Kill City Blues: A Sandman Slim Novel (22 page)

“We should keep moving,” says Hattie.

The dark closes in around us again, like we’re marching straight up a dinosaur’s ass. Or we’re lost in an old haunted fortress in a Euro-horror flick.
Tombs of the Blind Dead
. A hapless bunch of schmucks trapped in a cracked palace with an army of Templar zombies.

How do Kill City’s residents live like this? I remember hearing about people living in New York’s abandoned subway tunnels. Mole People, they call them. Some scavenge outside during the day, but others never leave the tunnels. I guess you get more than used to the dark. You come to think of it as home. It sounds a bit like Hell. It’s the most awful place you can imagine, but after a while you start relying on the filth and blood, the cozy familiarity of betrayal and casual brutality. It’s more than coping. It’s adaptation. You go into the dark one species and mutate to fit your surroundings. Grow better eyes and ears. Get used to the feel of the air so you can tell when something is coming at you. After a while you’re so suited to the environment you’re a whole new species. Except for the ones who can’t make the change. They never stop struggling with the dark. They’re always looking for a way out. Those are the ones who build paper meditation walks dedicated to the world or kill so cleanly for their Hellion master that it’s completely unexpected when you finally cut their throats. Of course, if you make it out, what you’ll find is you’re now a stranger in two worlds because the dark changes you and you’ll never got back to what you were before you got lost.

“Look at this,” says Vidocq. He’s crouched on the floor looking at a plastic water bottle. He holds it up. “This is new. So is this.” He picks up a half-smoked cigarette and sniffs it. Holds it out to me. I sniff it too. I pull off the filter and examine the tobacco at that end. It’s fresh.

I say, “Tykho told me that someone else knows about the ghost. I guess we’re not alone. The question is, are they ahead of us or are they lost and stopped here to get their bearings?”

“We have to assume the worst,” says Delon.

“I agree,” says Brigitte. “We have to assume that they know more than we do.”

“Or they’re lost and are doing the simple thing,” says Candy.

I say, “What’s that?”

“They’re circling around behind and following us since we’re the ones with not one but two certified guides.”

I look at Delon and Hattie.

“How much longer?” I ask the old woman.

“We go down another level just ahead. It will be harder for anyone following us to keep up.”

“Let’s get there and shake these fuckers.”

Up ahead we come to a door marked
AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY
. Diogo goes in first, and when we’re through, he takes out a padlock and secures the door from inside. The lock is big, but I’m not convinced it will keep any motivated people out for long. Still, any lead it might give us is a help. When we start moving again I make sure that Delon stays up front with whichever son is leading the way.

We go down to a floor with mall administrative offices and lockers full of maintenance equipment. It’s cooler down here. Less green with vegetation, but there are thick black patches of mold over all the air vents and the air is thick. Water drips down from overhead pipes. Vlad the Impaler could move in and start scaring peasants from this doomsday dungeon.

Hattie looks me over in the pale lantern light.

“You’re Sub Rosa, aren’t you?” she says.

“How did you know?”

“You stink of it.”

“Sub Rosa?”

“Judgment. About my family.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t give a rat’s ass—half a rat’s ass—about your family. Besides, I’ve seen worse.”

“Where?”

“Right in town. You remember the Springheels?”

“Charm makers. Used to be high-and-mighty but aren’t held in much regard anymore.”

“If there were any left, you’d be fighting over the same stale pretzels and moldy Big Macs.”

“What happened to them?”

“The last son, Jack, he had a fetish for demons. He called up an eater one day and the party didn’t go the way he planned.”

“The eater got him?”

“Technically, a High Plains Drifter, a zombie—”

“I know what a Drifter is. Just because I live in the boonies, don’t count me as stupid. Now go on.”

“Anyway, a Drifter got him in the end, but if it hadn’t been one of them, an eater would have done it sooner or later. He was begging for it.”

She thinks about it for a minute.

“I suppose we look quite respectable compared to that.”

“Yeah. You’re mother of the year and I’m king of the Mouseketeers. We’re a couple of lottery winners with money to burn.”

“You’d have killed my boys back there, wouldn’t you?”

“Every one of them.”

“Is that how you got that face? Doing things of that sort?”

“This? I was skipping through a field and fell on some dandelions. They hurt more than you’d think.”

She looks at me.

“Who’s the little Lurker?”

