by N. D. Wilson
Another fence flipped up the hood and off the roof, and they were heading downhill, past a barn, sliding by a farmhouse, through someone’s garden and beneath a tree, thumping an ancient tire swing into orbit, jumping a ditch, and fishtailing onto a gravel road.
“Everyone okay?” Gunner glanced in his mirror. “We all alive?”
“No!” Antigone was stretching the lawyer onto his back between the seats. “Stop! Horace got hit in the shoulder, right by his neck.”
“Can’t stop.” Gunner shook his head. “He breathing?”
“I think so!” Antigone yelled. She leaned her ear down to Horace’s mouth as he coughed, misting her cheek with blood.
“Get some pressure on the wound!” Gunner yelled. “Cyrus, get your window down and squeeze on out. I need your eyes on the sky the next couple miles. And hang on! I don’t want to lose you!”
Cyrus cranked his window down and immediately went deaf with the roar and rattle of gravel and wind. The driver lobbed back a pair of goggles.
“Pull ’em tight!” he yelled. “Tight!”
Antigone, white-faced, was crouched on the floor, pressing a wadded-up suit coat against the little man’s shoulder. Looking into his sister’s terrified eyes, Cyrus took a breath, pulled down his goggles, and fished himself out the window and into a hurricane.
Gripping the inside of the car, Cyrus eased his rear up onto the door, and his chin rose above the roof. The goggles shook, and his nose felt like it might disappear. The roof of the car was pocked with holes, and dust tornadoed on the road behind them. Gradually, gently, Cyrus looked up. At first, with his head shaking in the wind, he could only make out two contrails. And birds. Three of them. Maybe hawks or crows. High and circling.
Too big. Wrong wings. Kites? Hang gliders? The three shapes crossed paths and adjusted, forming a triangle. They were descending, following the car.
Cyrus turned his face forward, into the car’s absurd speed, and the spatter of bugs stung his cheeks. In the distance, Lake Michigan, a smooth plane of perfect blue, stretched to the horizon. Beside it, the buildings of Milwaukee were clustered like a collection of models.
A minute later, gasping and wiping his face, Cyrus told the driver what he’d seen.
“We have to get to a hospital,” Antigone said. “We have to call the police.”
“We have to change routes,” said the driver. “No more front gate for us. They’ll be waiting. It’ll push our time, but you can make it. And don’t you worry about Johnny Horace. Not just yet. He’s taken worse. He doesn’t know how to die.” The car accelerated even more. “Let’s see how fast the old girl can run.”
Cyrus and Antigone bounced on the floor of the car, popping like corn around the unconscious lawyer, taking turns pressing down on the man’s bloody shoulder until Antigone began to be sick and Cyrus pushed her away.
“C’mon, Horace,” he muttered, leaning all of his weight against the wound. But the car still bounced, and his hands bounced with it, releasing pressure. He had never seen so much blood; he’d never felt so much of it run between his fingers, fingers that were beginning to stick together with the clotting.
“His face,” Antigone said behind him. She was breathing hard. “It’s white. He’s going to die, Cyrus.”
“No.” Cyrus wedged his legs against the door and pushed down harder through the bouncing.
Eventually, the car found asphalt, but the turns were no longer smooth, and Cyrus had to fight to keep from being thrown into his sister or against the doors.
Traffic grew, and soon, the car slowed. Buildings began to dance past the windows.
The turns grew harder. Full lefts and full rights. Squealing U-turns.
Antigone’s face was gray and damp. Cyrus’s arms were shaking as he adjusted the bloody ball of Horace’s suit coat against the little man’s neck. The flow had almost stopped. Might not be any more blood to bleed.
The car squealed to a stop beside a Dumpster. Gunner jumped out and jerked open the rear door.
“C’mon!” He grabbed Antigone’s arms and pulled her out. Then he grabbed Horace by the ankles and dragged him through the door until he was sitting in a scum puddle on the asphalt.
Cyrus stepped out of the car and looked around. They were in a narrow, foul-smelling alley, but on top of the foul smell, blowing out of a big silver vent in the brick wall beside the Dumpster, he could smell pizza.
