After a moment, I do. It is the long, low roar again. Louder. Closer.
“Oh hell,” Maria whispers. “That’s ahead of us. That’s the way we’re going.”
“What is it?” I ask.
Nobody responds.
Mack lowers his hand and continues forward.
Part of me wants to turn around and run back to the hatch. Fuck the Pulitzer. Fuck it all. Whatever I encounter above, it’s got to be better than this. (What are we below, anyway? Chinatown? Bridgeport? Those neighborhoods would probably be okay.) But fleeing the tunnels, I realize, would mean going it alone. Increasingly, it feels like the most valuable—and rare—things in this outbreak are people I can trust. I may not like where Mack and Maria are taking me, but think I can trust them. For the time being, at least, I decide I’ll go with that.
Leopold Mack
The markings on the doorways of abandoned houses after Hurricane Katrina were utilitarian. There was no artistry to them. Their goal was to make mathematical and impersonal the most devastatingly personal information. The people in here are dead. This is how many corpses you can expect to find. (Or—in the case of the Katrina searchers who merely put a stripe down the front of a door—this house contains an unknown number of corpses, a more harrowing prospect entirely.)
The spray-painted designs on the boarded-off side passages are part of a code, but they are also decorated with verve and wit. As we continue to pass more of them, the skulls begin to wear hats, to smile and leer, and even to have little stick-figure bodies underneath them. Some hold things like guns, sticks, or swords. Some gesture or even dance. The skulls begin to feel more like characters from the Sunday funnies than utilitarian warnings of dangers beyond.
Then—it happens!—we find a board-up with some actual written words on it. Sort of.
“FUBAR,” Ben announces, reading the orange letters on the front of the boards. They have been painted beneath a winking, leering skull who wears a crudely crafted bow-tie.
“Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition,” Maria announces proudly.
“That expression has been around since before the Second World War,” I inform my young friends. “Look at the age of that paint. This guy is from before you were born.”
Ben looks at the board-up silently, like he’s trying to guess at what it could mean.
“Are all the coal tunnels like this?” Maria asks. It’s a good question.
I can remember watching a TV series on the local PBS affiliate a couple of years ago that explored the history of Chicago’s neighborhoods. In one episode, the genial bald-headed host mentioned that coal tunnels ran beneath a particular neighborhood. There were even some quick cutaway shots, purportedly showing the contemporary state of the tunnels’ i nterior. I’m starting to think that what the PBS program showed us were either not the real coal tunnels or just a tiny s howroom-area they keep clean for TV crews. What they showed us on television looked nothing like this.
“I don’t know,” I tell Maria. “But I’ll tell you something. Whatever’s down these blocked-up passages, people want to forget about it.”
We continue northwest along the ancient tracks. Our footfalls echo off the walls. So do our voices.
“I wonder what my mother is doing right now,” Maria whispers. “And my sister. God, I hope they’re okay.”
“I’m sure they’re fine,” I say to Maria.
“If they’re fine, then why are we down here in these tunnels?” observes Ben.
“We’re down here to make sure they stay fine,” I shoot back.
We reach an intersection where the tunnel splits three ways. I take us up the middle path, heading north. After perhaps thirty yards, it splits three ways again.
“What do you think?” Maria asks.
“This is good,” I say. “These junctions mean we’re inside what used to be the busiest part of the tunnels, right near the Loop. We’re making progress. We should keep going north.”
We ignore the tracks veering east and west and stay on the center thoroughfare. New intersections continue to come, but we ignore them. Most of the side passages in this part are not boarded up. Now and then we explore them with our lights, but usually detect nothing. There are more stairways set into the tunnel walls with hatches above. Ben stares at them longingly.
Underneath what I estimate to be the West Loop, we sight two humanoid figures on the track ahead of us. They wear suits— one brown, one black pinstripe—and have rotted, ghastly features. They’re huddled to one side of the tunnel, but not motionless. They appear to be attempting to climb over one another. We watch as one gets a few feet off the ground, slowly loses his balance, and falls to the floor with a thud. A moment later, the other uses him like a stepstool.
