From out of the Outlands
Part 12
Police file
Pinkie is quite a guy. He doesn’t take bullshit from anybody.
That’s why we liked him so much. Just one of those guys who you loved the minute he walked into the room, grinning at you, calling for free drinks for everybody, especially himself. When he saddled up to the bar, people moved out of his way, some slinking off, but most of them trying to get his attention. I never got enough of him, and made sure I was around when he showed up. I liked to hear him talk about the stuff he did on the job or when he went to school up the street, talk about people he’d pummeled, talk about deals he’d made. But most of all, we liked to hear his talk about women, about the playboy bunnies who he’d brought up to his flat, or the whores who fell in love with him and refused to let him pay.
Even Karen, the barmaid, listened and laughed, her eyes shinning as if she wanted to test out how true his stories were. She was quite a catch, and though most of us had made a move or two on her, she managed to avoid us, and still keep us coming. She said she wanted a man with money, something none of us could give her, working as cab drivers and bus drivers and men loading trucks for the Sears warehouse up the street.
But with Pinkie, everything was different. She seemed to hang on every thing he said, not even noticing his torn jacket or greasy jeans. She liked every story, even the ones where he said he killed someone. She went along with it all, smiling that smile of hers, leaning across the bar at Pinkie so he could catch sight of both her breasts. Maybe she didn’t believe his talk either, especially not the part about Pinkie taking her out some night for a real good time. But she didn’t sound the way the others sounded when they humored Pinkie. She’d just smile some more and say: “Is that so? You really did that? Did you really beat him up that bad?”
“It’s the godawful truth,” Pinkie said, holding up his hand like a boyscout to make his heart felt pledge. “I swear to it all, particularly the part about the date.”
“You shouldn’t swear, Pinkie,” she said with a laugh, then reached across the bar and touched his arm.
This whole side of the bar grinned when she did that, and when she went to give some other bum a drink, I eased up to Pinkie and told him he ought to get into that girl’s pants.
“You know she likes you, Pinkie, why don’t you go for it?”I asked.
“Of course, she likes me,” he said and grinned and cracked his knuckles.
I’d seen him beat a man with a cue stick for calling him a nigger, a common mistake new people made when seeing Pinkie for the first time. Pinkie wore more gold than a pimp, and had the same airs. Under bar lights, he olive skin looked darker than it was. But Pinkie hated niggers, and if any dared to stay in the bar when he came in, he soon dispatched them.
The barfights made a big part of Pinkies act. If no niggers were around to expel, he found someone else with some habit he didn’t like, finding some clown seated at one of the tables, or on one of the stools where Pinkie just happened to want to sit. Then, hooking his thumb, hed try to eject them, and even if they scrambled out of the seat to make room for him, hed stick a foot out, and then laugh when the fellow fell over it, making all of us laugh. Sometimes the fellow would glare and roll up his sleeves to fight. If he didnt, Pinkie would poke him in the nose anyway, saying he didnt like the look the man had given him. Then, they rolled on the floor and hit each other up and down beside their heads until Pinkie got tired of the game and yanked out a knife or razor. After that someone called the EMT and the porter mopped up the blood, and Pinkie yelled for more free drinks.
So when I said he should take the barmaid out, he looked at me for a long time like he wanted to fight me, then grinned, hitched up his britches, and said, “Why not!”
And hell, we all saw them walk off together after the owner closed up the place, his arm around her, her arm around him, laughing and squeezing like they’d guaranteed themselves a good time. Which made me wonder why when I came back in the following night, she didnt look anywhere near as happy, and had a pink circle around one eye and a thick cut on her lower lip, and wouldnt look at any of us, especially Pinkie when he ambled in.
“What happened?” I asked, when he didn’t call for free drinks. In fact, Pinkie didn’t look like Pinkie at all, just pissed.
“Why don’t you ask her?” he told me, then proceeded to look around the bar until he saw someone, a small guy in the corner, who looked funny at him, some guy we’d all seen once or twice, a nervous little man with a twitch, who Pinkie walked over to, hooked his thumb at, and when the man still didnt move, punched the man in the face. Then punched him again and again, and finally, when the little man didnt even seem to be breathing any more, Pinkie rubbed his fist, grinned at me and shouted: “Free drinks for everybody.”
