“We could spend more than two minutes trying to get it open,” I insist.
“Someone could walk by and hear us.” Aya stands, wobbling a little on her heels. Tears stream down her face, but she brushes them away with her palm. “They might stop to help.”
“No one would help,” Shana mutters. Even I can’t bring myself to agree with Aya. It’s somewhere around four o’clock in the morning in a shady neighborhood in Lower Manhattan and we’re pounding on a manhole cover.
“I tried everything,” Woody says.
“Shit.” Shana tries to look at me again, but when I don’t meet her eyes, she turns to Sam. “There are still some candles left burning. If we go now, we might be able to find another exit before they go out.”
So much for being on my side. “I’m not going back there,” I say.
“Jesus! What is your problem?” Shana snaps, shoving her hands in her pockets.
Sam drops a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. “Guys, drop it,” he says. “We have bigger issues right now.”
Shana stares at his hand. Her eyes narrow.
“I get it.” Her mouth twists into a cruel smile. “The lovebirds talked things over and decided this is my fault. Everything’s my fault, isn’t it?” She turns to Sam, narrowing her eyes. “You’re acting like I forced you into something but I was there. You wanted it just as bad as I did.”
You wanted it just as bad as I did? The words repeat in my head, like a math problem I can’t figure out. I frown and cross my hands over my chest. “What are you talking about?”
Shana’s eyes widen. She looks from me to Sam. “I thought you . . . shit.”
“What do you mean shit?” Something nags at me, but I brush it away. I’m being paranoid. I turn to Sam, but he won’t meet my eyes. “What’s going on?” I ask. The nagging feeling gets stronger, more insistent.
“Nothing.” Shana shakes her head. She stares down at her boots. The nagging feeling is different now. It’s panicked and ugly—desperate. I turn back to Sam, heat rising in my face.
“You said you were with someone.” My voice shakes, but I force the words out, anyway. “When we were broken up.”
“Casey . . .” He reaches for me, but I slap his hand away. I feel dirty where I let him touch me.
“Shana?” I hiss. “You were with Shana?”
I wait for him to deny it. To tell me I’m crazy, that he would never hook up with my best friend. But he can’t even meet my eyes. Dread forms a lump in the pit of my stomach. I picture him looking at her, touching her skin, and my stomach turns. Sam’s face looks ashen. Guilty. “I tried to tell you,” he says.
“You were giving me shit for hanging out with her. And all along you . . .” I can’t even say the words. I’m going to be sick.
“I know,” Sam says. “That was wrong, I’m sorry.”
I close my eyes. His words mean nothing to me. They’re static. White noise.
“You were broken up,” Shana adds, like this explains everything. I round on her. All the frustration and anger I’ve felt since she spiked my drink bubbles up inside me. I’m an idiot for thinking she actually cared about me. She doesn’t care about anything or anyone but herself.
“Everyone said you were a bitch. I actually thought you were my friend,” I say.
Shana stares at me for a beat. Then her lips curl into a smirk that’s halfway between embarrassed and proud. “Don’t be a tease. You like me because I’m a bitch. You wish you were more like me.”
I have to curl my hand into a fist so I don’t slap her.
“Shana, stop.” Sam shoots her a look.
“Shut up, Sam,” I hiss. I don’t want his help. I don’t want anything from him.
“Oh, calm down, Case.” Shana frowns. “It didn’t mean anything! We were just having fun.”
“Of course you were!” I shout. “You’re always having fun. Fun’s the only thing that matters to you.”
Sam takes a step toward me. “Casey, please,” he says. “As soon as we get out of here, we’ll talk. I can explain everything.”
My whole body shakes with anger, but my voice is steady. Cold, even. I turn on Sam. “I trusted you.”
Sam hunches his shoulders and stares at his feet. I see his lips on her neck. His hand slipping beneath her shirt. Disgust rises in my throat.
I have to get out of here.
