“What are you reading?” she said after a few moments.
“There’s a map on the wall.”
“A map?” Her heart quickened. “Of what?”
“Of the sewer system. It’s a diagram. It shows where we are, and where we need to go.”
“To find your brother?” She could not imagine what would happen to her after they found Dante. Would Dante become like an uncle to her, and Victor like a father? No, she had already known two fathers. Besides, she did not think anyone could replace Allen.
“Come on,” Victor said, taking her hand. “I have a feeling we’re not out of this yet.”
So they kept moving, and all the while Jenny wondered what would happen when she slowed Victor down too much. What would he do when he could no longer take care of her and chase after his brother? She considered herself to be a good judge of character, but still she could not decide which way he was leaning. He would do anything to save his brother—she knew that much. But would he abandon her again, leaving her as prey to the first person who found her?
She hated how her blindness had turned her into a victim. What use was she except to stumble around in the darkness and eat food she did not find? She wanted to claw off her stupid sunglasses and throw them in the muck, and then maybe tear out what remained of her eyes for good measure.
But instead she focused her thoughts on the sounds of splashing in the tunnel behind them, wondering if Victor heard it too. She suspected that, had she seen the diagram Victor had seen, every turn they took would have made sense. She could have tracked their progress with a bird’s-eye-view, imagining how much closer they were to emerging back into the clean air above.
But with no more than Victor’s hand to guide her, she was disoriented by the sewer’s labyrinth of passageways. Sometimes she felt certain they were backtracking along a parallel course to the one they had just taken. But Victor never stopped, and he never hesitated.
And neither did the sounds of pursuit.
“We’re almost there,” Victor said. “This tunnel will lead us to a pond, a lake, a reservoir—water of some kind. Then we’ll be out in the clean air again, okay?”
“Okay,” she answered, not allowing herself to hope for too much. She sensed that whoever was pursuing them was deliberately hanging back, as if waiting for the perfect moment to attack. She wondered whether Victor sensed this as well and was only putting on a good show for her.
A short time later, Victor stopped abruptly in his tracks. Jenny bumped into him with a little grunt.
“What?” she asked. “What is it?”
“It’s blocked,” Victor answered. “I can’t believe…” He kicked at something, and Jenny heard the ring of metal. “It’s a gate. I didn’t know they had gates down here.”
“So we keep looking,” she answered, pulling his hand. “Right?”
“Right,” he said, not bothering to hide the weariness in his voice. “There must be another way.”
They returned back to the main line. Their progress was beginning to quicken again when Jenny heard a sound she at first disbelieved.
“Did you hear that?” she asked, pulling back on his hand to stop him.
“No. What was it?”
“It sounded like…”
Then the sound came again, a soft whimper.
“Like a dog,” she finished.
_____
Victor was surprised he had not seen the glow of light reflected from the tunnel wall. A grate high overhead filleted sunlight into blinding strips, and far below, caught in the pool of that glaring light, the head of a dog poked from a drainage pipe.
The dog was of medium build, long-haired and filthy. It didn’t look like it had been trapped in the sewer so much as dragged through the sewer. It’s eyes, large and piteous, stared feverishly at the two visitors.
“What’s wrong?” Jenny asked in a low voice.
“The dog’s stuck in a pipe,” he answered. He studied the pipe and tried to imagine what kind of animal would have been foolish enough to think it could fit through there.
“Maybe we should help it,” Jenny said. Victor remembered her fear of dogs, the way she had hidden in the station wagon as a pack of wolves surrounded her. He could hear a trace of that same fear in her voice now. Perhaps, however, her fear was overcome by her sympathy for this creature.
Victor paused, not hesitating but listening. He had heard the sounds of footsteps, even if Jenny didn’t think he had, and it wasn’t difficult to imagine their pursuers might be close behind.
“Victor,” Jenny prompted.
“It’s too dangerous. We have to keep moving.” He took her hand and started to pull her along, but she planted her feet and pulled back.
“Please,” she said. “Please do it for me?”
Victor stared at her for a few moments. Had he just met her, he would have stuck to his guns. But after having abandoned her so recently (a choice that had endangered her life), he thought he owed her this small favor.
“Okay,” he said with a deep breath, “I’ll help the dog. But I need you to be my ears, understand? Don’t let them sneak up behind us.”
She nodded, probably feeling helpless because she couldn’t do more. That was alright. They would free the dog, and soon they would get through that closed door and be one step closer to reaching Dante.
Victor crouched by the panting dog, thinking of how different things might have gone if Jenny had not been with him. Had he met “Os, the Great and Powerful” on his own, he probably would have shot him. And he certainly wouldn’t have rescued this dog. But maybe that was the very reason it mattered so much to keep Jenny with him. In a small way, she seemed to preserve his sense of humanity.
