by Johnny Shaw
“You were in the Flood?” Andy asked. “Who is Beth?”
Rocco shined the light directly into Kate’s eyes. She flinched. He reached and held her face in his hand. “You done goldbricking, Girard?”
“I don’t need help.” Kate shoved Andy aside, standing on her own. Her body shook, but her eyes grew more focused. “Whatever Sheila gave me, I would do on weekends. I’m higher than a castrato. Feeling no pain and floating on marshmallow rainbows.”
“I need you to act like you’re not hurt. Just for a bit,” Rocco said. “Until we get you somewhere safe.”
Kate took the flashlight from Andy’s hand and headed down the corridor. Rocco and Andy looked at each other.
“She’s tougher than both of us combined,” Rocco said.
“I don’t doubt that.”
They followed, the slope more pronounced.
“Where does this lead?” Andy asked.
“Down,” Rocco said.
“Oh, hell,” Andy said.
They had reached the end of the passage. A dead end. Rough-cut stone, sparkles of granite shining in the flashlight beam. Debris from the tunnel’s construction stacked in the corner: bricks, wood, and stone.
“This can’t be right,” Andy said. “There has to be a way out.”
“There doesn’t have to be anything,” Rocco said. “Sometimes you’re screwed.”
Kate put one hand against the damp wall, her eyes closing for a long blink. She snapped out of it, checking to see if either of the men noticed. Rocco didn’t. Andy didn’t say a word.
“Maybe we passed it,” Andy said. “No reason a door or other tunnel or whatever has to be here at the end.”
Leaving Kate at the tunnel’s end, Rocco and Andy made their way back up the passage. They ran the flashlight over the damp walls and ceiling, looking for any exit.
“Nothing here,” Andy said. “You?”
“Nothing.”
A shotgun echoed from the direction of the brothel. A woman’s scream. Andy and Rocco froze, looking into the darkness. Waiting for what was next. Faint splashes of water. A man’s voice, but Andy couldn’t make out the words. Rocco drew his pistol and motioned for Andy to head back to the end of the tunnel.
“What are we going to do?” Andy whispered.
“We’re going to fight. Probably die,” he said. “Not much to plan when you’re in a goddamn tunnel.”
They turned and ran the thirty yards back to the dead end, the voices and splashing behind them distant, but growing closer.
When they reached the dead end, Kate had vanished.
“Where the hell?” Rocco said. He reached out his hands to feel where she had last been.
“There,” Andy said.
He pointed to a hole, low on the wall. The bricks stacked in the corner had blocked its view. A person could easily fit. Andy poked his flashlight into the hole. It opened into the top of a very large exposed pipe, low water moving at a downward angle. It was difficult to focus on the water, but it didn’t smell clean.
Rocco looked over his shoulder. He pulled out a grenade from his coat.
“What is that?” Andy said, which he immediately thought strange, as he knew exactly what it was. Maybe that’s just the thing a person said when he actually saw a real, live grenade in the hand of someone about to use it in a ramshackle tunnel.
“Sheila’s duffel has a mess of goodies,” Rocco said.
“We don’t know who is coming down the tunnel,” Andy said.
“At this point it doesn’t really matter.”
“We don’t know where that pipe leads,” Andy pointed out. “We could get trapped. Drown. Who knows?”
“We are already trapped,” Rocco said, pulling the pin and throwing the grenade down the long passage. He slid through the hole and jumped into the open pipe. The water pushed him into the darkness.
Andy’s eyes followed the arc of the grenade until it disappeared. Dim flashlight beams came into view. The splashing close.
A man with a very deep voice clearly said, “You hear something, Stu?”
Andy realized he wasn’t moving. That he stood completely still. He didn’t know for how long. He couldn’t calculate how many seconds had passed, but that grenade was about to pop. He stopped thinking and dove into the open pipe.
