‘Yeah?’
‘I’d like one of those gold bars. I’d like to hold it in my hand just to say I made it, just to say I won.’
They looked down at the misshapen bodies.
‘Stinking fucks,’ said Lupe.
They re-hung the polythene curtain and shunted the Coke machine back in position.
They pulled off their respirators.
Donahue wiped sweat from her face.
‘There will be more,’ she said.
‘And we’ll kill them too.’
They headed down the stairs.
‘Can you hear that?’ asked Lupe.
‘What?’
‘Sounds like music.’
‘There’s something in the walls,’ said Wade.
‘Where?’ asked Lupe.
‘Over there somewhere. To my left.’
‘Must have been the gramophone.’
Wade shook his head.
‘I killed the music.’
The turntable still spun with a rhythmic metallic rasp. Donahue found the brake lever and brought it to a standstill. She closed the lid.
They stood in silence.
‘See? Nothing.’
‘It wasn’t the record player,’ said Wade. ‘There was a scratching sound, like dragging nails. I definitely heard it.’
‘Where exactly did it come from?’
‘Over there. The corner of the room. Or thereabouts.’
‘There’s nothing,’ said Donahue. ‘Seriously. It had to be the phonograph. The mechanism must be rusted to shit.’
‘No. It was the sound of a living thing. You know what I’m saying. Scratching. Clawing. It had purpose.’
Lupe looked high on the wall. She ran her hand across the whitewashed surface.
‘Couple of planks screwed to the wall. See that? Beneath the paint? Wooden slats. Something blocked off.’
‘Could be rats,’ said Donahue. ‘Got to be millions of them, skulking around.’
‘Sure as hell didn’t sound like rats.’
‘Don’t let your imagination run wild,’ said Donahue. ‘Chill. We’ve got axes, knives and a big-ass gun. Anything breaks in, it will rue the day.’
26
Galloway paced the ticket hall.
‘Anyone got a smoke? Come on. One of you bastards must have a cigarette.’
‘Sorry, brother,’ said Wade.
Lupe and Donahue ignored him.
‘Assholes. The lot of you.’
Galloway stood over Sicknote and watched him paint. He cocked his head, tried to make sense of the image.
Sicknote pricked his thumb with a sliver of glass. He squeezed a fresh bead of blood and smeared it on the tiles. Bold, broad strokes. Blood and dust mixed charcoal black. He painted a swirling vortex. Screaming faces sucked downwards into the singularity.
Galloway repositioned himself to get a better view.
‘What’s that? Sinners dragged to hell or some shit?’
‘The Great Absence. It’s calling us, drawing us in.’
‘Calling? You can hear an actual voice?’
‘I can hear the smothering silence. It’s reaching out to us, reaching through the tunnels. It’s almost here.’
‘Has it got a name?’
‘It can’t have a name. It’s like antimatter. The opposite of existence. A creeping, expanding null. It’s new to this planet. Nothing like it has ever walked the earth before. But it is here now, singing in the dark.’
‘Whatever, man.’
Galloway took a Sharpie from the breast pocket of his shirt. He dropped it on the tiles.
‘Stop cutting yourself, for God’s sake.’
Sicknote uncapped the pen and started to draw.
Galloway sat on the bench next to Wade.
Wade held out his hand.
‘Guess we got off on the wrong foot.’
‘Fuck you,’ said Galloway.
‘We’ll be down here a while, bro. No point throwing punches all damn night.’
Galloway reluctantly shook his hand.
‘Does he always do that? Your friend. Sicknote. Does he always daub mad shit over everything?’
‘Yeah. He draws pretty much every waking minute. They had him in a holding cell at Bellevue. He decorated the walls with his own faeces. So they gave him crayons. More hygienic.’
‘Screaming faces.’
‘Yeah,’ said Wade. ‘A detailed delusional system, according to the docs. Obsessive motifs. Fills his head, night and day. Soon as he wakes up each morning he gets to work. Swings his legs from the bunk, yawns, scratches his ass, then picks up a pencil. Never stops.’
‘But always the same thing? Faces?’
‘Always. You know who he is, right? Real name is Marcus Means.’
‘Am I supposed to recognise the name?’ asked Galloway.
‘Albany, ten years ago. Any other state he’d be on death row. Personally, I’d tie him to a chair, but Lupe seems to have a soft spot for the guy.’
‘The Chief will order him killed,’ said Galloway. ‘You too.’
‘He’s that kind of guy, huh?’
‘His boys spent a couple of months bulldozing bodies into mass graves, and shovelling lime. They were pretty strung out by the end. He’s kind of protective.’
Wade took the cyanide cylinder from his pocket and turned it over in his hand.
‘According to Cloke, neither of us will be making the trip.’
‘How are you feeling?’ asked Galloway.
‘All right, I guess. One minute I’m hotter than hell, next minute I’m freezing cold.’
Wade pulled off his do-rag and dabbed sweat from his face and neck. Wisps of blond hair shook loose and drifted to the floor.
‘Well, hang in there, man,’ said Galloway, without conviction. ‘Maybe you’ll be all right.’
Donahue descended the platform steps and stood at the water’s edge. She listened to the deathlike silence of the tunnels. Strangely peaceful.
An unwelcome recollection. A woman retrieved from water, far out in the Hudson bay. A winter suicide. She jumped from the Brooklyn Bridge. An office worker. CCTV showed her strolling along a traffic lane, calm, relaxed, ignoring horns and flashing headlamps. She stopped and patted her pockets like she forgot keys. Then she set down her briefcase, squirmed through the lattice bars of the side barrier and dropped into the heart-stopping cold of the East River. Her body was discovered weeks later during a scuba training dive. Saponification: a long-submerged cadaver trapped among weeds, protected from microorganisms by depth and cold. Her flesh turned white like wax. Body fat slowly transforming into soap.
Donahue tried to push away the memory.
She gulped. She coughed. She bent double and puked. A torrent of vomit splashing into the flood water. Each hard retch echoed through the vaulted cavern. She caught her breath, and spat the taste from her mouth.
She pressed another couple of Vicodin from a foil strip and knocked them back.
She closed her eyes and breathed slowly, tried to get her body back under control.
A distant splash.
Donahue trained her flashlight into far shadows. The beam lit dissipating ripples.
She took a step back and unhitched the shotgun from her shoulder.
She scanned floating rafts of garbage. Big Gulp cups and clamshell burger cartons pirouetted in an almost imperceptible slow drift.
Another ripple. Bubbles broke the surface, an unmistakable trail heading from the distant tunnel gloom towards her.
She held the Maglite between her teeth like a cigar and shouldered the shotgun. She squinted and took aim, followed the approaching bubble-trail with the front sight.
The stairwell lights winked out.
She backed up the steps. She stumbled in the gloom. She dropped the flashlight.
She unhooked the Motorola hanging from her belt.
‘Guys? What’s going on? What’s the deal with the lights?’
The ticket hall.
Lupe fumbled the matchbook. She struck a light. The match flared, then burned steady. She peered into shadow.