A trilling scurry of rats flowed past his feet like a tidal flow and he cringed against the slimy wall until they had passed. The passage continued to turn to the left. The stream of sewage slowed, as if it had run its course. Bitterly cold, Collingwood crept on, his head reeling from tiredness and dehydration.
He stumbled over something soft and foul, he reached down to feel his way around it, his hands sank into rotting flesh and fur and he started away with a gasp of horror, scurrying past the rotting dead dog – or at least he hoped it was only a dog – as quickly as he could. Feasting rats hissed him on his way.
The softening of the darkness was so gradual that at first Collingwood did not realise it, not that he could see anything, or that the blackness was not complete – it was rath
