Not exactly the kind of statement that made Nate anxious to proceed, but there was no way he was going to act like a wuss in front of the girls and Dante.
Nadia designated herself as the candle bearer, and she and Shrimp led the way into the darkness of the tunnel. The combination of darkness, rubble, and subway rails made the footing treacherous, and it was slow going. The stink of mildew grew stronger, as did the mysterious something else Nate had noticed at the entrance. Cracks in the walls and ceiling made it feel like the tunnel might collapse on them at any moment. Patches of slimy green stuff Nate presumed was algae of some kind clung to the walls and lined the floor, making it slippery. Just ahead of Nate, Dante’s foot found one of those patches, and he went down, twisting his ankle and breaking his flashlight.
“Are you okay?” Nadia cried, eyes wide with concern as she rushed to his side.
“Fine,” Dante grumbled, wiping his slime-slicked palms on his already grimy pants before letting her and Shrimp give him a hand up. “Nothing injured but my pride.”
Shrimp dug a spare flashlight out of his backpack and handed it to Dante. “Be more careful with this one, Captain Studly. We need all the light we can get.”
Dante gave him a dirty look—shockingly, he had not yet warmed to his street name—but clicked on the flashlight without comment.
They continued on even more slowly, everyone aware of the precarious footing.
Nate was almost getting used to the mildew stink, but the other smell, the one that was getting steadily stronger, was another story.
“Gah!” he eventually exclaimed, trying to breathe through his mouth. “What is that?”
Shrimp, who had pulled his T-shirt up over his nose and mouth, turned around and said, “Beats me, and I never wanted to stick around long enough to find out.”
“It’s bat guano,” Agnes said, surprising everyone.
Shrimp cocked his head at her and said, “What’s ‘guano’?” at the same time Nadia asked, “How on earth would you know that?”
“Bat shit,” Agnes clarified, grinning at Shrimp. “One of my brothers is into caving, and I went with him a few times when I was a kid. It’s not a smell you forget.”
Great, Nate thought to himself. Rats on the ground, and flying rats in the air. “Hope we don’t all need rabies shots when this is over,” he muttered.
Shrimp didn’t look much happier about it than Nate felt.
“Let’s keep moving,” Nadia said, starting forward once more. “If the worst thing we have to face today is bats, it’ll be a good day.”
Beside him, Kurt gave a low whistle of appreciation and put a hand on Nate’s shoulder. “You were right about her, I was wrong,” Kurt admitted. “Girl’s got balls.”
Nate elbowed him in the ribs, though he was glad Kurt was finally beginning to see Nadia the way he did. Her courage put him to shame, and he tried to ignore the way his skin crawled. And the way Kurt stuck extra close as they continued forward, like he was afraid Nate would burst into hysterics at any moment. Kurt knew him too well not to see that Nate was struggling to keep putting one foot in front of the other. He would have been fine with the critters alone, but add the dark, the stench, and the irrational fear that the tunnel was going to choose this particular moment to collapse, and his nerves were stretched taut as guitar strings. Was he the only one who was feeling it?
“Remember,” Kurt murmured at his side, “Shrimp and Maiden turned back instead of exploring.”
Nate looked at him sideways. “You a mind reader suddenly?”
Kurt shook his head. “Nope. Just know how you think these days.”
Being self-conscious was definitely a new experience for Nate, but he’d been getting a lot of practice at it lately. Hard not to scrutinize his every action now that he’d woken up to how careless and oblivious he’d been in the old days. The old Nate had never had any reason to doubt himself, and he’d certainly never had reason to be afraid. How Kurt could have loved him back then, he’d never understand.
* * *
They’d been walking down the tunnel about twenty minutes when the rubble started getting thicker. Shrimp’s flashlight beam roamed all around, and when he pointed it upward, Nadia saw a large fissure in the tunnel’s ceiling. The stench of bat guano was overpowering, making her feel nauseous, and when other flashlight beams joined Shrimp’s, the fissure practically erupted with squeaking protests and the flutter of wings.