Andy slid at what felt like fifty miles an hour through the slick, mossy pipe. The viscous water hadn’t looked as though it was moving quickly, but that had obviously been an illusion. The flashlight wanged around, giving a disco-ball effect with little sense of the space. Like being inside a kaleidoscope. A kaleidoscope rapidly sluicing sewage. Not the most requested toy come Christmastime.
He thought he heard the explosion behind him, but it was more likely manufactured in his imagination. It wasn’t a tree falling in the woods. He didn’t have to hear the damn thing to know what had happened. He knew how grenades worked, and Sheila McCormick didn’t seem like the kind of person who provided duds.
Andy made himself as streamlined as he could and prayed that he didn’t crash into a grate or any of a number of things that could kill you underground. Were the rumors about alligators true? The water slide might have been fun if not for that looming dread. And, of course, the voluminous amounts of sewage that he’d accidentally swallowed.
Without any warning, Andy was airborne. He had reached the end of the line, and it had shot him past the flow of water. The brief moment of weightlessness was both exhilarating and horrifying. He belly flopped into a pool of thick water, sinking, swallowing more water, and then clawing his way to the surface.
It smelled like the inside of a dog fart.
There were a few built-in lights illuminating the space in a dull glow, buzzing and blinking. Which was important, as he’d lost his flashlight on impact.
Andy treaded water in a big open pool, the confluence of a number of pipes flowing into it. Old and brick with a few modern additions. He caught sight of a figure swimming with a flashlight. Rocco.
“Where are we?” Andy shouted, getting more of the mephitic water in his mouth. He swam in the same direction toward a ladder that led up to a landing.
“Sewers,” Rocco said.
“No shit.”
“Actually.”
Rocco was already halfway up the ladder when Andy reached it. His hand slid on the sludgy metal, but he managed to climb up after him. He lay on his back on the brick bank, catching his breath, turning every so often to hock out globs of the ick he’d ingested. He tried to remember his last tetanus shot and made a mental note to get ten of them very soon.
Rocco kicked the bottom of his foot. “Get up, son. We got to find Kate.” He shined his flashlight into the sludgy water, running the beam across the surface.
“She might’ve made it out. She had a head start,” Andy said, getting up. “She’s confused but still a badass.”
Rocco shined his light through the chamber. The space was large, with pipes delivering water and sewage from above. The bank they stood on branched out in two directions, tunnels on both sides receding into darkness.
“I know this place,” Rocco said.
Before they developed any kind of plan, a wet, filthy Kate ran into view from one of the arching passages. She ran along the bank toward them, arms flailing like a madwoman.
“Thank God,” Rocco said. “We got to clean out that wound.”
Without answering, she ran past Rocco and Andy toward the passage on the other end. Not a word. Her eyes wild with fear.
“Kate, you’re hurt!” Rocco shouted, following after her. “Where are you going?”
“Away from the monsters!” she yelled without turning back.
Rocco and Andy followed after her. She was fast for an injured middle-aged woman.
“Did she say monsters?” Andy asked.
Weird groans, growls, and roars echoed from where Kate had entered the chamber. The sound of movement, wet and menacing. Just when things couldn’t get any weirder.
Andy shrugged
. “Monsters, it is.”
They caught up to Kate in the next chamber. She was frantic, a cornered animal, but she stayed with them. If they kept moving, she remained calm. Whenever Rocco stopped, even for a second, to get his bearings, she freaked out. The drugs had messed with her head, brave one moment, terrified the next.
They moved through an underground river system with space to walk on either side. Rivers of sewage opened up into larger chambers. Andy guessed that they were a couple of stories underground, no manholes or indications that the street was directly above. The weight of the city rested on top of them.
“If I can find some landmark, I can maybe get us out of here,” Rocco said. “Fifty years, but some places never leave your memory.”
“During the Flood?” Andy said. “With Beth?”
“More happened in one day than in most lifetimes,” Rocco said.
Rocco guided them through the labyrinth of tunnels and passages. He moved with a confidence that made Andy optimistic. Rocco might not have known where they were going, but he sure as hell thought he did.
