Mutt

by Evan Fuller

  15

  Hunger

  The first sensation Emery felt was the warmth, spreading across his back and stomach from a genesis just above his right hip. Then a surge of pain announced the presence of the wound, and Emery screamed. Rather, his throat tried to scream, but the air had been knocked from his lungs when he had fallen to the ground, so only a soft moan escaped his lips. This, he realized, was his salvation: his pursuers were close, but they could not see him in the dark. Emery rose to his hands and knees and crawled until he found the wall of the tunnel. This is good, he told himself. If I just lay here, they'll pass me in the dark.

  His thought was cut short by the searching beam of a flashlight: of course it couldn't be that simple. Damnit. Thankfully, the light did not immediately find him: it was being directed at the cadaver of his fallen guide. Even from here, Emery could see the dead man's open eyes. Emery lifted himself up against the wall, trying to ignore the searing pain in his side, and began a hobbling flight from the light behind him, leaning on the rough stone for support. It was inconceivable that he could escape this way: the guards had resumed their pursuit. They moved much more quickly than he, rapidly closing the distance his head start had earned him. Emery pushed free of the wall and broke into a jog, cringing as the gunshot wound in his side dribbled fresh blood with each breath. There will be time to bandage the wound, he tried to tell himself, after I get away. If I stop now, I'll have more than one bullet hole to worry about.

  He kept running, still feeling his way along the wall with his left hand. The guards were sprinting now, drawing closer with every step, until Emery was sure he could feel their breath on his back. Any moment the flashlight would find him, and then Three Dogs' pistol would fire again—

  And then the light behind him disappeared entirely. Emery stopped, pressing himself against the wall, and listened. The voices he heard were muffled, distant: without realizing it, he must have passed some fork in the tunnel, and the guard with the flashlight had taken the other path. Emery sank down into a sitting position against the wall, gasping for breath, feeling for the injury. With jolts of excruciating pain, his fingers found two matching wounds: the bullet had passed straight through his right side, above the hip but below his ribs. It was a blessing, and a miraculous one considering his slight build, that the shot had found no bone or vital organ, but a clean hole had been torn through his oblique, and he was still bleeding. Emery removed his coat, shivering in the tunnel's frigid cold, and pulled off his shirt. Tearing it blindly into strips, he placed pieces of fabric against the front and rear wounds and tied the remainder of the garment around his stomach to keep them in place. The pain was even worse with the fabric pressed against the gnarled flesh, but it would do something, at least, for the bleeding. He put Green's old coat back on, trembling. Just my luck, he told himself. I'll freeze to death if I don't bleed out.

  But it seemed his pursuers might find him yet: he heard footsteps approaching, slower and more deliberate than the guards'. Emery did not need to see Three Dogs to know that he was coming: the man's daunting presence preceded him, spreading like a cold front through the tunnel. As quietly as he could, Emery felt his way along the wall, looking for some path to safety. He found none, but the tip of his boot brushed a large rock lying on the floor of the tunnel. Emery knelt to pick it up; it was lighter than its size suggested it should be, but it should still be enough. He raised it over his head, pressing his back against the wall of the tunnel and waiting for Three Dogs' approach.

  Each assured footfall was like the second hand of a clock, counting the moments until the terrifying man would be within arm's reach, and each one was louder than the last, until Emery could hear not only Three Dogs' motions but his breath. Emery stood still as the stone he held in his hand: he would only have one chance to strike, and even if the stone made contact with Three Dogs' skull, would it stagger the taller, stronger man long enough for Emery to finish him? The thought of the violence to come was a dark promise, daring Emery's still hands to tremble with dreadful anticipation. And then Three Dogs stood directly before him, peering into the darkness. He was in arm's reach; Emery held the stone ready to strike the man's ear, but he did not act. What if Three Dogs did not even know he was standing so close?

  The poppy lord inhaled deeply, turning around as if looking for something, though the tunnel was devoid of even the faintest light. This was his domain, and Emery breathed slow shallow breaths, knowing that in the absence of light, any sound would alert Three Dogs to his presence. Then Three Dogs grunted, and suddenly the air was filled with the stench of decay and a sound like raw meat being cut with a dull knife. When it subsided and Emery could hear Three Dogs' breathing again, it sounded like his breaths were coming from far above Emery's head, as if the baron had just grown several feet. What magic was this? In the blackness Emery couldn't see what had actually happened, but he was sure it was nothing good. He prepared to strike, trembling more violently as he wondered whether the blow would even reach the man's head now.

  “Baron,” came a voice from the direction they had come, “we 'aven't found the pureblood.”

  “A pity,” Three Dogs replied, and his deep voice echoed off the walls and the ceiling and Emery's skin. He was certainly standing taller now than he had. “And I see ye' didn't think to bring the light this way.” His voice was different too, deeper than it had been.

  “Blackroot took th' light, m'lord,” the guard said. “I can fetch 'im and bring it 'ere for ye', if it pleases ye'.”

  “It's far too late for that.” Three Dogs had turned to direct his voice at the guard, but he still did not move. Emery's arms, still holding the stone high over his head, began to tremble. “If the pureblood went this way, he's far ahead of us already.”

  “Did ye' see that blood, m'lord? It was a lot o' blood.”

  “A minor wound,” Three Dogs said, “and clearly he's still on the move. But it matters little. Without a guide, he'll be the tunnel dwellers' next meal. Come.”

