by Jeremy Bates
Chapter 56
“Hey! Will! Wake up!” Rob hissed. “Someone’s coming!”
“Huh?” I opened my eyes and winced against the pain pulsing through my head and body.
“Someone’s coming.”
I sat up and saw the faint glow of an approaching light. I was instantly alert. “If it’s Katja,” I said hoarsely, “let me do the talking, I think I can get through to her—”
“Tell her that if she lets us go we’ll—”
“I know! Now quiet!”
He fell silent. We waited.
The light filled the entrance to the room, yellow at first, then a warmer orange. A silhouette appeared. “Will!” Katja exclaimed in a hushed whisper, then she charged across the room. For a moment I thought her intention was to attack me. Instead she collapsed next to me and gripped my arm tightly. “You were right!” she sobbed. “My father lied to me. He lied to me about everything. Paris wasn’t destroyed, was it? Tell me this is true.”
“Yes—it’s true,” I said, baffled.
“I knew it! I checked my books, but there were no publication pages like you said. My father ripped them out. But there was a book in his study that still had the publication page. It said 2011. It was printed after the war. And I looked inside one of your bags and found a wallet. There was money in it. And why would you have money if there were nowhere to spend it? Am I right?”
“Yes, you’re right. I—we—use money every day.”
“And I found this too! What is it?”
She withdrew a slip of paper from an incongruous pink purse dangling from her shoulder. She held it in front of my face. The words were too small to read in the candlelight, but it was recognizable enough. “That’s a receipt, Katja. That’s what you get when you purchase something, so you have a record of it.”
“A receipt.”
“Yes—see, those are the purchased items on the left, and those are the prices they cost on the right.”
“I knew it! I knew it was something like that. Please, Will, I want to see the surface! Please take me. You have to take me there.”
“I’ll take you, Katja, I promise you, I’ll take you right now if you release me.”
“Will you let me live with you? I won’t know anyone else or anywhere to go…”
“I, yeah, sure, you can live with me. You can stay as long as you want.”
“And we can have a picnic outside, on grass? And you can take me shopping for a dress and help me make friends my age?”
“I’ll do whatever you want. But you have to get these cuffs off me first.”
“That’s why I brought this.” She pulled a hammer from the purse triumphantly—Pascal’s hammer, I realized. “Will it work?”
“Yes!” I extended my arms behind my back, pressed my palms flat on the dirt, and splayed my wrists apart so the chain links connecting them went taut. “Can you hit the chain without hitting my hands?”
“I think so.”
“Okay, do it.”
She moved behind me. I tensed. Then—whack. The hammer struck the chain…with about as much force as you might slap at a pesky fly.
I said, “You’re going to have to hit it harder than that, Katja. As hard as you can.”
“I don’t want to hit your hands.”
“You won’t. Try again.”
This time the hammer struck the chain with more conviction.
“Did it break?”
“No—nothing happened.”
“Keeping hitting it.”
She struck the chain five times, each time harder than the last, but with no success.
I said, “You need to find a rock, Katja, to put under the chain.”
“Okay.” She searched the room for what seemed like an eternity before exclaiming, “Found one!” She returned to me and slipped the rock beneath the chain. Hopefully it would act as an anvil and channel the energy from the hammer into the chain. A moment later came the now familiar whack—only this time my wrists sprang apart.
I was free!
I held my hands before me. Old cast-iron manacles encircled each wrist. Two chain links dangled from each.
I turned toward Katja and gave her a huge hug. “Thank you!” I gushed, and planted a kiss on her cheek. To my surprise she smelled earthy and fresh.
I released her and lumbered to my feet. My body protested as if it were a hundred years old. I swooned and doubled over.
“Are you okay?” Katja asked, eyes wide.
I nodded. “Just dizzy.” I buttoned and fastened my jeans that Katja had unfastened earlier and scooped up the hammer and the rock and told her to get the candle. “We need to help my friend now.”
She glanced in Rob’s direction. “But he’s not awake.”
“Yeah, he is. He woke up a little while ago. Right, Rob?”
“Yeah.”
Katja stiffened at his voice.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “You can trust him. I promise.”
Rob was on his back. I hadn’t heard him move since Katja had entered the room, and I guess he had been playing dead. I helped him into a sitting position. His jaw was pebbly with a day’s growth of beard shadow.
When he saw Katja’s mutilations for the first time, I felt his body flinch, though he remained pokerfaced. “Hiya!” he said. “I’m Rob.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Rob. I’m Katja.”
Rob stared at her, and I smiled, an alien feeling right then. I told Rob to spread his hands behind him. I slipped the rock under the three-inch chain connecting his manacles, lined the hammer true, and brought the head down. The chain links exploded apart.
“Fuck, yes!” Rob cried, holding his hands in front of him as I had done.
“Katja,” I said quickly, “we have another friend. A woman. Do you know where she is?”
She nodded. “I asked my uncles about her earlier. My father is keeping her in a room near his quarters.”
“His quarters? Where are his quarters?”
