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“That’s it! How did you know, Bill!”

“The sounds the tunnels made,” Bill answered, peering over Lydia’s shoulder. “Each sound made a noise that came in a set number, and each shape could present a number. Drip-Drip was obviously a two, and the hiss was a single stroke.”

Lydia looked adorably at Bill. Most of the mud from that morning had fallen off his face, and his arms were wet from the sewer water, giving him a glow that no clean water could. It was charming and disgusting all in one eyeful. She chose not to think about it too much. Rather be in the moment.

With the lock slid off, Lydia was able to pull the gate open with ease, and they slipped through. They heard a faint “byeee!” from Ziggy, who was in the darkness somewhere.

At first, the tunnel was pitch black. Bill banged his headlamp, and Lydia took out the torch he had given her earlier. Shards of light penetrated, and they heard scurrying as creatures crawled away. Bill looked at the wall while scratching his chin, then turned to smile at Lydia.

“Midnight Moon Lichen,” he said. She raised her eyebrows at him, not understanding why he was smiling at plants that grew in moist, muck conditions.

But then Bill turned back to the wall and started scratching the flora, ever so gently, as if he was tickling a mouse’s belly. The lichen started to glow, then became as bright as a 1980s fluorescent kitchen. Lydia turned off her torch.

“Impressive,” she smirked.

Bill chuckled. There was no way to impress this dame. He jumped back into the water, and they both carried on in silence. Lydia had questions, of course, and she sure as hell had stories, but they were on a quest to find a creature, which, as far as she understood, was incredibly elusive.

Bill held his fist up, and Lydia stopped. He was listening again. Lydia leaned forward to try and hear what he was hearing. She could hear the water moving down the tunnel. There were definitely some scratching noises of creatures hiding. But there was also something else. Deep breathing. An almost gasping noise, as if something was finding it very hard to breathe.

“There,” Bill said, pointing further down the tunnel. “Go slowly.”

Lydia and Bill made their way to the edge of the tunnel and up onto the small ledge. They crawled along it, as it was quieter, although slow-going. Lydia saw where they were heading.

Slowly, but surely, they got closer and closer to a large gecko. It was a bright ice-blue color.

“It’s alright,” Bill said. “We can move quicker.”

With that, he jumped back into the water and waddled his way through, without a thought to the amount of noise he was making.

“What are you doing?” Lydia hissed. “I thought we had to be silent?”

“Well, we did,” he shouted back over his shoulder. “That was until I realised what the small bugger had done. You see he has frozen himself. He can’t move. That’s why he is breathing so funny.”

“Is he still alive?”

“Umm… yes. By the looks of things. They’re cold-blooded, so technically it’s a good thing we came along; he might not be alive for much longer. I don’t think there is a way for him to warm himself up down here.”

Bill arrived at the Slushie and plonked the cage on the ledge. He opened the little door and then touched the Slushie, but quickly retracted.

“It’s cold!” he said sheepishly. Lydia rolled her eyes. Bill tried again.

Using his shirt to protect his hands, he cracked the Slushie off the concrete and placed him in the cage.

“We’d best move on,” he said. “I hear an odd noise coming from back there.”

Lydia turned to where they had come from. She could hear it too.

“How are we going to get out?” she asked, climbing back into the water.

“We could probably climb up through that manhole over there,” Bill said.

“What?!” Why didn’t we climb down that manhole to start off with?! Then we would have arrived here and not at the beginning, and we could have just grabbed this thing and gotten out, without having to unlock the gate and all that drama.”

“Yes, but it’s a little anticlimactic coming down a manhole and finding exactly what you want in two seconds. I thought you liked drama.”

“When I say I like the scenic route, I mean routes with scenery,” Lydia said, huffing as she grabbed the bottom of the ladder. “This is not scenic. This is gutter-of-gross, and I can’t believe you dragged me down here when I could have stayed at the top of wherever this hole comes out.”

Bill chuckled. He wasn’t going to say anything further. He climbed up behind Lydia and then had to climb a little over her to help her push the manhole up. As they both heaved, he couldn’t help but notice that she actually was pretty under all the contouring makeup. He wouldn’t mind taking a trowel to her face and gutting all the gloop off to see what condition her skin was underneath. He reckoned it probably was very pretty.

She caught him looking at her and snarled. He immediately gave her space as she climbed up and out into the open world above. As he himself climbed through, he heard a sloshing of water as a large wave washed down below him. He quickly climbed all the way up and sat on the road, with his legs still in the hole, peering down. The water level had risen almost to the top, and he was thankful he wasn’t in it. He turned to Lydia, who was removing the rubber pants as quickly as she could.

“What?” she asked aggressively.

Bill thought it best to not mention the near-death experience they had almost been in, and instead shrugged as he slid the manhole back on, hiding the evidence. With the salamander safely in the cage and once again in somewhat fresh air, Lydia decided to resume her role as extrovert.

“Don’t those things only have, like, one good ice blast in them? Are you not concerned that, since it’s frozen, it’s done? That we picked the wrong one and that we should probably go back in there and find another? And when I say ‘we,’ I really mean you, because I’m sure as a polka-dot last-summer Sunday not putting that rubber outfit back on. I’m not saying you’re not cute, Bill, but you are not that cute. So if you have a weird rubber fetish, you need to tell me now, because I’m not really into rubber, and we’ll need to create some type of safe word. I’m thinking ‘couch,’ but I feel like that may have been used before between a pirate and a sea-cow.”

Bill stopped and raised his eyebrows. Lydia had lost her hard stomping walk she had down in the sewer and was now back to tiny feet crossing over, with full swing in the hips and a posed hand mid-air. It was amazing how she could transform, not dissimilar to a cactus that Bill knew. What he also knew was that the sewer was in mid-flood stage, and there was no way he would be able to get back down there until it subsided, which meant that their only chance was the Slushie they had. He hoped the little guy hadn’t used up all his ice.

When they rounded the corner to where the Aggressive Nibbling-Weed was growing, Lydia muttered something about a thank you, but no thank you, and disappeared around the corner. Bill slapped his hat out and pulled it on his head before taking the lizard by the body. He held it firmly under the arms and then pulled down like a confetti gun. The salamander looked like its eyes were going to bulge right out, but instead a good blast of ice shot out of its mouth. Bill knew that if fully loaded, the lizard could wipe out half the street, but all he had left was only half its tank. However, as the plant was still in its pre-teen stage, the ice blast was enough to fully freeze it.

He flung the depleted lizard into a dark corner, and with a wheeze, it slid back into the depths. Lydia came out of her hiding spot, and both she and Bill stared at the frozen plant. She kicked it with her stilettos, and the whole thing shattered into small ice cubes.

“Wait, is that it?” she asked. “Have we done it? Have we saved the world?”

She knew the answer, but she liked to amuse men by asking questions. It made them feel important.

Bill puffed up his chest, as the man of the hour who had taken down a potential doomsday creature. He didn’t have an answer for Lydia, but he liked the fact that she was asking him. He quickly raced through his brain, trying to think of something cool to say.