by Jeremy Bates
“The past. A story.” Zolan slid her the ashtray.
Danièle took another long drag. “A story?” She exhaled again. She should put the joint out. Two tokes was enough. She only needed a small high, a medicinal high.
She tapped the ash from the end of it into the ashtray, but she didn’t put it out. “I do not have any stories.”
“Everyone has a story.”
She took a third drag. She was already quite high. Her lack of nourishment and sleep likely had to do with this. Yet she knew she was going to smoke the joint until there was nothing left of it. She wanted to get fucked. She wanted oblivion.
Zolan was waiting patiently for her to tell him a story. A story! Who was this guy? Did he think he was her friend? She would kill him if she could—she would too, wouldn’t she? She would commit murder?
Yes, if she had to. If it meant escaping here.
What about right now?
After all, it was just the two of them. There were no zombie-things outside. If she killed him, she could take a candle and flee into one of those dark tunnels. They would have to lead somewhere. She couldn’t rescue Will and Rob, not by herself, but if she could find a way to the surface, she could return with help.
My God, she thought, she could do this—couldn’t she? Yes! She had to. And look at him. The swine. The lust was all over his face. She could tell him a story, get him believing she was cooperating with him, she was accepting him, let him make an advance, and then, bam, she would kill him.
But with what?
Danièle stubbed the joint out in the ashtray—she would need her wits about her after all—and said, “When I was six years old, my father picked me up from school on a Monday afternoon. This was strange because it was always my mother who picked me up. He took me to the cinema to watch The Last Unicorn. It was a child’s movie, but it scared me so badly we had to leave early. Afterward we got ice cream, then we returned home.” She swallowed. She never talked about this. Even now, even in the predicament she was in, the memories were like razor blades inside her heart, and with each breath, with each word, they cut a little deeper. “My father led me to the basement. My mother was there. She was tied up in a chair, which had toppled onto its side, so her face was pressed against the floor. My older sister was tied up in a chair too. They both had gags in their mouths, stifling their screams. My father told me to sit in a third chair, though he didn’t tie me up. I guess he didn’t think I was a threat. Or maybe he was going to kill me first. I don’t know. He explained to my sister and I that he had been fired from his job the week before, and that he would not be able to provide for us any longer. He told us that our mother no longer loved him. She had no faith in him. She thought he was a failure. He told us she wanted to leave him and take us with her. He told us he couldn’t let that happen. He told us he had a better solution, one in which we would remain together, forever. He walked past us and retrieved a carving knife from where he had stashed it atop the old oil furnace. At that same moment our doorbell rang. This gave me courage and I jumped from the chair and ran. My father chased me up the stairs. He caught me in the foyer before I could reach the front door handle. He covered my mouth with his hand. I bit him. He let go and I screamed. My father had not locked the door—I guess that was not something you bothered to do when you were planning on murdering your family and yourself—and it burst open. My neighbor, Monsieur Rochefort, appeared with his daughter, my best friend. He drove us to Guides every Monday evening. My father attacked him with the knife, but Monsieur Rochefort was able to wrestle the knife away and subdue him while his daughter and I ran next door and got her mother to call the police. My father was charged with three counts of attempted murder and hanged himself while awaiting trial. We moved to France the following year.”
An uncomfortable silence stretched between them. Zolan finished his vodka. Then he got up and came around the desk, came up behind her. He placed his hands on her shoulders and massaged her back with strong thumbs. “It seems, Danièle,” he said, “that you and I have something in common.”
Danièle never took her eyes off the vodka bottle on his desk. “And what is that?”
“Both our fathers are rotting in hell.”
Chapter 54
Someone was calling my name, it came from the edges of the darkness, I heard it and knew I was asleep, knew I needed to wake up, but the darkness was too thick, too black, and I couldn’t claw through it, and I wondered if maybe my injuries had caught up to me after all, and I wasn’t asleep but unconscious, in a coma, and this terrified me because maybe I would remain in such a state forever, aware of the darkness, and the voices that called to me from the margins, but unable to do anything to reach those voices or a higher awareness, fated to live like a snail in the void—
I opened my eyes and found myself in a new darkness. But that was okay. Because this was real, I was awake, I wasn’t brain dead—
“Will! Wake up, bro! Wake the fuck up!”
I rolled onto my side. The chains clinked. Everything from my shoulders down was pins and needles. “Rob?” I groaned.
“Will!” he barked, his voice hoarse, nasally. “Where the fuck are we?”
“The cata…” My throat was parched again. “Catacombs.”
“I know that! But what happened? Some fucking guy attacked me. Drove a bone into my face. Broke my fucking nose. And now I’m chained up. What the hell? What the fuck’s going on?”
So I told him.
Katja spent the day reminiscing, scrutinizing, doubting, despairing. So many lies! Lies she had believed unconditionally. Lies like that photograph she had found in her father’s study, the photograph he insisted was of her grandfather and grandmother before the war, even though her “grandfather” appeared identical to him, and her “grandmother” didn’t appear to be much older than her. Lies like when he drank too much beer and mumbled in a stupor of a living, breathing Paris, mumbles he would dismiss the next day as “dream words.” Lies like his explanation that their food came from a warehouse that hadn’t been destroyed by the nuclear bombs—food that somehow remained fresh after all that time even when some of the bread and fruit and vegetables in their kitchen went moldy after only a few days.
