by Jenna Black
And so, they picked their way forward, moving slowly by the light of a single flashlight. Nadia carried the candle once again, and Nate knew he wasn’t the only one keeping an anxious eye on the flame. The heaviest dust particles had settled by now, but the air still felt thick and gritty, and they were all coughing occasionally. Nate hoped and prayed that whatever openings that had allowed air to get down here before were still intact.
There was a partial cave-in in the area where they’d encountered the bats. The crack in the ceiling had split open, spewing an impressive mound of rubble and dirt into the tunnel. One of the sides had also caved in, exposing another set of tracks on the other side of a thick wall. Nate was glad to see them, thinking now there was another potential way out of the tunnel if they found it blocked farther on.
Getting Agnes over the mound of debris was something of a challenge, but Nate supposed they should be glad the tunnel wasn’t completely blocked—or still crumbling around them. The footing was treacherous, and the mound was high enough they had to crouch to avoid hitting their heads on the bent and twisted beams that had once supported the ceiling when they went over the top. The air still stank of guano, and Nate shuddered to see little hairy bodies interspersed with the rubble.
They managed to get Agnes over and through to the other side without getting her any more banged up than she already was, but Nate winced in sympathetic pain at her every whimper. He tried not to think about what kind of filth was getting ground into her wounds, or about the fact that she needed a doctor and there would be none available.
There were no more major blockages after that, but it was still slow going, and they had to stop and rest multiple times, their lungs straining in the dusty air. Nate’s chest hurt from coughing, and he felt gritty inside and out. The hole they’d used to crawl into the tunnel in the first place had grown larger, but it was again going to be a challenge to get Agnes up the slope formed by the rubble.
Dante went up first, and they fashioned a crude sling out of his jacket and Kurt’s, tied together. Dante lay down on his stomach, holding both ends of the makeshift sling as Shrimp settled Agnes on it and she held on as well as she could. With Dante pulling from the top and Shrimp pushing from beneath, they got her out of the tunnel and finally got their first look at the destruction Dorothy had wrought.
The Basement was alight with the glow of fire, the air thick with smoke. Nate was pleasantly surprised to see that most of the buildings in his immediate view were still standing and undamaged, and he guessed that most of the bombs had been directed at the riot-riddled free territories.
Most, but not all.
There was a gaping hole in the side of one of the high-rises on the edge of the undeveloped area around the sinkhole, and another seemed to be missing its top few floors. Even with the glow of the distant firelight, it was too dark to see much, but Nate had the impression of shocked survivors stumbling around on the street or huddling together for comfort.
Shrimp was about ready to collapse from exhaustion, and Dante finally convinced him to let him carry Agnes for a while. Staying close together, they made their way through the streets toward Shrimp’s apartment.
In the grand scheme of things, there didn’t appear to be that many buildings in the Red Death territory that were hit, but one bomb hitting a high-rise created unimaginable damage. They had to detour around a street that was completely blocked by the crumbled remains of a tower, and even in the darkness they could see the blood. Nate caught sight of a disembodied arm and almost threw up.
When they turned the next corner that should have brought them within sight of the red tower, there was another pile of rubble. The red tower, and all of the buildings around it, had been utterly destroyed.
Shrimp gave an incoherent cry of dismay and started running forward, stumbling over cracked pavement, twisted beams, and blocks of concrete. He flung himself onto one of the piles of rubble and started digging at it frantically with his hands, grabbing bricks and crumbles of plaster and twisted pieces of metal at random and throwing them out of the way. He shoved aside a block of red-painted concrete, and Nate understood: that was all that remained of the red tower. And chances were good Maiden had been inside it when it went down.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Nate supposed they were lucky Dorothy hadn’t flattened the entire Basement, though the fact that so many buildings around the red tower had been hit suggested she’d been targeting it. Although it was hard to see how security officers could penetrate this deep into Red Death territory, Dorothy obviously had enough spies to help her pick targets that would most destabilize the Basement survivors. He wondered how many other gangs would find themselves leaderless come morning.
