The Prisoner (19 page)

“Rats …?” Laurel turned to Floyd.

“Weil’s disease?” he asked.

Henry nodded.

Floyd settled down on his haunches. “It’s a much-named horror, transmitted through contact with urine from infected animals. It’s biphasic. First, flulike symptoms, which soon disappear. The second phase may involve renal and liver failure and often meningitis. It’s a complicated disease to cure even with ample resources.” Floyd looked around, then lowered his eyes. “Here, she wouldn’t have a chance.”

Metronome’s head continued its slow sway.

Unconsciously, Laurel drew her legs tight to her body when a frantic scratching issued from the box at the boy’s feet. “What’s that?”

Henry rubbed his hands. “Our friend here has agreed to help us. She’ll get the heat off our backs by carrying the locators away.”

Laurel focused on a noise to her left. Floyd had stepped over to Russo’s stretcher and picked up something from the floor. Then he returned with a crumpled lump she recognized as the wraps they had worn around their necks.

“Don’t worry. I tucked the locators into the lead strips,” Floyd said.

With his foot, Metronome pushed the box into the circle of light. Something huge moved inside.

“Shit, is that a rat?” Laurel asked.

Henry’s beard parted to reveal a dark hole she supposed was his mouth. “Not just a rat. A very rare specimen.”

She reached for her bag of rice, tore its top, and fished inside for the plastic fork.

Henry nudged the box with his foot. “Beautiful, isn’t she?”

The rat shifted, its pointed nose trembling, and let out a tiny cry. Laurel cringed. “She’s enormous.”

“Yes, she is. They seldom grow larger than twelve inches or weigh over a pound. She’s an exception—heavy, almost two pounds, and pregnant. You know anything about
Rattus norvegicus
?”

Silence but for the muted whisper of voices echoing from the station dwellers.

“They live for about twelve months, and females reach sexual maturity in ten weeks. That leaves them four-fifths of their lives to reproduce. Since their gestation period is twenty-two days, they can have four to seven litters in a year. At eight to ten offspring a litter, a pair of rats can produce forty or fifty descendants.”

“That’s horrible.”

“Not really.” Henry nudged the box again. “That’s the mechanism of an advanced survival machine. The horrible bit, as you put it, is their yearly waste: fifty pounds of pellets, a gallon of urine, and a million hairs—all of it laced with rare germs. They are territorial, you know? They seldom move out of an area of one hundred feet around their lair.”

“I don’t understand,” Laurel muttered, her mouth full of hot rice. “Does that mean the thing can carry the sensors only a hundred feet away?”

“I told you, she’s special. Not from this area but from a maze of crumbling old sewers a mile away, unconnected by foot to these tunnels. Since she’s pregnant, she will do her damnedest to get back home; it will take her an hour. There’s a shortcut, but she can’t take it.
Rattus norvegicus
are poor climbers.”

“Norvegicus?
Does it mean these horrors are from Norway?” Laurel asked.

“No, it doesn’t. Someone christened the species and the name stuck.” Henry shifted to produce a set of rusty wires from his pocket and started pulling and adjusting them into a large hollow bracelet.

Floyd leaned over. “How’s your neck?”

“Sore.”

“I kept the cut to the same size the machine made to insert it. Half an inch. It should heal well, and any cosmetic clinic will remove the scar for next to nothing.”

Laurel nodded and dug back into her rice—warm, firm, and with a nutty flavor.

“Let’s get this beauty loaded,” Henry said.

Raul drew near and offered Henry the bundle of lead apron strips.

Metronome’s hands, encased in a butcher’s mesh gloves,
moved into the light. With uncanny dexterity, he flicked the lid open and pounced on the animal inside.

Raul recoiled, and Laurel pressed her back harder against the curved wall.

Henry unwrapped the strips and produced three hazelnut-shaped forms, like tiny Easter eggs, their surfaces rippling under the light, and slotted them inside the wire contraption.

Metronome grabbed the rat by its neck with one hand and gripped its hind legs with the other.

