My mind made up, I took a long view picture of the footprints leading down into the culvert, and then a few up close. The prints themselves didn’t have much shape to them, because the ground underneath was dry as brick. There would be no lifting footprints from this trail, only to find that the shoes in question were handmade by a blind Italian who only sold shoes on Thursdays to an exclusive clientele. I swore I’d seen that exact same plot on one of the alphabet soup detective shows that seem to be on every single night. I couldn’t remember which one, though. Maybe NCIS or CSI or WTF Are You Thinking, Detectives Never Get Those Kinds of Breaks. Except maybe in my bowling pin case, but that was definitely an exception to the rule.
The prints led straight into the tunnel, no question about it. I spent a few moments looking around for a second trail leading out but no luck there. Strange. If Rickroll had left them, I would have expected to find a clear indication of where he’d come out. Perhaps he might have walked in his own footsteps, but in that case, the grass would have bent in both directions, coming and going. Some pieces would point toward the culvert, but most would be pushed in the opposite direction. But the grass was all bent toward the culvert, so I was willing to bet that no one had come back out this way.
Either the monster was still in there, or it had gone out another exit.
Of course I didn’t believe in monsters, but my heart began to race anyway. Someone had definitely entered this tunnel. They hadn’t come back out. Maybe Rickroll was onto something after all. Maybe this wasn’t a hoax or a waste of time. Perhaps the person who’d left the unidentified device on the grounds had been wearing a mask—why hadn’t I thought of that before? They’d been wearing a monster mask when Rickroll had seen them. There were plenty of logical explanations, if only I could resist the urge to jump to ridiculous conclusions.
Now I found myself faced with a tough decision. I knew someone had gone into the sewers and might still be hiding in there, although I suspected that if this had anything to do with the device, the culprits had gotten the schematics of the sewer system and pre-planned a way out. My masked man was probably long gone by now. I wasn’t likely to find anything, but I should still call for backup, no matter how much it bothered me to ask Hardwicke for anything. I had to get over myself before tragedy struck again and I could only hold myself responsible for it.
I swallowed my pride and dialed my phone. I still had Hardwicke’s number programmed in from the few months I’d trained him, before I’d been partnered with Ronda. We’d gotten along so well then. The past made his abrupt personality switcheroo all the more difficult to deal with. But I would call him, and he would come, because that was how professionals worked.
The phone rang and rang, but he didn’t pick up. Well, damn. I couldn’t just walk off without searching the entrance at the very least. I left him a terse message, explaining where I was and why. Hopefully he’d come once he got the message.
Then I unclipped my flashlight from its spot on my belt and stepped toward the tunnel entrance. The cracked concrete dome peaked at about eye height; I’d have to crouch to walk inside. From out here, there wasn’t much to look at. The tunnel ran straight for about fifty yards or so and then turned off to the left. Debris blown in from the dumpsters littered the ground here and there, but obviously someone came in here to clean the place up periodically. Maybe Rickroll. I didn’t see heaps of dead leaves, so at the very least, it had been shoveled out since last fall. I imagined that the rain would carry a lot of dead plant life into the culvert at the end of the growing season.
While the tidy concrete tunnel appealed to me aesthetically, it also gave me zero chance of finding any footprints inside. I dutifully snapped a picture anyway, just to be thorough. Then, after a moment of consideration, I stepped inside. It would be safe enough to walk down to the turn and take a look. I’d reevaluate my options once I knew what lay beyond, but I’d likely have to call the Public Works Department and get someone to escort me down there. Toledo had an extensive network of tunnels and sewers below the city. I’d heard stories that early versions of the city had just sunk into the swamp, and they’d kept building new buildings atop the old ones, although I suspected these were just tall tales. Regardless, I had no desire to get lost in the underground warren of tunnels, with or without the potential presence of monsters with unknown, potentially incendiary devices.