The driver scooped Horace up off the ground and staggered toward the alley mouth, his shoes clicking as he went.
Cyrus grabbed his sister, and the two of them followed the tall black suit out of the alley and into a little square. There were people, but not many, and all of them stopped to watch the big man with the body.
Cyrus looked up, searching the sky. A single black shape was visible against the blue, almost motionless, hanging in place.
“Cyrus,” Antigone said. “Why are we here?”
The big man, turning sideways, managed to force his way through a small glass door, a little brass bell ringing as he did. The name of the place was arched in gold letters on the front window.
“Milo’s Pizza,” Cyrus read. “I don’t know, but we should go in.”
It was early and the pizza place was empty. It wasn’t even open. Two prep cooks were leaning out of the kitchen watching the driver and his load stagger through the dining room toward a door in the back. Black-and-white tiles checkered the floor, and rickety chairs were perched on the tables. An old Pac-Man arcade game chirped in the corner.
“Hey,” Cyrus said.
“We’re not open.” One of the cooks raised a sauce-covered spoon. “You can’t be in here.”
“We’ll just be a sec,” said Antigone, and grabbing Cyrus by the wrist, she pulled him between the tables.
Gunner had opened the door in the back and was setting Horace down. He stepped to the side, holding the door open. Horace was hunched on an old toilet.
“What?” Antigone asked. “What are we doing?”
The driver beckoned them in, shut the door, and locked it.
It was a tiny bathroom, and there wasn’t enough room for two people, let alone three and a man as tall as the door.
“This is one of the old entrances,” the driver said. “It’s been closed for I don’t know how long. Might be blocked. Couldn’t say when it was last used. Hold on to the sink.”
A plastic air-freshener high on the wall spritzed essence of pine tree onto his cheek.
“Ack!” The driver grimaced and spat, blinking in pain, and then hunched over and lifted the lid off the toilet tank. Plunging his hand into the water, he began to feel around. The toilet flushed.
“What—” Cyrus didn’t finish.
The floor shook and fell away.
Cyrus had only fallen downstairs once before, and they had been straight. These were spiral stairs, twisting down around an old cast-iron sewer line. And he was tumbling with his sister.
Gasping, yelping, crushed and crushing, the two of them rolled and flipped down the metal stairs and sprawled onto cold, wet stone. Nearby, water was running.
Antigone groaned.
Cyrus pushed her off and sat up, coughing in the darkness. In the ceiling above them, he could see the little well-lit and floorless bathroom. The toilet hung in the air, and Horace’s legs dangled over the sides.
The big driver, with his legs spread, squinted down into the darkness. “You all right?” he asked. “I told you to hang on to the sink.”
Heaving the little lawyer over his shoulder, he carefully descended the stairs.
At the bottom, he tugged a chain, and a strand of naked lightbulbs fluttered to life.
They were in a tunnel. The walls were made of brick, slimed green and black, arching into the ceiling above.
Cyrus stood up. The stone floor came to an end a few feet from where they had fallen. Beyond the edge, with a mounded back like a snake’s, dark water raced past. Above it, a large basket hung on a heavy cable.
Cyrus glanc
ed back at his sister. Wincing, she managed to stand. “Wow. What now?” She looked at the basket. “No,” she said. “We’re not getting in that.”
“From here, it will be easy for you,” the driver said. With Horace still over his shoulder, he wheeled a flight of stairs out of the darkness and pushed them to the water’s edge. Kicking on a foot brake, he began to climb. The stairs squealed and bowed beneath him.
“No.” Antigone shook her head and looked at her brother. “We don’t even know where we’re going. I’m not getting in a moldy basket dangling over some sewage river in a pitch-black tunnel.”
The driver heaved Horace into the basket and backed down the narrow stairs.
“We’re just going to shoot off somewhere? What happens if the cable breaks? Why are we even doing what you say? We don’t know you.”
Cyrus scanned the tunnel. His head was throbbing and his world had shattered, but he knew what to do next. He knelt by the water, dipping his sticky hands in the cool current. “Not the time, Tigs,” he said. “We’re in it now.”
