So he kept following it, hoping, praying it would lead him out of this madhouse. He could hear rustlings and squeakings and chitterings and now and again a leathery wing brushed his face. Bats. Rats. How harmless they seemed when you were faced with worse things.
Sounds now.
Them? Was it them? Had they tracked him down and were, even now, slinking forward to claim him? Was that it?
No, listen, dammit, listen!
Yes, a rushing noise. Like water. Like a waterfall, in fact. Loud and getting louder. Maybe a subterranean river or steam. And maybe, possibly a way out or just a way deeper into this stygian hell.
He began moving quicker through the tunnel now, the water splashing around his ankles. The breeze was much stronger and, Christ, how sweet it indeed smelled. How wonderful. He had forgotten what fresh air felt like against his face, in his lungs, the cool whisk of it against his teeth. It was a joyous thing really, but it only served to amplify the atrophied, stagnant reel of the tunnel system.
He kept moving, the fresh air pulling him along like a thread of hope. Maybe this is why he had seen none of the creatures for so long now. Fresh air and, possibly, sunshine would have been unthinkable to them, abhorrent. They would have avoided it like fumes from a septic tank—unclean, tainted even.
The sound of water was very loud now and the tunnel was still unwinding before him and when would it ever end? His feet moved faster, his breath rasped in his lungs, his heart pounded fitfully. And the flashlight dimmed and dimmed, began to flicker and, oh, dear Christ, not now, not now! He slapped its cylinder against his leg and it came back brighter and dimmed just as fast. He found that if he kept whacking it against his thigh, it would brighten for a moment or two.
Goddammit!
And then the passage veered off to the right and there was a chamber ahead. The air was still fresh… but he smelled something stale and noisome and, without thinking, he stepped into the chamber… and dropped fifteen feet in a slimy, viscous pool. And all around him, squeaking and rustling and clawing and snapping. He thrashed and fought and pulled himself up out of the festering muck and it smelled just about worse than anything. It was all over his face and down his shirt and up his nose. He still had the riot gun in his hand and the drop had jarred the flashlight and now the beam flickered and exploded with life.
And that’s when he saw them—the rats.
With a deathly realization, he looked upon them and they looked upon him. Ranks of them crowding for space in a grim, verminous circle that tightened and tightened. Huge, fat, with greasy pelts and trembling tails, eyes leering with rabies. They were grinding yellowed teeth and making ready.
He started to scream and couldn’t stop.
He pulled himself to his feet and realized what he’d fallen into was a collected pool of dung, waste material from the meals of the creatures. A vile, diseased stew of bacteria and filth. A sewer.
He started shooting with his Colt 9mm and got off maybe two rounds that echoed like rolling thunder in the chamber and the rats were in motion. He could never be sure if they were attacking or just stampeding out of fear, but they were everywhere. He could feel their dirty, furry bodies pressing against his legs and their teeth nipping at his waders and feel them clawing at his legs, but by then he was running, stumbling, and he fell into the filth again and little fangs ripped at his face and hands and he kicked and slapped them away.
The flashlight went out for good and a darkness thick as coal dust descended on him.
He plowed drunkenly through the rats, guided only now by sheer instinct that told him to run, run. And he felt the fresh air again and climbed out of that pit and the rats had retreated and, dear God, he probably had rabies. And then he was crawling down another passage on his hands and knees and he saw light. Filmy and gray, but light all the same.
A few pallid fingers of it issuing from a cleft in the rock ahead and he dove straight at, slamming into rocks and laughing as he cut and bruised himself, but not caring, not caring—
And then the floor disappeared beneath him and he was falling, falling, end over end towards the sound of rushing water.
41
Kenney’s world was chaotic and unbalanced. It was a barrow pit and a madhouse, a hot-blooded nightmare and a subceller freak show. He had escaped the mutants, but they had badly battered him. His head hurt; his face and neck stung from the acidic secretions of their fingers. He was out of rounds for the riot gun, but he held on to it for the flashlight and its effectiveness as a club. He still had his service weapon—a Colt 9mm—and flares. So he was not down and out just yet.
In the darkness, hip deep in the foul brown drainage, he leaned against the wall, unable to go another inch.
Where the fuck is Hyder and those reinforcements? What the hell are they doing up there? He should have sent a rescue team down thirty minutes after we stopped checking in.
Kenney knew he had to remain calm, but with each passing second in that awful place it became harder and harder.
He was lost, he was scared, he was confused. His mind was filled with dusty cobwebs. He was so damn tired he couldn’t seem to think straight.
Keep awake. If you do nothing else, keep… awake.
But it wasn’t easy. God, no. He was so exhausted from the shock of this entire nightmare and slogging through the stygian depths of the flooded underworld and crawling through cramped tunnels that he could have slept standing up. In fact, he could have gone right out leaning against the warm, mucky wall.
But he wouldn’t allow that.
He couldn’t allow that.
By sheer force of will he made himself stand erect, chuckling hopelessly deep in his throat when a stream of water warm as piss trickled from above and ran down his cheek. It was followed by a clod of clay that oozed down the bridge of his nose like a melting turd.
He pushed on through the water, refusing to think about the fact that Chipney—Jesus, Chip—was probably dead. No marriage. No future. No nothing save a bride left at the altar, crying her eyes out over the cold corpse of her fiancé.
You could have ordered him to stay above.
Yes, that was true, but he was a cop. A damn good cop and that would have been an insult to him, a professional slap in the face from a friend and a colleague and Kenney couldn’t do something like that.
Stop thinking and push on.
Yes, that was it.
He followed the tunnel around a bend, noticing that his flashlight beam was very weak, dimming to a struggling yellow ray that reflected off the swirling gaseous mist rising from the stagnant swamp around him. There was a shelf of rock jutting from the wall just ahead. He would change the batteries there.
That’s how tired he was.
So tired he hadn’t even noticed the light was going dead. His eyes must have really been beginning to adjust to the murk and that disturbed him.
He made it over to the shelf and it was perfect: a seatlike shelf of limestone. He crawled up onto it, dangled his legs over the edge, and swapped the dying batteries for the fresh ones in his tac vest. God, the light was so bright now it was blinding. He clicked it off, conserving power.
That done, he sat there, listening.
And listening.
He could hear the sound of water dripping, bits of the walls sloughing off, a steady sound of liquid draining into the soup like a leaking pipe. It was nice. It was nearly comforting. It made him very relaxed. Too relaxed, in fact, because his eyes began to drift shut. He didn’t bother fighting the exhaustion. He let himself sink into the darkness and raft away on dreams.