Bitter Waters (2 page)

Lying in the water, Ukiah reached in as far as he could stretch, questing with his outstretched fingers. His fingertips found the ragged edge where the pipe turned down, water pouring over the lip, washing away any sign of the boy.

The rain started to come down harder, moving from a light patter to a quickening drum.

Max swore. “If he's down there, this is going to get ugly fast. This is part of Nine Mile Run.” Sometime in the past, several creeks had been routed completely underground in concrete culverts that converged to form Nine Mile Run; it was a deadly labyrinth they had dealt with before. “Damn, if the airline hadn't lost our luggage, we could snake one of the minicams down the drain to be sure.”

“I'll call for a rescue team and look for a manhole,” Ari offered, seeming anxious to get away from the narrow pipe.

The rill of water coming down the hill was already deepening. Ukiah flashed to another child in the storm drains, a maze of swirling dark waters and an unhappy end, when Max was forced to pull him out half-drowned. “Max, I don't want to do that again—wander around lost while the kid drowns. We should see if we can find a map of the system.”

“The rescue team can deal with the storm drain,” Max said. “All we need to do is convince them that he's really down there. Are you sure?”

“No,” Ukiah had to admit. How he could squeeze into the pipe and see if Kyle was actually stuck in the pipe? If he was younger, closer to Kyle's age, he could fit.

It occurred to him there was a way to
be
smaller.

Ukiah dug his Swiss army knife from his pocket and made a deep cut across his wrist.

Max swore in surprise and caught Ukiah's shoulder. “What the hell? Ukiah? What are you doing?”

“I'm going to make a mouse.” Ukiah caught the flow of hot blood in his palm. “And I'm going to use it as an extra set of eyes.”

Max released him. “Okay. Just keep it out of sight. I'll keep Ari distracted.”

Ukiah clung to the memories of the boy as the rest of the day drained down into his hand. The blood stopped as the wound healed shut. He concentrated on the blood cupped in his hand, urging it to take form instead of seeping back into his body, merging with him again. It formed a quivering sack. Bones took form, a racing heart, and then finally the dark fur of a black mouse.

“Thank you,” Ukiah breathed, and carefully placed the
mouse as far into the drain as he could go. “Go on, find the boy.”

He leaned his body against the pipe, and thought only of the mouse as it skittered fearfully along water into the darkness.

. . . cold wet steel, undulating in frozen minihills, a rushing river of muddy water, a vast curving ceiling echoing back the white noise of water, something huge ahead, the growing smell of blood, the edge of a great hole, clinging to the edge, trembling with fear . . .

Ukiah tried to send comfort and encouragement over the fraying link. He could create the mouse because he was in truth a collection of independently intelligent cells acting as a whole. Whatever method his cells used to communicate, endowing him with telepathic abilities with his mice and those closely related to him, depended much on mass. The smaller the collection of cells, like the mouse, the shorter the distance he could communicate with it.

If he had been reduced down to hundreds of mice, none of them would venture down the terrifying drop. They would be too hard-wired by instinct to follow that course. They would flee to a safe dry place, and eat until they had energy to merge into a larger, stronger creature, hopefully human, hopefully with enough of his memories intact to return to being Ukiah. Thus, only with Ukiah's human mind directing the mouse remotely, did it overcome its fear and carefully pick its way down the rusty cliff.

. . . brown curly hair, a male human, a chilled cheek, closed eyes . . .

“It's him,” Ukiah whispered.

“Unfortunately,” Max's voice came over Ukiah's headset. “The nearest manhole is way down here, around the corner, and it's really started to pour. Damn, where's that rescue crew?”

Ukiah murmured an answer, trying to coax his mouse back out. It was on the edge of his influence, though, and frightened. It scurried back and forth on the imagined safety that the boy provided, hesitant to face the dark alone. Suddenly it slipped into the fast-moving water that chuted down over
slick bare skin. Ukiah squeaked in surprise as the mouse was swept down through a hole between child and pipe and washed away.

