The Dark River fr-2

by John Twelve Hawks

  FIVE MINUTES LATER, she was in Weehawken, a shabby commuter town with dirt alleyways separating three-story clapboard houses. When she was sure no one was looking, she scrambled over the stone wall that formed the back courtyard of a deserted Catholic church and pulled out her cell phone. Hollis’s phone rang five or six times before he answered.

  “Exit high! Purest children!” During the last three months, she had come up with three escape plans. “Exit high” meant whoever was in the loft should use the fire escape to climb onto the roof. “Purest children” meant they should rendezvous at Tompkins Square Park on the Lower East Side.

  “What happened?” Hollis asked.

  “Just do what I say! Get out of there!”

  “We can’t do that, Maya.”

  “What are you-”

  “Some visitors have arrived. Come home as soon as you can.”

  Maya found a taxi and raced back to Manhattan. Sitting low in the backseat, she told the driver to cruise down Catherine Street. A group of teenagers was playing basketball at the public housing project, but no one appeared to be watching the loft building. She jumped out of the cab, hurried across the street, and unlocked the green door.

  Maya drew her handgun as soon as she stood on the ground-floor landing. She could hear the sounds of cars passing down the street and a faint creaking noise when she climbed the wooden staircase. The moment she reached the door, she knocked once, and then raised the revolver.

  Looking frightened, Vicki opened the door and Maya slipped into the room. Hollis stood a few feet away holding the shotgun.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “It was a trap,” Maya said. “The Tabula know we’re in New York. Why are you still here?”

  “As I said, we have visitors.”

  Hollis motioned to the right. Someone had pulled back the painter’s tarps that defined the men’s sleeping area. Oscar Hernandez, the Jonesie minister who had rented the loft, sat on a folding cot with a young Latino wearing a red sweatshirt.

  “Maya! Thank God you’re all right!” Hernandez stood up and gave her a big smile. He was a city bus driver who always wore his clerical collar when conducting church business. “Welcome back. We were starting to worry about you.”

  An older woman’s voice came from the women’s sleeping area. Maya hurried across the loft and pulled back one of the tarps. Sophia Briggs, the Pathfinder who lived in an abandoned missile silo near New Harmony, sat on a cot talking to Gabriel. Sophia was the teacher who had taught Gabriel how to use his ability to cross over to different realms.

  “Ah, the Harlequin returns.” Sophia studied Maya as if she were a rare species of reptile. “Good evening, my dear. I didn’t think I’d see you again.”

  Something moved in the shadows over by the radiator. Was it a dog? Had Sophia brought a pet with her? No, it was a little girl sitting on the floor, her knees up, her arms wrapped around her legs. When Maya took a step closer, a face came up, a small face that displayed no emotion. It was the Asian girl from New Harmony. Someone had survived.

  7

  Gabriel watched Maya’s eyes as she glanced at the little girl and then turned to Sophia. “I thought everyone was killed…”

  “Everyone but Alice Chen-Joan’s daughter. I found her down in the missile silo protected by my lovely king snakes. The Tabula mercenaries came searching for us, but they only explored the main level.”

  “How did you get to New York?”

  “Dr. Briggs drove to Austin, Texas, and contacted a member of our church,” Hernandez explained. “A few of us still believe in ‘Debt Not Paid.’ We will protect Travelers, Harlequins, and their friends.”

  “But why are they here?”

  “Alice and I are both witnesses,” Sophia said. “We were passed from church to church until someone contacted Reverend Hernandez.”

  “Well, you’ve come to the wrong place. I won’t accept an obligation for you or this child.” Maya walked over to Alice Chen. “Do you have grandparents? An aunt or uncle?”

  “Alice has stopped talking,” Sophia said. “It’s clear that she’s been through a traumatic experience.”

  “I heard her talk at New Harmony.” Maya stood over Alice and spoke slowly. “Give me a name. I need the name of someone who can take care of you.”