“You’re not going to bite me, are you?” he said to the dog. Then, feeling foolish for speaking to the dog, he slowly reached toward it, watching its reaction. The dog merely watched him back. There was nothing feral in its eyes, nothing to suggest it would bite him if he tried to help.
Victor took hold of the dog’s shoulders and began tugging. The dog shifted, but only a little. Maybe the animal wasn’t stuck against the pipe. Maybe its leg was caught in something.
Victor tugged the dog a little farther. The animal whined and began scratching at Victor’s coat.
“What’s going on?” Jenny asked.
“Hold on.” With his arms around the dog’s chest, Victor gave one more pull and fell back to the floor with the dog on top of him. As he landed, however, he saw something protruding from the darkness of the pipe—something with fingers.
“Gotcha!” a voice cried in triumph. A shape materialized from the dim pipe—first the hand, then the head of a man hunched over. He plopped into the room like a newly-birthed alligator, eyes gleaming with excitement.
“Who the hell is this?” Victor said as he scrambled to his feet.
“I already told you,” Os answered. “I’m still looking for a new name, though. Do you have any ideas?” He spread his arms again. Victor almost expected him to turn in a tight circle, like a model advertising clothing.
The Colt appeared in Victor’s hand. “Back off,” he said. “Jenny, take the dog.”
Jenny followed the sound of his voice and found the dog, which was shivering. It seemed to look all around the room except at Oswald. When its eyes ventured in that direction, it lowered its head.
Oswald gestured at Victor’s gun. “Is that any way to treat a host?”
“Can you find your way back?” Victor said, speaking over his shoulder to Jenny. He didn’t let Oswald out of his sight.
“I think so,” she answered, placing one hand against the wall of the tunnel while the other held the dog by the collar.
“To the gate?” Oswald asked. “It’s closed. How will you get through?” He took a step forward.
“I wouldn’t do that,” Victor said.
“Will you shoot me?”
“If you make me.”
“Looks to me like your hand is on the trigger, not mine
.” Oswald grinned and stepped forward again.
“One more step,” Victor warned.
Oswald raised his hands in defense. “Alright, I understand. But you shouldn’t go wandering around in the dark.”
Before Victor knew Oswald had anything in his hand, a beam of light dazzled Victor’s eyes. Victor jerked his head aside and raised his arm to ward off the light. His finger was just tightening on the trigger when Oswald lunged forward and stabbed something into Victor’s chest. It felt like his entire body was on fire. His limbs shook, his teeth rattled, and then he was lying on the floor of the tunnel, looking up into that Cheshire grin.
“I knew we were going to be friends,” Oswald said.
Chapter 26: Twist of Fate
The pig’s body was divided into sections, each colored differently and named according to the particular cut: loin, ham, bacon, spareribs. The colors, bright purple and lime green and baby blue, seemed garish to Victor’s eyes, as if there was anything to glorify about the act of cutting an animal into pieces with a sharp instrument.
It was a small-town butchery that somehow had the feel of an open-air cafe, a place where you could stop by on a lazy afternoon and enjoy a drink and watch cars go past in the street. On one wall hung awards given by the town council. On the opposite wall hung the portraits of previous owners, with names and dates. The dates were short enough to suggest they indicated the length of time the deceased had run the shop, rather than how long they had lived. But the two were not all that far apart.
“What have you brought us, my boy?” said a man sitting at a table in the center of the room. He pushed back a plate of picked bones and balled a napkin in his fist, which he then used to sandpaper the fingers of the opposite hand. Even without the words “my boy,” Victor would have guessed the kinship between this man and Oswald. They had the same prominent foreheads, the same wide mouths. The staring eyes, however, seemed a feature belonging to Oswald alone.
A woman with an apron around her waist moved from behind the counter and perched herself on the back of the man’s chair, watching Victor with interest.
The man set the napkin aside and began picking at his teeth with a fingernail. “Where’s the girl?”
“She got away,” Oswald said.
Victor was standing in front of Oswald, and so could not see him, but he heard the tension in his voice. It was the tension of a man who has stepped on a mine and can’t remove his foot.
“What did you say?” the woman asked in a high whisper.
“But I got this one,” Oswald said, nudging Victor in the back. “Look at him.”
The two - husband and wife, judging by the wedding bands - regarded Victor openly. He had heard the expression “looked up and down” before, but never had he seen so literal a demonstration. It was the way men in a bar eye a good-looking girl, though in this case the stare suggested a different motive.
“And what’s your story?” the woman said. “Heading to the city?”
