He pulls his head back.
—So anyway, one last thing about fear in the brain. When you fuck up around here, like say you maybe try and strangle a fellow Enclave or something? They don’t kill you. No beheadings or getting put out in the sun. Instead they drop you down this shaft into the sewers. Maybe it’s symbolic. I don’t know. Doesn’t happen often. I mean, really rare. What I gather, mostly when they get cast out they just kill themselves.
I hear something splash in the water. Rats.
—But the story is, at least one of them is hanging on down there. Has been for years. Lone ex-Enclave looney wandering the sewers and living off God knows what. Could be like that alligators being flushed down toilets thing. Urban Vampyre legend. If you get me.
He starts to move the cover over the mouth of the shaft, stops and puts his face into the last remaining gap of candlelight above me.
—Still, pretty fucking scary, huh?
The cover slides and drops into place.
Whatever moves in the water isn’t a rat.
It’s fast and it’s strong and as soon as the darkness is total it’s on me and I’m being dragged through the water, banging off the tunnel walls, hauled up black shafts and flung across chasms I know are there only by the echoes of my screams.
—Hey, buddy, hey, buddy, hey. Got a smoke? Man. Got a smoke?
I can’t see anything. My eyes are open, but I can’t see a fucking thing.
But Jesus I can smell.
Stench. A river of sewage flowing somewhere below where I’m huddled. The stink of the city. Raw. Crackling taint of electricity from the subway train that rumbles past somewhere behind thick concrete. A puff of warm air carried out of the MTA tunnel brings oil and diesel fumes from a service train. Wet, meaty rat fur. Rot in too many hues to separate. And the Vyrus. Boiling and thin as steam.
—Asked do you have a smoke, buddy? A cigarette? Parlez vous?
I don’t say anything. I don’t move.
—Buddy. Buddy. I know you’re alive, buddy. You tryin’ to possum me? Huh? Want me to come over there so you can get a bead on me and grab me by the balls and rip them off, buddy? That what you got goin’ through your head? That’s it, ain’t it, buddy? Don’t bother to deny it, nah, don’t bother. I know that’s what you’re thinking. I know it is. Cuz, buddy, I can see it, I can see just exactly what you’re thinking. And you’re ’bout as interesting as last month’s fucking Post.
Something moves.
—Here, let me make it easy on you, buddy. Let me get up close.
He comes close. I feel him first. The heat. He smells like the sewer. And the Vyrus. Burning.
—How’s that, buddy? Better? Want to take a shot?
Water dribbles out of my hair and into my eyes. I wipe it away.
—No.
He shifts.
—Yeah, right. Good thinking. Sharp. You’re a sharp one, buddy. So?
—What?
—You got a smoke or what?
I reach in my pocket and find the Luckys.
—They’re soaked.
—That’s OK, buddy. I forgive you. Pass ’em here.
—I can’t see.—Can’t see. Can’t see. ’Course you can’t fucking see, buddy, it’s darker than a nun’s virgin anus down here. Just hold the fucking things out.
I hold out the pack.
—Filterless? Hell, buddy, what you trying to do, kill yourself?
He gurgles.
—That’s a joke, buddy. Ah, never mind. These’ll do. These’ll do.
He shuffles. —Can’t see. Right, right. Well, we’ll see if we can do something about that.
Light explodes.
I cover my eyes, a purple burst on the inside of my lids.
—Whoops. Got you by surprise there. Sorry ’bout that, buddy.
I take my hands away, crack my lids.
He’s across from me on the shelf of brick that juts from the mouth of a dry spill tunnel over the river of shit below us. Hunkered on spider legs, white to the point of transparency, bald and huge-eyed, he thrusts his face into the beam shooting from his flashlight and bares his teeth.—Gollum.
He gurgles.
—That’s another joke, buddy. Another joke. Read that in a book. That one kills ’em. Kills ’em every time, buddy.
He tucks the wet pack of Luckys into one of the pockets of the vest that hangs open over his withered torso and waves the light down the tunnel.
