Bad Glass Part 31

Danny raised a finger to his lips and urged Charlie to be quiet. Confused, the seventeen-year-old got up and joined us in the hallway. He fell into place at my heels, and we moved on to Taylor's door.

The door was open, but Taylor wasn't there.

There were candles burning on her nightstand, illuminating the room in a steady yellow glow. Her bed was made. She had a flowered bedspread-white and pink and blue-and the sheets were pulled tight, marred only by an indentation on the near edge, where someone had been sitting. I was surprised to see my camera in the middle of the bed, weighing down a crinkled piece of paper.

I pushed my way past Danny and retrieved the camera. It looked okay. It was smeared with dirt but still intact, still undamaged. Mac must have grabbed it from my room.

"Taylor?" Danny whispered, his voice taut and urgent. He spun and peered into the room's corners, as if maybe we'd just missed her standing there. When she didn't materialize, he stepped back into the hallway and called down toward the remaining bedrooms: "Taylor? Are you here?"

"What is it?" Charlie asked, perplexed, growing increasingly agitated. "What's going on? And why are you bleeding?"

Danny reached up and absently smeared blood across his forehead. He ignored Charlie's questions. Instead, he came into the room behind me and peered over my shoulder.

I turned on the camera and set it to display the most recent image. The screen lit, and my stomach dropped. My bruised head once again began to swim with vertigo.

"He's got her," Danny said, his voice hushed, terrified. "He took her away."

The picture showed Taylor bound at the wrists and gagged with duct tape. There was pure terror in her eyes. I was surprised to see that look on her face. I didn't know she was capable of such stark, unambiguous emotion; it was something she had never let me see. Would she have covered up her face, I wondered, if her hands had been free? Is this what she's always trying to hide? Fear? Terror?

She looked vulnerable. She looked ... human. Peering out at Mac, behind the camera, watching that crazed, mud-spattered lunatic. A hostage.

His hostage.

"What did he do with her?" Danny asked.

I looked up. Charlie was standing in the doorway, watching us with terrified eyes. He still didn't know what was going on, but he understood, at least, the nature of our fear: our frantic search, Taylor's absence. As I looked, Floyd appeared in the hallway behind him. The skater was mouthing a gaping yawn, still partially lost in drugged and carefree sleep.

I slung the camera around my neck and grabbed for the sheet of paper in the middle of the bed. "At least we know where they went," I said, holding up the note.

It was a familiar note. The paper was worn and crinkled, crisscrossed with at least a half dozen folds. One of the corners had been ripped away, and it looked as if the bottom third had been dipped in water and then allowed to dry. The whole thing was spattered with teardrops of mud.

But the words were still legible: "There's something I need to do, some place I need to be. I know you don't understand. I'm sorry, Amanda."

"Underground," I said. My voice was weak. As I continued, the words got caught in my throat, coming out rough, devoid of emotion. "The tunnels ...

"He took her to the tunnels."

As soon as I told him about the tunnel in the park, Danny tore out of the bedroom like a sprinter at the sound of a starting gun. His face was set in anger, and he let out a growl as he paused briefly just outside the bedroom door. "I'll meet you there," he said, "with as many men as I can gather. And guns. Lots of guns."

Then he clumped down the stairs and out the front door.

I could imagine him hitting the street and running like a man possessed toward the courthouse and his barracked soldiers, doing absolutely everything he could to keep Taylor safe.

That's the type of person he was. Loyal. Dedicated.

My head was pounding and I felt dizzy, still drunk but getting sober now. Possibly concussed. As I turned back from the door, my vision swam and the back of my throat filled with prevomit saliva. I reached down and grabbed the corner of Taylor's bed, trying to keep myself steady. When my stomach finally settled, I bolted down two more Vicodins, hoping to push back the pain and nausea, wanting nothing more than numb, unconnected distance between me and my injured, chemically unbalanced head.

But the anger remained. And the fear.

Mac had waltzed right in and taken her. Easy as could be. Danny and me, sloppy drunk on the sofa. Floyd and Charlie, asleep and oblivious. And Taylor ... all alone, she hadn't stood a chance.

"Get flashlights," I said. Floyd and Charlie were sitting on the edge of the bed. They had the camera balanced between them, propped up on Floyd's knee and tilted back in Charlie's hand. At the sound of my voice, they both looked up from Taylor's picture. There was fear in their eyes. They looked like children. Lost, frightened children.

"And get weapons," I said. "Anything you've got. We're going to get Taylor back, and Mac isn't going to stand in our way. At least not for long."

Danny and his soldiers weren't at the tunnel by the time we got there. I wasn't surprised. They had farther to walk, and I hadn't exactly taken my time getting us out the door and on our way-walking and running through the dark streets, but mostly running. Floyd, Charlie, and I were all panting for breath by the time we reached the dark opening.

