“You know,” Shade said, “when other kids go on adventures, it’s to exotic locations. Paris. The outback. Rainforest jungle. But with you, I get a sewer.”
“Next time, check the brochure,” retorted Winston. “And speaking of locations, ditch your phone.”
Shade gaped at him in blank disbelief, as if Winston’s face had just turned upside-down. “You’re not serious.”
“As a heart attack. Bledsoe called me. They have the numbers. They can track us.”
Without a second thought, Winston grabbed his phone from his pocket and threw it like a flat river rock. It skimmed once, twice off the still black water, leaving concentric rings on the surface that gleamed in their dueling flashlight beams. Then the thing struck the side of the tunnel with a loud spaaang and disappeared under the surface.
“Oh, that was a big mistake,” said Shade. “You know that’s the kind of thing that makes the monsters come out. Never disturb the dark waters, especially with a new smartphone.”
“Chuck it,” ordered Winston.
Shade took his phone from his pocket and cradled it to his chest with a deep frown. “What if you want to call him?” He glanced upward toward the surface.
“Then I’ll borrow a phone,” said Winston. “I memorized the number. Come on, we don’t have time.”
With an anguished groan, Shade slowly lowered his phone into the water, as if laying a beloved hamster into its grave. The glowing screen made it only a few inches below the surface before it flashed once and then went as black as the rest of the tunnel.
“I did that nice and gentle,” said Shade. “So, I hope whatever comes to attack us and drag us under goes after you.”
“Me too,” said Winston. “Then I won’t have to listen to you anymore.”
Despite himself, Shade smiled, and his teeth gleamed in the eerie darkness.
Winston wasn’t happy about being in the water. He could handle tight spaces. He was usually fine with the dark. Being in water he couldn’t escape from, though, even shallow water like this, set his already frayed nerves into overdrive. The truth was that he hoped Shade would keep up his crazy talk, because if all he heard was their sloshing through the water, he thought he just might go a little nuts. When he was little, he’d often had nightmares about drowning. Water was how things shorted out and died. Winston discovered that finally knowing where his phobia came from did nothing to calm his anxiety.
They needed to find the artifact as quickly as possible and get dry. Winston suspected that if they went left it would take them east, which would lead to a quick dead end. Even the big Portland flood of 1996 hadn’t made it much past Pioneer Square, and he was fairly sure that the engineers who had designed these tunnels long ago wouldn’t have spent much time and trouble extending the drainage too far inland from the river. Winston knew that Voodoo Doughnut was about three blocks directly south from their current position. The problem now was to guess which way led south and not into a dead end or out at the river.
“You have a compass handy?” Winston asked.
“Duh.” Shade twisted the pack around his body and unzipped a side pouch. “I could probably get us to Idaho from down here and build us a couple hammocks if you want.”
“Tempting, but…just the compass and Voodoo Doughnut for now, thanks.”
Winston gripped his flashlight between his legs and slowly slid his backpack around, as Shade had done, careful to keep it elevated above the water. He rummaged through it until his hand closed over the pouch of marbles. Then he fingered his way inside of the bag and seized a few. He slipped these into his jeans pocket, making sure to reload one into Little e. He didn’t know what would happen if he tripped and fell in the water. Would the marbles dissolve and explode in a riot of blue incineration? He thought about how ironic it would be if he really did manage to blow up a chunk of Portland, just like the FBI said.
Winston doubted that would happen, though. Whatever alien race was smart enough to create something like Little e, never mind the Alpha Machine and time-space travel, could probably engineer their energy marbles to not blow up if someone knocked over a glass of water.
As if sensing his thoughts, Shade said, “You sure it’s safe to have those things in the water? I don’t want Little Creepy broiling me to medium rare.”
“It’s not like that,” Winston said. “I’m not sure how to describe it, but…I control the energy. It only goes where I want. I don’t know how. Then again, I also don’t know where we’re going.”
