The snow was thick on the ground by the time I got out of bed. Almost five inches. Practically a blizzard by my sunny-California standards. The snow was still falling, but it was now just a tiny flurry, nothing but dust and smoke particles floating in the air.
It felt like my head had been stuffed full of foam and string sometime during the night. And my hand had resumed its loud complaints.
My jeans lay draped over the back of the folding chair, and as soon as I got out of bed, I dug through its pockets, coming up with the remaining oxycodone. There were three left and I considered taking them all, but I ended up just popping a single pill. The night before was a real blur—a slide show of motion snapping past inside my head—and I didn’t want to fall back into that haze. I wanted to stay sharp. I had work to do.
Besides, I told myself, my hand doesn’t feel that bad.
Unfortunately, this reassurance didn’t really help, as the thought of unwinding my bandages and checking on my damaged flesh still filled me with a sense of dread. It was something I didn’t want to think about, something I didn’t want to deal with. Not yet.
I got dressed, adding an extra flannel shirt to my layers of clothing. Then I stood at the window for a while, staring out at the snow-shrouded street. It was a still, pristine tableau. There were no cars or pedestrians, no hint of animal life. The entire world had been hidden beneath a thick alabaster blanket. I looked for tracks in the snow, but there was nothing there. Not a single footprint.
Not a single paw print, either, I thought, remembering the surge of wolves flowing down this very street.
On the way downstairs, I paused for a moment outside Floyd’s open door. He lay passed out atop his covers, fully clothed. His guitar case sat propped against the wall near his head, and his hands were smeared with dried blood. He was snoring.
The rest of the bedroom doors were all closed. The only sound in the upstairs hallway was the low, regular drone of Floyd’s breath.
Downstairs, I once again found Charlie sitting at the kitchen table, typing away at his notebook computer. When I entered, he glanced up briefly, and then nodded toward a French Press sitting on the kitchen counter. “I made coffee,” he said. “Help yourself.” Before I could thank him—before I could say a single word—he looked back down at his computer, once again losing himself in the glowing screen. I could practically hear the gears clicking away inside his head. In those brief moments, my presence had been noted, analyzed, and filed away. His thoughts had moved on. I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down at his side.
“When are you sending stuff out next?” I asked, idly rapping a knuckle against the back of his screen. “When does your thumb drive go back out into the world?”
“Taylor said tonight,” Charlie replied, not looking up. “She’s giving it to her friend tonight.”
“If I wanted to post something—to a forum, a message board—could I do that? Could you program something to do that?”
Charlie’s fingers fell silent on the keyboard, and he glanced up. I watched as his forehead scrunched up in lines of concentration, his unfixed stare drifting up toward the ceiling. I’d managed to capture his attention.
“Is it a public message board? What type of security are we talking about?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. You log into an account, then type stuff into a box.”
Charlie laughed and shook his head, then fell silent. His stare remained fixed on an imaginary spot above my shoulder. After a handful of seconds, his eyes refocused. “You have your computer here, right? Did you browse the site recently?”
I nodded. “Probably the last thing I read.”
He smiled. “Then bring it to me. I bet you ten bucks—if it’s still in the cache, I can do it. I can post whatever you want.”
“Thanks,” I said. “That’s incredible.” Charlie’s eyes flickered back toward his computer, and I could tell I was about to lose him again.
“Are you scared?” I asked, seizing the moment. “About what might come back? On the drive? In your email?”
He stopped, hands frozen over the keyboard. For a moment, I thought I’d pushed him too far. Then he smiled.
“No,” he said. “It’s them, my parents. I figured it out. They’re trying to get to me, trying to tell me something. And that’s what I want… to find them, to contact them.
“And when it’s time, it’ll all become clear. They’ll reach me, or I’ll reach them.” Charlie once again had that distant look in his eyes, like he was grappling with some technical problem, trying to figure out how to make something work. “It’s the message, you see, not the form it takes. I just have to figure out what they’re trying to say.”
He turned back toward his computer, dismissing me abruptly. I could see two windows open on his screen. One was filled with code, and the other showed his mother on the corner of Second Avenue and Sherman Street. Charlie had zoomed the picture in on her haunted expression.
