Girl in a Fishbowl (Crowbar Book 1)

by Thomas A. Gilly

  The latched squeaked as it moved. The door pushed in and they could hear the high pitched creaking of the hinges echoing into the space beyond. There was a faint ghostly light shading the darkness. Conrad pointed his flashlight and saw a curved concrete wall immediately ahead, a few meters away. “I’ll go first,” he said, and Terri moved aside as he poked his head out. The door was embedded in the wall of a great concrete tube. A stream of brackish water trickled along the bottom. The left, the source of the water, led into complete darkness—but a visible glow came from the right. He looked in that direction and saw a circle of light, like a distant shrouded moon. He stepped carefully in the tube, there was enough room at the bottom for him to avoid getting his feet wet.

  “I think I see the exit down there,” he whispered to Terri. She entered the tube behind him.

  He kept the flashlight pointing down at his feet to avoid stepping onto whatever those wet, lumpy, hopefully muddy pieces of something were. The disk of light grew larger as they moved forward. There was a slight breeze of cool air hitting their backs, giving Conrad a chill that raised goose bumps. The white light was now sufficient to see by.

  “Let’s turn off our flashlights,” Terri whispered.

  They stopped and turned off their flashlights. “Good idea,” he said. They continued forward.

  The view manifested itself above and below them as they reached the edge of the tube. They were on a hillside, looking down a slope to a concrete drainage canal twenty meters below. They could see because above them, in the great arched lattices that spanned the interior of the mountain like a black spider web, were white lights spaced into a constellation of artificial stars. Beyond the drainage canal was a raised highway, empty of cars. Beyond that was a residential neighborhood—house roofs lined up like doll houses. And beyond that were large buildings reaching up into the supporting lattice—sky scrapers—rectangular glass surfaces reflecting the electric stars.

  “It’s beautiful,” Terri whispered breathlessly.

  Conrad nodded in agreement. “But where do we go now?” he asked.

  “Is there anything on Blink Dog? I don’t see anything.”

  Conrad brought up the map—it represented the Bergs as large black splotches, with no indication of their actual position. The program refused to connect to the internet. Conrad suspected that Dad had prevented any GPS activity under the Bergs so that the authorities wouldn’t be able to retrace his movements if his hack was ever discovered.

  “We’re in the dark,” Conrad said.

  “Literally and figuratively,” Terri said, turning to him and smiling with nervous excitement.

  “I don’t know how we’re going to find him, it’s so big in here.” Conrad said, resignation heavy in his voice.

  “I’d like to take a look at those houses there,” Terri said. “This whole place is like a time capsule.”

  “I guess we could go out there. We might see some sign of Dad’s presence. We should never lose sight of this tunnel here though. We don’t want to get lost.”

  The slope of the hill wasn’t very steep. They stepped out of the sewer onto the scraggly remains of grass that had died years ago. After a few meters the ground gave way to gravel that crunched under their feet. It seemed they were making a cacophony of sound in the otherwise eerie silence under the Bergs.

  The water in the canal was shallow, only a few centimeters deep, just enough to get their sneakers wet. After crossing to the other side Conrad looked back to the sewer tunnel for reassurance. He then looked around but the ruins of the city bathed in its ghostly glow revealed no hint as to where his father might have gone.

  They climbed up the other side of the canal to the shadowed space underneath the raised highway. Conrad was about to turn on his flashlight when Terri grabbed his arm with both hands and hissed directly in his ear, “What is that?”

  Conrad looked about quickly but he couldn’t see anything. Then in the faint light he made out Terri’s hand and index finger pointing down the direction of the highway as it made its way into the side of the mountain. “Next to that column over there,” she whispered.

  Conrad squinted. His eyes were still adjusting to the dark. Then he saw them. About a hundred meters away. Some shapes moving low to the ground. Several of them—animals—they moved like animals. They were all congregating around a dark shape leaning against one of the concrete pillars holding up the highway.

  “Rodents of unusual size!” Terri whispered excitedly into his ear.