A dozen other lies, two dozen, all so clear now, all leaving her feeling shaken and scared and thrilled and most of all angry.
What had she been denied all these years?
Rob was full of questions while I explained to him what had transpired over the last day or so, but he went quiet when I finished. His silence lasted for several minutes. Then I heard a couple sharp intakes of breath and louder exhales, shuddering, gritty—a man trying to keep his emotions in check. It was the most depressing and lonely sound I had ever heard. “You know the last thing I said to the wife?” he said finally in a gruff voice. “I told her…” He began to chuckle. “Told her to go fuck herself.”
“You tell everyone to go fuck themselves.”
“This was different. I meant it. She knew I meant it. I think it was the end.”
“The end?”
“The end! The marriage. The fucking end. I think it was over.”
I didn’t say anything.
“We’d stopped talking a while ago,” he went on. “Meaningful talking. Now we’re like bitter old fucks on TV sitcoms, only it’s not funny. We don’t talk about the news at breakfast, don’t talk about our days, she tells me I’m making a mess while I’m cooking, and I tell her to get out of the fucking kitchen if it bothers her so much. You wanna guess why we’re still together?”
“Your girls?”
“Yeah, my girls. They’re the world to me. Bella’s five, Mary’s three. Bella’s just started kindergarten. It’s turned her into a diva. She’s suddenly decided she doesn’t like vegetables and only wants pasta and butter and cheese—for every meal, every day. She also thinks she’s too old for naps. I’m good with that because by bedtime she’s so tired she zonks off immediately. It’s amazing how fast they grow up. I know peopl
e always say that, but it blows my mind. Mary can barely draw a circle and still has imaginary friends, while Bella can jump rope, skate, walk on a balance beam…”
“You’re going to see them again, Rob—”
“Pascal’s dead!” he snapped. “Danièle’s gone! You think we’re walking out of here? You and me—we’re next. Dead. I’m not seeing my girls again. They’re going to grow up with some knob jockey stepdad and forget what I ever fucking looked like.”
Chapter 55
ROB
Rob flopped onto his back and rapped the back of his head on the hard-packed floor, overwhelmed with memories and emotions. He plucked a good memory, a pleasant one, out of the whirlwind. His wedding day—when everything in his life had been working, when everything had been right. Dev, so beautiful in her dress, stunning, unreal, entering the chapel, walking down the aisle slowly the way all brides do, her father beside her, proud to the point of bursting, Dev stopping at the altar, eyes so bright, filled with excitement for what their future together held. Later, searching for an apartment, one with a spare room that they could convert to a nursery, Dev stumbling out of the bathroom, her pants and knickers down around her ankles, shrieking that she was pregnant. Her water breaking during an episode of Friends, rushing her to the hospital, seeing Bella for the first time, a tiny dusky blue thing covered in ropes of blood and vernix, watching her take her first breath, her color turning to a rosy pink. Her first birthday, the flat filled with foil balloons; her second birthday, the flat filled with other toddlers. A couple weeks after that, having dinner in a nice restaurant, Dev saying she was pregnant again, celebrating with a bottle of wine, chatting like they were the only two in the place, in love…
Rob rapped the back of his head on the ground again, harder.
Into the darkness he said, “You’re right, boss. We’re going to get out of here. I’m going to see my girls again. We’re…” He squeezed his eyes tight. “Who’s Max?”
Will sounded startled. “How do you know that name?”
“You were mumbling it in your sleep.”
“What did I say?”
“Don’t know. Just heard Max a bunch of times.”
A long pause. “She was my younger sister.”
“Was?”
“I killed her.”
Rob pushed himself to his elbows, staring, unseeing. “You what?”
“I crashed a boat.” Another pause. “Six people died. I could have saved Max, I saw her in the water, floating there, but I chose to save my girlfriend instead.”
“You chose?”
“I always told myself it wasn’t a choice, I acted on instinct, but that’s only what I wanted to believe.”
“Did the girlfriend make it?”
“Survive? Yeah.”
“So—you split up?”
“Yeah.”
“Shit, I mean… Did you do time?”
“I wasn’t drinking, if that’s what you mean. The guy I hit wasn’t following maritime safety rules. He was under oars, didn’t need navigation lights, but he should have had a flashlight or a lantern.”
“So it was an accident.”
“An accident…yeah. I chose my girlfriend’s life over my sister’s. I let my sister drown. An accident.”
“That’s not what I meant…”
Will didn’t reply. Seconds slipped away, then minutes. The comfort that speaking had provided quickly faded, and the misery inside Rob returned. He summoned the faces of Dev and the girls, praying for a miracle.
Chapter 56
“Hey! Will! Wake up!” Rob hissed. “Someone’s coming!”
“Huh?” I opened my eyes and winced against the pain pulsing through my head and body.
“Someone’s coming.”