I felt bad for him. The only message I could read there, in that close-up, was a message of fear: Charlie’s mother looking back over her shoulder with that frightened look on her face, like she wasn’t alone on that abandoned street, like there was something else there, chasing her. Something horrible.
Amanda and Mac were playing in the backyard when I finished up my coffee. They were having a snowball fight. Amanda was hiding behind a row of rosebushes while Mac lobbed projectiles high into the air, sending them raining down like artillery shots. After a round of sorties, Amanda popped up over the line of bushes and whipped a snowball directly at his head, sending him toppling over.
Their laughter was high and bright, a counterpoint to Charlie’s insistent tap-tap-tap.
Amanda stuck her head in through the back door. “Me against you three,” she panted. “Mac needs the help. He’s getting his ass kicked out here!” A snowball hit the window at her side, and she turned, laughing, to once again join the fray.
Charlie’s fingers didn’t even pause on the keyboard. After Amanda disappeared, he started sucking at his teeth absently, filling the room with a wet, slurping sound. I set my empty coffee cup in the kitchen sink, then headed upstairs to start work on my forum post.
Taylor’s door was right across from the stairwell, and I paused when I reached it. I listened for a moment, then knocked tentatively. There was no response. I pushed, and the door swung open. The room was empty, her bed neatly made. Early riser, I thought. Already out in the world, doing whatever it is she does in the morning.
I continued on to my room.
I spent the rest of the morning staring at my computer screen, trying to assemble a forum post. It was a stressful task. The way I looked at it, this was the most important thing in my life. It was the next step in my journey, putting my pictures out there for the whole world to see.
These were my dreams and aspirations. In pieces on my computer screen.
More than anything, I wanted to make the right first impression. I wanted to capture people’s attention and establish credibility right off the bat. I wanted people to look at these pictures—really look at them—and take me seriously. I wanted them to recognize my passion, my skill, my art.
No wonder I was anxious. I had the weight of my entire future sitting right there on my shoulders.
I decided to start with some of my more mundane images. If I started with the insane stuff, I reasoned, no one would believe me. I could hear the arguments now: Yeah, he just Photoshopped a finger onto that spider; and that face in the wall, it doesn’t even look real—it’s just a mask, a mannequin.
No, I decided, it was better to start off with the stuff no one would dispute.
First up: the soldier in front of the ENTERING SPOKANE sign. Then an empty city street. Then Riverfront Park. And finally, a pair of pictures from Mama Cass’s: one showing the crowd of refugees gathered around the storefront, the other showing a handful of dirty faces watching me suspiciously. I liked this final picture; I thought it ended things on the right note. It put some human faces—ragged and tired, haunted and angry—amid all the desolation.
I was laying groundwork. Setting the scene.
I’d get to the insanity later.
I spent several hours tweaking the images, trying to make them perfect. Then I composed a couple of sentences for the top of the post. I tried to keep my preface simple; I wanted to let the photographs speak for themselves.
Greetings from Spokane! Here are some pictures from my first week in the city. I came here to document the conditions and, perhaps, find the truth behind the stories we’ve all been hearing. I’ll try to post more as events and pictures happen, but my Internet connection is pretty much nonexistent (I had to sneak this post out of the city, passing it hand to hand across the border).
I added the “hand to hand” thing to take heat off of Danny, in case this post ever caught the attention of the authorities.
After I finished the preface, I read it over a couple of times, trying to imagine the impression it would make. I found it lacking. It felt cold, clinical. There was no emotion, no hint it had been written by a real human being, someone capable of being moved by the things on the other side of the camera’s viewfinder. Tentatively, I typed out another line:
It’s strange here. It feels like a different world.
I stared at the post for a long time, reading over that sparse handful of sentences, studying each and every aspect of the photographs. It still felt insufficient somehow, incomplete. It is incomplete, I told myself. There is no end here, no conclusion… not yet.
But it is a beginning.
Floyd stuck his head into my room just as I was finishing up my post.