“I’m Gunner Lawney,” the driver said, and he wiped his forehead on his sleeve. “Johnny’s nephew. Got into some trouble and came up from Texas ten years ago. Was supposed to be an Acolyte, but that didn’t work out too well. But I found my niche.” He smiled. “I can drive, and I can shoot. Beyond that, pretty useless.” Gunner nodded at the basket. “Now get up in there. I gotta get back to the car and get it out of here.”
“What makes you think we can do this alone?” Antigone asked.
“You have to,” said Gunner. “Climb on up and I’ll tell you what to do.”
Cyrus splashed water onto his face and stood up. Antigone groaned, and then stepped behind her brother, pushing him toward the steep, rickety stairs. He climbed carefully, each narrow tread sighing in his hands, and when he reached the top he had to stretch for the edge of the basket. He pulled it toward himself, threw a leg in, and tumbled over the edge onto Horace.
The little lawyer moaned, and the basket swung.
Cyrus sat up and reached back for Antigone’s hands. She grabbed his wrists and he grabbed hers.
Antigone’s teeth were clenched, her eyes wide. “Cy, if you let go, I’m going to kill you.”
Cyrus smiled. “If I let go, you’re going to float away in a black river.”
Antigone jumped, clipped her knee on the edge, and fell inside.
“Great!” Gunner yelled. “Cyrus, there should be a lever in the front of the basket. Pull it when I tell you.”
Cyrus found the lever and waited. Powdered rust came off on his hands.
The basket jerked and the sound of grinding metal gears echoed in the tunnel.
He stood up and looked over the edge. Gunner was standing beside another lever in the wall. Two huge flaps had opened out of the sides of the river. Water was mounding over and around them, forcing them forward.
Something in the ceiling began to click like a roller coaster.
Cyrus looked up. The basket hung from a pulley, straddling the grease-covered cable above the water. But two smaller cables were looped onto hooks on the pulley, and they ran up into the ceiling, where an enormous spring as thick as Cyrus’s thigh was whining as it stretched.
“Oh, gosh.” Biting his lip, Cyrus sat down on his sister’s feet. She had Horace’s head propped on her lap and was squinting at his shoulder.
“The bleeding stopped,” she said. “At least on the outside.”
The clicking in the ceiling slowed. A final metallic click. And then … nothing.
“Get yourselves to the Galleria!” Gunner’s voice filled the tunnel. “Someone will take Horace to the hospitalers. Now hang on tight and flip the lever. I’ll look you up in Ashtown.”
Cyrus slid back beside his sister. “Hold on, Tigs. This is dumb. Really dumb. Are you ready?”
Antigone sniffed and tucked back her hair. “No,” she said. “Not even close. Not even a little bit. Now do it.”
Cyrus kicked the lever.
seven
ASHTOWN
CYRUS HAD NO way of knowing how far that first launch took them, only that it was far and fast and black. The basket bobbed and swung in the wind, occasionally grazing the walls where they narrowed, occasionally kissing the surface of the water, and at one point just missing another basket hurtling in the opposite direction.
Eleven times, the basket slowed and flipped some sort of switch. Naked lights sparked to life on the tunnel ceiling, hooks snagged the pulley, flaps opened in the river, and long-dormant springs uncoiled in the ceiling. Eleven times, they were launched, and the lights flickered off behind them. And then Cyrus stopped counting.
The tunnel changed. Brick became stone, and the bones of old arches dotted the walls and ceiling. At one launch, the ruins of another basket, rotten with moisture, dangled in a snarl of cable against the wall. At another, the river veered to the right while they continued on, straight through a much smaller, circular hole in the wall of the tunnel. By the time the next light tripped, the river—or another river—had joined them.
When the basket finally slowed and stopped for the last time, Antigone moaned.
“I was sick before this,” she said. “Can you see, Cy? Are we slingshotting again? I can’t do it.”
Cyrus sat up. He could hear gears and splashing, but the sound was different. No clicking. No whining springs. He felt his way tentatively to his knees and glared at the darkness.
With a crack, two delayed lightbulbs surged to white. One exploded, dropping its glass into the river. The other sputtered and survived.
