Dead Eye Hunt (Book 2): Into The Rad Lands

by Meredith, Peter

  He nodded once, paused, perhaps expecting applause or a comment on his hair. When he received nothing from the six of them, he nodded a second time and left.

  “Up!” Patton snapped, holding the box at the ready. He had them march back up the stairs and to the paddy-wagon. They went docile as lambs. Patton kept well back with his thumb ready on the button. There would be no getting the jump on him. Once in the wagon, they took another trip, this one slightly longer than the last.

  They were going south and Cole figured they would get loaded onto one of the garbage scows that stirred the foul muddy waters that surrounded Manhattan. Instead they slipped into one of the tunnels that burrowed beneath the city. A few turns and then they went deep. He was just wondering if there was a way to drive to Jersey, when the wagon slowed to a crawl. A few minutes later they stopped and the back was opened.

  A rolling iron door greeted them. It was only partially up, and they ducked beneath, finding themselves in a dark room that had been carved from the bedrock. A shadowy figure held a flashlight beamed at their feet. The light was thin and feeble and only managed to make the darkness around them more intense, making it impossible to guess the full size of the room or if there were others besides the person with the flashlight.

  “Remove their collars,” a woman with a deep rough voice ordered.

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea, missy,” Patton said.

  “My mistress commands it, so it will be done…one way or another.”

  Patton snorted in derision. “Whatever. They’re your problem now.” He stood back with a heavy pistol at the ready as the woman removed the collars one at a time, starting with Corrina and ending with Hamilton.

  “Lock the door behind you when you leave,” the woman ordered, dismissing Patton. She waited until the door had slid down before she gave each of them a blast of the light.

  When it struck Cole, a second woman said, “My God, Cole, you look awful.” It was Ashley Tinsley. The vamp turned on a lantern which lit up the room well enough for the six to see that they were in a twenty-foot square with roughly hewn walls and trash littering the floor. It was no place for a vamp and her two hulking bodyguards.

  Ashley wore a pantsuit of green alligator leather with accents of gold. Her hair and eyes were gold as well. Her full lips were pursed with worry.

  “What do you expect?” Cole asked. “I was executed, or the next closest thing. Because of you, I bet. You were working with Fantucci, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” she admitted in a soft voice, her eyes dropping momentarily. “I needed help; your kind of help, but it would’ve been deadly for both of us if I had come to you directly. You have been in something of a drought, financially, and I assumed that you would’ve said yes.”

  Cole couldn’t believe his ears. In a growing rage, he said, “So, you set me up for murder? You had me kill an innocent man!”

  “That was not my idea at all and I didn’t know until afterwards. I thought that they would…Well, I didn’t know what they would do. Julius said he would take care of the matter and I let it go at that. I’m sorry it went the way it did. At least you don’t have a reputation to protect. Outside of this room, you are a nobody. No one knows you except for maybe your priest friend and he doesn’t think highly of you.”

  “My reputation! Do you think I give a rat’s ass about my reputation? I killed an innocent man. Did you not hear that part?”

  Her golden eyes blazed. “I heard! I also heard that you killed him because you were too quick on the draw.” They glared daggers back and forth until, mercurial as always, she shook her head and unfurled a sweet, but sad smile. “Let’s not fight over some slag. Perhaps, what you haven’t heard is that my life is in danger as well. My cousin is hell bent on destroying the Tinsley line and isn’t that more important than some slag?”

  Cole sighed and shrugged. It wasn’t more important to the slag or his family—something that Ashley would never be able to understand.

  “Then all is forgiven?” Ashley asked, lighting the room with her beautiful smile. “Great! And not a second too soon it seems. We have to get across the river before it’s too late.”

  “We?” Cole asked.

  Her smile dimmed. “Well, no. I won’t be going, but Hagy will be going in my place. She knows the tunnels better than anyone.” Hagy had been standing in Ashley’s shadow, both literally and figuratively, and now with all eyes on her, she backed up a step, dropping her chin. Her full name was Susan Hagy, but no one had called her Susan in years. Hagy fit her better. She was slagged over. Her face had been cruelly ravaged by lesions and now was a hideous combination of scars and radiation burns. Her head was mostly bald, mottled and wet with pus.

