by Ian Caldwell
Charlie unloads a pair of pin-striped gray laser guns, then the set of Velcro straps with dark plastic domes in the middle. While he keeps fiddling with the packs, I start to unzip my jacket. The collar of my shirt is already sticking to my neck.
“Careful,” he says, extending an arm out before I can sling my coat across the largest pipe. “Remember what happened to Gil’s old jacket?”
I’d completely forgotten. A steam pipe melted the nylon shell and set the filler on fire. We had to stomp out the flames on the ground.
“We’ll leave the coats here and pick them up on the way out,” he says, grabbing the jacket from my hand and rolling it up with his in an expandable duffel bag. He suspends it from a ceiling fixture by one of its straps.
“So the rats don’t get at it,” he says, unloading a few more objects from the pack.
After handing me a flashlight and a two-way hand radio, he pulls out two large water bottles, beading from the heat, and places them in the outer netting of his pack.
“Remember,” he says. “If we get split up again, don’t head downstream. If you see water running, go against the current. You don’t want to end up in a drain or down a chute if the flow increases. This isn’t the Ohio, like you got back at home. The water level down here rises fast.”
This is my punishment for getting lost the last time he and I were teammates. I tug at my shirt for ventilation. “Chuck, the Ohio doesn’t go anywhere near Columbus.”
He hands me one of the receivers and waits for me to fasten it around my chest, ignoring me.
“So what’s the plan?” I ask. “Which way are we going?”
He smiles. “That’s where you come in.”
“Why?”
Charlie pats my head. “Because you’re the sherpa.”
He says it as if sherpas are a magical race of midget navigators, like hobbits.
“What do you want me to do?”
“Paul knows the tunnels better than we do. We need a strategy.”
I mull it over. “What’s the nearest entrance to the tunnels on their side?”
“There’s one in back of Clio.”
Cliosophic is an old debating society’s building. I try to see each position clearly, but the heat is clogging my thoughts. “Which would lead straight down to where we’re standing. A straight shot south. Right?”
He thinks it over, wrestling with the geography. “Right,” he says.
“And he never takes the straight shot.”
“Never.”
I imagine Paul, always two steps ahead.
“Then that’s what he’ll do. A straight shot. Beat a path down from Clio and hit us before we’re ready.”
Charlie considers. “Yeah,” he says finally, focusing off into the distance. The edges of his lips begin to form a smile.
“So we’ll circle around him,” I suggest. “Catch him from behind.”
There’s a glint in Charlie’s eyes. He pats me on the back hard enough that I nearly fall under the weight of my pack. “Let’s go.”
We start moving down the corridor, when a hiss comes from the mouth of the two-way radio.
I pull the handset from my belt and press the button.
“Gil?”
Silence.
“Gil? . . . I can’t hear you. . . .”
But there’s no response.
“It’s a bug,” Charlie says. “They’re too far away to send a signal.”
I repeat myself into the microphone and wait. “You said these things had a two-mile range,” I tell him. “We’re not even a mile from them.”
“A two-mile range through the air,” Charlie says. “Through concrete and dirt, not even close.”
But the radios are for emergency use. I’m sure it was Gil’s voice I heard.
We continue in silence for a hundred yards or so, dodging puddles of sludge and little mounds of scat. Suddenly Charlie grabs the neck of my shirt and pulls me back.
“What the hell?” I snap, almost losing my balance.
He runs the beam of his flashlight across a wooden plank bridging a deep trough in the tunnel. We’ve both crossed it in previous games.
“What’s wrong?”
He gingerly presses a foot down on the board.
“It’s fine,” Charlie says, visibly relieved. “No water damage.”
I wipe my forehead, finding it soaked with sweat.
“Okay,” he says. “Let’s go.”
Charlie walks across the plank in two great strides. It’s all I can do to keep my balance before landing safely on the other side.
“Here.” Charlie hands me one of the water bottles. “Drink it.”
I take a quick drink, then follow him deeper into the tunnels. We’re in an undertaker’s paradise, the same coffinlike view in every direction, dark walls tapering faintly toward a hazy point of convergence in the darkness.
“Does this whole part of the tunnels look like a catacomb?” I ask. The hand radio seems to be buzzing patches of static between my thoughts.
“Like a what?”
“A catacomb. A tomb.”
“Not really. The newer parts are in a huge corrugated pipe,” he says, moving his hands in an undulating pattern, like a wave, to suggest the surface. “It’s like walking on ribs. Makes you think you were swallowed by a whale. Sort of like . . .”
He snaps his fingers, searching for a comparison. Something biblical. Something Melvillian, from English 151w.
“Like Pinocchio.”
Charlie looks back at me, fishing for a laugh.
“It shouldn’t be much farther,” he says, when he doesn’t get one. Turning back, he pats the receiver on his chest. “Don’t worry. We’ll turn the corner, pop them a few times, and go home.”
Just then, the radio crackles again. This time there’s no doubt: it’s Gil’s voice.
Endgame, Charlie.
I stop short. “What does that mean?”
Charlie frowns. He waits for the message to repeat, but there’s no other sound.
