Bad Glass

by Richard E. Gropp

  Finally, Floyd’s grip loosened on my arm. “Just a little ways,” he whispered. “Just in and out.”

  I nodded and started forward.

  I tried to take pictures inside the tunnel, but the camera refused to focus in the dark and its flashes illuminated nothing but dirt—just dirt and more dirt, proceeding into the distance. I tried to take a candid shot of Floyd in the tunnel behind me, but he wouldn’t cooperate; he just pushed me forward with a frustrated growl.

  The tunnel slanted down. Its walls were marked with long regular grooves that looked too precise to be the work of unaided hands. Some type of earthmoving machine, I thought. Or a finishing tool, something to even out the dirt. The thin white wire was embedded in one of these grooves, about shoulder-high in the right-hand wall.

  “Do you know what Devon used to do?” I asked, trying to push aside the claustrophobic silence. “Before the city went to hell?”

  “I … I don’t know,” Floyd said. His voice was hesitant, shaky, torn between anger and fear. “Mac says he saw him working at a Jiffy Lube once, before all of this started, but Devon never says …” Floyd trailed off, suddenly lost in thought. “Wait a minute! Do you think he could be involved in this somehow? I mean, really involved? Do you think he helped get it started, working for the military, or terrorists, or something like that?” He paused abruptly, and when he continued, that brief spark of excitement was gone from his voice. Now there was nothing but breathless terror. “Or maybe he didn’t even exist back before all of this started. Maybe—”

  “Get a grip, Floyd,” I said. “You’re starting to sound crazy.” I swung the light forward, indicating the wire. “Let’s just follow the line and find out where it goes.”

  Floyd grunted at my abrupt dismissal, but he didn’t complain, following me wordlessly into the continuing dark.

  After a couple of hundred yards, the walls of the tunnel fell away, opening into a circular room about ten feet wide. A chill broke over my flesh as soon as we entered; it felt at least ten degrees colder inside this small space. The ceiling remained low, and we had to stay hunched over to keep from hitting our heads.

  I slowly panned the camera from left to right, spilling light across the dirt floor. There were tunnels reaching out in every direction, like spokes sprouting from a circular hub.

  “What the hell is going on?” Floyd whispered, moving up to my side. “Who could have done this?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I wouldn’t even think it was possible.” I moved to the mouth of the nearest tunnel. Its dimensions seemed to match the earlier passage: about five feet around, with a flattened floor. A trickle of wind blew in from the darkness. It smelled of autumn leaves and fresh clean snow. “There are no supports on the walls or ceiling, nothing to prevent a collapse.” I drew my finger through the damp earth at my side, watching as it spilled to the floor. “Nobody would do it this way. It’s too dangerous. Damn near suicide.”

  I turned and found Floyd perched on his knees in the middle of the room, his eyes pointed down at the floor. It was a strange position, and for a moment I thought I’d caught him in midprayer. Or maybe he’s fainting, I thought. Maybe this is all just too much for him and he’s ready to topple face-first into the dirt. Then he raised his hand and beckoned me over. He had his little flashlight out, and he was shining it down at a box embedded in the middle of the floor.

  The box was constructed from matte-black industrial-grade plastic. It had eight thin white wires sprouting from its squat body—two on each side—and a corresponding row of pinpoint LEDs glowed on its top. I turned and raised my camera, following a wire across the floor and into one of the gaping maws.

  “It’s a junction box,” Floyd said. “It links wires from all of these tunnels.”

  “A network?”

  “A secret underground network,” Floyd said, glancing up at the dirt above our heads. “And I mean that in both a literal and figurative sense.”

  After a moment of silence—both of us lost in thought—I stood up and started taking pictures of the box. “For Charlie,” I muttered when Floyd glanced up. “He knows about this type of shit, right? He might be able to tell us something.” The light from Floyd’s flashlight helped me focus on the box. I got a couple of midrange shots, then cranked the lens down into macro mode to catch the finer details.