  “Leave her alone, Maya.” Gabriel got up from the cot and crouched down beside the little girl. “Alice…” he whispered, and then he felt the aura of grief that enveloped her. The feeling was so powerful and so dark that he almost fell to his knees. For a moment he wished he had never become a Traveler. How had his father endured such pain from others?

  Gabriel stood up and faced Maya. “She stays with us.”

  “These two people will slow us down. We have to get out of here now.”

  “She stays with us,” Gabriel repeated. “Or I’m not leaving this loft.”

  “We won’t have to take care of them for long,” Vicki said. “Reverend Hernandez has some friends who live on a farm up in Vermont.”

  “They live completely off the Grid-no credit cards, no phones, no attachments at all,” Hernandez said. “You can stay there as long as you want.”

  “And how are we supposed to make this journey?” Maya asked.

  “Take the subway to Grand Central Terminal. A train leaves on the Harlem Line at eleven twenty-two tonight. Get off at a town called Ten Mile River and wait on the platform. A church member with a car will pick you up and take you north.”

  Maya shook her head. “The whole situation has changed now that the Tabula realize we’re in New York. They’ll be monitoring everywhere-it will be dangerous to move around. There are surveillance cameras on the street and in each subway station, and the computers will scan for our images and target our exact location.”

  “I know all about the cameras,” Hernandez said. “That’s why I brought a guide.”

  Hernandez raised his hand slightly and the young Latino sauntered to the middle of the room. He was wearing a baseball cap and loose athletic clothing that advertised various sports teams. Although he tried to swagger, he looked nervous and eager to please.

  “This is my nephew, Nazarene Romero. He works in the maintenance division of the New York Transit Authority.”

  Nazarene adjusted his extra-large pants as if that were part of the introduction. “Most people call me Naz.”

  “Good to meet you, Naz. I’m Hollis. So how are you going to get us to Grand Central?”

  “First things first,” Naz said. “I’m not in my uncle’s church. Understand? I’ll get you out of the city, but I wanna be paid. It’s a thousand for me plus another thousand for my friend Devon.”

  “Just to travel to a train station?”

  “You won’t be tracked.” Naz raised his right hand as if he were swearing an oath in court. “I guarantee it.”

  “That’s not possible,” Maya said.

  “We’re going to a station with no cameras and traveling on a train with no passengers. All you gotta do is follow my directions and pay me when it’s done.”

  Hollis stood up and approached Naz. Although he held the shotgun with his left hand, he didn’t need the weapon to be intimidating. “I’m not a church member these days, but I still remember a lot of the sermons. In his Third Letter from Mississippi, Isaac Jones said that anyone who takes the wrong path would cross a dark river to a city of endless night. Doesn’t sound like the kind of place you’d like to spend eternity…”

  “I’m not selling anybody out, man. I’m just gonna be your guide.”

  Everyone looked at Maya and waited for her to make a decision. “We’ll take you and the child up to the farm in Vermont,” she told Sophia. “After that point, you’re on your own.”

  “As you wish.”

  “We leave in five minutes,” Maya said. “Each person can bring a knapsack or one piece of luggage. Vicki, distribute the money so that you’re not carrying all of it.”

  Alice remained on the floor, silent but watching as
they quickly sorted through their belongings. Gabriel stuffed two T-shirts and some underwear into a canvas shoulder bag along with his new passport and a packet of hundred-dollar bills. He didn’t know what to do with the Japanese sword that Thorn had given to his father, but Maya took the weapon from him. Carefully, she placed the talisman in the black metal tube she used to carry her Harlequin sword.

  While the others continued to get ready, Gabriel brought a cup of tea over to Sophia Briggs. The Pathfinder was a tough old lady who had spent most of her life alone, but she looked exhausted from the cross-country trip to New York.

  “Thank you.” Sophia reached out and touched his hand. Gabriel felt like they were back in the abandoned missile silo in Arizona and she was teaching him how to free his Light from his body.

