Bad Glass Part 33

Amanda didn't even glance at the slab of shredded meat and jutting bone. She just turned, and the entire pack turned with her. They ran into one of the connecting corridors, soundless and graceful.

And they were gone.

I think it might have just been my imagination, but at the last moment, just before she disappeared from sight, it looked like Amanda dropped to all fours and started bounding forward on hands and feet. In that blur of activity, however, I couldn't be sure.

I stood at the threshold and watched as the last of Amanda's pack disappeared into the darkness. Then it was quiet.

I could feel Charlie, Floyd, and Taylor in the s.p.a.ce behind me. Standing there in shock. But I didn't turn around and look. I didn't want to see their horrified faces.

They'd be turned toward me, I knew, looking to me for direction. But I didn't have the answers they were looking for. I didn't have a clue. What I did have was a splitting headache. I had a lump in my throat and a small animal turning somersaults in my stomach. But no answers. No ideas.

Mac was dead. That was about all I knew. He was dead, and he couldn't have been any deader. Nothing but a disjointed slab of meat piled in the center of the floor.

But Taylor was safe. Thank G.o.d, Taylor was safe.

I looked down at the baseball bat in my hands. Disgusted, I tossed it aside.

After nearly a minute, Charlie stepped up behind me. "See that corridor?" he whispered into my ear. His hand shot forward, pointing to one of the connecting tunnels. It was filled with flickering orange light. "That's fire down there," he said. "We must be near the mushroom. The army's burning it from the ground." He paused for a moment, letting his outstretched hand drop back down to his side. "It can't be healthy down here ... being so near."

I inhaled deeply. I could taste the thick char of smoke in my lungs. I hadn't noticed it before. I'd been distracted-what with Amanda and the wolves, with Mac and his violent death. I coughed deeply and expelled a large clump of phlegm.

"Let's get out of here," I said, turning away from the room. "We got what we came for. We got Taylor. Let's get back to the surface."

Taylor was standing at my shoulder when I turned, and I nearly ran into her. The dirt on her face was streaked with tear tracks, and she refused to look me in the eye.

Broken, I thought. Taylor had always been broken to some extent, but it seemed worse now. Her abduction, that loss of control-she looked so fragile, so absolutely devastated. I moved to put my hand on her shoulder, but she shrugged it aside and turned away, starting into the dark tunnel. She had her arms crossed in front of her chest, clutching herself tightly, a defensive pose, like a hedgehog curled into a tiny ball.

And as she pulled away, the darkness came to life around her, reaching out and grabbing at her arms and legs.

It was like an animal, this darkness, I was sure. With thoughts and intentions, trying to engulf her, trying to suck her into its depths. Coming at her from every side. Tendrils from every shadow. Writhing blindly. Touching her and wrapping tightly around her limbs, drawing dark lines across her back. Insubstantial yet also thick, wide. Not spider joints, thankfully, but long midnight-black tentacles. Pure black. Spilled ink, etched across a paper-made Taylor.

My heartbeat quickened, and I stumbled forward a half dozen steps, trying to catch her before she could disappear, before the darkness could consume her.

I'd found her. I'd ventured into the very depths of the city and actually found her!

To lose her again, to the darkness, to the tunnel, to the city- But my vision cleared, and she was still there, in the tunnel before me. Perfectly normal. A stark outline against the dark wall. No tendrils, no errant shadows. Nothing but her back, flickering in and out of darkness as Charlie and Floyd moved behind me, their flashlights swinging up and down.

I took a stutter step back, disoriented. What had I seen? Was it a trick of the light? Vicodin? Spores? Physical and emotional stress?

Floyd, at my side, reached out and grabbed my bicep, holding me steady. I turned and faced him. His eyes were full of questions, full of concern, but I just shook my head.

"Let's go," I said. "Let's get the f.u.c.k out of here."

