Jabberwock Jack

by Dennis Liggio

  The money was actually good, though we didn't get it immediately. Instead of a fee, this guy said he could give us something better. It was a weird gadget that he said was "like a police scanner, but better." We were dubious at first. It didn't look like any police scanner I knew; we couldn't even figure out how it worked. Clueless, we took it to our friend Paulie, who knows far more than us about surveillance gear and police scanners. He looked at the device with curiosity for a few minutes, plugged it into one of his computers, then clicked away for another minute. I was watching him idly, so I saw the exact moment his eyes suddenly bugged out.

  "I'll give you five thousand dollars cash for this right now," said Paulie, his face still shocked.

  "What?" said Szandor with surprise.

  "Deal," I said. I quickly shook Paulie's hand before he could change his mind.

  On the way out, Szandor suggested we might have gotten more, but I responded that we shouldn't fleece our friends. I also reminded him that five thousand dollars was considerably more than we thought we could get. As it was, it meant neither of us really had to work for month or two. Considering Szandor still hadn't gotten another job after getting fired, that was particularly appealing. Just the week before this he had stopped sleeping on my couch and gotten a small apartment based on the odd jobs he was doing. I didn't want his money to dry up and for him to land back on my couch. It was also this money which allowed us to head up to see Tor and get trained. And ultimately it allowed us the time to join the hunt for Jabberwock Jack. So all in all, this escort job was very profitable, even if it was far more dangerous than expected.

  We led Dane Monday down into the depths of New Avalon. As I said, he was a strange guy. He loved to talk and drink coffee - he had even brought some down into the tunnels. He had a travel mug of coffee on his belt like some might have a gun in a holster. He slurped his coffee periodically for most of the first hour and then when it was gone he acted disappointed that he hadn't had the foresight to bring more.

  I couldn't tell if he was brave or insane. We recounted the ghoul ritual and how there could possibly be a few dozen man-eating creatures in the area, as well as the normal Avalon underground compliment of zombies and beasties, but he was completely unconcerned. He wasn't even surprised! Instead, he ignored any mention of monsters and was just extremely excited to see the armor and find out what it was. I wondered first if he was just crazy. As he talked, I got the feeling he knew a lot of things about a variety of subjects, so I began to think he was just some mad scientist who wasn't very practical or conscious of the world. Whether this was true or not, we just knew we needed to get him to the armor and keep him and his assistant alive.

  His assistant was a woman about our age named Abby Connors. Redheaded and pretty, she displayed the appropriate unease I expected for an underground expedition into monster territory. Unfortunately for her, Szandor kept trying to hit on her. He kept failing to pick up on the Not Interested vibe, a one whose vintage I recognized as the I Have A Boyfriend variety. She also seemed to have a great interest in documenting the expedition because she carried a camera with her. After this trip, I mentioned her to Paulie, who not only recognized her name, but was impressed that we had met her. Supposedly she had a Youtube channel or something popular with conspiracy theorists and Avalon truthers.

  Since they were civilians, we gave them the whole preamble about danger right before we went down into the tunnel system. I should have known something was up when they shared a look with each other and smiled. "We're not worried about danger," said Dane. They even had their own gas masks. We clipped LED lights on them - basically a small disc of light that provided short range light, enough at least for your personal space. We all also carried flashlights. Dane and Abby didn't carry weapons - that was the exclusive realm of my brother and I. Szandor had one of his beloved lead pipes and a crowbar in his pack. I carried my katana, a few flares, and a combat knife. We were ready for the typical residents of the underground - zombies, ghouls, maybe some snakes.

  If you've never been underground in a space with no lighting, nothing ever gives you the idea of just how dark it is. I love movies, but I can't say if I've ever seen a movie that really conveys the darkness. Movies that use too much darkness just look black and are hard to see, so that's not good cinematography. But real life is not a movie - it actually is really hard to see underground. There's an impenetrable blackness that surrounds you. You're never more aware of how short a distance light goes and how weak battery powered light is until you're underground. An LED light gives you a small bubble of light and a flashlight gives you a thin beam, but outside that, there's nothing. It's a world where nothing seems to exist when your narrow beam hasn't fallen upon it. It's an uncomfortable feeling where our brains can't build a visual map. We can't see the danger we want to know about. That dark is unnerving. It makes us walk a little closer to our companions, to want to hear their voices even when they have nothing to say. Something in the back of our brains always reverts to strength in numbers.

