– I don’t think it’s safe down there.
A sound like rusty chain scraped over a blackboard.
Chubby’s daughter shakes her head.
– There is peril.
I push them both through the door, grab Phil, drag him after, pull the door closed.
– Lock it, Phil.
– What if we want to get out fast?
– Lock the fucking door.
One by one he does the locks, cursing with each one.
– Fucked. Oh, now we’re fucked. Double fucked. Fucked for sure.
Light comes from a half-dead exit lamp over the door. No light down below. Howls. Good news seems to be that whatever lives down here hasn’t killed us already.
Things are looking up.
We go down.
Concrete steps and walls. Phil and the girl keep a hand on the wall as they go down and the light at the top fails their eyes and they become blind. I lead, still able to pick out the shapes of things. Kid is at the rear. No specialist, but he can see.
Hit bottom after a flight, and I can see something dangling from above. See a squat shape in the corner at the base of the stair, smell gasoline. I go over there, feel around, find a primer, pump it, find a handle, pull it. Takes three yanks and the generator kicks to life, feeding power to the work lamp hanging overhead.
– Sir.
I look at the girl.
– I fear we are not safe here.
She’s wearing moccasin boots with a rim of fringe at the top, several lace skirts, a peasant blouse tented over her belly, skinny dreads pulled up on top of her head. No end of bracelets, rings, necklaces and charms. The boy’s got the same boots in black, brown cords tucked into the tops, kind of a pirate shirt, black leather jacket with epaulettes, a load of silver amulets dangling from leather straps around his neck or tied to the jacket, and a thin goatee.
I go to the door under the work lamp.
– You don’t like it down here, go back up.
She rubs her arms.
– It was supposed to be a haven here. Safe from the rising storm.
Another steel door. More locks. And an iron bar braced across it, ends resting in U-joints bolted to the concrete.
Phil raises a finger.
– Joe.
The girl looks at some trash piled near the wall.
– My father spoke so highly of Percy. Our expectations were overmatched by reality. He seemed more a fool than a wise man. And the Hood itself, more a prison than a paradise for people of color. Cure. The very word promised safety. How were we to know?
I think about jamming my fingers in my ears, but keep looking for a way out instead.
There’s no ventilation to speak of. Exhaust from the generator flows into a plastic tube that runs duct-taped to the wall until it reaches a tiny vent above the door up top. A bundle of wires comes in through the same duct, snakes down the wall and into a hole drilled in the concrete wall next to the steel door.
Phil edges closer.
– Joe.
The boy steps up.
– I had the number. It gets passed around. Coalition, Society, people in need can find a number to call to talk to someone at Cure house. I think they ran a help desk when they first started. Or a crisis line. But I had to call a few times before anyone answered. Sela. I told her who we were, what we needed. What Delilah is carrying. She told us to come to the building over there.
He points north.
– On Seventy-second. Cure owns it. Buzz the super and it rings upstairs here and they let you in. Go straight back, Sela was in the alley waiting to bring us into here.
The girl shakes her head.
– That was the first sign that all was not well.
Phil clears his throat.
– Joe.
The boy is nodding.
– Yes. Sela didn’t look very. Healthy. And as soon as we got inside, we could see the situation was not what we were looking for.
The girl points up the stair.
– The Horde woman seemed all but mad. She spoke to comfort us, encouraging us to stay, but I sensed something.
The kid touched his forehead.
– Delilah can see things sometimes. Like she has the sight.
She raises a palm.
– Just what is given to me. And I sensed she had mad designs on the child. Soon, my fears were confirmed. She gave us drink, but it was drugged. We slept.
I’ve got my face close to the door, my nose at the crack.
I can hear that chain-scraping sound. Moaning. Can’t tell how many. Smell Vyrus. Wrong Vyrus. Something wrong. Smell dying. Smell wet concrete and mold and shit.
– Joe.
I look at him.
– What, Phil?
– Joe. We shouldn’t open that door, Joe.
– Why’s that, Phil?
– It’s bad in there.
I look around the space.
– Well, you can stay here and choke on exhaust fumes until Sela gets it together and Amanda opens that door up there for her.
He’s staring at the garbage against the wall.
– She stopped feeding them is all.
I take a closer look at the garbage.
I.V. bags, dry and crusted. No wonder I feel light-headed. Thought it was just the way the girl smells. All that extra blood pumping around inside her.
Phil points up.
– Why Sela is like she is, the blood, what was left, it’s been coming down here, to keep them alive. But Horde stopped.
– Not like it’s a secret her people are starving, Phil.
He shakes his head.
– Uh, no, that’s the thing, I’m not like an expert in the field, but what I’m saying is, on the upstairs floors, those are her people. People who, you know, came here to join, to join Cure and get the, what she promised, get the cure. And yeah, they’re starving too. But this?
He points at the door.
– This is where she keeps, and I’m just the messenger here and I tried not to let you take us down here so don’t be uncool about this, but this is where she keeps her experiments.
He scratches his head.
– In what she call, um, cross-splicing. Which, I don’t know what it means, so don’t ask, but if I were to guess I would say it means like, experiments in playing god. Or something. And what I’m saying is, that these …things… they don’t just, this is the scuttlebutt, they don’t just get into uninfected blood. Sure, yeah, that’s the flavor of choice, but they go any which way.
He points at me.
– If you’re following what I’m saying.
He scratches his head.
– Which is, I’m saying, they drink infected blood too.
The door at the top of the stairs rattles.
The girl points at me.
– Can you not fight?
The kid puts an arm around her shoulders.
– I’ll stand with you, man.
The girl makes a fist.
– And I. She wants our baby. She wants our baby to experiment on. And I will die to save our child.
I sort keys, find the ones that match the brands stamped on the locks.
– No.
She steps back.
I open the first lock.
– She won’t do anything to you or your baby. Not yet.
I open the second lock.
– You’ll be safe.
I fit the key to the last lock.
– Until I get back.
I pick up the iron bar that I took away from the door.
She sticks a finger at me.
– You said you knew a way out.
I heft the bar.
– I was probably wrong.
She steps back.
– We are abandoned.
I could tell her again that I’ll be back, but who the hell am I? What would it mean to her? And I’d probably be wrong anyway.
I get both hands on the bar.
– Open the door, Phil.
– I don’t want to.
– Do it anyway.
He puts his hand on the key.
– Story of my whole life.
He turns the key.
– I don’t wanna do it, but I’m doing it anyway.
He pulls on the door.
– Shit.
It sticks.
– Shit I wish I was high.
He’s not the only one.
They drink infected blood too. Like I don’t have enough to worry about, I got to worry about something trying to go for my neck.
Phil gives the door a good yank and it comes unstuck and something whips out of the darkness and there’s a mist of blood and Phil is gone. So it looks like it really does prefer uninfected blood, and I’m running after, swinging the iron bar, beating on something that has my friend.