“Here.” Henry fastened the wires around the rat’s midriff, then draped one of the lead-fabric strips over it and secured it with another length of wire. Then he nodded to Metronome. “Hurry up, boy, let her loose by the waterfall after you remove this piece of cloth. She’ll find a way to her lair.”

Laurel eyed Metronome’s retreating figure. “Will she be able to get the wires off?”

“I doubt it.” Henry’s voice didn’t show concern for the rat’s welfare.

“Won’t this get you in trouble?” Raul asked.

Henry’s eyes twinkled and he panned the tunnel. “More trouble?” The hole in his beard lengthened sideways.

“I meant—”

“I doubt the goons will do anything. They’ll guess some mole—that’s what they call us—has helped you out, but there are over twenty settlements. Besides, we may soil their neat tanks. Nah. They’ll be pissed as hell but can’t do shit about it. They’ll know you’ve fled and they’ll look elsewhere. As soon as Metronome returns—say, thirty minutes—we’ll be on our way.”

“You like it here?” Raul was ripping the tab from a bag of rice.

Henry cocked his head, as if he were taking Raul’s measure. “We have almost everything. Hooking up wires for electricity is easy, and discards from the city provide all the material comforts we need. Only running water is lacking, but, in a way, it’s an advantage; dirt and grime help us blend in with the darkness. To answer your question: No, I don’t like it, but it’s home, and crowded with extraordinary people.”

Laurel nodded. She understood about home and extraordinary people.
Bastien
. A lump formed in her throat, and the light dangling from the IV stand seemed to break into myriad sparkles.

“You move a lot?”

“Used to. We’ve been left undisturbed here for close to six years. A couple of years ago, there was activity farther west by the power station. The police crashed into a community and the brothers had to scamper. Some moved in with us and a few stayed. The Marchesi clan had set up a drug laboratory in an underground cave connected by a network of escape tunnels and passageways to their headquarters.”

Raul’s eyes flickered. “The heat found it?”

“Eventually. They pumped in concrete to seal all the exits.”

Laurel was about to ask if the mobsters were in or out when the concrete poured down, but a gleam in Henry’s eyes answered her question.
In
. “So now you stay put. I mean …”

“We visit other settlements to trade information or something they may have in excess. Sometimes we even have visitors, other than brothers from other tunnels—journalists and artists, principally.”

“Artists?”

“Yes. It seems a floor dusted with soda straws, condoms, tampons, and diapers nurtures creativity and artistic imagination. Go figure.”

Floyd darted a glance toward the opening at the end of the station. “You travel through the active subway tunnels?”

“That’s dangerous. We keep to the sewers as much as we can. Some have risked shortcuts between settlements through live tunnels, but it’s crazy. They may be run over by a train or touch the electric third rail—a shortcut’s not worth having your head, feet, and hands explode.”

9:11

After Metronome bolted down the tunnel, burdened with his rat cage, Henry Mayer finished his short exchange with Laurel and Raul, then moved to one end of the station, tailed by Barandus. There they sat for a while, Henry obviously talking, his hands dancing in midair, and Barandus leaning forward as if eager not to miss a word. After a few minutes, Barandus stood, strolled to a group gathered around a fire on the lower rail bed, and returned in the company of two men. Then he left again, this time to the opposite end of the station, where he shifted cardboard boxes aside. A little later he marched once more toward Henry, trailed by a plump woman swathed in a grimy military-issue raincoat.

Laurel couldn’t work out what was going on from where she sat on the platform, but she felt too weary to walk over and find out. Most likely Henry was marshaling his troops. Until he made a move, they could do nothing but wait.

Floyd loomed over her. “How are you feeling?”

“Rough,” Laurel said. Her throat was clogged again with all the emotions boiling up from inside.
Bastien
.

“Here, take this.” He offered a decrepit-looking water pack and, from his top pocket, a piece of metal foil with two dimples on its surface.

“What is it?” Laurel was already pushing the tablets, oval with a shiny silver coating, onto the palm of her hand.

“Vitamins and a dose of caffeine. Not too strong—you’ve eaten only rice—but it will perk you up.”