We didn't have the breath to talk, and for that I was grateful. This situation was wrong, all sorts of f.u.c.ked-up, and I didn't need Charlie or Floyd to tell me that.

It was dark, predawn. The sky overhead was clotted with clouds-the stars hidden, the moon long since crashed beneath the horizon. The rain had stopped, but the gra.s.s and trees were still dripping wet, and it was freakishly quiet. There were no animals rustling in the leaves and not a whisper of wind. If there were wolves here, stalking us through the night, they were being very quiet.

I had a baseball bat clenched in my hand, scavenged from the house's garage. Floyd had a kitchen knife. Charlie had a longhandled shovel.

I also had my camera. I hadn't even thought about it, just automatically dropping it around my neck after we finished looking at Mac's horrible photograph. It was a comfort, having it there. The camera had always been a comfort for me, a wall to hide behind, a distance to place between myself and the subject of my eye. I was seeing that now for the first time. The camera was my way of escaping from the world.

I gave Danny a couple of minutes. The tension grew with each pa.s.sing second as my imagination ran wild: Mac, dragging Taylor through the tunnels, hurting her; wolves and spiders, stalking through the dark; buried limbs and faces; the gigantic hand of G.o.d, entombed somewhere beneath the city, dead and drained of blood. When it got to be too much, I gathered up all my strength and headed toward the dark opening in the gra.s.sy hill.

"Wait, wait!" Floyd called, the first syllable loud before his voice dropped into a scared whisper. "Shouldn't we wait for Danny? And the soldiers?" Then, after a brief pause, "Shouldn't we wait for guns?"

"You can wait if you want," I said, trying to sound stronger, more confident than I actually felt. "But I can't do it. I can't wait ... not while he's got her in there, not while she's in danger."

I headed toward the tunnel, making a show of not looking back. Maybe this feigned nonchalance came across as confidence, but really, I just didn't want Charlie and Floyd to see my pleading, desperate eyes. I wanted to be strong ... but I wasn't. I was scared. And that fear-a fear of paralysis, a fear of loss-was what got me moving.

After a moment, I heard Floyd let out a string of expletives. Then he and Charlie followed me into the tunnel's gaping maw.

Photograph. Undated. Danny:

The room is small and dark. Concrete walls, underground. Dirty and wet, every surface glistening with moisture. There's a road flare burning on the far side of the room. A violet-red bloom-weak, but strong enough to illuminate the enclosed s.p.a.ce in an eerie crimson glow.

There's a body on the floor-a male body, fairly young-lying supine in the middle of the room. It is illuminated in the light of a half dozen flashlight beams.

The body is that of a soldier dressed in fatigues. Probably dead. Lying on his back with his head craned toward the wall behind him. He's clawed open his shirt, but his arms are thrown to the side, one hand inches away from a fallen flashlight.

There is pain on his face, a frozen mask of terror and open-eyed agony.

From the taut flesh in the middle of his chest, an arm sprouts, reaching up and bent at the elbow. The soldier is impaled all the way up to the arm's bicep. There are small rivulets of blood stretching the length of the arm-from taut, pointing fingers, past the elbow, all the way down to the soldier's chest, where the thin streams pool and spill off into his shirt.

The fingers are blurred slightly, the shutter speed too slow to freeze them in motion.

I took the first left inside the tunnel. This was the way Mac had gone during our first exploration. This was the dead end into which he'd disappeared.

But there was no dead end this time. The tunnel continued on, tilting down, farther into the dark earth. I looked for wires in the tunnel walls but didn't find any. Not here.

There were paw prints on the floor, though.

And, here and there, footprints.

The ceiling dripped wet mud onto our heads as we advanced. I jumped in surprise each time a drop hit the back of my neck.

"f.u.c.k, Dean," Floyd hissed as our flashlights stabbed into the dark, picking out nothing but tunnel and more tunnel. "I don't like this. I don't like this one f.u.c.king bit!"

I didn't like it, either, but I didn't say anything. There was no point; I wasn't about to turn around, not without Taylor. Charlie remained silent as well. I don't think the teenager had said a single word since we left the house. Whatever he was thinking, he kept it to himself.

A sound up ahead startled us to a halt. "Do you hear that?" I asked. They both nodded.

m.u.f.fled shouting. Shrill, frantic voices. And then the sharp crack of gunfire.

I jolted into a run, surging down the length of the tunnel. The mud slid beneath my feet, but I caught myself and continued on.

Gunfire in the tunnels. That couldn't be good. Is it Mac? I wondered. Is Taylor already ...?

After a hundred yards the tunnel deposited us into a small hub, a circular room with five new tunnels branching out into the s.p.a.ce ahead. Floyd and Charlie slid into the room behind me. Floyd fell on his a.s.s as he tried to avoid running into my back. "f.u.c.k," he muttered. For a moment he just sat there, shaking mud off of his arms, then Charlie helped him to his feet.