Even the barmaid grinned a little after that.
Yeah, Pinkie is quite a guy.
****************
Vincent could not travel fast, but even the slow pace wore on him. His wound throbbed with each step, though the bleeding had ceased and the red rag around the hole had grown darker with coagulation. He also began to hear the sounds of other voices, and caught scurrying in the various tunnels to either side of the main route, scurrying that wasn’t merely the rats running from the sound of the explosion, but a more human variety of ran rushing towards it, finding some perverse attraction to the echoes.
He had to stop several times as something appeared ahead of him in the dark -- the early scramblings forcing him to flick off his light again though he would have enjoyed the benefit of brightness in finding a less bumpy path.
These scurrying shapes were not Skids; they did not glow in the dark, nor did they come in large packs, coming instead in ones and twos, and from what Vincent could make out, armed in much less sophisticated weapons, older revolvers, sometimes a sawed off rifle. A few, he saw had shot guns.
Some were generally whole beings, like the Skids, marked up with self-inflicted scars in order to look more ferocious. While others bore the family scabs of a chemical affliction, the mutants of the LA wars that had worked their way north and bred, finding that some of the weapons used to fight them in LA had lasting effects in their children. Some of these poor creatures had three arms or four legs, some had more than one head -- though for the most part the additional appendages added nothing to their abilities, more like a cancer which they could not have surgically removed.
All, normal or mutant, bore the same desperate look of the Outlands, maybe more desperate for having been driven into the deeps where they had to scrounge longer and fight harder for even a minimal subsidence. Vincent could see how the flesh on many tightened around the bones, arms half as thick as the man or woman's size should have accounted for.
“So this is what we’ve come to,” he thought, remembering something his father had once told him, in one of the rare lucid moments: “A world is only as good as its poorest people.”
This world was poor indeed, Vincent thought, and dangerous.
Perhaps the pain dulled his senses, a pain that worked up from his leg to his head, filling his ears with the sound of his own, beating heart. One moment, he hobbled forward, the next minute something had shoved him from behind, something with teeth goring at the back of his head and claws tearing at his spine.
Vincent fell forward, but turned as he did, twisting out from under the grasp of his attacker, rolling around and then, rising painfully to his shaking feet, leaving his weakened attacker still on all fours in the tunnel, someone -- who though human in genetic makeup --- looked like a large rat, with canine style teeth poking up from thick gray lips, not a white man or a black man any more, but something so disgustingly beyond both that Vincent staggered back as the creature rose.
The small eyes stared at Vincent with hate, and then, the creature took one step, then another, advancing on Vincent with the slow determination of a prehistoric creature, all instinct, no brain. If the creature recognized the pistol Vincent held, it showed no sign, though did jerk back when Vincent pulled the trigger, struck first by the roar, and then by the impact of the bullet ripping through its chest.
The echo of this shot followed the other and seemed to Vincent like one more call to arms for the creatures of the darkness. He pressed the transmit button on his sleeve, and called Roth, but the tunnel had too many twists for the transmission to reach far, and if Roth heard him, he heard no reply -- although he caught whispers of voices lost in the static.
Vincent hobbled on.
The passage back now looked like a highway after so many had come this way, Skids and others crawling out to follow behind, sniffing out potential victims. And he heard much movement ahead of him, many less skilled than himself, stumbling and bumbling in the dark, as if they had come to this place from a region where light was more prominent. Yet for every clumsy soul Vincent heard, he knew a dozen silent wraiths floated in the darkness, watching and waiting for their opportunity to strike -- seeking to attack those who made themselves vulnerable with some accident.
Vincent knew that few solitary stalkers attacked openly or against anyone who might possess the strength to resist. Even on the street, the boldest actions were done by those like the Skids, in gangs of attackers, each providing the other with courage individuals lacked. In the Outlands, strength and skill most often acted as their own defense, providing an appearance of invulnerability that allowed prowlers to look elsewhere for victims.
