The Manhattan Hunt Club

by John Saul

  “Not cattle,” Jinx replied. “Don’t you get it? They’re running game.”

  “That’s all it is?” he asked, his voice reflecting his outrage. “A game?”

  The girl fairly glared at him this time. “Not ‘it’! You. You and that other guy. Don’t you get it? You’re not cattle—to the hunters, you’re just game. Like rabbits, or deer, or anything else people hunt.”

  Jeff felt numb. “And the people down here really help them?”

  “Why wouldn’t they?” Jinx asked, shrugging. “People die down here all the time and nobody gives a shit. Half the time nobody even knows who the bodies are. So if someone wants to pay us just to keep someone else from gettin’ out, what’s the big deal?”

  Jeff eyed her warily through the gloom. She couldn’t have been more than fourteen or fifteen, but there was a hard edge to her that told him she’d been on the streets for a while. “So why shouldn’t I think you’re just another one of the herders?”

  Jinx looked at him as if he were stupid. “They only use guys for that. Big guys. Like I could keep you from doing anything? Jeez!” Then, out of nowhere, she asked, “What’s your dad look like?”

  “My dad?” Jeff echoed. “What’s my dad got to do with—” And then it came to him. So much had happened since Tillie had thrown them out of the rooms she called the co-op that he’d almost forgotten the faint voice he’d thought was calling his name. “I thought I heard him,” he breathed, almost to himself. “But—” He cut himself short, studying Jinx carefully. What could she possibly know about his father?

  “There was a guy in the subway station,” she said, eyeing him almost truculently now. “The one at Columbus Circle. He showed me a picture of you.”

  “What did he look like?” Jeff asked, his pulse quickening even as he told himself it couldn’t possibly have been his father. Why would his father even be looking for him? And if somebody had seen him running into the subway, it was a lot more likely it was the police showing his picture around than his father.

  “I guess he was a little shorter than you,” Jinx was saying. “Kind of good-looking—blue eyes and blond hair.” She cocked her head, studying his face in the dim light. “He looked kinda like you, I guess, except for your hair and eyes. Except your eyes are shaped the same. Just a different color.”

  “What about the picture?” Jeff asked, struggling to keep his excitement under control.

  “It was you. Looked like you were younger—like maybe in college or something.”

  Jeff’s heart raced at the description of the picture his father always carried in his wallet. “What did he say?” he asked, no longer trying to keep his voice steady.

  “He just wanted to know if I’d seen you,” Jinx replied. “I was telling him about the hunters being after you when—” Now it was Jinx who faltered, but then she took a deep breath and finished. “Well, the transit cops came and I had to split. They don’t like me much.”

  Jeff barely heard her. If his father was looking for him, then who else was? His mind was racing now, trying to sort it out. How had his father known where he was? Could it have been the cell phone? But if Heather got his message, or his mother heard him before the phone went dead—

  But if his father knew he was still alive, wouldn’t the cops know, too? “What about the regular police?” he asked. “Were they in the subway, too?”

  Jinx rolled her eyes. “They only go in the subway if they want to go somewhere, and they won’t go in the tunnels at all. Bunch of chickenshits, if you ask me.”

  Jinx suddenly froze, and when Jeff started to speak, she grabbed his arm and put her finger to her lips.

  From somewhere off to the left, Jeff heard a sound.

  Footsteps.

  Footsteps that seemed to be coming closer.

  He glanced around. A few yards farther along there was a narrow passage he’d made his way through shortly after he’d left Jagger. If he led Jinx through it, he’d have no choice but to take her to Jagger as well. If she were lying, and working for the hunters, he would have led them right to the man who had already saved his life at least once. But if he didn’t go through it—if he went in another direction and couldn’t find his way back . . .

  Then he would have abandoned Jagger completely.

  Making up his mind, he signaled Jinx to follow him and started toward the passage, moving carefully so his feet made no sound. They came to the passage, and Jeff slipped into it, Jinx right behind him. He moved as quickly as he could, but the passage seemed endless, and now he thought he could hear the footsteps again, moving faster.