Shrimp uttered a foul curse and dropped to his knees, covering his head, and everyone but Agnes ducked as a swooping cloud of bats surrounded them. Shrimp wasn’t the only one cursing, and Nadia closed her eyes because if she got a good look at what was flying around them she’d probably run away screaming.
“They’re not attacking us,” Agnes said, no hint of fear in her voice. “They’re running away from us. Everyone just stay calm.”
Judging by the continued cursing, Agnes’s words didn’t have much effect, and Nadia’s adrenal glands didn’t seem convinced either. Her heart was racing, and she tried not to picture little furry bodies with leathery wings tangling themselves in her hair.
Eventually, the outraged swarm dwindled to a few stragglers darting here and there, and Nadia breathed a sigh of relief. The stench was making her eyes water, and she didn’t want to imagine how much guano they’d be carrying on them when they escaped from bat territory.
“Everyone okay?” Shrimp asked, brushing at his clothing and running a hand through his hair as if to reassure himself there were no bats clinging to him. For a tough guy, he was looking pretty green.
“I feel like they’re crawling all over me,” Nate muttered, squirming where he stood.
Agnes laughed. “Don’t be such babies. They’re more scared of you than you are of them.”
“Glad to know that,” Nate snapped. “Now can we get the hell out of here before they come back?”
It wasn’t much later that the tunnel opened up into the ruins of a station, the cavernous space making their every breath and footstep echo. It was hard to get a good look at the station from the well of the tracks, and getting up onto the platform might be something of a challenge, at least for Nadia and Agnes.
“Maybe we should just keep going,” Nadia suggested, but Dante had already grabbed the edge of the platform and was dragging himself up. “We aren’t here to explore—we’re trying to get to a phone signal.”
Dante dusted off his hands, squatting on the platform and staring down at them. “None of you has ever set foot in a subway station in your lives, have you?”
Nadia bit her lip and looked away, hearing the hint of reproach in his voice. Executives didn’t travel by public transportation, so even though the vast majority of Paxco citizens relied on subways and buses to get around, Dante was right and the closest she’d ever been to a subway was seeing one on TV. The same was no doubt true of Nate and Agnes, and Bishop and Shrimp would never have had need of public transportation when living in the Basement.
“Didn’t think so,” Dante said. “If we’re lucky, there’ll be a map around here somewhere, and we can figure out where we are, and how to get past the Basement borders as fast as possible.” He put his flashlight down and reached out with both hands. “Come on, I’ll help you.”
It made sense, so Nadia allowed Dante to help her up onto the platform, and the others followed, spreading out in search of a map. There was a lot of rubble, and everything was covered with a carpet of dust that made the air thick and hard to breathe when their footsteps stirred it up. On one end of the platform, Nadia found a set of tall metal turnstiles, behind which were stairs, which no doubt used to lead to the surface. When she shone her light up those stairs, however, she saw that they’d been solidly sealed off, with sturdy buttresses supporting whatever had been built on top of them.
There was a clatter and a thud behind her, and Dante called out a victorious “Got it!”
Nadia picked her way over to the center of the platform, where Dante had overturned a falle
n piece of tile. Under the tile was a dusty, scratched-up sheet of Plexiglas, beneath which was a faded, water-stained map with writing so small she could barely read it.
“I think we’re here,” Dante said, pointing to a speck on the map. A water stain made it almost illegible, but she could see the station name started with a J, and she’d noticed a bit of broken signage that said JACKSON AVE. on it. Of course, the streets had all been renamed when the Basement was built, so Jackson Avenue no longer existed and wasn’t much use as a reference point.
Dante’s finger traced over one of the lines on the map. “If we keep following this track here, it’ll take us under the river and into Manhattan, and we should be able to get a signal.”
Nadia eyed the line doubtfully. It was still a long way to go, and Nadia would be surprised if the city planners who’d designed the Basement hadn’t blocked the subway tunnels off before they merged with those that were currently in use.
