I just hoped she could live up to the image.
I followed her down the stairs. At the bottom, she unlocked the gate, and ushered me into the station. As she relocked it, I took my holster and sheath out of my satchel and donned them. Then I pulled out a large flashlight and turned it on. The tiled walls lining the entranceway lit up with a soft glow.
Slowly, I led Beverly down another set of stairs and onto the main landing of the complex. It was quiet and still. I found it almost peaceful, in fact. But the moisture-laden air and irregular creaks and groans coming from all directions kept me on edge.
“How far down are we?” Beverly asked. “Twenty feet?”
“More like twenty-five feet.”
“I was close.”
I shrugged. “If you say so.”
“Why are we here anyway? Shouldn’t we start at Grand Central and work our way south?”
“Kolen and Adcock entered the system north of Grand Central. By starting here, we should be able to retrace the vast majority of their path.”
She unlocked one of the tall metal turnstiles and pushed her way through it onto the platform. Turning around, she pointed her flashlight at me. “What’s taking so long?”
The beam smacked me right in the face. I shielded my eyes. “The fact that I can’t see anything isn’t helping matters.”
She swung the beam toward the ground. As I pushed my way through the turnstile, I saw her lips purse into a sly smile.
This is going to be a long night.
A very long night.
I pointed my beam to the south. It shot down the long, cavernous tunnel before yielding to darkness. Steeling myself, I leapt onto the track bed. Something small and furry yelped and slipped off into a crack. Reaching up, I offered Beverly a hand. Ignoring it, she jumped onto the bed next to me, landing lightly on her feet.
I turned to look at her. “Follow me and walk single file. And whatever you do, don’t touch that.”
She followed my beam to the third rail. “Jack told me that the workers turned off the electricity after the lockout.”
“Okay, go ahead and touch it then. But before you do, you should know that six hundred and twenty-five volts run through that rail when it’s in operation. That’s more than enough to push a lethal current of a couple thousand amps through your body. In other words, if Chase was wrong, you’ll die before you even know what hit you.”
Her eyes widened slightly. “What if the rain gets down here?”
“Don’t know for sure,” I replied. “But if you see puddles collected around the third rail, steer clear of them.”
“I don’t like it. I don’t mean the third rail either. It’s something else. Something just doesn’t feel right.”
I knew what she meant. For some reason, it felt like someone was watching us. It was just a feeling, of course, but that didn’t make it any less unsettling. “That’s your nerves talking. Give them time. They’ll get used to it.”
I began walking south, leading us past the Grand Central Terminal platforms. I moved slowly and cautiously, taking time to examine my surroundings. My initial unease began to slip away, replaced by a sense of fascination.
Most people found subway tunnels uniform and boring, mere carbon copies of each other. But to me, every inch of every tunnel was unique. There was something about the cramped isolation of the underground world that heightened my senses. Sights, sounds, smells, touches, and even tastes differed wildly from one tunnel to the next.
We walked past the 33
rd
Street station and ventured deeper into the tunnel. Every second I spent in the confined area took my mind further from civilization and more into my surroundings. The subway system was like a mystical, forgotten world. I felt a little like an explorer penetrating a series of unknown connected caves, filled with giant metal monsters, ancient ruins, and lost treasure.
At the same time, the lack of subway trains and other people created an eerie sense of desolation. And although I was confident that I could find Kolen and Adcock, I couldn’t escape the thought that something terrible had happened to them.
We strode through three more stations all the way to Union Square. Then, we turned around and retraced our steps. Although I hadn’t expected to find anything on the first pass, I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed at my failure.
I knew one thing for certain.
Kolen and Adcock didn’t vanish into thin air.
So where the hell were they?
THE COLONY
Chapter 13
“I lied to you.”
Mary Kantz gave Peter Dask a suspicious look. “Oh?”
“There’s an ulterior motive for this walk. I wanted to get you alone.”
