Undertow (The UnderCity Chronicles) (19 page)

Each painting was like that. On the surface easily recognizable, yet undermined by some reference to New York’s underground. Rats swam in the calm blue waters in the idyllic
Boating
. The statuesque
Madame X
was inverted by showing an ebony woman wearing a threadbare white dress. The lute player in
The Musicians
was holding a guitar with broken strings. Lindsay felt alternately amused at the ingenious twists of the artist and heartsick at the realities so starkly portrayed.

“Who did this?” she asked, walking down the tunnel, shining her flashlight back and forth at the grand display.

“This place was sealed in the 40s,” Jack explained. “Tunnel people found it in the early 70s, and when they did all this was here. Nobody knows who the artist was, or how she found her way down.”

“She?”

“They found painting supplies and scaffolding, and amongst it all were some old paint-stained dresses, probably to wear while working. I suppose the artist could have been a cross-dresser. However, the paintings are generally maintained to be by a woman.”

As Lindsay listened to the authority and openness in Jack’s voice, it struck her that this was where he needed to be. Here in this dark world he came alive. He became an explorer again, seeking to understand what he didn’t know, bringing what he had learned to others. Maybe he was a spider, spreading a web not between the lairs of the Moles, but between this world and the one above. He wouldn’t want to hear that, though.

Nor would he appreciate hearing that he was holding her hand. She kept the conversation to the art. “They’re incredible. Doesn’t anyone on the surface know about them?”

Jack shook his head. “No. Not that I’m aware of. There are other works, not on as large a scale, in the underground, though.”

“Why would anyone want to put their paintings where they’d never be seen?”

Jack shrugged. “Maybe these paintings are like Mrs. Moore’s jacket.”

“Ah. Some things are only beautiful if not brought to the light of day.” He frowned and seemed to noticed their joined hands for the first time. He moved to let go. She tightened her hold.

“Hey,” she said quietly, “remember the first time we held hands?”

She expected him to jerk free, but maybe because he was in a place where the old Jack had come out, he stayed with her. “You mean when you held my hand. Took years to get the circulation back.”

Encouraged by his humor, she said, “This is where you need to be, Jack. Here with these pictures, telling the world about the beauty beneath their feet.”

She felt him start to pull away and snared him back. “Jack—”

“You think I can skip on down here anytime I want? Take notes, pictures…maybe, lead a tour? Every step I take risks me being captured again, forced back into chains, of losing my ability to speak, to think, to remember. You have no idea what they did to me, Linds. What they made me do to other people.” He flung his arm at the pictures. “You see things of beauty. Turn off your light and you’ll see what’s really here. Blackness. Fear. A mass grave for New York’s forgotten and insane. That’s what I see, Lindsay, even when the lights are on.”

She didn’t believe that, she couldn’t. Not after what they shared last night.“And what about when you look at me?”

His voice remained hard. “You’re beautiful. That’s not me saying it, that’s a fact. But I look at you and all I see is what I can’t have.”

“You had me last night.”

He gave a derisive snort. “Did I really? Because I’m beginning to doubt anything ever happened. I wake up, you’re not there, and when you come back—not alone—you bring bagels.”

“I didn’t want to come on all hot and heavy with Reggie and Janice there.”

“I didn’t know eye contact was hot and heavy.”Again, he jerked at his hand and again she didn’t let go.

“Listen, I didn’t want you feeling you had to act differently around me, I wanted to give you space.”

“You know, Lindsay, how screwed up I am. The last thing I need is for you to pretend something didn’t happen when it did. Not something this fucking important.”

Of course. What had she been thinking? “I’m sorry, Jack. I didn’t want you believing you needed to feel things for me that you can’t. I wanted you to know that I was okay with that. What happened last night might not have been romantic, but it was real…and for me, it felt like a new beginning for us.”

It was hardly the time to be talking about the future what with dirt and danger all around. Yet, incredibly, Jack softened. “Listen, Lindsay, before we go on, I need to tell you something. I’d planned to do it this morning. It’s about somebody.” He winced at the last word and paused, clearly thinking about how to go on. Then suddenly he stiffened. Cocked his head. Looked at his watch.

“You hear that, Reggie?”

