Vasiliy stepped out of the pickup, down among the concrete footings, looking up seven stories to the street above him. He was in the pit where the towers had fallen. It was enough to take his breath away.
Vasiliy said, “This is a holy place.”
The sandhog had a bushy, gray-flecked mustache, and wore a loose flannel shirt over a tucked-in flannel shirt—both heavy with soil and sweat—and blue jeans with muddy gloves tucked into the belt. His hard hat was covered with stickers. “I always thought so,” he said. “Recently I’m not so sure.”
Fet looked at him. “Because of the rats?”
“There’s that, sure. Gushing out of the tunnels the past few days, like we’ve struck rat oil. But that’s fallen off now.” He shook his head, looking up at the slurry wall erected beneath Vesey Street, seventy sheer feet of concrete studded with tiebacks.
Fet said, “Then what?”
The guy shrugged. Sandhogs are a proud lot. They built New York City, its subways and sewers, every tunnel, pier, skyscraper, and bridge foundation. Every glass of clean water comes out of the tap thanks to a sandhog. A family job, different generations working together on the same sites. Dirty work done right. So the guy was reluctant to sound reluctant. “Everyone’s in kind of a funk. We had two guys walk off, disappear. Clocked in for a shift, went down into the tunnels, but never clocked out. We’re twenty-four/seven here, but nobody wants night shifts anymore. Nobody wants to be underground. And these are young guys, my daredevils.”
Fet looked ahead to the tunnel openings where the subterranean structures would be joined beneath Church Street. “So no new construction these past few days? Breaking new ground?”
“Not since we got the basin hollowed out.”
“And all this started with the rats?”
“Around then. Something’s come over this place, just in the past few days.” The sandhog shrugged, shaking it off. He had a plain white hard hat for Vasiliy. “And I thought I had a dirty job. What makes someone want to become a rat catcher anyway?”
Vasiliy put on the hat, feeling the wind change near the mouth of the underground passage. “I guess I’m addicted to the glamour.”
The sandhog looked at Vasiliy’s boots, his Puma bag, the steel rod. “Done this before?”
“Gotta go where the vermin are. There’s a lot of city under this city.”
“Tell me about it. You got a flashlight, I hope? Some bread crumbs?”
“Think I’m good.”
Vasiliy shook the sandhog’s hand, then started inside.
The tunnel was clean at first, where it had been shored up. He followed it out of the sunlight, yellow lights strung every ten or so yards, marking his way. He was under where the original concourse had been located. This big burrow would, when all was said and done, connect the new PATH station to the WTC transportation hub located between towers two and three, a half block away. Other feed tunnels connected to city water, power, and sewer.
Deeper in, he couldn’t help but notice fine, powdery dust still coating the walls of the original tunnel. This was a hallowed place, still very much a graveyard. Where bodies and buildings were pulverized, reduced to atoms.
He saw burrows, he saw tracks and scat, but no rats. He picked away at the burrows with his rod, and listened. He heard nothing.
The strung-up work lights ended at a turn, a deep, velvety blackness lying ahead. Vasiliy carried a million-candlepower spot lamp in his bag—a big yellow Garrity with a bullhorn grip—as well as two backup mini Maglites. But artificial light in a dark enclosure wiped out one’s night vision altogether, and for rat hunting he liked to stay dark and quiet. He pulled out a night-vision monocular instead, a handheld unit with a strap that attached nicely to his hard hat, coming down over his left eye. Closing his right eye turned the tunnel green. Rat vision, he called it, their beady eyes glowing in the scope.
Nothing. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, the rats were gone. Driven off.
That stumped him. It took a lot to displace rats. Even once you removed their food source, it could be weeks before seeing a change. Not days.
The tunnel was joined by older passages, Vasiliy coming across filth-covered rail tracks unused for many years. The quality of the ground soil had changed, and he could tell by its very texture that he had crossed over from “new” Manhattan—the landfill that had been brought in to build up Battery Park out of sludge—into “old” Manhattan, the original dry island bedrock.