The current was turning a stone waterwheel. The wheel was powering two tarnished green gears. The gears were cranking a cable up into a hole in the ceiling and back down out of another. Small, hinged wire cages two feet across were rising and descending with the cable.
Beside the basket, a wire platform had been bolted to the stone. Cyrus gauged the distance. It would be easy enough to climb onto the platform and then lean out, grab the rising cable, and hop into one of the cages. At least if you weren’t also trying to carry an unconscious lawyer.
“What do you think, Tigs?” he asked. “You first or me first? This is gonna be tough. He won’t stay in one of those by himself.”
He looked back at his sister. Antigone was huddled in a corner, as pale as Horace. Her eyes were squeezed shut, and she was forcing herself to breathe long, even breaths. It was her county-fair face—the face she made before losing her elephant ear and corn dog. It was the face that had thrown up in the front seat—and the backseat—of the Red Baron. And in the boat, out fishing with their dad. Many times.
“We’re here,” said Cyrus. “Tigs, you made it. Come on. See if you can stand up.”
Antigone opened one eye, and then shut it quickly.
“Open your eyes.” Cyrus grabbed her hands.
“You were moving,” she said. “The basket is still rocking.”
“Hardly,” said Cyrus, and he pulled her up.
Both of Antigone’s eyes opened wide and her head bobbed.
“No!” Cyrus yelled. “Turn! Point away!” He spun his sister around and leaned her over the rim of the basket. He couldn’t hear it. He couldn’t smell it. If he did, he’d be chucking, too. The county fair had seen it happen. Twice. The Red Baron hated it. “I’m not listening!” Cyrus began to hum an old car song his parents had used to distract them. His sister’s back quaked beneath his hand. He looked up at the ceiling, breathing through his mouth.
Antigone straightened and turned back around slowly. “Worst ever,” she said. “Seriously.”
Cyrus raised his eyebrows. “Maybe in this state. What about Highway One, the windy one on all the cliffs?”
“Oh, gosh.” Antigone shivered and raised her hand. “Don’t even say that right now.”
“And at least this time the river just takes it away. Sharing a bag is worse, and poor Dan sitting in between us, and Mom and Dad trying to sing us out of it.”
“Shut
up, Cyrus.”
“I’m just saying …”
“Don’t.” Antigone bent over and got her hands under Horace’s arms. “Help me. We have to get him to a doctor.”
In the end, Antigone rode up first. Cyrus followed, his feet balancing on the outside of the wire cage, his hugging arms pinning Horace to the cable.
He had only begun to rise when the light clicked off, controlled by some kind of timer. The sound of the water faded beneath him. In the narrow shaft, the squeaking of the cages blended and echoed with the lawyer’s rasping breath.
“Hold on, Horace,” Cyrus whispered. “Wherever it is that we’re going, we’re getting closer. Hold on.”
The cable bounced and shook. Above him, dimly silhouetted, Antigone’s legs disappeared as she hopped out of her cage.
“Hey!” Her voice roared down the hole. “They turn quick, so you won’t have much time.”
Cyrus hooked his arms through the lawyer’s armpits and flexed his legs, ready to lift.
His head rose into a musty room, lit only through cracks. He shoved the little lawyer at his sister, watched her stagger back into a wall, and then jumped, clipping his head on the ceiling before his cage vanished through the roof.
Antigone was coughing under the weight, sinking to the floor. Cyrus walked straight to the tallest crack of light, a seam between two doors. They were locked, but they were also thin and old, and they bent a little with pressure from his shoulder.
He backed up.
“Try one of Skelton’s keys,” said Antigone. “Is there a keyhole?”
“Nope.” Cyrus threw himself against the doors. Wood popped, but he bounced back. “I can break it.”
“You mean a rib? Maybe your shoulder?” Antigone adjusted her grip, propping Horace in front of her.
“There’s just one little bolt,” said Cyrus. “And it’s set in old wood.” He paused. What was he hearing? Voices. Shouting. “You hear that?” he asked.
Antigone nodded. “They don’t sound happy.”
This time, Cyrus used his foot. The wood splintered, and the two doors wobbled open onto a world of emerald and sunlight.
