Passenger

by Andrew Smith

  “The ag school would be in that direction. If there’s a way out, that’s the way to go,” I said. “What do you think, Griff?”

  “I’m with you guys.”

  I looked at Quinn, then again at the other boys. “You good with that way, Quinn?”

  Ben sounded agitated. “You gonna let him vote, Jack?”

  “If he’s going to come with us, he’s going to own what he does.”

  “Then one thing,” Ben said. “I want to know what all that was about upstairs. When you nearly killed the fucker.”

  I shined the light straight at the center of Quinn’s chest. I wanted to see his face, and I wanted to be sure that Ben and Griffin saw him, too. Quinn’s T-shirt had a shark-mouth rip beneath one arm from when I’d grabbed it and thrown him against the firehouse door. His ghastly, alabaster skin looked unnatural, like it caught the light and glowed; his nipple was an orange moon hovering in a whiteout.

  “He made a deal,” I said. “Quinn traded me off to the Rangers. That’s why they were there; what all the shooting was about. They came to kill us, Ben. Well, they came to kill me. I guess they weren’t expecting a surprise.”

  Quinn’s eyes darted back and forth, between each of our faces. “I’m sorry, Billy. I didn’t know they wanted to do you harm. I swear it. All I knew was they were looking for you. I’m sorry I told them I knew you.”

  Quinn was lying. He had to be. He knew gamesmanship better than anyone. He wouldn’t do anything unless there was some object to gain. That’s why he’d been tracking prisoner 373, following me; why he’d left his knife behind so I’d find it at the dead man’s house, and been so prepared for his new “good friend” at the firehouse when we first paddled his fucking canoe across town.

  “What’d they trade?” I said.

  Quinn’s eyes kept flickering. I found it hard to believe the kid could possibly be embarrassed or even put on the spot, but his face turned visibly red when I pressed him about it.

  He cleared his throat—stammered. “Well, Billy. They’s only two things Rangers could give me that I wanted.”

  “What was it?” Griffin said.

  Quinn looked pleadingly at me. “Don’t be mad, Billy. I swear to you I didn’t know they wanted to hurt you.”

  “Sure thing, Quinn.”

  But I kept staring at him, so he’d know that I wanted to hear the truth about what he sold me out to the Rangers for. He took a deep breath. “They offered me a gun. Or…”

  “Or what?”

  “If I took a gun, I was sure they’d end up shooting me, Billy. You know how they are about Odds with guns. So, one of the captains … she … you know…”

  I couldn’t imagine. Well, I didn’t want to. I looked at Quinn’s face, and the kid really wasn’t lying this time.

  “She let you have sex with her?” I said.

  I could almost feel the embarrassed heat coming from Quinn’s pale skin. He looked down and pulled nervously at his dick.

  “Fucking pervert liar. Bull. Shit.” Griffin laughed.

  “I’m sorry, Billy. It’s just. I haven’t never—”

  “Shut the fuck up.” I didn’t know whether to laugh at Quinn—at whatever captain allowed a horny kid who looked more like a cave salamander to slime his way onto her—or punch him again. “And stop fucking calling me Billy.”

  “Sometimes I can’t help myself, Bill—I’m sorry. Truly I am.” Quinn sounded like he was going to start crying again. “It’s just … you know … an Odd’s rig calls the shots when it gets … well … desperate, and mine’s been thinking powerful thoughts on its own lately. So I figured if they were going to shoot me anyway, I may just as well allow my pecker to—”

  “He said shut up, Red.” Ben started walking off, into the dark. “Nobody wants to hear about it.”

  And when Ben had disappeared into the black, he yelled, “Dumb. Fucking. Idiot!” so loud that it echoed and rippled its way in every direction along the ribbed steel guts of the Under.

  But that was Quinn Cahill.

  He was definitely no more than I expected him to be, and I can’t honestly say I was ever surprised by anything he ever did anyway.

  * * *

  We walked through the dark, following Ben.

  It was reasonable for him to be in the front, and not just because he was frustrated by our situation and pissed off at Quinn. He had the weapon. There was no way Quinn would be getting the speargun back, or even asking for it, anytime soon.