“Where they always are.”
“Yes, but—”
Rob asked, “How big is your home down here?”
“How big?”
She didn’t have any conception of size, I realized. This section of catacombs was all she knew. She had nothing to compare it against.
“How long does it take you to walk from here to your father’s quarters?” I tried instead.
She glanced at her wristwatch, as if it held the answer. “Ten minutes,” she stated.
“And how far is it from here to the exit?”
“Ten minutes.”
I frowned. Did she have no concept of time either? Or was it really equidistance to each location?
I drew a large circle in the dirt with the hammer claw and punched a dot in the middle of it. “If we are here, Katja, and that door there leads this way”—I pointed to the door a few yards away and marked a corresponding arrow in the dirt—“where are your father’s quarters?”
She cocked her head to the side. “They would be…here.” She pointed to a spot that would fall into the two to three o’clock wedge on a clock.
“And where’s the exit?”
She pointed at another spot in the eight to nine o’clock wedge.
“Are there any other exits?”
“No, that’s the only way in or out, and I’ve searched every tunnel.”
“Can you take us to where our friend is being held without running into anybody else?”
“I think so,” Katja said. “Most of my aunts and uncles stay in the Great Hall. They don’t have their own rooms like I do. But we still need to be careful. They wander when they want to.”
“We’ll have to take our chances.” I turned to Rob. “Ready?”
He looked pale but resolved. “Let’s do it.”
Chapter 57
DANIÈLE
Zolan stopped massaging Danièle’s shoulders and slid his hands down over her chest. She clenched her jaw but didn’t protest. He cupped her breasts and drew
his thumbs over her nipples in small circles. She wanted to leap to her feet and run, but she forced herself to remain seated and relaxed.
He slid his hands lower over her abdomen, to the top of her groin. He pulled up her shirt. His hands touched her skin.
“You’re cold,” he said.
“A little,” she replied, allowing a hint of throatiness in her voice.
He dug his fingers beneath the waistband of her pants, played them left and right along the top of her panties, pushed them farther, lower, but his hands wouldn’t fit. He withdrew them, unfastened the button on her jeans.
“Stand up,” he told her.
Danièle did so, turning, pressing her rear against the front of his desk. She did nothing to mask the fear and vulnerability she felt—it’s what drove insecure sickos like Zolan; it fed their need for mastery, strength, authority. Marcel had been the same. He had wanted to control Danièle to assert his competency, and the more she resisted that control, the more she fought him, the more he enjoyed it.
“Don’t be afraid of me,” Zolan said, his eyes burning with desire. “I know what I’m doing. I’m good. You’ll enjoy it.”
A tear tripped down her cheek.
He brushed it away with his fingertip. “There’s no need for that. You’re going to like what I’ve got.”
When he looked down, to undo his pants, Danièle reached for the bottle of vodka on the desk behind her. She grabbed the neck in an upside down fist and swung it around like a baton. Zolan glanced up at the last second and leaned backward. The bottle smashed his jaw instead of his temple. Blood flew in a fine spray from his mouth. He stumbled away from her and dropped into the chair she had been seated in.
Danièle swung the bottle again. It smashed into pieces against his forearms, which he had raised to protect his face.
“Fucking bitch!” he spat.
She darted around to the other side of the desk, almost slipping on the limestone floor in her haste. She planted her hands against the front of the desk. Zolan was holding his hand over his mouth, to slow the flowing blood.
Danièle shoved the desk. It was not too large and moved easily on the smooth stone. Zolan tried to push himself out of the chair, out of the way, but the desk caught him in the gut, knocked him back into the seat, and drove him into the wall behind him. There was a loud crack, which she hoped were his ribs fracturing. His breath burst from his mouth in a twisted gasp. He slumped forward, pinned in place.
She ran.
Chapter 58
We had been moving for about five minutes, creeping from one passageway to the next, when Katja whispered, “Someone’s coming! We have to hide!” She turned and hurried back the way we’d come, Rob and I sticking right behind her. We ducked into one of the corridors we’d just passed, and she pinched out the flame of her candle.
Darkness enveloped us.
“What if he comes down this way—”
She pressed her hand against my mouth, silencing me.
We didn’t wait long. A few moments later I heard labored breathing and footsteps—fast footsteps.
We’ve been discovered missing.
The blackness at the mouth of the passageway lightened to gray. Then a shape darted past so fast I almost missed it.
“Danièle!” I hissed.
“Will?” Terrified.
“Danny!” Rob said.
She stood in the hallway, staring in our direction like a doe caught in headlamps, and I realized that was because she couldn’t see us.
“Yeah,” I said, “it’s me and Rob. Katja—light the candle.”
A match scratched. Katja touched the tip of it to the candle’s wick.
Danièle cried out, shying away.
“It’s okay!” I said, rushing forward. “She’s helping us.”
Danièle and I embraced, her body sinking against mine, as if suddenly emptied of all strength.
“Will…” she mumbled into my shoulder.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “We’re getting out of here.”