  Coming closer.

  He came to the end of the passage, turned left, and pulled Jinx after him. Both of them instinctively pressed their backs against the wall, struggling to control their breath as they listened.

  In the distance they once again heard the sound of footsteps.

  A pause.

  On the wall opposite the end of the passage, a brilliant red dot appeared.

  It moved over the wall, back and forth, working steadily downward until it reached the floor.

  Laser sight, Jeff thought. He’s got a laser sight on a night scope, and he’s using the scope to look for me.

  The crimson dot vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, and then they heard the footsteps fading away.

  As Jeff was about to move deeper into the tunnel, Jinx’s hand closed on his arm, holding him back. “Listen,” she whispered.

  Once again Jinx’s ears had proved better than his own. Off to the right, in the opposite direction from which he’d originally come, he heard the faint sound of water dripping.

  A little more than fifty yards up the tunnel, they found it—water was steadily oozing from a crack in the ceiling, a drop forming and falling every second or two. His thirst suddenly overwhelming him, Jeff held his finger up to the drip, caught one, and put his damp finger into his mouth.

  The water tasted clear and fresh, and he was seized with an almost overwhelming urge to put his mouth to the crack in the ceiling and try to suck the moisture out.

  Instead he put the paper cup under the drip and forced himself to wait until the cup had filled.

  He drank only enough to slake the terrible dryness in his mouth, then filled the cup once more.

  “Aren’t you going to drink it?” Jinx asked as Jeff started back down the passage, carrying the cup of water as carefully as if it were filled with gold or diamonds.

  “Jagger needs it more than I do,” he said. “After he’s had a drink, I’ll come back for more.”

  They weren’t going to find Jeff.

  Heather wasn’t sure exactly when the thought first entered her head, but the deeper into the tunnels she and Keith ventured, the stronger its grip on her mind became.

  She had no idea where they were. Though she’d done her best to keep track of every turn they’d made, every passage they’d crept through, every ladder they’d climbed or crumbling wall they’d scaled, she had long since lost any sense of direction. The semidarkness itself was disorienting, though it hadn’t been too bad when they’d still been near the surface, when she’d actually been able to catch glimpses of daylight now and then. Even the few rays of afternoon sun that penetrated through the scattering of grates that appeared here and there over her head were enough to keep her from feeling utterly lost. But since they’d fled down the shaft after hearing the sound of a door closing—a sound that would have been perfectly ordinary on the surface, but had seemed alien to the strange world of the tunnels—she’d been struggling against a rising tide of fear that was now edging toward panic.

  Stop it, she told herself. We’ll be all right. We will find Jeff, and we will get out. But when Keith, leading her by half a step, stopped and put a hand out to keep her from moving forward, all the fears she had barely held in check nearly broke free. She might even have cried out if Keith hadn’t clamped his hand over her mouth, then held his finger to his lips. Her heart pounding, she strained to hear whatever it was tha
t had spooked him, and a moment later, when her pounding heart finally began to settle back into a normal rhythm, she heard it.

  Footsteps.

  Slow, irregular footsteps, as if whoever was making them was frightened of something.

  Or stalking something?

  The thought came to Heather out of nowhere, and she tried to banish it.

  They were approaching a crossroads where the passage they were following intersected with another. The dimly lit area ahead was empty, and she couldn’t tell from which direction of the tunnel the footsteps were coming, but they were definitely getting closer. She was afraid that at any second whoever was approaching would appear around the corner, and then—

  Keith’s grip tightened on her arm, and when Heather turned to look at him, his eyes were boring straight into hers and his lips mouthed two words.

  Two words that her rising panic made utterly incomprehensible until he spoke out loud a second later.

  “Where’s tha bottle?” Keith slurred. “Didn’t lose it, didja?”

  Then the words he’d mouthed came into perfect focus: Play drunk!

  “Threw it away,” Heather mumbled back. “Was empty anyway.”