Reggie, who’d been giving them some space, responded after a pause, “What did you catch?”

“The clicking of subway wheels…”

Lindsay looked upwards. “We’re near a station.”

“…at the wrong time.”

“Think it’s them?” Reggie said.

“I don’t know. We can’t stay here, even if it’s me being paranoid.” He turned back to her and lowered his voice, his grip so tight on her hand she got a taste of what it was like for him all those years ago. “Listen, Linds. You need to understand that all the mystery of this place is a trap. Go any deeper and nothing will be the same. The underground will change you, and none of it will be for the good.”

“You think I’m not already changed? What do you think happened when my family was wiped out except for Seline?”

“I’m not going to pretend I know what that was like but in the end, it didn’t keep you from living your dreams, from being who you are, maybe even something more.”

Now, she understood. “Is that what happened to you, Jack? They took part of you?”

“I lost my
soul
, Linds. Anyone who experiences the Moles is damaged. Even if Seline surfaces alive, she won’t be the same. In a very real way, no one gets out of here alive. And dammit, I need you alive.”

His pain and desperation cut into her, squeezed her heart as hard as his hand on hers. She shook her head in denial of everything he was telling her. She couldn’t go back. Seline needed her. They would all make it back. Everything would come right. Then, she looked into Jack’s haunted eyes, and didn’t know what to think anymore.

Reggie called from across the room. We got to move. Still another hour before we reach Agharta.

Still holding his gaze, she said the only thing she could. “Coming!”

* * *

So busy was Lindsay thinking through her conversation with Jack that they were almost at the end of the abandoned train tunnel before she registered Reggie’s final words.“Agharta? I thought the place was called Seneca.”

“We have to pass though Agharta to reach Seneca, and again on our way to The Pits,” Reggie explained. “It’s about the size of Sumptown.”

“They survivalists, too?”

Reggie hitched up the strap of his gun, his flashlight an ever-moving search beam. “Everybody's a survivalist down here. These people are more like tunnel doctors, and pretty good ones too. One of them especially. She’d kill you if you crossed her, but you’d swear she could raise the dead the way she—.” He halted his chatter, then steered it in another direction. “They got all kinds of weird ideas about the tunnels being part of Atlantis or something. Got started in The Burbs, then set up their own place down here after the cops came. Me and Jack know a couple of them, so they’ll be cool with us showing up.”

Lindsay looked over her shoulder. “Spent much time there, Jack?”

“Yeah.” A single edged word. There was more to it than that. There was always more when it came to him.

Reggie stopped, Lindsay almost bumping into him. He was standing at a thick steel door similar to the one that had allowed them into The Gallery, except this one was set within a massive brick wall that sealed the tunnel from the outside world. Yanking the heavy portal open Reggie revealed a damp, crumbling hallway, its walls studded with leprous-looking mushrooms, at the end of which was an old-fashioned service elevator—minus the elevator.

The metal lattice doors of the elevators were eerily intact. Reggie slammed them open with his shoulders, launching a screech that echoed loudly downwards. “Best they know someone’s coming,” he explained in a full voice. “You don’t want to be surprising nobody. Thrill killers pay ‘em a visit now and then, so they’re quick with their trigger fingers.”

Lindsay eyed the empty elevator shaft, a hard lump in her throat. “Thrill killers?”

Jack stepped around her, inspecting the shaft and area with his light. “Psychos. They find each other at fetish clubs, racist cliques, the internet…and come down here hunting tunnel folk. Most call themselves vigilantes, think they’re doing the city a favor by exterminating vermin.”

Lindsay recoiled. “People actually do that?”

Reggie held his beam back down the way they’d come. “Kill a topsider and you’ve got the NYPD all over your ass. Down here there ain’t no laws, so this is where they come to get their kicks.”

“Only sometimes they never make it back,” Jack added.

Something in his tone made Lindsay and Reggie stare at him uncertainly.

He didn’t seem to notice. “We’re wasting time. Let’s get going.”

Anchored to the lattice panel was a thick nylon rope which extended down into the depths, its length tied into knots every couple of feet or so. Lindsay aimed her light over the edge. It was a long, long way down. Her legs almost buckled, and she backpedaled away—fast.