Forward momentum, that was the kind of strategy that you needed when monstrous sounds followed you no matter which way you turned. At times they grew closer and weirder. It was certain that whatever made those sounds knew the layout of the place better than they did. Andy regretted having ever read H. P. Lovecraft. He wondered if he would go mad and his hair would turn white when he finally witnessed the indescribable, preternatural horror.
“Here. Finally. Here.” Rocco pointed at a crack in the wall. Not an official passage but a geological fissure. One just wide enough for them to squeeze into.
“You sure?” Andy asked. “It doesn’t exactly look safe.”
“There’s an old subway line on the other side. I’d bet you any amount.” Rocco slipped into the narrow opening. Andy helped Kate, following her.
The passage ran at a strange angle. They could walk upright but had to lean against one jagged wall to maintain balance. More than once, Andy cut his hand on something. Small but painful. Considering the catalog of injuries that he’d inventoried, it bothered him that something could add to the pain. Pain should be finite. No such luck. Life could always get more painful.
The passage opened into a chamber three times the size of the one they’d arrived in. No more water. And other than the smell coming off their bodies, the air was stale but clean. Rocco fanned his flashlight, revealing the room to be an abandoned train platform that predated the current subway and had been abandoned for some time. The tiling and architectural flair were of a different era. Probably one of the failed pre-Flood attempts at underground transportation. Something that ran on steam or springs.
“I told you I knew where I was,” Rocco said. He leaned back toward the passage. “I don’t hear anything following.”
“That’s because they’re already here,” Kate said. “The monsters are here.”
Rocco brought his flashlight beam around in a wide arc. A congregation of thirty men and women descended a staircase opposite them onto the platform. Their clothes appeared gray in the dim light. No consistency to their costuming other than its drabness. Some in suits and dresses. Others in primitive rags. One man was naked, his body covered in caked gray mud. The familiar sounds rose from the silence as they approached. Hums, chest beats, clapping, haunting sustained notes. Together creating an inhuman and ghostly chorus.
Rocco turned back to where they’d come from, but his flashlight revealed more gray men and women sliding through the fissure. Oozing from the darkness and joining their brethren.
“The people of the Underneath,” Rocco said with a sigh.
CHAPTER 29
Didn’t know him. Met him that day. Sometimes you have to trust a stranger. Especially when that stranger has a three-year-old’s smile and bright-blue eyes. And fourteen guns in the trunk of his Impala. Talk about being ready for anything.
—In a jailhouse interview with Molly Dasho, the waitress who joined Hark Turkus in an eight-hour robbery spree that left four dead in Auction City (1961)
“Things are going to get weird,” Rocco whispered. He stood completely still, keeping his hands away from his body. “Play along. Don’t fight it. And whatever you do, don’t punch holes in the masquerade.”
Andy nodded but had one hand on the gun in his waistband. He watched the strange group of underground dwellers approach them. They moved like ghosts, eyes never quite focused, looking around more than at them. They circled Andy, Kate, and Rocco. Their hums and moans vibrated in Andy’s chest. His rapid heartbeat supplied the percussion.
Kate balled her fists, ready to fight. Her eyes darted around as the group grew closer.
“Are they really cannibals?” Andy asked.
“They can hear you,” Rocco whispered.
In a fluid motion, the crowd surged forward. Play along, Rocco had said. Andy used every ounce of effort to not fight it. He felt their hands run along his back, his arms, his legs.
“Stay still,” Rocco said. “Let them.”
Andy felt the pistol lift from his waist. Hands reach into his pockets. Watched Kate and Rocco get the same treatment, a dozen hands searching their bodies. Weapons removed, disappearing into the rags of the ashen crowd.
Kate shoved one of the men away. “Get your hands off me.”
“Kate,” Rocco said. “Careful.”
“He grabbed my tit!” she yelled.
The coordinated moan of the crowd grew in volume, increasingly high-pitched. Andy’s ears rang, still sensitive from the explosion. In a quick motion six members of the crowd scooped up Kate and lifted her over their heads as if she were crowd surfing. Kate twisted but got nowhere.