Those who became victims allowed themselves to look like victims first, placing themselves in unfamiliar locations where they looked lost, or acting confused about where they were going. Many displayed the fear that was an honest reaction to the street, allowing it to consume them, allowing it to draw real muggers the way blood in ocean water drew sharks.
Vincent maintained his low profile, hobbling from shadow to shadow to avoid observation, pausing often to listen to the tunnel ahead. He was vulnerable, and his main defense now was to keep out of sight as much as possible. He had grown weak from the loss of blood and could not maintain an extended fight without rest and proper first aid to his wound.
And yet, he needed to reach Roth and the others for more than first aid. The darkness oppressed him. He felt again as he had as a kid when wandering the Outlands, as if civilization had abandoned him, all those previous instincts snapping into place in his head, along with the associated anti-social attitude.
“No one’s going to mess with me?” he heard himself thinking, just as he had thought as a kid. “I’ll kill them all.”
Vincent needed the company of Roth and Hilda and -- yes -- Cromwell, too, in order to restore perspective.
“I’m not the punk kid I was,” he told himself as he hobbled on, the pain shooting up from his leg to his groin. “I’m a law enforcement officer, even down here.”
Periodically, he made a transmission, seeking to hear Roth’s voice in return, and when Roth replied -- after what seemed like hours later -- Vincent actually found himself shaking with relief, pausing in a deeper darkness near a curve in the tunnel. He had returned to the section of tunnel where the lights glowed, a few solitary bulbs surviving the long years when most had not, their illumination actually making the tunnel seem darker and more ominous.
“Is that you, Roth?” Vincent asked; he could barely hear the reply that wavered in and out of the static.
“Yes, chief.”
“You seem farther away than when I left you.”
Again the reply came in waves, but from it, Vincent gathered that the small troop had traveled quite some distance to find the boy’s hideaway. He informed Roth of his condition and told her to stay put when she volunteered to come get him.
“I'll find you,” he said. “But have the first aid kit ready.”
The signal grew stronger as Vincent grew weaker, Roth’s voice becoming a beacon in a thickening haze as the pain increased and he stumbled more and more often, and paused for longer and longer periods to avoid some passing band of freaks.
The tunnel seemed to have become a highway of misbehavior, of foul-mouthed day-glow people, all of them looking for him or signs of his party, each seeking to find the pot of gold the explosions and the gunshots promised. And each seemed enraged by the fact that they had come so far from other parts of the underground only to discover nothing here but darkness and waste.
Vincent also avoided the skirmishes, this small gang meeting some other small gang in the darkness, ending their meeting with bloodshed. Most seemed to lack guns or carried such fire arms that were a half century out of date. The multiple fire weapons of the Outlands above seemed an extreme luxury here, and those that wielded them had little more advantage in the closed space as those with single shot semi-automatic weapons.
In the darkness one shot killed as easily as a hundred.
More than once, Vincent had to duck to avoid a stray shot as two groups of these villains battled it out for rights of passage, and more than once, he was forced to step over the dead and dying when one group took flight chased by the other.
He had come passed the point where he had left the troop, and now found he could not read the signs of the passage of his group under the trampling hoof-marks of the other gangs.
“You’re going to have to get the boy to give you instructions,” Vincent told Roth.
“Instructions? How?”
“He’ll know landmarks,” Vincent said.
And the boy did, and in fact had left marks of his own to mark the trail home, early marks from before he had learned these tunnels well, marks so subtle, they seemed accidental, a slash in the wood here, or a scrape of stone there, two slashes meaning a turn right, three, a turn left, one meaning straight ahead. Inch by inch, foot step after stumbling footstep, Vincent advanced, until a series of such turns took him off the main trail again, down one apparently dead end passage, then down another, until darkness made it impossible for him to read the signs and he was forced to flick on and off the light.