I sat up and saw the faint glow of an approaching light. I was instantly alert. “If it’s Katja,” I said hoarsely, “let me do the talking, I think I can get through to her—”
“Tell her that if she lets us go we’ll—”
“I know! Now quiet!”
He fell silent. We waited.
The light filled the entrance to the room, yellow at first, then a warmer orange. A silhouette appeared. “Will!” Katja exclaimed in a hushed whisper, then she charged across the room. For a moment I thought her intention was to attack me. Instead she collapsed next to me and gripped my arm tightly. “You were right!” she sobbed. “My father lied to me. He lied to me about everything. Paris wasn’t destroyed, was it? Tell me this is true.”
“Yes—it’s true,” I said, baffled.
“I knew it! I checked my books, but there were no publication pages like you said. My father ripped them out. But there was a book in his study that still had the publication page. It said 2011. It was printed after the war. And I looked inside one of your bags and found a wallet. There was money in it. And why would you have money if there were nowhere to spend it? Am I right?”
“Yes, you’re right. I—we—use money every day.”
“And I found this too! What is it?”
She withdrew a slip of paper from an incongruous pink purse dangling from her shoulder. She held it in front of my face. The words were too small to read in the candlelight, but it was recognizable enough. “That’s a receipt, Katja. That’s what you get when you purchase something, so you have a record of it.”
“A receipt.”
“Yes—see, those are the purchased items on the left, and those are the prices they cost on the right.”
“I knew it! I knew it was something like that. Please, Will, I want to see the surface! Please take me. You have to take me there.”
“I’ll take you, Katja, I promise you, I’ll take you right now if you release me.”
“Will you let me live with you? I won’t know anyone else or anywhere to go…”
“I, yeah, sure, you can live with me. You can stay as long as you want.”
“And we can have a picnic outside, on grass? And you can take me shopping for a dress and help me make friends my age?”
“I’ll do whatever you want. But you have to get these cuffs off me first.”
“That’s why I brought this.” She pulled a hammer from the purse triumphantly—Pascal’s hammer, I realized. “Will it work?”
“Yes!” I extended my arms behind my back, pressed my palms flat on the dirt, and splayed my wrists apart so the chain links connecting them went taut. “Can you hit the chain without hitting my hands?”
“I think so.”
“Okay, do it.”
She moved behind me. I tensed. Then—whack. The hammer struck the chain…with about as much force as you might slap at a pesky fly.
I said, “You’re going to have to hit it harder than that, Katja. As hard as you can.”
“I don’t want to hit your hands.”
“You won’t. Try again.”
This time the hammer struck the chain with more conviction.
“Did it break?”
“No—nothing happened.”
“Keeping hitting it.”
She struck the chain five times, each time harder than the last, but with no success.
I said, “You need to find a rock, Katja, to put under the chain.”
“Okay.” She searched the room for what seemed like an eternity before exclaiming, “Found one!” She returned to me and slipped the rock beneath the chain. Hopefully it would act as an anvil and channel the energy from the hammer into the chain. A moment later came the now familiar whack—only this time my wrists sprang apart.
I was free!
I held my hands before me. Old cast-iron manacles encircled each wrist. Two chain links dangled from each.
I turned toward Katja and gave her a huge hug. “Thank you!” I gushed, and planted a kiss on her cheek. To my surprise she smelled earthy and fresh.
I released her and lumbered to my feet. My body protested as if it were a hundred years old. I swooned and doubled over.
“Are you okay?” Katja asked, eyes wide.
&nbs
p; I nodded. “Just dizzy.” I buttoned and fastened my jeans that Katja had unfastened earlier and scooped up the hammer and the rock and told her to get the candle. “We need to help my friend now.”
She glanced in Rob’s direction. “But he’s not awake.”
“Yeah, he is. He woke up a little while ago. Right, Rob?”
“Yeah.”
Katja stiffened at his voice.
“It’s okay,” I told her. “You can trust him. I promise.”
Rob was on his back. I hadn’t heard him move since Katja had entered the room, and I guess he had been playing dead. I helped him into a sitting position. His jaw was pebbly with a day’s growth of beard shadow.
When he saw Katja’s mutilations for the first time, I felt his body flinch, though he remained pokerfaced. “Hiya!” he said. “I’m Rob.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Rob. I’m Katja.”
Rob stared at her, and I smiled, an alien feeling right then. I told Rob to spread his hands behind him. I slipped the rock under the three-inch chain connecting his manacles, lined the hammer true, and brought the head down. The chain links exploded apart.
“Fuck, yes!” Rob cried, holding his hands in front of him as I had done.
“Katja,” I said quickly, “we have another friend. A woman. Do you know where she is?”
She nodded. “I asked my uncles about her earlier. My father is keeping her in a room near his quarters.”
“His quarters? Where are his quarters?”
“Where they always are.”
“Yes, but—”
Rob asked, “How big is your home down here?”
“How big?”
She didn’t have any conception of size, I realized. This section of catacombs was all she knew. She had nothing to compare it against.
“How long does it take you to walk from here to your father’s quarters?” I tried instead.
She glanced at her wristwatch, as if it held the answer. “Ten minutes,” she stated.
“And how far is it from here to the exit?”