  When I was done, I settled back into a crouch and started to flip through the pictures on the LCD screen. The pictures looked good. The focus was sharp, especially on the macro shots, and I could make out a product number on the box’s bottom edge: PDL-0001A.

  As the seconds stretched into minutes, Floyd started to fidget at my side. He stood up and paced the length of the room a couple of times, then moved over to the mouth of one of the tunnels. He pointed his flashlight down the tunnel’s length, but its meager light did nothing to illuminate that inky-black space.

  When I finished checking out my shots, I glanced up and saw his outline in the dark. Its edges were barely visible, gradients of gray in a sea of black. It was a beautiful scene: Floyd standing at the mouth of the tunnel, staring into its deepest, darkest heart. I raised the camera and took a couple of pictures. The strobe flash shattered the darkness, replacing black with omnipresent earthy brown. And in those brief instances, Floyd’s bright clothing stood out like a neon sign, a flare of color in an otherwise drab world.

  Suddenly, Floyd let out a startled gasp and stumbled back from the opening. The gasp was a panicked, frantic sound, a loud hisssssssss, like the sound of gas leaking from a pressurized tank.

  He dropped his flashlight, plunging the chamber into complete and total darkness.

  I fumbled with the camera, turning it back around and frantically working the buttons with my uninjured hand. By the time I had it lit, Floyd was at my side, his hand gripping my arm. “Did you see him?” he whispered, his face pressed up against my ear. “Down the tunnel? In the flash?”

  “I didn’t see a thing,” I said. “What is it? What did you see?”

  “It can’t be,” he whispered. “Those eyes, those eyes … like they were underwater, like they’ve been underwater for a year. Since … since …” Then a deep shiver ratcheted through his bones, stealing his voice.

  And I could see his fear. All of it. It was in his eyes, the scathing, terrified depths of the thing, that primal, bestial terror. He watched the tunnel for a couple more seconds, then abruptly turned my way, fixing me with that same unbreakable stare.

  “Let’s go. Let’s go right now!”

  He pulled me to my feet, not waiting for an answer, and plunged us into the nearest tunnel.

  Photograph. October 20, 10:50 P.M. Naked flesh:

  Abstract blur of Caucasian skin. Gold candlelight on open denim. The barest shape of an erection, jutting out of indigo blue. And stretched lips.

  It is a simple image. All blurred colors, with no sharp lines. Too abstract to be pornography. Too explicit to be art.

  At first, I thought we were lost. I thought Floyd had pulled us into the wrong tunnel.

  There was just dirt around us—damp, featureless dirt. Nothing to distinguish one tunnel from another, nothing to recognize, to cling to in the dark. We’ve come too far, I told myself. We should be in the cellar by now!

  I imagined us wandering, lost, through these tunnels.

  The camera battery would die soon. Without its light, the darkness and dirt would swallow us whole. And then we’d be really and truly lost. We’d be buried alive.

  Using our hands. Stumbling blind. Moving deeper and deeper underground.

  And what would that do to Floyd? I wondered, peering into the darkness ahead. He was already freaking out. Much more of this and he’d be a complete nutjob, panicked and hyperventilating.

  Finally, without warning, we reached the cellar. Floyd let out a loud sigh of relief, breath hitching in his throat. Then he pulled me from the mouth of the tunnel, out onto the concrete floor. When I paused, lifting the camera to view the empty room once a
gain, Floyd continued on without me, dropping my arm and darting ahead into the gloom. His feet made a terrible racket as he stumbled his way up the dimly lit steps.

  The door banged open above me, letting light into the cellar. After the darkness, that dim gray rectangle burned like a supernova at the top of the stairs.

  When I reached the foyer, I found Floyd sitting with his back against the front door. He was digging through his pockets. After a couple of seconds, he pulled out a pill bottle and spilled a couple of oxycodones onto his shaking palm. He bolted them down and closed his eyes, his entire body falling slack with relief.

  “What did you see?” I asked. When he didn’t respond, I tried again: “How about we talk about it?”

  “How ’bout we shut the fuck up?” Floyd replied, his anxiety rushing out in an exhausted gasp. “How ’bout we just … shut the fuck up?”

