“You won’t listen,” he said. “You never do. Any of you. Every machine and dollar you make is bought with our blood. And we don’t ever get anything. Not even a memory. But one day they’ll remember. One day we’ll make them. We’ll make them remember all of us.”
Then Tazz turned away and walked down the pathway into the darkness. They heard his footfalls but after a while they did not even hear that.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
They were left alone in the tunnel. The other union men stood watching them, faces indistinct in the shadows, but Hayes barely noticed, lost in thought. The big one with the wrench lurched toward them and as he neared the stench of gin was overwhelming. A small man in a coat and hat came forward and pushed him back and said, “Easy there. Easy, Barney. Let’s get these folks home, all right?”
He turned to them and Hayes saw it was the man in the gray coat he had seen only a few nights before. He was a ratty little thing with an oversized nose and a wandering line of a mustache. He tipped his hat and said, “I’m Colomb. Mr. Tazz has assigned me the task of making sure you get out all right. Because we’re all peaceful-like, see? Very peaceful. Here, I’ll show you the way.”
He picked up a lantern and led them up into one of the other service tunnels. As they walked Hayes glanced behind them and saw the big guard staring at them, breathing hard. Others joined him, emerging from the shadows and watching their retreat with hungry eyes.
“Can’t believe you brought a woman down here,” Colomb said as he walked. “The idea of it. You’d get all dirty.”
“I’m fine,” said Samantha.
“Why in God’s name would someone do that, though? Must be crazy.”
“I needed someone else to hear,” Hayes said.
Colomb shook his head. “Just crazy is all.”
They walked up through the tunnels, guided by the weak halo of light projected by the oil lamp. Hayes asked, “How did you come to work for Mr. Tazz, Mr. Colomb?”
“Don’t know if I should tell you.”
“I’m just making idle chat.”
“I don’t think you make idle chat.”
They walked on. Eventually Colomb said, “I was fired. From valve control in the Vulcan facility. They said I was too old. Getting everyone else in danger. It wasn’t so. I just had been around so they were paying me more. And they didn’t want to do that. They could get someone to do it cheaper and maybe it wouldn’t be as good of a job, but so what? By their accounts it was better. I sent my little girl and my wife back to Idaho to live with her folks. Mr. Tazz gives me money to send to them. Five dollars a week. They do all right. I think they do all right.
“We came here looking for the promised land,” Colomb continued. “We didn’t find it. This place chewed us up and spat us back out. We’re not looking to Mr. Tazz for a general, Mr. Hayes. Not for someone to tell us who to hurt. Least, I don’t look at him like that. We just wanted someone to show us the way out of here. That ain’t so much, is it? And if he’s not going to help us, then who? You?” he said, nodding at Hayes.
Hayes said nothing. They continued through the tunnels and soon they heard the rattling of pipes and cars and trolleys. He figured they were perhaps thirty feet below the skin of the street. Maybe more.
“You’re closer to Mr. Tazz than others are, aren’t you?” Hayes asked.
“I guess.”
“And you perform a lot of his duties?”
Colomb shrugged.
“That’s how it works, isn’t it?” asked Hayes. “People do one small thing for this man they’ve never met. Ship a package. Open a door. And they don’t know who tells them to do it or why or what it’s going to do. They just blindly follow orders. And they all come from the top. Or nearabout.”
“You shut your mouth,” said Colomb.
Hayes smiled and closed his eyes and listened to the whine of anxiety that welled up inside the man. Suddenly Hayes smelled cool, smoky air and cold wind, and heard the clank and scream of an airship cradle about him. He did not open his eyes but still he saw the airship descending through the starry sky, its burnished belly black and glowing from the lights below. A massive thing that was almost alive.
Smooth and careful, said the man’s thought. Tomorrow night. Everyone does the transfer right or they don’t do it at all and then everything is lost. Everything, all of it.
Hayes opened his eyes. He and Colomb and Samantha were still trudging down the tunnel. Up ahead he saw ladder rungs and street light filtering through an opening.
