He reached into the holdall. A bottle cap protruded from a couple of balled T-shirts. Wild Turkey, quarter full. He uncorked and sniffed. He took a long slug. And a second. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
He looked around. No guns. Each 101st Cav should have been carrying an assault rifle and side arm. Maybe they expended their ammunition during the short journey from the hospital to the 23rd Street Station. Must have been quite a battle. Troops working their way block by block in cover/fire formation. Tossing grenades. Shooting their mags dry, shooting until their weapons smoked hot and jammed, in a desperate race to get underground.
Or maybe most of the soldiers refused to board the train for its final journey into the tunnel. No fight left in them. Perhaps they rode the freight elevator to the top of the Federal Building and waited for the bomb to drop. Injured, exhausted men electing to die on their own terms. Sat on the roof beside the water tower, sharing a cigarette. They shielded their eyes from the gamma flash, watched the unfurling mushroom cloud, yelled a defiant Fuck You at the oncoming firestorm.
Tombes took another hit of Wild Turkey.
‘Rest easy, guys.’
An improvised surgical theatre.
Blacked out windows. Forceps, scalpels and bone saws scattered across the floor.
Tombes inspected rough planks laid across saw-horse trestles. A crude operating table. Blood soaked into the grain, staining it black. Leather buckle straps for wrists and ankles.
A butcher’s slab. Unsuitable for surgery, perfect for dividing a side of beef with crude blows of a cleaver.
He took another sip of bourbon.
If Cloke were there he would say:
‘Cool it with the booze, all right? Keep a clear head.’
And Tombes would reply:
‘A skull full of panic isn’t a clear head.’
He surveyed the shelves.
The place was a charnel house.
His flashlight beam washed over jars. Pathological material. Tissue in suspension. Heart, liver, kidneys, pickled in formaldehyde. Organs bristled with tumourous growths.
He picked up a jar.
Sections of lung.
He picked up another jar.
An eye.
‘Christ.’
Documents scattered on the floor at the back of the coach.
Tombes corked the bottle, crouched and shuffled papers.
Monochrome photographs. A man lashed to an examination table, naked, head shaved. He was screaming, pleading with his captors. Lab coats and surgical gowns in the corner of each frame, sinister gloved and ministering hands clustered around him.
More pictures. A loaded hypodermic. Desperate, pleading eyes, lips curled in a despairing sob.
Tombes checked his flashlight. The beam dimmed to weak, grey light. He shook it. It flared and died. He shook it again. Stuttering light.
Nightmare glimpses of dissection. A bloody bone saw. A peeled scalp. A brain lifted from a skull. A body, skin peeled back, spine exposed.
Tombes tightened the battery cap until the flashlight shone strong and steady.
‘Sick motherfuckers.’
He took another drink.
He tried the door to the adjoining carriage. Locked. He wiped glass, tried to peer inside.
He smashed out the glass with his hammer. He reached through the broken window and unlatched the door. He edged into the carriage, hammer raised.
A camp bed. A desk. A chair.
The coach had clearly been home to a single occupant, the sole member of the Bellevue team privileged to enjoy space and solitude.
A Samsonite suitcase on the floor beside the bed. Tombes lifted the lid with his foot. Toiletries and clothes arranged with fastidious precision. Montaigne, Essays. A rosary.
Tombes took the bottle from his pocket, uncorked and raised the neck to his lips.
He glanced at the cot: double-take as he glimpsed silver hair and realised someone lay beneath the rumpled blanket.
‘Damn.’
He slapped the stopper back in the bottle.
He slowly pulled back the blanket, hammer raised ready to strike.
A body. An emaciated man. Fifties. Eyes closed, mouth open. Pristine. Uninfected.
Tombes lowered the hammer and knelt by the cot.
The man’s hands were folded across his chest. Tombes leaned close. A silver ring. A snake eating its tail.
‘Holy fuck,’ he murmured.
He sat back. He rubbed his eyes and shook to clear his head.
He unhooked his radio.
‘Cloke, you copy? I’ve found him. Can you hear me? Hey. Switch on, dude. I’ve found Ekks.’
The man held a notebook clasped in his hands. Tombes prized his fingers apart and took the book. A black Moleskine. Scuffed cover, crumpled pages.
He thumbed through the leaves. Urgent biro scrawl. Letters and symbols, line after line, page after page. Some kind of code.
Gasp. Convulsion. Ekks shook and arched his back.
Tombes dropped the book and gripped the man’s shoulders.
‘Holy crap. Hold on. Just hold on.’
Tombes grabbed his radio.
‘Cloke, can you hear me, over? Get down here. Bring the trauma kit. Ekks is alive. The fucker is alive.’
35
Lupe rubbed her eyes.
More maps and charts. She smoothed schematics over the table. She laid them one over another, let the accumulation of translucent onion-skin sheets plot city infrastructure embedded in the soil surrounding the Liberty Line, aka tunnel 38A.
Gas lines. Fibre-optic conduits. Sewer channels. A dendritic network, layer on layer. Veins and arteries.
‘Are you going to help with this shit, or not?’
Donahue sat against the wall. She chewed an energy bar. She was pale with exhaustion.
‘It’s a sealed tunnel. Not much we can do. If we had more men, if we had boring equipment, maybe we could help. Burrow from the street or parking structure.’
‘They’re your friends.’
‘Tombes is my friend. I don’t know Cloke. He’s nothing to me. Saw him a couple of times at Ridgeway. Hadn’t spoken to him before today.’
‘Don’t you want to help Tombes?’
‘The charts are useless. Lower Manhattan has been dug so many damned times no one knows what lies beneath the surface. Let the guys see what they can find. Tombes knows what he’s doing. He’s been riding a truck twenty years. He’s kicked a lot of doors, sucked a lot of smoke. He’ll keep his head. If there’s an out, he’ll find it.’
‘Fuck that crap,’ said Lupe. ‘We’ve got the maps. They’re relying on us to find a way home.’
‘When did you start to give a shit?’
Lupe crossed the room and sat beside Donahue. She uncapped a bottle of water and swigged.
‘If we don’t find something worthwhile in these tunnels, they won’t send the chopper. The Chief doesn’t need any of you. He needs shooters, hard-ass trigger men. Civilians are dead weight. They sit around, draining resources. Useless eaters. Waste of food, waste of water. So if you guys strike out, he won’t send the chopper. Why risk the remaining machine, the pilot, pulling you guys out of the hot zone? You’re all sick. You’ll get sicker. You’ll need beds, treatment, a shitload of medical supplies. Face it, girl. You’re an asset. And you just got expended.’
‘Bull.’
‘I’d do the same in his position.’
Donahue wiped her forehead. She inspected her sweat-slick palm.
‘It’s started. The sickness.’
‘Fight it.’
‘How about you?’ asked Donahue. ‘Do you feel it yet?’
‘Yeah. Worming into my bones.’
Lupe straightened. She stretched.
‘Galloway. Idiot is high on Dilaudid, convinced he’s going to live for ever. I’ll deal with him. Quick and clean. Wade and Sicknote won’t give a shit. But you got to take my side when Cloke and Tombes get back. Make them understand. It had to be done.’