by Chuck Wendig
*
Riverside Park is pretty. It sits right along the east side of the city. In the spring and summer: flowering trees, concerts, roller skaters. In the fall and winter: sledding, Christmas lights, more concerts. Folks jogging. Readers reading. Kids playing.
It’s what lurks below it that’s scary.
Underneath Riverside runs the Freedom Tunnel.
It was used for freight train transportation from the 1930s up until the mid-80s. They shut it down then, walled it off after the West Side Line stopped running, though Mookie heard other rumors: the West Side Line didn’t just stop running but something broke through the Tunnel and the train was dragged down into the dark. Might be just a story like some stories are.
Either way, by the mid-90s, the place was a teeming shantytown. A hundred homeless living there in the dark, having broken into the closed-off tunnel by traveling the byways and boltholes of the Great Below. They set up tents and tin shacks. They had dogs. They fought and fucked. Mookie knew some of them well—some of them became his Mole Men. Men and women who went down into the dark and mined Blue for him. Then Amtrak forgot or dismissed the stories they’d heard and came in and bulldozed it all out, repainted all the graffiti, patched up all the holes.
Trains run a few times a day now. And the tunnel’s open.
But it’s still where people go when the trains aren’t scheduled. They go down there to buy drugs. Or sell ‘em. And some of the boltholes into the Deep Downstairs are still open if you know where to look.
Fyodor picking that place means Fyodor isn’t all dumb. He knows the score. He knows what’s below their feet.
It’s a dangerous place to meet.
But it’s Mookie’s kind of danger.
*
“I should be handling this,” Mookie says. “I should be the one to meet him.”
Lacey shakes her head as Werth clips a radio to her belt. “Fyodor doesn’t know you,” she says. “Or if he does, he’s gonna know something’s up. This has to go smooth.”
Mookie’s chest rumbles with disapproval. “I say fuck that. I say I go down there and hide in the dark and soon as the rat pokes out his head I grab it and threaten to twist it off until he tells us who’s got the goddamn book.”
“Uh-uh,” Skelly says. “You gotta stem that bleed, baby. We go down there start breaking fingers, he might talk, but then he either goes back and tells his buddies what’s up, or we kill him and then they figure it out anyway. And then they get a chance to warn whoever has the book and the whole damn clam closes up. But this way? We get him to give up some info, maybe we learn something.”
“Fine,” he grouches.
“Sun’s gonna rise,” Werth says.
And they emerge from the shadows of Grant’s Tomb.
*
The park bench overlooks the river—well, it overlooks the Hudson Parkway, first, but there sits the river beyond. A gray, sluggardly channel of water. Just lighter than the dark that sits upon it like a black bird. Mookie and Skelly sit on the bench while Werth paces, the radio in his hand so they can listen in on Lacey. Skelly has her skates on. She occasionally rolls them on the asphalt below the bench. She pretends she’s solid as a rock but Mookie knows this is a nervous habit. She’s worried about Lacey.
And it’s not just Lacey. The girl took two others with her—Black Petunia and Carrie Scaryskates. Carrie really is scary: she’s all firm jaw and permanent sneer, eyes squinting in a way that always looks like she doubts you, like she’s a disappointed parent or a distrustful girlfriend. Mookie can’t crack that nut. Petunia, though, she’s damn near the opposite. All smiles. Cheeks round and shining. She tells jokes, laughs, sings. Mookie likes her. She puts him at ease, somehow. Calming the monster inside.
Together the three of them are down in the dark of the Freedom Tunnel.
Mookie doesn’t like it. Got a feeling in his gut like someone’s pinching his intestines shut, like all manner of toxic sewage is starting to back up inside him.
That might be a sign of something else, though.
He grabs the tin of Viridian. Scoops out a little spoonful of the green dust, then unzips his jacket enough to go down under his collar and feed his heart. Skelly watches him, rapt. “The hell are you doing, sugar?”
“Nothing,” Mookie says.
“Feeding the beast,” is Werth’s answer.
“Seriously, what is that?” she asks.
“We’ll talk about it later. Sun’s coming up.”