As I stepped into the tunnel, I flicked on the flashlight. Near the entrance, the light trickled through cracks in the concrete and came slanting in through the opening, but the space quickly grew dim as I moved slowly and deliberately inside. I kept my eyes roaming and all senses alert. Perhaps I’d find something. Perhaps this would be the moment where the case broke open, and I didn’t want to miss it because I’d decided to phone it in. And even if that didn’t happen, it would suck if I tripped and broke my ankle. Slow and steady would win the race here.
When I was about halfway to the first corner, I heard a noise. It brought me to an immediate halt as my ears strained to pin it down. Perhaps it had just been the echo of my movement bouncing back at me off the curved walls. I waited, tense with adrenaline, my hand resting gently on the hilt of my sidearm. But I heard nothing.
After about a minute of tension, I relaxed. Tunnels like these could play tricks on your senses, which helped to explain why I hadn’t wanted to enter it alone in the first place. But this one couldn’t be safer. No branching tunnels or slippery, mold crusted slopes. No terrifically low ceilings, although my back had started to ache from all the hunching over. I didn’t like the feel of my hair grazing the concrete, so I instinctively stooped over further as I proceeded forward.
Then I heard it again. The barest scrape of movement against the concrete around the corner up ahead. It was a light sound. Probably a squirrel or some other small animal. Maybe it had burrowed in through cracks in the concrete and made itself a cozy little home out of the sun and away from predators. But maybe it wasn’t a harmless little thing. Maybe I’d heard a shoe, scuffing against the pavement as its owner shifted his weight in preparation to spring…
I’d managed to work myself up good when I realized someone had probably taken shelter in the coolness of the tunnel. The homeless population had really grown over the past few years, what with all the layoffs and business closings. Not that Toledo had the corner on poor economies—it was like this everywhere from what I’d heard. I counted myself lucky to have a steady job, and I’d drilled budgeting and good financial sense into my son’s head until he’d complained he was dreaming in numbers. Too bad, in my opinion. If he didn’t learn fiscal conservation early in life, he could end up like the poor sap I was likely to find around the corner.
Even though I’d come up with multiple logical explanations for the noise, I still approached the corner with extreme caution. Every sense remained on high alert, straining for any sign of movement or aggression. I saw nothing, heard nothing. No more shuffling of feet or whatever that sound had been. The only scent in the air was a dry, old smell. Not unpleasant or moldy, more like museums and ancient libraries. Perhaps the leaves had piled up here, around the corner, and I’d heard the rummaging of a mouse deep in the pile, looking for something to eat.
My mind still ran with the possibilities when something knocked into my hand, moving too fast for me to catch a good look at it. I could make out nothing but a dark blur before my flashlight flew into the opposite wall. The plastic hit the wall with a crack, and the light went dim. I barely noticed. The thing wrapped around my head, cutting off all light and sound. It felt warm to the touch and had a slick, sickening texture like a snake warmed in the microwave. It was long and flatter than a snake, but I wasn’t exactly interested in playing compare and contrast the serpentine materials at the moment. I was too busy trying to breathe. The whatever-it-was covered my entire face, wrapping around to the back of my head.
I scrabbled at its spongy surface, trying to pull it off me, trying to figure out what the hell it was in the first place, but I
couldn’t accomplish either. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Spots danced before my closed eyes. My lungs heaved, trying to draw in oxygen that wasn’t there. My fingernails scrabbled at the thing around my face, but they grew weaker with every second.
My gun! I reached to my hip, but my fingers couldn’t manage the button on the holster. It was a simple closure, designed to be easily opened by an adrenaline fueled officer in trouble, and I’d drilled it over and over again until the movement was automatic, but my air-starved fingers wouldn’t cooperate. Panic overcame me, and I thrashed against my captor, but that only increased the pressure on my head. My knees buckled. I went down.
The last thing I remember before I lost consciousness was the crunch of dead leaves underneath me as I fell to the hard concrete, the snake-like thing still wrapped around my face. Then there was nothing.