“Ukiah!” Max called over the headset. “What's wrong?”

Ukiah leapt to his feet and bolted toward Max. “I've lost my mouse! I need to get it back.”

Max exploded into curses.

The rain beat furiously down now, sheeting off the rest of the world so it seemed like Ukiah struggled within a pocket universe to save the boy. He rounded the corner and found his partner and Ari beside an opened manhole, shining lights into the hole.

Max looked up, obviously torn. “Kid, the water is already deep and fast, and it's raining harder now. We don't have ropes, and you're not even sure what direction to go. Just wait for the rescue crew.”

“I've got to go,” Ukiah said, wishing Ari wasn't there so he could argue with Max openly. Perhaps, it was better this way—he could never win arguments with Max. He hadn't considered losing his mouse when he sent it into the drain—a lost mouse was much too dangerous to the world. Hex had used a single stolen mouse to create Kittanning. With a second mouse, the Ontongard leader had nearly remade Max into a clone of Ukiah. Even without the evil intentions of the Ontongard, Ukiah could not ignore that somehow, some part of the dismembered child Magic Boy, perhaps just a lone mouse, had become the Wolf Boy, and eventually himself.

He had to get it back. He brushed past Max to the manhole, ignoring the look that spoke volumes.

 

The sound of water falling out the throats of countless feeder pipes, echoed by curving concrete, combined into an unending deafening roar. Ukiah climbed down the slick metal ladder into the ink blackness. The water grabbed his foot as he went to step off the ladder, trying to jerk him under. He braced himself against the current and found his footing. The water flowed up to his knees, numbingly cold, seeming nearly solid with the force it applied on him.

Ukiah stood a moment, waiting to adjust to the cave
darkness pressing in on him. As his eyes adapted, the fist-sized disk of filthy concrete illuminated by his flashlight became a curving, grime-coated wall, a shimmer reflecting off the moving blackness that was water, and the thin paleness where the two met in a mud-tainted froth. Sound and pressure filled in what he could not see; he sensed the top of the pipe close to his head and the opposite wall just out of reach and out of sight.

Trying to ignore how little space was left between the flat plain of water and the top arch of the pipe, Ukiah concentrated on finding the boy and his mouse. Kyle had been west of the manhole, but this culvert ran north to south. Ukiah replayed the last moments of contact with his mouse. It had rushed away from him, heading south, not east toward this culvert. Nor could he sense his mouse now, or glean anything of the boy. Ukiah decided to follow the flow of water and see if there was a main junction pipe. Letting go of the ladder, he waded with the current, fighting to stay upright. The cement floor, unseen under the water, sloped with the steep hillside, which would make getting back hard. His flashlight danced through the cave darkness as he staggered forward.

Fifty feet down, the pipe ended, spilling its water down into a ten-foot-tall main junction pipe running east to west. The water was deeper, over his knees and creeping toward his hips. Much deeper and he'd lose his footing against the current completely. And he still wasn't sure if he was going the right direction. He played his flashlight down the left-hand wall of the pipe, looking for something that led back north to Kyle.

Max said something to him over the headset, the thunder of water drowning out his words.

“What?” He cupped his free hand over his ear, trying to keep the water's roar out.

“Which way are you going?”

“I went south. I'm going east now. First left!” Ukiah shouted and spotted a likely feeder, forty feet down. While only four feet in diameter, the pipe was still wide enough for him to travel without getting stuck. “I'm going to head north now. Hopefully it will take me back to Kyle!”

He overshot the feeder, shoved past the opening by the rushing water. Gripping the lip of the pipe, he hauled himself back and up into the pipe. He had to squat, duck-walking against the water, but luckily it only came to his shins. Fast-food drinking cups and empty pop bottles floated past him, washed out of gutters and into the storm drain. He came to a small dam made from a wedged tree branch and a Kentucky Fried Chicken box.

Perched on top was his mouse.

