The Canal (24 page)

Joe laughed. Look at that arm; it belongs to
me, and not for very long. This was comedy. Not one of those
stand-up gags, no, real comedy, your laying in the sewer with your
arm halved off kind of comedy. He laughed like a man who did this
for a living, died every day. Then he downshifted into more of a
howl. Sitting up now, he was howling. Hear this you canal. You
fucking drain.

Joe stood. He was dizzy, felt full of old
yarn. But not this time. This once, not him. There were ledges here
he could walk on, and with his bleeding arm tight across his chest,
Joe skimmed like a stone, he floated. Where to go was taken care of
-- the sickness pulled him there. That thing, that monster, the
ruin in his body was drawn to it. Joe grinned as he bounced through
the dense darkness, many times falling into the surging flow,
through the tangled spaghetti of tunnels, his hair sticking in
chandeliers of low-hanging fungus.

Deeper and deeper and darker and down. Thub
thub...thub thub. The Enterprise, yes, but he could also hear the
baby, faint yelps and gibberish. He juked into a tunnel, easing
down a hill, deeper still, where gravity was stronger, and the
ground was prehistoric and hot. Vapor rolled off the water here.
The canal was far above him maybe, leaking through the ceilings.
You could sense its weight, hear it slurping at the sewer spouts.
The dragon was near -- Joe tasted the bile that it brought to his
throat, he could hear the drone of the surf and feel the sand
itching in his shoes.

There would be no creeping, tense entrance.
No hand wringing or hesitation. And maybe it would go like this:
Joseph -- golden armored, crest flowing, trumpets blowing -- sweeps
into the dragon's loathsome den. "Foul beast behold--" And
poof...fireball. Joseph to sawdust. Damsel's devoured, castle's
burnt, dragon resumes nap. But Joe didn't care. It would probably
be more fitting that way -- less like legend and more like life,
where everybody lives unhappily ever after.

He began gaining speed, descending at a trot,
down unsteady dunes to meet the shore. He came upon an opening, an
alcove, and another sewer shaft that rose to the street above. He
realized that he hadn't descended anywhere; he was still just below
the asphalt, probably no more that a block distant from where he'd
started. Wan, sausage sized beams of light filtered in from the
manhole cover -- and in their glow rested Alan's son, his caustic
diaper shining.

Baby...but no dragon. Wait, could it be this
easy? Could it be so simple? Joe moved rapidly, lurching into the
alcove miraculously unscathed. Eugene, the treasure, seemed okay;
still a baby, still operational. An ugly baby -- it was the
forehead mostly, quite off-putting, the kid was 80, maybe 85
percent forehead, conservatively.

"They won't let this happen again," he said.
"They'll never leave you alone, you big headed, you... You sure had
them scared, for a minute we thought you'd drowned, but I got you
goddammit, I got you, you fat little..."

He gathered the child into the grip of his
good arm. Yes, things would finally go right this time. Joe would
make it; he'd beat the canal. He'd get the kid safe. All he had to
do was get to this ladder and go on up. And Joe felt a draft of
crisp air from outside, it tasted deliciously sweet, menthol cool,
like bleach to a drain.

Which made it so disappointing to hear that
sullen, tortured drum: Thub thub...thub thub. Along with the
digestive gurgle of water, the gagging bubbles. Of course he should
have known. Of course it was here. And where else but beneath the
growling sewage?

The Enterprise emerged from the water, rising
to the ceiling, and Joe found himself eye to eye with the monster's
heart, wobbling there in its tumoral scrotum. Past it, through
semi-transparent skin, Joe could see the knotted tubes of lungs and
the convoluted turnpikes of arteries. The belly button was a
suppurating barnacle that squirted something in his eye.

Get the kid safe, thought Joe. Yes, he'd do
that. And then he'd come back later and finish this business...or
maybe he wouldn't, maybe he'd just-- See, he was angry and all,
really, quite furious, but, just look at that thing. Larval grape
sacs, bulging with the embryos of mutated froglings, hung from its
cheeks while viper tongues spat from the tips of cone shaped warts.
The whole profanity belonged to an orphaned mythos, one that had
wrongly celebrated birth defects and smallpox and was later
deserted for something far more photogenic, like unicorns and
fairies and Adonis'. Relegated to hell while more popular Gods
flourished.