“Come here, man,” he said, stifling a yawn. “There’s something I want you to see.”
I saved my work and followed him into his room.
At one time, this had been a child’s bedroom. There were alternating rows of clowns and balloons peering out from the wallpaper, bright cartoon shapes turned bleak and gray beneath a layer of dingy smoke residue. Across from Floyd’s child-size bed, some of the clowns had been gouged out of the wall, as if attacked with a potato peeler. All the balloons remained intact. In the corner, a black sweatshirt shrouded the shape of a hobbyhorse.
The room smelled of pot and stale sweat.
Floyd was still half asleep. He stopped in the middle of the room and stretched his hands up over his head, letting out a loud yawn.
“What’s up?” I asked, and I smiled. “Did you have a bad dream? Do you need me to tuck you back in? Maybe sing you a lullaby?”
Floyd let out a fake laugh. “Fuck, man, you’re funny,” he said. “I didn’t realize you were so fucking funny.”
He grabbed my elbow and pulled me over to the window. He had his blinds drawn almost all the way to the bottom, and I had to crouch down in order to peer through the gap. “Check it out. Across the street.”
The view was the same as I’d seen from my window earlier that morning. The street was covered with snow, and there was absolutely no sign of life. Then I noticed the tracks leading from our front door to the house directly across the street.
“Upstairs window,” Floyd said, crouching down at my side.
I focused on the upper story, slowly scanning from one room to the next. All the windows were shuttered save the biggest one, just above the front door. There was movement there, on the other side of the glass. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like somebody pacing back and forth.
“It’s Devon,” Floyd whispered conspiratorially. “I’ve seen him over there before, but I’ve never been able to figure out what he’s doing. Sometimes he’ll go over there and we won’t see him for days.” Floyd let out an annoyed grunt. “And when I ask him about it, he won’t tell me shit.”
I went back to my room and got my camera, then returned to Floyd’s side. I raised the camera to the sill and zoomed in on the window across the street.
I hadn’t noticed the electric-blue light, dwarfed in that world of startling white snow. But now, magnified inside my camera lens, it became obvious. An eerie blue glow illuminating one side of Devon’s face. The light moved across his features as he paced back and forth, striding quickly from one side of the room to the other. Every once in a while, he raised his hands in a gesture of apparent frustration.
I couldn’t tell what he was doing. Did he go over there to vent? I wondered. Is he just storming about in an empty room, blowing off steam?
As he passed in front of the window, Devon paused suddenly and looked our way. There was a strange expression on his face—a look of both fear and annoyance—and for a moment, I thought we’d been caught in the act of spying. But I quickly realized that that was impossible. We were hidden in Floyd’s dark room, staring out through a tiny crack in his blinds. There was no way he could see us here, not from that distance.
Then I noticed Devon’s lips moving in the faint blue glow.
“Is he alone over there?” I asked. “Have you ever seen anyone else in that house?”
“No,” Floyd said, a hint of surprise in his voice. “We’re the only people on this entire block.”
I started taking pictures, snapping off a long series as Devon abruptly looked back over his shoulder toward the far corner of the room. He once again raised his hands in frustration.
He was still talking. Explaining. Arguing.
“What’s he doing?” Floyd asked. “I can’t see shit.”
I turned away from the window, putting my back against the wall and sliding down to the floor. I handed the camera to Floyd, and he raised it to his eye. After a moment of silence, he lowered the camera and took a step back from the window. There was a shocked look on his face.
“What’s going on here, Dean?” he asked, his eyes wide, his voice wavering. “Who’s he talking to? Who’s he meeting? And why there, across the street from our own house?”
And what about that blue light? I recognized that color. It was the same shade I’d seen between the walls of the apartment building on Second Avenue, glowing deep down in the heart of the building. Beneath that horrible disembodied face. The memory of that face—that frantic, pleading eye—set my skin shivering.
“There’s only one person who can answer those questions,” I said. “And he’s waiting for us right across the street.”
It took us a couple of minutes to get ready, to throw on our coats and lace up our shoes. I strapped the camera across my chest and led the way, anxious to find answers, to find the link between this place and the apartment building downtown. And Devon. I needed to know what he was doing over there, what his connection was to this whole thing. To the city. To the face.
