* * *
Shrimp called off the efforts to dig through the rubble, deeming that protecting the survivors they had was more important than spending the whole day hoping for a miracle. He directed his people to dig out the tunnel opening instead, creating a pathway so that people could walk in instead of having to drop down through the hole and scramble down an unstable slope.
When the entrance was relatively clear, Shrimp sent the men onward to try to clear the wreckage where the bats had been and to see if there was a way to get through the station. Meanwhile, Nadia organized the effort to transfer the wounded into the tunnel, using makeshift stretchers when necessary.
There wasn’t a whole lot of room inside the narrow tunnels, but the good news was that the tunnels stretched for miles. One of Shrimp’s digging teams reported that they had cleared the partial cave-in and that the hole in the wall gave them access to another set of tracks—and therefore more room.
In the afternoon, Nate was taking a break from the tunnels when he saw a helicopter in the distance. It was too far away to make out any words, but he could hear the sound of a loudspeaker. The helicopter was moving slowly, making a careful sweep over the Basement. Nate assumed the message was something to the effect of “be good little children and we’ll stop beating the crap out of you.” And it received exactly the kind of reception Nate would have expected.
For the first time since he’d gone into the tunnels last night, he heard the distant sound of gunfire. The helicopter hastily gained altitude in an effort to get out of range, but that didn’t discourage whoever was shooting. The helicopter got the message and turned around, moving considerably faster now, its loudspeaker silent.
From this distance, Nate wasn’t sure how far away the Basement’s border was, but he thought the helicopter was back into the Employee neighborhood on the border when there was a boom loud enough to rival the bombs. A trail of smoke rose into the sky, and something slammed into the fleeing helicopter. Another deafening boom, and the helicopter burst into flames, burning shrapnel falling from the sky, quickly followed by the helicopter itself.
Nate gaped in horror and hoped the burning helicopter wouldn’t kill any innocent bystanders when it hit the ground.
“Told ya some of the other gangs are well armed,” Shrimp said with a savage grin. Nate hadn’t even realized the guy was beside him.
“Yeah,” Nate agreed, “and in case Dorothy needed any more evidence that another bombing is justified, they just gave it to her.” Which was probably why she’d ordered the helicopter to fly over the Basement with its message in the first place. Nate wondered if the pilot or crew had had any clue they were being sent on a suicide mission.
Shrimp’s grin faded, but then he shrugged. “At least it buys us some time. She won’t send her bombers in the daylight if she doesn’t wanna lose some of them.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
It was getting perilously close to nightfall before they were ready to set out once again. Nadia found herself watching the sky anxiously, even though she knew Dorothy wouldn’t send the bombers until it was dark.
It was tempting to just rush off into the darkness in search of help, but they had to see to the safety of the people of the Red Death first, get as many as possible into the safety of the tunnels. Shrimp had his enforcers doing door-to-door sweeps trying to make sure the towers were all empty, while Nate and Nadia organized the children, setting them to making sure everyone had food, blankets, and water. Nadia might have expected the kids to be terrified, but life in the streets of the Basement had hardened them, and they had been trained since birth to be good little soldiers.
Finally, they were ready to head out. Shrimp had spared a few men to check out the collapsed station, and the men reported that there was an opening in the wreckage that would allow them to pass through. How far they would get afterward was a big unknown.
Shrimp commanded a dozen of his people to make the trek with them, to help carry Agnes, to dig out if and when necessary, to act as scouts if the tunnel branched—and to protect their expedition, if it turned out the bombing had given other Basement-dwellers access to the tunnels. They were also better equipped than they had been the night before, Shrimp’s men bringing shovels, pickaxes, and crowbars in case they were needed.
It was as dark and oppressive as ever in the tunnels, and even more stinky, since no one had had a chance to bathe after the day’s exertions. Nadia was seriously worried about Agnes, who seemed to look paler and more wan as every hour ticked by. Worse, she seemed to be developing a fever, and Nadia didn’t need a medical degree to know that was a bad sign.
There were piles of debris along the way, places where the shovels and crowbars came in handy, but once they got past the ruined station, the tunnels were relatively clear. After a tense and grueling trek, they came upon another station. This one had fared better than the last, and with a little scrambling—difficult when they were trying to be so careful with Agnes—they got through it.
It was when they reached the third abandoned station that things got tricky. It looked like the place might have taken a direct hit and collapsed in upon itself. There was no way to walk through it, but there were some small openings here and there. Shrimp sent his men to crawl into each one they could find and see if there was a way out on the other side.
And that was when the night’s bombing started.
“Back into the tunnel!” Shrimp commanded, and everyone obeyed without thinking until they were out of the station’s crumbling interior and in the relative safety of the tunnel. Everyone except the men who were looking for a way through, that is.
“Shouldn’t we be helping them?” Agnes asked, though she wasn’t in any shape to help anyone. “Or getting them out of there?”
Shrimp shook his head. “We don’t have time to play it safe. If we wait till the bombing stops, it could be too late.”
Nadia sidled over to Dante, slipping her hand into his, her heart racing as the floor beneath them shook. They were most likely under the free territories right now, where the bombing had been heaviest last night and probably would be again tonight. They could all die down here, buried in a pile of rubble, their bodies never to be found.