—C’mon, buddy, I ain’t carrying you this time.
I keep close to the jet of hot air blowing from the louvered slats at the bottom of the switch-room door.
—Cold? Sure you’re cold, cold as hell down here, ain’t it? Not that I feel it. Not that I feel it a’tall, buddy.
He reaches over and moves the cigarettes around, rotating them in the hot air, helping the tobacco to dry.
—Yeah, just about right, yeah. Just about there.
I rotate myself, straightening my bad knee in front of the vent. The bone is knitting, it grinds when I move it.
He plucks at my damp slacks.
—What’s with the getup?
—Dead guy’s clothes.
He strokes his neck, his skin reflecting the blue of the light above the switch room.
—Didn’t ask from who, asked what’s up. Where’s your whites, buddy?
I look at his own clothes, the soiled cargo vest and painter’s pants. Both were once white, I suppose.
I rub my knee.
—Never wore whites.
—Never, huh?
His arm snaps out and he lays a finger along my chin and turns my head.
I don’t flinch.
He looks me over.
—Yeah, but you’re Enclave. Way you’re looking at me, you’re too fucking mean to be anything else.
He drops his hand.
—Didn’t take to the warehouse, huh, buddy?
—Never tried.
He fingers the cigarettes.
—Good call, that. Yeah, sure, sure, good call, buddy. This one’s done. That thing working?
He points at the open Zippo next to the smokes.
I pick it up and flick the wheel and sparks jump, but no flame.
—Still too wet.
He digs fingers into one of his pockets and comes out with a folder of matches.
—Hate to waste these things. But the need is urgent, buddy.
He tears out a match and lights it and brings the flame to the dirty, bent cigarette in his lips and inhales.
—There you go, that’s it, sister, come to papa.
He drops the match and holds the smoke for a second and blows it out.
—Well, tastes like shit, but that comes as no surprise, buddy. Here.
He offers it to me and I take a drag. He’s right, it tastes like shit.
I take another drag and pass it back.
—Daniel went out in the sun this morning.
His hand freezes. He takes the smoke, looks at it.
—He make it?
—Fuck do you think?
He sucks smoke.
—I think he got burned and died, but a man can hope, buddy. Even down here, a man can hope.
A train blasts past just beyond the alcove that hides the door, and I watch the real people flick past inside.
—They got me off the street. Long time gone, long time, buddy. Know how long?
—Nope.
—Neither do I, buddy. Neither do I.
He puts a hand out and we drop back between girders and wait as an MTA service crew in orange vests and helmets crosses the tunnel dragging tool bags over the tracks and cursing and telling dirty stories.
He waves and we start walking again, following the line of the third rail.
—Saw I was Enclave one of them did, buddy. Saw me wandering out of a saloon down the Bowery and saw it in me. Well, Vyrus don’t lie. So I was told.
He stops and points at the tunnel where the service crew disappeared.
—That’s a dead tunnel. Pr
obably, buddy, they’re scrapping something down there. That or goin’ off to get high. Bums live down there mostly. Couple of ’em will get scared out by the crew. Crew loves to shove the bums around. Bums, buddy, bums in all the dead tunnels. ’Cept mine. Nothing lives in my tunnel but me and the rats, buddy. Me and the rats.
He starts off again.
—Daniel was the one bled into me. That meant somethin’. Not to me. Did to him. Tried not to make a big deal of it he did, but it mattered to him, buddy. All us he put the Vyrus in, we were kind of special to him. Didn’t make much difference. I never took to it.
He stops again and squats and I lean against a girder, not wanting to bend my leg.
—The quiet’s what got to me, buddy. Ever notice how quiet it is in there?
—Yeah.
—Too fucking quiet. Everyone meditating. Pondering. Thinking on the Vyrus. Fuck. I wanted some chatter. Buddy, I tell you, it drove me just about out my fucking head.
He spreads his arms.
