Dark Days

by James Ponti

  “Welcome to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s gold vault,” he said, his Brooklyn accent making it sound like there was a w in the middle of “vault.” “It holds more than half a million gold bars, weighing approximately 6,700 tons.”

  It took Grayson less than thirty seconds to say, “That’s over $380 billion. Billion with a b.”

  The guard stopped and smiled. “Very good math. $382 billion to be exact.”

  I don’t know which impressed me more: the money or Grayson’s math skills.

  “All of the gold in the vault belongs to foreign countries,” he continued. “Much of it came here around World War II, when European governments wanted to make sure that their money was secure.”

  As he talked, he led us through a series of massive steel doors, past many more armed guards, and finally to a long hallway where the gold is held. It’s kept in blue cages with numbers and multiple padlocks on the doors. He talked about the meticulous way in which each bar is tracked, measured, weighed, and reweighed.

  “Now I have a question for you,” the man said as he looked out at us. “We are eighty feet below ground and there is one important thing that makes this gold vault possible. Does anyone know what it is?”

  He looked first at all the kids in the school group, but they just shook their heads. Then he looked at us. We were equally stumped until Natalie came up with the answer.

  “Manhattan schist?”

  He smiled. “What a smart group this is. Good with math, good with geology. Manhattan schist is exactly right. If it weren’t for New York’s superstrong bedrock, this vault could not exist, because the weight of the gold would cause it to sink deeper into the ground.”

  We all exchanged looks at the mention of Manhattan schist. Everything was tantalizingly close to coming together. As for the tour, it was interesting and the gold was impressive, but it seemed like the Federal Reserve might be a dead end. For the life of us, we couldn’t figure out how Marek could get so much as a single bar out of the vault. There were too many safety measures. And even if he could steal some, any missing gold would be noticed within forty-eight hours.

  “It’s impossible,” Natalie said as we walked around the museum exhibit at the end of the tour. The exhibit had archival pictures, old scales, and equipment used for measuring the gold. There was even a mountain of shredded cash. (Shredding old bills is one of the things the bank is in charge of doing.) “With the gates and the vaults and the many people with big guns, I don’t see how he could get any of it.”

  “It’s not like he can come in at night, either,” Grayson said, motioning to a display about the massive vault door. “The only way into that vault is through a ninety-ton steel door that is locked air-tight every night. In fact, it’s shut so tightly that one time a paper clip got in the door and shut the entire system down. There’s no getting through it.”

  “Then why do I still think that it’s exactly what he’s doing?” I asked.

  “Because it’s Marek,” said Natalie. “And he always seems to figure out how to pull off the impossible.”

  “Check it out,” Alex called to us.

  We walked over to where he and Liberty were looking at a display featuring a timeline of the building’s construction.

  “This is the vault being built in the early 1920s,” he said, pointing at a large brown-tinted photo of the construction crew hard at work. “They’re eighty feet underground, blasting their way through the Manhattan schist.”

  “Okay,” said Natalie. “Why is that important?”

  “Look at the man in charge.” Alex pointed to a man in a hardhat. We recognized him instantly.

  “Marek Blackwell,” said Grayson.

  “It makes sense,” said Liberty. “Marek worked underground for almost a century. He worked on a lot of the big projects.”

  “And he wasn’t alone,” said Grayson, pointing to another face.

  I expected to see that it was another of the Unlucky 13. But it wasn’t. Still, it was a face that we all recognized.

  “Is that the guard?” asked Alex. “The one who let us in without the tickets?”

  We looked closely, and one by one came to the conclusion that it was in fact the guard. His hair and moustache were darker, but there was no denying who it was.

  “You think he’s friends with Marek?” asked Grayson.

  “If he is, then why did he help us?” I asked. “You’d think we’d be the last people he’d help.

  Natalie had a look of concern. “Maybe he didn’t help us. Maybe he put us on that tour so he’d know where we’d be for the next hour.”

  “Why?” I asked, still not getting it.

  “So he’d have time to call in reinforcements,” she said.

  We looked toward the exit. There was only one way out of the building. We looked back at the guard station, but the supervisor was no longer there.

  “So you think he recognized us, made sure we got in, and then called his friends?” asked Alex.

  “That’s exactly what I think,” she replied. “It’s brilliant. There’s only one way in and out. The street’s narrow, so we don’t have a lot of options. It’s the perfect place to set a trap.”

  We all nodded in agreement and looked to the door. We didn’t have a lot of options. We were going to have to go out and face whatever was there. Marek’s war was about to begin.

  Trinity

  So what do you guys think?” asked Natalie as we looked out toward the doorway that exited onto Liberty Street. “Are they out there waiting for us?”

  “My guess is yes,” said Grayson.

  “Mine too,” I added.

  “Maybe we should just fight them,” suggested Alex. “We know they’re going to attack at some point, maybe we should just stand tall and fight back now.”

  I didn’t like this idea at all. “There are only five of us,” I said. “They’ll have us outnumbered, and probably by a lot.”