She couldn’t miss the looks of dismay the two men exchanged. Damn. She couldn’t let them down. Reggie checked his pack and gun, then said with forced cheer, “I’ll call when I reach the bottom.”

Taking hold of the rope, Reggie swung out, then began to shimmy down. Lindsay watched the beam from his light ricochet around the shaft for a few seconds, and then it and Reggie were swallowed into the darkness. Jack snapped on the flashlight beneath his gun as the illumination from Reggie faded.

“The rules still apply. Get going, woman.”

Lindsay’s legs were trembling. “Quit being a jerk and give me a minute."

“Oh, nice one. I’m the jerk,” he said quietly, then he slammed his fist against the lattice, rattling the metalwork. “Didn’t I tell you I’d do this myself?” he exploded. “But oh no, you think that just because you conquered the world on the surface, you’re smart enough to take on the underground. You think you can handle everything, then you come up against the first little challenge and you fall apart—”

“I’m not falling apart! I’m taking a moment to get myself together, all right?”

“No, it’s not all right. What are you going to do if we’re on the run from the Moles? ‘Excuse me, I’m a little nervous around heights. Give me a moment to get myself together and then we’ll continue the chase.’ If you’re in the way, Lindsay, then it could cost lives. Reggie’s. Seline’s. And most certainly your own precious hide.”

Lindsay’s patience with him snapped. “What about you, Jack? Aren’t I endangering your life, too?”

“I already told you I’ll live.”

“Oh, yeah, right. You can outrun Moles to the surface and then you’re lost. You’ll crawl into a hole, pull the plugs and eat scrambled egg sandwiches for the rest of your life.”

“At least I’ll be alive. Except then I’ll have Reggie’s death on my hands. He’s down here because he feels guilty, and wants to make things right. You’re down here because you think you can make things right, despite what I just got through telling you. He’s a good man. You’re a fool.”

Lindsay flinched, then looked away. She walked stiffly to the edge of the shaft. She stared at the rope as it swayed from Reggie’s movements. It gave a wild shake and Reggie’s voice echoed from below. “Yo!”

The rope came to a standstill, and Lindsay grabbed for it. Her backpack and the gun unbalanced her, and she swung out into the dark opening, her grip slipping. She cried out and flailed with her legs, failing to wrap them around the rope, she went into an uncontrolled slide.

It all happened in a split second and then the rope steadied. Jack’s voice boomed down at her. “Lindsay, feet against the wall! Now!”

Her boots thudded against the concrete surface about six feet below the opening. Her heart hammered loud in her ears.

Jack set his light at the edge of the pit. “I’m going to pull you up. Hold on tight and walk up the wall.”

When her head and shoulders appeared above the edge, Jack reached down and hauled her up by her ass. She laid flat on her stomach, her face tucked in the crook of her arm.

Reggie’s voice rose hollowly up the shaft. “Everything OK?”

“Yeah,” Jack called back to him. That same word, this time weary and resigned. It had Lindsay pushing herself onto all fours. “Listen—” he started in.

“Don’t say it, Jack. I know what you’re thinking, and I don’t need to hear it again.”

“I already told you before that you don’t know what I’m thinking.”

Lindsay stood, swaying only a little. “Fine, Jack. Fine. Except this time whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it.” She made for the shaft. “Just tell me how to get down this fucking rope, all right?”

He gave a small sigh, which she didn’t care to interpret. “First of all,” he said, “take off your gun and pack.”

Lindsay did so, her body relaxing from the release of the weight.

“Okay, now the bottom of the shaft isn’t all that far down,” he continued. “I’ll steady the rope for you, and all you have to do is take hold of it and step out. You ever play on a tire swing when you were a kid?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s no harder than that. You stand on the knot below you, lower your hands, then your feet, and inchworm your way down. Keep your eyes on the wall, not up or down, and you won’t get vertigo. Take it nice and easy, and you’ll reach the bottom before you know it, okay?”

“Okay.”

He leaned out and snagged the rope, handing it to her. She took it and drew a deep lungful of air.

“Good. Now, hold tight and step off. I’ll keep it steady.”

Lindsay closed her eyes, took another deep breath, and swung gently out into space, her hands clutching the rope. Her feet instantly found the knot beneath them, and then she bumped against the wall of the pit.