I had no choice but to crawl forward, shot or not.  My leg was just getting over its initial outrage at what had been done to it, beginning to hurt for real, and my boot was filling with blood.

I had to squirm through a tighter spot, and then the floor began to slope downward again.  The arched ceiling rose up and away from me, and then I was out of the tunnel, sliding a few feet down slick icy dirt and fetching up against something hard and straight.  I looked up, my eyes tearing with pain; the tunnel's mouth glowed behind me.  I had left the penlight a hundred feet back.  I listened for Taiisha, didn't hear anything from the tunnel.

I pulled my left mitten off with my teeth.  My hand was shaking.  No surprise.  It was too dark for me to see my leg, but that was just as well; it felt bad enough.  What had I slid into? I reached up, felt a narrow metal grate, curved slightly.  It was only a few inches wide.  I thought of the car in Lexi's garage, with its upright grille.  "Another car," I said to myself.  My voice was ragged with pain.

"It's a LaSalle," Lexi said in a low voice, turning her flashlight on.  I was looking directly at it when it came on, and squinted from the unexpected, painful light.  "Sorry," she said, and turned the beam away from my face.  "It's a 1934 LaSalle," she said again.  "Roadster.  Needs a new top, among other kinds of love."

"Where did they come from?" I asked, realizing as I did that she didn't know any better than I did.

"LaSalles?  Detroit, I think.  I can't remember for sure if they built them at Fisher alongside the Cadillacs or not.  It might have been--"

"No...I didn't mean that."

"Well, what did you mean then?"

I shook my head.  "Never mind.  We have to go."

"You're hurt," she said.  "Did you get hit?" I nodded.  Lexi squatted to look at my leg.  I tried to pull it away and she put a firm hand on my uninjured ankle.  "Wait," she said.  I did.  She reminded me of Eddie, trying to help.  I held still for her.  Lexi peeled the coat and my skirt carefully back.  "Bullet came out," she said.  "But I'll bet you know that.  You're turning gray, too.  Let me feel your pulse."

"I'm okay, Lexi."

She smiled at me.  "Of course you are, dear.  Or at least you will be until..."

I pulled my skirt back down and stood up.  My shot leg folded up the instant my injured foot touched the floor.  I fell into Lexi's arms with a loud bark of pain that echoed up the tunnel.

"...you try to stand up, stubbornlet," Lexi finished.  She eased me back to a sitting position.  "I was going to tell you not to do that.  Mind if I use the bottom third of your skirt to tie it up, for now?"  Cloth tore; Lexi hadn't waited for an answer.

The light of the flashlight bobbed wildly in my vision.  I was getting dizzy.  "Oh, God, I'm going into shock," I said.

"You've bought the ticket, reserved the room, and arrived, dearie.  There's a hole blown in your leg," Lexi said calmly.  "Button your coat," she said, shrugging her own coat off.  "And put mine on over it."

"I can't take your coat."

"Yes you can, and you will.  Your body temperature's going to drop like a tour bus in the Pyrenees.  It already is.  And you're wet with sweat.  If you don't stay warm and try to stay calm, you're gonna die." She put the coat on me.  I didn't feel any warmer.

My voice cracked.  "How am I supposed to be so calm? She's, she's back there.  Taiisha."

"The evil chiclet formerly known as Gray?"

"Yes.  She killed Martin.  She'll kill you too." I was wet to the skin, with sweat or snow and ice I couldn't tell.  My teeth began chattering.  I clenched my jaw to make them stop.

Lexi sighed.  "I've heard that before," she said mildly.  She helped me up.  I couldn't stand without her help.  "Follow me; I have an in with the Mysterious Subterranean Tunnels Department.  She killed Martin?"

"Yes."

"In my house?"

"I'll clean it up for you.  I have experience," I said.  I was getting lightheaded.  I staggered, and Lexi pulled me up.  "I'm so sorry."

"You don't need to be sorry.  It's all part of the rollercoaster.  Careful, the floor's not level here."

"I can't see.  I'm going to pass out, Lexi."

"You can see," she said.  "Open your eyes."

"I'm tired."  The complaints just spilled out of me.  I was losing control, and hated myself for it.  I shook my head again, hard, but the dizziness stayed.

"You're a swooner," Lexi said.

"A what?"

