by Chuck Wendig
“Kelly,” Nora gasps, the time for nicknames gone. The leader of the Get-Em-Girls hops off the back with a Louisville slugger and bashes a gobbo’s leg crooked, then caps the head. The two girls crash together in a hard hug. “How–”
“Long story. Here, you need this.”
She hands Nora a switchblade. The blade springs free with a click of the button.
Nora smiles.
His arm is dead weight, a slab of salami hanging off his body.
But the rest of his body still works. Even as his heart pulses like an old frog’s neck – lubdub, lubdub, lub…dub – he knows that what Nora said is true.
He’s the weapon here.
And what his Grampop said so many years ago is true, too: “You got a hard head, Mikey.”
Hard as diamond, but nowhere near as pretty.
He rolls his body over, using his dead arm like a bludgeon. Sorago doesn’t expect it and is bowled over. Mookie rolls with him. Pins him. Lies on him like a beached whale. The gun comes up, presses into his forehead–
Mookie jerks his head aside as the gun goes off. Bang!
Ears ringing. High-pitched whine. This is a test of the emergency broadcast signal…
He brings his hard head down against Sorago’s.
Once. Then twice.
A third time. Fourth, fifth, sixth.
He rears back one last time–
Sorago’s mouth fills with fresh venom to spit–
A switchblade buries into his forehead.
Nora presses it further. Then twists.
Crunch.
Sorago’s legs kick once. Then are still.
“You saved me,” Nora says. “I save you.”
The Vollrath work, unaware. Drill buzzing. Dynamite in tubes.
Suddenly, the first drill cuts out. Then the second. Engines gutter. Drills slow, then stick in the rocky holes they were drilling. Smoke curls upward in lazy circles.
The heads of the puppet-men turn and look.
Behind the drill stands a corpse-walker with a beet-red blister-face. He holds the power cords that connect the massive drills to the generator.
The generator still grumbles – a quiet chug compared to the growl of the drills – but the dead man has unplugged the machines from it.
And on the other side, a girl with a bleeding arm bends down and uses a small knife to cut the det-cord leading to the bundle of dynamite.
The Vollrath let go of the bodies. The men drop. Still alive. Barely.
SOMETHING HAS CHANGED.
The thought goes out, a frequency shared by all Vollrath.
THIS WILL NO LONGER BE OUR TIME.
Then:
WE RECEDE UNTIL
And the Vollrath sink through the floor, escaping the Shallows. Returning to the Tangle from whence they came.
Nobody is answering on the other end of the walkie-talkie.
“The Vollrath are leaving,” Vithra growls.
“Shut your mouth,” Candlefly snaps. Suddenly this nice day is as gray as the sky above. He tries to raise Sorago. “What’s going on down there? Over.” Just an empty radio hiss.
“Something’s changed.”
“I said, shut up.”
He grabs the button, hits it with the flat of his palm.
There’s a buzz and a crackle.
The det-cord, so he understands, is fast. Many times the speed of a bullet. Miles away but traveling ten thousand feet per second…
There should be a boom right about–
Now.
Nothing.
No distant whump.
No earth shake.
How irritating.
“You,” he says, pointing to Vithra. “Go.”
“What if I say no?”
“Then your monster-god brethren get to stay down in the dark and I turn you off like a light-switch. You said it. Something’s changed. It’s gone wrong, and I need you to fix it. Now go.”
The old man’s face stretches into an inhuman sneer. “As you wish.”
He heads toward one of the tunnels branching off of the quarry.
They fade through the rock. The reaper-cloaks abandon their men and are gone. Leaving Sandhogs behind, bloody but breathing.
Mookie stands. Arms useless. Heart barely thudding. He feels like a heavy stack of bricks on the back of a donkey – swaying left, swaying right. But still he stands. Thanks to the Blue Blazes shooting through him like a hot jet of magma.
“Thanks,” is the only word he can manage. He says it to everyone.
“We shoulda let you die,” Burnsy says.
Skelly punches him in the arm. Mookie gives her a rare smile. He knows it’s an ugly thing, his smile: all lop-sided, his underbite forcing his teeth to poke out over his upper lip. But she smiles back. And winks at him. A small moment, but one that makes him happy.
Nora links her arm in his. “We better get you–”
The radio at Sorago’s hip crackles.
“Sorago. Answer me. Over.”
They share a look. The radio hisses. “What’s going on down there? Over.”
“They’re up there,” Nora says. “Waiting.”
“Motherfucker was probably gonna be the one pushing the plunger on this dynamite,” Burnsy says. He walks over and yanks on the sheared det-cord, pulling a dozen sticks of dynamite from their hole.
“Not a plunger,” Mookie rasps. “Button.”
Burnsy grabs his crotch. “I got your button right here.”
“Would you guys be quiet?” Skelly says. “You hear that?”
“Hear what?” Burnsy asks, but she shushes him, taps her ear.
Somewhere far off is an infernal roar.
“What is that?” Nora asks, voice low.
“Him,” Mookie says. “The Boss.”
“Oh, shit,” Nora says.
Skelly pales. “I saw… I saw what he can do.”
“We have to go,” Nora says. “We have to leave.”
“But where? How?” Skelly asks. “This is a dead-end. And the way out is a one-way street straight toward–”
The wail and roar again. Closer this time.
“We can’t fight him,” Skelly says.
“I’m gonna have to,” Mookie says. Everything hurts. He can barely lift a fist to swing it. If only he had the Red Rage. Maybe he could grab some dynamite and… “Hold up. I got an idea.”
His voice is sluggish. Mush-mouthed. But he tells them in a string of broken words.
Burnsy’s blistery lips twist into a dramatic frown. “I fucking hate you, did I ever tell you that?”
“Sorry.” Mookie shrugs. “Better hurry. Gotta get these fans set up.”
Vithra runs on all fours, loping forth like the spawn of the Devil and the meanest wolf in the woods. His long limbs spring him forward, leech mouth squirming and gnashing. Claws clicking on concrete.
He’s going to kill them. Whoever is here, he’s going to rip them into so many ribbons. Then decorate himself and the walls. The idea thrills him. To make something pretty out of so much blood.
He hates humans. Disgusting things. The hairless apes crawled out of the trees and claimed dominance over the land and sea and sky. And he and his brothers and sisters were forced to stay down in the dark with the earthworms and voles and eyeless crickets. It was the daemons – daemons like Candlefly – who forced the Hungry Ones into the deepest pits and would do so again given half a chance. And it was the humans who kept them there. Millennium after millennium.
But with the city gone, they will have a kingdom once more to call their own.
He’ll find a way to dispatch Candlefly. The man is arrogant. He oversteps his bounds. He will leave an opening, and Vithra will crawl through it.
But first, the end of this tunnel. The blast didn’t work. It won’t matter. He won’t need dynamite. He’ll use his claws. His teeth. The whole of his body. He’ll launch himself into the rock and tear through it like he’s tearing through some poor fool’s belly to get to his guts.
/> The tunnels will break and the water will flow and he will swim in it as the city above goes thirsty. As the men are moved out. As the monsters move in.
Ahead is a haze of smoke. Whirling like a sideways cyclone.
He hears the thrum of distant fans.
He cares little for the machinations of man. He continues forward.
Hungry. Always hungry.
It’s then he sees something ahead–
Something smaller than him. Racing forward with equal speed.
A beast of the Great Below, he thinks.
But then he sees. It is no beast.
It is a machine. On four wheels.
Vithra howls at it in rage.
Nora presses the walkie-talkie button, holds it to Mookie’s face. He clears his throat. Tries to get his growl on, sound as much like Sorago as he can manage.
“Detonate,” he says. “Over.”
Candlefly hears it and laughs.
He punches the button.
Vithra leaps over the quad. It passes underneath as he hits the ground again.
Trailing behind are a dozen sticks of dynamite. Connected to the braid of det-cord.
There’s a sizzle. The cord burns.
