Undertow (The UnderCity Chronicles) (10 page)

Jack said nothing. He was ignoring her which, she supposed, was his prerogative. Then: “Today is the first time I’ve come down since I made it back to the surface.”

Although his voice was mostly even, Lindsay picked up on the raw, bleak undertones. She began cautiously, not wanting to intrude on his pain. “I knew about you being… trapped down here for two years, but until we came here I thought from where you were living that you were still coming down—”

“Lindsay,” Jack ground out. “Shut. Up.” Followed unexpectedly by “Please.”

She did, though she had to bite her lower lip to do so. She finally understood why he’d been so reluctant to help her. From Jack’s past love of the underground and his ratty lifestyle she’d assumed that he’d continued his adventures. His self-imposed exile meant that something terrible must have happened.

She licked her lips. There was still something he needed to know. “You should’ve looked me up, Jack. You know you could’ve. Especially when Seline came to see you. I can’t believe she didn’t tell me that she’d gone to you.”

“Don’t blame her. I asked her not to.”

He hadn’t wanted to renew their friendship. She pressed a hand to her abdomen and pushed on. “Jack. I won’t make you go into what you don’t want to talk about. Nevertheless, after we get through this, I want you to know I’m around if you’d like to do normal stuff. Like have a coffee or go to a movie, or buy a TV, a potted plant, a third fork—”

This time when he told her to shut up, there was a smile there, too. It emboldened her to ask one more question. A safe one that had nothing to do with him.

“Jack, who are the Moles?”

There was no answer. Beside her he’d gone still. She could feel him retreat from her. More than retreat because that at least would be a strategic move, this was a sudden absence as if he’d dropped into a black hole, and there was no way to follow him because she’d no idea where he’d gone. One thing was for sure. The Moles, whoever they were, had everything to do with him.

* * *

Jack’s lungs burned as he ran the tunnel, the beam of his flashlight picking out the jagged chunks of concrete that littered the floor. He’d shed the weight of his pack and spent handgun, but he could hear the skittering footfalls of the Moles getting louder, closing in on him like wolves for the kill.

He leaped over a tangled mass of rebar and while airborne, his light caught a narrow opening in the wall. He zagged down it, into another brick-lined tunnel, and prayed it would soon join a path he knew.

Then, ahead, a cave-in. A wall of smashed masonry and oily black earth that cut off the way. Skidding to a halt, Jack swung around the beam of his light, searching for an escape route. There was none. He flung himself at the rubble, began to scramble up it. Something big and hard and cold slammed into him.

Jack’s vision exploded into stars as he tumbled, and his skull smacked against the corner of a cinder block. His flashlight was stripped from his hand and smashed against the tunnel wall. In the utter blackness, several of the things piled on him, and thin, iron-hard fingers curled around his neck, arms and legs, their grip wrenching as pliers. He heard the click of their teeth, and knew that in a second he’d be torn apart…or worse.

He found his feet, and, in a spree of punches and kicks, knocked three aside. He lashed out blindly at the others but they were too tough, too vicious and too many for him to escape. Their sheer weight in numbers dragged him down, and they wrestled a thick canvas bag over his head.

“Fucking bastards!” he screamed through the bag, his breath was cut off by the yank of a drawstring around his throat. His arms were folded back, wrists bound with raw wire that bit into his flesh. He continued to kick, then his ankles received the same treatment, and he was gripped by his tattered clothes and hauled off the floor.

Blood trickled over his face, sped by his frantic heartbeat as they transported him back the way he’d fled, deeper and deeper into the chasms of the underground. Bound and hooded, he still struggled, though it was no use. At least Reggie had got away. The tunnel fighter had been badly mauled, but it looked as if Jack had led the Moles off his trail long enough to afford an escape.

Their path twisted and turned, until at last they emerged into a place where their footfalls echoed and a chill, metallic reek filtered through the bag, burning his nostrils like acid fumes. He was dropped upon a cracked tile floor, the air knocked from his lungs. Limbs cramping, he flopped there like a dying fish, gasping past the cord tight on his windpipe. Then something gripped him hard by the back of his neck, forcing it slowly around until his vertebrae were about to snap.

“Jack Cole,” a voice beside him hissed and cracked like liquid nitrogen poured over naked flesh.

“ You’re…you’re going to break my neck…” Jack choked.

His neck muscles were allowed to slacken by the tiniest margin. “Jack Cole,” the inhuman voice repeated, bare of inflection or emotion. “You are Jack Cole. The one who has seen the roots of many cities.”

Jack gritted his teeth in pain as its grasp tightened again. “Yes.”

“No,” it corrected. “Jack Cole is dead.”

Nearby, Jack heard a heavy metal plate being pulled back, then a sickening reek of decay assaulted him, overpowering the burning acid stench. The wire that held his limbs was roughly untwisted, and he tried to stagger to his feet. No sooner did he move, then he was grabbed under the shoulders and shoved into a pit. He landed with a tremendous splash, and came up choking and sputtering, standing waist-deep in fetid water. He tore the bag off his head, the stench, asphyxiating, and doubling over, he vomited into the foul water.

Above, the metal lid was slammed shut, and he was sealed in the putrid darkness, gagging as he fumbled about. His hands met the slime-slick wall of the pit, then groping, his fingers closed over something soft and pulpy, like a swollen, rotten fruit. His hands trailed over it, then he recoiled, letting out a strangled cry.