He stopped at a junction to make certain he had his bearings. As he looked down the length of the crossing tunnel, he saw, in his rat vision, a pair of eyes. They glowed back at him like rat eyes, but bigger, and high off the ground.
The eyes were gone in a flash, turning out of sight.
“Hey?” yelled Vasiliy, his call echoing. “Hey up there!”
After a moment, a voice answered him, echoing back off the walls. “Who goes there?”
Vasiliy detected a note of fear in the voice. A flashlight appeared, its source down at the end of the tunnel, well beyond where Vasiliy had seen the eyes. He flipped up the monocular just in time, saving his retina. He identified himself, pulling out a little Maglite to shine back as a signal, then moved forward. At the point where he estimated seeing the eyes, the old access tunnel ran up alongside another tunnel track that appeared to be in use. The monocular showed him nothing, no glowing eyes, so he continued around the bend to the next junction.
He found three sandhogs there, in goggles and sticker-covered hard hats, wearing flannels, jeans, and boots. A sump pump was running, channeling out a leak. The halogen bulbs of their high-powered work-light tripods lit up the new tunnel like a space-creature movie. They stood close together, tense until they could fully see Vasiliy.
“Did I just see one of you back there?” he asked.
The three guys looked at one another. “What’d you see?”
“Thought I saw someone.” He pointed. “Cutting across the track.”
The three sandhogs looked at one another again, then two of them started packing up. The third one said, “You the guy looking for rats?”
“Yeah.”
The groundhog shook his head. “No more rats here.”
“I don’t mean to contradict you, but that’s almost impossible. How come?”
“Could be they’ve got more sense than us.”
Vasiliy looked down the lit tunnel, in the direction of the sump hose. “The subway exit down there?”
“That’s the way out.”
Vasiliy pointed in the opposite direction. “What’s this way?”
The sandhog said, “You don’t want to go that way.”
“Why not?”
“Look. Forget about rats. Follow us out. We’re done here.”
Water was still trickling into the troughlike puddle. Vasiliy said, “I’ll be right along.”
The guy dead-eyed him. “Suit yourself,” he said, switching off a tripod lamp and then hoisting a pack onto his back, starting after the others.
Vasiliy watched them go, lights playing far down the tunnel, darkening along a gradual turn. He heard the screeching of subway car wheels, near enough to concern him. He went on, crossing to the newer track, waiting for his eyes to acclimate themselves to the darkness again.
He switched on his monocular, everything going subterranean green. The echoing of his footfalls changed as the tunnel broadened to a trash-strewn exchange near a convergence of tracks. Rivet-studded steel beams stood at regular intervals, like pillars in an industrial ballroom. An abandoned maintenance shack stood to Vasiliy’s right, defaced by vandalism. The shack’s crumbling brick walls featuring some artless graffiti tags around a depiction of the twin towers in flames. One was labeled “Saddam,” the other “Gamera.”
On an old support, an ancient track sign had once warned workers:
WARNING
LOOK OUT FOR TRAINS
It had since been defaced, the T and the N in TRAINS blotted out, and electric tape stuck
atop the I to turn it into a T, so that it now read:
WARNING
LOOK OUT FOR RAT S
Indeed, this godforsaken place should have been rat central. He decided to go to black light. He pulled the small wand from his Puma bag and switched it on, the bulb burning cool blue in the dark. Rodent urine fluoresces under black light, due to its bacterial content. He ran it over the ground near the supports, a moonlike landscape of dry trash and filth. He noticed some duller, older, piddling stains but nothing fresh. Not until he waved it near a rusted oil barrel lying on its side. The barrel and the floor beneath it lit up bigger and brighter than any rat piss he had ever seen. A huge splash. Factored out from what he normally found, this trace would indicate a six-foot rat.
It was the recent bodily waste of some larger animal, possibly a man.