And it is. A red line at the horizon like spilling blood. Blood that turns to fire, fire that begins to grow and creep and stretch across the sky.
The radio crackles. Lacey. “I see somebody.” Hiss, static, pop. Then, “It’s him.”
Mookie hears a snippet of a song Petunia is singing. Can’t make out the words or the tune, really—just a songbird trill. Carrie mutters something.
A distant voice. A man. Hard to make out. Sounds like a greeting.
Up here, on the river, a garbage scow drifts across the river, its gray churn suddenly lit by fringes of gold from the coming sun.
On the radio, Lacey: “Fyodor. Good to see you.”
“You brought friends this time.” A Russian accent. Hard to hear. Mookie grabs Werth’s wrist, yanks him closer, so they can all listen in.
Carrie: “We’re cool, dude.”
Lacey: “They’re cool. It’s cool. You bring your guys, I bring my girls.”
So Fyodor has backup, too.
Fyodor: “Gang’s back together, eh? The Get-Them-Girls, yes?”
Behind them, a quiet city begins to wake up. Distant horns honking. A fire siren. A swatch of music, booming bass, choom choom choom.
Petunia: “You know it, brother.”
Fyodor: “I am not your brother, bitch.”
Mookie tightens. Skelly puts a steadying hand on his knee.
Then, the Russian says, “What do you have for me?”
Lacey: “Pages. From the book. Got torn out.”
Fyodor: “Torn out. You tear them out? You scam me?”
Shit. Mookie mumbles, “This isn’t working.”
But then, Petunia, with her sweet song: “We ain’t scamming no one, honey. We’re offering you a service is all.”
Lacey: “If you still have the book, we’ll give you the pages if you want them.”
Fyodor: “Nothing is free.”
He’s right. Nothing is. Free sounds as much of a scam as hey, we just “found” these pages, oops, now pay us for them. But Lacey knows, and she says, “I figure a favor for a favor. We do this for you. You tuck it away in your pocket, case we need it. Meanwhile, your buyer will be one happy pappy.”
“Favor for a favor,” Fyodor says. “I like this deal.”
Lacey: “So you still got the book, then. Your buyer’s gonna thank you.”
Fyodor: “One problem, bitch.”
Mookie stands. Hands go to fists.
Fyodor: “The book is complete. No missing pages.”
Mookie growls, “We gotta get down there.” But then he sees it. On the garbage scow passing by. A shine of sunlight trapped in a—
A rifle barrel.
Mookie barks a warning, grabs Skelly just as the rifle shot goes off—an echoing report over the river, rolling like thunder. Werth spins like a top, a jet of black blood from his shoulder, bleating like a kicked billy goat as he drops to his knee.
Then: more gunfire.
On the radio. From down in the tunnels.
Skelly yells. Before Mookie can do anything, she’s up and on her skates, knees bent, body low. He yells after her as the rifle goes off again—
Bark on a bony cherry tree kicks up as Skelly shoots past it.
Mookie looks down to Werth, who waves him on. “I’m dead already, just go!”
And he goes. Legs pumping. Heart going. He can practically feel the furnace that is his body gobbling up the green stuff but he can’t care. All he cares about is Skelly. But she’s already zipping ahead and he feels like
a boulder slowly rolling—she’s on skates and he’s carrying all his bulk, boom, boom, boom. Feet on pavement. Heart piston-punching the inside of his breastbone. Another rifle shot. The asphalt kicks up just behind her skates—he sees the spray, the sparks, and then she’s jumping—
Mid-air. From here to there. Toward the tracks. Toward the exit of the Freedom Tunnel. Knife out. Screeching like a Valkyrie as she leaps.
*
Werth winces. Pulls himself up behind the bench in case anybody decides to take another shot, finish him off. Being dead sucks, in particular because the pain doesn’t stop—the bullet tore through him, but it still burns like a motherfucker.
He presses himself against the back of the bench.
He peels up his sleeve, all the way to the bicep. Still can’t get at it so he tears fabric to expose the wound.
There. A hard furrow through his dead flesh. Dark blood welling up slow like blackstrap molasses. The blood moves. Something beneath it.