Dante squeezed her hand, and in the faint glow of the flashlights, she could see the look of grim determination on his face. He was scared—they all were—but he wasn’t going to back down. And, more important, he wasn’t going to go all guy-like and try to make her and Agnes stay in the tunnels where it was “safe.”
A bomb hit somewhere too close for comfort, and the tunnel shook. A fine rain of dust and pebbles fell from the ceiling, and the rubble in the station gave a disquieting moan. One of Shrimp’s men climbed out of the space he’d found, shaking his head.
“No way through,” he declared before joining the rest of them in the tunnel.
They stood aside, breathless with nerves, waiting for Shrimp’s other scouts to emerge. Nadia tried not to imagine what it was like crawling through the unstable rubble while the earth shook. The Red Death were ruthless gangsters, had cheered while people were put to death before their eyes, and yet in this moment they were showing themselves to be capable of bravery and heroism. She would see it as the triumph of the human spirit if she weren’t so busy worrying that the roof was going to collapse.
Another scout emerged from the rubble without finding a way through, and Nadia prayed they weren’t at a dead end. It might be possible to dig a passageway through to the other side with their shovels and pickaxes, but not only would the effort be risky in the extreme, it would take forever, and they didn’t have that kind of time.
The bombs were exploding on a regular basis now, the ground continually vibrating under their feet. The rubble shifted ominously, and a small landslide began just as another bomb hit at what sounded like only a few yards away. Everyone ducked instinctively, but the ceiling held, and the landslide didn’t seem to make much of a difference to the pile of rubble.
Shortly afte
rward, the third scout crawled back through the opening he’d explored, grinning and flashing a thumbs-up. He was filthy, and sporting tears in both his clothing and his skin, but he’d made it.
“Can we get Agnes through?” Shrimp asked when the scout rejoined them.
The scout shook his head. “Not on a stretcher.”
“I can crawl if I have to,” Agnes said. “You guys’ll help me.”
Shrimp put on his stubborn face. “You’re not crawling with a fever and a head injury.”
Nadia almost smiled as Agnes mirrored the stubborn face. “I’ll do whatever it takes. I’m the only one my father will listen to, and that means we have to get me through there.”
No one liked the idea—least of all, Shrimp—but it was hard to argue her point. The success or failure of this mission all depended on her. Nate, who had at one time treated Agnes with contempt and casual cruelty, looked at her with something like awe.
“I think you’ve earned your street name,” he told her. “I hereby dub thee ‘Lionheart.’”
“Lionheart,” Shrimp repeated, nodding. “I like it.”
It was hard to tell in the patchy light of the flashlights, but Nadia was sure Agnes was blushing furiously, unused to praise.
“Great,” Dante grumbled. “You get ‘Lionheart,’ and I get ‘Captain Studly.’ There is no justice in the universe.”
There was no lifting the tension as they huddled in the dark tunnel with bombs bursting overhead, but Dante’s quip did at least inspire a few smiles.
“Carry me over there, and we’ll get going,” Agnes said.
It was Shrimp, of course, who picked her up, and they all made their way over to the gap in the rubble that would eventually lead through to the other side. One of the men went over to the last remaining opening, shouting into it to let the scout know he could turn back.
There was no answer, and when they shone their flashlights into the opening, they could see that it was an opening no longer, the rubble having shifted about two or three body lengths in.
“Should I stay and try to dig him out?” one of Shrimp’s men asked.
Shrimp frowned, then shook his head when the constant vibration of the bombs created another rain of pebbles and dust.
“Too dangerous,” Shrimp said.
“We can’t just leave him!” Agnes protested.
“I ain’t risking more men if I don’t know he’s alive.”
He yelled into the opening one more time, and they all listened intently for an answering voice, but there was nothing.
“Let’s get moving before this whole place comes down on our heads.”
* * *
Nate wasn’t sure how long it took to crawl through that opening in the wreckage, but it seemed like at least a week. And if it seemed like a week to him, it must have felt like a year to Agnes.
Nate wanted to go back in time and take back every unkind word he had ever said about the girl. She was dizzy, disoriented, feverish, and weak, and yet she refused to quit, even though she had to take a break to puke a couple of times. Taking rest breaks when you were in the middle of a pile of shifting rubble that could crush you at any moment was about as unnerving an experience as he had ever had.
The bombing continued throughout the long crawl, although it seemed to be concentrated farther away, at least for the time being. Perhaps the entirety of the free territories had been bombed into rubble by now and Dorothy was starting on the gang territories.
Toward the end, Agnes got so disoriented she couldn’t remember what she was doing or where she was going. Shrimp, who was in front of her, and Nate, who was behind, had to push, pull, and drag to keep her moving forward. He prayed that all the jostling and bumping wouldn’t cause her condition to deteriorate any more than it already had. He was afraid they might be killing her, but he also knew she would want them to do anything and everything possible to get her through.
Eventually, they popped through to the other side of the rubble and were able to make their way into the continuation of the train tunnel. Agnes lost consciousness almost immediately, but they kept going, Shrimp cradling her tenderly against his shoulder.