“They’re trying to get up to that hatch,” Maria says, spotting a sealed opening in the ceiling with her beam. “There must be people on the other side.”
No sooner does Maria utter these words, than the zombies stop trying to climb. Both of their heads swivel around in slow unison. Brown Suit manages what looks like a smile. They begin walking toward us.
“I’ll do these,” I say, stepping forward. “Hold your ears.”
I walk up to the zombies and draw my gun. Brown Suit’s smile grows even wider as I get close, revealing horrible black-green teeth.
BLAM! BLAM!
My handgun thunders in the cavernous depths. I put a hole through each zombie’s forehead. They go down, still.
“Evil bastards” Maria says, pausing to spit on the corpses as we continue past.
I smile.
To me, it feels like zombies are more a force of nature than a sentient, evil entity. Back in divinity school, I had to learn about all kinds of evil. Believe me, I’m an expert now. But which kind of evil are zombies? That question is still a head scratcher. One morning (or evening), zombies are just there, with the s uddenness of a crashing tidal wave or a ground-rending earthquake. You wake up, and they’re out on your lawn chasing down the mailman. Zombies kill and eat people, yes, but so do Bengal tigers and great white sharks. Where’s the evil there?
I think, to get at real, Biblical-level, brimstone and hellfire evil, you need humans. Living humans. You need them for things like neglect, contempt, hatred, and avarice. Certainly, these forces are the reason why we are now 20 feet below the surface of the city, racing to prevent the new mayor from being murdered. The zombies aren’t trying to kill Maria’s father any more than they’re trying to kill Maria herself, or Ben, or me. The humans are the ones with murder in their souls. The humans are the ones who discriminate.
Zombies are just the natural disaster. The opening in the rift for evil to come on through.
Somewhere below the northwest Loop, Ben’s flashlight goes out.
“Dammit” he says, banging on the side of the light. “What the hell?”
We stop and try to fix it. We remove the batteries and r einsert them. We unscrew the back and look at the wiring inside. No luck.
“Did you do something to it?” Maria asks accusingly.
“No,” Ben insists. “The beam got dim and went black.”
“It’s just out of juice,” I tell them. “Don’t worry. We’ve got two lights left. C’mon. We keep moving”
“Should I still be in back?” Ben asks, a tremor creeping into his voice. “I mean, you each have a gun and a flashlight. Now I just have this baton and no flashlight.
“Does it make sense for you to go first if you don’t have a
flashlight?” Maria asks, crossing her arms.
“I guess not,” says Ben, suitably silenced.
After a half-hour of walking, we arrive in front of yet another boarded-up passageway. The skeleton face painted on the boards has two blacked-out teeth, an “X” over its right eye, and a conical hat like a wizard.
“That’s a new kind of hat” Ben observes from the rear.
“Ehh, the other ones were more interesting,” Maria says. “A pointy hat isn’t that creative.”
&
nbsp; We stand there looking at it. There is an awkward silence as Ben and Maria wonder why I do not continue down the open tunnel ahead.
“What’s up, Mack?” Maria finally says. “You see something interesting?”
“We have to go this way,” I respond soberly. “Down this tunnel.”
“Excuse me?” In the ambient glow from her flashlight, I can see her raise a skeptical eyebrow.
“Yes,” I say, turning my Maglite over to show her the compass in the handle. “Take a look. For the last mile or so, this tunnel has been curving—first north, and then back east. I think we’ve reached the northwest corner of the Loop. Now we need a tunnel that will take us further west, out to Oak Park.”
Maria says, “But how do you know it’s this one? Why don’t we scout ahead and see if there’s an open tunnel heading off west?”
“It’s this one,” I assure her. “Look.”
I point to an almost imperceptible engraving in the brick wall beside us. Covered in a hundred years of soot and grease, it reads simply: Oak Park Junction.