“Don’t worry about her. She’s with me.”

“I thought so. The face of a killer and a Jade on your arm. Your mama must be proud.”

“My mother wouldn’t know a Jade from a lawn flamingo.”

“Once we drop you off, you won’t be coming back, will you?”

“Much as I enjoyed the room service, I have another hotel to get back to.”

“I have your word on that? We won’t see you again?”

“Hell yes.”

“All right, then.”

“So, you’re calling it off?”

“You mean my boys killing you all and leaving you here in the tunnels? I expect I will.”

“Good call.”

“We’re done here.”

Hattie falls back to where Diogo is walking and says something to him.

“Aw, Mama.”

She slaps him.

“You mind me.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

We go down a long side corridor to an unmarked door. Doolittle tries the handle. It doesn’t open.

“Trouble, Mama,” he says.

“Allow me,” says Vidocq, and gently pushes the boy out of the way. He takes a leather wrap from his pocket and opens it to reveal a set of delicate tools. Brigitte and Traven hold lights over his head and he takes a couple of them and picks the lock.

Hattie coughs and says, “A good man to have around.”

“You should hear him sing karaoke.”

Hattie turns to the group.

“This wasn’t always locked. Guess the Shoggots are even worse about folks wandering into their territory. You sure you want to do this?”

“We have no choice,” says Delon.

Hattie looks at me.

“What kind of secrets can a dead man have that you need so much?”

“I’m hoping he knows where I left my car keys.”

She shakes her head.

“There’s no helping some people.”

A
click
echoes off the walls and the door opens a few inches.

“Et voilà,”
says Vidocq.

“Voilà yourself,” says Delon. “Look at this.”

On the other side of the door, twisted wire cables are bolted to both sides of the wall and the base of the doorjamb. They stretch away from us into the gloom, and it takes me a second to figure out why. There’s stars above but nothing below the door except a wide rocky chasm. Sometime in the last few years this section of roof collapsed, taking several levels of floor with it. I point my flashlight down, but I can’t see the bottom. The cables form a V-shaped bridge. Two tightly spaced cables are the bottom of the V with a single waist-high cable on each side to form the top.
Rickety
isn’t the word for the thing. I look at Hattie.

“You’re fucking kidding me.”

She crosses her arms.

“You want to go? This is the way.”

Delon has stepped back a few feet from the door. He’s looking down the hall.

“I’m guessing this isn’t on your map.”

“Nothing even like it.”

“Perfect.”

Hattie smiles.

“We can go forward or we can go back, but either way I keep Nehebkau’s Tears and the Gihon salt.”

“Then we keep going,” I say. I turn to the others. “Agreed?”

Everyone but Delon gives me a yes.

“You have something to say, Paul?”

He looks at his feet.

“I didn’t know about this. I’m not good with heights.”

Beautiful. So Norris Quay is afraid of heights. What an exciting piece of trivia. You’d think fucking Atticus would fix something like that when he made his windup clones. Maybe crossing the Grand Canyon bareback never came up before.

“We’re all going. That means you too.”

“I’m not sure I can.”

“We’re going to need the map in your head when we get across. That means if I have to tie your arms and legs and kick you across like a soccer ball, you’re going.”

“Threats don’t help.”

“That’s not a threat. A threat is when I say if I have to dangle you over the side and drag you across like a sack of dirty laundry, I’ll do that too.”

“Stop it,” says Brigitte. “Can’t you see you’re making it worse?”

“If you can pep-talk him across, be my guest. But we can’t wait around here all night.”

Brigitte talks to Delon quietly. He nods but doesn’t look up from the floor.

I say, “Hattie, you and your boys have done this before. You head across and show us how it’s done.”

“Of course,” she says.

She waves to Diogo and the others and they start across, going one by one. Even for them it’s not an easy crossing. The cables were probably tight once upon a time, but over the years they’ve stretched and the whole bridge has started to go slack. The crossing looks like it’s all about a slow and steady pace, checking your balance with each step. Lean to one side or the other and the whole bridge tips with you. Diogo shows off by tipping both ways during his crossing, righting himself easily each time. It makes my stomach clench each time he does it.

Then it’s my turn. I look across the chasm at the Mangarms. I can’t tell if the bridge is fifty feet long or a mile. I put my right foot on the two cables that form the walkway and test my weight. They hold. I’m kind of disappointed. If the whole thing fell down, I wouldn’t have to go across. Now I have to pretend to be brave. I grab the two side cables and start across.