  Griffin stayed close on my right. Even though he carried Ben’s spear, I could tell the kid was scared. Who wasn’t?

  Quinn paced himself, walking like a prisoner halfway between Ben and us.

  I never knew there was such darkness anywhere in Marbury. It seemed that every step we took, as we got farther away from the hole to the firehouse, distances distorted, became greater, and time—if it even existed here in the Under—slowed down.

  At least on the surface, there was some bland recognition of the passing of a colorless day into a washed-out night, but here in the Under, there was only the cool black and absolute quiet.

  I’d seen films of what it looks like in the deepest trenches beneath the ocean, but this was perhaps even lonelier, and scarier, too.

  We walked.

  Occasionally, we would kick things embedded in the dry dirt beneath our feet: bones; several shoes—I wondered why shoes seemed to last longer than anything else—corroded soft drink cans; and an entire television set, the kind with a glass picture tube—an antique in anyone’s world. Griffin uncovered a blue vinyl pouch, the type you’d use to organize roadmaps kept under the driver’s seat in a car.

  None of us were paying attention to his discovery. I think we were all nearly blind by concentrating our eyesight on the narrow and dim beams cast forward from our flashlights.

  “Fucking sick,” he said.

  I stopped, shined my light on him. “What?”

  “There’s a dried-up kid’s hand inside this thing. Look.” Griffin turned the pouch over and something that looked like a large gray spider fell out onto the ground at his feet.

  My stomach turned.

  “But I think this is a map, Jack.” He carefully pulled out a yellowed clump of folded paper, pinching it between two fingers like it was poisonous.

  “Let’s see that.”

  Ben and Quinn stopped, maybe fifty feet down the tunnel ahead of us. When Quinn swung his light around in our direction, the thing that had fallen from the plastic pouch—the hand—took off, skittering across the top of Griffin’s foot, away into the darkness. I tried keeping my light on it—whatever it was—but it was too fast.

  Griffin screamed and kicked wildly at the air. “Fuck! Shit!”

  He looked like he was dancing, and the paper he’d been holding fluttered away into the nothingness.

  “I don’t think that was a hand, Griff.”

  “What the fuck was that?”

  I could see Ben’s silhouette in the light cast by Quinn’s torch. He was walking back toward me and Griffin. “You guys okay?” he called.

  “Griff picked up something that was alive. It ran off.”

  “What was it?”

  “Shit!” Griffin said, backing away from his spot. “It was fucking disgusting, Ben.”

  Ben looked at me. “Harvester?”

  I shook my head. “We thought it was a kid’s hand. It looked like a hand. I don’t know what it was.”

  “Welcome to the fucking Nature Channel,” Ben said. “Hope whatever it was doesn’t eat boy meat.”

  He had to say it. I was certain at that moment we all were thinking about that kid’s skull hanging on the hook we passed.

  “But there was a map or something in there, too,” I said. “Griff flung it over there. Help me look for it.”

  I began scanning the ground with my light.

  Click. Click. Click. Click.

  Quinn came back, shaking his flashlight to recharge it.

  Click. Click. Click. Click. Cli
ck.

  Ben eyed the kid. He had a button-pushing, fuck-with-you look on his face. I’d been through enough with Ben that I could see what was coming, and I dreaded it.

  The last thing we needed down in the Under was for all of us to start getting on each other’s backs.

  And Ben said, “You shake that thing pretty good, Red. I bet you practice a lot, don’t you?”

  “Huh?” Quinn was reasonably clueless.

  Griffin laughed and spit. “Fucking grab my balls, pervert.”

  Quinn took one wide step over to Griffin and shoved the smaller boy’s shoulder, spinning him around. “You want to start fucking with me again, not-Ben?”

  “Hey!” I spun around and aimed my light directly into Quinn’s face.

  He stopped cold. Done.

  Click. Click. Click. Click.

  “Oooh … Ahhh … Rrredddd…,” Ben moaned.

  I felt myself getting hot. “Cool it, Ben. Please.”

  Quinn forced a laugh. “Heh-heh-heh … That’s a good one, Ben. I get it! And damned if I’m not pretty good at it!”

