The back of my head is throbbing, I wince every time my feet slap against the pavement, and I’m feeling kinda sick to my stomach now. But I gotta keep right on running. No other choice.
By the time I’d gone six or seven blocks though, I’m spending more time crouched down behind dumpsters and pressing into shadows than I am actually makin’ tracks. Seems like there’s a cop car on just about every street and they’re cruisin’, nice and slow like. Checkin’ out passersby, that kind of shit.
So what do ya do when the fuzz thinks you’re a would-be rapist and have laid out the dragnet? Where could you possibly go to find even a modicum of safety. Me?
I head down to Price Square.
Because that’s where all the homeless are, that’s why. I figure once I’m there, I’ll just kinda blend in, ya know? I mean—let’s face it—all of the disenfranchised basically look alike, and they all look like me.
Gettin’ there was a problem, though. I was sure one of you cops were gonna see me darting across the street, sooner or later, or you’d start searchin’ the alleys once I didn’t turn up on the avenues. If I could just make it to where I had in mind, I knew I’d be home free, but I had no earthly idea how the fuck I was gonna get there.
Now, this is the point in the story where Ocean helps me, if ya can dig that. Ironic, no? Here I am doin’ all this shit in an attempt to spare her a life of suffering and she comes to my aid.
How so? The sewers, man!
I think about Gauge and Corduroy leading her through that network of tunnels with those rotters just overhead, and the undead bastards never had a clue. So I find me a manhole cover back in one of the alleys and dig out this piece of metal from a dumpster. It took a lot of grunting and muscle, but I finally pried that cover from the ground and climbed down the rungs of the ladder.
The sewers in Ocean’s time are dry, man. There’s still a lingering odor, but there hasn’t been a toilet flushed in years. Me, I’m not so lucky. I’m sloshin’ through brown water up to my knees and I have to continually yank my feet outta the sludge that’s built up on the bottom. Place smelled like one of those outhouses they put at campgrounds, after the summer sun has been bakin’ everything inside, and I keep reaching out for the walls to keep from slippin’ in this shit. The walls are pretty damn nasty themselves, they’re slick and gooey and there’s these little things that look like stalactites… only they feel kinda like jelly, or congealed snot. I didn’t even want to think about what I was putting my hands into.
And, damn, it was dark down there, man. I basically had to focus on these rectangular slices of light from where the glow of the city filtered through the drains and walk until I’d reached one. I’d peer out through the drain, try to figure out where the fuck I was from a very limited view, and then make my way to the next one.
I musta been down in those sewers for close to forty-five minutes, man., but eventually I figured I was pretty close to Price Square and should get topside again. I was startin’ to feel lightheaded and my heart was just pattering away in my chest. At the same time, it seemed like it was gettin’ harder and harder to form a complete thought. I didn’t know if this was from my head injury or from breathin’ in clouds of methane… but, either way, I didn’t like the options. If I passed out down there, man, I probably woulda drowned in raw sewage. They woulda found my body pressed against the grating at the treatment plant and it would been all she wrote for ‘ole Bosley Coughlin.
I ended up scaring the hell outta this group of Asian kids when I popped that manhole cover and pulled my sorry ass back onto the streets. This was over by the public library. Not that small annex over on 32nd, but the main one that has that fountain going at all hours of the day. You better believe I headed straight for those gurgling cascades of water, man. I stood under that sculpture of a cherub with the stream comin’ outta the cask tucked beneath his arm while all the muck that had coated me tainted the water brown.
After I thought I’d washed most of the shit off of me—and I’m being literal there—I made my way to New Horizons. It’s this little shelter about a block or so away from Price Square, see? They took me in, bandaged my head, put some hot food in my belly, gave me a pocket-sized Bible, and put me up in a cot for the night. You better believe that laying down never felt so good. Every muscle in my body ached and even though I’d had a bath of sorts in the fountain, I could still smell the lingering stench of sewage in my nose. I kept thinkin’ about how none of this ever woulda happened if I’d just listened to Steel, ya know? I mean, the dude may be something of a prick, but when it comes to this underworld stuff, he really knows his business.
Now, I’d be lying if I tried to say that I wasn’t also thinkin’ about Clarice fuckin’ Hudson, man. While I listened to the street people snore and mutter all around me, I kinda replayed the entire scene over in my mind. Not the chase or the attack, but those brief moments in the mall when I’d actually found myself feeling sorry for her. When we stood there facing each other like two opposing generals who’d realized the enemy wasn’t quite the monster propaganda made them out to be.
And, as I pulled that scratchy blanket up to my chin, I made a promise to myself—I would never underestimate that bitch again.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Ocean could feel Corduroy’s gaze like a hot coal on the back of her neck. He was seated at the table in the main chamber, leaning back in the chair as if he had nothing better to do than watch her pace back and forth, Baby crying on her shoulder. She tried to make sure she was behind the wall of the nursery as much as possible, away from his line of sight. Even then she knew he was still out there, sitting at that damn table like some sort of sentinel.
He knows I was there, somehow he knows, I can just tell.
Baby’s screeches made her eardrums feel as if they were about to shatter so she bounced lightly on the balls of her feet while rubbing his back gently. She closed her eyes and tried to sing to him, but her mind kept returning to the night before and she stumbled over the words.
The door with the barred window. The little room beyond, newspapers wadded into tight little balls and…
“Shhh… it’s okay, Baby. It’s okay, honey.”
Somehow, Ocean felt more like she was talking to herself than the squirming child pressed against her body. She wanted so badly to just forget everything that had happened since last night, to pretend that it had all been a dream. But how could she? Even if she could somehow push Corduroy’s attack to the back of her mind, did she really believe she’d be able to forget that she’d seen behind the forbidden door? And what did it all mean anyway? Why exactly was there a—
Someone was in the room with her. It wasn’t so much that she heard him, it was more like a cold shadow had fallen across her skin, coaxing the bumps beneath the fine hairs on her arms.
Her eyes snapped open and she froze in place for a moment, entirely forgetting the wailing infant in her arms. At the same time, her breath caught in her throat with a sharp gasp and the walls of the room seemed to press in around her.
Corduroy stood in the doorway with his arms folded across his chest. The scarred and twisted flesh of his face was stretched as much as it could be into a tight lipped frown and something about his posture made it seem as though he were purposely blocking the entrance, cutting off her only means of escape.