She was about to voice her concern when a muffled boom echoed through the tunnels, shaking the floor and causing a rain of dust to fall from above.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“What the fuck was that?” Bishop asked eloquently as he brushed dust and pebbles out of his mohawk.
There was another boom before anyone had a chance to answer, and Nadia’s heart sank to the bottom of her stomach. They were too late. Dorothy had ordered the tanks to fire.
They all stood in stunned, horrified silence as the explosions continued, the platform shaking under their feet as more debris pattered down. The shaking was bad enough to knock something over with a loud crash, though in the darkness Nadia didn’t know what it was. It was possible the station would collapse on top of them, and she tried not to think about being buried alive down here.
“Those explosions are too big to be just the tanks,” Dante said, then yelped when a chunk of concrete from the ceiling hit him in the head.
“Dante!” Nadia cried, springing toward him, almost singeing him with the candle she still carried.
“I’m all right,” he assured her, though there was blood running down the side of his face. “Let’s get back in the tunnel where there’s less open space.”
Nadia wasn’t sure the tunnel would be any more secure than the station, but at least any debris from the ceiling wouldn’t have as far to fall and might not hit as hard.
They scrambled toward the tracks and down. A louder, closer explosion echoed through the station just as Nadia’s feet hit the tracks, the shaking so strong she lost her footing and went down with a thud.
“Those are bombs!” Dante shouted as he grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet. His face was white, making the blood that streaked the side of it more stark.
Agnes screamed as one of the support pillars on the platform cracked. It didn’t fall, but it wouldn’t hold for long.
“Take cover!” Dante yelled, and they all sprinted for the nearest tunnel, which at that point was the one they’d come in from.
The booming and shaking made the footing even more treacherous than it had been before, and the sprint quickly turned to a staggering, lurching run. Nadia dropped her candle, the flame immediately snuffing out when it hit the ground. Luckily, the flashlights were enough to light the way as chunks of cement and tile dropped from the ceiling and crashed on the platform, filling the air with choking dust and flying debris.
Something caught the side of Nadia’s face, leaving a stinging streak across her cheek, but she wasn’t about to slow down and assess the damage.
Nate and Bishop were the first ones to reach the edge of the tunnel, though Nadia could barely see them through the cloud of dust. They both stopped just a few yards in, turning to urge the others to move faster.
Nadia was running as fast as she could, but she was hardly a world-class sprinter. Dante had hold of her hand and was practically dragging her forward.
“Let go and run!” she screamed at him, knowing she was slowing him down. But of course he wouldn’t do it.
The station was crumbling, the chunks of debris from the ceiling getting larger and more deadly. Nadia could hardly breathe, coughing and choking on the dust while her lungs screamed for more oxygen to fuel her run.
Nadia and Dante reached the edge of the tunnel just as an ominous groaning sounded from overhead. Dante tried to keep her moving, but Nadia stopped and squinted into the dusty darkness behind her, picking out the jerky beams of Shrimp’s and Agnes’s flashlights. Something big hit the edge of the platform right beside them and burst into a spray of debris, some of which hit Agnes, and she went down with a cry of pain.
Shrimp immediately stopped to help her, trying to pull her to her feet. When that didn’t work, he dropped his flashlight and hauled her over his shoulder. Through the darkness and clouds of dust, Nadia could see little except the whites of his eyes and his gritted teeth.
A metal beam slammed to the floor, and the groaning grew louder. Shrimp continued to stagger forward, reaching the mouth of the tunnel just when the groan turned into a scream and the station’s ceiling came crashing down.
Dante and Nadia both reached for Shrimp, helping him keep his balance as he struggled under Agnes’s weight and the shaking ground. They hurried deeper into the tunnel, the cloud of dust from the collapsed station following them, making it nearly impossible to see even with the flashlights. Agnes lay limply over Shrimp’s shoulder, not moving.