“East,” said Shade, tilting the compass to catch the light. He pointed to their right. “That way.”
“You’re sure?” That earned a Shade eye roll. “All right, sorry.”
Winston led them forward. The water had to be moving, because otherwise it would have been fetid and crusted with algae, but it was so slow that no current pushed against them, nor was there even a faint burble as the stream crept along its course. Except for the two of them, the tunnel was utterly silent. When they spoke, the sound had an odd, constricted feel, as if the words fell dead only inches before their faces.
Winston guided them down the tunnel until they reached a T. He guessed that the branch sat under NW Third Avenue, which meant they had to turn right to go south. Casting his flashlight beam all around the tunnel split, Winston had a thought. If the water was always at calf height, why would there be slime on the walls and ceiling, especially in the summer? Could whatever organic black ooze surrounded them exist solely off of evaporation and humidity? Or did the pipeline occasionally fill up?
“We should go faster,” he said.
“No complaint here,” said Shade. “You’re the one lead—” He broke off and suddenly sloshed about, aiming his light into the dark water by his legs. “What was that?”
“Very funny. We’re not in a trash compactor.”
“No, I’m not playing!” Shade cried, a hint of actual panic in his voice. “Something moved past my leg!”
Winston swallowed. If he tried to defuse the situation with a Han Solo line, maybe it would go away. “It’s just your imagination, kid.”
“It’s not!”
Shade kept casting his light beam in every direction, as if trying to catch his own shadow, and the fact that he had no interest in pursuing the Star Wars script scared Winston more than anything else.
“I didn’t feel anything. It was probably a fish. You like fish.”
“Yeah,” said Shade, momentarily shining his beam in Winston’s face. “But not rats. Everybody knows sewer rats eat people.”
“No, they don’t. And smell.” Winston drew in a deep noseful. “Do you smell sewage? I get chlorine and fertilizer and…” The smell was faintly acrid and metallic. “…maybe tar from the street runoff. But not sewage. I think we’re safe from sewer rats.”
“Unless they’ve adapted to living off of chemicals. Maybe they have gills and super-sharp teeth and a need for vengeance. Monsanto rats.”
“They are not Monsanto rats. It was probably a piece of wood floating by.”
That explanation seemed to soothe Shade a bit, and he lowered his flashlight down to the tunnel before them. “How far do we have to go?”
“Three blocks.”
“If it’s straight.”
Winston sighed. “Yes, if it’s straight. And if not, you’ve got a compass.”
“It won’t be straight,” Shade muttered as he took a hesitant step. “It’s never straight.”
Winston wanted to argue, but something told him that, this time, Shade’s paranoia might turn out to be right.
***
Bledsoe grunted with the slightest bit of satisfaction as the bolt securing the sidewalk hatch gave way with a loud snap. The two officers set their crowbars aside, and each hauled up a steel flap. Bledsoe started to push past them, made it down two steps, and then halted suddenly. He grimaced and shouted, “Flashlight! I need a flashlight!”
One of the officers ran to his car’s trunk and came back with a flashlight in e
ach hand. One was a pocket-sized LED model, five or six inches long, and the other a full, metal-bodied Mag, over a foot long and built for bashing heads. Bledsoe grabbed the latter and handed the shorter unit to Smith. The agent examined it with a scowl.
Bledsoe wasn’t interested in having a mine-is-bigger-than-yours argument. He quickly led the agent down the stairs. The two were careful to hunch protectively under the low ceiling. They reached the bottom and ran into the main room. Bledsoe took in the scattering of chairs, likely blown apart and strewn by the flashbang grenade. Then, he spotted Lynch’s body off to the side, near a wide hole ripped out of the long brick wall.
“Lynch!” called Bledsoe, not really expecting a reply. Surprisingly, the big man rolled onto his side and groaned. Bledsoe appeared over Lynch just as the large man tried unsuccessfully to sit. Instead, he fell back clutching his right forearm.