“Oh,” Maria says, slouching her shoulders in defeat.
“How do we get inside?” Ben asks.
It is a reasonable question.
“These boards look old,” I say. “Let’s see what your nightstick can do.”
Ben creeps to the front of the board-up. The wizard-hatted skull stares back at him, smiling. Ben selects a point off to the side where the boards look thinner, and begins to hammer.
Wham! Wham! Wham!
Right away, we see that this will work. The boards surrender easily to Ben’s blows. Bits of wood caked in tunnel-dust fall to the ground. Large holes begin to appear.
“This is gonna be no problem,” Ben says, pausing to kick away the debris at his feet. He has made an opening roughly the size of a computer screen. We can see into the blackness of the tunnel beyond.
Suddenly, the blackness forms into the shapes of a skeletal hand, and reaches out through the gaping hole toward him.
“Look out,” I say, rushing forward. Ben is not paying attention and is fiddling with bits of wood that have gone into his shoes. He looks up but does not immediately see the arm. I grab Ben around the waist and pull him forcibly backward. At the same moment, the hand lurches forward and rakes its claws against his police helmet.
“Jesus!” Ben says, jumping backward into my arms.
“You’re okay,” I say, setting him down.
A pair of zombies, black as coke, are visible through the hole that Ben has created. They have eyeless faces. Their skins are withered like Egyptian mummies in a museum. Their silent mouths open and close noiselessly like Jazz Age automatons. Their decomposed nose-holes sniff the air.
“Fuck me,” Ben says, still alarmed. “They were right on the other side of the boards! We didn’t hear them or anything!”
“These look too dried out to groan,” I observe.
“They just blend right into the black walls!” Ben says. “That one tried to claw my eyes out. Man . . . fuck this place!”
“Now, now,” I tell him. “There are only a couple. Let me put them out of their misery, and then you keep on hacking away. You were making good progress.”
“This is like a reverse zombie movie...” Maria quips from behind us. “The zombies are barricaded inside, and we’re breaking through to get at them.”
“Just shoot those fucking things,” Ben says, taking off his helmet to wipe the sweat from his brow.
“All right” I say, drawing the Glock. “Here we go.”
As Ben and Maria plug their ears, I expend four more valuable bullets on the shadowy mummy zombies. They’re so old and brittle I expect them to just explode under the force of my bullets. They don’t. My first two shots miss—one entirely. Another goes into a zombie’s chest. The penetrated zombie shrugs it off, remaining upright. I squint down the barrel of the Glock and risk another step forward, standing closer to the zombies. That does the trick. Two headshots later, it is done.
“Good shooting, Mack,” Maria says. She is just being kind, as she probably could have done better herself.
Maria creeps to the screen-sized opening and peeks through with her flashlight.
“Yeah, that’s all of them,” she announces.
“Good,” I say. “Now Ben, you can finish the job.”
We smash a man-sized hole through the barrier and squeeze inside. The passageway beyond is filthy and soot-smeared. It smells dank, like slime and mildew. There is a strange, persistent humidity, even in the winter air. The walls are composed of old bricks— once a healthy red, but now aged and stained to near blackness. The rail tracks below our feet lead off into the darkness beyond. The floor is dusty. There are also two sets of coal-black footprints leading up to the barrier.
“The zombies,” Maria observes.
“Yes,” I say. “This is as far as they got.”
“Two sets of footprints.so maybe there were only two of them?” Ben tries.
“I sure hope you’re right,” I tell him.
The overriding sensation conjured by this side tunnel is decay. This is a place that has been forgotten so long that it has rotted away. Nobody was meant to see the inside of it—the very sights we are seeing now—ever again. It had been boarded up for the last time and was waiting patiently for the city to get up the gumption and funding to fill it in with concrete.
Funny how zombies change things.
The floor of this passageway is quiet. The dust and gunk on the floor have gained the upper hand. It is thick enough to pad our footfalls like snow. (It occurs to me that—in addition to not hearing ourselves—this also means it’s now more difficult for us to hear approaching zombies.)