  “Fuckin’ bitch,” Keith said, a little louder now, and moving unsteadily toward the cross tunnel that lay ahead. “Thought I tol’ you not to drink it all.”

  Heather shuffled after him, her hair over her face.

  A figure stepped out of the intersection then, turning to face them. Heather knew he wasn’t one of the people who lived in the tunnels, for there was nothing about him that suggested that he was a drunk or a junkie, or any of the other down-on-their-luck people who had been exiled to the tunnels.

  This man faced them with a demeanor of utter self-confidence and authority, an authority strengthened by the ugly rifle he cradled in his arms. Its hard metal surfaces gleamed even in the dim light of the overhead bulbs, and the magazine protruding from beneath its stock told Heather it was some kind of automatic. There was a telescopic sight mounted above the short barrel, and the ease with which the man held the gun told her he would have no trouble using it. He carried a small backpack and was clad entirely in black like a figure out of a movie. His face was so smudged with black makeup that his features were totally obscured. He seemed puzzled that he’d run into them.

  “Hey!” Keith said, a goofy smile spreading across his features. “Got anything to drink?”

  The man ignored the question. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, his voice every bit as imperious as his stance. “There’s a hunt going on—you people are supposed to stay clear of this sector.”

  Keith raised his hands in mock horror. “Well, pardon me all ta hell. Nobody didn’t tell us about no—” He wove slightly, leaning forward as if he couldn’t quite make the man out. “Wha’d you say was goin’ on?”

  The man’s expression darkened. “Never mind. Just get out of here.” He jerked the muzzle of the rifle toward the far end of the passage they were in. “There’s a shaft about three hundred yards farther along. It will take you up to the subway tunnel. After that, just find a station and get out.” His lips twisted into an unpleasant smile. “And try not to get hit by a train—it messes up the tracks.”

  “Hey, anything you say,” Keith slurred amiably. “Don’t want no trouble . . .” He took Heather’s arm and began steering her along, and she did her best to match his shambling stagger. “Jus’ lookin’ for a drink,” he muttered as they started past the man. Then, just as he came abreast of the man, Keith appeared to stumble, bumping into him. The man, startled, instinctively pulled away, raising his gun as if to fend Keith off. In an instant, Keith’s foot lashed out, his shoe catching the man in the dead center of his crotch.

  Wracked by a spasm of agony so paralyzing that only a strangled sound escaped his throat, the man collapsed to the floor, his fingers reflexively tightening on the rifle as he went down. Even before he hit the ground, Keith had pulled his own gun from the waistband of his pants and lashed it across the man’s temple. Shuddering, the man sprawled onto the floor. His whole body trembled for a second, then he lay still, blood oozing from the deep gash in his scalp.

  Heather stared at the crumpled body in horror. “Is he . . . dead?”

  “Doubt it,” Keith muttered, already on his knees, rifling through the man’s pockets. “He’ll be asleep for a while though—it’s not like in the movies, where they wake up two minutes later and start chasing people again.” He took the man’s wallet and put it in his own pocket, then pulled the backpack loose and handed it to Heather. Last of all, he took the man’s braided nylon belt and used it to tie his wrists and ankles behind his back. “Just in case he wakes up,” he said. Picking up the rifle, he stood and peered down both the intersecting corridors. There was nothing in the darkness, at least as far as he could see. He nodded in the direction in which the man had been moving. “Unless you’ve got a better idea, it seems like we ought to go wherever he was headed.”

  Heather gazed down at the unconscious man lying in the muck on the floor. “What if someone finds him?”

  “Then they’ll know it’s not going to be quite as easy as they thought.”

  As he started down the passage, Heather fingered the backpack. “Shouldn’t we see what’s in here?”

  “We will,” Keith assured her. “But if any of this bastard’s friends come along, I don’t want to have to explain what I did.” Turning away, he moved deeper into the tunnel, Heather following him.