The man that was once Konrad Zoladski is caught in a wave of fire. Hot white heat hits him like a tractor trailer. But there’s something else, too – an intricate cage the color of bronze. It breaks apart, spears of metal tearing through him–
And with it, a howling specter. A face, familiar. Casimir. His grandson. (Is he even Konrad Zoladski anymore?) The specter is a torn ribbon, a rain of knives, a howling mouth and a thousand eyes. Wraith-hands, hands of wrath, plunge into his mutated flesh and rend it asunder and fire fills the gaps.
Then the wave of white is gone, buried in darkness as the lights go out and the tunnel crashes down around him.
A fresh wave of smoke blows in, but the giant fans, running on generators, push it back. Burnsy sighs. “She was a good girl, that ride. God bless America.” He holds his hand over his chest and stands stiff.
“Guess we timed it right,” Nora says.
Burnsy drove the quad forward, the accelerators held down with electrical tape – he bailed off the back soon as he got it going in a straight line.
Skelly leans against the wall, exhales a heavy breath. “Are we done?”
They listen. No more bestial sounds from the dark.
“Think so,” Mookie says. It feels like his voice is coming back. The venom is still in him, but his heart is picking up the pace. Returning to the normal drum-beat he hears in the hollow of his head.
The radio crackles.
“What happened? Who is this? Over.”
Candlefly’s voice. They share a look. Mookie grabs the walkie with a numb hand, uses the meat of his palm to press the button.
“You’re damn right it’s over,” Mookie says. “All your buddies are dead, Candlefly. Tunnels One and Two are intact. You should run. Because I’m going to come for you soon as I see daylight. And when I find you, I’m going to tear you into hunks like a piece of fresh bread, and I’m going to dip those parts of you into your own blood.”
Then Mookie drops the walkie and stomps on it.
“Did you really need to stomp on the radio?” Burnsy asks.
Mookie shrugs. “Felt good.”
“Let’s find our way out of here,” Skelly says.
Water Tunnel #3 is collapsed. No way to get past it. And no Boss-thing corpse in sight. Down here it’s dark, and they’re thankful Burnsy brought a pair of headlamps.
Mookie directs them toward another bolthole. It will take them back out, he says, toward the Canal Street station. They walk for a while in the underground. They don’t talk. Occasionally they hear the wail and gibber of a goblin in the distance.
A sound, it seems, of the madness born of mourning.
As they walk, Nora starts to feel it. She almost forgot, almost felt normal.
But then–
It’s just an itch, at first. A twinge in her belly. Then a tickle over her flesh like the tiny legs of a thousand ants dancing. Anxiety begins to crawl up inside of her. Soon it’s more than that; it’s full-bore panic, scrabbling and slamming itself against the walls of her mind. Sweat pours out of her. Her mouth is dry as a desert wind. Her hands curl into claws; the muscles in her legs start to clench and cramp.
They get to an old rusty door with a cracked wire-frame window.
A subway train blasts past on the other side. Lights strobing.
Mookie goes to open the door.
She cries out.
He stops. Turns. The headlamp light shines bright in her eyes. She can’t see his face, but he can see hers and she wonders how she looks. If it’s half as bad as she feels–
“What’s wrong?” he asks, pulling her close.
“I can’t… go.”
“What?”
“I can’t go with you. Out… up. Back.”
“You’re not making any sense.”
She stifles an unexpected sob. “I’m… different. I belong here.”
“Nobody belongs here,” Skelly says. She pulls Nora close, but Nora draws away – her touch feels like burning. “Nora, whoa–”
“Oh, God,” Nora says. “It was the mushrooms. Wasn’t it?”
“You’re on mushrooms?” Skelly asks.
Burnsy steps past. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. What mushrooms?”
“We found the Death’s Head,” Mookie says. “It’s a mushroom. She was… dying. Dead. I gave it to her…” He pulls them out of his pocket: the glow is gone. They’re shriveled and dry like little dessicated organs.
“Aw, shit,” Burnsy says. “Mookie. Nora. I’m so fuckin’ sorry.”
“What?” Nora asks. “What is it?”
“You’re right. You can’t leave. You’re… part of this place.”
