Blood Lust: A Supernatural Horror (47 page)

“This is the first of
the two
steel
doors
. The second is about
ten miles
away at the end of the old
tunnel
.
”
McNeil sound
ed
like a proud father
presenting his firstborn son
.
He rapped on it with his knuckles and it rang out
like a brass bell
.
“
It’s
made of t
wo inches of solid
US
steel and it
was
fireproof and
waterproof, though
I doubt it would pass muster now
.
We’ll
shut
and bar it behind you and repeat the process for the other
one
.
” He stared at me closely. “
This is your last chance to back out
, Hardin
.”

I shook my head, not trusting myself to speak.
I had suddenly broken out in a cold sweat. I fought the urge to wipe
imaginary perspiration off my brow. I did
rub
my palms
across
my jeans.

“We installed a
hatch in the grate over the main
ventilator
airshaft
yesterday
. Use it if you get in trouble. Someone will be there
with a
crane
and bucket
.
We’ll seal the grate we entered by on the way
back
out.
”

“Thanks. Make sure no one opens these doors after I go in unless
I
yell
out
.”

He shrugged. “It’s your show. I wish you would let me come with you. I know every inch of that tunnel.”

“You’ve done enough. If things go badly, contact Captain Bledsoe. Maybe they can flood the tunnels with poison gas and kill this creature if I fail.”

McNeil crossed himself. “Saints be with you.”

I’ve never been very religious, but I was touched.
I checked the batteries on my cell phone and saw I had no reception. That wasn’t good. I had planned keeping contact with Joria through McNeil’s cell phone.
McNeil noted my look of consternation and
handed me a
walkie-talkie
.

“Cell phones don’t work down here
for some reason
. The
walkie-talkie
s
don’t half the time, but it’s better than nothing. If you get in trouble, yell out. I’ll send in the cavalry.”

I shoved the
walkie-talkie
in my back pocket
, my only link with the outside
and it was iffy
. “Thanks.”
I turned to Joria. “Stay with McNeil. If I need some info, I’ll use the walkie-talkie.”

“Let me come with you
,” she pleaded
.
“
I know the
Chupacabra
. I can talk to it. Reason with it.”

I refrained from telling her that was the reason I didn’t want her with me. Instead, I said, “The time for talk is over.
It has to die.”

She nodded mutely but looked unconvinced.
After a long pause, she grabbed my face with both hands and kissed me. I was anxious to get started but I waited long enough to respond
in kind. With my lips
crushing
hers, it was easy to imagine that she loved me.
A part of me, the lonely part, wanted it
very badly t
o be so, but the past was difficult to forget
. She had sided with the
Chupacab
r
a
,
perhaps even aided it.
I wasn’t certain just where her loyalties lay.

“Don’t die,” she whispered when our lips
parted.

“That’s my goal,” I said smiling. “Watch out for her,” I said to McNeil. As if guessing my hidden meaning
, he nodded.

He handed me a bottle of water. “You might need this.”

I graciously accepted his gift, having forgotten to bring any
along
, sticking it in my pocket.
Facing the dark access tunnel,
I switched on my flashlight and
stepped inside
.
The darkness seemed to recede forever.
The sound of the
steel
door slamming behind me sounded like a crypt door closing
or a
death row
cell do
o
r
clanging shut
. I jumped
involuntarily
when the
steel bar
dropped across the door
with
a
loud thud
of finality
.
I had good cause to be jumpy. I was alone, cut off from the outside world, hoping I was sharing my confinement with a creature from hell.

As I stared down the
pitch-black
tunnel, m
y vertigo tried to
deceive
me into believing I was falling down a
deep, dark
well. I
reached out and caressed
the walls of the tunnel to reassure myself
that down
was below my feet.
None of the lights set at intervals along the wall
were working
. I
was glad for my
flashlight.
It looked as if no one had used the tunnel in years. An inch of dust cushioned my steps
, billowing at each footfall
, powdering my face
. I brushed cobwebs out of
my hair
hoping their
weavers
weren’t climbing over my back
. The air
tasted
stale and musty. I was glad when the tunnel ended and I reached the old subway line.

To my surprise
and utter delight
, a few electric lights still illuminated small areas of the tunnel.
I doubted they
had
remained on all the
se years.
I thanked McNeil for his foresight
in restoring electricity to the old tunnel
.
These pools of
pale
luminance dotted the darkness, disa
ppearing into the distance. A pair of rusty tracks
too narrow for subway trains
ran along the tunnel
for work carts and
hauling debris.

I had to backtrack to
the end of the tunnel
to assure myself I was not leaving the creature behind me
. A heavy
,
wooden timber
wall
s
ealed the tunnel where
the new
subway line
veered away from the original abandoned
line
.
I prodded the
wood
with a steel rod I found
nearby
checking for weakness but the ancient
timbers were
still
solid.
Unlike the newer subway tunnel
’s concrete casing
,
th
e older tunnel
had only a lining of
wooden boards reinforced in p
l
aces with more substantial wooden beams.
Small piles and drifts of dirt and gravel that had sifted through gaps in the wood
en lining
lay scattered along the tracks.

As I walked along the
gently
upward
sloping
tunnel, I encountered several small rooms that had served as tool sheds and meal areas for the work crews. I
quickly
checked out each of these in turn, finding nothing but a few
abandoned
tools and rusty lockers.
My
eager
ness
to confront
and kill
the Chupacabra
quickened my steps
.
I was drunk with righteous anger
and the desire for revenge.
In the distance, I heard
a
dull thud as
McNeil’s men sealed
the remaining
access
door
.
The severity of my position
alone in the tunnel
quickly sobered me.
 

After
almost
an hour
of walking
,
the
muted
whump
-
whump
-whump
of a ventilator fan
broke the unnerving silence
.
I approached it cautiously. The
massive
fan
was set in
the
roof of the tunnel in an
airshaft
running crosswise
ab
ove the
two
tunnel
s, connecting
to the main
ventilator
airshaft, which
McNeil
had sealed.
The ten-foot diameter fan sucked a large volume of air through the tunnel but still could not
entirely
rid it of its stale odor
, especially with the
emergency
doors shut
.
A tangle of dirty tattered cobwebs waved in the breeze. A wooden la
dder against the wall
provided access
to a trap door
used by the maintenance crew to access the airshaft beyond the fan. This was my emergency way out. My legs wanted to carry me up the ladder to freedom but I persevered. I had a job to do, one too long overdue.

My growing skepticism
began to
gnaw at me.
The noise of the fan would mask any sound the creature made, but its keen ears could probably detect
my movements.
I was
beginning to wonder what I had
been thinking when I conceived my half-baked plan
.
I had been searching for two hours and was nearly
halfway down the tunnel
but
had no
t
encountered the creature.
Had we
inadvertently
locked the creature out of its den instead of confining it?
Wa
iting another day to destroy the creature meant the possibility of another girl’s death
. I could not consider this
gloomy
option. It had to end today.

My first clue that I was not alone came
in the form of
a horde of rats racing down the tunnel toward
me, stirred up by something farther down the tunnel.
The
hairy throng materialize
d
in a pool of light cast by a functioning electric
light
, leaping over each other in their frenzy.
They were upon me in an instant, loudly squeaking their anger and fright as they brushed against my boots and
attempted to scale
my legs
, their tiny claws digging painfully into my flesh
.
I kicked at them madly and slapped at the ones
covering my body
. I did not think I had a fear of rodents until faced with such an enraged mass.
Dozens of stinking creatures clung to my pants and my arms. I feared
they would bring me
to the ground and
I would
become rat chow or wind up with the Black Plague
or some other hideous disease
, but they were too frightened to attack. They were more concerned with escape.
Escape from what
, I wondered.
Almost as quickly as they had appeared, they disappeared behind me.
I found that
odd. I could see more lights farther back down the tunnel
the way I had come
but the rodent horde did not
reach them. I decided to backtrack in case I had missed an opening
in which the creature could hide
.

I moved more
cautiously
, scanning
the walls for
any possible hiding place
. My light chanced upon a small opening, a crack in the
wooden wall
near the floor
, a mere four-inch split in a board.
Beyond
the w
all
, I
saw
dirt and darkness. Crouching, I thrust my light as far as it would go
and saw that the opening in the wall became a
larger cavity extending directly below me
.
By l
istening carefully, I could hear running water
some distance away
. Perhaps this
crack led to
one of the caverns about which McNeil had informed me.
I lay down
on the ground for
a better look at the hole.