A pit formed in Mary’s stomach. Peter was taller than her. Bigger too. She couldn’t fight him off, especially not by herself. “I hope you’re not thinking…”
“No, it’s not that,” he replied. “Not at all. I just needed to talk to you about something. Something important.”
“So talk.”
“I’m planning a coup.”
Mary shook her head. “That’s not funny. If Ghost heard about this…”
“I’m sick of Ghost. He’s a stubborn old bastard whose time has passed.”
“You’re serious aren’t you?”
He sneered. “Damn right I’m serious. Someone needs to take a stand. Our people are dying. The healthy ones are deserting in droves. If we wait any longer, the colony will be extinct.”
“We owe Ghost. He saved us. All of us.”
“Your loyalty to him is going to get you killed.”
Mary spun on her heel. Lost in thought, she marched through the long thin subway tunnel.
A coup.
The very idea made her nervous. She liked Dask. Liked him a lot. But Ghost was like a father to her.
As she walked, she shifted her gaze from left to right, sweeping it across the cool, dank space. Thanks to twelve years spent living underground, her eyes had grown accustomed to darkness. As such, she could see almost everything around her. Scattered trash. A discarded boot. Smashed boxes.
A shopping cart.
Her eyes lingered on the cart. It was a whole lot bigger than the carts she’d seen while begging outside D’Agostino’s. But its size wasn’t its only unique feature. Through some feat of magic, it stood solely on its hind wheels.
Puzzled, she studied the strange spectacle. It took her only a few seconds to unravel the mystery. A thin metal pole rose out of the ground and sliced through the bars of the cart, impaling it at an awkward angle.
Glancing upward, she noticed that the pole extended all the way through the ceiling. She frowned. How had someone gotten…?
Dask coughed. “Listen Mary, forget I said anything. I’m just blowing off steam, that’s all.”
Mary wanted to believe him. The colony was the closest thing she ever had to a real family. “I know.”
“It’s just that Ghost…he doesn’t…well…”
His voice trailed off. Mary considered probing him to say more. On one hand, the conversation made her uncomfortable. But on the other, she didn’t want to push Dask away by ignoring his feelings. Already, she sensed a wall growing between them. And that terrified her almost as much as losing her family.
Emotionally torn, she pushed on, plunging across the tracks that made up the Lexington Avenue Line. The lockout presented a rare opportunity to enjoy the tunnels that surrounded her home without fear of being run over by subway trains. She did her best to enjoy it. But her heart was no longer in it.
Mary snuck a glimpse at Dask who strode behind her, stress lines etched across his handsome face. He no longer looked like the frightened, bratty, annoying kid she’d met all those years ago. Now, he was a devilish, tough twenty-two-year-old.
He sported rippling muscles. His sullen eyes weakened her knees. She liked everything about him, from his long blonde hair to his permanent stubble to his taste in music. He was the kind of boy…the kind of man…that struck fear in the hearts of parents.
Her thoughts drifted to her own mother. What would she think of Dask?
Mary never knew her mother. She didn’t know the woman’s dress size, her favorite food, or her hobbies. In fact, she didn’t even know the woman’s real name. But years of longing and dreaming had answered those questions.
Sort of.
Mary imagined her mother as Penelope Jarvis, a name that she’d picked out randomly from a discarded newspaper. Penelope was a beautiful woman with long blonde hair and curly eyelashes. She fit snugly into a dress, loved spaghetti and meatballs, and read books for fun.
Somehow, Mary and Penelope had been separated at birth. It wasn’t Penelope’s fault. She would never knowingly abandon her child. In fact, every day she spent hours calling around, searching for her long-lost daughter.
Searching for Mary.
Penelope would love Dask. Penelope loved everyone. The longer Mary thought about Penelope, the better she felt. It was a fantasy to be sure. But in Mary’s experience, fantasies were almost always better than real life.
After another few minutes, the tunnel yawned open, revealing a platform. But this one was shaped like an island and stretched longer than the others. She recognized it immediately. It was the platform that divided the two sets of southbound tracks at Grand Central Terminal.