Not that Maiden’s death was a sure thing. It wouldn’t exactly break Nate’s heart if he was dead, but he joined in Shrimp’s probably useless attempt to dig through the rubble. The man was evil through and through, but Nate knew exactly how much it hurt to lose family members, even when you loathed them.
Dante pitched in shortly after, and Kurt started snagging various wandering, shocked Red Death members and trying to get them to help. But they didn’t know Kurt, and they were all too stunned and fearful to do anything.
Nate scrambled over the debris and gave Shrimp’s shoulder a quick shake. “We need more help,” he said. “They’re not listening to Bishop, but maybe they’ll listen to you.”
Shrimp blinked as if he had no idea what Nate was talking about. His hands were already ragged and bleeding, and his desperate need to keep digging was written all over his face. Nate gestured at the street behind them, where survivors were milling around uselessly, many crying, some wounded.
“Get them organized,” Nate urged, worried now that the shock might turn into violence. Nadia was sitting on the curb close by, Agnes laid out on the sidewalk with her head in Nadia’s lap. If the survivors turned into an angry mob, Nadia and Agnes would be obvious and easy targets, as he would be himself.
Shrimp blinked some more, then closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath. He did it again, then opened his eyes and looked more sane and stable. He didn’t say anything to Nate, merely nodded, then dusted off his hands. He headed off toward the cluster of survivors, and Nate turned back to the rubble, grabbing a chunk of plaster and tossing it aside. He didn’t think it likely there were any survivors under the debris, and even if there were, he doubted they’d be able to dig them out very effectively with nothing but bare hands. But he worked at it anyway, because it was the only halfway useful thing he could think of to do.
Shrimp had more success rallying the Red Death, and soon the rubble was swarming with people. Shrimp organized them into shifts, because the work was exhausting. And harrowing. And depressing as hell, especially when they started to find bodies.
When Shrimp called for a shift change, Nate grudgingly hauled himself to his feet and stepped away. He wanted to keep working, wanted desperately to find at least one survivor, but his limbs were trembling from exhaustion, and logic told him he had to at least take a break.
A swell of pride momentarily lifted his heart as Nate saw that Nadia was organizing the people who weren’t digging, directing some to tend the wounded and getting a bunch of children to bring water to the diggers. A little girl no more than six, with wide, frightened-looking eyes, held a bottle of water out to Nate, and he accepted it.
“Thank you,” he croaked, but she was already turning to someone else.
* * *
Shrimp underwent a metamorphosis that awful night, and Nadia watched it happen before her eyes. At first, he was the shocked and grieving brother, mindless with his need to bury his grief in action. By the time the sun rose in the morning, it was clear that the Red Death had accepted him as their new leader. He had organized the digging effort so that they were now as efficient as it was possible to be when they were digging by hand, and had ordered some of his enforcers to help Nadia with other relief efforts.
There were a lot of wounded, and
there was, of course, no medical aid available. With the help of the enforcers, Nadia cleared out the ground floor of several of the nearby towers. There was some grumbling by the owners of those apartments—but that was why Shrimp had sent the enforcers with her. She then had the most severely wounded—including Agnes—carried into those apartments, where fellow gang members did the best they could to tend the wounds. Mostly, this consisted of trying to clean them up and wrapping some bandages, but there were a few people who had experience sewing homemade stitches who went around closing up what they could.
Nadia knew the biggest danger was probably infection, especially when they were doing such an imperfect job of cleaning out the wounds, but it was the best they could do. Thanks to the black market, the Red Death had drugs stockpiled, and most of their supply had survived the bombing. Unfortunately, Nadia could find no one who had any medical expertise. Although she had access to boxes and boxes of drugs, the only ones anyone could positively identify were painkillers that were often sold for recreational use. She could be sitting on a mountain of badly needed antibiotics, and yet she didn’t dare administer unknown drugs to the wounded. At least she could hand out painkillers.