  Quinn angled the flashlight up, pointing out from his crotch.

  Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

  Griffin whispered, “What a fucking dork.”

  I ignored them. I scanned the ground behind Griffin. “There it is.”

  I bent down and picked up the folded paper. It could have been a hundred years old; it was so faded and clumped together. But it was a map. I glanced back to where Quinn was playing jerk-off with his flashlight, and my eyes followed his beam across the expanse of the tunnel.

  Where the light hit the ridges of the steel wall, I saw writing.

  “Holy shit.” I dropped onto one knee and aimed my flashlight at the words.

  Quinn was oblivious; his light epileptically darted all over the place, clicking and clicking.

  Griffin caught on first.

  “What the fuck is that, Jack?”

  I could only shake my head and stare.

  Quinn froze.

  “Don’t mind that, Billy. We sometimes used to come down here to play, is all.”

  “He’s a fucking liar.” Ben started across the dirt floor toward the smears of graffiti.

  I said, “What’s it mean, Quinn?”

  The kid dropped the beam of his flashlight down onto his feet.

  Quinn said, “Nothing. I told you we used to play down here, Billy. When I used to have other friends.”

  And on the wall, scrawled in thick rusty letters that advertised a kind of urgent warning:

  I WILL KILL YOU IF I CATCH YOU DOWN HERE AGAIN, QUINN

  Below it, in another hand, a response. Some of the letters were backwards, a jumble of lowercase and capitals:

  We all saw it.

  I shined my light directly at Quinn’s pale and expressionless face.

  “That was a game, Quinn?” I said.

  “I told you it was,” Quinn said. “We used to play like that down here.”

  “You and someone named Billy?”

  Quinn’s voice was low and unsteady. “I was just messin’ with you. Uh. Jack.”

  Ben stormed toward us. Even in the starved light cast forward by the torches I could see the great clouds of dust he kicked up with his feet.

  “He’s a fucking liar, Jack.”

  “We shouldn’t have brought him,” Griffin said.

  Quinn dropped his flashlight into the dirt and took off running, back in the direction of the ladder up to the firehouse. Maybe it was the darkness, but the kid seemed to almost fly.

  Griffin grabbed the collar of Quinn’s T-shirt, and the entire thing ripped from Quinn’s bony and luminescent body as he struggled to get away. Ben launched himself at Quinn, wrapping both arms around his knees.

  Quinn tried to kick free from Ben’s tackle, and his pants split right up the middle. He lost a shoe before Ben finally took the kid down.

  Then Ben was all over Quinn, punching, pulling his hair, slapping him with such force it sounded like a toy cap gun from another time when kids played games that didn’t involve hanging their enemies’ heads from spikes on the wall.

  “You fuckin’ kill that kid, you piece of shit, Red?” Ben panted and swung. “You fuckin’ kill your friend?”

  Ben brought his knee up, again and again into Quinn’s balls.

  “Get off him, Ben,” I said.

  I didn’t care what Ben did to Quinn Cahill. I just didn’t want Ben to hurt himself.

  “Ben?” I said.

  Ben Miller shoved himself away from Quinn.

  His arms were streaked with Quinn’s blood. Ben was a filthy, muddy mess. His eyes shone crazily like twin white stars in the dim light.

  He said, “I think we should kill him, Jack. I’ll fucking kill him if you think we should.”

  This is what Marbury does to boys like Ben.

  I looked at Griffin. I was taking a vote, and Griff knew it.

  Ben said, “We’d be better off if we just do it quick.”

  Griffin shook his head.

  “I don’t think we should kill him,” Griffin said.

  I stood over Quinn. His eyes were shut. There was a cut along the swollen ridge of his left cheekbone. Ben had knocked the kid out.

  I nudged Quinn with my foot.

  “Get up, Quinn,” I said.

  Ben walked out into the dark and threw up.

  This is what Marbury does to boys like Ben.

  I shined my light on Quinn.

  The kid was a mess.

  He lay on his side on the ground, curled up with both hands inside the rip in his jeans, holding his nuts.

  “Get up,” I repeated.

  eighteen

  We were tired.