Each step is a new adventure in bullshit. What kind of sadist invented bridges like this? I’ve seen pictures of them, so I know they exist other places in the world and that people use them every day, scurrying across like squirrels on a telephone line. I’d like to see one of them try it in Kill City over a bottomless pit. There’s no way the other team came this way. With any luck, that means we’re ahead of them. Unless Hattie is taking us the long way around for a laugh, which I wouldn’t put past her.

I don’t know if it’s taken two minutes or a lunar month, but finally I make it across. Hattie’s boys grab and pull me the last couple of feet onto the concrete ledge. I turn back to the others and wave like it was nothing at all, hoping I don’t piss myself before the rest of them come over.

Candy is next. She puts out a foot, grabs the side cables, and crouches like a tiger, getting a feel for the bridge. She stays that way for several seconds. Long enough that I think she’s frozen in place. Then she sprints forward. The bridge wobbles and sways under her, but she doesn’t miss a step. What took me minutes to do, she does in a few seconds. Hattie’s boys reach for her on our end, but she ignores them and jumps the last few feet onto solid ground herself. Cheers start up from the other side of the chasm. Candy waves and bows.

I put my arm around her shoulders.

“Show-off.”

“Scaredy cat.”

Father Traven is next. Except for Delon, he’s the one I’m most worried about. I’m not convinced his footing is all that good on flat ground. While a moving walkway doesn’t seem like suicide, it’s still extremely stupid. There’s nothing we can do but see what happens.

Vidocq and Brigitte shout encouragement as Traven plods across step-by-step. He’s fine until he hits the middle, where the slack in the cables is worst. His feet wobble. He gets a death grip on the two side cables, and teeters, trying to right himself. Each time his balance starts to come back, he loses it again. He’s stuck there, unable to go forward or back.

I’m so focused on Traven that I don’t see Brigitte start across. She’s almost as fast as Candy. When she reaches Traven she stands behind him, moving her weight back and forth, trying to counteract his movements and balance the cables. Gradually it works. Her added weight and sense of balance settle the cables into place. They come across together, a step at a time. When they’re close enough, I pull Traven off the wires to clear Brigitte’s path while Candy grabs her.

Traven walks to the nearest wall and collapses there. Brigitte collapses next to him. He takes her hand and they sit together in the dark.

Delon is next. Vidocq practically has to shove him onto the cables. Delon stands at the end, petrified, looking down into the chasm.

“Paul,” yells Candy.

He tilts his head up slightly.

“Look at me,” she says. “Don’t look down. Just at me.”

After a couple of minutes Delon takes an actual step forward. Then another. Every time he stops moving, he looks down, so Candy yells to him.

“You’re doing fine. Look up at me. Keep looking here.”

He makes it all the way to the middle of the bridge before one of the cables breaks. One of the two walkway cables comes loose with a metallic snap, coiling back to the far end and slamming into the wall. Delon goes down on one knee, desperately holding on to the side cables as the whole bridge bucks and sways. The sound of strained bolts and wires echoes off the cavern walls. After several minutes the bridge stabilizes enough for Delon to stand.

Candy starts to call to him again, but I put a hand on her shoulder. At this point I don’t want anything to surprise or confuse him. Step by uncertain step Delon gets a little closer to our end. Finally he’s close enough for Diogo and the boys to grab. They pull him off the wires and he pukes over the side, down into the chasm like he’s trying to get even with it.

Vidocq is last to cross. He’s not a big man but he’s not petite and he’s wearing a heavy greatcoat. Not standard issue for the Flying Wallendas. He tests the cables before he steps across, shaking the two side cables and gently putting his weight on the walkway. Satisfied, he steps back into the door and opens his coat. I don’t have to see him clearly to know what he’s doing. He’s drinking a potion. Then another. And a third. He shudders. Breathes in and out a few times and steps onto the bridge. And sprints like a goddamn madman all the way across, not touching the two side wires and, from the way it looks, barely touching the bottom one. The wires are letting out sharp metallic screams, straining under him. He jumps the last few feet. I don’t know if he felt it or if he just got lucky, but just as he launches himself, one of the two side cables breaks. Vidocq ducks as it snaps back a few inches over his head. He’s shaking and his face is slick with sweat when he reaches our side.