“I’m not falling for that,” he says.
“Falling for what?”
“Endgame. It means the game’s over.”
“No shit, Charlie. Why?”
“Because something’s wrong.”
“Wrong?”
But he raises a finger, silencing me. In the distance I can hear voices.
“That’s them,” I say.
He lifts his rifle. “Come on.”
Charlie’s strides quickly get longer, and I have no choice but to follow. Only now, trying to keep up, do I appreciate how expertly he runs through the darkness. It’s all I can do to hold him in the ray of my flashlight.
As we near a junction, he stops me. “Don’t turn the corner. Kill your flashlight. They’ll see us coming.”
I wave him on, into the opening. The radio blasts again.
Endgame, Charlie. We’re in the north-south corridor under Edwards Hall.
Gil’s voice is much clearer now, much closer.
I begin toward the intersection, but Charlie pushes me back. Two flashlight beams jerk in the opposite direction. Squinting in the darkness, I can make out silhouettes. They turn, hearing our approach. One of the beams falls into our sight line.
“Damn!” Charlie barks, shielding his eyes. He points his rifle blindly toward the light and begins to press at its trigger. I can hear the mechanical bleating of a chest receiver.
“Stop it!” Gil hisses.
“What’s the problem?” Charlie calls out as we approach.
Paul is behind Gil, motionless. The two of them are standing in a trickle of light coming through the gaps in a manhole cover overhead.
Gil places a finger over his lips, then points up toward the manhole. I make out two figures standing above us in front of Edwards Hall.
“Bill’s trying to call me,” Paul says, holding his pager toward the light. He’s clearly agitated. “I have to get out of here.”
Charlie gives Paul a puzzled look, then ges
tures for him and Gil to step away from the light.
“He won’t move,” Gil says under his breath.
Paul is directly beneath the metal lid, staring at the face of his pager as melted snow drips through the holes. There is movement above.
“You’re going to get us caught,” I whisper.
“He says he can’t get reception anywhere else,” Gil says.
“Bill’s never done this before,” Paul whispers back.
I pull at his arm, but he jerks free. When he lights up the silver face of the pager and shows it to us, I see three numbers: 911.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Charlie whispers.
“Bill must’ve found something,” Paul says, losing patience. “I need to find him.”
Foot traffic in front of Edwards mashes fresh snow through the manhole. Charlie is getting tense.
“Look,” he says, “it’s a fluke. You can’t get reception down he—”
But he’s interrupted by the pager, which begins to beep again. Now the message is a phone number: 116-7718.
“What’s that?” Gil asks.
Paul turns the screen upside-down, forming text from the digits: BILL-911.
“I’m getting out of here now,” Paul says.
Charlie shakes his head. “Not using that manhole. Too many people up there.”
“He wants to use the exit at Ivy,” Gil says. “I told him it was too far. We can go back to Clio. It’s still a couple minutes before the proctors switch.”
In the distance, tiny sets of red beads are gathering. Rats are sitting on their haunches, watching.
“What’s so important?” I ask Paul.
“We’re onto something big—” he begins to say.
But Charlie interrupts. “Clio’s our best shot,” he agrees. After checking his watch, he starts to walk north. “7:24. We need to get moving.”
Chapter 3
The shape of the corridor remains boxy as we keep north, but the walls, which were once concrete, are increasingly of stone. I can hear my father’s voice, explaining the etymology of the word sarcophagus.
From the Greek meaning “flesh-eating” . . . because Greek coffins were made of limestone, which consumed the entire body—everything but the teeth—within forty days.
Gil’s lead has grown to twenty feet. Like Charlie, he moves quickly, accustomed to the landscape. Paul’s silhouette blinks in and out of the uneven light. His hair is matted against his forehead, tamped down with sweat, and I remember that he’s hardly slept in days.
Thirty yards up, we find Gil waiting for us, his eyes shifting from place to place as he shepherds us toward the exit. He’s looking for a backup plan. We’re taking too long.
I close my eyes, trying to see a map of campus in my thoughts.
“Just fifty more feet,” Charlie calls to Paul. “A hundred at most.”
When we arrive below the manhole near Clio, Gil turns to us.
“I’ll pop the lid and look out. Get ready to run back the way we came.” He glances down. “I’ve got 7:29.”
He grips the lowest step iron, lifts himself into position, and raises his forearm against the manhole cover. Before applying pressure, he looks over his shoulder and says, “Remember, the proctors can’t come down here to get us. All they can do is tell us to come out. Stay down and don’t say anyone’s name. Got it?”
The three of us nod.
Gil takes a deep breath, shoves his fist upward, and pivots the cover against his elbow. It cracks open half a foot. He takes a quick inventory—then a voice comes from above.
“Don’t move! Stay right there!”
I can hear Gil hiss, “Shit.”
Grabbing his shirt, Charlie pulls him back, catching him as he loses his footing.
“Go! Over there! Turn your flashlight off!”
I stumble into the darkness, pressing Paul in front of me. I try to remember my way.
Stay to the right. Pipes on the left, stay to the right.