“You want to fight, you got yourself a goddamn fight!” Kate yelled, kicking at the heads of the people near her feet.
“Stop it, Kate!” Rocco shouted. “You’re going to reopen your wound. Stop it, damn it.”
Andy held out his hands. “She’s injured. Hurt,” he called to the crowd. “Whacked out on pain medication. Hallucinating. She thinks you’re monsters.”
“They’re monsters,” Kate said. “The monsters have me.”
For a brief moment, nothing happened beyond Kate’s kicking. The collective sound of the crowd dropped in volume. They spoke in unison. It sounded as though they were saying mermen over and over again. Just what Andy needed, some half-man/half-fish creatures to emerge from somewhere.
The mob set Kate back down. She dizzily swayed, but Rocco pulled her toward him as soon as her feet hit the ground.
“You’re okay,” Rocco said. “Take it easy.”
“I don’t know what’s happening. Where the hell are we?” Kate asked, looking around.
“We’re in the Underneath,” Rocco said. “I need you to stay calm.”
The crowd noise had died to a creepy harmony, soft hisses and moans. What the Eagles would sound like if they were ghosts haunting an abandoned house.
“What do we do?” Andy said. “What happens now?”
“They’re dangerous. But only if you call them on their act,” Rocco whispered to Andy. He made his thumb and forefingers into a circle and announced, “I am an ally of Saint Agnes. Honor my presence. I request a parlay with the great one, Merlin.”
From C.H.U.D. to Renaissance Faire in one sentence. At least “Merlin” made a fraction more sense than merman. The crowd fell silent when Rocco spoke the wizard’s name. One person coughed, but that was accidental.
“I guess Merlin beats Larry as the name for the king of the mole people,” Andy said.
“That’s exactly the kind of shit that will get us killed,” Rocco said. “It’s all about the theater of the thing.”
“Who asks for an audience with Merlin?” a voice proclaimed.
The crowd parted, giving Andy, Kate, and Rocco a view of the platform stairs and the man descending them.
If your name was Merlin, you should embrace it. Especially if you were the leader of a community that lived in the sewer
system. Whether Gandalf or Doctor Strange, go the extra mile. An eye patch or face tattoos or a raven on your shoulder.
Merlin did not disappoint. He had a pointy goatee, had combed the ends of his eyebrows up into a curl, and wore a red cowl. Without it, the small man would have looked like a junior college accounting teacher. Short and pudgy with a gut. The ensemble was costume-shop quality. The only giveaway to the modern world were his cowboy boots. They had snake heads on the toes that probably looked cool in the catalog.
“I am Rocco Colombo. I am Floodgate,” Rocco said.
“Merlin knows who you are,” Merlin said. “Merlin follows the Overneath.”
Andy leaned toward Rocco. “Is this guy kidding?”
“Shut it,” Rocco said, giving Andy a hard look.
“State your business to Merlin,” Merlin said, continuing to approach.
“We are not here by choice. We mean no insult,” Rocco said. “We were chased down here. Our friend is hurt.”
“We are all chased down here,” Merlin said, “by one way or t’other. That does not change the fact that your presence violates the Treaty of the Immiscible that Merlin drafted with Saint Agnes. And your weapons nullify any beseeching of sanctuary.”
“They’ve been distributed among your people. Used only to defend against those that pursued us,” Rocco said. “We would never use them on your people.”
“Merlin’s progeny are powerful.” Merlin glanced at Andy. “Merlin recognizes Colombo and the woman, Kate Girard. Who is this one? Who is the stranger you’ve brought among us?”
“I can speak for myself,” Andy said.
“And yet Merlin wants not to hear from you,” Merlin said.
Andy took a step forward. The sounds of the ragged crowd grew as they threw their arms forward, wiggling their fingers in front of them. The sun-starved skin of their gray hands like dying earthworms.
Rocco put a hand on Andy’s shoulder. “Safe passage back to the surface. We want nothing more,” Rocco said. “To disturb you no more. What will that cost us?”