A thing like a fat leech pushes up its head, birthed from the goop.
A little tendril. A tentacle. It squirms, licking the air.
Werth growls. Tries to shove it back into its hole, then wads up the ripped shirt and stuffs it into the wound. “Not right now,” he tells it. “Fuck off.”
*
Mookie crests the hill, looks down over the tunnel’s top—
Skelly’s got a man down on the tracks. She’s got him by a fistful of hair at the back of his head. She yanks it back. Slams it forward. Back. Forward. Again. Mashing his head into the tracks. Is that him? Is that Fyodor?
Then he sees the three other men.
Running up. Behind her.
Submachine guns up.
“No!” Mookie yells, and leaps, but he fears he’s too late.
*
Her girls. Her girls. She put them in danger and now they’re dead. Lacey. Petunia. Carrie. This is all a circle, a snake coiling around a gravestone in order to bite its own tail. She’s mad at herself. Mad at Mookie.
But most of all, she’s mad at the man underneath her.
She leapt. An act of faith. And there he was. Beneath her. She landed just behind him, close enough to catch and tackle. He dropped and she clambered up onto his back. And now she’s got him. Slamming his head into the gravel between the tracks.
I could pulp him like an orange, she thinks. For killing her girls. Another voice tells her, But we need him. And yet, she doesn’t care. It’s like knowing you shouldn’t have another bite of cake, another sip of wine, another smear of the Blue stuff. But knowing and caring aren’t the same thing.
It’s then, though, that she hears.
Boots crunching behind her. His men. She knew they were coming but, again—
Didn’t care.
One of them yells in Russian.
Then the ground shakes and a gun goes off—an ear-splitting chatter, a firecracker pop—and all around her stones kick up and dance. But the pattern is erratic, which means these guys are either horrible shots or—
She turns. Looks.
Mookie.
He’s behind one gunman—a reedy, bony Russian with a chin like a pig’s hoof. Mookie’s big hand wraps around the top of his head as the gun aims wild—now chattering bullets upward, shooting clouds. Mookie spins the head. The neck breaks.
The other two men start firing. But Mookie’s already turning. Using the bony Cossack as a meat shield. Red flowers bloom on sallow Russian flesh.
Then Mookie charges. Still holding the corpse.
He batters one. A flabby fuck who flies backward, smacking his head on one of the rails. Skelly can feel the vibration beneath her.
The other, a muscle-head with hair spiked in a clumsy faux-hawk, roars and gives up trying to get in a shot, instead barrels forward like a train.
Mookie drops his meat shield.
Throws a punch. One punch.
The Musclehead’s glass jaw stays still while his legs keep going. Suddenly he’s gone vertical. Dropping flat on his back, blasting air noisily from his lungs. Mookie drops on top of him with one knee, then delivers a final piston punch that maybe knocks the guy out, maybe just kills him, Skelly doesn’t know. She doesn’t give a rat’s ass. All she cares about is that she’s free now to do this.
She yanks back Fyodor’s head.
Brings the knife to his throat.
Mookie cries out, “No! We need him.”
“He killed my girls,” she hisses through clamped teeth.
She’s a thirsty girl now, with only Fyodor’s blood to slake it. The knife against the man’s throat—it wouldn’t take much. Her knife is sharp. She keeps it that way. A twist of muscle, almost involuntary, would open him up. Pop his top like a Pez dispenser.
But Mookie’s voice, soft and clear, says, “Then don’t waste it by wasting him.”
And that stops her.
“Fine,” she says, tears burning hot at the edges of her eyes.
On the river, the garbage scow has floated downriver.
In the distance, sirens. Coming closer.
“We gotta move,” he says.
“Where?”
“Get him up. And follow me.”
*
They move into the tunnel. Mookie’s hobbling. He landed on his ankle wrong. Didn’t break it, but it twisted. Putting pressure on it sends a spiral of pain up his leg like a choking vine. Together they carry Fyodor into the dark—Mookie’s got his feet, Skelly his arms. Fyodor mumbles, moans. His face looks like steak that hasn’t rested: bloody, wet, rent. Fuck him.
