by Jeremy Bates
She pushed open the door and let out the breath she’d been holding. The study was unoccupied. A number of candles burned softly, so she set hers aside. She didn’t like this room because of the bones that covered the walls. Her father told her that her grandfather was responsible for this. She didn’t remember her grandfather, but she’d always secretly hated him. According to her father, just after she was born, her grandfather tried to take their family to the surface without suits. Everybody became sick and returned underground, but the damage was done. They turned crazy and their noses and lips fell off. Only her father was unaffected because he had been smart enough to remain in the catacombs. And since she was so young, he was able to reverse the craziness inside her and raise her like a regular little girl.
He’s done everything for me, she thought, fighting tears. He wouldn’t lie to me. I shouldn’t be here.
Katja crept forward. Books were scattered everywhere. She wasn’t allowed to read them because they were for Adults Only. Some appeared really old, while others seemed much newer. She chose a newer one with a scary cover. It was thick and called The Stand. On the fourth page she read: First Anchor Books Mass-Market Edition, June 2011. And below that: Copyright © 1978, 1990 by Stephen King. There were other years on the page as well, but her eyes glossed over them. The print was too small, and her head was spinning.
The book fell from her hands and hit the floor with a heavy thud. This snapped her from her stupor. Heart racing, she glanced toward the connecting bedroom. When her father didn’t emerge, she pivoted, intent on leaving. That’s when she spotted an orange bag peeking out from behind her father’s desk. She had never seen it before—it was so bright and new—and she was sure it belonged to Will or one of his friends. She was also sure she needed to see what was inside it.
She approached silently, stepping as lightly as she could, careful not to bump anything. The stone floor was cool under her bare feet.
She rounded her father’s desk and discovered four bags in total, all different colors. She knelt before the orange one and unzipped the main pocket. She cringed at the sound the zipper made, but there was nothing she could do to quiet it. She pulled out a red sweatshirt. Beneath this was a black can. She turned it so she could read the label: Bière du Démon. She had never seen this particular beer before, but she had seen several other kinds. Her father drank them often. Like the books in this room, they were for Adults Only. The only other item in the bag was a scrunched piece of white paper. She unfolded it and discovered a list of some sort. She recognized a few of the words—bread, cereal, milk—but not others. Schweppes? Nivea? And what were those numbers on the right?
Katja stuck this in her tights and unzipped the bag’s smaller pocket. There was a blue wallet inside, what people used to use to hold their money. She opened it and gasped. There were several bills inside. She had never seen actual money before, and she reached for one—
“Katja, what are you doing?”
Her lungs locked in her chest. She dropped the wallet back into the pocket and yanked the zipper closed and stood just as her father stormed around the desk.
“What in God’s name are you doing?” he shouted.
Katja shrank away from him. He had never hit her before like he hit her aunts and uncles, but she was sure he was going to hit her right then.
“I couldn’t sleep!” she blurted.
“You know you’re not allowed in here when I’m not up.”
“I know! I’m sorry! I’m scared!”
Through the tears that blurred her vision, she saw his face change. The hard lines softened. “What are you scared of?”
“The visitors! I had a nightmare of them attacking us. That’s why I couldn’t sleep. So I came here, and I saw these bags.”
“Did you open all of them?”
“Only that one.”
Her father picked up the orange bag, took the beer out. “This is all that was in it?”
“And this.” She handed him the red sweatshirt.
“Did you go through the other bags?”
“No, I promise.”
He tossed the bag aside and held out a hand for her. She took it. He pulled her to her feet and kissed her on the cheek. “I’m sorry I yelled at you, my mouse,” he said with a sigh. “But you know better than to come in here when I’m not up. We have rules for a reason. Without rules there would be no order, and without order, there would be chaos.”
“I’m sorry, Papa. I won’t do it again.”
“Good. And you have no need to fear the visitors. They’re chained up in the Dungeon. They can’t go anywhere I don’t want them to.”