CHAPTER 12
The stench of rotten garbage filled my nose, choking off my air. In the movies, unconscious ladies always wake up with delicate grace and fluttering eyelashes. I heaved myself into a sitting position with a whooping intake of breath and nearly vomited from the smell. My lungs burned, and my body felt like I’d been stuffed into a laundry bag full of bricks and tossed into an industrial sized dryer to tumble around for a while. My heart fluttered in remembered panic, and I looked around hurriedly lest some weird snake-thing leap out of nowhere and cut off my breath again, but I saw nothing.
After all, it was pitch black.
My eyes couldn’t make out a single flicker of light no matter how hard they strained. I heard nothing. Smelled plenty, but that wasn’t much help. Without any idea of my location—and, more importantly, the location of my assailant—I had to get my act together fast. I took quick stock of my body. Nothing broken as far as I could tell. I might be one big bruise when this was all said and done, but bruises healed. What I found next startled me. I’d expected an empty holster, empty pockets. But my sidearm still sat at my hip. My cell phone and badge were in my pocket. My hip kit still sat on my belt. Not that I’d really need nitrile gloves or chewing gum. The phone was the real win.
I pulled it out and pushed the power button. The electronic glow didn’t do much to pierce the darkness, but I wasn’t about to complain about the quality of the illumination. I held the phone up, looking around quickly to make sure I was alone.
The tiny space afforded little room to hide. I’d awoken in a small concrete cell, about ten by ten in size. The domed ceiling sat low enough that I would have to crouch again when I stood up, but right now that prospect made my head swim so I didn’t. Each of the four walls opened into an upward sloping tunnel. The furthest one from me had a pile of rotting garbage heaped at the end, but the rest were empty of garbage or killer, face-wrapping snakes.
The light from the phone flickered, and I looked at the screen with dismay. I only had 4% battery left. With all the tumult, I hadn’t put it on the charger at work like usual, and then I’d taken all those pictures of the culvert. I’d been due for an upgrade too, but of course I’d been too cheap to take in the old phone for a new one that held a charge better. I sure regretted that now.
Rather than waste battery on the light, I tried to call for help. Screw Hardwicke; this time I dialed 911. But unsurprisingly, I had no signal. I figured I must be too deep in the sewers to have reception. I tried to stay calm, because I’d expected as much based on the up-sloped tunnels, but tears welled in my eyes nonetheless. I might be tough, but I wasn’t stupid. The outlook didn’t look good. I had no idea where I was or who had attacked me. Said attacker could still be out there, although I was willing to bet that they’d ran for it. Maybe they’d realized I was a cop and hightailed it out of here before I could wake up. Sometimes the badge spooked people, and usually that annoyed me, but given the circumstances, I’d take it.
What I needed to do was not panic, but I found that easier said than done. The imagined weight of the tunnel system above me—all that earth—felt heavy and stifling. The more I thought about it, about the snake-like squeeze over my face, the harder I found it to breathe. My heart sped up again for the bazillionth time that day. I knew I had to calm down before I gave myself a heart attack atop everything else, but that didn’t make the feeling go away. I had a little mini meltdown there on the concrete in the dark. All I could think of was the possibility that I could have died down here alone, with no one to take my body back to my family. That my son would have become an orphan.
When the shakes finally subsided, I stood up cautiously. My legs felt wobbly but sturdy enough to move so long as I didn’t decide to make a run for it. Of course, I couldn’t see a damned thing so that was no option anyway. Slow and steady would be the only way to go, but I had no clue which direction to take. An expert spelunker, I wasn’t.
Sitting there helplessly in the dark and waiting for someone to turn on the exit signs didn’t accomplish anything. Go figure. I needed to think my way out of this, or I wouldn’t get out. Logic had saved my ass plenty of times before, and I sure as hell needed it now. Without much light left to use to mark my way, I had to come up with a plan that would keep me from walking around in circles.
