Three lotd-1

by Jay Posey

  She held the chemlight out, saw steel-grated stairs, rust-coated but sturdy, trailing off into the darkness below. The pool of light illuminated no more than the first five steps, and she wondered just how far “down there” really was.

  “Can you carry me?” Wren asked. He seemed surprisingly unconcerned, and that made Cass feel stronger.

  “Sure, sweetheart.”

  She knelt; let him scramble up on her back again. His warmth was comforting.

  “Here, you hold this,” Cass said, handing Wren the light. “Hold it out in front, so we can see where we’re going.”

  “Like a maglev,” he replied, almost cheerful.

  “Just like.”

  Cass allowed herself a half smile, as she stood, hooking her arms under Wren’s legs, and adjusting him on her back. She was almost jealous of his apparent fearlessness, even knowing it was born of ignorance.

  “I’ll be the train,” she said, “and you can be the driver.”

  “OK…” said Wren hesitantly, swallowing hard. Cass looked back, saw him staring down into the blackness below. “But not too fast.”

  Maybe not as fearless as she’d thought, or perhaps hoped.

  “Slow and steady, baby. We’ll keep it on the rails, alright?”

  He tightened around her, she felt him nodding against her back. He held the light at arm’s length, showing the few steps ahead and no more. Cass took a deep breath. Slow and steady. Together, they began their descent.

  The gloom was heavy, cool, damp; smelled vaguely of earth, and dust, and water. An urban cavern. But one full of energy, as if the darkness that enshrouded the pair were itself alive, eager to consume the meager light they wielded, to embrace them, and perhaps devour them as well. Each step brought a creak or groan of steel, stairs long-unused reawakening to their purpose for the first time in unmeasured years, or even decades. A narrow handrail marked the edge. Cass pressed her shoulder to the wall opposite, mistrusting the protection the rail seemed to promise, and fought the resistance she felt emanating from further below, the timeless fear of the unknown. Forward, onward, downward she drove herself, despite the growing temptation to return to the relative safety of the landing above.

  Fifteen stairs down, the steps turned abruptly left, ninety degrees. After another fifteen, another ninety-degree left. This became the pattern as Cass descended, with Wren fidgeting upon her back. The air grew cooler and damper. Cass wondered how far below the streets they’d come. And she wondered where the man that brought them here was now. She hoped he was still alive. Had to believe he was, no matter what the odds against it were. She realized for the first time she didn’t even know his name.

  “I’m tired,” Wren said, softly. “Can we stop?”

  “Not yet.”

  “How much longer?”

  “Not much.”

  Cass continued on, legs and knees aching, wondering for herself how much farther they had to go. Internally, she checked global-time. 19:07 GST. Outside, somewhere high above them, night had settled fully. One foot in front of the other; automatic now. They’d been descending for nearly half an hour, though at their current, cautious pace, Cass had no idea what distance they had traveled. Not nearly as far as it felt, that was certain.

  She felt Wren’s grip around her shoulders slacken, his head bump down on her back. His arm, stretched out in front of her, began to lower slightly, slowly.

  “Wren,” she said, quietly. She hated the way her voice sounded in the utter silence, as though speaking drew unwanted attention from the darkness, or whatever might be lurking hidden within it. “Wren?”

  Wren’s small hand continued to lower, grip relaxing on the chemlight. Cass reached up instinctively to catch it. Without her arm supporting his leg, Wren slipped sideways on her back, jolted suddenly awake. The chemlight flew from his hand, danced on Cass’s fingertips.

  For a breathless second—

  —she almost thought she’d caught it.

  Instead, it clattered to the stairs, bounced, skittered to the edge. And fell. Cass watched in horrified silence as the pale yellow light shrank into the void, and disappeared, swallowed by the blackness. She never did hear it hit the bottom.

  For a time, neither of them spoke, or moved, in the utter darkness that encased them. Then, Cass felt Wren’s slight shudders, knew he was sobbing, silently, mortified. She swallowed her own panic, anger, disappointment.

  “It’s alright, baby. It’s OK.”