All around them rise the graffiti left over from the Moles: iconography of the Deep Downstairs on full display. Sigils from gobbo temples. Cartoony dudes with headphones and eyes glowing blue. Shadowy reaper-shapes that call to mind the Vollrath.
Ahead—
Something moves.
Mookie turns, sees Skelly hears it, too. Together they set Fyodor down—
Just as Lacey calls to them.
“Help me,” she says.
And here she staggers out of shadow. A spreading red across her middle.
*
Mookie knows the old boltholes and this one’s still in place. They creep in through a crack behind a couch turned vertical. They wind through tight spaces, into the Shallows of the Great Below. Soon as they’re far enough in, Mookie pulls a couple red flares from Skelly’s bag, pops them off, tosses them into the dark in either direction. The walls here are just rock, pulled apart in a tectonic shear. Water drips.
“You handle him,” Mookie says to Skelly, referencing Fyodor. “I got Lacey.”
“But, how—”
“Later.”
He props Lacey up against the wall, gentle as his big mitts can manage.
“The other two are dead,” Lacey stammers. “He just... he just... they had guns...” Suddenly her jaw tightens. “The bastards!”
“Shut up,” Mookie says. “Stay still. I’m gonna lift your shirt. That okay?”
She swallows hard and nods.
He starts to lift it. Her middle is smeared with dark blood. The red flare glare shines across the wetness. Mookie pulls the tin of Viridian. He’s not really sure how this works, but fuck it, what choice does he have? He cups his hand, dumps some into the middle of his palm—enough to form a small dune of the green stuff. Then he quick presses it to the bullet wound. Lacey screams. Writhes. The wound foams.
*
“Bitch,” Fyodor groans.
Skelly grabs his wrist, pins it against the rock.
Then she takes her knife and rocks the blade against his thumb, same way you might cut a clove of garlic. The tip pops off, rolls away. Fyodor screams.
“You need to tell me what you know,” she hisses.
“Your gang is done. We are moving against all you little—” And here he says something in Russian, a word she doesn’t know, petisay or petite-say. “We are organizing. Like Zoladski did. But not everybody gets to come to the table—”
She cuts another inch of
f his thumb. Now only a stub left.
Over his howls, she says, “Cut the gas, dickhead. That’s a whole other can of worms. I wanna know about the book. The Maro Mergos. Who has it?”
“Who has it? Fuck you.” Said through bubbling spit.
She presses the knife against the nub of his thumb. “No more hitch-hiking with this hand—”
“Wait! Wait. We have it. We still have the book.”
“Nobody took it?”
“The buyer is coming. Five days. Five days!”
“Where are you keeping the book?”
“Little Odessa. Kolbasnaya Restaurant.”
“Who? Who is the buyer?”
He spits on her. It spatters against her cheek.
It’s too much. She sticks the knife in his middle. He gurgles, gassy. His eyes go empty, like dead televisions. Then Fyodor is done, gone, kaputski.
*
Back at Mookie’s bar, they have Lacey sleeping across a booth. She’s curled up like a baby in a crib. Breathing deep.
Skelly stands over her. “She’s going to be all right, isn’t she?”
Mookie nods. Because she is. The wound isn’t healed, not all the way. But it’s closed up. Still pink, ragged, but the flesh isn’t hot to the touch. Mook knows the signs of infection: the red tendrils underneath the skin. Like fingers, reaching. This isn’t that. The girl will have a scar. A little part of him thinks, Well, you deserve it.
Skelly seems to know what he’s thinking. “You saved her. You didn’t have to.”
Mookie grunts. Gives a half-shrug of his big boulder shoulders.
“You’re one of the good ones, hun.”
He barks a half-laugh. “I ain’t a good guy. Good guy looks down at her, is glad he did what he did. I look down at her and think about what a rube I am.” Using some of his Viridian on her? The girl who left him to die? What’s he got, dumbbells in his head? “I look down at her and I’m still pissed. Still think, if she dies, maybe I don’t shed a tear.”
“It’s all right to be mad at her. I’m still pissed, too. Leaving you like that. That’s part of why I roped her into all this. She had a debt and I aimed to make her pay it.”