The Road to Hell (4 page)

Neither of them had said much for the best part of an hour as they weaved their way through the sewers beneath the old city. At first it had been to avoid detection, but now Harrison seemed preoccupied, not just with getting away from the maintenance yard but from Susan as well.

“
Talk to me,” cried Susan in exasperation, her voice echoing off the brickwork.

There was no answer.

“
What just happened back there?” she asked, struggling to keep up, cold mud squishing between her toes as she desperately tried to move on the dry, high ground weaving through the cavern.

“
You tell me,” came the stark reply.

Harrison fought to turn the stiff, old screw handle on a hatch set into the wall. The hatch opened to reveal a ladder leading down to the darkness.

“
In case you haven’t noticed,” said Harrison, climbing down the ladder, “someone wants you dead. Not only you. But anyone that comes in contact with you. You’re bad news, lady.”

Water dripped from the ceiling.

A series of dull lights glowed at the bottom of the ladder, casting a dim light over the old construction tunnel. Susan hurried after him, determined not to be left behind.

“
Make sure that hatch is shut tight,” Harrison barked.

Rust flaked off the ageing iron pipes, crumbling in her hands as she closed the hatch, sealing them in the darkness.

“
Slow down,” she called out.

Harrison stepped off the bottom of the ladder and walked off into the tunnel.

“
Why are you so hostile towards me?” asked Susan, slipping on the ladder rungs as she hurried down the shaft.

“
Hostile? I’m not hostile. You make it sound like I’m the bad guy in all of this.”

“
You’re mad at me.”

“
Mad? I’m not mad. I’m absolutely pissed.”

“
I don’t understand,” Susan added, stepping off the bottom rung into soft clay, dusting her hands off against her clothes.

Harrison paced back and forth.

“
Quit playing games, lady. You’re not a prostitute. You’re not from 7G. Just who the hell are you and why does the entire goddamn police force want you dead?”

“
My name is Susan.”

Harrison spun around with his finger pointing at her face, just inches from her nose, the muscles in his arm flexed and tense.

“
Get this straight, Susan. I don’t like you. I don’t trust you. At the moment, you’re excess baggage. The first chance I get I’m dumping your ass, preferably somewhere the cops can find you so I can get on with my life.”

“
But my sister-”

“
Your sister, what? Come on. You talk about trust. But you don’t trust me. Why the hell should I trust you? Trust is a two way street, honey. Who sent you to me? Who told you to come to the old city to find me, huh? Or did you just wake up this morning and decided you were going to go downtown and
frack
someone’s life over? Is that it? Pick out the dumbest Private Eye you could find?”

Even in the dim light, the crumpled photos she held in her outstretched hand reflected a soft, oily rainbow off their glossy surface. Harrison hadn’t seen her pull them from her purse, but she held them out for him as tears welled up in her eyes. The photos looked old, with large creases running through them where they’d been folded repeatedly.

“
And what’s this supposed to be?” he asked, taking them from her.

“
Trust.”

The image quality was poor, as though the photos were taken from an old computer monitor rather than with a camera. Why nothing modern, Harrison wondered, why no holograms? These things looked like they were taken before the war.

“
This is what they were after. This is why they want me dead.”

There were several shots of a man in a black cloak. One in what looked like a hotel kitchen and another in a stairwell that could have been taken anywhere in the old city. But it was the third photo that intrigued Harrison. The body of a naked woman lay strewn across a double bed inside some seedy hotel room. Each shot had a date and time stamp on the bottom right-hand corner. Harrison was surprised to see they were only a couple of days old. They looked much older.

“
That’s it?”

Susan reached out and pulled a fourth photo from the back of the shot of the kitchen. The moisture in the air had caused the poorly developed chemistry to become sticky. Water damage marred the photo but it was clearly another shot of the seedy hotel room, only this time the shadowy figure appeared to be helping the young lady stand. Only at this point she wasn’t naked. She had a cloak draped over her shoulders.

“
So what? I don’t get it. Looks like a drug deal gone bad. Why would someone want to kill you over this?”

“
Look at the time stamp,” replied Susan.

Harrison compared the two shots of the hotel room closely before saying, “OK, so she wasn’t dead. What’s the big deal?”

“
Oh, she was dead, alright,” replied Susan. “What you’re looking at is a daemon.”

“
A what?” cried Harrison, stepping back in surprise and lifting the image so it picked up more light. He wasn’t sure quite what to make of it, not sure if he should laugh or take her seriously.

“
Look closely at the shot in the stairwell. He’s a ghost.”

“
You should have stuck with the line about being a prostitute. At least that was credible.”

Harrison examined the photos carefully. The dim light and dirty fingerprints made it hard to see for sure, but the man walking up the stairs appeared almost transparent. The faint outline of the wall and the staircase behind him were just visible, as though he were some kind of demon.