  Carefully, she knelt, feeling the wall to her side to maintain her sense of direction, and swung Wren around, embracing him. Reassuring him; feeling hopeless herself.

  “It’s OK, Wren. I shouldn’t have made you carry it all that way. Don’t cry, sweetheart, it’s not your fault.”

  He buried his face into her shoulder, hot tears falling on her neck. She caressed his head, ran her fingers through his hair, soothed him; screamed inside. She dared not turn around, couldn’t face the ascent, but her heart revolted at the idea of continuing further down without any way to see what might lie ahead. What if the stairs had given out down below? And who knew what creatures might have found their way in and made their nests in here? Cass’s mind exploded with the possibilities, none of them pleasant.

  In the end, she couldn’t bring herself to continue on without some sense of where they were, or where they were headed. Even with the risk it posed, it seemed like the best option of very few. Cass shut her eyes, accessed distant satellites high above the earth, pinpointed herself, identified their current location. She’d already done all she could to mask her signal. Hopefully, no one would notice the query.

  Within seconds of finding herself in the world, she had blueprints. They were in the storm-water system, seventy meters of one hundred below the surface. According to the schematics, the concrete floor lay thirty meters further down, a junction between miles of pipes and ducts, each carrying hundreds of thousands of gallons of water back and forth from collection points to treatment centers and on to distribution. The entire system was automated, and apparently remained functional, even now. Knowing where she was somehow soothed Cass, stole some of the menace from the darkness. She felt strengthened.

  Only for a moment. Somewhere, high above, the silence was rent by the piercing shriek of steel. Cass knew in an instant. Someone, or something, had breached the door. She wanted to believe it was the man, coming to get them. The dread in her heart told her it wasn’t.

  “Mama?”

  “Come on, baby.”

  Cass swung Wren up on her hip, adrenaline coursing, heart pounding. In the complete blackness, she took the steps down, two at a time. Knowing they were closer to the bottom than the top gave her some courage, but she knew how slowly she’d taken that first stretch. There was no way to tell how quickly whatever it was would descend.

  Around and around they twisted, Cass plunging her feet down into darkness, hoping with every step that there would be a stair below to meet them. Then. Finally. Concrete. They hit bottom so quickly, she stumbled to a knee on her second step, expecting to find another stair instead of level ground. A pale yellow light shone weakly not far away.

  The chemlight. Miraculously, it hadn’t broken in the fall. Cass scrambled to it, seized it, raised it high to get her bearings. Follow the pipes, he had said. To the first alcove.

  She did.

  A long concrete corridor, smooth and rounded, tunneled from the base of the stairs, off into apparent oblivion. Along the wall, oxidized pipes stacked atop each other, some merely as wide as Cass’s arm, others large enough for her to have crouched inside, had there been a way to enter them. They were beaded with moisture, much as Cass was, despite the coolness of the air. She pressed on in the dim light, searching for a break in the wall.

  Wren’s arms tightened around her neck, and he pressed his mouth to her ear, speaking in a ragged whisper.

  “Mama… Mama…” the boy choked out, like a child caught between wakefulness and nightmare. “It’s coming!”

  Ca
ss could hear the fear in his labored breathing, felt it herself, in her bones, like a great grasping claw just at her heels. She didn’t dare look behind. She jogged on, trying to keep the balance between silence and speed.

  Behind them, a strange sound. A flapping sort of echo, like bat’s wings. Or bare feet upon the stair.

  There. Just ahead, on the right. A break in the wall. The first alcove.

  The pipes continued on, passing over top of the niche. By ducking down, Cass found she and Wren could slip in behind them, though once they did, she couldn’t see the point. It was a dead end, only six feet deep; deep as a grave, and no more. But it was all they had. She took Wren to the far wall, as far back as they could go, sat him down on her lap, between herself and the wall, switched off the light.

  And waited.

  Cass fought to quiet her own breathing, to calm her thumping heart. The blood in her ears made it impossible to be sure whether or not those were footsteps in the corridor. In the next instant, she had her answer.