—Now look at me. Know how often I get to have a conversation, buddy? Just about never. Talk to the rats, buddy. Tell them everything on my mind. Know what’s on my mind?
—No.
—What’s on my mind is the fuckers finally drop someone down that hole doesn’t kill himself first chance he gets, someone a man might expect to have a word with, and I end up with a monosyllabic son of a bitch like you, buddy. That’s what’s on my mind.
—Huh.
—Yeah.
—I was a discipline problem, buddy. Same way I was in the army. Know how many times I got the stockade? One time, buddy. Just the one time after I got drunk and cut my bunkmate’s ear off with my bayonet. When I got out of the stockade it was just in time for me to get kicked out. Buddy, that warehouse, it’s a fucking miracle I lasted a day. As it was, I made it a couple years. But only because of Daniel. You know the old man well, buddy?
He climbs up on a dead platform and reaches down to me.
I take his hand and he pulls me up.
—We talked some.
—Riddler he was, wasn’t he?
—Yeah.
—The sun, huh?
—Yeah.
—Crap.
He leads me to a rusted gate and yanks on it and it scrapes open.
—Down this way.
I follow.
He looks back at me.
—You need the flashlight?
The blue and yellow and red lamps of the tunnels fade behind us.
—Yeah.
—Here.
He passes it to me and I point it straight down, the reflected light more than enough for my eyes.
He kicks a pile of rags from his path.
—If the old man hadn’t had a feeling for me, I never would have lasted. Tell ya, buddy, sure seemed as though he liked the trouble cases. Seemed to have a taste for the ones that didn’t fit right in there. What would he make of me now, huh? Tell ya, he wouldn’t recognize me at all, buddy. Not at all.
He touches his stomach.
—I was fat. I mean, by Enclave standards, I was a damn pig. Fasting. I came from an ass-poor family. Why I went in the army the first place was to have all I wanted to eat. They wanted me to not eat on purpose. Know what kind of sense that made to me?
—None at all.
—Yeah, you got that one, buddy, none at all. But. Here I am.
He runs a fingertip down his ribs, like raking a washboard.
—I didn’t grow up with any religion to speak of. But I got a feeling, if I had, it would have stuck deep. Would have been one of them people strays hard from the way, only to come back to it twice as hard in the end, buddy. ’Cause living down here, with no one and nothing to keep an eye on me, with hot and cold running bums wandering around ripe on the vine, with no reason to do anything but feedfeedfeed, I found faith. How’s that for a pisser?
He stops.
—Yeah, you tell me that Daniel went out in the sun, my first thought is, Shit, that sad sorry fuck finally went and did it and got himself burned. But what I’m really thinking under that is, Please let it be real. Please let him be the one who makes it. Please bring me home. Buddy, I am one lonely fucking man.
He takes out the cigarettes I gave him and puts one in his mouth and I flip the Zippo open and it lights this time.
He blows the smoke down into the cone of light at our feet, watches it swirl.
—In the end, buddy, I’ll do it too, ya know. When I can’t hold it in anymore, when the Vyrus says, Shit or get off the pot, I’ll climb up there and take a crack at it. Daniel, he probably thought he’d make it. Right till he cooked, that SOB probably thought he was gonna cross. Me, buddy, I’ll do it knowing I’m gonna burn. So you tell me.
He offers me the smoke.
—Which of us is crazier, buddy, me or him?
I take the smoke, drag and give it back.
—Got me.
He taps ash.
—Yeah, it’s a puzzler. Crap. Always had a hope I’d see the old man again. Show him that I turned out OK. Show him that I took it to heart in the end. That I believe. Even if I don’t want to. Wish I could tell him I was sorry for the trouble I caused him. Buddy, I tell you, in the end, when I blew, I blew hard. Went spastic and grabbed a blade and started cutting. Killed half a dozen Enclave. Half a dozen of my own, buddy. Know how many killed half a dozen Enclave?
He taps his chest.
—Me. That’s how many.
He smiles.
—Not that I’m proud of it or anything.
