Downsiders

by Neal Shusterman

  Talon squeezed Lindsay’s hand tighter, so it could not slip out of his grasp. “Run!” he said. “Run and, whatever you do, don’t look back!”

  Lindsay didn’t bother to ask for an explanation. Nor did she need to see Talon’s face in the shadows. She knew instantly by his tone of voice that this was not about being caught breaking the rules; it was about living, or dying.

  She could feel the rumble now, and heard the violent churning of water behind them. At first she thought it might be some sort of flood—a sewer discharge pounding their way—until she heard the ghastly moaning, deep and guttural, of something, no, of a great many things, that were very much alive, and bearing down on her and Talon far faster than they could run. She had heard the stories of alligators in the sewers. Now she knew that those tales must have been true, although she never imagined alligators would make that kind of noise.

  “There’s the ladder,” Talon shouted. It was only thirty yards away now, stretching down from a shaft much wider than the one they had first fallen through. “We can make it.”

  But Lindsay wasn’t so sure, for the rumbling and churning was deafening now, and so was that gruesome groaning that reverberated hollowly around them—a sound so strange, and yet oddly familiar.

  The light from the shaft ahead lit the way now, reflecting off the slick limestone bricks that lined the Bot, making it brutally clear how far away they still were from the ladder— and although Talon had warned her not to look, she did not want to die without knowing the nature of her end. She forced a glance behind her, expecting to see a pack of toothy, reptilian monstrosities bearing down on them—but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

  I must be going crazy, she thought. Those can’t be what I think they are. But indeed they were, and now they were twenty yards and closing....

  While alligators once had been a legitimate reason to avoid the Bot, sadly, they no longer played a significant part in Downside life. Their meat, once a staple of Downside existence, hadn’t been seen on a dinner table for more than ten years.

  It was no mystery how the reptiles had originally gotten there—in the good old days, Topside children would buy baby gators on their Florida vacations. Then after an ungrateful nip or an unpleasant tussle with kitty, the baby gators were sent on a one-way flush down into the sewer. Once there, they would begin a new life, and provide many a hero’s scar among the proud hunters of the Downside.... But that was long ago. Thanks to those same proud hunters, and the fact that children now returned from Florida with mouse-ears instead of reptiles, the sewer gators had become extinct.

  This threw the whole subterranean ecology into disarray, for without an alligator population to thin out their numbers, other creatures began to thrive. And so, in recent years the prevailing nuisance in the sewers of New York City was violent and unpredictable stampedes of cattle.

  The bovine menace was first introduced to the Downside by the unexpected incompetence of two Topsiders—Sidney Black and Henry Pitt, who headed the better-forgotten film company BlackPitt Productions. In the mid 1970s, Sid and Henry had shipped in the steer for their subterranean horror epic, Bull!, which the producers proudly billed as “Jaws, with a cow.”

  The star bull, as well as his many understudies and stunt doubles, turned out to be lousy actors, and escaped on the third day of filming, disappearing into the depths. In the end, Bull! was never completed, BlackPitt Productions went bankrupt, and moviegoers were spared the cinematic spectacle of man-eating holsteins. As fate would have it, however, several of those wayward bulls turned out not to be bulls after all, and, well, nature found its way. The result was several healthy, if somewhat light-sensitive, herds of cattle.

  It was a godsend for the Downside hunters. Subterranean life turned the cattle primitively fierce as they stampeded endlessly through the muck of urban waste in search of moss to graze on. At last there was dangerous game once more, and the hunt reemerged as a favorite rotation among the Downside teenagers. Few events were more exciting than the prospect of running with the bulls.

  Of course, few people actually ran with the bulls. After all, being trampled to death in the sewer wasn’t exactly a hero’s death—and besides, hunting methods had become more sophisticated than in the days people wrestled alligators by hand. No, only an imbecile on an unlucky day would find himself caught in a down-steer stampede.

  Twenty yards and closing.