  She could have passed for a trog were it not for her eyes, which were far from dull. They were bright blue and sharply intelligent.

  “I will lead you into the Rad Lands and you might live if you do as I say. For starters, you will wash head to toe. I smell blood and if I can smell blood, the dead ones will as well.” She turned toward another door, this one a trapdoor that sat open like a mouth. No one followed. “Come on. Taking a bath is the easy part.”

  Sulking, Hamilton went first, followed by his two men and McGuigan. Corrina lingered with Cole, who was stuck between the desire to kiss Ashley and his internal demand to scream at her.

  “Don’t you start in with a lecture,” Ashley said, seeing his look. “We don’t have time and would I even listen? Probably not. No. Definitely not. Remember how pleased we both were with my ears? Why would we want to subject them to any sort of abuse?” She had been walking closer to Cole and now she was right below him, her eyes at chin level due to the five-inch heels she wore. She glanced once at Corrina and said, “Avert your eyes, child. You don’t want to see this.”

  Before Corrina could turn away, Ashley pulled Cole down and kissed him deeply on the mouth. His mind went blank for ten seconds and he was only vaguely aware when she leaned back. “Stay alive,” she whispered, “and come back to me.”

  She left him stunned, and walked toward the rolling door which was being lifted one-handed by one of her guards. She smiled one last time and disappeared with the lantern.

  “You are such an idiot,” Corrina seethed a few seconds later, punching him in the arm. “Look at you just standin’ there with your mouth hangin’ open. God, she knows how to play you. She got you arrested! She got you in Dutch with the mob! She got you on death row and now she’s sending us to die and you’re okay with it because she gives you one lousy kiss? You are one big fuckin’ joke.”

  He could see the fear in her eyes; it was enough to keep him from saying anything.

  “The squirt ain’t wrong,” Hamilton said, laughing cruelly from the lip of the trapdoor. “She had you from the beginning. She had you by the balls.”

  “Whatever,” Cole muttered. “Pretend that you had no part in this, I don’t care. It won’t make a difference. We still have to cross the river and bag three of them.”

  Sergeant Phillips slid his eye to Brunker and raised a single brow. Hamilton smirked and nodded, agreeing. Cole caught the looks and knew what they were planning: they would wait until the moment was right and jump the slag. In the tunnels, it would a simple thing.

  Hagy was no fool. In silence, she had been watching them. Although she had a pair of sawn-off scatterguns crisscrossing her back, and an old Eagle semi at her hip, she made no move towards them. “Miss Ashley is very pretty. She smiles and winks and turns men into puddings. Behind that smile she is more than you realize. She is as powerful as a thousand men. She has the power to crush ants like us beneath her pretty shoes. Believe that. Believe it with all your heart or you will suffer.”

  “Yeah, she’s great,” Hamilton said. “Weren’t you supposed to show us the way out to the Rad Lands? Isn’t the clock ticking?”

  “First, Miss Ashley wanted to let you know that your sister and your mother are doing fine out in Queens. They are safe, for now.” Hamilton’s head w
obbled on his broad shoulders. His mouth opened and closed and opened again, but before he could think of something to say, Hagy had turned to Sergeant Phillips. “She also wants to let you know that your son hasn’t been brushing his teeth like he should.”

  “His teeth?” Phillips asked, softly. “How does she know about his teeth?”

  Hagy’s hideous face melted into what would’ve been a smile on a normal person. “She knows everything about all of you. I would be careful about crossing her. There is nowhere you can run that will be safe. And you wouldn’t want your loved ones to suffer, would you?”

  Brunker looked as though he was actually thinking it over. Next to him Sergeant Phillips was pale, while Hamilton was furious. It was an impotent fury—Ashley had cemented the Governor’s plan. “This fucking sucks!” Hamilton groused.