  “That’s what happened to George Washington, isn’t it?” Grayson asked me. “You’ve been studying the Revolutionary War, what did he do when the British had him outnumbered?”

  “When he realized he couldn’t win, he escaped instead,” I said. “The British had him trapped in Brooklyn and he got away right from under their noses by sneaking his troops across the river in the middle of the night. By the time the redcoats woke up and realized what had happened, it was too late.”

  “I think that’s what we should do too,” said Natalie. “We’ve got to figure out a way to sneak out of here.”

  “Okay, but we won’t be able to wait until the middle of the night like Washington did,” Alex said. “So we’re not going to be able to hide in the dark.”

  “True,” she said with a smile. “But we can hide in the sixth grade.”

  She nodded toward all the purple-shirted sixth graders who were mobbed together about to leave. There was another group in addition to the ones who were with us on the tour, so there were about forty of them all together.

  “You think we can blend in with them?” Liberty asked. “They’re all wearing matching shirts and we’re not.”

  “True, but all we have to do is blend in long enough to make it to the corner,” she said. “Once we’re that far, we can make a run for it.”

  “Just like George did,” I added.

  Alex thought it over and nodded. “I like it. But we need a plan for where we go once we make it to the corner. This should give us a head start, but they’re going to chase after us.”

  “I don’t think the subway’s safe,” Natalie said. “It’s too easy to get slowed down waiting for a train.”

  “Besides,” Grayson added, “the subway’s kind of their home turf.”

  “I have an idea,” I said cautiously. “But it will only work if we can make it to Trinity Church.”

  The school group started moving toward the door, so there wasn’t really any time for me to explain it.

  “I vote Trinity Church,” Natalie said.

  �
��Agreed,” said the others.

  I felt a lump in my throat and said a silent prayer that my plan would actually work. Lately it felt like most of them hadn’t.

  The school group was like a floating blob as it worked its way out the door, and we tried to mix in and spread out so we didn’t draw attention to ourselves. Some of the kids recognized us and started up conversations, which helped us blend in a little more.

  “Keep your eyes down and faces covered as much as you can,” Natalie whispered to Grayson and me as she walked passed us. “Until we make it to the corner.”

  We caught our first break when we stepped outside and saw two tour buses dropping people off. The buses helped us hide, because they blocked the view of the sidewalk we were on.

  “I see four bad guys directly across the street,” Alex said in a low voice. “They’re still watching the door. I don’t think they noticed us.”

  “There’s another pair back behind us by the pretzel vendor,” added Natalie. “I saw their reflection in the windshield of the tour bus.”

  We knew there were at least six of them there for us, but so far none of them seemed to be aware that we’d exited the building. We were almost to the corner when one of the teachers spoke up.

  “All right, Mansfield, everybody line up!” she called out to the school kids. “We need to do a head count.”

  The students started lining up alongside the building, and there was no way we could stay with them without really sticking out, so we had to keep walking.

  “Pick up the pace,” said Liberty, who was behind me.

  “Three on the opposite corner,” said Grayson, turning his face down and away from them. It seemed like the undead were everywhere.

  We were almost to Nassau Street when I made eye contact with none other than my favorite Dead Squad member. It was one-eared Officer Pell, standing directly in front of us. He seemed surprised that we’d gotten that far without anyone noticing, but pleased nonetheless to see me.

  “Hello, Molly,” he said with a raspy hiss as he moved right toward me. He reached out to grab me by the shoulder, but out of nowhere Alex clocked him with a punch across the jaw that knocked him down flat. Just like that three more zombies noticed us and leapt out.

  Our head start wouldn’t mean anything if we couldn’t get past them in a hurry. In a flash I took out one at the knee, Natalie knocked down another with a crack of her elbow against his jaw, and Liberty did a nifty move when the last one tried to punch him. He spun around like a dancer and managed to stomp on the back of his calf, snapping his leg bone in half. They weren’t down for good, but we had our opening and we burst out into a full sprint.

  We caught some luck when the traffic light changed just as we reached the corner, so that we didn’t even have to break stride as we bolted toward the church two blocks away. My pulse quickened as we ran, in part because of the excitement but even more out of nervousness. The others were counting on my plan working. I couldn’t mess up again.

  It took about two and a half minutes until we were running up to the iron gate that marks the entrance of the church. When we reached it, we stopped for a second to take a quick breath and to look back over our shoulders.

  “I don’t see anyone,” said Grayson.

  “You don’t see them,” Liberty said, “but they’re there. I guarantee it.”

  “It’s all you,” Natalie said to me. “Save the day.”

  “Follow me,” I instructed them confidently. “I’ve got this.”

  Trinity is a beautiful gothic church that I’m sure was impressive when it first opened, but now it’s dwarfed by skyscrapers on all sides. The churchyard serves as a cemetery and has many famous early American heroes buried in it. When you add up all the tourists and the tombstones, it’s a crowded place to be in a hurry. We tried to be respectful without being slow.