The bombing grew more and more distant, and soon they were in a stretch of tunnel that didn’t look like it had seen any damage at all. There were a lot more rats in this section—they seemed to have realized this was the safest place to be during the bombing—but they squeaked and scattered whenever someone shone a light on them, and Nate much preferred them to the bombs.
According to the old subway map Dante had seen in the first station, they were probably now traveling under the Harlem River, which meant they were officially out of the Basement, into one of the fringe neighborhoods that were close enough to the Basement to be considered undesirable. Unfortunately, being under the river also meant that there was no way they could pick up a phone signal, so they had to press forward.
It was too much to ask that the tunnel from the Basement could simply merge with the active tunnels and give them an easy way to get close enough to the surface to get a phone signal. Nate couldn’t say he was surprised when they came upon a solid brick wall sealing off the tunnel, but it made his heart sink just that much lower. Agnes needed medical attention now, and she wasn’t going to get it.
Shrimp laid Agnes on the ground, using some of the scant supply of water they’d brought with them to clean some of the grime from her face. Her eyelashes fluttered, but she didn’t wake up. Meanwhile, his men started to work on the wall, taking turns with the pickaxes. Nate powered up one of the phones they’d brought with them on the off chance it would get a signal, but of course it didn’t. They were just going to have to wait for the brick to give way.
Everyone was exhausted. They’d gotten little to no sleep in the last forty-eight hours, and they’d all spent a lot of time doing hard physical labor—and that was before the difficult and nerve-racking scramble through the debris. Swinging pickaxes under the circumstances was far from easy, and Nate was glad Shrimp had had the foresight to bring enough men that they could work in shifts. Despite feeling like he had jelly in his limbs, Nate offered to take a turn, but Shrimp turned him down.
“No offense, but it’ll go faster without you.”
The old Nate would probably have been insulted enough to make an issue of it, his pride stung. But though he didn’t like admitting it, he knew Shrimp was right. He wasn’t accustomed to manual labor, and though he didn’t think he was particularly weak, he wasn’t particularly strong, either. Several of Shrimp’s men—and Dante—definitely were strong, and they made steady progress on the wall, hacking away at the brick while everyone else stayed out of reach of the flying chips.
By the time there was a hole in the wall big enough for everyone to get through, Nate couldn’t hear any more bombs going off. He didn’t know if that meant the bombing had stopped, or if it had now moved far enough away for the sound not to carry through all the earth and water above.
Once again, Shrimp picked Agnes up, and they continued down the long, abandoned tunnel. After walking what felt like about five more miles, they found their way blocked once more, this time by a metal fence with a padlocked door. The tunnel they’d been following had begun a gradual curve a little while back, and when Nate shone his flashlight into the darkness beyond the fence, his heart gave a leap of hope.
“More tracks!” he said excitedly.
The rusty, disused rails that they’d been following through the abandoned tunnels merged just a little way ahead with another set of rails—ones that weren’t rusted.
All flashlight beams focused on the new set of tracks. They weren’t exactly shiny and new, and the spaces between them were as damp and nasty as the rest of the tracks they’d been following. But why would there be a fence here unless this was the border between the used and the unused tunnels?
Nate tried a cell phone again while Dante grabbed one of the pickaxes and started hacking at the padlock. For a brief moment, Nate picked up a feeble pho
ne signal, but it quickly winked out. They were outside of Dorothy’s phone blockade, but still too far underground to get a reliable signal.
The padlock broke, and the door in the fence creaked open. Everyone took a hurried step forward, seeing the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, but Dante blocked the way and raised the hand not holding the pickax.
“Wait up,” he said. “If those are real, live tracks up there, then we’ve got to be careful.”
Nate had gotten a glance at the time when he’d checked for a phone signal. “It’s three A.M. Subways don’t run at this hour, do they?” Not that he was any kind of an expert on public transportation.
“Not in this neighborhood they don’t,” Dante said with a scowl. “This near the Basement, it’s all unskilled laborers. You know, no one Paxco thinks it’s worth providing twenty-four-hour service for. But that’s not what I’m worried about. Any of you guys know what the third rail is?” They all exchanged baffled glances, and Dante shone his flashlight on the tracks beneath their feet. “These two rails are harmless,” he said, his beam moving back and forth between the rails on each side of the ties. “This one isn’t.” His flashlight illuminated a third rail, one Nate had never particularly noticed except for when it got in the way of his footing.
“In the live tunnels,” Dante continued, “there will be one hell of an electric charge running through the third rail. One touch could kill you, so make sure you don’t step on it.”
Nate glared at him. “You didn’t think to mention that when we first came down here? I’ve probably stepped on that damned rail a million times already!”
Dante rolled his eyes. “Like Paxco’s going to waste the money to run electricity through the rails it’s not using.”
“It still would have been nice to know.” Nate sounded sullen to his own ears, but he didn’t like that Dante had made a blithe assumption that could have gotten any one of them killed. However, he seemed to be the only one getting pissed off, and both Kurt and Nadia gave him reproachful looks. He couldn’t honestly say he felt jealous of Dante anymore, but that didn’t mean he’d grown to like the guy.