  “No! Those can’t be.”

  “Radioactive giantism. It is a thing.” There was nervous humor in her voice.

  He watched the indistinct shadows, the lumps of darkness, milling about together around the pillar. How many are there? What kind of animals are living down here?

  “Maybe they’re small mutant people,” Terri said and giggled.

  What should I do? Conrad wondered. I can’t let Terri get hurt. Whatever they are they’re probably hungry. But still, he wanted to see what they were. He looked around his immediate surroundings. “I wish I had a stick or something,” he said.

  “I do have a gun.”

  “No! No guns. We can always run away.”

  “What if they can run faster than us?”

  “If you take out that gun I know something bad is going to happen. We have to be non-threatening. We’re invaders into their world, whatever they are.”

  “Okay, I won’t take it out. But I’ll have a hand on it in my pack just in case. We are going to take a closer look, right?”

  “Yeah, Let’s get closer. That gun does have a safety, doesn’t it?”

  “The safety is in my head.”

  He looked at her. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “That’s what Detective Martinez told me.”

  “Alright, let’s just move forward a little bit. To get a better look.”

  They crept forward toward the shapes in the darkness. Conrad had his flashlight off but pointed in their direction, ready to turn it on if he heard anything dangerous. If these creatures had been raised in this darkness they wouldn’t be used to something as bright as his flashlight, they might become blinded and helpless. There was dirt under their feet, their footsteps were silent. As they continued Conrad thought he could hear some sounds, soft high pitched animal sounds. They were twenty meters away. Then he heard a loud growl and saw one of the shapes rear up. He turned on his flashlight.

  A mass of furry bodies was illuminated by his light. Most were facing away from him, toward the pillar. One turned in his direction and its yellow eyes glowed, surrounded by a black mask.

  Raccoons! They’re a bunch of raccoons!

  There had been several trash pandas living in Conrad’s neighborhood when his was growing up. Those raccoons were popular and were sort of like neighborhood pets, friendly to people and ready to take handouts. Those raccoons were plump and fluffy and pleasant, worthy of the name ‘trash pandas’. These raccoons weren’t trash pandas. These were scrawny, scraggly, mangy, subterranean raccoons. There were about two dozen of them, and they were all intensely focused on the lump of rags leaning on the base of the pillar.

  Then Conrad saw that the lump of rags had an arm that threw something out to the raccoons. He pointed his flashlight toward it and saw that it was a man. The man was seated against the pillar, wearing a loose gray overcoat. His hair and beard spilled down in a long tangle of disarray. In one hand he held a rectangular tin container, the other hand was pulling dark strands of something from the container and tossing it to the raccoons. Sometimes a raccoon would catch it in mid-air. Other times it would hit the ground and several raccoons would lunge for it.

  Conrad and Terri watched this for several seconds. Neither the man nor the raccoons paid them much mind.

  “There’s a raccoon man in here.” Terri said.

  “There certainly is.”

  “Do you think he has them trained? Like, can he order them to attack us?”

  �
�I hope not,” Conrad said.

  “He might know something about your dad.”

  “I was thinking the same thing.”

  They moved closer, Conrad keeping his flashlight on the man. His face was gaunt and pale. Conrad watched as he reached for another tin—sardines he could now see—and opened it. The raccoons watched with patient anticipation. The tin was opened and with eyes that didn’t seem to focus in any particular direction the man started throwing out more sardines.

  Conrad stopped when they were two meters away from the nearest raccoon.

  “Excuse me,” Conrad said. “Hello?”

  The nearest raccoon turned toward them. Conrad fought an impulse to jump back. The raccoon then turned toward the raccoon man as another sardine was thrown.

  “Excuse me sir?” Conrad said. There was no response from the man, no inkling that he was aware of them at all. “Sir, I’d like to talk to you. Sir, can you hear me?”

  They continued trying to talk to him for several minutes with no success. Conrad wanted to go up to the man and shake his shoulders, try to get a response, but he would have to go through the hungry raccoons. Finally, he turned to Terri and said, “I don’t think he’s going to be any help to us.”

