He thought it was just the gurgle in the pipes above him, but it continued. Chuckling at first, then louder. A demented sound. Bernie shook and rattled the gate.
“Let me out,” he shouted.
“Ow, ow, ow,” came the reply from behind him.
He clasped his hands over his ears to shut out the sounds.
He could wait, he thought, wait until morning. Until someone came.
But perhaps no one ever came.
He brushed a tickle from his cheek. It was wet. A tear. He wiped his face on his sleeve. Men didn’t cry. And there must be another way. Besides, whoever it was had been behind him.
Without light, Bernie picked his way down the stairs again, feeling for every step with his toes before committing himself. It made his legs ache. But there were no echoes.
As he descended he became aware that he could see. Not clearly. Just the dim outline of his outstretched hand. There were lights below. People.
Bernie stopped. People had locked him in. His throat was dry, his head sore and he could smell his own sweat. He edged round the last bend.
It wasn’t much of a light. A pale glowing in the distance, its source blocked by a dark shadow. Bernie sank down, his back to the wall, shivering. He was in a cavern, he realized, the roof held up by massive columns.
The wartime caverns. Now empty. What was it he had read in the newspaper? If the idea had been to convert them into a huge bus depot then there must be another way out. And the light must be a bonfire lit by vagrants. They would know.
Bernie bent his head to rest it on his knees. To calm down. To still the fear. He would walk across to them. Warm himself, ask the way. It was nothing to get fretted about.
He was right up to them before he saw them. Grey figures stooping over a pile of burning sticks. One picked up a brand and straightened. He was no taller than a twelve-year-old boy. None of them were. Slowly they reached for the flaming torches. The flames illuminated only their faces. They were round and wrinkled and ugly. Like goblins.
One smiled. His teeth were small and sharp and pointed. Bernie spun round. They were behind him too. He panicked.
He screamed. He ran, heedless of the fact that he couldn’t see.
He hit a pillar with his shoulder. He held his arms out before him and ran into another.
“Bernie, Bernie.” Someone was shaking his shoulder.
“The alarm’s not gone off,” he muttered trying to pull the blankets over his head. There weren’t any. He was cold.
“Bernie.”
His head throbbed. His shoulder ached and there was pain in one of his wrists. He knew his eyes were open but he couldn’t see.
“It’s Ilyas, Bernie. Do you remember me?”
“I can’t see you,” Bernie said.
“What are you doing here?” Ilyas asked. There was a babble of unintelligible voices around him.
“Exploring,” Bernie said.
One of the other people spoke to him. He couldn’t understand. Ilyas answered in his own tongue, then spoke to Bernie in English. “I’ve told them we were at school together. That they cannot have you.”
“What do you mean?” The feeling of panic was coming back, seeping through the pain of Bernie’s hurts. He remembered the leering faces, the pointed, eager teeth.
“You must go,” Ilyas said. “Can you stand?”
“I’m locked in. Someone locked the gate.” Bernie heard himself whining.
“I’ll show you the way.” Ilyas put his arm under Bernie’s shoulder and helped him to his feet. Bernie swayed, disorientated. He felt invisible walls pressing in on him and the weight of Birmingham descending slowly to crush him. He whimpered.
The voice in the darkness spoke again, sharply, insistently. Ilyas replied and began to lead Bernie forward.
Bernie felt hands pawing him, long nails touching his face. Ilyas spoke and they withdrew. Bernie could hear feet shuffling after them and somewhere a squeaky sound as a violin began to play. It was a dirge.
They splashed into water, which became deeper, soaking his trainers and numbing his legs inside wet trousers. The sound changed as though they were entering a narrow, enclosed space.
“This is the river Rea,” Ilyas said. “It runs underground here, down through Digbeth.”
“What’re you doing here?” Bernie asked, partly to drown out the sound of the scuffles of their followers. He felt slightly safer now. The air around was a bit warmer, though it smelt a little of sewage.
“I live here. My people always have. We steal from above when we have to, and eat what comes down to us.”
“But we were at school together.”
“Times change. We have to adapt.”
Progress was slow. Bernie staggered when he tried to walk unaided. He blundered into the tunnel wall. Pain shot up his arm from the damaged wrist.
He leant heavily on Ilyas, though it was uncomfortable due to the other’s lack of stature. There were splashings and squealings from the water.
“Just rats,” Ilyas said, “squabbling over food.”
Bernie shuddered. He would have felt happier if he could have seen the animals. Something soft brushed by him. Far behind he thought he heard howling, the kind that could emanate from human throats.
Then Bernie could see. The end of the tunnel was a small orange-grey circle in the distance. It looked much too tiny for him to get through. The shaft they were traversing began to narrow. Old brick was replaced by smooth concrete. The water, concentrated into the compressed space, was deeper and swirled faster, tugging at his legs.
“You will have to crawl,” Ilyas said. “There was no time to fetch the raft.”
He tried, but his wrist gave way, throwing him into the water. He screamed with pain and swallowed foul-tasting liquid. He surfaced, spluttering and sobbing.
“I can’t,” he said.
“You must. I can’t keep them away for ever. There’s a grid at the end but it lifts up easy. I used to come this way to school most days.”
Bernie dragged himself through the tube. Cold and soaked, he kept watching the patch of light.
Ilyas started back the other way, whispering a hasty, “Goodbye.”
Bernie peered through bars set about nine inches apart. Beyond them the river ran between steep banks, above which were silhouetted buildings outlined by sodium lights. The fringes of the water were studded with the debris of city life. He could hear the sound of an occasional car.
A piece of chicken wire stretched across the bottom of the bars, catching paper, twigs and gnawed bones as the river flowed out of he culvert. The gate itself had been repaired recently and was held in place by shiny new bolts. By reaching through, Bernie could just reach them. He had drawn one when he heard the snuffling behind him, and a whispering. He stretched for the other. Refusing to glance behind, he stared out at freedom, and at the four men who were walking towards him.
A street lamp created a brighter pool of light, illuminating the round wizened face and the pointed teeth.
Dale Bailey
Hunger: A Confession
Dale Bailey lives in Hickory, North Carolina, with his wife Jean and daughter Carson. A frequent contributor to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, he has also published stories in SciFiction, Amazing Stories, Pulphouse, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, Nebula Awards 31, and the two most recent collections of The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction.
His short fiction has been collected in The Resurrection Man’s Legacy and Other Stories from Golden Gryphon Press. In addition to the Nebula-nominated title story, presently under option to Twentieth Century Fox, the collection includes “Death and Suffrage”, a winner of the International Horror Guild Award.