Katja wanted to ask him where the woman had gone, because only Will and the other man were in the Dungeon, but that would give away that she had visited them. Instead she asked, “What’s going to happen to them?”
“Once I speak to them, and make sure they are not a threat to our way of life here, I will return them to where they came from, just as I have done with all the previous visitors.”
If her father had told Katja this a few hours ago, she would have believed him wholeheartedly. She still wanted to, but she couldn’t.
She couldn’t believe him about anything anymore.
“Now,” he said, stifling a yawn with his knuckles, “it is still some time until Colin crows. You can sleep in my bed with me if you wish.”
“No, I feel better now. I will return to my room.”
She started for the door.
“Katja?”
She paused. “Yes?”
“I love you. I would never let anybody harm you.”
“I know, Papa,” she said, fighting a fresh onslaught of tears. “I know.”
Chapter 53
DANIÈLE
Danièle’s “room” was furnished with nothing but a hammock, a plastic table meant for a four year old, a candle melted onto a ceramic plate, and a book of matches. She had waited a couple minutes after Zolan escorted her there, to make certain he was gone, then she stuck her head out the door. The hallway was lit with torches set in wall sconces, and some twenty meters to the right (the hallway ended abruptly to the left) she made out two zombie-men. One stood with his back against the wall, tapping a bone-weapon against his forehead. The other paced back and forth. At every about-turn he would touch a wall with a finger or toe ritualistically.
Apparently she wasn’t free to do as she wished after all.
Of course she wasn’t, she thought. How could she have allowed herself to believe this?
Danièle summoned her nerve and walked toward the zombie-men. She wanted to test her boundaries, but she also needed to find someplace to relieve her bladder and bowels.
The pacing zombie stopped. His left index finger remained pressed to the wall, as if he were ringing a doorbell. He stared at her, though she couldn’t read anything in his hellish face. The one tapping his head with the bone stared too, then licked the end of the bone with his tongue. Danièle didn’t know if this was sexual innuendo or an unconscious act, but it made her want to turn around and return to her room.
She didn’t. She kept her back straight, her chin high. She was sure Zolan would have warned them not to touch her. But the question was: would they obey him? Zombies did whatever they wanted, didn’t they?
Zombie #1 with the wall fetish didn’t move to let her pass, and she was forced to stop directly before him. He stank. She couldn’t remember ever smelling something so vile. There was the feces and urine and body odor, but there was something else mixed with all this, a peaty rottenness she associated with bogs. She guessed he was anywhere between forty and sixty. He was mostly bald, with greasy tufts of white hair sprouting above his ears. He had the normal disfigurements (God, was she already beginning to think no nose or lips as “normal?”), and his albino-white skin was etched with burst capillaries and scabs and smeared with mud. He wore a torn Rolling Stones T-shirt and frayed track pants soiled in the groin and knees. The body beneath the clothes seemed lean and hard.
She stepped right, to go around him. He matched her step. She went left; he went left. Zombie #2 issued a wobbly bellow that she assumed to be a laugh. Zombie #1 joined him, laughing in her face.
His breath was so foul she acted without thinking, shoving him aside so she could get past and get fresh air. When she realized what she’d done, she expected him to grab a fistful of her hair and drag her back to her room like cavemen did in the Sunday morning comics. He didn’t, and she kept walking, staring straight ahead as she passed Zombie #2.
Danièle didn’t know if they were following her, she couldn’t hear them if they were, but she didn’t check. She didn’t want to show uncertainty, which would be interpreted as weakness. She went straight until a secondary hallway broke off from the one she followed. This led to Zolan’s study, she knew from memory. As she glanced down it, she saw in her peripheral vision that the two zombie-men had indeed followed her. They hovered about ten yards back.