The drip-dripping of the water over the old track echoed down the breezy tunnels. He sensed rustling, some distant movement, or else maybe this place was getting to him. He put away the black light and scanned the area with his monocular. Behind one of the steel supports, he again saw a pair of shining eyes reflecting back at him—then turning away and vanishing.
He couldn’t tell how near. Given his one-eyed view scope and the geometrical pattern of the identical beams, his depth perception was shot.
He did not call out a hello this time. He did not say anything but gripped his rebar a bit more tightly. The homeless, when you encountered them, were rarely combative—but this felt like something different. Put it down to an exterminator’s sixth sense. The way he could sniff out rat infestations. Vasiliy suddenly felt outnumbered.
He pulled out his bright bullhorn spot lamp and scanned the chamber. Before retreating, he reached back into his bag, broke open the cardboard spout on a box of tracking powder, and shook out a fair amount of rodenticide over the area. Tracking powder worked more slowly than pure edible bait, but also more surely. It had the added advantage of showing the intruders’ tracks, making follow-up nest baiting easier.
Vasiliy hastily emptied three cartons, then turned with his lamp and made his way back through the tunnels. He came across active tracks with the boxed-over third rail, and then the sump pump, and followed the long hose. At one point he felt the tunnel wind change, and turned to see the curve brightening behind him. He quickly stepped back into a wall recess, bracing himself, the roar deafening. The train squealed past and Vasiliy glimpsed commuters in the windows before shielding his eyes from the smoky swirl of grit and dust.
It passed, and he followed the tracks until he reached a lighted platform. He surfaced with bag and rod, pulling himself up off the track onto the mostly empty platform, next to a sign that read, IF YOU SEE SOMETHING, SAY SOMETHING. Nobody did. He walked up the mezzanine stairs and moved through the turnstiles, resurfacing on the street into the warming sun. He moved to a nearby fence and found himself back above the World Trade Center construction site. He lit a cheroot with his blue flame butane Zippo and sucked in the poison, chasing the fear he’d felt under the streets. He walked back across the street to the World Trade Center site, coming upon two handmade fliers stapled to the fence. They were scanned color photographs of two sandhogs, one with his helmet still on and dirt on his face. The blue heading over both photographs read: missing.
FINAL INTERLUDE
THE RUINS
IN THE INTERVENING DAYS AFTER THE FALL OF TREBLINKA, most of the escapees were tracked down and executed. Yet Setrakian managed to survive in the woods, remaining within range of the stench of the death camp. He gobbled up roots and whatever small prey he could catch with his broken hands, while from the bodies of other corpses he scavenged an imperfect wardrobe and raggedy, mismatched shoes.
He avoided the search patrols and the barking dogs by the day—while at night, he searched.
He had heard of the Roman ruins through camp hearsay from native Poles. It took him almost a week of roaming, until late one afternoon, in the dying light of dusk, he found himself at the mossy steps at the top of the ancient rubble.
Most of what remained was underground, with only a few overgrown stones visible from the outside. A large pillar still stood at the top of a mound of stones. He could make out a few letters, but they had faded so long ago that it was impossible to discern any meaning.
It was also impossible to stand there at the dark mouth of these catacombs and not shudder.
Abraham was certain: down there was the lair of Sardu. He knew. Fear overcame him, and he felt the burning hole growing in his chest. But purpose was stronger in his heart. Because he knew that it was his calling to find that thing, that hungry thing, and kill it. Make it cease. The camp rebellion had scuttled his killing plan—after weeks and months of procuring raw white oak for shaping—but not his need for vengeance. Of everything that was wrong in the world, this was the thing he could do right. That could give his existence meaning. And now he was about to do it.
Using a broken rock, he had fashioned a crude new stake, chosen from the hardest branch he could find, not pure white oak, but it would have to do. He did this with mangled fingers, further ruined his aching hands for all time. His footsteps echoed in the stone chamber that formed the catacomb. Its ceiling was quite low—surprising, given the Thing’s unnatural height—and roots had upset the stones that precariously held the structure together. The first chamber led to a second, and, amazingly, a third. Each one smaller than the other.