  An evil croak, a mixture of loudly exhaled breath and digital static, echoed down the concrete tunnel. Instinctively, Cass cradled Wren to her, buried his face in her breasts. He clung to her with trembling hands. Silence. Then, again, the harsh electronic cry. This, now, followed by shuffling steps, growing louder, closer. Cass’s mind scrambled for options, to think of anything she might have to use as a weapon. Realized she had none.

  A faint ice-blue glow began to spread at the entrance of the alcove, so faint at first Cass wasn’t sure she could see it. Slowly, gradually, it intensified, until there was no mistaking it. The shuffling steps continued.

  The man had brought them out from the safety of the wall, sent them here, sent them here to die. And she had let him. Cass bent her head, silently pressed her lips to Wren’s damp hair, kissed him goodbye. She took the slightest trace of comfort in knowing that at very least, Asher would never take Wren.

  The footsteps ceased. The entryway was bathed in soft white-blue light, slowly, faintly pulsing. The inhuman cry sounded again, shocking, intense in its proximity, and Cass realized a Weir was standing at the entrance, its blue-glow eyes roving to find them, searching. Through a gap in the pipes, she caught a glimpse of the pinprick orbs, smoldering in their sockets. Her heart caught in her throat, chest constricted in terror.

  And then—

  Shuffling steps resumed. It moved on, further down the tunnel, croaking every so often. Light faded, and eventually sound vanished as well, leaving Cass and Wren clinging together in the uncertain safety of the alcove. Neither dared to speak. They hardly dared to breathe.

  Finally, after a time, Cass allowed herself to believe they were alright. She checked the time again: 19:29 GST. Just twenty-two minutes had passed since their pitch-black flight down the stairs. It was going to be a long night. Wren leaned heavily on her, limp, breathing with the deep rhythm of exhaustion. Cass shifted her weight, brought her coat up and around them both, leaned her head back against the wall.

  But sleep wouldn’t come. Not for her, not here in this place. She fought the urge to turn the chemlight back on, though the promise of its meager light seemed like water to parched lips. The blackness began to work on her mind, making her see things, hear things she knew weren’t there, couldn’t be there. Fedor, Kostya. Asher. Asher and his hounds, hunting them, finding them, seizing Wren, and taking him back. She couldn’t let that happen. She wouldn’t let that happen.

  Cass accessed the satellites again. The man had told them to head north when the sun rose. But she didn’t know why, or what they should be heading for. She scanned, just pulses at a time, always releasing connection after a few seconds and siphoning a new one to avoid trace. North. Miles and miles of urban wasteland. Nothing surprising there. She panned the internally displayed image, eyes open, seeing the image projected onto her corneas, not the darkness beyond. Nothing stood out, no exceptional towns, no safe houses, no signs of life. Unless… She isolated; zoomed.

  And froze.

  A soft white-blue glow engulfed her. The Weir had doubled back.

  Five

  Wren lay sleeping in her lap, undisturbed by the deadly creature prowling at the entrance of the alcove. Cass could see no details of the thing, save its gently radiating eyes: blue, cold, electric. These shifted; floated in a fluid, elliptical pattern, as though the Weir were peering at her through smoke, or heavy fog. Or like a cobra, before it struck. Instinctively, slowly, she squeezed Wren closer, hoping he wouldn’t stir. The Weir hadn’t seen them here before. Maybe it would overlook them again.

  For a moment, it just stood there, silently. Cass couldn’t even hear it breathing. But she could smell its scent. Antiseptic, metallic, faintly pungent, like a stainless steel scalpel, with lingering vapors of embalming fluid. Death preserved.

  It glanced casually away to its right, as if disturbed by some unfelt breeze, or perhaps considering continuing on to the stairs. The creature hesitated there, just long enough for Cass to hope it would leave. Instead, it whipped its gaze back directly upon her, and she knew it was over.

  The Weir crouched back, coiling to pounce, and let fly its white-noise scream. Cass crushed Wren to her, shut her eyes, turned her back to absorb the brunt of the attack.

  But it didn’t come.