  He remained still for a couple of seconds. Then he hugged himself, rubbing at his arms like he was trying to get warm. “I was seeing things,” he said. “I just let my imagination get the best of me.”

  “Then tell me what it was,” I prodded.

  “Jesus fucking Christ, Dean,” he growled. His eyes popped open, and he fixed me with an angry glare. “This isn’t something I talk about, okay? So shut the fuck up! There ain’t going to be a tender moment here … and no fucking group hug!”

  He pushed himself up off the floor and threw the door open, storming out in an angry huff. After a couple of seconds, I followed, tracing his path back through the snow.

  As soon as I entered the house, I heard Floyd’s bedroom door slam shut up on the second floor. I thought about following him up but decided not to press my luck. He’d taken his pills. He’d be calmer soon. If he wanted to talk, he’d talk.

  “What was that?” Charlie asked, emerging from the kitchen. “It sounded like a freight train running through the house.”

  “It’s nothing,” I said. “Just Floyd. I think I pissed him off.”

  Charlie nodded dismissively, then turned back toward the kitchen. He paused at the threshold and looked back over his shoulder. “If you want to do your forum post,” he said, “you should get me your computer soon. I don’t know when Taylor’s friend’s going to show up.”

  I grunted my assent, then went upstairs to grab my notebook computer. I paused briefly in the hallway outside Floyd’s door. I could hear him pacing back and forth inside his room. Whatever he’d seen down there in the tunnels, he hadn’t escaped it yet. It was still with him, chasing him back and forth, back and forth.

  When I got back to the kitchen, Charlie popped open my computer and set it on the table next to his own. He immediately began shuttling through my file system, popping from window to window with uncanny agility. It was too fast for me to follow; his hands were a blur, careening back and forth atop the keyboard. After a couple of minutes, he made an encouraging sound and started typing code into his own machine.

  I let him work, turning my attention to the camera.

  The camera was getting dirty. Before coming to the city, I’d treated my Canon with great care. It was my prized possession, and I kept it clean, in pristine shape. In the last couple of days, however, I’d let all of that slide. Now I was dismayed to find dings and scratches all along its matte-black body. Not to mention the mud and the layer of grime where I’d been touching it with my dirty hands. I used the hem of my shirt to wipe away most of the mud, then removed the lens cap and turned the camera up toward the light. I could see specks of dirt all across the green-tinted lens, countless dots of black, marring my precision optics. I let out a deep sigh and replaced the lens cap. There was no way I was going to try to clean my good glass with a dirty shirt. I had a cleaning kit upstairs. I’d give it a good working over tonight, before I went to bed.

  After I finished inspecting the camera, I turned on the viewscreen and flipped back through the pictures I’d taken in the tunnel. Most of them were worthless. They were blurred, out of focus, or showed nothing but deep brown dirt. The pictures of the junction box, while technically fine, were incredibly boring; they were nothing but industrial detail with absolutely no hint of mystery or art. And the pictures of Floyd in the hub were too dark, his pale face floating in a sea of black, staring off into even more black. He could have been standing in any dark room, cave, or midnight forest.

  I zoomed in on the last couple of shots, trying to figure out what he’d seen in those brief camera flashes, but the pictures showed nothing new—just his face, contorted in sudden horror.

  I shook my head and scrolled back to a picture of the junction box. “Do you know what this is?” I asked Charlie, holding up the camera for him to see.

  Charlie glanced up from his notebook. His eyes swam for a couple of seconds—out of focus, as if he’d just surfaced from a dream—before he finally managed to lock in on the camera. He took it from my hand and studied the image. “It’s a networking hub.” He found the navigation buttons and began zooming in on different parts of the picture. “I don’t recognize the product number. PDL-0001A—I’m not sure what company that would be. It certainly doesn’t look like a consumer model.”

  “What does it do?” I asked. “What would somebody use it for?”