At the first hub, I pa.s.sed Taylor and led the way into one of the right-hand tunnels, wanting to make sure we didn't head back the way we'd come. I didn't want Taylor to see Sabine's bag or, G.o.d forbid, Danny. I just wanted to find some way up and out. Back home. Back to our little makeshift headquarters.

Then, maybe, out of the city. And far away. Far away from this f.u.c.king place, with its waking nightmares and its constant f.u.c.king wounds.

As far as I was concerned, this was it. I'd had enough. Even without Taylor-with her hidden face, always shrugging me off, always turning away-I needed to leave. No matter how painful that might be.

This wasn't a life.

This was a fugue-state dream that I needed to wake up from. I needed to move on and grow the f.u.c.k up. I needed to get real. Finally, for once in my life, f.u.c.king real. Not art and photography, not romantic chaos and confusion without a center. Not the end of the world, painted in brooding, melancholy shades of gray and red. Real.

I needed a job. I needed an apartment. I needed someplace stable and calm, something in my life that wasn't tinged with madness or melancholy or f.u.c.king adolescent dreams. I needed to grow the f.u.c.k up! And that most definitely meant leaving Spokane and Taylor behind, finding someplace and someone stable. Things I could lean on without fear of falling on my face.

I didn't need piles of shredded meat bleeding in the dark. I didn't need deformed flesh and a girlfriend who couldn't even stand my touch.

As I pressed on into the tunnel, I fumbled the bottle of Vicodin from my pocket and dry swallowed another pill. That was another thing I needed to leave behind.

But not yet. Not here.

Time pa.s.sed, and I lost all sense of direction. Turning randomly. Tunnel after tunnel after tunnel. Hub after hub after hub. They all looked the same to me, and it felt like we weren't making any progress at all.

Then Floyd paused and gestured me to a stop.

"Do you hear that?" he asked, turning the flashlight back the way we'd come. Charlie and Taylor had taken the lead three hubs back, and there was only darkness behind us now.

I shook my head. I didn't hear a thing.

"It was laughter," Floyd whispered, a nervous smile on his face. He closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. The smile quivered, but it didn't quite disappear. "It's my brother. It's Byron. He's down here, Dean. He's always been down here."

Charlie and Taylor paused up ahead as soon as they noticed that we'd stopped following. They were out of earshot, about twenty feet away, a semicircle of light in the darkness, their half-moon faces turned our way.

Floyd took a step forward and then stopped. I was worried that he was going to take off into the tunnel, looking for his brother. And if that happened, I knew, he'd disappear. Forever. I knew it, just as I knew that Sabine was gone. And Weasel. And Danny. And Amanda. And Mac-most definitely Mac. I grabbed Floyd's forearm and held him back. He looked down at my grip. There was no annoyance there, on his face, but no relief either. h.e.l.l, there was no comprehension whatsoever. He might as well have been staring at the bottom of an empty bucket.

"He was looking for me that night," he whispered, "when he died, when I ..." He raised his eyes and once again squinted into the dark. "I don't think he ever stopped looking. No matter where I run, no matter what I take, he's always there, tortured and alone, looking for his big brother."

He turned back toward me. "That makes sense, right?" he pleaded. His brow crinkled down into a narrow chevron, and his eyes collapsed into slits.

"I don't know, Floyd," I said, pulling him back a step. I urged him down the tunnel, back toward Charlie and Taylor. "I don't know what's possible in this place. But I know what's healthy, and this," I said, gesturing around the tunnel, "isn't healthy. We have to get out of here. We have to find our way back up to the surface."

He gave me a brief nod, then turned and once again started forward.

I stood there for a moment as he walked away, peering into the darkness behind us. There was nothing there. Nothing but dirt and rock.

The tunnel ended at another bas.e.m.e.nt.

The bas.e.m.e.nt in which we'd found Danny and his soldiers had been dark and damp, dingy concrete. This one was different. This one was brightly lit and clean, an underground hallway painted beige, with rows of flickering fluorescents in the ceiling. The floor was linoleum. There were mounds of dirt piled around the mouth of the tunnel, and a single line of footprints led the way down the corridor. Otherwise the floor was spotless, glossy clean, reflecting the overhead lights.

