Jabberwock Jack (16 page)

Noticing our glances at her weapons, she smiled a toothy grin. "Jack may have teeth, but I have talons." She carried no gun. Despite her witchy nature and her knives, I really wondered whether she should be on this trip.

Jericho came down last. He also had declined to bring a gun. He didn't even have a spear gun. He carried only one weapon that I could see: a harpoon. Maybe it
was
a spear. It was a long shaft with a barbed point and a nasty edge. The blade was matte black, probably tarred for stealth. It was the shaft that was strange to me. Rather than being completely uniform, like a staff, there were places where it seemed to curve outward, widening. But not for a grip. I also could swear I saw the glint of Avalon Brass when it caught the light, coming from writing on the shaft.

"Let's get going," said Jericho. If the old man had been serious and stern above ground, down here with his game face on he was practically
frightening
. The depths had made his presence even sharper and harder than before. He moved toward the front of the group and began leading our company of seven.

I lagged behind a bit so I could walk next to Meat.

"What's with that harpoon?" I said to him, keeping my voice low, particularly now that we were underground. The only sounds were the dripping and trickling of water accompanied by our footsteps. There were a few murmurs of other conversations. Diego was trying to say something to Szandor, not realizing the mask made him nearly incomprehensible.

Meat took a look at Jericho, as if gauging whether he could hear us or not.

"You remember that Jack took his leg, right?

I nodded.

"Well, that's not entirely true."

I raised my eyebrow but waited for the explanation.

"Jack didn't get his mouth totally closed around Jericho's leg. When Jericho was finally pulled back away... Jack's teeth had ripped all the flesh off Jericho's leg. But the bones were still attached."

My whole body tensed. That sounded like some sort of hell, worse than just having your leg lopped off. It was having your leg
scraped
off.

"They had to cut the bones off," said Meat, "there was no way to save what... uh... tissue was still attached to them. But Jericho kept those bones. I don't know who he found to do it, but he found someone who would do what he wanted. The core of that spear is his leg bones. That spear basically
is
his missing leg. And he intends to kill Jack with it."

"That's..." I started to say.

"Best to keep that opinion to yourself," said Meat. "Down here, talk isn't as silent as you think. But that should be a sign of the lengths Jericho is going to go to if it means Jack's death. Remember that. For good and for ill."

My pace slowed so Meat ended up walking past me. I had a sudden chill. I hadn't realized just the type of man I was down here with. If he was going to turn his missing leg into a weapon... what did it mean for the team he assembled to take down the creature? I now wondered if Jericho saw us all as expendable tools to get Jack.

We walked for about half an hour in the sewers without interruption. I wasn't surprised. We hadn't heard of any activity around here in recent days. If monsters were going to be active, they tended to do that at night - even underground, they somehow seemed to know the day cycle. We headed west, toward the more recent Jack pings in Southend. But we weren't yet in the Undersystem.

"So this isn't even the area where we're going to track Jack?" said Diego, pulling his mask off to rub his sweaty face. "Why didn't we just go straight down into this Undersystem?"

"We're looking for a good entrance to it," I said. "Some are blocked, some are to the wrong part of the Undersystem. But honestly it's about a
good
entrance. You're welcome to jump in this water current and swim your way down to the Undersystem."

"You'll get down there real fast," volunteered Szandor.

"But who knows where?" I said. "And you won't know how to get back up."

"I get it, I get it," said Diego. "I just didn't expect it so wet down here."

"In a fucking sewer, no way," said Szandor sarcastically, but with a smile.

Diego sighed in frustration. "No, I mean compared to the tunnels in Russia. They didn't smell like this. They weren't so humid. So wet."

"That's the Avalon rainy season," I said. "These are all full of rainwater. You would have been better off a few months ago."

"But that's not when Jack was here," said Delilah. "And from everything I hear, once we get down into the Undersystem, it's going to get a whole lot wetter."

"We should have brought a canoe," said Diego.

 "We're here!" called Meat from the front of the group. His light shined on an arrow painted fluorescent orange. Meat had been here last week and had flagged this location in preparation for this trip. That was good. What was bad was that he must have been sloppy about it or something. Maybe he made too much noise when he had left it, or maybe he had dropped beef jerky or something. I had no idea what, but the nook the arrow pointed at was no longer empty. At the sound of our voices, two creatures lurched around the corner.

Ripped and dirty clothes covered stiff bodies. One of them wore the bright yellow jumper of a New Avalon maintenance worker, but he no longer had that job. He no longer had any job. He was dead, just like his friend. Gray desiccated skin told the tale of about a month down here in the sewers rotting and trying to find someone to bite. They had probably wandered for miles down here. And now they wanted to bite us.

Yes, they were zombies.

Truthfully, zombies were not as horrible a monster as in movies. Yes, they were caused by something like a virus. But the virus/fungus/bacteria/curse/whatever had a long incubation phase and the cure was semi-known. That is, the cure existed and was easily obtainable (anti-fungal pills), but not all doctors knew what to prescribe. However, even if they never encountered the infection before, most doctors who had patients suffering from it figured it out in the week of incubation. Those victims were saved and lived long happy lives free of a thirst for human flesh. Most zombies were people who got bitten and then lost, often in the sewers. Only slight higher in priority than ghouls, zombies were probably the biggest occupational hazard for New Avalon maintenance workers. I know they typically had one person in the group carrying a shotgun for emergencies, but I hoped those guys were getting some serious hazard pay. Especially when they ended up like these two guys.

Zombies weren't a big deal for my brother and I unless we were in a tight space or there were a lot of them. Blunt and sharp objects worked well with them. Romero rules were in effect - severing or damaging the brain was the most effective ways of dealing with them. Though to be fair, that was also one of the most lethal ways of dealing with most human beings as well. So normally, zombies were a breeze. But on this hunt for Jack, we just had one problem - we weren't geared for this. We were hunting a gigantic serpent. A spear gun seemed not very worthwhile for a zombie. And we really didn't have much in the way of hand to hand weapons.

I saw Diego heft his hunting rifle and aim.

Delilah pushed his rifle aside. "Are you stupid? No."

"What?" said Diego, seeing these two figures lurch slowly toward us. Saliva dripped from one zombie's broken jaw.

"Noise," I reminded him. "Shoot that thing and we'll alert everything around here to our presence. If there are more zombies, they're going to spill out like a goddamn slot machine. Even with a silencer it's too loud. Guns are bad zombie weapons."

"Well, shit," said Diego, lowering his rifle and rubbing his forehead under his hat.

"Delilah, can I beat on some zombies with the butt of this spear gun?" I asked. "Or is that going to break it or throw off the aim?"

Her face twisted in thought. "Probably not. Just don't hit it too hard."

"Don't hit it too hard? I want to hit it as hard as damn possible to kill it!"

"Fuck this," said Szandor. He reached into his jacket and pulled out one of his trusty lead pipes. It was a shorter one, but still a deadly weapon.

"Why do you have that?" said Delilah. "We agreed that there would be no lead pipes. That's unnecessary gear and weight for this mission."

"Oh yeah, I remember you saying that," said Szandor, hefting the pipe. "But then I really sat down and thought about it for a while and decided Fuck You."

 Szandor ran forward and tackled the zombie in the maintenance gear. Taken by surprise, the zombie crumbled to the ground. The zombie started to snarl at him, but without even a pause, Szandor started hitting it in the head with the lead pipe. Repeatedly.

The other zombie was confused by the rush of my brother's body and the sudden loss of his compatriot. The zombie awkwardly turned toward Szandor. It raised its arms to grab at my brother. Then it retched blood as a harpoon impaled it. A greater confusion appeared on its face as it couldn't move.

A second later there was a
thunk
and it fell. Meat wiped the butt of the pistol he had just bashed the zombie's brains out with.

"This one's down," said Meat. Jericho pulled his harpoon out of the dead zombie.

Szandor wiped his pipe on the zombie's clothes and then pulled himself up. He brushed bits of blood and brain matter off his jacket. "This one's good too."