“Here,” said Colomb. “Here’s where you go. Don’t ask me what street this is, I don’t know.”
“Fine,” said Hayes. “Should I go first or should you, Sam?”
Samantha sighed and began climbing up the rungs. Colomb studiously averted his eyes and stared at the floor. When she was up Hayes followed and Colomb stayed behind. Samantha bade him goodbye but he did not answer. Simply stood with the dimming lantern down in the underground, looking up at them. Then either he moved away or the light died. They could not tell.
Samantha and Hayes walked back through the streets. By their reckoning they were northeast of the Shanties. As they walked Samantha noticed Hayes was shivering. She was not sure if it was fear or if he was ill.
“Thank you for coming,” he said quietly.
Samantha did not answer.
“I was just worried. I knew I’d make it out of the meeting alive, but… but these past few weeks, I don’t know what’s going to happen. If I’m going to get up the next day or not. Something’s wrong with me. I’m… seeing and hearing things. This was important and someone else needed to hear it.”
“God,” said Samantha. “Just be quiet. Be quiet for once.”
“All right.”
They continued walking. Their legs were streaked with mud and their footsteps squelched as they walked.
“He knew Skiller,” said Samantha.
“Yes.”
“And he knew what you can do.”
“Yes,” said Hayes. “That’s something. Do you know how many people know about that that are still alive?”
“No.”
“To be honest, I don’t either. You could count them on one hand, I’d imagine. I think I got something useful out of Colomb, though. I picked it up very fast, I’m not sure why.”
“What was it?”
“He’s smuggling something out of the city tomorrow night,” Hayes said. “What, I don’t know. Where, I don’t know. I just know it’s by air, and it’s tomorrow.”
“Does it have anything to do with that machine?”
“No. I don’t think so.” He laughed bitterly and shook his head. “Did you see that thing on its corner? That lamp-thing?”
“I saw you staring at it.”
“Yes. Brightly showed me one a while back. Communication thingy. At the time he claimed that they weren’t due out for at least a year. And when they did come out, it would revolutionize the world. But when we saw Tazz’s device, there it was. They must have had working versions for years. If there was a revolution, I didn’t fucking notice. That thing doesn’t need miles of cable if it’s got a Sibling bleeping away on it. They must have every damn machine down there linked up the same way. I always knew they’d been keeping things from me, but I never knew how much.” He shook his head. “Sookie was right,” he said softly. “They don’t ever release anything unless they’ve already been using it.”
They turned down an alley to cut over to the canal road. They could see the lights of a tanker’s top deck crowning just above the buildings ahead as it slogged through the waters. It looked like a dreary little carnival spinning through the night sky, its strings of lights fluttering with the breeze.
“He seemed very composed,” said Samantha. “Mr. Tazz, I mean. He’s quite the orator.”
“An orator, maybe,” said Hayes. “But he wasn’t composed. I think he was absolutely terrified.”
“You could sense that?” she asked. “From that far away?”
“No. I just knew. I don’t have to have a gift to know when men are frightened.”
She thought for a second. “His cell actually was one-forty-five, though, Mr. Hayes. I remember.”
“Do you? Good for you.”
“But you said it was one-fifty-five.”
“Yes. I was just fucking him around. But I got what I wanted from him, didn’t I?”
“What do you think of it?”
“I think it troubles me very deeply.”
Samantha was about to ask why, but suddenly Hayes stopped where he stood. Then he turned around. “What?” she asked.
He shushed her and held up a hand, then turned to peer down the alley behind them.
“What?” she asked again.
He shook his head and took a step forward, still looking into the darkness.
Nothing moved. The alley was still except for the drip of water from an overhead fire escape. Then there was a whistling sound and something flew through the air, massive and heavy, and struck Hayes on the side of the head with a sharp crack. He fell to the ground, arms limp and crumpled underneath him.
Samantha shrieked and ran to him and turned him over. A river of blood began pouring from Hayes’s scalp, marking one eye, and he blinked drunkenly. “What was that?” he asked.