Vincent only heard the distant reports of gang fights now, the gun fire, the screams, the moaning of the dying. But he saw no one along this way, and wondered how the boy had managed to disguise his trail so well as to keep out intruders even at times like these. Vincent also wondered if his own care was adequate in preventing someone from following him. Despite his stumbling step, he tried not to leave marks in the softer soil, keeping closer to the walls where the soil was drier and harder and less likely to show his passing. When he did leave a mark, he stopped, and attempted to erased it by rubbing his jacket arm across the space. He knew, to a trained tracker, this showed more surely than his footprint would, announcing his intent for secrecy. But Vincent believed few true trackers would wander so deep as this, and among such foul company as these gangs. People with such skills used them in those regions where they could best get a reward for their efforts, near where the neighborhoods actually had openings onto the underworld, where teenagers and other sometimes wandered out, where sometimes, greedy wall guards came out to stash their pilferage.
Vincent also stopped often, listened carefully, to make sure he did not hear the step of someone creeping behind him, or the sound of their breathing in the tunnels behind, someone -- perhaps like the boy -- but with much more vicious intent. But for all his care, he heard nothing, saw nothing, and believed himself free of pursuit.
At which point, the glowing dagger-face of a Skid stepped out in front of him.
“Well, well, what do we have here?” the formidable figure said.
Vincent tried to pull the trigger of his pistol, but a hand from behind him had grabbed his arms, knocking his weapon out of his hand. It clattered on a stone near his feet.
“That was not nice,” the Skid in front of him said, then hit Vincent across the side of his head, and the blackness of the tunnel expanded before his eyes, and everything in it vanished.
***********
Vincent smelled smoke, then coughed. Smoke filled his lungs and assaulted his face so that his eyes teared even before he open them.
He expected the blackness to continue and was shocked when he found himself in a long chamber with a fire at the other end, a piece of tunnel that was more polished than those he had wandered through for the last few hours.
“My God, we’re in a train terminal,” he thought, and then shook his head. “No, a subway, but one that hasn't been used in a while.”
The lettering was all wrong, marking some street whose name he didn’t know, in a style that hadn't been used in New York since the subways had been built. Large arched doors opened onto the track area. All had shinny tiles, most of which now suffered under the impact of day-glow paint. The language made no sense to him, more scrawling than letters, and yet Vincent knew from his life in the Outlands that graffiti had a purpose, and that here he was in the center of some club’s hive, and the lettering had more significance than outside, like a temple or church. Though here in the light of the bond fire, each leaped and danced, making the walls seem to move.
Someone turned on music, and Vincent realized it was the sound of this or perhaps the lull in the roaring volume that had stirred him from his forced sleep. The side of his head felt as if it had a hole in it, and indeed, when he lifted his hand to investigate, his fingers found blood -- much of it already caked.
The smoke grew thicker as some figures near it turned a spigot, a hunk of meat hanging over the flames, sizzling.
“Where the hell did they get that?” Vincent wondered, squinting to make out the shape against the light. “It’s too big to be a cat -- or a dog...”
The realization hit him, stirring up a queasy feeling in his stomach. He closed his eyes again, and this time when he opened them, he found a familiar face staring down at him.
“So you're awake,” the Skid said. “It’s about time.”
Vincent tried to sit up, but found three more Skids pointing guns in his face. He fell back slowly.
“What do you want?” Vincent asked, aware for the first time that his backpack and other gear was missing.
“The others,” the first Skid said.
“What others?”
“The others!” one of the Skids with a gun said, jabbing the point into Vincent’s chest. “The women.”
“Women? I don’t know what you're talking about.”
“Liar!” shouted a third Skid who lifted the butt of his rifle to slam down on Vincent’s head, but the first Skid, the apparent leader, grabbed the man's arm before the blow could be struck.
“We know you had women with you,” the leader said. “We could smell them all over the tunnels.”
The horror of it struck Vincent harder than any blow. He glanced around. The gang that surrounded him -- maybe as many as fifty or sixty members -- were all male.
Males trapped with their raging hormones in a world without satisfaction, where even the easy release valve of a prostitute was hundreds of feet and miles of tunnel above on the streets, men stirring in these closed quarters with the smell of two women in their nostrils.
“What the hell have I done?” Vincent thought in horror, the image of his wife’s face floating up into his head from some dark recess. And suddenly, he felt as helpless now to his fate in the outlands as he had then, stuck with a vulnerablity he had lacked before.