We paused just outside the tunnel. I held my breath and listened. Except for the buzz of the fluorescents, the building was quiet. There was the smell of cleaning supplies in the air. Disinfectants, wax. I wondered who was keeping the floors so sparkling clean.

Taylor cleared her throat and pointed to the wall, just outside the tunnel's opening. There was a single word painted there, in faded red paint-UP-and an arrow pointing toward the ceiling. It was a small sampling, just two letters, but I was sure it was the Poet's work. I could imagine her here, her face hidden behind that black leather mask, spray-painting those letters. Cobb Gilles would have been standing at her shoulder, watching, waiting, protecting. When? When had they been here?

"They've got power," Charlie said, stating the obvious. "Just like the research facility." There was excitement in his voice. "The government must be keeping it running."

"Well, somebody's keeping it running," Floyd said. His voice was slurred slightly. When I turned to face him, he was tossing an empty pill bottle back through the mouth of the tunnel, back into the darkness. He still had that nervous smile on his lips. "Maybe just a generator. Somebody with their own purpose, their own vision. There's plenty of s.h.i.t in this city. It's not just the government."

"Whatever," I said. "Let's just get the f.u.c.k out of here."

I started down the hallway, trying to avoid the footprints that were already there, smeared like black ink across the floor. They were abstract Rorschachs-I saw a b.u.t.terfly there, a nuclear mushroom cloud, a crying face. Taylor, Charlie, and Floyd followed.

After a moment, I heard Taylor's voice behind me, tentative and quiet. "Is this the research building?" she asked. "It ... it seems familiar." Her voice sounded tortured and confused, as if she were drunk and straining to make sense of something just outside her realm of comprehension.

I pulled to a stop. The hallway swam around me for a moment.

"No," Charlie said. Then, confused: "Or ... f.u.c.k."

I turned. Charlie was standing in the middle of the hallway, spinning, confused, on his heel. He no longer had his shovel; he must have discarded it in the tunnel. "I mean, it was different, right?" he asked. "A different color? A different sound?" He raised his hand to his forehead and crinkled his brow, thinking, but struggling at it.

I looked at the doors to my right: B24, B22. And on my left: B23, B21.

"I don't know, Charlie," I said. "This place does look familiar, but I ... I just don't know."

I tried to remember that other place: the building, Devon, Charlie's parents' lab, the laser apparatus. It seemed so indistinct, like someone else's photograph, viewed a long time ago, or maybe a video I'd seen on the Web, seen and then forgotten. And here, all we had was ... what? I looked up-nothing but buzzing fluorescents above our heads-then back down the way we had come, toward the tunnel's empty mouth. And still there was that single set of footprints on the floor behind us, just one, despite the pa.s.sage of our muddy feet. Nothing had changed. The world remained static.

Moving through this world without leaving footprints-that's what we are, I thought. Nothing we do makes even the slightest impression. There's nothing important we can ever really change.

I couldn't think, and it wasn't just the drugs or my injured head. It was the world. It was this place.

Charlie dropped his hand from his forehead, and his face widened with sudden surprise-a dawning moment of clarity-then he sprinted past me, down the corridor. After a moment, I got my feet unstuck from the floor and hurried to follow.

At that point, I don't know. In that place ...

There was a sound now at the far end of the corridor. Maybe it had been there all along and I just hadn't noticed. But that seemed unlikely.

Footsteps, echoing. A whir and a hum.

Taylor caught up to me and grabbed my arm. I looked back at her worried face, but I didn't stop running. "Don't let him go," she said as we continued to chase Charlie down the hallway. Her voice was pleading but confused. She was just as lost as I was, bogged down in this sea of incoherence, this maze of overwhelming impressions. Bright lights overhead. Hard and shiny floor. And the feeling that something was wrong, the feeling that we were completely, irrevocably lost.