  “I concur,” Terri said. “Let’s go take a look at the houses. Maybe we will find some clues in there.”

  Conrad nodded and they slowly backed away until they felt safe enough to turn around and walk toward the houses.

  Chapter 34

  Between the highway and the residential area was a chain link fence. Conrad and Terri didn’t have to travel far along it before coming to a section that had been separated from its fence post. They squeezed through and found themselves in the back yard of a suburban home. The yard was huge—a half-hectare of dead grass and dirt. The house was extravagant—a two story white building with a two car garage attached to it. Flush with the fence was a white shed that had a cupola on top with a wrought iron rooster weather vane. The wooden deck coming off of the back of the house had a table and chairs and a propane grill.

  “Look at this place,” Terri said in wonder. “It’s like we’ve entered some old family sitcom.”

  “What gets me is the number of these houses,” Conrad said. “Think of all the energy they were wasting.” He pointed over at the shed. “I wonder if there’s a lawn mower in there.”

  “Probably, that’s what sheds were for.”

  “I want to go take a look at it,” he said, walking over to the shed.

  “Why?”

  “It just so completely symbolizes the whole suburban era. Whenever I think of those times I imagine all these yards filled with middle aged men smoking pipes and pushing lawnmowers to cut grass they are going to spray millions of liters of water onto just so they can cut it down again next week.” He reached the shed. “Aw crap, it has a lock. I really want to push a lawn mower, just to say I did.”

  “You sir, are a weirdo.”

  They walked over to the deck. Conrad tested the first step with his foot. “It seems solid,” he said. “I thought they’d be rotted.”

  “Toward the end I think they were making them out of some sort of fake wood,” Terri said.

  On the deck he leaned his elbows on the rail overlooking the yard. “Can you imagine?” he said as Terri stepped up next to him to share his view. “Can you imagine us owning a place like this? Can you imagine coming out here to grill up some burgers and drink beer and play horseshoes? I mean, people could afford all this on a normal person’s salary. You didn’t have to own ten companies to have a place like this.”

  “What’s this ‘we’ stuff?” she said. “Are we moving in together now?”

  “Um . . . ah,” he stammered. “I mean, if we wanted to we could have managed it. Because that’s what people did in those days.”

  “Okay Mr. Brady,” Terri said. “As long as we have a housekeeper. Come on, let’s look inside.”

  The sliding glass door was locked. They tried to look inside but the view was blocked by curtains. They went around to the front yard and saw a large X was spray painted on the front wall. To the left of the X were the letters “EPA”. Above was “9-5-46”. Underneath was “0”. Terri and Conrad looked the cryptic graffiti for a few seconds.

  “Well, the top number is obviously the date the building was searched,” Conrad said. “I wonder what EPA means?”

  “Maybe it’s the initials of the guys who searched it,” Terri said, but then quickly corrected. “Oh! I bet that stands for the Environmental Protection Agency!”

  “Oh yeah! That makes sense. I bet that zero means no one was in the building when it was searched.”

  “That’s good.” She checked the door. “Unlocked!” she said as the knob turned.

  The air was thick and musty. There was only a dull glow coming through the windows—they took out their flashlights and turned them on. The beams sliced through the dust that floated in the air. Conrad closed the door behind him as they walked into the living room.

  “They had a TV!” Terri said, looking at the wide screen TV on the wall. “I thought people had stopped using TVs by the time of the dirty bomb.”

  “I remember reading that some families would sit around and wear their smart glasses and project the same shows onto their old TVs at the same time, out of habit.”

  They shone their lights around at the couch, the love seat, the coffee table—other than the TV the walls were bare—if there had once been pictures on the walls the residents had taken them during the evacuation.

  “This is so creepy,” Terri said. “There were people’s lives spent in this house.” She turned to Conrad. “So, what’s the plan? What should we do now?”