That was the worse part of his wife’s rape and murder, the helplessness. He had grown accustomed to his own realitve vulnerablity, and had compensated for it with the cleverness and care, training himself to detect even the remotest sense of threat, learning to avoid those circumstances which he could avoid, and a series of strategies for how to handle the rest.
But his marriage had left him with one glaring weakness, and he -- like the insiders -- had presumed he could defend himself against attack on that score with technology, surrounding himself with alarms and bulletproof glass, only to discover none of that could keep out the rage. The Outlands had smelled out his wife – with her help -- just as the Skids now smelled out Roth and Hilda.
“Well?” the leader said, putting his foot on Vincent’s chest, the glowing man’s right hand holding Vincent’s own pistol. It was aimed at Vincent’s face. “Where are they?”
“I don’t know what you're talking about,” Vincent said.
The pistol’s muzzle blazed, the roar filling the tunnel and Vincent’s head as the bullet spat out and struck the ground an inch from his ear, its heat leaving his cheek scalded and the sound his right ear, deaf.
“Not good enough,” the leader said.
“Kill him, Billy,” one of the others said. “Kill him.”
It was a chant soon picked up by some of the others, a chant echoing louder and louder in the chamber until Vincent envisioned himself strung out over the spiggot instead of the poor soul who was. But his own fate concerned him less than those who he had brought down into this hole with him. He knew Roth wouldn’t stay still once radio contact ceased. She would know something was wrong and would insist on coming out to determine if he was alive or dead, and thus, stir the animal passions of this insane group, who could smell her and follow her scent.
What had kept them from the trail this time was perhaps the boy’s cleverness, he as much a woman to this crowd as Hilda or Roth, and over his time fleeing, had learned techniques for disgusing his scent, or had found a location whose natural odors put off pursuit.
“I'll kill him later,” the leader, Billy, said. “After he begs me to.”
Then, staring down at Vincent, Billy motioned for the police chief to rise. The foot came off Vincent’s chest. Hands yanked him to his feet.
“Now, friend,” Billy said, easing closer to Vincent’s face so that the stink of the Skid leader rolled over Vincent, making him wretch, the scent of grease and earth, the smell of the unwashed, all that had appalled Vincent as a child now rushing back as the fanged man's face inched up to his. “You will lead us to the women or we’ll make you wish I’d pulled the trigger and ended it all here. You get my meaning?”
Vincent nodded.
Roth would not be far away now; and that scared him. She was too straight-forward a cop to survive well under these conditions. She didn’t have the instinct for the street, the wiley ways Vincent and all other street people had.
“Then you’ll lead us to them?” Billy asked.
Vincent gave another nod.
“Good!” Billy said and laughed and motioned for the others to follow, as one of Billy’s underlings gave Vincent a shove towards the tracks.
“Down there,” the underling said. “We’ll get you back to where you were and then you show us.”
Vincent hobbled to the edge. No stair descended to the graveled ground around the rusted track. Some of the other Skids dropped down off the edge, boots splattering the pools of oily liquid that had settled into the grooves of earth, rain water or run off from the streets high above that had worked down slowly through the cracks of civilization to find itself wasted here. The smell of mildew rose.
“Well?” one of the underlings snapped, poking Vincent between the shoulder blades with the muzzle of his rifle. “What are you waiting for?”
“I can’t climb very well,” Vincent said. “My leg hurts and I’m dizzy.”
“Fuck your leg,” the underling snapped. “Get down there or we'll push you down.”
Vincent bent; the pain filled him with such agony, he froze in a half croach, unable to lower himself further or rise again.
“Damn it, asshole! I told you to move.”
This time a hand hit him in the back, rolling Vincent forward so that he fell towards the gap, the gravel, water and rusted steel rushing at his face. Vincent barely had time to roll himself into a ball, bounding against the hard ground.
Then, he kept rolling, under the legs of the other Skids, knocking two of them down, before the gun fire behind him hit two or three more, with answering gun fire blasting back at the men on the platform. Vincent jumped up and ran, his weak leg giving him little traction, but carried him into the deeper darkness, feet striking the ground between the rail road ties.