"How could this be mushrooms?" Charlie asked, finally breaking his silence. His words were tiny, as if the dirt were trying to steal his voice, absorbing its strength and leaving behind nothing but a hushed whisper. "The tunnels-how do spores explain any of this?"

I shrugged. They didn't.

"Or are we hallucinating?" he continued. "Are we still in the house, collapsed on the floor, muttering and dreaming together? Or maybe pa.s.sed out in the park while Mac and Taylor get farther and farther away?"

The thought was horrifying. I shook my head, and the room slid back and forth around me, continuing to move for a moment even after my head stopped. The light dimmed for a couple of seconds, then it returned to normal. "We can't think about that," I said. "They're in here, and so are we, and we've got to find them."

Right then, a shout sounded in the distance-indecipherable, but shrill and desperate. It didn't sound like a woman's voice. I turned my head, trying to locate the source. After a moment, both Charlie and Floyd pointed to the tunnel on the far left. I ran on ahead.

There were things in this tunnel. Objects. At first, it was just chunks of rock and wood breaking up the endless stretches of mud. Then a milk crate and an empty vodka bottle. Then there were planks beneath my feet, forming a makeshift floor. We came into another hub and found a geometric asterisk laid out in the dirt, narrow lengths of flooring that reached out into five new tunnels. There was a wooden chair set up against the wall, with an unlit lantern perched on its seat.

I swung my flashlight from tunnel to tunnel, looking for something new, something to point me in the right direction.

"Dean-" Floyd started, but I let out a hiss and he fell silent.

"Turn off your lights," I said, hitting the b.u.t.ton on mine. "Shut them off. Maybe we can see ..."

Charlie clicked his off. Then, after fumbling for a moment, Floyd did the same.

The tunnel dropped into darkness. It was a deep and claustrophobic black, and as soon as my eyes lost input, I got dizzy. I thought I was falling, toppling forward into the void. Without vision, without that point of reference, I lost all track of the world. The Vicodin, I thought. The alcohol, the plank upside my head. It wasn't the world doing this, I a.s.sured myself. It wasn't the spores or the speed of light. It was the things I'd done to myself, and the things I'd let happen.

I reached out to catch myself against the floor, keeping the flashlight and baseball bat clenched tightly in my hands, but the floor didn't come. I just continued spinning through the void.

"Dean ..." It was Floyd, terrified, keening in the dark. "I hear him ..." And I wondered at the "him." Mac? Floyd's dead brother?

I blinked, still toppling forward, spinning down into the pit under the city, plummeting toward the heart of the world.

"Dean!" It was still Floyd, but more frantic this time. I could hear feet clumping against wood, a terrified stutter step.

I blinked again and realized that the darkness wasn't complete. There was the dimmest of lights off to my left, sitting there, stationary, in the corner of my eye, even as I continued to spin through s.p.a.ce.

I flicked my flashlight back on and found myself still standing in the middle of the hub. Not falling. I spun around, panning the flashlight across the room. Charlie had a confused look on his face, but there was no fear there, just a strangely distant interest, like he was buried in his own thoughts, trying to work out a complex problem. Floyd was different. He had his hand up against his chest, clutching at his heart. There were tears on his cheeks, and his mouth was moving, quivering open and shut without making a sound.

"Left," I said, pointing toward the tunnel down which I'd seen the light. "We're getting somewhere," I added, trying to sound rea.s.suring.

I continued on, leading the way forward.

The tunnel ended at a concrete wall. There was a hole there, punched through the concrete, leading into a dark bas.e.m.e.nt. I stuck my head through and panned the flashlight left and then right. It was a large multiroom bas.e.m.e.nt, something you'd find beneath an office building, not a private residence.

I had no idea where we were. We should have hit the river long before we reached any type of large building. Had we somehow made it downtown?

There was the sound of scuffling up ahead in one of the adjoining rooms-feet sc.r.a.ping against concrete, spinning on a heel. Then the loud crack of rifle fire. "To the left!" someone called. There was another crack.

A quiet hiss: "Got it!"

And then, frantic: "Is that it? Are we done?"

I moved into the bas.e.m.e.nt, and Floyd and Charlie followed, staying a couple of steps back. The room was damp, smelling of mildew and rot. Charlie shone his flashlight toward the door on the far side of the room. There was a faint red light in the gap at its foot. The sound was coming from behind the door.

I shut off my flashlight and gestured for Floyd and Charlie to do the same. Then I made my way to the door. Slowly, I turned the k.n.o.b and pushed it open, afraid of what I might find on the other side.

"s.h.i.t!"

There was a blur of motion as a soldier in the middle of the room raised a rifle and pointed it at my chest. Then a collision of limbs, and a bullet snapped into the wall at my side.

"Don't!" Danny cried, after straight-arming the soldier's rifle. "f.u.c.king stand down, man!"