It was a face—a human face.

And turning about, arms outstretched, he found it was not the only one
.

Jack woke on a great sucking gasp that lifted his head clear off the cot. He dropped back and shot a look at Lindsay. She slept on, thank God. Last thing he needed was her asking one more fucking question about himself, her voice all low and soft as if they were—as if they were something they weren’t. He closed his eyes but she stole into his ears with soft, regular breathing and his nose caught her pure feminine smell. There was no way he was going back to sleep.

He opened his eyes to the blackness, so deep he might as well have been blind. What it hid, his memory generously found again. Her blonde hair blending with the clarity of her skin, her soft full pink lips, the high cheekbones….

He was acting like a hormonal teenager. When he was fifteen, that was excusable, not at thirty-three. Not when he’d been through the hell he had. He still wanted her, only not with boyish innocent lust. No, he wanted to pull her under him and pound into her, listen to her cry out and spill into her. And then he wanted to do it all over again. He wanted to use her like an animal.

An animal, like the fucking Moles had made him.

Returning to the tunnels hadn’t been the gut-wrenching experience he thought it would be. His memory had served him faithfully, guided him unerringly through the labyrinthine underground, and while he’d felt the pull of the tunnels, he didn’t feel as though he was losing himself to them. Instead he’d once again felt the adventure of entering the flip side of New York City, once again saw on the walls and in the debris the stories of human resilience and despair.

It helped having Lindsay close. He’d been as nervous as hell approaching Sumptown. No matter how friendly, these people knew what had happened, and he’d feared they’d unwittingly say or do something that would unleash the terrors he’d worked so hard to lock away. With Lindsay right behind him, so sane and solid, he’d carried on.

The problem was that when he was alone with her she ransacked his emotions with all the recklessness and tenacity of a raccoon with a garbage can. He couldn’t sleep and he couldn’t take lying beside her. He’d go and talk with the tunnel dwellers. Play at being an anthropologist again. It beat what he’d been doing for the past year. Playing dead.

* * *

Lindsay woke disoriented, the everlasting night giving her no clue about how long she had been unconscious or if she was alone.

“Jack? You there?”

She reached across and patted the flat cot. “Guess not.” She flicked on her flashlight and read her watch. 4:52. Were the runners back?

She shouldered her pack and whapped her way past the tent flap, almost bumping into Dee as she did so.

“Oh! Sorry.”

Dee smiled at Lindsay’s bleary-eyed look. “Mr. Cole is with the mayor by the fire. The last group of runners are back, so they’re talking.”

Lindsay started toward the fire, when Dee touched her arm. “Hey, if you have a minute, there’s something I’d like to show you.”

Lindsay hesitated. Whatever the woman had for show-and-tell couldn’t compare to news about Seline.

“Come on. It won’t take long.”

Then again, not agreeing would break the obedience rule and while it might not apply to Jack’s underground friends, better to err on the side of caution, and so she let Dee guide her through Sumptown. As they skirted the fire, Jack glanced up from his conversation with a couple of jack-shirted young men, and Lindsay gestured with her head toward Dee. He turned back without so much as a nod of acknowledgement. Jack was taking this property thing way too seriously.

Dee led her to a tent on the other side of the community, this one about half the size of The Library and lit by a kerosene lantern.

“Come in,” she beckoned. “I wanted to show you this before you left.”

Lindsay cautiously entered, then her jaw dropped at what Dee had on display. The tent was crowded with boxes and baskets, but at the back, space had been made for a weaving loom, and hanging beside it was a bright woolen jacket of an amazing pattern, recalling the strange images of the deep tunnel graffiti.

Dee slid it gently from its hanger and held it up for Lindsay to see. “Do you like it?”

“It’s incredible. Did you make this?”

The woman’s chest swelled visibly with pride. “I want to give it to you. A present.”

Lindsay didn’t know what to say. “Mrs. Moore…thank you…it must have taken you ages to make that. Why give it to me?”

Dee laughed, the sound musical despite being hushed. “Because it’s no use down here. It’s far too bright and delicate to wear in the tunnels. I made it for fun, I thought you might like it, being a topsider and…and because it’s good to see that Mr. Cole is no longer alone.”

The woman was clearly fond of Jack, and Lindsay knew she didn’t have much time. “Jack won’t talk to me about the tunnels. Can you tell me what happened to him?”

Her kind expression still in place, she shook her head. “Oh, it’s not my story to tell, dear.” She shuddered. “Even if the telling of it weren't hard.” She placed the folded jacket in Lindsay’s hands. “I’m sure in time he’ll talk to you. He’s as fond of you as you are of him.”

Which wasn’t saying much. Then Lindsay remembered the squeeze of happiness she felt when Jack’s hand was on her knee and his lips by her ear, and suddenly she didn’t know what to think. She fumbled for something to say, and turned to the jacket. “Mrs. Moore, if you can create things like this you could make a good living on the surface….”

The woman gave a small gasp. “You topsiders are playing with fire, Miss Sterling, and one day it’s going to catch. Sooner or later, it’ll happen, and I don’t want to be up there when it does.”

Dee radiated a kind of serenity and faith that only came from those who were deeply at peace with themselves. Who was she to upset the weaver’s world with her version of the way things were? Who was she to say that she had any better handle on reality? She’d spent her whole life not knowing what lay under her own two feet. She’d spent years thinking Jack was one thing when he was another.