All he wanted now was to keep from tripping, one foot pounding the ground after the other, as the gang erupted behind him, some shouting for the others to stop their squabbling, others shouting at his escape.
If it was an escape, he thought. They knew these tunnels better than he did, and could travel down them much more quickly -- even if his leg wasn’t bad. Pure adrinline had propelled him to this point, inspired by dark thoughts of what the Skids would do if they forced him to lead them to where Roth and Hilda were staying.
As if he knew.
But they would get him close enough and Roth would make her grand appearance, only to be overwhelmed by sheer numbers.
“What a fool I was leading those women down here,” Vincent thought as he ran, aware that the bickering and gun fire had ceased behind him -- a bad sign. “I should have known what would happen. I should have give up to Security, let them trade me back to the city. Now I'm responsible for those women, the way I was when I let his woman police officer confront Cromwell alone.”
Behind him, he heard the thud of pounding feet, the arrogant Skids caring little about stealth. They owned these tunnels. Vincent had half hoped for a bullet in the back, something that would keep them from using him as their blood hound. Now, he had to arrange it so that he led them away from where he believed Roth and Hilda hid.
“Which is not easy,” he thought. “Since I don’t have a clue myself.”
But he did. He knew they had to be on this level or lower, hidden in the dregs of Manhattan’s underground. All he needed to do to avoid coming in contact with them was climb, find an alterative passage and take it up, and keep on going up until he couldn’t climb any more, until one of them got bored with this little game and shot him.
He studied the dark walls and saw several passages, all going down. Then, he came to a ladder. Metal. Rusted. Something left from when real crews came here and did honest work in this place. The sight of it, even as old as it was, gave him hope. He struggled up the rungs as quickly as silently as he could, climbed up through a hole -- and a ribbed concrete tunnel, coming to some kind of metal door, which after some struggle, he managed to open. And he found himself struck by the sharp scent of human fesis, urine and chemical solvents.
He had stumbled into a sewer. The curved clay walls dripped from numerous outlets, staining the sides in brown and black tears, the mouths of pipes dripping into the space from countless places above. It was not a modern sewer or part of the system now used regularly, but one of those combined sewage and storm water viaducts so popular before the federal Clean Water Act. He could not have accessed a more modern tunnel that drove sludge over long distance by means of pumps. Yet he knew this tunnel was a lot higher than he previously imagined he’d come -- higher because the Skids were not a deep level gang, but only wandered there, searching for the very kind of secrets that poor boy had found: seeking an alternative way through the bottoms of the neighborhoods, seeking women and plunder.
Vincent was high enough in the web of tunnels to actually hope to find a way out, high enough to the sub-sub basements of the taller buildings actually to butt such places as this. But more importantly, storm water drains didn’t flow deep, and thus if he was in one, then he had access to the street. All he needed to do was find a passage up through which he could climb.
Behind him, the echo of pursuit sounded, the voices of the aggravated Skids shouting at each other, giving warning as to where he scent led. They were angry voices, and voices that now indeed would kill Vincent if they caught him -- but not a quick death, Vincent imagined, still hoping the squeeze the truth about the women out of him.
Vincent hobbled on, his shoes slipping on the slick clay, the smell of the place so rank he could hardly breathe -- and, in fact, was likely toxic if he didn't seek a fresher source of air. He did not hurry. Could not. His leg ached. So did most of his body. But he needed to examine the wider pipes that led down from above. The ones that dripped the most foul liquid he avoided entirely. Those that seemed to bring only rust drew more attention, for they most likely led more directly to the street, flowing largely with water. He stopped at one. It smelled of water, but of standing, mildew water. He moved on.
All the time, he heard the voices growing louder behind him. He did not see their glow in the dimness, so they apparently had not found out his little trick yet, wandering instead some parallel passage, sniffing and cursing, and searching in vain.
“It's the smell,” Vincent thought. “The Goddamn sewer has thrown off their noses.”
He laughed and moved on to the next pipe then the next, squinting up at each mouth in an attempt to make out where each led. Finally, he came to one which seemed to smell the least offensive. He couldn’t smell fresh air or water, but it lacked that aged scent he’d gotten from all the others, and he thought it was time for him to start up.