Victor did not answer. The woman sighed and patted her husband’s shoulder. “It’s always one or the other, isn’t it?” she said to him. Then she turned her attention back to Victor. “Most of them can’t stop talking. But a few come in here, sit where you’re sitting, and do just the same thing. They stay quiet. You know what happens to them?” She smiled. She seemed to enjoy smiling at others’ expense. “The same thing that happens to those who talk.”
“Not much incentive to share, then,” Victor answered.
The husband and wife raised their eyebrows at one another. “He does talk!” the man said. He leaned forward like a man ready to get down to business. “You see, friend—what’s your name? It’s always simpler if we know each other’s names.”
“Victor.”
“Victor. Well, I’m Reginald and this is my wife Ellen. I’m sure you’ve met Os by now. No matter what you say or do here, the end is going to be the same. That part, alas, is already set in motion. Nothing any of us can do about it now. But how we get from point A to point B?” He shrugged and leaned back. “That can be as easy or as difficult as you choose.”
“What do you want from me?” he said. “Aside from the obvious.”
“The world’s a little different than it used to be. Communication isn’t quite the same—ergo, information is at a premium. So all we want is for you to tell us what you know. That’s it. In return, we’ll see to it that you don’t suffer.”
Victor looked from the man to the woman, reading more than a passing interest in their gaze. They had been cut off from the world, and now they needed to know what was going on. Their happy little community wasn’t as happy as they were pretending. Evil was afoot in Mayberry.
“What I know?” Victor repeated, shifting his weight.
The man nodded. “The short version, please.”
“And then you’ll make it quick?”
“That’s right.”
Victor let his eyes move around the room as he considered this. He was thinking of the spots of blood he had discovered near the closet in the cabin, of finding Jenny on the floor in the broken glass, of the buck he and Dante had hunted in the forest and how big the antlers had been, and how, if the animal had just moved along the wall instead of crossing it, the brothers might be eating steaks at the cabin right now. Maybe they would be planning a move in the spring. Maybe Dante would have convinced him by then that it was time to break their isolation.
“Victor?” Reginald prompted. He was no longer feigning good humor. “Get on with it.”
“What I know,” Victor repeated again, softly. “I know that a week ago, the world made some measure of sense to me. I know that men on horseback took my brother and I’ve been following them ever since. I know that, no matter where they try to hide on this blighted earth, I will find them. I will break the world in my hands just to find them. And when I do?” He gave a grim smile. “They will suffer, no matter what they say or do.”
“Victor,” Reginald warned.
Victor leaned forward and raised his voice. “I will find them, along with the one who sent them, and I will bring their world crashing down on their heads!” He leaped from the chair and shoved the table forward, knocking Reginald backward. Ellen stepped back with a muffled cry and started shouting for someone to restrain Victor. Her gaze moved over Victor’s shoulder and paused there, just on the edge of disbelief. For a moment, Victor imagined that Oswald might not try to stop him.
Then the cattle prod found his back. But he was ready for it this time, and though it played havoc with his nerves, he forced himself to remain standing, his arms reaching toward the man and woman, ready to strangle the life out of them. Then, as the shock of the prod faded, two pairs of arms grabbed Victor’s shoulders.
“Nuts,” Oswald said. “I think he just killed the battery.”
“For God’s sake,” the woman shouted, “put him in the freezer!”
_____
There must be a way out, he thought.
He tried the doors. Locked. He kicked the glass, testing whether - with enough force - he could break through. The glass was too thick. The only way he might be able to break it would be to lead with the crown of his head. If he did that, he would be fortunate to get no more than a concussion.
His heart kicked into high gear. Maybe that was because he needed the movement of the blood to keep warm. Or maybe it was because, wherever he turned, all four walls gave him the same message. There was no back door here, no key to pilfer or mistake to exploit.
In short, this was nothing like the movies.
Most of the bodies on the shelves were laid out like cadavers in a morgue, but a few had frozen in more unusual postures: huddled in the corner, hugging their knees, their heads tucked as low as they could pull them.
Victor wondered how many people had died in that freezer. He wondered what twist of fate had led him into this spiderweb when he had been so close to his brother.
Max.
His hands clenched at his sides. She had direc
ted him to take the shortcut. She had told him to look for Ellen, the very bitch who sent him in here. Maybe the two groups had an arrangement.
Maybe Max will see you again later—or part of you, anyway.
Victor screamed and struck his fist against the glass. The pain was remarkable, especially when he realized he’d done no damage to the window. There was not so much as a scratch. He pulled back, nursing his fist.
The old Victor wasn’t so afraid, he thought. Was it true? Had he once been a different person, a stronger person?
Brothers (The Last Colony Book 1) Page 19