He loses the smile.
—And it made a pile of problems for Daniel. As he’d been nursing me along all the while.
He drops the butt and grinds it under a bare leathered foot.
—Bitch’s bastard, I wish I could have a word with the fucker. I really do, buddy. Still. You never know.
He squints at me.
—Ever seen one of them things, buddy?
I play the light over the floor, don’t say anything.
He nods.
—Yeah, you seen one. Scary as all hell, yeah? Know what’s scarier? Nothing. Nothing in this world scarier than a Wraith, buddy.
He moves closer.
—I watched it happen once. Watched Daniel and a couple other of the old-timers sit and meditate for days, none of us allowed a drop of blood while it was goin’ on. Watched a crack open. In the air. A crack in the air. Know what that looks like, buddy? Looks like nothin’. Looks like what nothin’ looks like. Watched one of them things squirm out of it.
Closer.
—And then I stopped looking. ’Cause I didn’t want to see anymore.
Closer, whispering.
—Know what they say? Say about them? What Daniel said they are, buddy? Know what they are?
He licks his lips.
—They’re what happens. They’re what happens when the Vyrus is done with us.
He points at himself.
—They’re what’s gonna happen to me.
He points at me.
—And they’re what’s gonna happen to you, buddy.
He leans his mouth close to my ear.
—They’re what we become.
He puts a hand on my shoulder.
—So you never know, buddy, we both may get to see Daniel again.
He leans away and looks me in the eye.
—Boo!
I jump.
He laughs.
—Sorry, sorry, buddy, it’s the prankster in me. I may be a true believer now, but I still got discipline problems.
I crack a knuckle.
—Yeah. I can see that.
He stops laughing.
—Buddy, they call it a sense of humor. Look into it.
—Sure, as soon as you show me how I get the hell out of this place.
He points up.
—There. Up the ladder, buddy.
I rake the light up the wall and see the rungs bolted into the concrete, leading to a trap.
—It’s an alley up ther
e. Might be a couple garbage cans on top of the trap, but no lock. That work for you?
I shine the light back at the floor.
—Yeah, that’ll work.
He reaches out and takes the flash and switches it off and we’re in darkness again.
—Well, up you go, then.
I climb.
At the top I put my shoulder against the trap and heave and some cans crash to the ground and it swings open and flickering Manhattan night light fills the narrow sky above the alley.
—Buddy, hey, buddy.
I look down into the black tunnel.
—Yeah?
—You sure about that, goin’ up there, you sure? ’Cause think about it, what’s gonna happen sooner or later?
—What’s gonna happen?
—Buddy, what’s gonna happen is that sooner or later they’re gonna find us out. Shit, buddy, they may already know about us. Seems kind of far-fetched to think they don’t, huh? And when they’re ready, when they got things set up for us exactly how they want, they’re gonna hunt us all down. Right, buddy, that sound about right? Sure it does. My religious zeal aside, I got no illusions. Why do you think I stay down here? Up there, what you got? Think. It’s not even natural. Trying to live a life that isn’t yours anymore, right? That’s all it is, buddy. Down here, I’m safe as houses. No one hunting me down here. I hit a bum for some blood, no one cares. No one calls the cops. Buddy, down here, I’m the top of the food chain. Down here, I can last forever. If I want to. Think about it. Down here is where you belong. It’s where we all belong, buddy.
I look up at the sky.
—I’m not saying you’re wrong. But I got someone up here.
—Huh. Well, that’s different, then.
I look back down into the hole.
—What’s your name, old man?
—Joseph. Yours?
I blink.
—Simon.
I hear his feet padding away.
—Be seeing you, Simon.
I climb out into the alley and close the trap.
I make for home, my stink clearing the sidewalk ahead of me.
I make for home.
Where I have blood and guns.
I want them so bad, I want blood in my gut and a gun in my hand so bad that I don’t even see Lydia’s bulls coming for me. Just the tattoo across the biggest one’s knuckles before her fist lands in my face.