  In the dark, sounds are louder, especially ones that seem to come from outside the area you can see. Smells are sharper, which can be even worse since underground areas tend to have lots of lingering scents. You hear that tired statement that when blind, your other senses adapt. Down in the dark places, it's not exactly about adapting. In that darkness, where your light barely reaches anything, your mind is starved for sensory data. So if there's a scrape from far off, the chitter of a rat, or the sound of something falling, your mind snatches onto that as a big deal. Up in the light, such details will be forgotten, but in the dark when you have nothing to work with, everything is loud, everything makes you tense.

  And if, like my brother and I, you know there are actual monsters down in the darkness, your anxiety and fear are real and justified. Anyone who doesn't feel fear in the darkness underground is either a psychopath or a fool. Oh, you can be heroic, you can do what you need to despite any fear you feel - it doesn't have to be paralyzing. But you still feel the fear. That's your instinct, that's your danger sense. Those who have cut themselves off, those who don't fear the dark - well, I don't want to be with them. They're going to get themselves or their friends killed. Respect the darkness.

  Despite pleasant conversation, I could tell the prolonged darkness was getting to Abby, even with her and Dane's cavalier attitude about the hazards. Darkness is doubt, it is danger, it is that creeping unease, that back of the brain fear. Down here, something crawls up into your head. Without even deciding to, you start thinking about the route back. How many lefts was it? Could I make those turns if I lost my flashlight? If I lost my LED? How long would it take to even get back up and see the sky again? Something catches in your lungs when you realize if there's a problem you're that far away from the surface, that not even a quick run in panicked fear would get you back up in a few minutes. You're an hour underground, an hour from any chance of the sun, any hour in darkness and danger. Even if you've never been claustrophobic, even if you're in a gigantic cavern or area, suddenly you feel enclosed, as if the darkness itself is a physical wall. There's nothing you can do but push past it. Entertain those feelings too long and you will suddenly bolt into a run, drowning in irrational fear. Running blindly underground, especially in the maze of New Avalon's tunnels, may get you lost for good. Or worse.

  After about an hour, we were near our destination. We couldn't go down the drainage grate my brother and I had gone down last time, as it had been raining pretty heavily in the weeks prior. The train tunnels were wetter, but not impassable. The drainage system was a mess. But we still found a route back to the chamber where the ghouls had worshipped the armor.

  As agreed, I stayed with Dane and Abby while Szandor scouted ahead with his night vision goggles. Last time we were here, we saw about fifty ghouls. That's not the sort of thing we wanted to go into blind. Luckily, as we had been told before last time, there was a side passage which overlooked the armor's chamber. Szandor crept up there and look
ed for danger. In a few minutes he returned to me.

  "There's good news and there's bad news," he said.

  The good news: no sign of ghouls whatsoever.

  The bad news: the armor was gone.

  The truth was that this wasn't really a surprise to any of us. We had hoped the armor would remain, but we had no reason to expect it. It had been some time since we saw it. We had even posted a picture on the internet. The ghouls could have moved it - they did seem to worship it. Minerva Technics could have taken it. Someone could have even somehow figured out where it was from our picture and hauled it away.

  We took Dane and Abby to the main room where the armor had been. I showed Dane where the armor was, on a elevated section of the chamber. Besides the lack of armor, there weren't any of those big pots where the ghouls burned things. There was no debris either. I couldn't see any fresh footprints, but it was really hard to tell in the light we had and neither my brother nor I are really trackers. Whoever had been here seemed to have cleaned the place very well. If there was any doubt, we might have wondered if we were in the wrong place. But this was definitely the right place.