  Talon pushed Lindsay in front of him as they ran for the ladder, putting himself between her and the herd, determined that if someone had to be gored by a horn, it would be him. The first of the beasts overtook them, churning past them as if they weren’t even there, their maniacal mooing resonating through the tunnel.

  In an instant the animals were barreling past them two and three abreast and disappearing again into the darkness ahead, completely oblivious of the two humans caught in their bone-crushing path. Talon and Lindsay were almost carried away, then Talon reached out and grabbed the ladder. Using all his strength, he pulled Lindsay away from the blind beast that was about to crush her beneath its hoofs. But they were not home free yet, for now the largest of all— an Angus as dark as the pitch it was coming through—was heading directly toward them. There was no question that its head was much stronger than the worn iron of the ladder, and there was no time to climb out of range. Talon and Lindsay could only stare as it plowed toward them.

  It would have killed them had salvation not come in the form of a heavy steel disk dropping from the shaft above.

  The falling manhole cover hit the bull’s shoulder with a clang, and with such force that it was knocked out of stride. It stumbled into water, causing a multicow pileup that managed to slow the stampede long enough for Talon and Lindsay to climb up and out of the down-steers’ killing path. When Talon looked up, he saw what he knew he would see—because manhole covers did not fall indiscriminately in the Downside.

  There, just out of view, toward the top of the shaft, were two familiar kids anxiously chattering with one another, perched like spiders in a web, and wielding a second manhole cover. The hunt had begun.

  The spiders were Railborn and Gutta, who were tethered from ropes dangling down the shaft, in the midst of their first Hunt. Railborn balanced the second manhole cover, gritting his teeth against the weight, with high hopes of nailing a healthy steer so he could come back victorious on the first day. “Did we get one?” he asked.

  “I don’t know, I didn’t see,” said Gutta, peering into the shadows. There had been a momentary slowdown, but the steer all seemed to be plowing past again. If their first shot had hit something, it had only been momentarily stunned. But there was something else down there now. Something moving toward them.

  “Wait,” said Gutta, “I think there are people down there!”

  “What?”

  Out of the depths climbed a fugitive of the stampede—a wet, grimy girl. But she wasn’t alone. Talon was right behind her.

  The shock was enough to make Railborn lose the manhole cover. It went spinning end over end, slamming into the water between cows.

  “Great,” said Gutta. “That was our only ammo.”

  “Talon, what are you doing down there?” demanded Railborn.

  “And who is this?” asked Gutta angrily. “What’s this all about?”

  “She’s a faller,” Talon quickly told them. “She got trapped in the Bot, and I had to get her out. That’s all. No big deal.”

  “Hi,” the girl said, and said nothing more.

  Gutta scrutinized this “faller,” shining her flashlight in the girl’s squinting eyes. “If she’s a faller, how come I don’t remember catching her?”

  “I didn’t say she was one of our fallers. She’s somebody else’s—from one of the other groups in our last rotation.”

  “You were supposed to be here with us!” shouted Railborn. “The hunts-master is blaming us because you weren’t here!”

  “Well, I’m here now, aren’t I?”

  Down below, th
e last of the stampede had gone past. They could hear the distant clangs of falling disks as others in shafts further down the hunting route discharged their ammunition.

  For Railborn, Talon’s actions might as well have been deliberate sabotage. “My father expected me to bring home a kill on the first day,” he barked. “What am I going to tell him now?” But Railborn was kidding no one. Even he knew that the real source of his anger was the fact that Talon, once again, had beaten him to the punch. It was obvious to Railborn that Talon had gone down into the Bot as a show of bravado on the first day of their hunting rotation. It was this kind of one-upmanship that always drove Railborn crazy. Tonight Talon would be able to go home and tell his parents and all their friends that he had actually run with the bulls. But what would Railborn have to tell? And although Gutta didn’t seem too impressed right now, Railborn knew she would be once she cooled down. Even now it seemed Gutta had completely forgotten that Railborn existed, throwing all of her attention on Talon, and this faller-girl, who, even under the layers of Bot scum, was clearly quite pretty.