Floyd seemed far less eager. “There’s only one set of tracks,” he said, pausing in the middle of the snow-covered street. “Whoever he’s meeting… either they came in another way or they were there before the snow started to fall.”
“Only one way to find out,” I said, glancing up at the house’s now-empty window. “So move your ass.”
The front door was unlocked. I tried to keep it quiet as I eased the door open, but the hinges let out a loud, painful groan. I paused before crossing the threshold, listening for Devon up on the second floor, but couldn’t hear a thing. There were no arguing voices, no pacing footsteps.
We stepped into the foyer, and I shut the door behind us.
The house had been stripped bare. The owners must have moved fast, I thought. From what I’d seen, most of the houses in the area weren’t this clean; most showed signs of life forced to an abrupt stop. The owners must have hired moving trucks and fled the city as soon as the weirdness started, back in July or August, before the mad rush of evacuations had forced people to flee with whatever they could fit in their cars. I started sticking my head in through open doorways. I found an empty living room, an empty dining room. The house had nice hardwood floors. It reminded me of the place my father had bought with his third wife, down in southern California.
As I surveyed the empty rooms, Floyd moved deeper into the house. “Dean,” he hissed after a handful of seconds. “Come here!” I followed him into a bright yellow kitchen.
“Look,” he said, pointing toward a pair of sliding glass doors. He kept his voice low. “There’s nothing in the backyard. Not a single footprint.”
Floyd was right. There was nothing but pristine white snow out there, stretching across the entire yard. Whoever was here had been here for a while. And they hadn’t had time to flee.
Floyd met my eyes, his bottom lip trembling slightly. He pointed up toward the second floor. His expression was easy to read: They’re up there. Waiting.
And, no doubt, they’d already heard us coming.
We returned to the foyer, and I nodded up toward the second-floor landing. “You and Devon are friends, right?” I whispered. “Call up to him. Let him know we aren’t a threat.”
Floyd nodded, his eyes still wide. “Devon?” he called. “You up there, man? What are you doing?”
We both held our breath, waiting for a reply. After a half minute of silence, I gestured toward the stairs. Floyd shook his head and backed away, making me take the lead.
The upstairs hallway was dark. Most of the connecting doors stood wide open, but the windows in each of the rooms had been boarded shut, blocking out the snow-white light. After my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I poked my head into a couple of rooms, finding them just as empty as the rooms downstairs.
Floyd put his hand on my shoulder and pointed to a door up ahead. It was the only closed door on the entire floor, and its position put it even with the downstairs entrance. It was the room we’d been watching from across the street. Devon’s room.
Floyd stepped up to the door and knocked. “Devon?” he called. “Seriously, man, what is this shit? What’s going on?” There was no reply. As the silence started to stretch, I watched the expression on Floyd’s face morph from tentative discomfort all the way to annoyance. “Fuck, man, we know you’re—” Floyd’s voice was cut short as he threw the door open, revealing yet another empty room.
The unshuttered window gave entry to a blinding white light, and I was left momentarily dazzled, trying to blink away the starbursts in my eyes. Floyd stepped into the room, looked left, then right, and immediately stormed out again. I could hear him rushing from room to room along the upstairs hallway, looking for Devon.
For my part, I turned slowly just inside the door, studying the walls, trying to figure out where that eerie blue light had come from. There weren’t any visible problems with the room—no ragged holes punched into the walls, no disembodied limbs—but that didn’t stop my heart from thumping hard inside my chest. I turned to my right and ran trembling fingers along the nearest wall. I didn’t know what I was feeling for. Something horrible. Something I couldn’t see.
“He’s not up here,” Floyd said, rushing back into the room. “There’s nobody up here.”
I stepped over to the window and stared out at the bright afternoon. “Is there an attic or a cellar?” I asked. My hands were still shaking with adrenaline, but I could feel my heartbeat starting to slow. “Is there someplace they could hide? I mean, they have to be here, right? We saw Devon just a couple of minutes ago. And that blue glow…”
“Hey, hey, hey!” Floyd exclaimed, a hint of surprise in his voice. “Did you see this?”