Chapter 59
KATJA
Katja didn’t like the way Will put his arms around his friend. It made her feel squishy inside, and she glared at the woman angrily. But the woman wouldn’t look at her so she gave it up and started off into the tunnels.
She couldn’t remain angry for long anyway, because she was too excited. She was going to the surface! This was the most adventure she’d ever had. She felt like Dorothy in The Land of Oz on her way to the Emerald City. Dorothy had three friends to help her along the way, and Katja had three friends too. But Katja had it much easier. Dorothy had to battle wolves, crows, bees, Winkie soldiers, and winged monkeys. Katja only had to get past Hanns and the others.
And she had a plan for that.
Chapter 60
When Katja stopped abruptly, I thought she’d heard something again with her insanely acute hearing, and I whispered, “What is it?”
“We are almost there.”
“Where?”
“The Great Hall.”
She’d mentioned that before. “What’s the Great Hall?”
“It’s the room that leads to the exit. It’s also where most of my aunts and uncles live, so we’re going to have to trick them.”
Trick them? I glanced at Rob and Danièle. They seemed equally skeptical.
I said, “How do we trick them?”
“Have you read The Wind in the Willows?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“I have,” Danièle said. “Something about a frog getting into trouble?”
“Not a frog!” Katja said. “A toad. At one point Toad gets arrested—that means he can’t leave Toad Hall—but eventually he gets bored and wants to leave. So do you know what he does? He tricks the Water Rat who is on guard at the time.”
“How does he trick him?” I asked.
“He pretends to be sick!” Katja said proudly. “The Water Rat lets him go outside, and he runs away.”
“I don’t think pretending to be sick is going to get us past your uncles.”
“No, you don’t understand. You’re going to hide. I’m going to tell them my father is sick, they have to go help him. That’s when we will escape.”
I thought this over. It was better than anything else that came to mind.
Rob said, “Where we gonna hide?”
“There.” Katja pointed down a branching corridor.
“How far does it go?” I asked.
“Not far.”
“What if someone comes down it? We’ll be trapped.”
“No one will come down it,” she said.
We huddled together in the darkness, listening. An icy mist swirled in my gut, and my heart thumped so loudly in my chest I wondered if the others could hear it.
“I hope you can trust her,” Danièle whispered to me.
“She’s brought us this far,” I said.
“Why is she helping us?”
“She wants to go to the surface.”
“Hey, Danny,” Rob said. “How’d you get free?”
“Shh!” I said. “I hear them.”
In the distance came what might have been Katja’s voice, followed by several others, which were deeper, back-of-the-throat, masculine.
Danièle gripped my hand tightly.
A moment later someone holding a torch in one hand and a bone in the other passed the end of our corridor, less than fifty feet from us. Eleven people followed in a procession of broken-bodied gaits, three carrying torches, and all of them carrying bones.
After they had passed, and their guttural mutterings faded, a small light appeared and seemed to float toward us.
Katja stopped when she could see us and, with a delicate index finger, indicated for us to follow.
The Great Hall was appropriately named, as it reminded me of a great hall you might find in a medieval castle. Torches set in gilded sconces lined the walls at evenly spaced intervals. A solid-looking table, perhaps sixteen feet in length, dominated the cen
ter of the yawning space. Three silver candelabras stood on its chipped and stained surface, their gleaming spaghetti arms holding blood-red candles. Only a few chairs encircled the table, though they were high-backed, sturdy, and featured intricate woodworking and some sort of lion motif. My first thought was nobility, and I recalled what Danièle had told me about King Charles X and his morbid parties. Could this furniture have been scavenged from those party rooms?
Nevertheless, amidst the grandeur was smelly squalor. Grungy mattresses, either bare or topped with a mess of dirty sheets, lay haphazardly around the floor. Each was surrounded by a collection of boxes and baskets overflowing with the kind of stuff you saw bums pushing around in their shopping carts: soda cans, plastic bags, tin cans, plastic bottles, articles of clothing, other junk.
An overweight woman sat on one of those mattresses. She wore no clothes. Her large breasts drooped to her waist. Her belly folded over her waist onto her lap like an apron. Scabs covered her skin, some streaked with dried blood, some bleeding freely. She stared at us but didn’t seem to see us.
Two others were curled up on the floor, apparently sleeping, while an old man with wild wheat hair and a craggy face and a puckered mouth shuffled toward us, arms outstretched, saying something I couldn’t understand.
Katja didn’t pay him any attention, which suggested he was not a threat, and led us quickly across the room to an arched doorway encrusted with human skulls. Then we were hurrying down a long stone tunnel, and even though we were still deep underground in a labyrinth from hell, right then I felt as free as if we were running across an open field with a spill of stars overhead.
We had escaped.
Chapter 61
When we reached the first T-junction I said, “Which way, Katja?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know.”
Rob’s jaw dropped. “You don’t know?”
“I have never been this far before.”
We chose left at random, and Katja took the lead, holding her candle before her, one hand cupped around the flame so it wouldn’t blow out.