  The first rat had caught the scent of blood within a few seconds after Keith’s gun had slashed through the fallen man’s scalp, and by the time Keith and Heather had disappeared into the gloom, half a dozen of the creatures were slinking toward the unconscious body.

  They approached it warily, knowing that this kind of animal could be dangerous, but as they crept closer and it failed to move, they became bolder.

  Two of them slithered close enough to sniff at the blood, dipping their tongues into its warm saltiness.

  Three more joined them.

  Soon four more appeared out of the darkness, and another dropped down from a ledge where it had remained concealed from the moment the man had first arrived.

  They began nibbling at the man’s fingers first, and when he made no move to jerk away, moved quickly on to his arms and his face, his legs and his torso. Then, as the skin and flesh were torn away and the internal organs were exposed, the cockroaches and ants began to swarm out of the darkness to join in the feast.

  By the time the man in the coal black clothes died, nearly a quarter of his body weight had been consumed by the voracious creatures of the darkness.

  He was awake for the last few minutes of his ordeal.

  Awake, but not screaming.

  His vocal cords had already been eaten away.

  CHAPTER 34

  “That man is going to die, isn’t he?”

  Heather and Keith had been moving swiftly since leaving the fallen man lying unconscious in the muck, both of them silently keeping track of the turns they took, counting their steps. Keith had come to a halt a moment ago, pausing just outside one of the pools of light cast by the widely spaced bulbs in the low ceiling of the utilities tunnel. His body had fairly quivered with tension as he held up a finger to keep Heather from speaking, and both of them had strained to hear, searching for any noise that might betray the presence of another human being.

  All they had heard were the faint scraping sounds of rats creeping along the concrete.

  Satisfied that they were at least temporarily alone in the tunnel, he moved closer to the light, and while Heather dropped down to rest on a large pipe, Keith rifled through the backpack the man had been carrying. Only when Heather asked her question did he look up.

  “He might,” he said. “He would have killed us. As soon as we were past him, he was going to shoot us.”

  Though she heard the words clearly, Heather’s mind rejected what Keith Converse had said. Why would the man have kill
ed them? He didn’t know them, had no idea who they were.

  “It’s why he didn’t send us back the way we came,” Keith explained, sensing Heather’s uncertainty. “He wanted us close to him, close enough so he couldn’t miss.”

  “You don’t know that,” Heather said, her voice low. “Why would he—”

  “We saw him,” Keith said. “We saw his face. As soon as he said we weren’t supposed to be there, I knew what he was going to do.”

  “Then why didn’t he just do it?” Heather demanded, and Keith could hear her desperation, her need to believe the man would have let them pass unharmed.

  “Because he’s a coward,” Keith said. “What other kind of person would hunt for an unarmed man with an automatic rifle?” He glanced around at the tunnel stretching away in both directions. Save for the shadowy areas of darkness between the pools of light, there was no place to hide. He reached back into the bag and continued removing its contents.

  Night vision goggles—not the cheap Russian variety he had seen in hunting magazines, but a fancy-looking setup whose price he couldn’t even guess at.

  A two-way radio, smaller than any cell phone he’d ever seen.

  A canteen of water and a packet of food—the kind hikers carried with them, weighing almost nothing but packing a lot of energy.

  A neatly coiled length of rope.

  A pint of scotch—Chivas—which Keith suspected wasn’t part of the standard issue of whatever group the kit’s owner was a part.

  And at the bottom, a small leather-bound book, like a diary. Though its color was indistinguishable in the darkness of the tunnel, the softness of its grain told Keith it was of the same quality as the goggles and the scotch. It bore an elegant monogram stamped in gold:

  MHC

  Below the monogram, in the same lettering, but in a smaller size, appeared the words:

  THE MANHATTAN HUNT CLUB

  Keith flipped the book open. It wasn’t a diary, but rather, a kind of logbook, and as he scanned the first page, his blood ran cold. When he was finished, he wordlessly handed it to Heather. As she silently began to read, he tried to grasp everything that first page implied: