Jabberwock Jack (17 page)

Jericho just gave Szandor a dismissive look, grunted, and swung himself over onto the ladder. With surprising speed, he descended the rungs. We could hear the sound of his boots touching down on the metal catwalk. He stamped his boots a few times, the clang echoing in the darkness.

"It's fine," called Jericho. "Let's move!"

"Well, it
could
have been dangerous," said Szandor.

One by one, we headed down the ladder. For a few of the larger packs, we lowered them with a rope into waiting arms below. Delilah setup another relay above this ladder. I was the last down. As I had waited above, the tension we felt earlier, that had been defused by silence, began mounting again. As my companions left me one by one, my nervousness rose in large increments. Then I was the only one left.

"Come on already!" called my brother from below.

I clicked off my flashlight so that I had both hands free for the ladder. I began lowering myself down, the sewer I was leaving lit only by my LED light. I took the ladder slowly. One step at a time. No need to break my neck here. Because of this, I left the sewer one foothold at a time, the light getting dimmer and dimmer.

When just my head was above the opening, I gasped and tensed. I decided not to stop but kept going. The faster I got down, the faster both my hands were free. Maybe I had seen it, maybe not, but I felt too exposed on the ladder.

Finally I reached the bottom. My brother noticed my strange look.

"What is it?" he asked.

I looked back up at the ladder opening, turning on my flashlight to shine up there. "I thought I saw something. But maybe I didn't."

"What was it?" asked Szandor.

I shook my head. "It was probably nothing. Let's just stay on our guard."

Szandor shrugged and nodded. We grabbed our gear and followed the others on the catwalk.

What did I possibly see? I'm not sure, since the LED light was in motion and dimmed from me climbing down the ladder. But I thought, just for a second, that I saw the light reflect off something maybe twenty feet away. Four things.

Two pairs of eyes.

The Undersystem was vastly different from the Sewers, more so than I realized the few times I had been down. I had never been in this section. The first thing I noticed was the largeness of it. The sewer tunnels were mostly cramped affairs outside the main tunnels, a rats warren of twisting pipes, access tunnels, and carved out spaces for water to run. The Undersystem was full of gigantic spaces. Large tunnels for vast amounts of water, holding and drainage tanks, overflow spaces, and other constructions to make sure the sheer volume of water did not overwhelm the bowels of Avalon even in the rainy season.

That scale contributed to the feeling we were unwelcome. The Sewers felt like they were designed to be hospitable; water could work its way through, but there were plenty of tunnels and pathways for people to get around. The Undersystem, on the other hand, seemed design for water. A few concessions had been made for humans to travel down here for maintenance, but this was not our realm. Any changes made for human travel were an afterthought, an addition. Metal catwalks were the most popular in sections, which despite Szandor being shown wrong, were a concern. In such a wet environment, decades, possibly even nearly a century old metal constructions were still less trustworthy than stone or cement.

Darkness felt even more impenetrable down here. Up above it was just as dark, but beyond the darkness was often a wall, a pipe, some structure. But down here with such large spaces, the darkness just masked more empty space, a greater void. Above in the tunnels, sometimes our LED lights showed a little of the walls, an unintended but reassuring reveal. But down here we didn't see the walls unless we stood next to them or shined our lights on them.

The sound of water was ever present, either dripping, rushing, or spilling. In this first area, we had descended onto a catwalk that was suspended about twenty feet above rushing water. We shined our flashlights down into it but saw nothing but black water. When we didn't shine our lights down, we couldn't even see the water which flowed beneath us.

I wasn't the only one unnerved by this. "I think you guys made a mistake," said Diego, shining his light down into that dark river beneath us. "Like I said, I can't track things in the water. I can track in both cities and wilderness, yes, but even I won't claim I could do this. I can't track a creature that just swims everywhere. You didn't tell me it was like this, I thought it was just tunnels." He took off his hat and ran his hand through his hair. "I'm not going to be much help. I'm out of my depth."