She looked on the ground beside him. A thick wrench lay on the cement, its handle dull red from where it had crushed the skin on his head. Then she heard feet pounding on the ground and out of the corner of her eye she saw movement. She turned just in time to see the big guard from before running up the alley toward them, and she tried to stand and run but he seized her arm and whirled her around and tossed her into a wall as though she were no more than a rag doll. The back of her head met brick and her whole body seemed to fall away from her. She slumped down to the cement, fingers uselessly searching for something to keep her upright.
She watched as the big man grunted and picked up Hayes and punched him three times in the face, all solid blows. Hayes tried to lift his hands to protect himself but the man threw him to the ground and savagely kicked him.
“Fucking pansy,” growled the guard. He stooped to pick Hayes up again, but somehow Hayes moved lightning-fast and his flick knife was suddenly buried in the side of the man’s arm up to the hilt. It happened so fast Samantha barely registered it, and she found herself wondering if the little ivory handle was just a bizarre ornament on the man’s coat. The guard roared in pain and slapped Hayes down and landed a solid kick on the side of his head. Hayes lay still, a curtain of his blond hair hiding his face from view, though it was now rosy with blood where it was close to his face.
“Fucking Newty pansies,” gasped the man. “Fucking little bastard.” He ripped the knife from his arm, groaning, and slender trickles of crimson began weaving out of his cuff and down his wrist and around his knuckles. “You’re all pansies,” he said, and threw the knife away. “All of you. Fucking lavenders is what you are.” When he turned to get his wrench he saw Samantha crawling away.
“No you don’t,” said the man. “No. No you don’t.” He stepped forward and gripped her by the ankle and dragged her to him. Her skirt slid up as she moved, revealing her legs and waist. The big man laughed and reached out to her and she screamed. He slapped her once, then again. His enormous hands grasped the sides of her head and pulled her close, his gin-breath filling her nose and mouth and filthy fingers smearing her cheeks.
“Ain’t you the cutest thing,” he said.
She tried to turn away, tried to resist the surge of vomit rumbling in her throat.
“Ain’t you just the cutest thing,” he said again.
“Stop,” said a voice.
The big guard dropped her and looked down the alley. There was a man standing there, gun held in both hands with its barrel expertly trained on their attacker. The man was streaked in mud from head to toe and his clothes were ragged and his eyes wild and furious. He was breathing hard and every movement he made screamed of murder.
“Get down on the ground,” said the man.
“Donald?” said Samantha breathlessly.
“Get down,” said Garvey again. “Get down on the fucking ground.”
“Little bastard,” said the big guard, taking a step toward Garvey. “You’re all little bastards. Not real men. Not at all.”
“Stop right where you are, goddamn you,” Garvey said.
“Little man,” he said, and reached for the wrench.
The gun went off. The flash was quick and muted but the crack was deafening in the tight alley. The man’s leg opened up and turned to shreds and he howled and tumbled to the ground, grasping his inside thigh. Garvey stood over him, eyes wide, watching the stream of smoke gently unraveling from the gun barrel. Blood pumping erratically through the guard’s knuckles. His eyes moved to Hayes, who lay moaning on the ground. After a second he walked to Samantha and knelt before her.
“Are you all right?” Garvey asked. He spoke faintly, as if he was not sure where he was.
“How did you…”
“I followed you. When I went to pick you up. I saw you leave.” He looked away as though he had forgotten something, and then turned back to her and said, “I lost my hat.”
“What?”
“My hat. I lost it. In the tunnels.”
“Donald, are you hurt?”
“What? No.” He thought again. “I shot a man, Sam,” he said, almost as though he were remembering something from long ago. “I shot him.”
“I know.”
Garvey looked at the man lying on the ground. “It’s a wound,” he said. “It’s only a wound.” Then he moved over to the man and took off his own shirt and wrapped it around the man’s thigh and cinched it tight. The man screamed in agony and Hayes moaned again and sat up.