As she walked through the open area, her chest began to hurt. She didn’t like the silence. She wanted to talk to Dask, to explain her feelings.
She glanced over her shoulder. “I get it. The past two months have been awful. I’ve lost too many friends. I don’t want to lose anymore. Can’t you and Ghost find a way to resolve your differences?”
Dask grabbed her shoulder and spun her around. “People are dying, Mary. And Ghost won’t do anything about it.”
“Can’t you just talk to him?”
“I already tried. He’s far too conceited to listen to me.”
“Maybe if I tried…”
“Don’t waste your time.”
He paused for a moment. “You’re my girl, Mary. I need you. I need your support.”
Mary walked into the next tunnel, furtively wiping her eyes in the process. His words touched her. But they also made her ill at ease. Did he really care about her? Or was he just using her to aid his ambitions?
A single set of tracks ran down the middle of the tunnel, separated by I-beams and walls on either side. The tracks themselves were relatively clean, largely free of trash and debris.
“Mary, take a look at this.”
Sensing urgency in his voice, she turned around. Dask knelt a few yards behind her. Despite the blackness, his face looked ghostly white. “What’s wrong?”
He pointed at the ground. “Look.”
She walked over to the side of the tunnel and saw a couple of half-footprints. “What about them?”
“Not those. Look at the marks.”
Leaning back, she noticed something strange. A thick layer of gravel and dirt covered much of the ground. But near the footprints, a large, oddly shaped area had been wiped clean and filled with a pool of slime and sewage.
Dask looked at her. “We need to get out of here. Now.”
She worked her mouth but nothing came out.
“Mary…” His voice was louder now, more urgent.
She turned around. And that was when she saw it. It flew across the tunnel, sweeping a wide swath in its wake.
The beast slammed into Dask.
He toppled over, hitting his head on the ground.
His eyes rolled to the back of his skull.
Mary tried to scream as the horrible thing shot toward her. She saw its red eyes, the blood dripping from its pointed teeth.
With tremendous force, it crashed into her. She fell backward and the creature slid over her, pushing her down with its weight.
The gigantic jaws opened wide.
Teeth clamped around her face.
She heard a sickening crunch.
And then, it began to eat.
Chapter 14
Beverly yawned. “Well, that was a couple hours of my life I’ll never get back. I hope you’ve got something better planned for tomorrow.”
“Patience is a virtue,” I replied. “One you seem to lack.”
She walked a little farther and then pointed to the right. “I keep seeing those things everywhere we go. Do they have a purpose?”
I glanced over my shoulder, following her finger to a gigantic steel piling. Dotting the entire area, the pilings looked like a metallic garden, sprouting out of the concrete and growing through the ceiling. I touched one as I passed by it, feeling the cool metal course through my fingertips. “It’s definitely not useless,” I replied. “That is, unless you’ve got something against midtown Manhattan.”
“How’s that?”
“A long time ago, railroad tracks and a large train yard sat above our heads. But the land was far too valuable to be used in that manner. So, in 1903, New York Central started to move everything underground. Then it built a new terminal and constructed Park Avenue on top of the whole mess.”
“What’s that got to do with the pilings?”
“New York Central sold the air rights to developers, which gave them the right to build in the area, but with no right to the ground itself. So to support their buildings, developers drove steel pilings deep into Manhattan’s bedrock. Without them, midtown Manhattan would literally fall right through the earth.”
“You make it sound dangerous.”
“It’s downright deadly if you consider the thousands of trains weaving through here every day, traveling at top speeds. It’s a wonder midtown hasn’t caved in yet.”
“Not that I care, but where’d you learn all that?”
I shrugged. “Back when I was still an archaeologist, I spent a few months studying these tunnels in great depth. Picked up a few things along the way, I guess.”
I led Beverly through a few twists and turns until we finally arrived at a large open space, consisting of crumbling maintenance shacks, half-completed structures, unused tracks, and rusty subway cars.
“Where are we?”