She resumed walking and came to another intersecting corridor, this one unlit. She paused at it. Make a dash into the darkness? No. She wouldn’t get far. The zombies would catch her. They would tell Zolan she attempted to escape. Whatever privileges she had been afforded would likely be withdrawn. She needed to be patient, wait for a better opportunity.
She continued straight and after several minutes arrived at what seemed to be a kitchen of sorts. It was a large room with a high ceiling and a central fire pit, the embers within the circle of rocks glowing hotly. The air smelled of smoke and stale produce. Lining the walls were homemade shelves that overflowed with boxes and containers. On the ground sat a basket of potatoes, and another of mushrooms. On a crudely constructed table were an assortment of pots and pans, plates and bowls. And scattered everywhere: junk. Broken chairs, slabs of wood, sheets of rusted metal, a stack of flattened cardboard boxes.
She entered the room reverently, as you would enter somewhere you were not supposed to be—and sensed movement from the shadows. A zombie-woman sat among a pile of trash. She watched Danièle but didn’t say anything. She held her gnarled hands tightly against her sunken chest. Her head was cocked to one side. Through a gap where several teeth had once been, her tongue protruded like a worm, liver red, running back and forth over her gums. She cackled, almost as if she were trying to speak. She repeated the cackle at intervals, cricket-like. From ahead, through an arched doorway, a loud, terrible groan responded.
Danièle recoiled a step, then dashed back past the zombie-men, all the way to her room.
The rest of the day passed with excruciating slowness. A zombie-woman—a different one than the decrepit thing that had made those cricket noises—brought Danièle breakfast a little after the rooster cock-a-doodle-dooed again: eggs scrambled with mushrooms and a cup of black tea. Danièle was hesitant to eat the eggs, but her hunger proved too great. Afterward she used the plate and spoon to dig a hole in the corner of the room to serve as a latrine. She had no toilet paper and felt disgustingly dirty after she did her business, but what could she do?
Sometimes the zombie-men in the hallway made loud noises, which she assumed passed for communication, but for the most part they were quiet, and when she checked on them, sedentary. They simply sat and stared, the way old people in nursing homes sat and stared at the same spot on the wall.
Danièle wanted to stay awake, stay alert, but her eyelids turned impossibly heavy, and she dozed off in the hammock. She woke later to Zolan standing in the entrance to the room.
“What time is it?” she asked, completely disorientated.
“Time?” He seemed amused, as if he was about to ask her if she had somewhere to be. Instead he said, “It is time to eat. Come.”
“I am not hungry.”
“You haven’t eaten anything but eggs today.”
“I am not hungry.”
The simian smile remained on Zolan’s face. “Come anyway,” he said, though he was no longer asking.
Danièle got up and followed him. The two zombie-men were gone.
“You said I would be free to do as I wished,” she said.
“You haven’t been?”
“Two of your nephews or grandnephews sat outside my room all day.”
“Jörg and Karl, yes. They were there for your protection. Only a fraction of these hallways are lighted. I did not want you to get lost.”
“I would not have gotten lost.”
“Maybe not. But you might have run into some of my other family members who aren’t as…civilized…as Jörg and Karl.”
Danièle recalled the groan from the room beyond the kitchen. She said, “Are we going to discuss the ‘arrangement’ for my friends and myself now?”
Zolan shook his head. “Unfortunately your friends have yet to regain consciousness.”
This was the news she’d feared. “What if they are in comas? What if—”
“As I told you—”
“They need help!” She stopped on the spot. “I want to see them.”
“That’s not a good idea right now.”
“Why not?”
“They need their rest.”
“Are they dead?” Her voice cracked on “dead.”
“Of course not.”
“I want to see them,” she repeated stubbornly.
“They are being cared for, and they will recover. You must be patient. That is all I am willing to say on the matter.”
Zolan began to walk. Frustrated, feeling helpless, Danièle fell into step behind him. They didn’t speak. The only sound was their footsteps and the spitting of the torches.
Zolan turned right at the corridor that led to his quarters.