Setrakian had nothing with which to light his way, but the crumbling structure allowed for faint columns of late-day light to seep through the darkness. He moved cautiously through the chambers, pulse racing, stricken at the threshold of murder. His crude wooden stake seemed wholly inadequate as a weapon to fight with in the dark, with the hungry Thing. Especially with broken hands. What was he doing? How would he kill this monster?
As he entered the last chamber, an acid pang of surging fear burned his throat. For the rest of his life, he would be afflicted by acid reflux. The room was vacant, but there, at its center, Setrakian the woodworker saw clearly in the dirt floor—as though inscribed there—the outline marking of a coffin. A huge box, two and a half yards by one and a quarter yards, and one that could only have been removed from this lair by the hands of a Thing with monstrous will.
Then—from behind him—he heard the scratch of footsteps along the stony floor. Setrakian whirled with the wooden stake outstretched, trapped within the Thing’s innermost chamber. The beast had come home to nest, only to find prey lurking in its sleeping place.
The faintest shadow preceded it, but the footfalls were light and dragging. It was not the Thing who appeared at the stone turn to menace Setrakian, but a man of normal human size. A German officer, his uniform tattered and soiled. Its eyes were crimson and watery, brimming with a hunger that had grown into pure manic pain. Setrakian recognized him: Dieter Zimmer, a young officer not much older than he, a true sadist, a barracks officer who bragged of polishing his boots every night in order to scrub away the crust of Jewish blood.
Now it longed for it—for Setrakian’s blood. Any blood. To gorge itself.
Setrakian would not be taken here. He was outside the camp walls now, and so resolved that he had not endured such hell only to fall here, to succumb to the unholy might of this cursed Nazi-Thing.
He ran at it with the point of his stake, but the Thing was faster than anticipated, grasping the wooden weapon and wrenching it from Setrakian’s useless hands, snapping the radius and the ulna in Setrakian’s forearm. He cast the stick aside, and it clacked against a stone wall and fell to the dirt.
The Thing started for Setrakian, wheezing with excitement. He backed up until he realized he was in the center of the rectangular coffin impression. Then, with unexplained strength, he ran at the Thing, forcing it hard against the wall. Dirt crumbled out from around the exposed stones, falling like wisps of smoke. The Thing tried to grab for his head, but Setrakian again lunged at him, shoving his broken arm up under the demon’s chin, forcing its sneering fa
ce upward so that it could not sting him and drink.
The Thing improved its leverage and flung Setrakian aside. He landed next to his stake. He gripped it, but the Thing stood smiling, ready to take it away again. Setrakian jabbed it beneath the supporting wall stones instead. He wedged it beneath a loose stone and used his legs to pry out the stone, just as the Thing’s mouth began to open.
Stones gave way, the side wall of the chamber entrance collapsing as Setrakian crawled away. The roar was loud but brief, the chamber filling with dust, smothering the remaining light. Setrakian crawled blindly over the stones, and a hand grabbed him, its grip strong. The dust parted enough for Setrakian to see that a large stone had crushed the Thing’s head from crown to jaw—and yet it was still functioning. Its dark heart, or whatever it was, still throbbed hungrily. Setrakian kicked at its arm until he escaped the Thing’s grip, and in doing so dislodged the stone. The top half of the head was split, the skull slightly cracked, like a soft-boiled egg.
Setrakian grabbed a leg and dragged the body with his one good arm. He hauled it back to the surface and out of the ruins, into the very last vestiges of daylight filtering in through the tree cover. The dusk was orange and dim—but it was enough. The Thing writhed in pain as it quickly cooked, settling into the ground.
Setrakian raised his face to the dying sun and let loose an animal howl. An unwise act, as he was still on the run from the fallen camp—an outpouring of his anguished soul, from the slaughter of his family, to the terrors of his captivity, to the new horrors he had found…and, finally, to the God who had abandoned him and his people.
The Strain Page 29