“Oh, thank God,” he breathed. He picked up the tiny bundle of shivering wet fur and, unzipping his coat, tucked it into his shirt pocket. He broke up the tree branch, clearing it out of his way, letting the water float the debris away.

“Come on, Ukiah!” Max called over the headset. “It's turning into a downpour out here! You've got to get out!”

“I'm almost there!” He worked his way past the smaller pipes feeding into his, sniffing for the blood trace he picked up earlier. There!

His luck held. Kyle's pipe was little more than an elbow, doing an abrupt right angle into the drainpipe Ukiah crouched in. While only about a foot across, it should have been wide enough for the four-year-old to wriggle through. Ukiah worked his hands up between the boy and pipe. While Kyle's front was pressed tight to the pipe, there seemed plenty of room in the back. Why was the boy stuck?

Wedged tight against the center of the boy's back was a ball. Irregularities in the pipe kept the ball from descending, and the boy lacked any way to push the ball up, as his hands were trapped to his side.

“Ukiah!” Max was shouting.

“I almost have him, Max.” Ukiah pushed the ball up and out of the pipe, and the boy slid down into his arms in a gush of water like a baby being born. Alive. Unconscious. Ice cold. “Got him!”

“What?” Max shouted.

Ukiah didn't bother to answer. He waddled awkwardly down the pipe, carrying the limp boy. At the mouth lip, he halted with a groan of despair. The water level had risen dramatically in the junction pipe; most likely the rushing water
would come up to his chest now. Just dropping down into the flow would be like stepping out in front of a speeding car; he doubted he could keep his feet when it hit him. If he lost hold of the boy in this torrent, he wouldn't be able to get him back.

“Max! Where are the rescue crews?” He cupped his microphone to keep the water's roar out. “Max, I'm going to need someone on ropes.”

“Hold on!”

He waited in the vast, dark wet roaring. Two lights appeared in the feeder upstream and picked him out. “I see them!”

The lights separated, one coming on while the other stayed, anchoring ropes. The first rescue worker came fast, carried on the rush of water like a piece of debris. Ukiah caught Max's scent as the first light slammed against his pipe, revealing that it belonged to his partner.

“What are you doing?” Ukiah shouted at him.

“Getting you out of here!” Max shouted back. “Come on!”

Max steadied him as he climbed down into the current. The water smashed into him, and then tried pulling him down and carrying him away. Together they worked their way back to Ari, standing anchor for the rope. The policeman was tied off with a second rope, leading back to the ladder.

Brilliant light and water streamed down through the open manhole. Hands reached down for the boy, and Ukiah blindly passed the small limp body upward.

“Go on,” Max shouted.

Ukiah ducked his head, lost between cave black and brilliance. “I can't see!”

“Go on, Ari!” Max waved the cop ahead, and then guided Ukiah's hand to the ladder. “Can you make it alone?” Ukiah nodded. “I'll go first and act as your eyes.”

Max climbed up, and was there, a steadying hand and voice, when Ukiah scrambled out of the manhole. Rescue No. 1, the heavy rescue truck from the Shadyside station, Engine No. 14 of the Oakland fire station, and another squad car had filled the street while Ukiah was in the storm drains. The night was full of flashing lights, blaring radios, moving bodies, shouting voices, and restraining hands.

Ukiah covered his eyes as they shifted painfully back to human normal, trying to block out some of the confusion around him. At least the earlier cloudburst had ended, and the rain had tapered down to a fine drizzle.

“He's fine.” Max fended off an attempt to get him onto a gurney. “Just give him a moment.”

A compromise of him sitting on the fire engine's bumper was reached, and a woman pushed away his hand, commanding, “Let me see. Do you have something in your eyes?”

“The light hurts.” He blinked open his eyes, squinting against the glare. “I got used to the dark.”

“Then you probably don't want me to do this.” She shone a penlight into his eyes and watched them dilate. Behind her, the ambulance pulled away, whisking Kyle off to Children's Hospital. “You really should leave this stuff to us,” she chided. “Good work, though. It's great to have finally found one of the missing kids.”