"You swoon, when you go into shock.  It's what some people do.  Some people get manic.  Some get hysterical.  Some get super-anal retentive.  It's different for everybody.  It'd be cool to take notes, if I wasn't so worried about you.  I should get a grant and do a study."

"How do you know these things?"

"Racing," she said.  "People crash, they almost always go into shock, even if they're not hurt too badly.  Pain and fear do that whether you admit to them or not, and all those little traits just pop right out.  I usually get manic--all of a sudden I have to make sure the car's okay, catalog what's wrong, make calls for replacement parts, find out if anyone else was hurt, make three hundred phone calls, you know.  There could be a hole in my skull and I'd be yelling for a phone so I could make sure the right towing yard picked up the car.  I also get extremely cranky.  After I rolled an MGB once at Road Atlanta, I actually hissed at the corner worker who was trying to get me out of the car."

I smiled in spite of myself, briefly.  "I'm so glad you're back."

"Hm?"

"Nothing."

"Oh, okay then."

From the tunnel behind us, a howl erupted.  It was a moment before I recognized the horrified voice as Taiisha's.  "Dog!" she screamed.  "No! Dog! No! Get away!"

"What the fuck is happening to her in there?" I said.

"Well, do you have a dog?"

"No."  Another long, anguished scream came from the tunnel's mouth.  It raised goosebumps on my arms; Taiisha's fright was somehow more unsettling than her smug arrogance.

"Neither do I, but she must be afraid of them."  I felt Lexi shrug.  "I think there's a bit of a bad patch in there.  You must have missed the ugliness, if you were shot by then.  Remember the nasty ghost I mentioned?  I think that's her little turn-back-now tollbooth.  I saw some nastiness too, although it had nothing to do with dogs.  Of course, I'm talking out of my butt.  Who knows?  Who cares?  She sounds unhappy, so it's obvious that instant karma has come to get her.  Maybe it'll slow her down.  We're going up steps now, careful.  One, two, three."

I looked up from the floor.  In the beam of the flashlight I saw wallboards, a door, a cheerful-looking window with no glass in it.  It was a house, but we were still underground.  "Is there a house down here?" I asked.

"I don't think we're in Kansas any more, Toto," she said.  She did a pretty good Judy Garland.  "Yes, it's a farmhouse.  It's a little bit squished and a lot tilted, but there is in fact a house here.  There's got to be the most gleeful story behind how it got down here."

Behind us, there was a single gunshot.  The report was slightly muffled, having come from deep in the tunnel.  Even though there was no danger that Taiisha was shooting at us, we both jumped.

The screaming had stopped.

Lexi snorted, shook herself, and got moving again.  "There's a short, steep tunnel to the surface right behind the kitchen."

"How do you know that?"

The floor was tilted; Lexi stood downslope and supported me.  "Oh, I was already up there.  I was hanging out in the house when I heard the shooting.  I think I might make this my playhouse, what do you think?  I'll fill it with toys and come down here when I want to be left alone."

Lexi started to tell me something about seeing the ghost in the tunnels, and something about the three cars, but I grayed out for a few minutes, lulled by the sound of her voice.  When the haze cleared again we were climbing up a shaft almost as steep as the one I had slid down earlier.  The walls of this one were smoother, though, and rusty metal rungs had been installed in the floor, like staples.  I heard myself saying, "I can't climb this.  My leg won't hold me."

"Oh, shut up," Lexi said.  "We're halfway out.  You don't give yourself nearly enough credit."

I was lying on dirty ice and pushing myself along with my good leg.  I had to use both hands on the rungs to keep from sliding back down.  My shot leg stretched uselessly next to me, trailing a sullen string of blood, and it was hurting worse every minute.  It was somehow numb and shatteringly painful at the same time.  I could feel it beginning to swell up in spite of the cold.  "Oh God, it hurts."

"I'll bet it does.  Just a bit farther, Nikki."

"I hit Eddie.  Taiisha told him I was going to kill him, and I was supposed to, but I didn't want to and I wasn't going to, but she told him and I had to hit him.  I hid him in your room.  And I called your friend Molly," I babbled.  "I told her to come here.  I didn't know if you were going to be okay or not, and I thought you needed a real friend here."