“What going on?” he mumbled.
“Stay down, Hayes, you’ve been hurt,” said Garvey.
Hayes blinked through the ribbon of blood running down his right cheek and said, “Jesus fucking Christ, Garvey, did you shoot him?”
“Shut up.”
“Fucking looks like it to me.”
“Shut up.”
Samantha walked to the wounded man, legs trembling. She looked at the wound and felt her breath catch. “Oh, no,” she said, kneeling.
“Oh no what?” asked Garvey.
She knelt and began pulling back his makeshift bandages. They were already soaked a deep, dark red, so dark you could not tell what their original colors had been.
“What are you doing?” Garvey asked.
“No, Donald, no…” she whispered. “You… you hit an artery. There in his leg.” She shut her eyes grimly and began rewrapping his bandage.
“So? So what? Tie it tight and we can-”
“Donald, it’s… it’s very unlikely he’s going to survive this,” she said quietly.
Garvey stared at her, then down at the wound. “What? No.”
“Yes. He’s probably going to bleed out. Unless we get a doctor right now. And even if we do, it’s very doubtful.”
“God,” said Garvey. He began wrapping more makeshift bandages around the man’s leg. “We can just put on more, can’t we?”
“We’d need to sew the artery shut, Donald,” Samantha said, eerily calm. “And I don’t think that anyone will be able to do that in time. In fact, I’ve never seen it done in time.”
“He’s fine,” said Garvey. “It’s just a wound, for God’s sake. I just shot him in the fucking leg.”
Hayes pulled himself up, spat blood to the side, and looked at the wounded man. “She’s right, Garvey,” he said. “That man’s dead, he just doesn’t know it yet.”
The unioner moaned and tried to swipe at Hayes. He missed and his fingers dragged along the ground. Hayes ignored it and reached forward and grasped Garvey’s hand.
“Garvey,” he said. “You killed him.”
“Shut up.”
“You did, Garv.”
“Shut up.”
“You’ve killed him. You killed a unioner, Garvey.”
Garvey leaned into the wound a moment longer, then slowly relaxed. He looked at Hayes as though the words had struck him dumb.
“What?” he said softly.
“You killed a unioner,” Hayes said. “You need to run, Garvey. Get up and run. You can’t be found like this. You don’t know what they’ll do to you.”
“What?” he said again.
“You need to run, Garvey.”
“Donald,” said Samantha. “Please, Donald, come on, come and leave him.”
“Listen to her, Garvey,” Hayes said. “There’s no saving him. We have to go.”
Garvey sat back and looked at the man. The guard’s breath was shallow and ragged now. Then Garvey’s face tightened and his eyes went dead and he said, “Get me something else. Some other bandage.”
“Jesus, Garvey, we’ve got to move.” Hayes struggled to his feet and grabbed hold of Samantha’s arm.
“Get me something or get away.”
“Donald, if they catch you here with him that’ll be the end of it,” Samantha said. “The end of everything.”
Garvey looked at her. “I shot a man, Sam,” he said. “I’ll… I’ll call for help and try and get him to a hospital.” Then he shook his head. “Go. Get out of here. I won’t have you caught with me.”
“Donald, please.”
Garvey bound the man’s wound tighter. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I know you didn’t, but-”
“I didn’t do anything wrong. And that’s all that matters. I have to stay, Sam. I shot a man. I shot him. Someone has to do something.”
“Donald, please, come with us. We can leave. We can just… we can leave all this behind us.”
“No,” he said softly. “Don’t you understand? No. I can’t.” He looked at her a moment longer and then turned back to the body lying on the cement.
Samantha felt herself moving toward the mouth of the alley. She looked back and saw Garvey on his knees, streaked in filth and blood and still tending to the man’s leg. The man was ashen and pale now. Lips sluggish and white. His final moments watched over by the filthy, doomed creature beside him, who did not know him and never would, tending to the man’s injury as though there were no one else in the world but the two of them. Then Hayes pulled her forward and they were gone.
The Company Man Page 28