"There are still regular tunnels down here," said Meat. "I think you'll still have a chance to track."

"Regardless of whether you can use your specialty," said Jericho, "you are still a hunter and I expect you to handle yourself appropriately. We will pursue this beast to the last man."

"Whoa, hold on here," said Szandor. "Last man?"

"I didn't sign up for a suicide mission," said Diego. "You hired me to track it and find it for you. I'm not going to just throw my life away once we find it."

"You will help me kill this beast as you agreed!" said Jericho, moving into Diego's space to challenge him.

"Not for suicide!" said Diego. "This monster will only be hunted to the last man if you're that last man!"

"This is still my hunt and I am still your leader!" said Jericho. "You will do what I say or..." He trailed off.

"Or what?" said Diego. Jericho didn't respond, his eyes now averted as he realized he stepped too far. Diego addressed his question to the others. "Or what? You'll kill me? Throw me in the brig? We're not on a ship. Did anyone else know they were signing up for a suicide mission?"

"Nobody's saying this is a suicide mission," said Meat.

"Are you sure? I think that's what I just pretty much heard him say," said Diego.

"I also feel like I heard that too," said Szandor.

"Nobody's doing anything stupid," said Meat. "We all want Jack dead. But we're going to follow typical hunter protocol. We go in carefully, we work with how things change, and if we need to, we retreat and return with a better plan. No bullshit. Are we all agreed to that?"

Diego nodded, but then there was silence. "Well,
are we?
" he said, looking at Jericho.

"Yes," said Jericho reluctantly.

"A chieftain restrained is a tribe made lame," said Fala.

"This isn't a tribe," said Diego. "We're getting paid and agreed to help. But we're no damn tribe and Jericho is no chieftain."

"Could we maybe fucking concentrate on working as a team so we can actually fucking kill Jack?" said Delilah in an angry outburst. "Fuck you guys! You fucking hate each other, that's fucking fine! Then fucking work together to fucking kill Jack quicker, then you two can go your own fucking ways and never see each other! Does that fucking work for you?"

Diego sighed. "Yes, agreed. Sorry, okay?"

Jericho nodded and turned back to walking. That was as close as you got to a sorry with that guy.

We started walking again. Fala quickened after Jericho. Meat went next, trying to be a buffer. Szandor patted Diego on the shoulder and went with him. I slowed down and walked with Delilah.

"Thanks for that, by the way," I said.

She looked up from her device and shook her head. "That's just what we don't need. Do they think the rest of us aren't freaked out and worried about the crap that comes out of Jericho's mouth? We are, but we're doing a job here." She looked back down at her devices.

"What are those things you have there?"

Delilah looked up again, annoyed, but sighed and tried to pull herself out of that attitude. "Sorry. This one is basically a GPS. Of course, pings are few and far between down here, so it's not accurately updating our position most of the time. It has some basic pedometer functionality, so it can sort of roughly guess where we are from our preexisting map. Down here it still works as a compass. And since I have put in the location where we last got a ping from your katana, it can confirm we're still moving toward it. And this one..." She reached into her bag to pull out another device.

I looked at the GPS but visually there was not much going on with it. Once she got the other one out, I saw radar style waves move across it and a bunch of blips appear.

"Oh, I know this one!" I said. "It's a motion detector, right? Like from
Aliens
!"

She shook her head. "There really doesn't exist hand held motion detector tech that is that effective. Like, it will work in a static area, but nothing like the movies. No, this isn't detecting motion. Remember those trackers I had you all put on? That's what this is sensing. I can tell direction and approximate range. If we get separated or someone gets lost, this is going to be real handy."

"I'm glad someone thought ahead," I said. "I'm beginning to wonder about some of the other planning or Jericho's single mindedness."

Delilah shrugged. "I was given specific problems to work with and I found solutions. I was also looking for something to interface with Paulie. But honestly, being down here, I don't think any amount of relays are going to get us a signal. I had trouble getting pings in the sewers, but since we came down farther I've gotten exactly jack nothing for connection. I've also begun to wonder if Paulie had the right idea."