  “What is that she’s wearing?” demanded Gutta. “Are those Topsider clothes?”

  “No...,” said Talon. In truth, the clothes the girl wore were so covered with grunge, you couldn’t tell what kind they were. “Can’t we talk about this somewhere else?” asked Talon.

  And so the four of them climbed out of the shaft—but no sooner were they out than Talon was slipping away without explanation, taking the faller-girl with him.

  Gutta tried to follow, but got caught in her tether and by the time she untied herself they had disappeared down any one of a half dozen passageways. She grunted out her frustration and kicked the wall.

  Railborn took a step closer to her, but decided he was too close and backed away again. This may have been the wrong time to say what he was about to say, but it seemed to him this was as close to a right time as he would ever get. “It’s okay,” he offered, trying to find in his voice the casualness that came so naturally to Talon. “If he doesn’t want to be with us, then we can do the rest of the rotations without him. Just you and me.”

  Gutta didn’t say anything. She just looked down the various intersecting passageways around them, still searching for a sign of Talon.

  “I mean,” continued Railborn, clearing his throat, “there’s no law that says he has to be a part of our group, is there? And it would be kind of nice if it was just the two of us. I’d like it, anyway...wouldn’t you?”

  Finally Gutta turned to him. “What’s his problem anyway? He’s never around when he’s supposed to be—he’s hanging out with fallers instead of his friends...” and then she stopped, finally catching Railborn’s pleading eyes. “Huh? Did you say something, Railborn?”

  Railborn turned his gaze to the dusty stone floor. “Naah,” he said. “Never mind, it wasn’t important anyway.”

  Missing Persons

  Talon led Lindsay through the darkness of the High Perimeter once more, but this time they moved more swiftly, for Lindsay had grown accustomed to the dark. They emerged through a narrow grate into the comfortable, if somewhat unconventional, “apartment” of an old man Talon called The Champ. Although The Champ had been snoozing in front of his discolored TV screen, he showed his finest hospitality to his guests, offering them each a shower in the pool’s old locker rooms, which he referred to as his “bathroom suites.” It was a far better idea, thought Lindsay, than stepping out into the cold night with wet, grime-covered clothes.

  As Talon’s day started at sunset, this was probably still morning for him—but for Lindsay the exhaustion of the night was hitting hard and heavy. It must have been late. She wondered if her father would be home yet, and if he would notice that she was gone.

  She stepped out of the girls’ locker room wearing the oversized jeans and a flannel shirt that the old man had supplied. He busied himself preparing a skillet of rich-smelling stew over an electric range toward the shallow end of the pool, and when he saw Lindsay he dished her out a bowlful. Until she saw it, she didn’t realize how hungry she was, and she shoveled it in as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks.

  “So you’re the girl he’s been doin’ all the thinking about?” said The Champ, glancing back to make sure Talon was still in the other locker room.

  “I suppose so,” said Lindsay, not sure whether to be flattered, amused, or irritated by the fact that this was common knowledge.

  The Champ grinned. “And I’ll bet he was a total gentleman, wasn’t he? They’re all like that, you know—they got this weird code of chivalry or something. He’s not even allowed to look at a girl the wrong way.”

  “Because his mother still knows him?” Lindsay said, fishing for a clue.

  The Champ chuckled. “He told you about that, huh? From what I can figure, the boys down there aren’t allowed to date until their mothers don’t recognize them anymore— whatever that means.”

  Lindsay’s eyes widened in new understanding, and her lips pursed in secret disappointment. She took a good look at The Champ; his dark, weatherworn skin, his mannerisms, the way he moved. Like someone born to a world of light. “You’re not a Downsider, are you?” she asked.

  The Champ shook his head. “I’m what you might call an independent.”

  Lindsay heard the shower turn off in the boys’ locker room. She took a step closer to The Champ. “Who are they...these ‘Downsiders’?” she asked quietly. “How did they get down there?”

