Striding forward, the sewer dilates into a high chamber that allows us to stand to our full height on top of a stone damn of sorts. It’s here that multiple storm-water discharge and sewage pipes converge, dumping their contents into a lagoon that lies beneath a cement ramp.
The sound of rushing water obscures everything else as we take a breather and examine the water pooling in the lagoon.
“I’m sorry about your friend, Gus,” she says.
“He was the best of us,” I reply. “He was the only person back in VC1 who never wanted anything from anyone else. He was—”
“Selfless.”
I nod.
“That’s a damn rare thing,” she says. “Aren’t too many people left who think their prime purpose in life is helping others.”
“You’re like that, Naia. You’re like Gus in a way. You saved me. You’re a good person.”
She stares at me, her mouth crooked open.
“Don’t say that.”
“Why not?”
“Because good people don’t last long.”
She moves away from me and I reach for her, but the combination of algae, scum, and tiny black snails under our feet is incredibly slippery and we begin to slide.
Naia’s right foot goes out from under her first and she slips, pulling me down with her into the lagoon.
The water is icy and much deeper than it first appeared.
Naia’s hand slips away from me and she’s caught by the current and vanishes into a swirling vortex of black water.
I study the darkness and shout for her and something stirs.
The water swells, waves fanning out, a hand breaching the water’s surface.
Instinctively I grab the hand, only to see that it’s flesh-ragged bone. The thing, the Dub that’s attached to it is like a person who’s been unmade. The monster emerges from the water like a living skeleton held together by rotting sinew and scraps of slippery connective tissue and flesh that’s been pinholed by maggots.
I’m so shocked I don’t move even when the waterlogged demon tackles me back into the lagoon.
Water funnels into my mouth.
Salty.
Rank.
Dotted with discolored curds of God knows what.
The Dub’s hands latch around my throat as it forces me back and down. Fear blows through me because it looks like the ghoul’s trying to drown me and then it bites at the water—at me—as if I’m a bobbing apple.
My back hits the rocky bottom of the lagoon and I piston my legs up, breaking the thing’s grip, buying myself a few precious seconds.
Surfacing, I upchuck the water and suck in a mouthful of air. Naia’s visible off to my right, waving frantically.
I look down to see what appear to be tiny snakes rising from the water.
Closer inspection reveals they’re not snakes at all, but fingers.
Dozens and dozens of fingers.
Followed by the sunken, chalk-white faces of countless Dubs.
They’d been down there in the water the entire time.
I guess I assumed the damned things couldn’t operate underwater, that they’d drown like a normal person, but apparently, like so many other things, I was wrong.
Thankfully time and the water have eroded their hands and faces, their cored-out eyes deep-set and black, teeth gone from their mouths, the flesh and nails vanished from their hands. The contrast between the eggshell paleness of their paper-thin skin and the black holes in their mouths is jarring.
They spider-scuttle and moan and grab at me, their rubbery digits moving over every inch of my body, squeezing, touching, groping, mouthing with blackened, bile-greased gums, but unable to break the skin.
I press through the gauntlet of squashy dead, throwing elbows, and reach Naia who’s standing, hip-deep in a section of the lagoon where debris has collected by a wall grate. We paddle and wade through the rest of the water to a set of crumbling stone steps that lead to another passageway.
Peering back we see one or two Dubs splashing through the water and then the pack that was chasing us up on the street appear, a flock of them ghosting out of the semi-darkness, sliding down the ramp, swimming across the lagoon.
We blitz down the passageway, Naia running as quickly as she can on her bad ankle, heading toward the light.
There’s another grate, much larger this time, at the end of the passageway, partially open.
We burst from the grate only to find that we’ve circled back around.
We are directly across the street from the building that houses Gus’s lair. From where I stand I can even see the two-person window-washer contraption that Gus and I used to venture out before.
Meanwhile, it sounds like the city is being torn apart a second time the shrilling of the Dubs is so loud. They seem to somehow be all around and even above and below us, the patter of naked feet on pavement growing louder.
“Leave me, Wyatt,” Naia says, her normally calm voice breaking. “Just let go and leave me back in one of these buildings and I’ll find a place to hide.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because the very last time I saw my mother I let go and I made a promise to myself that I would never do that again.”
She stares at me and then I point at the window-washer contraption.
“Besides, it takes two people to work that thing.”
She sighs and nods and I drag her across the street where she sags on the sidewalk. I jump up to snag the seat which is where Gus and I left it, suspended several feet off of the ground.
“Um, Wyatt,” Naia says, pointing.
I look back and every inch of solid ground is filled with Dubs.
It looks like some kind of crazed parade, the Dubs thronging the street, an avalanche of decaying flesh. Their numbers swell with every step as more and more of the brain-slurpers haul themselves up out of sewers and subway drops.
They gesture and howl their displeasure in our direction.
“There’s so many,” Naia says. “Looks like the entire city.”
“And we went and rang the dinner bell.”