I turned away from the window and found him moving toward the far side of the room. There was something tucked away in the corner, something I hadn’t noticed earlier: a small metal console, about the size of a shoe box.
“It’s a radio,” Floyd said, settling down in front of the box. He hit a switch, and it hummed to life. A bright digital display illuminated the front panel, and static crackled from its speaker. “Some type of CB radio. Battery-powered. And that’s not all.” Floyd reached behind the radio and picked up a pair of binoculars. There was a worried look on his face as he handed them over; his eyes kept darting back and forth between my face and the sleek black piece of equipment. He understood exactly what the binoculars and radio meant.
I took the binoculars back over to the window and raised them to my eyes. I scanned across the front of the house, spending brief seconds on each of the upstairs windows before finally panning down to the open living-room blinds. I adjusted the focus, zooming in on the sofa. It was a good pair of binoculars. Staring through those high-quality lenses, I could make out the stains in the sofa’s upholstery. Hell, I could count the number of crumbs trapped between its cushions.
I spent two nights on that couch! I thought, letting out a frustrated grunt. Somebody could have been watching me the entire time.
I lowered the glasses and returned to Floyd’s side, giving him a faint head shake as I crouched down on my heels. He took the binoculars from my hand and set them back where he’d found them.
“I thought radios didn’t work here,” I said, nodding toward the console. “I thought the military was jamming all of the channels.”
“Yeah, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they were keeping some frequencies open so they could communicate with each other.” He frowned. “But they’d be monitoring those lines, keeping it all military all the time.”
“Do you think this is military business, then?” I asked, pointing to the radio.
“Devon? Military?” Floyd grunted in disbelief. “No way! I just can’t believe that.”
“Then who?” I asked. “Who was he talking to?”
Floyd shrugged and leaned forward, studying the radio more closely. There was a large “transmit” button on the front of the console, and the frequency was set to double zero. Floyd leaned over the top of the box and began running his hands along its back side. “Wait a second,” he muttered beneath his breath. “What do we have here?” He got up into a crouch and started moving his hands across the wall behind the console. “There’s a wire here, coming out of the radio.”
“An antenna?”
Floyd shook his head, more interested in following the line than answering my question.
I got up off my heels. I could see the wire now, a thin white line pressed into the angle between floor and wall. Once he got to the door, Floyd stood up straight, following the wire as it continued up along the outside of the door frame. The thin white line touched the ceiling, then continued down the length of the hallway, back the way we’d come.
“It’s held in place with staples,” he said. “We’ve got to follow it, find out where it goes.”
“Hold on a second,” I said, turning back toward the room. “We left the radio—”
I halted, shocked motionless before I could take a single step back into the room. The console was still lit, illuminated by the sharp digits glowing bright on its face. Double zeros, drawn out in glowing blue lines.
The light was bright enough to bathe the entire room in eerie electric blue.
I groaned, suddenly feeling very, very stupid.
It’s nothing but coincidence, I chastised myself. The glow in the apartment building, this room… it’s just a fucking color.
I shut off the radio and followed Floyd out of the room.
Floyd had a tiny flashlight on his key ring. He focused its narrow beam on the wire, tucked up against the ceiling, and started following it down the length of the hallway.
“Tell me about Devon,” I said as we followed the tiny white line. “I’ve barely seen him. It seems like he’s gone all the time.”
“Yeah, he hasn’t been around much. Not since you got here.” We reached the stairway, and Floyd traced the wire back down the wall, where it disappeared over the edge of the landing. “He’s always been a bit of a flake, but…” He stopped in his tracks and turned back toward me, a perplexed look appearing on his face. “Actually, he asked about you last night, asked about your photography. He wanted to know what you were planning to do with all of your pictures.”
Uneasy gooseflesh prickled up along my back. My pictures. Was that it? Was this all about me?