“No, no, no,” Mookie says. “That’s bullshit. I can pick her up right now, and we can get the hell out of here.” He reaches for Nora, but she pulls away. She pulls away from all of them. Begins backing down the tunnel. Even receding ten feet calms her pulse-beat, lessens the itching.
“I’m fine,” she says. Suddenly puffing out her chest. Holding up her chin and blinking back tears. “I can handle it.”
Stay tough, she thinks. Take this like you’ve taken everything else. Suck it up, you stupid girl. Even still, her hands dart out, brace herself against the walls of the passage so she doesn’t collapse. Don’t let him see you like this. Don’t let him see you weak.
Mookie reaches for her, but she pushes him away.
Burnsy leads Mookie off and she hears the dead man telling him, “Mook. Listen. The stories about the purple skull – I didn’t know it was a mushroom, but people talk just the same. Always figured the old tales were bullshit but…It’s like the myths, right? Inanna or Orpheus or–”
“I don’t know shit about that!” Mookie roars, and he picks up Burnsy and slams him against the wall. “Don’t you fuck with me, Lister.”
Burnsy talks fast. “I’m just saying I’ve done some reading since I been down here and the old stories say that when you eat of the Underworld, you can’t always leave. Now, that ain’t universally true – shit, the Blue stuff alone makes that clear – but I’ve heard that the Death’s Head is different. That it’s like a trap. It keeps you alive but it also…keeps you, you know what I mean?”
Nora can’t help it. She turns around. Faces away. Arms crossed. The stance of the petulant teen, she thinks, but it helps her. Calms her not to look at them. Her eyes forward, staring down the passage, she can’t help but think: Is this really my home now? This horrible place? She still feels a hard pit in the middle of her. Like a hard stone in the space between her heart and her stomach.
Skelly holds her hand. For a while they just stand. Like people at a funeral, the awkwardness of their grief laid bare. Mookie presses his head against the stone wall of the passage. Burnsy looks down.
Finally, Nora says, “I said I’ll be OK, so
I’ll be OK.”
“You can come to Daisypusher,” Burnsy says. “We’ll get you a place.”
“Living among the dead,” Nora says. She just barely manages to stifle a sob. “Awesome. Love it. Let’s do it.” She hears the sarcasm in her voice and feels a stab of shame.
“Better than dying.”
“What happens if I go out there?” she asks. “What happens if I leave?”
Burnsy shrugs. “Not sure we want to find out. Not today.”
“OK. OK.” She sniffles. “Let’s do this. Let’s go.”
She starts to storm forward, back down into depths. Mookie catches her shoulder, but she pulls away. He turns toward the others, asks, “Can you guys give us a minute?”
Skelly kisses her on the brow. Then she goes through the door. Burnsy nods, gives her an awkward clap on the shoulder. He follows after Skelly.
“This can’t be true,” Mookie says. “I’m gonna try to get you out.”
“Good for you. I don’t need your help.” She knows she sounds like a little bitch, but the words keep coming. “Go home, Mookie.”
“Don’t.” He pivots her, looks in her eyes. “Don’t do this. Not now. Don’t pull away. I’m your dad. You’re my baby girl. For a long time I couldn’t take care of you and I’m not gonna lose you now. Not to this place. I’ll fix this.”
She sucks in a deep breath. Hesitates. But then: “OK.”
“OK?”
“I said OK.”
“I love you,” he says. “And I’m so sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too.” Those words, a stone thrown that shatters the whole dam. Waters flood. Drown her. Tears fall. Her cheeks feel warm and wet as her nose starts to plug up. “I love you, too.”
He pulls her close. Wraps his one arm around her. It’s strong enough for three, four arms. “I can stay a while if you want.”
“It’s OK. I’ll go with… Burnsy, is his name?”
“Yeah. He’s all right.” Mookie pauses. “I killed him. A while back.”
“Oh.”
“I know. But he’ll get you squared away. I’ll bring blankets. And food. Anything you need. You still like those little – shit, what are they called? The little chocolate buttons with the tiny white dots–”