I bring the seat down to the ground and we climb inside (shivering in our still soggy clothes), and then I do as Gus did before. I engage the contraption’s manual device and tell Naia to hold the excess nylon rope as the counterweight rises down and we head up.
As we rise up alongside the building we watch the Dubs arrive and huddle on the ground. As if caucusing, they form a circle and one or two of them grunt and point at us. The others seem to listen and then another moans and points at the side door that leads into the building we’re about to enter.
They’re coming for us, they know we’re going to hide inside and they’re going to cut us off.
“Help me, Naia,” I say. “We’ve got to go faster.”
She grabs the rope attached to the counterweight and helps me by pulling in a downward motion.
As we rise I look out over the city and see the remnants of Odin’s men, still fighting a running battle with another battalion of the dead two or the three blocks away.
The sound of gunfire and explosions is like a call to arms for the Dubs, the beasts rampaging from all quadrants of the city, marching toward VC1.
We reach the hole in the side of the building and I help Naia inside. Then we enter the hallway only to see that the Dubs have already breached the lower-level door and are churning up the stairwell. They’re only a few feet away from the boobytraps Gus rigged.
“RUN!” I scream, pointing toward the metal exit door at the other end of the hall.
Naia gimp-runs forward and I look back to see a Dub hit the first boobytrap as a blast of hot air flips me backward and my world turns upside down.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The floor tilts under me and I land on my ass as a portion of the far wall vanishes in a teeth-shattering explosion.
My elbow shields my face the explosive fragments as I roll over and check to see that I’m n
ot missing any parts. Naia crawls over next to me and we see that the stairwell has been cratered, but not so significantly that the Dubs still can’t climb up which they do, like spiders, clambering over the shredded bodies of their comrades.
I shove open the metal door to Gus’s hidden room and secure it with the half-section of metal I-beam that he used as a crossbar.
“What is this place?” Naia asks.
“This was Gus’s safe-room.”
“His fortress of solitude, huh?”
I don’t get the reference and drop to my knees, scanning the interior of the space which apparently was trashed by Odin’s boys. The flatscreen and phonograph and all the stacks of periodical and books have been smashed or ripped apart. On the floor I see pages torn from books by Ted Lewis and Fitzgerald and Amis and all the other writers that Gus loved; posters of the movies by Peckinpah and Kubrick; stills from famous photographers and images painted by masters hundreds of years ago when the world was still right defaced; and Gus’s prized pile of zombie books soiled by spit and blood and urine, the walls and floors covered in filthy graffiti, images of sex organs, and anti-gay obscenities.
They found and destroyed everything Gus held dear, but my gut tells me they likely missed the most important thing.
The Dubs pound on the door as I crawl over and pick up the section of floor that conceals the cavity where Gus kept his secret goodies. Everything is still there: the gold coins, the weed, the old Bible…
The black pistol.
The only thing of value is the gun and so I hold it up and like I’ve seen others do before. I pull back the slide and a round jumps out. Naia grabs the bullet and I insert it back into the gun and click off the safety.
The metal door thumps and bends, the Dubs on the other side trying to smash their way in.
“What’s the plan?” Naia asks.
“There’s only one way out,” I reply pointing to the window at the other side of the room.
We move to it and Naia looks down and then across to VC1.
“Don’t even tell me we’re going across,” she says.
“We have to,” I say, bobbing my head toward VC1. “We have to go back in.”
“Not with this ankle, Wyatt.”
I search through the piles of debris and find the long ladder lying hidden under the bed sheet that Gus used to use to camouflage the open window.
With no time to spare, I slide the ladder out until it reaches into VC1.
The metal door creaks and little clouds of dust spring from around its hinges as the drywall buckles.
We scramble across the ladder as the metal door caves in and the marauding Dubs rampage forward.
Crossing the ladder, we dive into the space hidden between the walls in VC1. I look back and the Dubs are already on the ladder. I grab the ladder’s end to either shake the Dubs free or drop it to the ground, but the weight of the Dubs makes it impossible to move. There’s no more time to do anything about it and so we turn and crouch-crawl through the tight corridor that leads into the building.
I spot the hidden doorway into Gus’s workshop and kick the fiberboard as we scrabble inside.
Ramming a screwdriver in the latch to secure the door on the other side, I spin to see that most of Gus’s dogs are still in their cages, including Zeus.
Naia limps over to the front door and opens it as a sound builds from the direction we’ve just come.
The Dubs are following our scent.
Naia holds open the front door and I pop the latches on the cages and release the dogs.
Zeus is the only one who doesn’t bolt.
He kneels next to me and perks up and growls in the direction of the Dubs who burst from behind the faux wall as we turn and run.
With Zeus barking alongside us, we slam the front door and negotiate our way out into a corridor on twelve.
The Dubs are close behind, making a horrible racket as they slap the walls and their own flesh and shriek like animals at a slaughterhouse.
“Which way?!” says Naia.