"Any others?" said Jericho.

"None," said Delilah. I also confirmed that we had only seen those two.

"Onward," said Jericho imperiously.

Around the corner, we found the access hatch Meat had picked for us. A large piece of solid metal stamped with the City of New Avalon Public Works logo, the access panel was held closed with a few large bolts. Around the panel was fluorescent orange spray paint, only slightly marred by dirt.

Ten feet from the drainage stream, the panel, like everything here, was damp. The grime didn't help either.

Szandor looked at the grimy bolts. "So we get to unscrew them?" He started looking in his pockets for his gloves. Yes, my brother will use a lead pipe and his bare hands to smash in a zombie skull, but he puts on gloves for dirty bolts.

"Amateur," said Delilah, clearing people out of her way. Putting down her backpack, she pulled out a battery powered drill. She matched the bolt to the right attachment and put it on. She moved to start it, but then paused to look at us. "This is a power tool, so it's not exactly quiet. And it's definitely not a usual sound for down here. If there are creatures in the immediate area, they're going to know we're here real quick."

"But we have no choice," said Meat. "I tried the bolts with my hand when I was down here. We need something better."

Delilah nodded. "So be on your guard."

We all nodded and readied our weapons but still mostly held our flashlights, keeping a circle around her. Most of our attention was on the long tunnel we had been travelling west on. I didn't realize just how silent it had been until she started up. The high pitched whirr of her drill sounded like a jackhammer. That sound echoed down the tunnel in both directions. We were still using LEDs and flashlights, but I suddenly wanted some night vision to try to look down the tunnel without being such an obvious target. Instead we shined flashlights at the ends of the tunnel, further advertising our presence.

While I failed to see anything with my flashlight, I could swear I heard some scuffling. It was hard to tell for sure, since the whirr of the drill was making it harder to hear anything else. So while we all nervously waited, I couldn't tell if I heard scuffling and footsteps or if my mind was playing tricks on me. A look to the others showed that they too had a similar dilemma. None of us wanted to go off half cocked and alarm everyone, but we all wished this would go way quicker.

When Delilah paused, I thought she had finally finished, but then she said, "Almost done," moving to the last bolt. The tension was ramping up quicker. When we heard a splash from far off, we all tensed up. Szandor dropped his flashlight (luckily the cord was wrapped around his wrist) and nervously held his spear gun, his arms tense.

"Careful," said Meat in a low voice. If Szandor fired that, it create more noise and whatever controlled calm we had would be broken. I felt a little ashamed that we, a group of professional hunters, were so nervous, but right now we didn't want to fight monsters. There was only one creature we actually wanted to see. Everything else was unneeded danger.

"Done!" said Delilah, putting away her tools and pulling herself to her feet. As she moved away, Jericho and Meat lifted up the access panel. They put it down to the side, the metal making more noise than I wanted. But that was it. Other than our words and incidental noises, it was over. Silence began to fill up the tunnels, as if it had been water displaced by our movements.

We shined lights down the access hatch. It was a long metal rung ladder down to a catwalk. The flashlights didn't do a good job, but it appeared there was water under that. A chill cold came up from below, giving more unpleasantness to the darkness down the latter. On the plus side, the air didn't smell as bad as the sewers. It still wasn't pleasant, but it lacked that sewage spice that had filled up our nostrils.

"And so we enter the Underworld to meet the spirits," said Fala.

"I think we've already been wandering around an Underworld," said Szandor.

"Then this is the Underworld's Underworld," said Delilah. "It's Avalon's Hell. Does that metaphor work better for you? Because I think this works better without any pithy analogies."

"Have you been down there?" asked Jericho to Meat.

"I just located the access panel and marked it for us," said Meat a shake of his head.

"So we have no idea if that catwalk will hold us?" said Szandor. When he received questioning looks, he continued. "Who knows how old it is? And it's right over water. It could be rusted to hell. Was I the only one who thought of that?"

"Then we will find out," said Jericho.

"Well not me, I raised the concern, I'm not the sacrificial lamb," said Szandor.