“
Pictures can be faked. There are no daemon. That’s just a fable. A ghost story mothers tell their children to keep them from sneaking out at night.”

Susan was silent.

“
You expect me to believe in the bogey-man?”

“
It’s no myth,” she replied. “I assure you, Artemis is real.”

“
Girl, you are trouble. That’s all there is to it.”

“
My name is-”

“
I know what your damn name is,” replied Harrison, cutting her off. “So why are the cops really after you? They normally shoot people after the show trial, not before. They’ve got to look good for the civil libertarians. But not when it comes to you. No, they don’t want you talking. What is it? Are you mixed up with the mob? Or did you
frack
over one of the council members? Is that it?”

“
I’m telling you the truth,” protested Susan, snatching the photos back, “My sister is in danger.”

“
Whatever,” replied Harrison, waving his hand in disgust. “Well, this is where our paths separate. Do you see that tunnel? Follow that and it’ll take you back to the surface about four miles from the factory.”

“
I’m not leaving you,” replied Susan.

“
I’m not giving you a choice,” countered Harrison. “By now they’ve figured out our little ruse and my mug shot will be plastered all over the south side. I gotta stay low for a while. Wait for the heat to settle down.”

“
But what about me?”

“
You’re on your own, kid.”

“
Can’t I come with you?”

“
No.”

“
Why not?” asked Susan.

In the soft light, her dilated pupils made her look all the more feminine and vulnerable. For a moment, Harrison felt sorry for her, but only for a moment. It didn’t take his street-savvy smarts long to kick in and remind him exactly what kind of heat this sweet, little lady had just brought down upon him.

“
Believe me. You don’t want to go where I’m going.”

“
I don’t understand. Where are you going?”

“
To the Underworld.”

“
I’m not afraid,” replied Susan.

“
You should be,” said Harrison, turning and walking the other way, his cowboy boots splashing in the puddles.

“
You can’t leave me,” cried Susan, her cry echoing around her.

“
I just did,” yelled Harrison without turning back. He was already disappearing down the far tunnel.

Slowly, the sound of footsteps faded into the distance and Susan found herself alone in the shadows. In the moody half-light, everything seemed hostile, the dripping water, the groan of a metal pipe contracting in the cold, a water rat scurrying along a thin ledge. The silence scared her more than the chase.

For Harrison, this was just another shitty day. Instead of running from some disgruntled union boss he was running from the cops. Should be the same though, he thought, lie low for a couple of months, forge some new identity tags, move to the north side and start again. Only this time there was nothing left. The office, the safe, his loft apartment, they’d all be impounded. By now there were probably cops pouring all over his stuff with the care and grace of a wounded buffalo. Trashed, the whole place would be torn to pieces. They’d empty the draws all over the floor, break down the cupboards looking for some secret stash, tear up the floorboards and rip open his furniture, all in an effort to find some dirt on him.

It had to be a setup, he thought, trudging through the mud in the low light, but who? And why Kane? What the hell was he doing there? It had been almost a decade since they’d crossed swords. Damn. And when they couldn’t find any dirt on him they’d plant some. Some kiddy porn or some hard drugs, something to discredit him, something to get people to distance themselves from him. Oh, Rosie would never fall for it. But it would mean a complete change of identity and a new set of implanted RFID tags to keep the police off his back, and that was going to hurt. It always did.

After an hour, Harrison arrived at the catacombs, a hive of caves cut through the porous rock by a series of subterranean rivers. Most of the rivers had dried up, starved of water by the city above, but a few still ran year round. Moisture in the air made everything cold and dank.

There were more and more people in the tunnels, mainly beggars and squatters, outcasts from both worlds, living in the nether-realm between the Underworld and the city above.

Kids ran up to him, crowding around him, begging for candy and then slowly peeling away as he continued marching onward, only to be replaced by another group of muddy children from further up the tunnel. The effect was a seemingly constant swarm of ten to twelve children buzzing around him, tugging at his clothes, their eyes full of sadness, longing for hope. With his arms slightly raised in an effort to show he had nothing to give, he waded on through them, his shotgun resting over his shoulder.

Progress, he thought, some bloody progress. Poor kids don’t stand a chance, all ragged and torn, with rags for clothes and nowhere to call home.

“
Equality,” he mumbled to himself. “It’s just a pipe dream to soothe the conscience of the rich.”

The only equality these kids knew was that they were all born in the mud. And what could he do for them? Feel bad for a few minutes. Push on quickly so he could forget about them, yet again. What a shitty world, he thought as he tried to be kind and smile, without getting their hopes up.

Gaslights slowly replaced the failing electric lights on the ceiling. They were set more closely together, appearing every twenty feet or so as compared to the dim mining lights that, at some points, were spaced over a hundred feet apart.

In the flickering light, houses and shop fronts began to appear, crude dwellings carved into the rock on each side of the tunnel. People were bartering, haggling over a slab of meat or a rack of dried cave fish.