  “Yes,” was her reply. Then, without fear, she dropped down through the trapdoor and began crawling through a squat little tunnel that ran straight south. The others followed, with Cole taking up the last position. He wasn’t going to let anyone run away, except for Corrina, that is. She was a friendless orphan and as such she had no one to threaten, and there was little chance she could be found in the underground warren beneath the city if she chose to hide there. There was nothing to keep her with the group and yet she didn’t even hint at trying to escape.

  In her mind, there was nothing and nowhere to escape to. She was afraid to go on and yet, she was more afraid to go back to the hateful world alone. She had decided that her fate was entwined with Cole’s and she would only win if he did.

  She just wished she didn’t have to walk to her fate in a urine-stinking jumpsuit that was ten sizes too big. Her wish came true some twenty minutes later as Hagy guided them to a larger tunnel where they found an abandoned truck. In the back were barrels of water to bathe with, a change of clothes for each of them, packs, food and weapons.

  The water was cold but clean. While Cole bathed, Hagy stared unabashedly at him with her arms crossed in front of her chest. “That hole you got, it still bleeds. That’s trouble in the Rad Lands.” She reached into the first of the two coats she wore and dug out a small jar of some sort of red paste. There wasn’t much left in it. “Beetroot salve will cover the smell. The dead can’t see for shit, but they can smell blood like a shark.”

  “This isn’t my first time dealing with Dead-eyes,” Cole said, opening the jar and giving it a tentative sniff and was happily surprised to find that it had an earthy scent. He dried and looked down at the gash in his leg. A chunk of flesh and muscle the size of his thumb had been shot away. The wound was puffy and red; the scab that covered it was crusty black but leaking small trickles of pink and red.

  “It’s gonna sting,” Hagy warned with a smile.

  He sucked in his breath as she applied the salve. It burned like there was a flame being injected into the wound. At first, the salve frothed then it hardened, while all around it, his exposed flesh seemed to shrivel. “Mother fucker!” he rasped, balling one hand into a fist.

  “I told you. Now go on and get dressed. Keep the jar, just in case.”

  Cole was still cursing when he limped over to the clothes which were a complete mishmash of rags. To battle the cold and possibly the radiation, they layered torn sweaters over ripped shirts and slacks over dirty jeans. In the end they resembled trogs instead of people.

  By the time Cole was covered in the rags, his leg had gone numb, which was an improvement, he supposed. Famished, he then started digging into the food; having come from a vamp’s larder it was better than most restaurants. There was real cow cheese, soft bread, and roasted meats.

  Cole made a heaping sandwich and as he ate, he went to inspect the weapons: a dozen sawn-off scatterguns and six semi-automatic pistols. The pistols were surprisingly old—turn of the century Riker Tens. The scatterguns held five shells, were pump action, and were so battered and nicked up that there was no way to tell their make or model.

  As ratty as they were on the outside, the guns were perfectly clean on the inside. Cole belted on the holsters and slid his guns in place: the scatterguns across his back, the pistol at his hip. Each of the packs contained a box of twenty shells, a quart of fresh water, heavy manacles, leather hoods, leather mittens, duct tape, a compressed air-powered dart gun and five hypodermic needle darts that held enough concentrated tranquilizer to kill a man.

  “Mittens?” Brunker asked, holding up his set. “What the hell are these for? What we need is body armor.”

  “Armor will just slow you down,” Cole said. “No armor will save you from getting your head ripped off. The mittens are for them. To keep them from scratching your face off.” At the bottom of the pack was a three-inch long hunk of plastic. It had an on/off switch and a small red light. “What’s this?” Cole asked.

  “Radiation meter. When it buzzes it means you better get your ass under cover as fast as you can, or this will happen to you.” She pointed at her face. “Speaking of which, don’t drink anything on the other side. If you do, you’ll be shitting blood for the rest of your life. The good news is the rest of your life won’t be more than three days.”

  Hagy had her own pack and it was bulkier than any of the rest. One glance in and she muttered, “This’ll do. Alright, let’s get moving.”

  Cole slung a pack across his shoulders and then dug through Corrina’s, taking her water and the ammo, making it smaller and lighter. Still she couldn’t help wondering how far she would be able to hike with even that much weight on her back.

