They shoved him through a brown, dirt passage shored up with boards. It was lit by hanging light bulbs shining like a yellow disease. The passage sloped down, and as he descended, he felt the air grow more stagnant. Dangling roots brushed against his face like cobwebs. Soon it seemed to Eric no living thing existed anymore. Nothing but mildew and worms.
But he was wrong.
They came to a small, square room, lit only by the light from the dirt passageway that led to it. Huddled in the corners of the room, chained to lengths of rebar stuck to blocks of buried concrete, were several people. A few of them were wearing jerseys of Boston sports teams, marking them as Minutemen. But their clothes were in rags and their faces were gaunt as skulls. The room smelled like an outhouse. Eric stumbled to his knees as a man jerked him downward to cuff him to a loop of rebar.
“Please,” one prisoner rasped near him. “Please give us water.” His voice was sand. When none of the guards said anything, he repeated, “Please.”
One of his guards, a huge man, suddenly stepped forward, and quick and brutal, smashed the prisoner down with the butt of his rifle. “I told you fuckers not to say anything,” the guard hissed. He lifted his rifle and struck the prisoner again, shattering his jaw against the cold earth.
The rest of the prisoners moaned in sympathy, but crawled closer into their shadows, cringing away from the guard.
Eric sat and said nothing.
When the guards left, Eric listened as the man who had been struck choked on his blood.
No one said anything. Eric doubted they had the strength.
So he had come to it at last. This was what he had been running from. This was what had made him avoid gangs. But it had found him anyway. Sitting in the Cave, Eric felt as if he had always known it would come to this. He was destined for this.
Eric had found his hell.
There were no guards in the Cave. They just left them chained there. There were no visits. No water. No food. Most of the prisoners were too weak to speak. One of them was already dead, the body chained uselessly to the ground. The man who had begged for water died the first night Eric spent there.
When the guards left, the Cave was darkness. Cold, utter darkness, of a kind Eric had never known. Soon light seemed to be nothing more than a memory. In the complete dark, Eric could not believe in the dazzling sun. Within hours it was hard for him to imagine he had once hiked underneath a summer sun. As the days passed and no light touched his eyes, he listened. Smelled. Felt the ground around him. With each passing hour, he felt less like a human and more like a worm. He felt like those worms baked alive on dark asphalt in summer, dried out into coils of stiff flesh.
Eric the worm.
Eric thought of Birdie, somewhere alone up above. He thought about Lucia and her grief and hoped she would find a way to conquer it, to be strong for Birdie. He thought of ways of escaping.
He imagined he pulled the steel rebar from its sheath of concrete. Like Arthur and Excalibur. He imagined he held the steel like a sword, and advanced with stealth back up through the passageway. He broke through a door. When the guards turned to him, he crushed their skulls with the rebar, grunting with the effort, and listening to the crunch of their shattered bones with careless exultation. Holding the steel in his hand, which dripped a trail of blood and gore, he entered the church where the green-eyed man held Lucia and Birdie among a crowd. Into the crowd he waded, his steel bar flashing. He fought his way to them, blood arcing from his swinging steel. The dying moaned about his feet, but he did not care. He took Birdie in his arms, Lucia by the hand, and led them from that place, back into the green forests, lit by the hot sun.
But it was fantasy. He was no King Arthur. He was Eric the worm. The rebar was solid in its cement home. The steel cuffs were tight against his wrist. He could not move. When he could hold it no longer, he had to piss in his pants. The warmth of it sickened him with grief and shame. He tried not to cry in the sensitive silence, but tears came anyway.
The fantasies stopped.
All he could think of was water.
All the different kinds of water. Rain water. River water. Water in lakes and water in ponds. Dew caught in the grass. Water that collects in your hair when you walk through a fog. The cold water of melted frost. Water in puddles, on roads, dripping from roofs. Loud water rushing down a waterfall. Silent water, still and contemplative as a monk. The first glass of water of the day and the one you have at night. The water that waits for you in a glass. Water in an aluminum canteen and water from a plastic jug. Boiled water. Fresh rain water. Frothing water and pouring water. Blue water, green water, water the color of sand, and water as dark as night. The gold water of the reflected sun and the pale water of the moon. The turquoise water of curling waves cresting, with their white hats. The gray water of storms and the brown water of floods.
Clear water.
He could think of nothing else, even when the thinking became something worse than desire. When the pain began.
Alone in the darkness, dying of thirst, Eric felt himself begin to shrivel. His body seemed slow, his blood moved through him like mud. His mouth burned and his tongue felt like a dry dead thing in his mouth, except for the pain.
When he had first come to the Cave, he had tried to speak to the prisoners. “Hello?” he had asked the darkness. “Is there anyone there?” There was no reply, maybe a whimper or two in the darkness, the other worms, wriggling on the floor. He had thought then that they were too afraid to speak, but now he understood.
It hurt. His tongue was so swollen and dry, he could not imagine speaking with it anymore. It hurt to swallow. Speech was impossible.
A blazing yellow light appeared. And then the raucous sound of their captors. They emerged from the light like burning angels. Their movements seemed effortless, weightless, blessed. What a miracle it was to be whole. Before he could accustom his eyes to their presence, they grabbed him up and dragged him out.
“Fucking stinks in here,” one of the guards said to the prisoners as they left, as if it were their fault.
They dragged Eric up the passage. He stumbled, trying to follow. It was astonishing to him how weak he was. It was not like in the movies where the prisoners managed to keep their dignity despite all their inhuman treatment. In reality, it was easy to break someone.
They carried him through a room and dumped him down in front of a desk where he groaned and coughed through a dry throat. Using what little strength he had, blinking in the blinding light, Eric struggled to stand. When he did, he saw the green-eyed man sitting behind the desk, studying him cooly. There was no sympathy there. If anything, the man was casually amused.
He saw Lucia first. She was in a corner, looking at him, her face bruised and her lip split. One of her eyes was swollen shut. Beside her was Birdie, staring at him with quiet anguish. He knew they had been told not to utter a word. Eric turned away. He didn’t want them to see him like this.
“My name is Daniel Sullivan,” spoke the man with green eyes, “and I’m going to give you two ways to die. I want you to choose.”
Eric didn’t move as Daniel Sullivan spoke. He fought hard not to tremble. Not in front of Lucia and Birdie.
While Sullivan explained his choices, Eric concentrated on his green eyes and the little crescent shaped white scar on his forehead.