  If we were above, we’d have been asleep for hours by now, but we pushed ourselves beyond exhaustion.

  We had no choice.

  And now we had learned a little more about Quinn Cahill, the King of Marbury. I couldn’t help but worry about the other wonders we’d find down here.

  Like Ben said, welcome to the fucking Nature Channel.

  Quinn struggled to keep up with us, but we pushed on as long as we could. None of us wanted to rest without some sign that we might get out of the darkness of the Under, but I knew the boys needed to find someplace where we could stop.

  I think it may have been the longest stretch of time ever in which Quinn Cahill said absolutely nothing. He just limped along, two steps behind Ben, who now carried the other flashlight. I walked at the back of our line.

  And I don’t know exactly who was worse off: Quinn, who’d been beaten and deposed by three kids who didn’t belong in his kingdom, or the three of us outcasts who’d likely never find our way out of this hole.

  Maybe we walked three miles; maybe it was three hundred feet. Who knew? But it was going to happen sooner or later: We came to a branch in the tunnel network and had to make another decision about which way to go.

  Ben and I stunk like corpses. Ultimately, the three of us ended up abandoning our shirts, having to use them for wipe rags to smear the burning dust away from our eyes.

  I tried telling myself that if we’d gone the other way—the way without the little bit of hair on the boy’s skull—that we’d already be dead. But that was a stupid thought.

  Billy.

  There was no escaping the idea that maybe if we were all dead, Ben, Griffin, and I would wake up back in their garage, or maybe stretched out on the deck beside their pool, lounging with Conner Kirk in the sunlight, talking shit to each other.

  Maybe.

  We stopped.

  Ben punctuated his question by aiming his flashlight. “Right, left, or straight?”

  The tunnel that intersected the one we’d been following was smaller; maybe only three-fourths the diameter, so it seemed darker, more cramped. It looked like something bugs would live in.

  “How about we sit down right here and get a little food and water in us?” I said.

  Griffin let out a big
breath of air. “I’m fucking tired, Jack.”

  I watched him peel the pack off, drop it, and in less than a second, Griffin was down in the dirt, stretched out, using his backpack as a pillow.

  I shined my light on Ben. We were all so filthy. We looked like pictures you’d see of trapped coal miners—all dirt, teeth, and wide, haunted eyes. Without saying anything, Quinn sat down on the ground beside Griffin, grunting a little, holding on to the crotch of his jeans to keep it from yawning open and letting anything out.

  He put his head down on the pack right next to Griffin’s, and then rolled onto his side like the kids were spooning or something. “I ain’t trying nothing, not-Ben. I’m hurt and I need to lay down.”

  Griffin kept his eyes shut. “You touch me and I’ll jab my thumbs so far into your fucking eyes you’ll be looking out your asshole.”

  Ben and I sat down.

  I took Griffin’s map out of my pocket.

  “Try to sleep if you want, Griff. Me and Ben will keep a watch out. But when I wake you up, you’re going to get your butt in gear.”

  “Okay,” Griffin mumbled.

  “And no complaining,” Ben said.

  I dug into the pack and pulled out one of our water bottles. We passed it around. Griffin drank some.

  We let Quinn have some, too.

  I unfolded the map, and it fell apart. I had to lay the little parched rectangles together like a mosaic, flat on the dirt between my legs.

  “You ever seen a map of this place before, Quinn?”

  Quinn didn’t move. He stayed on his side with one hand pressing the cut on his cheek and the other cupped beneath his crotch.

  “I never seen one, Billy. I heard about ’em, though.”

  “Anything else you heard about that you’re not telling?” Ben asked.

  Quinn didn’t answer.

  Griffin breathed like a little boy when he slept, nasal and deep. The kid could sleep anywhere, through anything, like flipping a light switch.

  I shined the light down on the puzzle of map lying in the dirt.

  “Fuck this place,” I whispered.

  “What do you see?” Ben leaned over, but he kept his own light pointed away from us. He was always watching.

  Here was a place called Glenbrook. The streets and highway interchanges were all laid out the same. I could have drawn the identical map from memory. But nothing else outside, away from Glenbrook, was the way it was supposed to be.