I push past Sam and climb back onto the ladder. Anger propels me forward, and I move up the rungs two at a time, until the manhole is directly above me. I loop one arm around the ladder to steady myself, and run my fingers along the cool metal. There has to be a latch or a groove—something that Sam and Woody missed. But the surface is smooth. Frustration bubbles up inside me. I grit my teeth and bang against the cover with all my strength.
A dull ache forms at the back of my head. I close my eyes, trying to calm the steady beat of pain.
I feel like I’m at the clinic again. I’m huddled in the corner of my room that first night, sweat drawing lines down my back. I can’t stop shaking. Tremors of pain roll through my body. My stomach churns, even though I haven’t eaten since this morning. My arms trembling, I crawl to the foot of my bed and fumble for my sneakers. The painkiller I snuck in clatters onto the cold tile floor.
The door to my room creaks open, and a nurse walks in. My heart pounds wildly. I grope for the pill, but it slips from my sweaty fingers.
“Where did you get this?” The nurse kneels and picks my last pill up off the floor.
“I need that,” I say, grabbing at her hands. She shakes her head and leaves the room, shutting the door behind her.
“No!” I shout. I crawl over to the door and bang against the wood until my knuckles bruise.
My eyes flicker open again. I’m in the tunnel, not rehab, and my knuckles are raw from pounding at the manhole cover. But it hasn’t budged.
The headache seeps into my skull. I imagine it like a wild creature, its long tentacles pressing against my brain and temples.
My body feels heavier as I climb back down the ladder and drop to the ground next to my friends. “It’s stuck.”
“You don’t say,” Woody mutters, cocking an eyebrow.
The rest of them look at me, waiting. I wipe the grease from the ladder rungs onto the back of my jeans.
I don’t want to think about what happens next, but Shana’s right. It’s better to get it over with now. Before the candles die.
“Okay,” I say.
“Casey . . .” Sam puts a hand on my arm. The same hand that touched Shana’s skin and hair and lips. I pull away, disgusted.
“Don’t,” I warn him. I still can’t look him in the face, so I stare at the toe of his sneaker. “Let’s find another exit and get the hell out of here.”
Sam nods and peels the candle off the floor. The flame sparks as he holds it out in front of him.
“Let’s go,” he says.
FIFTEEN
SAM LEADS US DOWN THE TUNNEL, HOLDING THE candle in front of him like a beacon. Shana’s arm brushes against his as they walk, and I look away.
I always thought she hated Sam, or that she was jealous of how much time I spent with him. Now I know better.
I should have figured it out the night of Jasper’s party. I was crouched in the bathroom, waiting to be rescued by Sam, when I heard Shana’s gravel-on-sandpaper voice on the other side of the plywood door.
“Where’s Casey?” she demanded, but she started toward the bathroom without waiting for an answer. Her high-heeled boots bit into the floorboards, making them shake.
I wanted to crawl into the dirty shower stall and hide. I wanted to back up against the door and hold it shut with my body. But that was stupid. Shana was my best friend.
Seconds later, she threw open the bathroom door. “What are you doing in here?”
I swallowed, feeling
the last grains of oxy dissolve on my tongue. “Hiding from that creep you left me with.”
“That creep is our hookup. He’s going to score us some H.”
Shana wiggled her eyebrows, but I just stared. H. As in heroin.
“Are you crazy?” I hissed.
“Duh,” Shana whispered, giggling. “Come on.”
She started to stand, but I grabbed her wrist, pulling her back to the floor. “Wait,” I said. “What did you promise him?”
Shana’s smile faded. “What?”
“What did you say you’d give him in exchange for the drugs?”
Shana chewed her lip. Her eyes traveled down my body. “You wouldn’t have to do much,” she said. “Just make out a little.”
Disgust turned my stomach. “No,” I said. Shana started to argue, but a car rumbled to a stop outside, cutting her off.
“That’s Sam,” I told her.
Shana rolled her eyes. “Of course you called Prince Charming to come and save you,” she muttered.