"Staying up there?" I said. "Maybe. All I know is we've only been down here a few hours, have seen just two minor monsters, and we already nearly had a fight among ourselves. If horror movies taught me anything, we're cracking up way earlier than we should and that's bad."

"Yes and no," said Delilah. "Remember, we're all monster hunters, not random teens in horror movies. Getting to kill something other than two zombies might actually calm everyone's nerves."

I nodded. "It's crazy, but you're right. Who knew the solution was that we needed something to try to kill us?"

The catwalk eventually gave way to stone and cement at the end of the gigantic chamber. We were all glad to have our feet on something more solid and to not be making such noise with every footstep. We found a door that was half rusted. It had been once painted with a stencil, but half of what was written was now gone, leaving just FLOW. Despite its decay, it opened without issue.

The room beyond was a huge hall. Immediately before us was a long cement path, maybe four feet across, no railings. There were iron rings embedded from the cement at various intervals but we didn't know their usage. On either side of the path was water. Unlike the rushing water we had just left, this water was still and we heard just a faint trickle. The water rose up to within two feet of top of the cement walkway. Our flashlights revealed massive cement pillars in the water on either side, stretching to the other side of the room.

"I would have been happy with railings," grumbled Szandor.

"Me too," said Diego.

"Probably has something to do with the rings," said Meat. "Maybe they attached machinery or poles to that."

"Still, railings," said Szandor. "Now I'm going to be paranoid that I lose my balance and suddenly stumble into the water."

"When do you lose your balance without being in a fight?" I said.

"I'm just saying that normally I don't, but give me a narrow walkway with no handholds and suddenly I feel paranoid I'm going to fall," said Szandor. "And then I might fall."

"Do we need to put you on one of those leashes they use for small children?" I said.

"Nah, I'm good," said Szandor.

"Suck up your fear, people, let's get going," said Jericho in his usual serious manner. He stepped forward and began crossing the room. Fala followed after him, then Meat. Next was Diego and Szandor. I would have gone next, but since Delilah kept on and off fiddling with her equipment, I was more comfortable if she wasn't last. So I brought up the rear.

We were maybe a third of the way across before the silence was broken.

"Was that a splash? I heard a splash," said Szandor.

"I heard something too," said Diego. He was shining his flashlight in the water to our right. There were small ripples like the surface had been disturbed but his light couldn't find anything other than ripples.

There was another sound in the water to our left. Our flashlights all chased after the sound, finding only more ripples. Szandor dropped his flashlight, letting it hang by its cord and grabbed his spear gun tightly. Jericho stopped walking and tightened his grip on his harpoon.

A third sound came from our left again. This time the flashlights were quick enough to see something. Not that we knew what it was. We saw a glimpse of something white disappear under the water.

"White?" said Szandor, his voice raising. "Isn't Jack white? Is this him?"

"Keep your head, soldier," said Meat.

"If we're going to fight a gigantic serpent here, then -" began Szandor.

"
Quiet!
" shouted Jericho. He cocked his head to listen in the silence that fell over the room. We all looked for some sign of what we were facing. We looked for something to happen, yet also still dreaded the unknown which would come next. Our weapons were ready, but all we had to work with was our meager light, the vast darkness, the hanging silence, and the very still water which filled the room.

Then the water next to Jericho exploded.

Arrows in the Dark

The huge splash of water made it hard to see what it was. Jericho was temporarily blinded and his flashlight reared backward. But with the surge of water came a mouth... a long mouth full of teeth. The two foot long snout clamped down on Jericho's leg, trying to tear the limb from him. White scaly skin, red eyes, teeth, and a very hungry mouth. But it wasn't Jabberwock Jack. The scale of the creature was way off.

No, this was an alligator. A white alligator.

We all turned to assist Jericho. It was only Diego who put it together.

"Wolf pack tactics!" he shouted. "Everybody watch out!"

Jericho had been attacked from the left side. Diego now spun to the opposite side, the right.