“They aren’t going to be fooled forever,” he thought. “They must know this tunnel is here and some of them aren’t stupid. Sooner or later one of them will think to poke his head up here.”
So he pulled himself up. And fell, unable to get a good grip on the slick surface of the pipe. A jolt of pain rushed up from his leg. The warmth and the sutle scent told him he was bleeding again. He hoisted himself up into the hole again, this time wedging his forearms against either side. He slipped a little, but did not fall, and inched himself up into the gap, working his way like a worm up the slow incline.
The pipe curved upward, and his climb became all elbows and knees, an inch by inch endurance test he felt himself gradually losing.
“I hope to hell it doesn’t rain,” he thought, imagining the torrent of water rushing down from above, grabbing him, shoving him back the whole distance to plop him back in the sewer where he’d started. But only a steady dribble of liquid flowed down past him, rusted but with a smell that seemed sweet to him after the stink below. His greatest worry was his strength. His wounds made him weaker than otherwise, and even if he had started this full strength and fully rested, he would have found this a chore. His fingers ached, too, from seeking to grip the tiny cracks and ribs, but the effort eased his dependency on his limbs.
Inch by inch, he rose, climbing above his fear of pursuit. The pipe was his only enemy, and the distance, each effort the only thought he had in his head as he moved.
“Just one more push,” he kept telling himself, then one more after that and another and another until -- shockingly as it seemed, he came to a point where the pipe flattened and became two pipes, an intersection that would not allow him to continue rising. He could only turn right or left, and that presented him with a quandry -- although for the first time since his struggling into the pipe, he could rest his weight on solid metal, stretching himself out in the right tunnel on his back, breathing hard as his limbs relaxed.
He had never ached so much, and not just from the wounds. In fact, the climb and his use of fingers, knees, knuckles and elbows had made the wounds seem insignificant. He bled more from the hundred tiny infractions than from the puncture. Still, as he rested, his leg had time to ache again as well.
He nodded off, unable to fight sleep. He did not fight it now. He cared little about pursuit.
“If the fucking Skids can make that climb, then they ought to have me,” he thought.
He woke awhile later to distant sounds, but he could not determine if they were the Skids below or the report of some other gang elsewhere in the tunnel system. He was high enough now to have climbed passed many layers of tunnels, most of which were likely occuppied. Then, he slept again.
He dreamed of an open field, a vast green area where he used to wander as a kid before the state closed Central Park. Sheep’s Meadow, they called it. The green of it always struck him as the oddest thing on the planet. Even the trees didn’t look green any more, leaves taking on a grayish hue, almost the color of snow. He dreamed he was small again, charging across that vast expanse, chasing something, not being chased, and not for any evil purpose. He just couldn’t make out what he was chasing or why, only that he needed to catch it, that it was the most important thing in the world to him, and the most illusive. The faster he ran, the faster the grey shape ahead of him ran, darting this way and that, as he darted. Finally, where the land tilted upward the thing -- perhaps a dog -- turned left, stumbled, and he leaped upon it, landing with a huge, echoing thump!
He woke. He could hear voices now, and movement in the tunnel above him.
“Someone’s coming down it,” he thought, and squirmed back to the main passage down, fingers slipping, nearly sending him into a single direct plunge back the way he had come. He gripped the edge just in time, forcing his fingers to hold onto the rusted and corroded clay. The voices grew louder as they descended.
“There's been a lot of activity down below,” one of the voices was saying. “A lot of shooting and explosions. And the boss doesn’t like it.”
“It’s the Skids,” the other voice said. “They’re always fighting.”
“Not like this. They wouldn’t be shooting the shit out of each other like this.”
“They could be.”
“What about the explosions then?” the first voice said, now clear enough and close enough for Vincent to hear the man’s heavy breathing as he eased himself down the tunnel.
“What about them?” the second man asked. “They’ve blown up stuff before.”
“Not like this,” the first man said. “This was no gunpower stuff, but high explosives. Where would the Skids get that kind of stuff.”
“Maybe they found it? There were a lot of terrorist groups that used to use the tunnels years ago – after the World Trade Center attack.”