I pushed past her and dashed for the front door, ignoring the whistles and hollers that followed me out.
I kick a beer can, watching it rattle down the subway tunnel. Sam had been furious. He broke up with me the very next morning. It hadn’t occurred to me until now that all of it had been Shana’s fault. If she hadn’t dragged me to that party, Sam never would have seen me like that. He wouldn’t have dumped me, I wouldn’t have been sent to rehab, and he never would have ended up with Shana. Everything would have been fine.
Woody elbows me. “You want?” he asks, holding a silver flask engraved with a marijuana leaf. I shake my head.
“No thanks.”
Woody shrugs and takes a drink. “Right,” he says. “Shana mentioned you were doing the whole sober thing.”
“Yeah,” I say. “They look down on drinking in rehab.”
Woody nods, like I just said something deeply profound. “I get that.” He takes another swig from his flask. “So. Are you a Jesus freak now?”
“What?” I cough.
“My cousin went to rehab last year. When she came back she was, like, really into Jesus. She started saying all this stuff about how He was driving her car, and that He takes over when she can’t handle her life.” Woody fumbles with the flask’s lid. “Apparently there was a lot she couldn’t handle, because she prayed all the time, too. I mean, she prayed like it was her job. Come to think of it, I don’t think she had a real job.”
“I’m not into Jesus now,” I say, cutting him off. “It wasn’t that kind of rehab.”
Woody nods, solemnly, like he’s well acquainted with the many types of rehab. “Do you think it’s God?” he asks. He stretches his arms over his head and his shirtsleeve moves up, revealing the Japanese characters he had tattooed on his bicep sophomore year. He thinks they read “peace” but Aya told me they actually say kimoi, which translates to “creep.”
“Do I think what’s God?” I ask.
“Whatever happened to Julie. Maybe it’s the Rapture and God is killing all nonbelievers.”
I think about the bloody wound hollowing out her gut and the way someone strung her up across the tunnels for us to find. I twist Julie’s ring around my thumb. It’s too big for me, and I’m afraid it’ll slip from my finger. “It’s not the Rapture,” I say.
“Then what do you think it is?
Something thuds to the ground ahead of us. I stop walking and grab Woody’s arm.
“Oh, God,” Aya moans. “Oh God oh God oh God.” She huddles against Shana’s back.
Sam squints into the darkness, holding the candle before him. The light illuminates only the rough stone-and-brick wall. “I think it was just some dirt crumbling from the ceiling,” he says.
We start shuffling forward again. It definitely could have been dirt, I tell myself. These walls are old enough. I’m surprised we don’t hear more bits and pieces crumbling off them.
But the noise didn’t really sound like dirt.
I huddle closer to Woody, pushing that thought to the very back of my mind. He drops a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. It’s a nice, brotherly gesture and I feel a rush of gratitude toward him.
“Well?” Woody asks. “What do you think it is?”
It’s a second before I remember that he’s asking me what I think killed Julie. “I think it was a man,” I say. He raises an eyebrow, and I tell him about the girls I heard talking about the homeless serial killer who lives in these tunnels.
Woody blows air out through his teeth. “That’s messed up,” he mutters. “Do you think he’s down here now?”
I stare straight ahead, into the darkness that’s like a wall outside the safety of Sam’s candlelight. If I think too hard about all the things that could be hiding out there, I wouldn’t be able to take another step. I swallow, and the back of my throat tastes like ash.
“Yeah,” I say. “I think he’s down here now.”
We continue moving through the tunnels in silence, eventually reaching a fork. Woody gives my shoulder one last squeeze and jogs up next to Sam.
“This way,” he says, pointing down a narrow tunnel that twists away from the main subway system. It’s much smaller than the tunnels we’ve been walking through so far, and there aren’t any tracks stretching across the ground.
Sam frowns. “You’re sure?” he asks.
“I practically live in the subways,” Woody says. A clump of blond hair falls over his forehead, and he gives his head a practiced toss to get it out of his eyes. “This one’s headed north, yeah? Should take us to Chambers. There’s definitely a way out there. We’ll probably find something after, like, twenty minutes of walking.”