When she was too tired to move anymore, Nadia plopped down onto the floor beside Agnes in the makeshift hospital. Someone had stitched up the wound on her head, shaving away a patch of her hair in the process. The cut was several inches long, but Nadia was more worried about whatever damage had been done to the inside of her head. The poor girl was so sick to her stomach she couldn’t even keep water down, and she was too dizzy to sit up on her own. And then there was the wound at her ribs, which didn’t look as serious, but which wasn’t being helped by Agnes’s constant need to heave. Seeing her like that and being unable to help was a form of torture.
Nadia managed a couple of hours of fitful sleep before she couldn’t bear to sit still anymore. She woke Agnes, just to make sure the girl hadn’t lapsed into a coma, then headed back outside.
It was her first time seeing the aftermath in broad daylight, and it was more horrible than she could have imagined. Shrimp still had people digging, but all they had found so far had been bodies and body parts, which were being laid out on the sidewalk, out of the way. Someone had thrown a tarp over them, but Nadia could see fingers and toes and hair peeking out from beneath. And there was blood everywhere.
She found Shrimp giving instructions to a squad of armed enforcers, who scattered when she approached.
“What was that all about?” she asked.
Shrimp’s face was a dull gray color, and it wasn’t just from the coating of dust. She doubted he’d slept at all, and he had to be exhausted. His hands were all scraped up from his own digging efforts, and she worried he was on the verge of collapse.
“Need to patrol our borders,” Shrimp answered.
Nadia’s mouth dropped open in outrage at the thought that he would be worried about territorial squabbles at a time like this, but he hastened to clarify.
“Just to make sure none of the bordering gangs decide this is a good time to stage a land grab. Last thing we need is a turf war, and if they see we’re defended, they’ll leave us alone.”
Nadia nodded her acceptance. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.”
“It’s okay.”
She turned her attention to the grim rescue efforts. “Have they found anyone alive?”
Shrimp pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Doubt they will, either, but it makes us all feel better to at least try.” He brushed in vain at some of the dust and filth that clung to his clothes. “I shoulda made up my mind to help sooner,” he said. “Maybe if we’d tried the tunnels a day earlier…”
“It’s not your fault,” Nadia said. “If you want to blame someone other than Dorothy for what happened, blame Maiden. If he’d agreed to help us in the first place, none of this would have happened.”
It wasn’t the most sensitive thing to say, not when they were standing amid the rubble that had once been the red tower. Ordinarily, Nadia thought carefully before she spoke, but today she was too tired—and too angry—to bother.
Shrimp’s hands clenched into fists, and he grimaced as if he’d just been punched in the gut. Nadia regretted her harsh words, but knew taking them back wouldn’t help. It was the thought behind the words that hurt, not the words themselves.
“They found Maiden a few hours ago,” Shrimp said, and Nadia’s heart broke for him just a little. “I always said the bastard was too mean to die. Guess I was wrong.”
“I’m so sorry,” Nadia said, and she meant it. Not that she was sorry Maiden was dead, per se. But she was sorry his death caused Shrimp pain, and sorry her own words had made it worse.
“That bitch Dorothy has made it personal now,” he growled, and for just a moment, his expression was forbidding enough to remind Nadia of his brother. “I sent a coupla scouts out to the free territories—at least what’s left of ’em. If Angel and her crew are still alive, Red Death is joining up, and we’re gonna put a hurt on the fuckers who did this.”
Nadia shook her head. “We already decided forming a people’s army wasn’t going to be enough to stop Dorothy. That’s why—”
“I don’t give a shit!” Shrimp no longer looked like the amiable, easygoing guy who had puttered around the kitchen with Agnes. “I wanna make them pay!”
Anger, fury, radiated from him in palpable waves, and Nadia was sure the bombings had aroused similar feelings in survivors throughout the Basement—at least in those who weren’t too terrified to think. Out of anger like this had atrocities been committed, and Nadia hoped Shrimp and the rest of the Red Death didn’t suddenly remember she and Nate and Agnes were Executives and turn on them.