I lead Naia through a side door and over a walkway built between different wings of the twelfth floor.
The door splinters somewhere behind us, the Dubs bawling, sirens going off.
I can hear voices above us, footfalls, and then we greet a half-dozen workers who are startled to see me.
I recognize several of them as having taken part in the tormenting and torturing of Gus.
They look at me like I’m a ghost, which, I suppose, I am.
Even though there’s a part of me that thinks they’re about to get what they deserve, I urge them to run. I plead with them, but they react by staring or snickering or glaring and mumbling harsh words. Naia tugs on my arm and we work our way slowly past them with Zeus in tow. Twelve steps later I turn back a final time. The look on those we leave behind is something I’ll take with me for as long as I live.
The blood has somehow gone out of their faces.
They sport a look of absolute astonishment.
It’s a look you often saw in the days during the Unraveling.
The “I can’t believe I’m about to die,” look.
They hear the noises made by the Dubs and turn and the ghouls quickly blanket them, grabbing people and ripping and biting and tearing. The floors and walls are quickly splashed crimson as the Dubs divide, some heading down a stairwell, others following us.
Zeus gallops ahead of us and over the walkway and ascends a set of steps.
I elbow a door open and we enter a portion of the physical plant, running as fast as we can by blast-furnaces and through tangles of machines and giant wheels and pneumatic hammers
We thread through suffocating spaces where daylight never shows itself and past alarmed workers, men and women who are bending over whirling machines and humming devices that help route power through the building.
“RUN!” I shout at them. “GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!”
They look up and those who coverings over their ears remove them and listen because they can hear it. Even over the roar of the machines they can hear the sound they hoped and prayed they would never hear.
It’s like a vast stirring, a rolling and rumbling all at once and from every direction.
The Dubs are here in full.
The dead have invaded the corridors and caverns of the Vertical City.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I hold Gus’s pistol in my right hand, watching the tide of Dubs roll in.
The workers that did not flee are quickly overwhelmed, some cut down while standing, others gang-tackled, disappearing under a blur of bluish-white flesh and talon-like hands.
Zeus is alongside me, barking, Naia pumping my hand.
“There’s nothing else we can do,” she says.
We cross to the other side of the room and I kick open another door and we head up into one of the building’s countless stairwells.
A man appears, a boy really, probably a few years younger than me.
He’s holding an axe in his trembling hands.
My pistol comes up and I draw an imaginary circle over his chest.
“Wha- what’s happening?” he says.
“Hell’s coming,” I say. “And unless you want to enter the void, I suggest you beat your heels and tell the others to get out of here.”
He drops the axe and gallops up the stairs as we follow, so much adrenaline surging in our bodies that neither of us feel any pain.
“Where are we going?!” Naia asks, taking the steps two at a time.
“We’re going to help an old friend,” I say.
With each step I take, the blood pounds in my brain like an engine’s throbbing.
The wail of the sirens combined with screams and shouts is deafening, but we hustle up the stairs and reach another gunmetal gray door.
On the other side is the sixteenth floor.
There’s going to be more people on sixteen, more guards, better armed, better trained.
We’ve got one gun and maybe
eight or nine rounds and a million Dubs in hot pursuit.
I fire into the door.
“What the hell did you do that for?!” Naia asks.
“I wanted to see if it worked.”
She scowls and I shoulder open the door and there’s pure panic on the other side.
People are running for cover, carrying their belongings, calling out for guidance.
We shield our faces as best we can with our arms, drifting through the bedlam.
One or two people who were involved in Gus’s shunning appear to spot us, but they’re too preoccupied with saving their own asses to do anything.
At the far end of the hallway is a single, bearded guard who looks as petrified as the kid with the axe in the stairs.
He’s fronting the door I want access to.
We surge forward with a crowd of perhaps twenty people, everyone so tightly packed in the space it’s almost impossible to move.
This works to our advantage because bearded guard is unable to stop the forward progress of the crowd.
By the time bearded guard’s looked up, most of the others have retreated through other doors.
I bring the gun around and plant the barrel against his nose.
“Who’s inside?”
“I don’t know.”
I thumb the gun’s hammer back.
“The pri-pris-prisoner. Del Frisco. He’s in there,” bearded guard stammers.
“Anyone else?”
He shakes his head.
“If you’re lying I’ll take your head off.”
“I ain’t lying,” he mutters.
Bearded guard unlocks the door and Naia holds Zeus whose mouth is open, the dog growling.
I enter the room and—
WHUMP!
A metal bar grazes my head.
The bearded guard, the sonofabitch, was lying.
Without thinking my gun comes up and I fire into the middle of the second guard (the one hiding behind the door), the unlucky who’s holding the bar.
The blast lifts the man off his feet, whipsawing him back over a chair.
The second guard slumps in a pool of red, tries to push himself up, then collapses on his back. I stand there in shock, horrified that I’ve killed one of the living. The gun feels as if it weighs a hundred pounds and I want to toss it away when footsteps echo.
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