Lexi laughed.  "This is where I'm supposed to tell you that you are a real friend, right?"  She was almost to the surface.  The gray day seemed blinding bright after all the time I'd been underground.  "Well, I think your ego's bloated enough as it is," she joked.  "So I'm not gonna.  But wait till Molly gets here, we'll make strawberry cake and lasagna for three.  Or should it be four? Shall I invite Mr.  Doctor Edward Sharp to dinner as well?"  Lexi scrambled out into the snow, then turned around to help me. 

"Yes," I said.  She pulled me out into the snow.  The tunnel came out in what looked like the remains of a deer blind.  A door had been laid horizontally on the ground.  It looked like the floor of the blind, but it opened up like a cellar door.  I thought it must have taken Lexi quite a bit of pushing to open it with a foot of snow on top of it.  The sky was only a fraction lighter than the dead black of the tunnel.  Lexi's light made the snow glow.  Once I was out she closed it quickly and began burying it under snow again

I fell down in the snow; standing hurt too much.  We were somewhere in the woods, at the bottom of a small valley between three hills. 

"If only I had an anvil," she said, shoveling snow with both arms.  Soon the door was gone under a mountain of freshly disturbed snow.  "Or a big round rock on a ramp.  If I can push that open, so can Cruella," she said, "but maybe we'll get lucky and she won't find the tunnel."

"I've never gotten lucky in anything that has to do with her.  Don't take chances."

"Well, if I had an anvil I wouldn't hesitate to use it.  But I don't."  She looked around.  "Nope, no anvil."

"We're lost, aren't we?"

"No, we're not.  Silly pessimist girl.  My house is that way," Lexi pointed.  "But Sir William's is that way.  From my place, it's five miles by car, and one and a half as the crow flies, thanks to the roads.  And it's closer than my house, so to it we shall go."

I was still lightheaded.  In fact, it was getting worse.  I hoped the cold was slowing my bleeding down.  I had never died slowly before; it changed things somewhat, as did my conviction not to return if Taiisha killed me.  I didn't want to die.  No no no.  I hung my head and closed my eyes.  "How do you know that's the right way?"

"Internal compass," Lexi said.  "I had a powerful magnet attached to my skull just above the hairline.  My head's always trying to point north."  Snow crunched as she came closer, trying to get me to smile.  "If you put an electronic device near my face it'll stop.  I'm serious.  Try it, it's cool.  Do you have a watch?" I smiled to humor her and she was pleased.  "Actually, I'm lying.  I just have a good sense of direction.  I've spent a lot of time sliding sideways through forests in cars.  Not that has anything to do with it, I just like to brag about rallying." She touched my shoulder, urging me away from the tree.  "C'mon.  It can't be that far.  We gotta walk, Nikki.  If I was in better shape, I could carry you piggyback," she said apologetically.  "Lean on me.  Listen to me babble.  There will be a test."

I did as she asked, but I didn't raise my head or open my eyes.  Things were beginning to spin even with my eyes shut.  "I'm getting dizzy," I said.

"Bet you've been dizzy, but thanks for admitting it anyway.  You need juice." She pulled me forward and forced me to take a step, then another.  "I have juice in abundance, all sorts.  Think about juice, Nikki."

"Oh fuck, where's my bag? I dropped it."

"I have it," Lexi said.  "I've had it since we started climbing.  Apart from the strap being ruined it's fine.  Don't worry about it." She squeezed me a little.  Between the cold and the shock, my leg had gone numb again.

"Thank you," I said.  I grayed out again as we slogged through the woods.  Lexi talked the whole way.  I didn't lose consciousness, but was only incidentally aware of my surroundings.  I stared at the white ball of light cast by Lexi's flashlight until it got blurry around the edges and was the only thing in existence.  There were no trees, no snow; even Lexi was a dim shape.  I could have been dreaming.  There were a few moments of sharper hurt from my leg, which was being bandaged by someone I didn't recognize.  I couldn't tell how much time had passed, or where I was.  It was as if there was a short-circuit to my short-term memory, because I forgot about it almost instantly, until it happened again.  My leg was tightly bound.  "Got to get you someplace warm," Lexi said.  "Are you still all swoony?"

"Don't let me go," I answered, dimly aware that more time had passed but not of much else.  A wave of pain made my eyes roll up in my head, and I went away again.