  Charlie shrugged. “Standard stuff. Connecting computers in a network.” He held up the camera and pointed at the image. “Those wires are heavy-duty coax, so this setup could potentially cover quite a bit of ground. And the LEDs on top? Each indicates a live connection—a computer, another hub, a printer—so there are at least eight nodes on this network. Possibly more if they’ve chained together additional hubs.”

  “Would it work for audio? Voice traffic?”

  “Sure. You could send pretty much anything down this type of line. As long as it’s digitized.”

  I nodded. I’d already guessed at most of these answers; it was all pretty standard stuff. It was this next bit I really wanted to know: “Let’s say you were able to get your hands on one of these lines, in the middle of a network. Would you be able to listen in? Would you be able to hear what’s going down the wire?”

  Charlie paused, a concerned look on his face. “Yeah. At least theoretically, you’d be able to sniff out all of the information flowing over the network. You might not be able to understand it if it’s encrypted, but you’d be able to get it.”

  I nodded and smiled.

  “What is this, Dean?” Charlie asked, moving uncomfortably in his seat. “Is this part of the military’s setup here in the city? Did you take this picture at the courthouse?”

  For a moment, I was tempted to tell him the truth. I was tempted to tell him all about Devon’s radio, and the tunnels, and the network hidden beneath the city. But finally I decided against it. He had enough to worry about. Besides, I wanted Taylor to hear it first. When it came to this house, and the people in it, she was in charge. She would know what to do.

  “It’s nothing to worry about,” I lied, forcing a smile onto my lips. “There’s abandoned computer shit all over the city. I was just wondering what it might be worth back home.”

  Charlie managed a surprised flurry of blinks. Then he offered up a sly smile. “Hell, if that’s your scam, don’t waste your time with this junk.” He held up the camera, indicating the junction box on its screen. “After I finish up with your forum post, I’ll point you toward the real moneymakers … for a small cut of the profit, of course.” He let out a loud laugh, then turned back toward his computer.

  There was a wide, boyish grin on his face as he got back to work. It was good to see him smile. For a time, at least, he actually looked his age.

  Taylor and Danny showed up a little after sunset, carrying a cardboard box filled with booze. Bottles of Wild Turkey and Bombay Sapphire.

  “Some guys in my unit went AWOL for a couple of days,” Danny explained, flashing a lopsided grin. “I covered for them, and they were so grateful, they brought me back some gifts. I thought I’d share the spoils.”

  We built a fire in
the living room and sat around drinking bourbon and gin out of mismatched glasses. Amanda and Mac joined us, but Charlie stayed in the kitchen, finishing up work on the thumb drive.

  “Where’s everyone else?” Taylor asked.

  “Sabine’s with Mama Cass,” Amanda said. “I think they’re working on something. Some type of project.”

  “And Floyd’s upstairs, brooding,” I added. “As for Devon …” I just shrugged. For all I knew, the tunnel had swallowed Devon whole.

  Or maybe he’s standing right across the street, I thought, watching us from his second-story window. Watching us drink. Taking notes. Planning diabolical plans.

  I stared down at the bourbon in my glass. It glowed gold in the firelight, shining like liquid honey. Those first few sips had hit me hard, heightening the effects of the oxycodone in my blood. I flexed my hand and felt the skin tighten around my wounds. The pain was still there, but distant, a tickle up and down the length of my forearm. Distant, as if I were experiencing a wound on someone else’s body.

  I glanced up and caught Amanda midsentence: “—so hard. I thought he was dead for sure!”

  “Yeah,” Danny said. “Fucker’s lucky to be alive. He fell three stories and walked away with nothing but a bad bruise and a sprained foot.” Danny paused, and a thoughtful look came across his face. “Of course, he hasn’t said anything yet, and we can’t figure out what happened. He’s in some type of … waking coma. The medics have to keep him sedated all the time; otherwise he tries to get up and walk away. It’s like that’s the only thing he knows how to do anymore. Walk. Like that’s the only thing left in his head.”

  I shivered, remembering how it had looked: the soldier plummeting from the hospital window, hitting the ground hard, then getting up and lurching away.