Not that she thought Shrimp would hurt Agnes, but this kind of anger had a way of boiling over and raging past anyone’s command.
“Then make them pay by taking Dorothy down,” she said, trying to keep her voice reasonable and soothing. “Our plan last night was a good one, and we didn’t get to finish. Let’s go back and see if we can get that signal.”
Shrimp’s Adam’s apple bobbed, and he was shaking with his fury and grief. “I don’t wanna make a fucking phone call. I wanna kill every motherfucking Exec who’s eating caviar and sleeping soundly between silk sheets because they don’t give a shit what happens to the rest of us.”
“I’m an Exec. So is Nate. So is Agnes. There are good people out there who are being lied to, who are being shown faked footage of Basement-dwellers acting like savages because that’s how Dorothy can get what she wants. Your problem isn’t with Execs in general: it’s with Dorothy. So let’s take care of the problem instead of getting more people killed for nothing!”
Nadia wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d refused to listen to her. She was all too familiar with the helpless anger he was feeling right now, with the desperate need to lash out.
“Look,” she said as gently as possible, “Dorothy had my sister killed. She killed Nate’s father right in front of our eyes. We both know exactly how you feel. But the best revenge isn’t to die heroically. It’s to win.”
His shoulders loosened and the fire in his eyes cooled. The rage was still there, but it had been joined by reason. “I know you’re right. And if the bombing didn’t completely destroy the tunnels, we should go back out tonight as soon as it’s too dark to keep digging. But if some of my people want to run off and join Angel, I ain’t gonna stop ’em. And if we can’t get through the tunnels or get a signal, then all bets are off.”
“Fair enough,” Nadia agreed.
If they couldn’t get through the tunnels and put a call through to Chairman Belinski, then she didn’t imagine they’d have anything better to do than join up with whoever was left and storm the barricades in an ultimately pointless show of resistance.
* * *
“You have to take me with you,” Agnes insisted when Nadia and Shrimp told her they were going back into the tunnels.
“Honey, you’re in no shape to be scrambling through tunnels,” Nadia reminded her. Agnes’s face was starkly pale, her eyes sunken.
“Then someone will have to carry me,” she replied stubbornly. “As far as the outside world knows, you and Nate kidnapped me and murdered Chairman Hayes. You’re not going to be able to convince my father or anyone else you’re the good guys unless I’m there to verify it. We don’t know how long the phones will last, so we need to be as quick and convincing as possible.”
“No way, Agnes,” Shrimp said, giving her the look of command he’d been giving the Red Death all day, the look that had even the toughest of them scurrying to obey. It wasn’t that he looked particularly scary—just very much in charge. “We’re not dragging a girl with a head injury into those tunnels. You could get brain damaged or something. Maybe even die.”
Agnes was undaunted. “If we don’t do this, I’m probably going to die anyway, as are all the rest of you. You think Dorothy’s going to stop now? Think she’s going to assume we’re all dead so it’s safe to let up on the Basement?”
Shrimp glared, but he’d already acknowledged the likelihood of more bombing.
Agnes pressed her point. “And where do you think I’ll be safer? Out here in one of these buildings, or underground in the tunnels?”
Shrimp sat back on his heels and cursed under his breath. “Didn’t think of that.”
Nadia hadn’t, either. The tunnels weren’t exactly what she’d call safe, and she wasn’t sure they’d hold up if a bomb burst directly above them. But when there were bombs being dropped, being underground sounded like a damn good idea.
“We should try to get as many people underground by nightfall as we can,” she said, and Shrimp agreed.
“And hope she waits till night to start bombing again,” he muttered.
“So it’s settled,” Agnes said. “You’re taking me with you.”
That Shrimp still didn’t like it was etched into the lines of his face, but he grudgingly agreed.