“That’s why the boss sent us,” the first voice said. “He wants to know what those Skids found and if they found something dangerous, he may just send someone down there to take it away from them. He don’t need no kids playing around.”
The voices echoed loudly now, and Vincent knew they were near. He scrambled into the other duct, and then, as quickly as his stiff and aching limbs would allow, inched himself deeper into the tunnel. This climb came easier since the incline was less steep -- though it curved slightly as it climbed, providing him with cover within moments.
Lucky for him. Lights appeared nearly the moment he reached the curve, flashing around in this tunnel as the men shifted themselves for the steeper descent.
“And what if we get ourselves shot?” the second man asked. “What if those Skids decide they want to blow us up.”
“We can’t let that happen,” the first man said. “The boss just wants information, not heroics. But you slide down first. I’m sick of leading this little expedition.”
“Me? Why me?”
“Because you’re the heavy weight here, not me. You’re the one whose supposed to blow those fuckers away if they try and stop us.”
“Not if I’m on my ass,” the second man said.
“Just go. We're not going to run into anybody for a while. And if you’re really nervous, just slide down quick. Then, you can cover me when I come out.”
“Fuck you.”
“You want me to tell the boss?”
“All right, all right, I’m going.”
Then, the light dimmed a little and Vincent heard the sound of the man sliding down the tunnel, moving like a pea through a clay tube.
“He’ll be sorry when he gets to the bottom,” Vincent thought. “It’ll take him a month to wash the shit off.”
Then, more slowly, the second light vanished, too, as that man descended the main tube down -- but with greater care. Vincent waited, giving both men adequate time to lower themselves before he moved back to the other tunnel from which they had come. If they had gotten in, he could get out, and for the first time for a long time, Vincent had hope.
When he reached the main tunnel again, Vincent peered over the edge with care. He saw the rumor of light, but not the direct beams, just dancing shadows moving further and further away. Carefully, he eased across this gap into the other tunnel, and began to climb the less steep tunnel. He could almost smell fresh air.
The climb proved longer and more wearisome than Vincent had hoped. The angle flattened slightly, but his energy soon exhausted itself, and his wounds began to ache. He checked the wound on his leg frequently. While it didn’t bleed, the color seemed strange and he hoped that his wandering through the sewage hadn’t inspired an infection.
“My luck I'll get passed all this and fall on my face dead from some jerk’s shit,” he thought, pushing himself to keep moving. He was thinking of Roth, and Hilda, and the Skids. How well protected were they from an intensive search?
Vincent put these thoughts out of his mind. He would go back. He would find them. But not without aid. To help them, he had to help himself first, and now -- with hope alive in him again -- he pushed himself, despite his wounds and worries, dragging himself up that tunnel inch by precious inch, making himself push on even though his body now threatened to quit on him.
“Is that air I smell?” he thought, and paused and sniffed, drawing the air deeply into his lungs, tasting the all too familiar tang of polution. “My God! I've made it.”
Yet he still could not see light ahead of him.
“Perhaps it's night,” he thought amazed at how little night and day had affected him, and how little he had thought of passing time. How long had he been wandering these tunnels? Without the sun, without his watch or computer, he had not concept, but he felt weary enough to account for a year. He breathed again more deeply, then pressed himself to move even faster, and finally, the tunnel turned, back to vertical. He would have dispaired, save for the fact that those other two men had come this way, and had left a ladder by which to return. He climbed it, slowly, dragging his wounded leg up behind him. At the top, he came to a round opening, the metal plate -- normally in place -- set aside. Above this, he found himself inside a tent, one of those blue plastic street tents the utilities used when repairing some electrical or water propblem, fully armed with defensive systems to protect those working inside or below.
Vincent found a man seated at a small console, monitoring activity on the street outside. Perhaps the man heard Vincent’s heavier than normal step, or heard Vincent’s gasp when he lunged across the tent towards the console and the man. But the guard’s move to pull his pistol failed as Vincent cuffed him.
Vincent grabbed up the pistol instead, flicked off its safety, and pointed at the fallen guard’s face.
“Now, friend,” he said. “Would you mind much telling me which one of these instruments activates the video phone?”