Dear friends. Joe on his nighttime beach. It
stretches for miles. He decided to climb, his ladder now a palm
tree, crooked and ungroomed. He could reach the top, it wasn't
far.

The Enterprise made no apparent attempt to
stop him, and soon escape was inches from Joe's face -- above he
could hear wide spaces and a diesel bus. Except...there was one
complication. With one deteriorating hand holding the ladder and
the other hand holding the baby, he had no way to lift the manhole
cover.

He could...drop the baby? YES-- No. No, how
could he? Or he could drop the baby with all intention of coming
back and reclaiming it later. YES. He could go somewhere safe and
wait until he got angry again-- Wait. No, wait. This was Henry
we're talking about. Joe looked at the boy, the five-year old boy.
Henry looked the same as always, with the same curls in his
chestnut hair. Joe wouldn't leave him, not again.

Joe jerked upward, ramming the lid with his
skull. The rebound almost knocked him from his perch as blood
quickly washed into his eyes. He'd do it a second time, for
Henry.

The dragon was waiting and watching. Growing
bored of this display. Talons constricted around Joe's legs and
tugged. Joe lost his grip on the ladder but caught the next rung
down. Tug...drop...tug...drop -- Joe felt his arm come undone a
little more each time. He kept descending until his lips grazed the
beach, kissing the sand fleas. Was it bad to throw a baby? Joe
threw the baby. Although it was only a short toss, to buy the boy a
few more moments of safety. The child bounced diaper first into the
alcove. Apologies, Henry. Apologies.

"Joesssssifff..."

At least Joe still had his good arm. He and
it, they were going to do this. For once. Because you could get so
mad sometimes. Because it was all very unfair. All this. Sickening
and unfair. So the good arm went inside Joe's good coat and found
Alan's good gun. Joe raised it and fired.

He shot the dragon. ...Maybe. Or had he shot
the ceiling? Fuck. Joe pulled the trigger again -- this time a
pink, swirled knob on the Enterprise's shoulder disintegrated into
mist. Black ichor rooster tailed from the wound.

The baby whined and Joe shrieked.
Disappointingly, the dragon laughed (bone saws keening). The beast
drank its own blood and swaggered in the spray -- truly a sight,
satyr-like, an epileptic shimmy.

Before Joe could do anything else the
creature's mouth jolted into action, chugging fast, the tongue
beating Joe about the face. Readying to swallow him.

>> CHAPTER EIGHTEEN <<

You had to worry about the uncorked sewer
shaft, gasping its open invitation, swallowing the rain. You had to
worry about what that might mean. Because a person didn't want to
have to go down there.

Meanwhile Rose, she was already standing over
it, looking in.

"I don't know if you should be doing that..."
Alan managed to pose it partly as a question, partly as a plea.
Because you had to worry where this was headed, what direction this
might take.

There were plenty of quotable wise men, with
statues that now go ignored in parks and town squares, who have
conjectured that struggle and sacrifice give life breadth and
worth. In other words, you can't always take the easy way out --
there is your character to consider and all. But Alan had to
wonder, were any of these gentlemen philosophers ever confronted
with the sight of a woman climbing into a dank sewer? Did they ever
have to think about going down there themselves? Knowing that
everything you hated, everything you feared could be down there? Or
were they too busy sounding noble and idealistic, while the poor
saps that actually worked for a living got stuck with the ugly
details?

By now, Rose was completely submerged beneath
the street. Alan went to the opening and reluctantly stared. He
encountered an overabundance of odor -- a buffet of excrement,
night sweats, and sour treasure. He had to wonder, if just for a
moment, whether Eugene was really worth it.

He hoped so.

Alan clamped his flashlight in his mouth and
began to descend. The shaft was smaller once inside, and he had to
fold his shoulders to fit. Progress was slow. Plodding. But the
transition, from aboveground to underworld, when it was finally
complete, was horrifically profound.