“And the hangover?” She offered a weak smile and swallowed the pills with a sip of the tepid water.

“When the effect wears off, you’ll need to sleep around the
clock.” He squatted by her side and, wedging his back against the slightly curved wall, sat down.

Laurel glanced at Raul, dozing next to Russo’s stretcher, and Lukas, slumped in a corner, his eyes vacant.

Floyd followed her glance. “Of course, the issue may be academic. When the effect wears off, we may all be dead.”

“There’s a third alternative,” Laurel offered.

“Yes?”

“Something in between. We may be on our way to sleep around the clock, in a tank.”

Floyd didn’t answer. He must have relaxed, because his arm pressed against hers. She arrested an unconscious reflex to give him more room by moving aside. Instead, she leaned her head on his shoulder. He tensed, but only for a moment. After a long sigh, Floyd shifted to free his arm and wrapped it around her shoulders. The polymer material of Laurel’s stiff jacket creaked, but his hug felt good.

“I won’t let it get that far,” Floyd muttered.

“You came prepared?”

He shrugged. “I grabbed some syrettes we use to put down patients too far gone.”

“Like dogs at the pound?”

“Mmmm, how long?”

The sudden change of topic caught Laurel unaware. “How long what?”

“Until we get out of here.”

“I don’t know.”

Floyd turned his head toward Russo and nodded. “He’s wasting away. He won’t last much longer. Hours, maybe.”

Laurel opened her eyes a fraction to look through her eyelashes at Russo’s prone shape. “Shep—the man who planned the breakout—knows his condition. He’s organized our extraction with Henry’s help.”

“And the blood?”

“And the blood.” A while ago Floyd had given her a list of the materials he needed to revive Russo—a long list she’d keyed into her Metapad and flashed to Shepherd.

“Floyd?”

“Yes.”

“You said you have more than one syrette?”

“I did.”

“Then save one for me.”

On the opposite end of the tunnel, something flashed, followed by tiny flames that soon grew into a roaring fire. Around it, dark figures hovered like tormented souls in a Goya etching.

“Why him? Is he a big gun? An experiment gone wrong? A mobster?” Floyd had a nice voice.

Shepherd’s instructions had been clear:
Don’t volunteer any information about Russo to the doctor or the controller
. But that was before. Now secrecy was moot; they were in the same boat. “Russo is a lawyer, like Raul—” She was going to add,
and Bastien
, but swallowed instead. “And me.”

“And what else?” he insisted.

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t spend eight years slowly dying in a tank for being a lawyer unless you’re a rapist–lawyer, or murderer-lawyer, or—”

“I see what you mean. No, Russo is just a lawyer, an activist. A blue-assed fly who rattled someone in power.”

“What was he convicted of?”

“He was never tried.”

“You must be joking.” But his voice quivered.

She moved closer, until her head touched his cheek. The sensation of warmth on her scalp was almost too delicious to bear. “I wouldn’t describe this circumstance as a joke, but I always knew you quacks had a weird sense of humor.”

“Quack? How dare you?” But he tightened his arm, as if dreading she would pull away. “I only use leeches when strictly necessary.”

A silence followed, as satisfying as any violin concerto.

“So, our government’s betters have been using the tanks to salt away troublesome folks and kill them,” he said.

“Something like that.”

“I see.”

“What do you see?”

“The streets teeming with police, DHS FDU squads, and troops. I bet even the Boy Scouts and the Salvation Army are
looking for us. They can’t allow the worms to get out of town.”

“Mmmm?” Laurel felt sleepy. His pep pills must have outlived their shelf life.

“I’m losing my touch. Here I am, oozing witty remarks, and all I get is snores.”

“Your touch is fine.” For the first time in many hours, she felt a smile tug at the corners of her lips. Floyd Carpenter, forty-one, doctor of medicine, broke after a recent traumatic divorce, no children or live-in pets. At least, these were the scant details Shepherd had rattled from his notes while they ran over the operation. It seemed years ago instead of weeks.