  Dane was initially disappointed, but he was not defeated. He took out a pair of goggles that reminded me a lot of our night vision goggles and started scanning the area. Seriously, he said "scanning" - like he was on Star Trek or something. They're goggles, it's not scanning, it's just looking.

  Believe it or not, he found a trail. It was no trail that my brother or I could see. Like I said, we're not forest rangers or trackers, but we can notice a cue or two when pursuing monsters, usually enough to tell which way they went in the past few hours. Somehow with his goggles, Dane claimed there was a trail leading off into a side tunnel.

  Szandor and I had short conference. Technically this was beyond the scope of what they hired us for. We had been hired to take the pair to where the armor had been. We had just done that. Did we want to go farther? We were already here and we didn't think the trail would travel too far from here. And who else was going to take the two down into the tunnels? Paulie? Meat? We were their best bet. We didn't want Dane and Abby coming down here on their own and getting killed. And maybe - just maybe - Szandor and I were curious where this might lead and what Dane might find. It ended up to be a foolish move, but we agreed to press on.

  The trail took us what I believed was east. These were tunnels that we hadn't yet mapped and compasses were notably bad in the labyrinth under New Avalon. We did pass a few points where we saw ladders that would probably bring us up to the surface - I noted these on our map for future reference. Then the nature of the tunnels changed. Rather than the well bored tunnels of the normal New Avalon system, these were roughly hewn. It was possible that these were support tunnels used to help create Avalon's proper tunnels, but I wasn't sure. This tunnel was wide and very rough cut. It also started descending a little sharply. The sound of dripping water was much louder in this darkness. I looked up and got an eye full of water. I almost felt like I needed an umbrella.

  "I think we're under the river," I said, pulling the hood of my jacket up over my hair.

  "That doesn't make me feel good at all," said Szandor. "Are you sure?"

  I shrugged. "No way to know for sure. We've been going down and east. We could be under the river. It sure is wet enough. And all the moisture seems to be coming from above."

  "Could the tunnel could fall down on us due to the weight of the water?" asked Abby. Her nervousness had only gotten worse the longer we were down here.

  "Nonsense, these tunnels have been here intact for decades!" said Dane. "Fine Avalon engineering!"

  "By Roger Carmichael, I'll remind you," said Abby.

  Dane conceded this point, though I wasn't sure why he had the sudden change of mind at that statement. "Okay, maybe it's less safe than I thought. But we still have no reason to think that this tunnel will now, at this moment, just happen to collapse on us for no apparent reason."

  "Except that seems to be how it works with you," said Abby.

  "Do we need to reevaluate this job?" said Szandor nervously after hearing their exchange. "Because I'm suddenly feeling like there's more danger to this than we were told. And not from the monsters."

  "Nobody's currently trying to kill me," said Dane, as if this explained how things were okay.

  "What?" blurted Szandor.

  "That we know of," said Abby under her breath.

  "I think we may want to head back now. Heading back seems a great idea. Mikkel, what do you think?" said Szandor, his voice quick with nervousness.

  I would have responded, but the world went into weird focus and a hot wave rushed over me. I was vaguely conscious of the group: me in front, Abby pointing her flashlight at something, Dane leaning down to grab something, and Szandor bringing up the rear and looking around nervously. Then the scar at my temple throbbed, just preceding the pounding in my head.

  It was what Szandor calls my Bad Feelings. He has no idea how horrible they feel, or he'd have a much worse name for them. It's like someone took a whole movie, added in director's commentary, crammed in a few more deleted scenes, hammered that all together into a writhing mass, compacted that down to the size of a softball and then tried to forcefully jam that into my head... by way of a garbage truck. It's painful. I see a flash of images, get a lot of feelings, and typically have only a second to act upon it. Usually I just act on instinct or let myself be guided. These feelings hurt like hell, but they have saved our asses a few times. My brother and I would probably be dead or crippled if not for this very painful danger alert.

  In this case, that horrible feeling was giving me teeth. Big teeth. Gigantic jaws. A big red eye. White. Frothing water. Rubble. Loud noises. Move!