How had he not always been sensing this
place? Mere feet below his world, how was he not aware of this
sweating, seeping nightmare? Whole spires of dangling rot, ever
swelling, ever growing, ever listening to the rumble of life above,
sizing it, gauging it. Just yards away. Barely a distance, more a
notion. And it was as big as your cities, on the flip side of the
coin, where the catacombs lay, a terrible mirror image, the very
pulse of decay itself -- these chutes of raw, untreated sewage, an
ungodly petrol, the 5th element, a pioneer combo of water, waste,
and microbe -- alchemal underachievement, lead into manure, toilet
prayers, scumbag omelette. Alan had never imagined. Never even
considered it. This thriving place.

Light was a foreigner here -- didn't
understand the language, didn't want to learn. Tunnels gazed at
Alan blindly and uncomprehendingly. In the dim glow of his
flashlight he glimpsed Rose, outlined in brown spray, with her arm
deep in the boisterous flow. He averted his eyes, it seemed too
private and personal and disgusting.

When her ablutions were complete, Rose
quietly hurried away through a toxic grotto. Alan followed, while
tripe-tasting mists bathed his skin and he touched saprophytic
slimes.

The farther along the more agile Rose became.
She had no light, yet she led with absolute precision, pausing only
to retch, which she did with a disturbing relish. Alan knew that if
he lost her, he'd be lost himself -- like some cursed soul he'd be
forced to wander these byways for eternity, teetering on the brink
of cesspools and bathing in waterfalls of grease and sputum.

It was all... It was all rather too much. He
felt dizzy and reached out a steadying hand. It plunged deep
through the crust of a fissure or nest. There were things moving
inside, whispering and scraping. His arm became unrecognizable,
brown and ticklish, dripping with a very rough breed of cockroach,
exceptionally leggy and mucousy. Alan flapped and danced and his
sleeve divulged a torrid jackpot. Tenacious insects sought the
safety of his underwear and pockets, sought the warmth of his
armpits.

But Rose, where was Rose? There. A glint, a
hint, ducking left. Alan fought onward, queasily parrying the bugs
as he went. He prayed it was actually Rose whom he was following
and not something dreamed out of the darkness, some inhabitant of
these caves, a sewer dwelling antelope maybe, massive eyed,
luminous, with cloaca feet. He turned down a short slope, the heat
and stink growing unbearable.

His flashlight abruptly touched on a
startling scene -- no need to dwell on the wad of shivering,
dripping flesh that clogged the end of the tunnel, or its pelt of
weeping offal, or the gasses seeping from flaps in its ribs and
that filled the chamber with the incense of rotted organs. No need,
although Alan thought he recognized someone familiar...

Alan's first thought was that Joe was perhaps
defeating the creature. Yes, Joe was killing it, like he'd said he
was going to do. He'd enacted some unorthodox plan whereby he
inflicted serious damage upon the fiend while simultaneously
appearing to be devoured. It was a marvelous approach, would fool
anyone. And those screams he was making were just reassurances.
"I'm doing fine," he was trying to say. "It's not how it looks."
Joe had it handled.

It was a drama that Alan suddenly recognized.
He had seen this before. In the squatter building, when Joe was
being attacked. The two person pose was practically identical --
nearly religious, with the tender saint consoling his reborn
disciple, although that was being merciful considering the
nauseating amount of tearing and gnawing that currently taking
place, and the blood squirting from this particular saint's
mouth.

Thub thub...thub thub.

Alan, at last, finally understood. Vital
connection: made. There was no psychotic cannibal. There were no
feral dogs. No vagrant cult. There was only this. This monstrosity.
This medieval horror. This bubonic mistake. It was the source of
all problems and the crux of the entire case. It was the
answer.

Alan's skin prickled. Here then was his
destiny, his one true mission -- to confront this commandant of
dirt and destruction. To fight for all that was lawful and
sanitary. To free mankind forever from error's scourge, from
chaos.

Alan felt full of current. He glowed with
righteousness. This was his moment. This was the battle that would
forever turn the tide. Alan drew his revolver. He took careful aim.
There was no room for failure...

But in the swelling roar, in the building
rush, he'd forgotten something. He'd forgotten about Rose. And Rose
had bloomed, suddenly potent and fierce, here in the murk, suddenly
filling the entire room. She pried the gun from Alan's hands,
lacerating him deeply with her nails, throwing the gun into the
sewage. She slashed Alan's cheeks, tried jabbing his throat. He
ducked, stumbling out of reach.