Every year since he was ten, I’d taken my son Greg to one of those Halloween corn mazes where people in zombie masks hop out at you. Both of us were twisted bastards, even back then, and we’d always found haunted houses to be hilarious, so we usually laughed our way through the whole thing. The first year, though, we’d gotten lost in the maze. My ten-year-old son hadn’t been frightened of the zombies and serial killers, but he sure as heck had been scared of being lost in the corn. I remembered talking him through the fear, teaching him how to pick and direction and stick with it, knowing that eventually the navigation technique would carry him out.
The tunnels weren’t exactly the same layout-wise, but I hoped the technique might help me all the same. I needed to pick a pattern and approach the maze logically. I decided to take the tunnel on my left for starters. At any intersection, I’d take the one that went up. If none of the options ascended, I’d go left. If I kept track of my decisions and the layout of each intersection by giving each one a number, I’d hopefully be able to keep myself from backtracking or getting lost in an endless loop. And, in an emergency, I’d use what was left of my precious battery to make sure I got out okay.
Once I’d made up my mind, moving became much easier. I closed my eyes for a moment and focused on the senses I could use rather than worrying about the ones I couldn’t. I remembered the smell I’d noticed moments before my attacker struck—the dry scent of libraries and old things long forgotten. I might not be able to see, but he wouldn’t be able to either, right?
Unless he was a monster. As laughable as the thought was, I’d faced an inhuman killer just last winter. So it might not be so laughable after all, but even if Rickroll had been right after all, and it was some kind of…snake man, possibly alien thing? But that line of thought only managed to make me nervous. I had to stick with what I knew. If I smelled that scent again, I’d be on the alert. That was all I could do. Worrying about the unknown would only make me more vulnerable.
I crept carefully up the tunnel, trying to reach that impeccable balance between momentum and silence. If I moved too fast, I’d never hear anything trying to sneak up on me. If I went too slowly, I’d never get out at all. Luckily, the tunnel didn’t slope too sharply, and I found my footing easy to maintain. Soon enough, I’d climbed to the top, and the ground leveled out beneath me. The wall I’d been grazing my fingers along suddenly disappeared, so I groped around with firm deliberation. I was no panicked coed in a slasher movie. I wouldn’t lose my composure, go screaming off into the darkness, and break my fool neck whilst wearing ridiculously tiny nightwear. Perhaps this meant I’d found the intersection that would lead me to the top.
It was a dead end. No exit that I could find at all. When I reached up, I felt the edges of what might have been a chute overhead, but I could only graze it with my fingertips. Without anything
to climb on, I wasn’t getting up there.
As hard as I tried not to, I felt discouraged as I trudged back down to home base and tried the next tunnel to the left. I wouldn’t die down here. I’d be just fine, and maybe I’d even managed to snag some kind of trace evidence under my nails that would lead us to the killer. I didn’t need to feel afraid.
But I did. All the logic in the world didn’t keep it from me. All I could do was wrench my thoughts from a dark, lonely death back to the next step in my plan. Over and over again. At the rate things were going, now I’d end up with a nice case of claustrophobia to go along with my traumatic flashbacks. I’d be justifying Dr. Boudina’s salary for the next twenty years.
The next tunnel sloped upward in an almost identical manner to the first, and I steeled myself for disappointment as I ascended it. With my luck, the only tunnel with an exit would be the one filled with garbage. Once I reached the top, I stepped forward, holding my hand up to find the edges of the hatch that I knew were there, expecting the same layout as before. I couldn’t have been more wrong. My foot landed on nothing, and down I went, falling into nothingness.
My years of boxing had taught me how to take a spill, but not like this. I could roll out of a fall if someone knocked me over, avoiding injury to my limbs. But I’d never trained for freefall, and I hit the ground poorly, twisted half into a protective ball. My right shoulder absorbed most of the impact, but my bruised body felt every ounce of it. The shoulder snapped audibly. The sound seemed giant to my ears.
The world went white with pain. This time, when unconsciousness came for me, I welcomed it.
CHAPTER 13
Unidentified Flying Suspect (Illegal Alien Book 2) Page 7