“Well, you’re not going anywhere,” Bledsoe mumbled disapprovingly. “Where’d they go?”
“I don’t know,” Lynch rasped.
“How’d they knock you out?”
Lynch blinked several times, trying to focus on Bledsoe’s face. “The Chase kid. He grabbed this thing I found down here.” He tried to hold up both hands, probably to show the length of whatever he was talking about, but his right arm wouldn’t obey him. “A metal thing. It shocked me. He…” Lynch turned suddenly sheepish, as if he was embarrassed to admit the truth, which he should be. “He knocked me out with it.”
Bledsoe knew exactly what he was talking about. The last time he had seen it, the device had been wielded by a chimpanzee in 1948. Apparently, some things never changed.
Bledsoe started to blame himself for not anticipating this. He remembered Amanda holding the device as he had fought with Claude. She had struck him on the back with it once, twice, trying to make him stop…
Knowing that Lynch was of no more use to him for the time being, Bledsoe turned away and searched for where the boys might have gone. Soon, he discovered the hole blown in the concrete floor.
“Down here,” he said, pointing with his light beam at the metal rungs visible through the opening. “Smith, you go down first.”
Smith opened his mouth, then wisely closed it. He stepped past Bledsoe, set one loafer on the second rung down, and began his descent, careful not to catch his shoulders on the jagged concrete.
Bledsoe heard a faint splash and shone his light down on top of Smith’s green-dappled head. The man stood in shallow water, studying his surroundings.
“See anything?” Bledsoe called.
“Nothing,” the agent replied. “It’s just a tunnel with about a foot of standing water. Maybe a sewer.”
Bledsoe leaned closer to the opening and sniffed. That wasn’t a sewer.
“Can you tell which direction they went?” he asked.
Smith scanned in both directions, then he stopped and listened. After a few moments, he shook his head.
Bledsoe swore under his breath. He could bring in a bunch of people and have them split up, but that was just asking for someone to get lost or for the boys to be found and then have a chance to plead their case without Bledsoe there to shut them up. Moreover, Management wanted as few people as possible involved in this case. The associated risks were too great. If an officer got injured or killed on this operation, Bledsoe and those above him would have to field a ton of unwanted questions. He could order his radiation sensors brought in and start an aboveground search. Yes, even this bumbling, curly-headed half-wit should be able to handle that. But Bledsoe had to act — now. He found himself growing increasingly tired of bird-dogging this troublesome teen. He was playing a game to rules he felt helpless to control.
What, then? What could he do? Right now, those boys were stuck down here like rats in a…
And then he knew.
“Smith, get up here,” he called even as he walked away and back toward the stairs. “Officer Anderson,” he said into his wrist transmitter. “Anderson, come in.”
A few seconds later, one of the Portland policemen who’d been next to him on the street buzzed back. “Yes, sir.”
“Anderson, I want street patrols within a dozen blocks doubled, tripled, in case those kids surface. And I need the top expert on the drainage system under Portland on the horn five minutes ago.”
“On it,” he said. “Should I ask why?”
“Nope,” said Bledsoe. “It’ll only slow you down.”
23
Doughnut Discovery
Winston didn’t care if the top of the drainage tunnel was turning his hand into a goopy, black-stained mess. He just needed to feel something solid, something that wasn’t dark, threatening water. Rationally, he understood that it was only up to his knees. There was no way it could magically reach up and grab him and pull him under. Still, the fear of being surrounded by water, of knowing that no matter which way he ran, he couldn’t escape its danger, pressed on him. It couldn’t have been more than 55 or 60 degrees in the tunnel, but he felt himself sweating. His shoulders hunched to the point of aching. With every movement, he heard the slosh of water around his legs and imagined each ripple getting higher and higher up his body, covering his waist, his neck…and finally his head.
He didn’t realize he’d stopped.
“Dude, you OK?” Shade asked from just behind him.
