Could be I hear a chuckle in the dark. Crazy old man chuckle. Laughing at what I said, or at what he’s leading me back to. Or could be I hear nothing at all. Nothing but me laughing at myself.
Hurley widens the hole I made when I came this way before. Hunched to make our way up the sewer line, we straighten when we reach the storm vault, looking up at the drain hole I shoved Phil through.
We study it, picked out in crossed flashlight beams.
Grate I removed is still off. Still dark as hell up there.
Quiet.
Terry stands directly under the hole, sniffs, pulls a face, steps back and waves us to him.
– What is that?
I shake my head.
– What’s what?
He points at the hole.
– Smell.
I step under the hole, make a show of raising my face and scenting, come back to Terry, Lydia and Hurley.
– Smells like a lot of dead people to me.
He frowns.
– Joe, without this meaning to sound like a brag, because I wish it wasn’t the truth, but I’ve smelled piles of dead in my life.
He points at the hole again.
– That’s not what they smell like.
I find my tobacco, unseal it and start to roll.
– And when was the last time you smelled over a hundred Vyrus infected who all died of starvation?
I seal up my smoke.
– ’Cause that’s what’s been going on in there.
I pat my pockets, looking for a light, and realize I never grabbed a dry pack of matches before we set out.
– Shit.
Lydia goes to the hole herself, gets a whiff, comes back.
– It’s Vyrus. Dead. Something else.
I fiddle with the unlit smoke, holding it between my fingers like it might make me feel a little better.
– Could be the shit-smeared walls you’re smelling. The bile they puked up when they died. Could be the wood rot in the walls. Wait a little longer and all you’re gonna smell is Predo’s boys coming through the front door.
Hurley is under the hole now. He inhales, flinches, pinches his nostrils closed.
– A proper reek it tis, whatever it may be.
He unpinches his nose, takes another whiff.
– Hard to say an all, but could be a hint o gun powder as well.
Terry pulls a whisker from his soul patch.
– I don’t like to be overly suspicious in a team endeavor like this, but, I don’t know, I just don’t like climbing into a dark basement when I can’t really smell what’s in it.
He points at me.
– You first, Joe.
I look up at the hole.
– As if there were any doubt.
The ache is in my fingernails now.
Cramps haven’t hit the point where I’d rather die than feel the next one, but I can sense them stacking one after the other like waves ready to pound the shore. Bones alternate between freezing and scorching.
I shiver, sweat, stand under the hole rubbing my stomach.
Lydia kneels a few feet away, an old wood-stocked carbine in her hands, aimed at the hole.
– Sooner you go up, sooner you might eat.
I wipe sweat.
– Feel like I’m gonna puke. Cramps. Hot flashes. Cold flashes.
I point at myself.
– Sure I’m the guy you want on point?
She jerks her gun at the hole.
– Jump on up there and stop whining, Joe. Doesn’t sound like there’s anything wrong with you that most women don’t deal with once a month.
– Calling me a pussy?
She drops her aim till it’s on my legs.
– Need some motivation here, Joe?
I hold up my half a hand.
– Leave a little for the vultures, lady.
She tilts her chin at the hole.
– Show us how safe it is.
I rub my chin.
– Sure. Safe as houses. Nobody up there but the chickens. I jump.
Full fed, I’d just about be able to hop straight up and land straddling the hole. Like I am, I get as good a grip on the edge as I can with one thumb, and haul myself up and through.
Nothing kills me.
Light from below shows me the corpse of the thing I did in a couple hours ago. Seeing it twists my stomach in another direction. Looks like someone crossbred a cactus with a manatee and turned it inside out. Only worse.
Amanda. Crazy little girl. What the hell are you doing?
I can’t see much more, my eyes not cutting the dark all that well. But it does smell thick with Vyrus. Thicker than I remember. And might be Hurley was right about that gun powder. Did the girl and her boy have a piece? Did they maybe use it on Sela out in that stairwell?
Hell. She’d have killed them both. Might explain the extra Vyrus smell if she killed the boy. Especially if she tossed his body in here.
From below, Terry.
– You dead, Joe?
I stick my head in the hole, shade my eyes from the flashlight beam, look at Lydia and Terry, their guns trained on me.
– That a trick question?
Terry circles his finger at me.
I look over my shoulder at the basement, look back down.
– Let me finish checking it out. And throw me up a flashlight.
One of them tosses the light, I miss it and it sails up through the hole, hits the floor, goes dark and skitters away, a little tinkle of sound trailing it.
I use the light from below as best I can, crawl out of it, into dark, feeling the floor. Put my hand in something wet and knobby-soft, feels like a handful of warm pig fat. I pull my hand back and fingertips skim something on the ground and it makes that tinkle sound as I scatter it.
Broken glass from the flashlight.
Fucking thing better work.
The beams from below are still shooting up through the hole, dancing on the cobwebs overhead. Just ten feet away, but they do me no good. A cramp grabs my guts. Yank, yank, yank. I put my hands down, scatter more glass, hear more tinkles. Feel more warm wet under my knees, soaking through the cold wet clinging to my jeans.
Man, that thing I killed was full of blood.
Wait.
Warm wet.
How many hours ago did I kill that thing? Yeah. No. I put my hand down. Smell my hand. Vyrus. No. Doesn’t look good for Chubby’s little girl’s boyfriend.
My hand closes on the flashlight.
Fucking finally.
I turn it on. See my hand covered in blood and something green, streaks of pink running through it. See the thing I killed, close up this time. Only. Except wait. It looks more like an inside-out lobster mashed with a porcupine. Wait.
Look over my shoulder at the beams coming from the hole. Reorient myself to the basement. Flash the beam of my own light to the opposite wall. And there’s the thing I killed.
Cold.
Beam on the thing in front of me.
Warm.
Scuttle back on my heels.
Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle.
Look down. Floor is covered in shell casings.
What are all those black lumps?
Raise the beam, run it over the far end of the basement near the door, pile of bodies, some in black coveralls and body armor, some in police uniforms, coveralls, tracksuits, blood in runnels, a mass under the pile, still twitching, looks like a ball of flesh whips.
I can see those doors I felt in the dark a few hours back. They go farther than I thought. A row of them. Six, seven maybe. Half of them open. The basement takes a turn, there could be more doors around the bend. It’s quiet, but I can smell that mystery stink, Vyrus gone wrong, slipping from each of those doors.
They quiet because there’s no uninfected blood for them to smell?
Fed and sleeping?
Dead?
I’d like to get that lucky. Once in my life, I’d like to get that lucky. But I’m not counting on it.
I stand, take a few steps toward the hole and something takes me from behind, wraps around my throat, pinning my arms, covering my eyes, my mouth. I’m dragged backward, picturing tentacles, flesh whips, some other madness from Amanda’s lab, the Vyrus stretched to a perverse conclusion.
– Quiet, Pitt.
A hand is taken from my eyes.
Not in the grips of a mutated land squid, simply pinned by another trio of enforcers.
Predo, his suit clinging to him where it’s been soaked in blood, a crust of something yellow-gray dried along his jawline, a crosshatch of wounds closing on his forehead.