By mutual agreement, they stopped running when they reached a section of tunnel that seemed solid, the walls and ceiling showing no signs of cracking, no debris raining down. There were still the muffled sounds of explosions coming from the surface, and the dust carried the scent of smoke. Everyone was coughing and breathing hard, exhausted from exertion and adrenaline as they tried to get the dust out of their lungs.
Everyone except Agnes, that is.
Shrimp laid her down carefully on the smoothest spot he could find between the tracks. Her limbs flopped loosely, and her head lolled. The hair on one side of her head was matted with blood, and there was another bloody wound across her ribs on the same side.
“Is she breathing?” Nadia asked, dreading the answer.
“She’s breathing,” Shrimp reassured her hoarsely, turning to cough and spit. His eyes were shiny. “I shoulda been between her and the platform,” he said. “I knew it was safer by the wall.”
Nadia squatted beside him and put her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t,” she said. “None of us had time to think—we just ran. And if you’d been the one hit, Agnes wouldn’t have been able to carry you to safety.”
She didn’t think Shrimp was much comforted, and indeed neither was she. Agnes was the most innocent of them all, the one who least deserved to be caught in the middle of this hell. So of course she was the one who got hurt.
Nadia settled in, sitting on the rail beside Agnes and holding the girl’s hand. Dante sat beside her, draping his arm over her shoulders and holding her close. She looked at his bloody face and remembered that he, too, had been hurt.
“I’m all right,” he said before she could ask.
“But—”
“Scalp wounds bleed a lot. Really, I’m fine.”
She nodded, having no choice but to take his word for it.
Together, they sat silently in the dark and listened to the sounds of Dorothy bombing the people she, as Chairman, was supposed to protect.
* * *
The bombing went on for hours, with only the occasional respite. Not that Nate had much of a sense of time down here in the darkness.
They’d lost several flashlights over the course of their exploration and flight, so to conserve the batteries on the ones they had left, they lit a single candle as their only source of light. Agnes had regained consciousness, but it was obvious to everyone that she was in rough shape. She didn’t seem to know where she was, and she groaned in pain whenever she tried to move. Shrimp was making her as comfortable as possible, keeping up a gentle murmur of dialog, both to keep her awake and to keep her
from panicking.
Nate sat with his back against the tunnel wall, too numb and shocked to take much comfort in Kurt’s arm around his shoulders. He’d thought the tanks were the worst Dorothy would bring to bear on the Basement, but he’d obviously been wrong.
How many people had died tonight? People who’d done nothing wrong, for there were innocents in the Basement, no matter how depraved the place might be. He was pretty sure tears were leaving tracks in the coating of dust on his face, and he didn’t give a damn. His mind just couldn’t encompass the evil that had been done this night. And he couldn’t help feeling guilty that chance had led him to relative safety while the unfortunates above him were being slaughtered.
Nate wasn’t sure how long they sat there, no one speaking, after the bombing let up. It was a long time, though, and it was Nadia who finally broke the silence.
“I guess we should see if we can get out of here,” she said.
It showed something about how sluggishly Nate’s mind was working that he hadn’t even considered the possibility that they were trapped. But solid though the tunnel felt here, its walls and ceiling had already been compromised in other places along their route, and there could easily have been cave-ins.
“What do you think it’s like out there?” Nate asked of no one in particular.
“Bad,” Kurt said, and tough and thick-skinned though he was, Nate noticed there were tracks through the dust on his face, too. “Really, really bad.”
Dante lowered his head into his hands. “God, I don’t want to see it.”
Nadia rose stiffly to her feet. “I don’t want to see it, either, but it’s better than the alternative. So let’s go.”
Agnes made a halfhearted attempt to stand, but Shrimp quickly scooped her up in his arms. There was no way she was walking, not in her condition.
“I can carry her for a while if you get tired,” Nate said, and Kurt and Dante made similar offers.
“Nah, I got ’er,” Shrimp said. “She don’t weigh much.”
Even in her pain and misery, Agnes managed a small smile.