My shoulder glances the wall and tears my shirt. Paul is staggering, exhausted by the heat. We manage twenty paces stumbling over each other before Charlie stops us so Gil can catch up. In the distance a flashlight enters the tunnel through the open manhole. An arm descends after it, followed by a head.
“Come out of there!”
The beam twitches in both directions, sending a triangle of light sharking through the tunnel.
Now a second voice, a woman’s.
“This is your last warning!”
I look over at Gil. In the darkness I can see the contours of his head as he shakes it, warning us not to speak.
Paul’s breath is wet on the back of my neck. He leans against the wall, beginning to look faint. The woman’s voice comes again, deliberately loud as she speaks to her partner.
“Call it in. Post officers at all the manholes.”
For a moment the flashlight retracts from the opening. Charlie immediately presses at our backs. We run until we reach a T in the tunnels, then continue past it and veer right around a corner into unfamiliar territory.
“They can’t see us here,” Gil whispers, out of breath, clicking on his flashlight. Another long tunnel retreats out of sight, toward what I take to be the northwest of campus.
“What now?” Charlie says.
“Back to Dod,” Gil suggests.
Paul wipes his forehead. “Can’t. They padlocked the exit.”
“They’ll watch all the main grates,” Charlie says.
I begin pacing down the westward tunnel. “Is this the fastest way northwest?”
“Why?”
“Because I think we can get out near Rocky-Mathey. How far is it from here?”
Charlie hands the last of our water to Paul, who drinks it eagerly. “A few hundred yards,” he says. “Maybe more.”
“Through this tunnel?”
Gil considers for a second, then nods.
“I got nothing better,” Charlie says.
The three of them begin to follow me into the dark.
For some distance we continue through the same passageway in silence. Charlie trades flashlights with me once my beam grows too weak, but keeps his focus on Paul, who seems more and more disoriented. When Paul finally stops to lean on a wall, Charlie props him up and helps him on, reminding him not to touch the pipes. With each step, the last drops of water plink in empty bottles. I begin to wonder if I’ve lost my bearings.
“Guys,” Charlie says from behind us, “Paul’s fading.”
“I just need to sit down,” Paul says weakly.
Suddenly Gil directs a flashlight into the distance, bringing a set of metal bars into view. “Damn it.”
“Security gate,” Charlie says.
“What do we do?”
Gil crouches to look Paul in the eye. “Hey,” he says, shaking Paul’s shoulders. “Is there a way out of here?”
Paul points at the steam pipe beside the security gate, then makes an unsteady downward swoop with his arm. “Go under.”
Scanning the pipe with my flashlight, I see insulation worn away on the pipe’s underside, just inches above the floor. Someone has tried this before.
“No way,” Charlie says. “Not enough room.”
“There’s a release latch on the other side,” Gil says, pointing to a device by the wall. “Only one of us has to go. Then we can open the gate.” He lowers his head to Paul’s level again. “You’ve done this before?”
Paul nods.
“He’s dehydrated,” Charlie says under his breath. “Does anyone have some water?”
Gil hands a half-empty bottle to Paul, who greedily drinks it down.
“Thanks. Better.”
“We should go back,” Charlie says.
“No,” I say. “I’ll do it.”
“Take my coat,” Gil offers. “For insulation.”
I put a hand on the steam pipe. Even through the padding, it’s pulsing with heat.
“You won’t fit,” Charlie says. “Not with the coat.
”
“I’m okay without it,” I tell them.
But when I lower myself to the floor, I realize how tight the opening is. The insulation is scalding. On my stomach, I force myself between the floor and the pipe.
“Exhale and pull yourself through,” Gil says.
I inch forward and force myself flat—but when I reach the tightest section, my hands find no grip, only puddles of ooze. Suddenly I’m pinned beneath the pipe.
“Shit,” Gil growls, falling to his knees.
“Tom,” Charlie says, and I can feel a pair of hands at my feet. “Push off me.”
I force my feet off his palms. My chest scrapes hard against the concrete, and one thigh glances the pipe where the insulation is gone. Reflex jerks it away just as I feel the lancing-hot pain.
“You okay?” Charlie asks, when I shimmy through to the other side.
“Turn the latch clockwise,” Gil says.
When I do, the security gate unlocks. Gil pushes it open, and Charlie follows, still supporting Paul.
“You sure about this?” Charlie asks, when we advance into the darkness.
I nod. A few steps on, we arrive at a crude R painted on a wall. We’re approaching Rockefeller, one of the residential colleges. As a freshman, I dated a girl named Lana McKnight who lived there. We spent much of that winter sitting by a lazy fire in her dorm room, back before the flues on campus were shut for good. The things we discussed seem so distant now: Mary Shelley and college Gothic and the Buckeyes. Her mother had taught at Ohio State, like my father. Lana’s breasts were shaped like eggplants and her ears were the color of rose petals when we stayed too long by the fire.
Soon I can hear voices coming from overhead. Many of them.
“What’s going on?” Gil asks as he draws near the source.
The manhole cover is just over his shoulder.
“That’s it,” I say, coughing. “Our way out.”
He looks at me, trying to understand.