I shook my head. I don't know why. I don't know if I was trying to shake the cobwebs from my mind or if it was a response to Taylor's request. And if so, what was I trying to say? No, I won't let him go? No, I don't understand? Or no, he's gone and I can't do a G.o.dd.a.m.ned thing about it?

Charlie reached B13 and, without slowing down, twisted the doork.n.o.b and bolted inside. Taylor and I reached the door a couple of seconds later. We nearly ran into Devon's outstretched hand.

Devon. He was standing there, just inside the threshold, blocking our way. There was a smile on his face; it was a self-righteous, victorious smile, and it filled me with dread. He knew too much. Here, in this city, no one knew enough to wear that kind of smile. His palm was up, keeping us out of the room, and he shook his head: No.

I was about to press my way through, but Taylor let out a loud gasp, and her hand tightened on my forearm. I glanced down and saw her peering deeper into the room. I followed her eyes.

Charlie was standing fifteen feet away, next to the laser apparatus. There were two other people in the room with him. I recognized his mother from the emailed picture. In that picture, she'd been scared and confused, peering back over her shoulder; there was absolutely none of that now. The man must have been his father. Charlie's back was to us, but his parents were smiling. His father had a good grip on his son's biceps, holding him at arm's length and beaming with pride.

As we watched, Charlie's mother moved in and encompa.s.sed him in a tight hug. A second later, his father's arms collapsed and they all pulled near. They stood like that for a time, clenched in a three-way embrace. Then Charlie's shoulders began to shake gently.

There was no sound in the room. Even the hum of the laser-still spitting out its bursts of bright green light-had gone silent.

I once again moved to push Devon aside, but Taylor held me back. I glanced back down at her face. There was a smile on her lips, warm and heartfelt. "Give him this," she whispered. "For a moment, at least."

So I grunted and rocked back on my heels. After a moment, watching this heartfelt reunion, I lifted the camera from my chest and started taking pictures. I felt like a voyeur-more so than usual-but I didn't stop.

Photograph. Undated. Charlie and his parents:

Through the top half of an open door: three people huddled together in the middle of a brightly lit room.

It is a man, a woman, and a teenager nearing the end of his adolescence. All three are black-the man a lighter shade than the woman and the teen. The man and woman are dressed in light professional clothing. The teenager is decked out in a ragged ski jacket, dirty pants, and mud-spattered boots.

The man's face is the only one we can see-the teenager has his back to the camera; the woman's face is buried against his shoulder. The man's eyes are closed, and he is smiling warmly.

They are standing next to an elaborate piece of lab equipment mounted atop a sawhorse. There's speckled linoleum beneath their feet and a pair of computer monitors on a table at their side.

A blurred figure stands in the foreground, just inside the door. On the left-hand side of the frame: a single eye-barely visible-and the corner of a smile. At the bottom of the frame: an arm, spanning the width of the threshold.

The blurred figure is set firmly between the camera and the huddled group. It is an obstacle, separating the viewer from the subject.

Finally, after standing in his parents' embrace for nearly a minute, Charlie looked back at the door. There were tears on his face as he gave us a smile. But the smile didn't last long. It quivered and broke, and his eyes slowly drew wide.

Then Devon blocked our view. This infiltrator-government agent, demon, whatever-once again flashed that victorious grin. Then he stepped back into the room and slammed the door shut in our faces.

Taylor jumped, startled at the sudden violent gesture. Her eyes sprang wide, and her hands bolted to the doork.n.o.b. She worked at it violently, but to no avail. It didn't even rattle. She let out a horrified squawk, completely incoherent. I stepped up to her side and started pounding at the door. It was like hitting the side of a building; it didn't even shake in its frame.

"Charlie!" Taylor called. No answer. "Charlie!"

After nearly half a minute, she let out a devastated sob and gave the k.n.o.b one last upward heave. It didn't move. Her hands slipped from the k.n.o.b and flailed in the air for a moment, then she pressed them flat against the door's surface. Dejected, burned through all of her determination and anger, she lowered her forehead against the immovable panel and let out a pathetic sob.