  Finally, Three Dogs and his guard strode back in the direction of the cavern. He moved at an unnatural speed, and in too few steps. Emery waited until he could not hear even a hint of a footfall, and then his shaking hands dropped the rock to the ground.

  What Three Dogs had said might well prove true: Emery had no way of making it out of the tunnels on his own. He groped for the flashlight inside his pocket, turned it on, and squinted at the brightest light he had seen since leaving the cavern. The tunnel ahead of him was massive and continued for hundreds of yards in a straight line before forking again. The metal rails of old subway tracks were still visible in places, but for the most part, they had been buried by dirt and eroding rock in the years past. Emery directed the beam at his feet, and nearly lost his grip on the flashlight: the stone he had held was smooth and off-white, with recesses where the eyes had once been. It was a human skull.

  The fear Emery had kept at bay since entering the tunnel now overwhelmed him, and he took off running as fast as he could. With every glance, shadowy forms manifest in his periphery: the weak glow of the flashlight was, as he had suspected it might be, far more terrifying than the blissful ignorance of utter darkness. Breathless and dizzy from blood loss, he reached the fork in the tunnel. Left or right? His mind filled each black chasm with a thousand horrors. Left or right?

  He finally took the path on his right, deciding that he would alternate each time he encountered such a decision. This made sense for the first fork, but after a dozen, his mind was racing even faster. Hadn't he seen this junction before? Everything looked the same down here. At any moment, what appeared to be nothing but a figment of his plagued mind might reveal itself as one of the tunnel dwellers and then a host of its friends would follow and chase Emery through the dim-lit caves and they would block his path and take his light and lead him deeper into the earth and break him into tiny pieces and the faster his mind moved the more frightened he became and there were fiends at every corner of his vision and oh God he w
ould never never reach the surface.

  And then a more frightening actuality interrupted his fantasies, and Emery's racing thoughts came to a sudden halt.

  The figure, hunched over with its back to him, was a naked human body, its skin so pale that blue veins were clearly visible beneath it. The creature was twenty yards ahead, and when the flashlight beam met its flesh, it scuttled away on all four limbs, disappearing around the bend of the tunnel. Emery's legs locked in place and would not obey: the tunnel people had found him.

  Emery stood still for a full minute, rallied himself, and took a single step. Moments later he was moving briskly again, now in the opposite direction. Whenever he turned to look over his shoulder, the flashlight beam found nothing, but the sounds followed him, the sounds of voices like none he had ever heard, speaking a language that sounded like nothing human. How many of them there must be, Emery could not guess, but he was sure beyond any hope that they were hunting him. Dizziness and nausea encircled his head like rings of smoke, and finally Emery paused for a moment, doubling over to catch his breath. He had stood still for less than a moment when something tackled him to the floor.

  Emery gasped as his wound brushed the ground. He rolled and tried to rise, but in a fraction of a second the tunnel dweller was on top of him. Emery raised an arm to his face just as it struck, shielding his eyes from the clawed hand. With his other arm, Emery swung the flashlight at the creature's temple. The blow connected, but as it did, the light puttered out. Emery rolled again, shoving the tunnel person's body off him. He had crawled only a foot or two when its hand seized his ankle. He kicked backward with his other foot but missed its face; the tunnel dweller was pulling itself slowly up his body, a cold white arm wrapped around his knees now. Emery reached forward desperately until he felt it: an unyielding metal shelf. It was the track of the old train.

  Emery felt the other clawed hand grab at his belt; if the tunnel dweller reached his head, Emery knew he was lost. He lunged for the train track and pulled himself violently toward it with both arms, flailing his legs to shake his assailant. The tunnel person reared. Emery was sure he'd have only a moment to react, and no eyes with which to see. He rolled sideways, and when the tunnel person pounced at the spot where he'd been a moment before, he spun, grabbed it by the neck, and slammed its face into the tracks in one motion. Whether unconscious or dying, it didn't move again. Emery groped for his flashlight in the dark. Why hadn't any of the other tunnel dwellers attacked—unless they were amassing as he fought the first? He found the light and frantically fumbled to remove the batteries, put them back in properly, and turn it on. When he did, the flashlight beam revealed what he knew it must: he had been surrounded.

  There were half a dozen figures hunched in the tunnel ahead of him, and from the sounds behind, at least that many more were approaching. Some had thin white hair growing over their faces, while others held raised claws to shield their eyes from the light. Emery grasped hopelessly at his belt line, as though searching for his machete would make it appear. The pale forms drew slowly nearer, unhurried, sure that they would have their meal. Emery remembered the feeling of the skull in his hands. He wondered whose it had been and how that poor soul had ended up down here. The tunnel people before him drew nearer; Emery backed up until he felt hot rank breath on his neck. He wondered whether Juliet would retrieve Timothy and Miren's medicine from Dr. Hanssen, now that his errand was complete, or whether the doctor would refuse when Emery himself did not appear to claim it. The nearest of the tunnel people was within arm's reach now; it swatted Emery's flashlight from his hand. The light broke on collision with the floor, and the tunnel was perfectly dark again. A single tear escaped Emery's eye; he thought of the night he had found Lydia in his bedroom. He wished that he had asked her to stay. Their claws slowly brushed his neck.

  And then there was another light in the tunnel. Fire.