  Conrad sighed. “I don’t know, I’m not sure what to do.” He shook his head. “I know it’s ridiculous but . . . I was sort of hoping that Dad had built some sort of secret community in here. Like maybe he had an army of Morlocks he was preparing to unleash on the outside world and overthrow the rich and create his utopian world. Or maybe he had a LARP club he could geek out with.”

  Terri’s eyes suddenly went wide, looking past Conrad toward the windows. “Foda-se!” she exclaimed, reaching out and grabbing his arms. “Foda-se! Look!”

  Conrad spun around toward the windows. He didn’t see anything there.

  “There was a face!” Terri said urgently. “I saw a face out there looking in! I swear it looked just like a skull! He just looked in for a second and ducked away! He was bald—or maybe he was wearing a skull mask!”

  Conrad went over to the window and tilted his head left and right. No sign of anyone.

  There was a knock on the front door.

  Both Conrad and Terri froze. Neither spoke for several seconds. Then there was another knock on the door.

  “What should we do?” Terri whispered to Conrad.

  “Answer it?” he whispered back uncertainly.

  “I don’t know. You didn’t see that face. There is something seriously wrong with that person—if it is a person.”

  Once again the door knocked.

  “I’m going to answer it,” Conrad said.

  “I’m taking out my gun.”

  “No! No guns. We don’t want to start anything here. He might know something about my dad.”

  “Alright. Answer it.” Still, her hand reached for her fanny pack.

  Conrad went to the front door with Terri close behind. He put his hand on the door knob and then called out, “Hello? Who is it?”

  The voice that responded was definitely male, but more high-pitched than the average male voice. “This is Nose. Are you guys moving in?”

  Conrad looked at Terri and asked, “Did he say ‘Nose’?”

  “Yeah, it sounded like Nose,”

  Conrad called out, “Hi, um, Nose. Are you out there alone?”

  “Just me and us chickens.”

  Conrad turned again to Terri. She shrugged. “He sounds harmless,” Conrad said.

  “I guess so,” Terri said.
>
  Conrad opened the door. At the first sight of the man he couldn’t help but let out a “Dafuq!” He was short, a little over one and a half meters. He was bald and his skin was porcelain pale. He had on his face what Conrad guessed was a grin, but with only a single visible tooth in the gaping open mouth it was hard to be sure. The most notable feature on his face was actually the lack of a feature—Nose had no nose. Over the hole where the nose should be there was a shear fabric held in place by a triangle of thin strips of duct tape. He was wearing a gray sweatshirt with the sleeves cut off at the shoulders and baggy exercise shorts. The well-defined muscles of his limbs were the very definition of “sinewy”.

  Nose extended a hand. As Conrad looked down at it he couldn’t help noticing that the hand was extensively scarred, especially on the knuckles. Conrad took his hand and Nose’s gaping grin became even wider as he pumped the shake with an iron grip before letting go.

  Conrad started to say, “My name is—” but Nose interrupted “No names!” There was sudden fear on his face. “No names here. That’s the first rule. No names. Just handles. My handle is Nose. I’ll call you Bob, okay? Bob. And you . . .” he pointed to Terri. “You’re Bobbi. Okay? Is that okay?”

  Conrad shrugged and said, “Okay. I’m Bob. And this is Bobbi.”

  Nose’s fear vanished and he was grinning again. “Hi Bob! Hi Bobbi! Nice to meet you. Welcome to the neighborhood! Is this where you’re going to be staying? It’s a lovely house!”

  “We’re just looking around,” Terri said. “This is the first house we visited.” There was an awkward silence—at least awkward to Conrad and Terri. Nose was still grinning. Terri finally said, “So Nose, are there other people living in the neighborhood?”

  “Not too many right now. That’s why I was excited when I saw you two. It’s been quiet. Really just Raccoon Man. And his raccoons. He’s not all that sociable. He doesn’t play Risk. Do you play Risk?”

  “Um, yeah,” Conrad said. “Listen, we’re actually looking for someone. He would have come here about a week ago. A middle-age man, long blond hair, beard? Have you seen him?”