---

“Bill, it didn’t work,” Lydia said.

She twirled the dials back and forth to ensure that maybe it wasn’t her fault. Maybe she got the alignment wrong. But it wasn’t her. The code Bill suggested wasn’t right.

“What were you listening for?” she asked, turning back to him.

He shrugged.

“The sounds,” he said. “I thought the sounds had numbers. Like drip-drip was a two.”

“But the dials don’t have numbers, they have shapes, or runes…”

“Yes, but two could be the two strokes, see,” he said, pointing over her shoulder. “And then three could be the triangle.”

“So you heard 4, 2, 1 and 3?”

“Oh. No. I heard something else. But the reader…”

“The reader? Is that who we are blaming right now?”

“Land of Goshen!”

Lydia and Bill turned. Ziggy was back.

“You hear that?” he asked, pointing up.

Lydia and Bill listened. Lydia wanted to call a spade a spade, or in this case, a Ziggy, a madman, but he was right. There was a noise. It was a low rumbling noise. She noticed that some of the glowing snails were retreating into alcoves. Bill noticed the mushrooms all curled up. They both turned to Ziggy.

Ziggy was petting a grey pigeon and seemed unbothered.

“Who’s a cute little coo-coo?” he was muttering, stroking the bird’s head.

The bird coo-cooed in response. Each time Ziggy stroked him, his head disappeared a little into its shoulders, and its squiff eyes bulged a little. Bill and Lydia just stared at him. He turned to them and raised one of his eyebrows.

“What?” he asked. “Oh, I’m sorry. This is Fred. Fred, this is… um… What’s your name again?”

“The NOISE!” Lydia blurted. “WHAT’S THAT NOISE?”

“Oh, it’s probably a huge wall of water, similar to a tsunami, rushing down here to drown us and potentially kill us all. Yes. It happens once a day. Say, you guys don’t have any sanitizer, do you? I don’t want to get bird flu.”

“We have to get out of here!” Bill shouted.

“Yeah, but I’ve got to just observe this pigeon a bit. I’m writing a book you know, on ‘Grey Pigeons – What’s with all the guano?’“

Bill grabbed Lydia’s hand and pulled her. The noise was getting louder and louder, making it almost impossible to hear anything else. Lydia yanked her hand from Bill.

“We can’t go out the way we came! That’s where the noise is coming from!” she shouted.

Bill twitched in thought, then his eyes widened.

“The manhole! One of the noises I heard down the tunnel was a rattle-rattle, rattle-rattle of a car driving over the manhole. We can climb out!”

“GREAT! Which tunnel was it with the manhole?”

Bill shrugged.

“I don’t know! The reader got the tunnels confused, and now I’m not sure which one is was!”

Lydia wanted to slap this man. She wanted to slap you. How could she have gotten into this situation? She should be at a cafe somewhere, drinking an espresso, reading the news. The last thing she ever expected in her life was that she would die, wearing rubber pants. Well, actually, she could see herself dying in rubber pants, but not these rubber pants. These were unflattering.

“Here she comes!” Ziggy yelled.

Bats and rats with wings, along with moths and other dark creatures, flew in a cloud over their head, trying to find a way out.

“Awww…” Ziggy said. “There’s my red-chested bat friend! Hey bat friend! We’ll hang out next Thanksgiving, I promise!”

Lydia and Bill turned to look at Ziggy. Somehow the strange man had managed to procure a surfboard. The water was pulling away from them now, lowering all the way down to their ankles. They looked toward the depths of the tunnels, and the wave came rushing around the corner. Lydia could see the balls of yarn that it must have collected from Maude’s alcove. Bill saw his left sock, which he was sure was on his foot a minute ago. The wall of water rushed at them. Lydia grasped Bill’s hand again and screamed as the water hit them in the chest.

The water split into the various tunnels, and Ziggy turned his board into one. They could hear him yelp in joy as he barrelled the wave and disappeared.

Bill and Lydia had no control but to go wherever the water took them. Lydia was struggling to keep her head above water. They were sloshed and battered about the tunnel. Eventually, the tunnel did lead out, but it led out to a pipe that flowed out at the top of a cliff. There was nothing for them to do but scream like two mating seagulls as they plummeted to their deaths on the rocks jutting out from the sea.

Nobody found them, because by the time darkness fell, everyone in the town was dead, as no one had worked out a way to stop doomsday.

---

Well, that was unexpected. And escalated fast. I guess you picked the wrong answer. You should probably go back and try one of the others. You know what’s nice, though? I can give you a link. It’s the least I can do, since I wrote your death.