  “I’ve thought about you a great deal in the last few months, Gabriel. What’s been going on here in New York?”

  “I’m all right. I guess…” Gabriel lowered his voice. “You taught me how to cross the barriers, but I still don’t know how to be a Traveler. I see the world differently, but I don’t know how I’m supposed to change things.”

  “Have you done any more exploring? Did you reach the other realms?”

  “I met my brother in the Realm of the hungry ghosts.”

  “Was it dangerous?”

  “I’ll tell you about it later, Sophia. Right now, I want to know about my father. He sent a letter to New Harmony.”

  “Yes. Martin showed it to me when I went to his house for dinner. Your father wanted to know how the community was doing.”

  “Was there a return address? How did he expect Martin to contact him?”

  “There was an address on the envelope, but Martin was going to destroy it. All it said was, ‘Tyburn Convent. London.’”

  Gabriel felt as if the shadowy loft was filled with light. Tyburn Convent. London. His father was probably living there. All they had to do was travel to Britain to find him.

  “Did you hear that?” he told the others. “My father is in London. He wrote a letter from a place called Tyburn Convent.”

  Maya handed the.45 automatic to Hollis and took a handful of bullets for her revolver. She glanced at Gabriel and shook her head slightly. “Let’s get to a safe place and then we’ll talk about the future. Is everyone ready?”

  Reverend Hernandez agreed to stay in the loft for one more hour, using the stove and the lights as if someone were home. The rest of the group crawled out the window to the fire escape and climbed up onto the roof. It felt like they were standing on a platform above the city. Clouds drifted over Manhattan, and the moon looked like a smudged chalk mark in the sky.

  They passed over a series of low walls and reached the roof of a building farther up Catherine Street. The security door had a dead-bolt lock, but Maya didn’t see that as an obstacle. The Harlequin took out a thin piece of steel called a tension wrench, inserted it into the keyhole, and turned the plug slightly. Then she forced a locksmith’s pick in above the wrench and used it to push the upper pins into the housing. When the last pin clicked into place, she pushed the door open and guided them downstairs to the ground floor of a storage building. Hollis opened the door and they stepped into an alleyway that led to Oliver Street.

  It was about ten o’clock in the evening. The narrow streets were filled with young men and women who wanted to eat Peking duck and a few egg rolls before they spent the night dancing at clubs. People got out of taxis or stood on the sidewalk examining the menus displayed in restaurant windows. Although Gabriel and the others were concealed in the crowd, he felt as if every surveillance camera in the city were tracking their movements.

  The feeling got stronger when they followed Worth Street to Broadway. Naz led the way, Hollis beside him. Vicki was next, followed by Sophia and Alice. Gabriel could hear Naz explaining how the subway system was being converted to a system that used computer-controlled trains. On some lines, the motorman spent his entire shift sitting in the cab of the front car, staring at the controls that worked without him.

  “A computer in Brooklyn makes the train start and stop,” Naz said. “All you gotta do is punch a button every few stops to show that you’re not asleep.”

  Gabriel glanced over his shoulder and saw that Maya was about six feet behind him. The straps of her shoulder bag and the sword carrier crossed like a black X in the middle of her chest. Her eyes moved slightly back and forth like a camera that was continually scanning a danger zone.

  They turned left onto Broadway and approached a triangular park. City Hall was a few blocks away-a large white building designed with a wide stairway leading up to Corinthian columns. This fake Greek temple was only a few hundred feet from the Woolworth Building, a Gothic cathedral of commerce with a spire that reached into the night.

  “Maybe the cameras have been tracking us,” Naz said. “But it don’t make no difference. The next camera is down the street. See it? It’s on the lamppost near the stoplight. They got us walkin’ up Broadway, but now we disappear.”

  Stepping off the sidewalk, he led them through the deserted park. There were a few security lights on the asphalt pathways, glowing with a feeble energy, but their little group remained in the darkness.

