"killersusesewers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lewis Stafford)

think either of us will ever get another chance to get away from those murderers."

Dave didn't answer her. He was concentrating on some way to escape from that manhole.

After minutes in her strained position, standing on the iron rungs of the ladder, the
girl said: "I don't think I can hold myself up here for many hours!'

"You won't have to," Dave told her. "We're either going to get out of here or get
stuck in a tunnel and drown there. That water will run for fifteen minutes and then shut
off for five, if the inflow hasn't changed since I looked at the graph. It was taking
five minutes for the wet well to fill up enough to start the automatic pumps and pump it
dry again. We catch the incoming sewage that way so the pumps won't have to run steadily."

When the sound of the water told Dave the flow was slackening, he climbed down and
found the water was getting quite low near the tunnel entrance.

He helped the girl down the ladder, saying: "The chlorine isn't so strong, now, but
take shallow breaths anyway, We've got five minutes to go fifteen or twenty feet. I'll go
first; you crawl after me. If the water comes before we get through, my body will shut it
off enough to let you get back in here, provided you keep your head. All right, let's go!"

He started crawling as fast as he could, the girl behind him. The slick growths along
the cement walls didn't help, and the five minutes seemed gone before he was halfway
through.

Dave Sands saw the end of the tunnel, and squirmed with fresh energy toward the con-
crete pit which the tunnel opened into. It was a good thing be did; the water was begin-
ning to roll over the edge of the clarifier and into its circular ditch, then falling
down into the pit where Dave was climbing to his knees, The girl was still in the tunnel,
the sewage water rushing in on her. Dave Sands reached into the tunnel, caught her hand
and jerked the girl into the safety of the deep pit with him.

The girl was wet and all mussed up, soaked to the skin with filthy water. Her red hair,
made darker by being wet, drooped down over her face.

Dave said: "Look, ordinarily I'd quit before I'd crawl in that filthy water, but, now,
we couldn't be any slimier or dirtier. It's too easy to see us here; but if we crawl along
that circular, three-foot ditch, we can't be seen if we make it under that steel walk that
goes out into the middle of the clarifier. At least, the clarifier takes all the solids out
of the sewage before it drops the water over the side."

"I'll do anything you say," the girl told him. "But I don't see what good it'll do to
hide. When the men look down the manhole and find our bodies aren't there, they'll just
start hunting and find us."

"I'll take care of them," Dave said grimly. "Even if I have lost my gun, there are other
weapons. Maybe we can't hope to hide very long, and we can't get away without being seen;
but we can still fight and maybe win."

It was very unpleasant moving through sewage water on hands and knees, hidden by the