No, he thought. Not at all.
But Winston nodded in the feeble glow from their flashlights. “Yeah.”
Shade shone his light into Winston’s face, making him squint and turn away. “Wow. You’re really pale,” he said with clear concern before covering his worry with a forced smile. “Oh, wait. You’re always that pale.”
“That’s hilarious,” said Winston, taking a deep breath. “You still know where we’re going?”
“Of course. If we figure two feet per step through the water, we’ve come about seven hundred feet, which should be two blocks or so. Hopefully we come to a split or junction soon, because we need to head more—”
Winston felt something hard bump into his leg. He jerked away from it instinctively and was glad that he barely suppressed the urge to scream like a little girl. Winston cast his flashlight around the water’s surface.
“What?” Shade asked. “You felt it, too, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”
Winston caught himself biting his lips, just like his mom. “It wasn’t a tentacle.”
“Did I say tentacle? Why’d you have to say tentacle?”
Shade’s own light beam danced frantically across the water. They saw nothing except black liquid surface, slick tunnel walls, and the glint of ripple where the two met.
“There!” cried Shade, pointing his light down the tunnel and toward the right. “Is that a branch to the right?”
Winston should have seen it first. He had the better night vision, and now that he followed Shade’s beam, he could see branches off to the right and left, darker ovals within the black stretched before them.
“And another to the left,” said Winston. He gestured to the right. “That way?”
Shade checked his compass and nodded. They started forward again, trying to move as quickly as possible without risking their footing on the slippery floor.
“Maybe we should have been like marking the walls or something,” said Shade, “as a way to find our way back out if we get lost.”
“Or give anyone following us a way to find us more quickly? I don’t think so.”
There was a brief pause, and then Shade blurted out, “Ugh, you see?” He splashed a little more recklessly through the water. “That’s the thing with you.”
“What thing?”
“The way you just assume everyone is out to get you.”
“Dude!” Winston shone his light back the way they had come. “In case you haven’t noticed, everyone is out to get me!”
“That’s not what I mean.”
Shade stopped when they arrived at the tunnel branching. Winston thought he felt the breeze pick up slightly as they sto
od in the four-way junction.
“Then what do you mean?” Winston asked.
“I—” Shade’s words choked off, and his free hand groped at the air. “You’re not being careful. The more you can do, the more dangerous you get. You’re backing us into these corners and using more and more…”
Winston felt annoyance push aside his fear of the water. “More what?” he asked, voice lowered.
Shade stiffened. His chin jutted out. “Violence. It’s almost like you’re looking for situations where you can use that thing—” He motioned toward Winston’s backpack. “—to attack people.”
The words came out before Winston was even aware of thinking them. “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever said.”
Winston tensed, knowing instantly that he’d made a mistake. He wanted to apologize and try to retract the words, but it was already too late.
Shade stepped back as if Winston had struck him. “Yeah, ‘cause it’s stupid when you make statements based on observable facts.”
“They aren’t facts!” Winston retorted. “Every time I’ve had to use Little e, it’s been when there was no choice. Either I took a risk or we were good as dead. I mean, you’d probably be fine after they interrogated you and your family and took all your stuff and—”
Winston inwardly cursed his runaway mouth. He shouldn’t have mentioned Shade’s family. With Shade’s mind preoccupied by their own danger and violence, it was only a small jump to wonder if his family would be in the same boat, getting stun grenades lobbed at them and thrown into prison cells. Shade would make that connection. His expression said he already had.
“I appreciate you helping me,” said Winston. “For real. There is nothing I want more right now than to wrap up this whole Alpha Machine mess and get us back home.”
Only he wasn’t sure if any of them would ever be going home. They — whoever they really were — had his dad. They wanted his mom, for sure. And the Tagaloas? With what Shade now knew and had seen, would he ever be allowed to return to regular life?
Winston Chase and the Alpha Machine Page 24