  “Where are we going?” Gabriel asked.

  “There’s a deserted subway station right beneath us. They built it a hundred years ago and closed it down right after World War Two. No cameras. No cops.”

  “How do we get up to Grand Central Terminal?”

  “Don’t worry about that. My friend is gonna show up in about fifteen minutes.”

  They passed through a cluster of scraggly pine trees and approached a brick maintenance building. A ventilation grate was on the west side of the building, and Maya smelled the dusty odor of the underground. Naz led them around the building to a steel security door. Ignoring the various warning signs-DANGER! AUTHORIZED ENTRY ONLY!-he pulled a key ring out of his knapsack.

  “Where did you find that?” Hollis asked.

  “In my supervisor’s locker. I kind of borrowed the keys a couple of weeks ago and copied them.”

  Naz opened the door and led them into the building. They were standing on a steel floor surrounded by circuit boxes and electrical conduits; an opening in one corner led to a staircase. The door closed behind them and a loud boom echoed in the small space. Alice took two quick steps forward before controlling her fear. She looked like a half-wild animal that had just been returned to a cage.

  The circular staircase went downward like an enormous corkscrew to a landing where a single lightbulb burned above a second security door. Naz sorted through his stolen keys, mumbling to himself as he tried to open the lock. Finally he found the right key, but the door still wouldn’t move.

  “Let me try.” Hollis raised his left foot and aimed a front kick at the lock. The door popped open.

  One by one, they entered the abandoned City Hall station. The original light fixtures were empty, but someone had attached an electrical cable to the wall and run it to a dozen bulbs. A token booth was at the center of the entrance lobby; it had a little dome-shaped copper roof and looked as if it belonged in the sort of old-fashioned movie theater that had ushers and a red velvet curtain. Beyond it were wooden turnstiles and a concrete platform by the subway tracks.

  A layer of grayish-white dust covered the floor; the air was stale and smelled like machine oil. Gabriel felt as if he were locked inside a tomb until he gazed upward at the vaulted ceiling. It reminded him of a medieval church-an interior of high arches that rose from the ground and met at central points. The tunnel itself was another set of arches, illuminated by tarnished brass chandeliers that held frosted-glass globes. No advertisements. No surveillance cameras. The walls and ceilings were decorated with white, red, and dark green ceramic tiles that formed intricate geometric patterns. It made the underground environment feel like a sanctuary, a place of refuge from the disorder above them.

  Gabriel felt warm air move across his skin, and then heard
a distant rumble, growing in power. Seconds later, a subway train came around the curve and raced through the station without stopping.

  “That’s the number six local,” Naz said. “It loops through here and heads back uptown.”

  “Is that how we get to Grand Central?” Sophia asked.

  “We’re not riding on the six. It’s too public.” Naz glanced at his watch. “You get a private train with nobody watching. Just wait. Devon should be here in a few minutes.”

  Naz paced in front of the booth, and then looked relieved when a pair of headlights appeared in the tunnel. “Here he comes. I need the first thousand-right now.”

  Vicki handed a wad of hundred-dollar bills to Naz, and their guide passed through a wooden turnstile to the platform. He waved his arms as a single subway car rolled into the station pulling a hopper car piled high with trash bags. A slender black man-well over six feet tall-was operating the controls in the front cab. He stopped the subway car and opened the double doors. Naz shook hands, exchanged a few words, and then handed the money to his friend.

  “Hurry up!” he shouted. “Another train will be here in a minute.”

  Maya led the group into the subway car and told them to sit at either end, away from the windows. Everyone obeyed her-even Alice. The little girl seemed completely aware of everything that was going on, but she never showed any expression.

  Devon stood in the doorway of the closet-sized cab. “Welcome aboard the trash train,” he said. “We got to change tracks a couple times, but we’ll be up at Grand Central in about fifteen minutes. We’ll stop at a maintenance platform because there aren’t any TV cameras in that area.”