“Twenty minutes?” Shana hisses.
“Tops,” Woody says.
“Look, if he thinks there’s an exit this way, we should take it,” Sam says. “Better than wandering around lost.”
“I guess,” Shana mutters.
The new tunnel is too narrow for us to walk side by side. We form a line—Woody, then Sam, Shana, Aya, and me. Our footsteps echo off the curved walls around us, and water drips from the ceiling. I slip my cell out of my jeans pocket and check the time—4:37 a.m.
We’ll be out of here before five, I tell myself. I try to picture what will happen next. Would we go right to the police station to report Julie’s murder? I imagine someone wrapping a blanket around my shoulders, and drinking watery coffee while I explain how we found her. The thought makes me shiver. It’s equal parts comforting and horrifying.
The tunnel slopes upward. I lean forward to keep from losing my balance. A broken lightbulb juts out from the wall, and glass crunches beneath my feet. A cockroach darts over the bricks. I cringe, looking away.
The wall ends, abruptly, replaced by thick wooden slabs that stand several feet apart. Sam’s candlelight flickers over another lane of thick metal rails on the other side.
I dig my cell phone out of my pocket and aim the light past the tracks. Chicken wire stretches between the two lanes. It comes up to my waist, affixed to the wood with bright orange zip ties. A wooden beam cuts across the slabs, dividing the space in half.
“Do you think there’s something over there?” I crouch to peer below the beam, shining my light over another brick wall on the other side of the train tracks. “An exit or another platform?”
A train thunders through the tunnels before Woody can answer. I don’t see it, but dirt rains down from the ceiling, coating my hair. My heart leaps in my chest. Trains mean people.
“There must be a working subway directly above us,” Woody says, shaking the dust from his head.
“How do we find it?” Aya asks.
“The tunnel’s sloping up,” Woody says. “They should connect at some point.”
The others hurry forward, but I stand too quickly and smack the back of my head against
the wooden beam. Pain spreads through my skull and a wave of dizziness washes over me. For a second, I can’t see.
“Shit,” I mutter. Someone drops a hand on my shoulder. “It’s okay,” I say, rubbing my head. “I’m fine.”
“Casey?” Woody calls. I blink, and my eyesight clears.
Sam and Shana huddle together at the far end of the tunnel, the candle flickering between them. Woody stands a few feet away, Aya hovering behind him.
They all stare at me, eyes wide with horror.
“Oh my God.” Aya lifts a trembling hand to her mouth. Fear trickles through me.
I turn my head.
Meaty gray fingers rest on my shoulder. The flesh is mottled and waterlogged, the fingers swollen to twice their size. Jagged black nails jut out from them, looking like they might pop off. There’s a raw, bloody wound where the pinkie should be.
I scream and jerk forward. The hand tumbles from my shoulder and smacks onto the dirt-covered floor. Two bones jut out of the bloody, decaying stump.
SIXTEEN
I STUMBLE INTO THE WALL, SWATTING MY ARMS AND shaking out my hair. I still feel those fingers on my shoulder, the fingernails grazing my skin.
“Holy shit!” Woody shouts. Sam lunges forward and yanks me away from the decaying hand. I shudder violently. I can’t seem to catch my breath.
Shana takes a step forward, her eyes wide. “What’s that?” she says, and I jerk my head around to where she’s staring.
The decaying remains of an arm stick out from a narrow crevice just above us. Bloody flannel rags cling to what’s left of the jagged bones and shredded, meaty flesh. Nausea turns my stomach. I sink against the wall and ball up a fist at my mouth to keep from vomiting. I’m dimly aware of a cold hand brushing against my arm.
I flinch away.
“Hey, it’s just me,” Sam says, holding his hands in front of him. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay.” I take another deep breath and clench my hands to still the trembling. Sam aims the candlelight at the arm.
Survive the Night Page 11