  I lunged forward and pushed Dane out of the way, causing him to stumble toward Abby and Szandor. Then the tunnel wall exploded.

  The flashlight flew from my hand as I was thrown backward. Rubble flew everywhere but I was extremely lucky. Nothing but tiny, harmless pieces of stone struck me. Water erupted and sprayed all over the tunnel. In the spinning of my flashlight, I saw the danger that I had been warned of. A massive jaw with teeth like swords and one big red eye that seemed to glow. I saw only a quick flash, but there was no second eye to match the first, that spot was empty. There was a screeching wail accompanied by the stench of decaying fish.

  I found myself on the ground as this monstrous head turned, sweeping back and forth to take in the whole tunnel. My flashlight had ended up facing away from the monster, so I had just faint light from the LEDs and the shine of my brother's flashlight from the other side. I saw it in shadow and still knew was enormous. Its head alone was bigger than I was! I was scrambling to get back on my feet. I expected it to swallow me with its giant mouth. I was the closest to it. I was the disabled prey. But for some reason, I was ignored.

  The gigantic teeth lunged toward Dane instead. The creature narrowly missed him, this time my brother pulling Dane out of the way. In the shadowed light, I could see the massive bulk turn, a gargantuan snake-like body that shifted and slid forward. The entire mass began moving past me, still ignoring me. But there was so much of it. More and more of its body kept coming out of the broken wall as water flowed into this tunnel.

  I couldn't see past the creature anymore, its massive sliding bulk filling most of the passage. I heard the shouts of the others beyond it, seeming to recede into the distance. I knew they were at least alive and hopefully running like hell. The creature was going after them, not me.

  For a moment, I stood looking at the dimly lit creature, my mind trying to understand what I was seeing, trying to not feel the fear that was shivering through me. I had never seen a creature this size. When I said its bulk pushed past me, I meant a snake-like body that had more width than I had height. Those teeth were each as long as my arm, that mouth could swallow a man whole. The massive body that was sliding past me was doing so in seconds, not an instant. Neither Szandor nor I had never encountered a monster t
his big - we had never even heard of something this big. In case I'm still not conveying the fear and gravity of this gigantic creature - this wasn't just a monster, this was a goddamn fucking sea serpent!

  Water was pouring into the tunnel and was now starting to cover my boots. It wasn't a roaring deluge, but this tunnel would be underwater soon. The air was filled with dust and I pulled my mask down. As I looked to the massive body which swiftly slid in front of me, I felt fear, but I was also feeling something like excitement. This creature could kill me without thinking about it, yet at the same time, here was a monster we had never seen, one that maybe no one had ever seen. If we got out of this alive, we could tell a story no one else ever could. Or if we failed we could be damn privileged corpses.

  I drew my katana. This is where I engaged in some typical Nowak reckless stupidity. I'll admit this was more of Szandor's kind of maneuver, but I was running out of options. This creature was chasing my brother and the people we were hired to protect. I also needed to get out of this tunnel before I drowned. And let's be honest, I had seen too many movies. I was standing in front of a giant monster holding a sword. Of course I was going to act like a reckless idiot.

  With a yell, I leapt forward and with both hands stabbed my katana into the creature. Up close I could tell the serpent's skin was white, though covered with dirt, grime, and what could have been seaweed. There was some resistance, but the leap and my full weight thrust the blade with great force, piercing the monster's skin. Dark blood spurted from the wound. The katana stuck firmly in the serpent's flesh.

  What happened next I had kind of expected, but it was still jarring. The serpent didn't stop moving, in fact, it didn't react at all. It continued on its way... and the sword was pulled with it. The katana was nearly wrenched from my grip but I held on. I scrambled to get my boots up as I was yanked along with the monster's body. I held on for dear life. I was riding a gigantic serpent by the hilt of my katana. This was somehow awesome and completely ridiculous - or I'd have felt that way if my arms didn't ache and the risk of death wasn't still strong.