  The Champ looked away, returning to his stew on the range. “Who does he say they are?”

  Lindsay knew what Talon believed—that the Downsiders were always there, before there was a city, before there was even a Topside. But Lindsay had enough perspective on the world to know that it couldn’t be true, and as she studied The Champ’s face she could tell that he didn’t believe it, either.

  “You know something, don’t you?”

  He threw her an uncertain glance. “I don’t know anything. Not for sure anyway. And maybe some things are best left that way.”

  “But couldn’t you tell me what you think?”

  The Champ spooned himself out a bowl of stew and took a long time before answering. “Did you ever hear of a man named Alfred Beach?”

  Lindsay shook her head.

  “No, I didn’t think you would have—he was mostly forgotten by the time I was born.”

  Talon came out of the locker room then, having redressed in his Downsider clothes, which he had washed and rung out but were still sopping wet. The Champ quickly cut short his conversation with Lindsay. “Like I said, some things are best left unknown.”

  Talon hopped down into the pool shell. “I was hoping you could help get her back home,” he said. “I would, but I’m in deep trouble as is.”

  “I’m not exactly an invalid,” said Lindsay. “Getting home’s a no-brainer. I don’t need help.”

  The Champ laughed. “At two in the morning everyone needs help getting home.”

  Lindsay gasped. “No! Is it really that late?”

  “I guess we’re both in trouble,” said Talon.

  The Champ took a metal tin down from a cluttered shelf and pulled out a few crumbled bills. “I’ll give you cab fare and hail you a taxi.”

  “You’ll loan me cab fare,” corrected Lindsay.

  Talon now stood next to the pool drain, looking like a wet puppy, far less threatening than he had appeared to her on New Year’s Eve.

  “Thanks for showing me all that...,” she said, feeling a gap fall between them like the distance between worlds.

  “Maybe we could meet here at The Champ’s place sometime,” he said. “Play a game of Monopoly or something.”

  “Sure, maybe,” said Lindsay.

  “You can even be the car,” said Talon. He lingered a moment more, then slipped down the drain and disappeared. Lindsay listened until the sound of his footfalls in the tunnel became too distant to hear.

  In the double town house on Eighty-fourth Street, Mark Matthias had inde
ed noticed that his daughter wasn’t home—and the fact that he hadn’t noticed until about 9:30 at night only fueled his fear and frustration. At first he foisted the blame on Todd, who was supposed to be looking out for Lindsay but who hadn’t noticed she was missing until his father pointed it out. But as the evening went on, Mr. Matthias took on more and more of the blame himself.

  Becky Peckerling, who was the last person to see her, said only that they had parted company at about 5:30 on the corner of Third Avenue and Seventy-seventh. Becky failed to mention, however, that the last place she had seen Lindsay was under Third Avenue—which would have put an entirely new spin on the unfolding investigation and would have left Becky the subject of more interrogation than she cared to handle.

  “Maybe that street freak from New Year’s Eve kidnapped her,” suggested Todd. And so the police prepared an all-points bulletin featuring a sketch of Talon that didn’t look anything like him. Before the sketch could be released, however, Lindsay showed up on her doorstep wearing clothes that clearly were not hers.

  “My God, Lindsay! Are you all right? Did they hurt you? Did you get a good look at them?” With all those hours to dwell upon what fate might have befallen the poor girl, it was already her father’s foregone conclusion that she had been the victim of foul play.

  Lindsay knew she couldn’t tell where she had been and what she had seen. But she was not a liar by nature and, frankly, she was in no state to attempt any explanation at all.

  “I’m tired, Daddy, and I really don’t want to talk about it,” she said. Then she plodded upstairs to her room, taking some guilty pleasure in the fact that she had left her father and Todd completely stymied. But her father could not leave it at that. In a few minutes he came to her room. Lindsay found herself both frustrated and yet in some small way pleased that he would not let it slide.

  “I am your father,” he said as he stormed around the room. “I think I’m entitled to know where you were until three in the morning.”