  A strange sound — the wet whip of metal through flesh and bone — silenced the Weir mid-cry. A dull bounce, followed by a heavy collapse. A sharp wave of chemical odor, sulfuric or strongly ammoniacal, crashed over them. Cass dared open her eyes to find only pitch-blackness, the Weir’s blue-glow eyes doused.

  Then—

  —a voice, in the darkness.

  “I’m here.”

  The man. He spoke in low tones, somewhere between whisper and growl. “You OK?”

  “Where have you been?” Cass demanded, harsh, through gritted teeth, barely restraining her voice.

  “Is your boy alright?” he said, more gruffly. “He’s quiet.”

  Before Cass could respond, the man ignited his own chemlight. Meager light by most standards, but to Cass’s eyes it blazed like a sun.

  Three held the chemlight outstretched; scanned the couple huddled against the wall. He could barely see the kid, tucked in there between the wall and his mother, but he could see enough. Wren’s eyes were open wide, staring, not even squinting against the sudden flare of Three’s light. Jaw clenched, oblivious to his surroundings: catatonic. No way to tell if the kid was even still in there anymore. Three shook his head.

  “I’m fine,” Wren said in the barest of whispers, unblinking. “Is the other one still down here?”

  Three glanced to Cass. She looked just as surprised as he felt. Three grunted, frustrated with himself. Surprised could get you killed.

  “Other one?” he asked.

  Cass shook her head.

  “That one…” Her eyes flicked to the dark heap by Three’s feet for a hint of a second, “…passed us once, but came back.”

  Three caught a motion out of the corner of his eye: the kid, shaking his head ever so slightly. Not openly defying his mother. Almost to himself. Like he wanted his mom to be right, but knew she wasn’t. He just kept staring straight ahead.

  “Wren was sleeping,” she offered, gently combing his hair with her fingers. “Maybe he dreamed it.”

  Wren’s watery gaze shifted to Three, and Three got the sense the kid knew something. He didn’t push it.

  “OK,” he said, with a slight conspiratorial nod to Wren. “Well. Let me take care of this.”

  He kicked at the unmoving remains of the Weir.

  “Then we’ll see what we see.”

  Three hooked the chemlight on his coat, letting the light fall across the Weir’s remains. Cass inhaled sharply, hand reflexively shooting to cover Wren’s eyes. She’d never seen one up close before.

  It might have been a man once, long ago. A man dead of starvation, left exposed in some frozen desert where rot had never touched the corpse. The skin was green-gray in the chemlight, stre
tched tight like a drum over its skeleton, with hardly enough apparent muscle to animate the bones. Its hands lay curled like dead spiders, each of its knotted fingers sharply tipped with what looked more like talons than nails. The neck ended abruptly just above the shoulders, and seeped a pungent, viscous fluid; the source of the chemical odor. Its head… well, there was no sign of that.

  There came the quiet swishing sound of steel drawn across fabric, and Cass realized for the first time that Three had been wielding his short blade, and was only now sheathing it. He hooked his forearms under the Weir’s armpits without any apparent revulsion, and dragged it further down the tunnel, away from the stairs. The scraping sound of the corpse across the concrete grew fainter and fainter, and at last faded to silence. Cass felt fear creeping up on her again, never having noticed its absence in the first place.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, after a while. “He’ll be back.”

  She told herself she was comforting Wren. The darkness stretched time, made it difficult to judge whether it’d been five minutes or twenty.

  “He’ll be back,” she repeated.

  “He’s a good guy, right?” Wren whispered.

  “What, sweetheart?”

  “He’s a good guy? He’s not going to hurt us?”

  Cass hesitated for a bare moment, brushed her fingers through Wren’s hair, soothing.

  “Don’t worry, baby,” she answered. “I don’t think he’s dangerous.”

  “He is dangerous, Mama,” Wren replied, with unusual certainty. “But he’s good, right?”

  There was something in the tone, something deeper behind the question, but it was a something Cass couldn’t puzzle out. She put her hand on his cheek. It was cool, clammy; wet with tears. He was trembling.

  “What is it? Wren, what’s wrong?”

  He didn’t answer, except with a labored sob, one he’d been trying to hold back. Panic surged up in Cass’s chest: a crushing, nameless fear for her child.