You ready? Charlie asks once the two sophomores have finally passed by.
I shift my foot across the manhole cover, dusting off the snow.
He kneels down and hooks his index fingers into the gaps of the manhole cover. The snow dampens the scrape of steel on asphalt as he drags it back. I look down the road again.
You first, he says, placing a hand at my back.
What about the packs?
Quit stalling. Go.
I drop to my knees and press my palms on either side of the open hole. A thick heat pours up from below. When I try to lower myself into it, the bulges in my ski jacket fight at the edge of the opening.
Damn, Tom, the dead move faster. Kick around until your foot finds a step iron. There's a ladder in the wall.
Feeling my shoe snag the top rung, I begin to descend.
All right, Charlie says. Take this.
He pushes my pack through the opening, followed by his.
A network of pipes extends into the dark in both directions. Visibility is low, and the air is full of metallic clanks and hisses. This is Princeton's circulatory system, the passageways pushing steam from a distant central boiler to dorms and academic buildings up north. Charlie says the vapor inside the pipes is pressurized at two hundred and fifty pounds per square inch. The smaller cylinders carry high-voltage lines or natural gas. Still, I've never seen any warnings in the tunnels, not a single fluorescent triangle or posting of university policy. The college would like to forget that this place exists. The only message at this entrance, written long ago in black paint, is LASCIATE OGNE SPERANZA,VOI CH'INTRATE. Paul, who has never seemed to fear anything in this place, smiled the first time he saw it. Abandon all hope, he said, translating Dante for the rest of us, ye that enter here.
Charlie makes his way down, scraping the cover back onto its place after him. As he steps from the bottom rung, he pulls off his hat. Light dances across the beads of sweat on his forehead. The afro he's grown after four months without a haircut barely clears the ceiling. It's not an afro, he's been telling us. It's just a half-fro.
He takes a few whiffs of the stale air, then produces a container of Vick's VapoRub from his pack. Put some under your nose. You won't smell anything.
I wave him off. It's a trick he learned as a summer intern with the local medical examiner, a way to avoid smelling the corpses during autopsies. After what happened to my father I've never held the medical profession in particularly high esteem; doctors are drones to me, second opinions with shirting faces. But to see Charlie in a hospital is another thing entirely. He's the strongman of the local ambulance squad, the go-to guy for tough cases, and he'll find a twenty-fifth hour in any day to give people he's never met a fighting chance to beat what he calls the Thief.
Charlie unloads a pair of pin-striped gray laser guns, then the set of Velcro straps with dark plastic domes in the middle. While he keeps fiddling with the packs, I start to unzip my jacket. The collar of my shirt is already sticking to my neck.
Careful, he says, extending an arm out before I can sling my coat across the largest pipe. Remember what happened to Gil's old jacket?
I'd completely forgotten. A steam pipe melted the nylon shell and set the filler on fire. We had to stomp out the flames on the ground.
We'll leave the coats here and pick them up on the way out, he says, grabbing the jacket from my hand and rolling it up with his in an expandable duffel bag. He suspends it from a ceiling fixture by one of its straps.
So the rats don't get at it, he says, unloading a few more objects from the pack.
After handing me a flashlight and a two-way hand radio, he pulls out two large water bottles, beading from the heat, and places them in the outer netting of his pack.
Remember, he says. If we get split up again, don't head downstream. If you see water running, go against the current. You don't want to end up in a drain or down a chute if the flow increases. This isn't the Ohio, like you got back at home. The water level down here vises fast
This is my punishment for getting lost the last time he and I were teammates. I tug at my shirt for ventilation. Chuck, the Ohio doesn't go anywhere near Columbus.
He hands me one of the receivers and waits for me to fasten it around my chest, ignoring me.
So what's the plan? I ask. Which way are we going?
He smiles. That's where you come in.
Why?
Charlie pats my head. Because you're the sherpa.
He says it as if sherpas are a magical race of midget navigators, like hobbits.
What do you want me to do?
Paul knows the tunnels better than we do. We need a strategy.
I mull it over. What's the nearest entrance to the tunnels on their side?
There's one in back of Clio.
Cliosophic is an old debating society's building. I try to see each position clearly, but the heat is clogging my thoughts. Which would lead straight down to where we're standing. A straight shot south. Right?
He thinks it over, wrestling with the geography. Right, he says.
And he never takes the straight shot.
Never.
I imagine Paul, always two steps ahead.
Then that's what he'll do. A straight shot. Beat a path down from Clio and hit us before we're ready.
Charlie considers. Yeah, he says finally, focusing off into the distance. The edges of his lips begin to form a smile.
So we'll circle around him, I suggest. Catch him from behind.
There's a glint in Charlie's eyes. He pats me on the back hard enough that I nearly fall under the weight of my pack. Let's go.
We start moving down the corridor, when a hiss comes from the mouth of the two-way radio.
I pull the handset from my belt and press the button.
Gil?
Silence.
Gil? I can't hear you
But there's no response.
It's a bug, Charlie says. They're too far away to send a signal.
I repeat myself into the microphone and wait. You said these things had a two-mile range, I tell him. We're not even a mile from them.
A two mile range through the air Charlie says. Through concrete and dirt, not even close.
But the radios are for emergency use. I'm sure it was Gil's voice I heard.
We continue in silence for a hundred yards or so, dodging puddles of sludge and little mounds of scat. Suddenly Charlie grabs the neck of my shirt and pulls me back.
What the hell? I snap, almost losing my balance.
He runs the beam of his flashlight across a wooden plank bridging a deep trough in the tunnel. We've both crossed it in previous games.
What's wrong?
He gingerly presses a foot down on the board.
It's fine, Charlie says, visibly relieved. No water damage.
I wipe my forehead, finding it soaked with sweat.
Okay, he says. Let's go.
Charlie walks across the plank in two great strides. It's all I can do to keep my balance before landing safely on the other side.