  When the others were ready, Hagy eased through a narrow crack in the wall and into a side tunnel. This led to another tunnel, and another. Soon they were in the maze beneath Krupp. Corrina had come through it twice and could now pick out landmarks: a broken pipe jutting from the wall that looked like a mouth, a dip in the tunnel followed by a hump that made the others walk hunched-over, a section of quartz flecked granite she thought were diamonds which she had tried to scratch out of the rock on her last trip through.

  Hagy took them on a slightly different course and followed a curving path that wound downward and eventually led into the Pit. They had to climb through a low heavy door which could only be opened from the tunnel side and then through a hundred-year-old ambulance, before they found themselves deep within the giant mountain of trash. The harsh, acrid smell was ten times worse than it had been, as was the heat. It radiated from every surface.

  “We’re going to need gloves,” Cole said. His hands were still raw from the last time he’d been in the Pit.

  Hagy had wrapped her face with rags and her voice came out muffled. “No. We don’t have far to go.” Hamilton started to slide one of his scatterguns from his back but she stopped him. “Not yet. We can’t appear threatening. The Crag people are very touchy.”

  “Who are they?” Corrina asked.

  “Trogs,” Hagy said, turning her sharp eyes on the girl. “They control the other side of the river and no one enters their territory without their permission. I am hoping to bribe them into helping us. There’s a chance we might live if they do. Then again, we might not. When I say they’re touchy, I mean they’ll look for any excuse to eat a little thing like you. So, don’t piss them off and definitely keep covered. Don’t let them see that soft flesh of yours.”

  “They’d eat me?”

  Hagy’s belly let out a growl. “What can I say? Food is scarce in the Rad Lands. We eat whatever we can catch.”

  Chapter 25

  Delicately, Hagy picked her way through the deepest bowels of the Pit. Cole followed, keeping Corrina close to him. McGuigan minced along next, trying not to touch anything. Behind him came Hamilton, cursing under his breath, and in the back were Phillips and Brunker. They kept glancing up as the great mountain above them; it constantly shifted and groaned.

  Just when their nerves were about to snap, Hagy came to an immense steel door. It had come from a bank vault and had a great wheel set in its center. “Look away,” she commanded. When everyone was faci
ng back towards the Pit, she spun the wheel back and forth until there was a loud click. “Alright. Help me with this.”

  It took three of them to heave the two-foot thick door back on its rusting hinges. The giant door opened onto a wall of cement twenty feet in height and more than forty across. At the base of the wall was a man-sized tunnel with cracked uneven walls. Someone had taken a pickaxe to the cement and had delved through it.

  Cole glanced in, thinking that the cement would run only a few feet, instead it went on and on into the darkness. “What is this? Cement under a river?”

  “This is called the Holland Tunnel,” Hagy answered. “It’s very big. You’ll see. It’s much bigger than just this. When the Dead-eyes came, the governor at the time filled it in with this stuff.” She tapped the wall. “You’ll see. It’s big. But first, come here child.” Hagy drew Corrina aside and whispered something in her ear.

  “No secrets!” Hamilton cried. “We’re all in this together.”

  Hagy’s eyes crinkled as she grinned behind her rags. “Now you are. The child knows the combination to the lock on the door. I’d make sure she doesn’t die if I were you.”

  “That’s…that’s…that’s not fair,” McGuigan finally spat out.

  “When is life ever fair?” Cole growled. “Now, nut up, the lot of you. This is the easy part.”

  Hamilton doled out a “Fuck you, Cole,” which was expected. Regardless, the others moved closer and at least tried to hide their fear.

  The hand-carved tunnel ran for over a hundred yards before it opened onto a much wider one. Hagy spun her light around as she pulled the rags away from her face. The air was much cooler inside this larger tunnel and smelled of salt and mildew. The walls were made of old cracked tile that was stained black and covered in mold. The floor was asphalt and other than the long cracks that ran through it, was in remarkably good condition. It was littered with the usual trash, but also old olive-drab boxes and crates that were thrown here and there. All of them had been smashed open and upended, and were long empty.