We advance down the pitch-dark shaft. The number of pipes lining the walls dwindles from three to two, and then to one. Hatches to the world above cease to appear with any regularity. Privately, I start to wonder if there will be a functional hatch once we get to Oak Park. There has to be an opening. Has to be. But might it be sealed? Blocked from above? Quite possibly. There is no way to know
After about twenty minutes of walking, we encounter an empty suit of clothes. When my flashlight finds it, I freeze and train my gun. Maria and Ben freeze as well. I’m expecting a zombie to rise up out of it, but that doesn’t happen. Maria gets brave and walks up to it. She gives the clothes a little kick. Her foot reveals only a gray pinstripe suit. It is many years old. Trousers, jacket, and vest. Three piece.
“They sure like suits down here,” Maria says.
“I should have worn one like Mack did,” Ben jokes. “Then I’d fit in.”
They both look at me in my pinstripes and pink tie and smile.
We encounter an empty, rusted bucket. It has been rendered unusable by what looks like a blow from an axe. Maria moves it with her foot and it gives a grrrrrr scraping sound against the floor. We leave it where it is and continue down the dark passageway.
Then after perhaps a quarter mile’s walk, we hear something. Soft, but distinct.
Grrrrrrrr.
“Did you hear—?” Maria begins. “Yes,” I whisper.
Four hundred yards behind us, someone, or something, has— as they say—kicked the bucket.
“We’re not alone in this shaft,” Maria whispers.
“I never thought we were,” I whisper back.
“Let’s pick up the pace,” Ben rasps from his position at our rear guard. “Zombies can’t catch us if we move fast”
“We’re going as fast as is prudent,” I tell him.
“Then go faster than’s prudent” he shoots back. “Come on, chop chop.”
I listen again for movement in either direction. I shine my beam back behind Ben. The bucket is out of sight, and so is whatever moved it . . . for now.
I turn back around, and we continue down the passage, perhaps walking a little faster than before.
The blackness before me becomes crushingly uniform. It is like snow blindness. I shine my light around to break up the mo
notony, but it is difficult to do anything with it. This much blackness—in a tunnel, under a big city, in the middle of the night—takes the upper hand. Just the thought of it is crushing. The blackness is in charge. It hangs over us like a funereal pall.
“We’re over halfway there,” I say, as much to cheer myself as the others.
Ben jumps a little, rattling his riot helmet. He is that much on edge.
Good, I think. It’s not just me.
After what feels like a mile, the tunnel begins to widen. Not subtly. The walls are suddenly twice as far apart. This means more places you have to shine your flashlight to check for zombies. We also begin to hear noises. They are coming from a spot straight ahead.
“What is this, Mack?” Maria asks, like I’m the authority.
“The tunnel is getting bigger,” I tell her. “Widening.”
“I can see that,” she responds. “What’s that noise? Is it water? Machines?”
“It sounds like a rustling, but also like a clicking,” Ben offers from the rear. “Could be we’re going underneath a factory. Or, ooh, maybe a power plant!”
“I don’t think so,” I tell him.
“What is it then?” Ben asks aggressively. “Listen, that’s like, clicks and taps and.rustling. What could that be?”
“I don’t know,” I answer honestly. “But I bet we find out in just a second.”
We continue down the widened tunnel, looking left and right for zombies. There begins to be something more than dust and grime underfoot. There is a slickness and squishiness that wasn’t there before. Oil? Grease? Maybe. The air begins to smell like the inside of a machine shop. The strange rustling grows l ouder. It makes me think of reeds swaying in the wind. Reeds and rain.
And here I have to watch myself. The sounds combine with the fear and the gun in my hand, and I know I am on a slippery slope that leads back to that scared nineteen-year-old kid in Vietnam. I think of the small metal cross I wear on a chain beneath my clothes and let myself notice it against my chest. I take deep breaths. I force myself to keep moving.
Zombie, Illinois Page 23