  I led the others inside the church and down a stairway to a basement vault. Crypts lined the walls and marble markers signified who was buried in them. This was my first time coming down here, so I hoped that I had my facts right. I turned a corner, worried that we might run into a dead end, but was relieved to see another set of stairs descending farther down.

  “Is anyone following us?” Natalie asked.

  Alex looked back as we turned the corner. “Not that I can see.”

  The stairwell emptied out into a darker crypt. The tombstones on the wall in here dated back to the late 1600s.

  “This is the oldest part of the church,” I said. “We’re almost there.”

  We entered the final vault, and there, in addition to the crypts, was a small construction area in the corner marked off with bright orange tape and thick layers of plastic sheeting. I got down on my hands and knees and pulled up the bottom of the plastic.

  “In here,” I said as I crawled under.

  The others followed, and when we came up on the other side we were in a sub-basement with a dirt floor. It was only about four feet high, so we had to sort of walk and crawl half bent over in between the brick pilings that held up the building.

  “There it is,” I said, pointing toward an old stone doorway that had been dug out. Carved into the keystone at the top of the entry was the phrase TUTUS LOCUS.

  “What is tutus locus?” asked Natalie.

  “It’s Latin,” said Grayson. “It means ‘safe passage’.”

  “That’s right,” I told them. “The Sons of Liberty built this during the Revolution. They would have their meetings in the church, and if the redcoats came, they’d escape through here. It was used again during the Civil War as part of the Underground Railroad.”

  “Then how come we’ve never heard of it?” asked Alex.

  “Because it was lost and forgotten for more than 125 years,” I explained. “It was just rediscovered a few months ago.”

  “Where does it lead?” asked Natalie.

  “Away from the Dead Squad,” I answered.

  She smiled. “That’s good enough for me.”

  We passed through the doorway and entered a centuries-old tunnel lined with brick walls. There was absolutely no light, so we took turns illuminating the way with our phones. It was hot and sweaty, and my face was caked with dirt and dust. After about fifteen minutes we stopped to catch our breaths and to listen for any Dead Squad members who may have figured it out and followed us down here.

  “I don’t hear anything,” Natalie said happily after about thirty seconds of silence. “Except maybe a couple of rats in the distance.”

  “Speaking of rodents,” Alex said, “let’s hear it for our one and only Gopher.”

  They all did quiet little golf claps and tried to fist-bump me in the dark. For the first time I didn’t mind the nickname. (Well, not much anyway.)

  “How did you find out about this place, anyway?” Grayson asked. “You said it was just discovered a few months ago?”

  “That’s right,” I answered. “The professor at CCNY, the one I’ve been studying, she found it in some old papers she was researching. In fact, she was arranging to lead a thorough archeological dig of the entire passageway.”

  “Was arranging?” Natalie asked. “What stopped her?”

  “Marek,” I answered. “Or rather, his funding. He donated a ton of money to support her research for the new George Washington book, so the excavation of the tunnel has been postponed until that’s done.”

  “When I first put you on this assignment to study her and what she was doing, you weren’t happy,” said Natalie. “You thought it was going to be boring and that I was punishing you.”

  “You could tell that?” I said, thinking that I had kept my emotions hidden.

  “I could tell,” she said. “But, this is why. None of us would have read it carefully enough to find this and remember it when we needed it most.”

  After more than a few mistakes, it felt good to get something right.

  “All right,” Alex said. “We better keep following this thing until we can find a safe way back up to the surf
ace.”

  We started walking again, although not as rushed as before.

  “You’d think that studying this tunnel would be more important than her book on Washington,” Grayson said. “I wonder why she didn’t do this first and then write the book later.”

  “That’s back to Marek,” I replied. “His financial support specified that the book had to come first and then this.”

  “He’s really weird, isn’t he?” said Alex.

  “Usually I’ve found him to be more smart than weird,” Liberty said. “There’s always a reason for what he does. Even if we don’t always see it right away.”

  A couple minutes later we reached a junction where the tunnel joined up with another one that was bigger. It was the underground equivalent of going from a side street to a major road. It was about ten feet by ten feet and there was even a little light.

  “Wait a second,” Liberty said as he rapped the walls and the ceiling with his knuckles. “It’s all wood.”

  “Is that important?” asked Alex.

  “Have you ever been in an all-wooden tunnel before?”

  Alex shrugged. “I guess not.”

  “I think this may be a cattle tunnel,” Liberty said. “I’ve heard about them, but I didn’t know if they were real or it was just a legend.”

  “What’s a cattle tunnel?” asked Natalie.

  “Back before refrigeration they needed to bring the cattle from the boats on the river to the slaughterhouses in the Meat-packing District,” Liberty said. “They couldn’t risk them stampeding down the streets of New York, so they drove them through underground tunnels made out of wood. They had cowboys and everything.”

  “Are you being serious?” I asked.

  “Totally,” he said. “When they stopped needing them, the tunnels were built over and people lost track of where they are.”

  “That means this should take us out to the river if we go that way,” Alex said pointing to the left.