Danièle stopped again. “Are we not going to the kitchen?”
“Our food will be brought to us.”
She hesitated. She didn’t want to be alone with him in his study again—or bedroom, for that matter. Almost immediately, however, she realized how foolish that concern was. If he wanted to do something to her, he would do it, regardless of where they were. Those zombie-things wouldn’t interfere. In fact, they would likely join in.
They continued on. Zolan’s quarters were located at the end of the corridor. He pushed open the door, and they entered. He saw her glance at the tomes scattered everywhere and said, “I’m a voracious reader, and the catacombs is as good a place as anywhere for such a pastime.”
Danièle sat in the chair she had sat in earlier, while he took the one across the desk. She said, “What else do you do here?”
“In the catacombs?” He shrugged. “What you do: I explore. It has turned into an obsession of sorts for me. Also, I enjoy meeting the variety of cataphiles who now occupy the tunnels. It is nice to have fresh conversation sometimes.”
For the first time Danièle wondered whether Zolan had a job or not. Did he climb out of the catacombs in the early hours of dawn and get on the Metro like everyone else? Did he bring clean clothes in a backpack and change in a train station restroom? Surely he didn’t work at anything that required a suit and a tie. A construction worker perhaps? Or a McDonald’s employee, the guy who flipped the burgers? This line of thinking led her to her job at the florist shop. Flo, the owner, likely had a meltdown when she discovered Danièle had never arrived for her shift. Flowers not watered, orders not taken, deliveries not made. Nevertheless, this was nothing more than a fleeting thought. Danièle was a prisoner in the catacombs, and Pascal was dead—
No, stop it. She had not allowed herself to think about Pascal since he died, and she wouldn’t until she was free of this place. Then she would grieve. Now she had to deal with the madman Zolan—who was not only insane but also delusional. Because did he really think he had her fooled? Did he really think she believed he was going to let them all go? He would have to know they would head straight to the police, and the police would arrest him and his entire zombie family.
So why not kill us and be done with the problem then? she wondered. Why is he stringing us along—or at least stringing me along? What’s h
is plan?
He obviously wanted something, and Danièle could guess what. She saw how he looked at her. Lustful. She was aware of this even back at the Bunker. Yet if he wanted to fuck her, why not do it? Why this charade that she was a guest? Was he trying to romance her? Did he think she would fall in love with him and live down here with him?
Yes, he really is crazy—as crazy as the rest of them.
Zolan took a bottle of vodka and two glasses from his desk. He filled one halfway to the rim, nodded to the other. “Will you join me?”
“No thank you,” she said stiffly.
He fussed with something on the ground—she couldn’t see past the desk—then held up her cask of wine. He raised an eyebrow.
“No thank you,” she repeated.
“I know what you want then.” He fussed again, and a moment later he produced her Ziploc baggie of marijuana. He saw the reaction on her face and smiled. “We all have our vices, don’t we?” He tossed the baggie on the table in front of her.
Danièle stared at it. No way was she going to get high with Zolan…but, God, a few tokes would be nice. Just two, maybe three, just enough to calm her nerves a little.
“Please, indulge,” he said. “It is not for me.”
Zolan shot a second cigarette from his pack and lit up. The smell of the burning tobacco, and the fact he wasn’t getting high too, decided it for her. She opened the baggie, withdrew the papers and a clump of pot, and crumbled the pot between her fingers. When she finished rolling the joint, Zolan passed her a brass Zippo. She accepted it guiltily, like a crack addict accepting the needle that had just killed her friend.
She lit the joint and inhaled deeply.
Zolan sipped his vodka and said, “Tell me something about yourself, Danièle.”
She hated it when he used her name, it presumed a disturbing and artificial familiarity, but she didn’t say anything. She held the smoke in her lungs for as long as she could, then exhaled. The act was Zen-like. The tension in her neck and shoulders seemed to leave her body with the smoke. “Something?” she said, opening her eyes.