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. I told him the truth: I have no idea what you’re doing.” Floyd paused for a moment, his face contorting as he tried to piece it all together. “What’s going on, Dean? Why’s he spying on us? And who’s he talking to on that radio?” He held out his hands, then looked left and right, a gesture that encompassed the entire house. Then his voice dropped down to a whisper: “And where’d he go?”
“I don’t know. I’m new here, remember?”
Floyd stared at me for a couple of seconds. His eyes were cold and accusing, like he didn’t quite believe me.
“Really, Floyd,” I assured him. “I’m as lost as you are.”
Finally, after a couple more seconds, he nodded, relenting. Then he turned and started down to the foyer.
The wire crossed over the side of the landing and proceeded down the wall, continuing to a doorway recessed beneath the stairs. The wire disappeared inside, squeezing between door and door frame.
Floyd nodded me forward, once again making me take the lead. His eyes were wide, and they kept darting back and forth between me and the door. His nerves were contagious. I paused with my hand on the doorknob, suddenly paralyzed by fear and doubt.
Is Devon waiting for us? I wondered. Does he have a weapon?
Or is there something worse in there? The thought made my blood pump cold inside my chest. Something not Devon. Or just part of Devon. An arm or a face, jutting out from a broom closet wall.
I cast the image aside and pulled the door open, releasing a gust of cold air that buffeted my face, making my eyes water. On the other side of the door there was a stairway leading down to a cellar. Only a couple of rough-hewn steps were visible in the dark, and the smell of damp earth gusted up from below.
“Fuck,” Floyd grunted. “Are we really going down there?”
“That depends. Do you want answers?”
Floyd let out another grunt. “I don’t know. I’m getting pretty good at living with mystery.”
“C’mon,” I prodded. “Shine your light on the steps.”
Floyd’s flashlight was tiny, and it barely scratched the thick veil of darkness. I took the stairs one step at a time, pausing to feel ahead with the tips of my toes. Our footsteps did not echo in the dark; every sound was absorbed and consumed inside a heavy, damp silence. I paused when we hit the concrete floor and fumbled my camera from around my neck. I worked the buttons from memory, turning on the LCD display and scrolling back to one of the pictures of Devon inside the house’s snow-shrouded window. It was a bright picture, and it lit the display like a fluorescent panel. I turned the camera around and used it to illuminate our surroundings.
The cellar was only partially finished. The walls and floor on the near side of the room were smooth stretches of dingy gray concrete, and the ceiling overhead was an exposed grid of joists. Three-quarters of the way across the room, the concrete gave way to damp earth, breaking off in a ragged arc that surrounded a hole in the far wall. The hole was a gaping dark void—about five feet around—and it absorbed the light from my camera, swallowing every trace like a giant hungry mouth.
“A tunnel,” Floyd whispered in surprised wonder. “A motherfucking tunnel!” I heard his jacket rustle as he sat down at the base of the stairs.
The dirt floor slanted down into the tunnel’s mouth. I panned the light across its width, finally noticing the thin white wire. It entered the tunnel halfway up its wall.
“Where’s the dirt?” Floyd asked. His voice remained a thin, breathless whisper. “The cellar’s empty. Where’d they put the dirt?”
I panned the camera around the room. Floyd was right: there were no mounds of displaced dirt, no equipment, nothing at all to support the logistics of such a massive project. “I guess it’s on the other side,” I said, taking a step toward the tunnel’s mouth.
Floyd was at my side in a matter of seconds, grabbing my elbow before I could even reach the damp earth. “You’re not serious,” he hissed, still keeping his voice low. “We can’t go in there. We have no idea what might be waiting.”
“Devon went this way,” I said. “He had to. There was nowhere else he could go! How dangerous could it be?”
“He could be working with anyone, Dean. And if he saw us, if he knows we’re following…” I heard him choke down a nervous swallow. “And that’s just the human threat. You’ve heard all of the stories. You know what could be waiting for us in there.”
He was right. I clenched my hand around the camera and felt the dull pain of my wounds ratchet into a white-hot bolt of fire. After I loosened my grip, the pain of my wounds continued, radiating all the way up the length of my forearm. The dogs had a tunnel just like this, I reminded myself. What if they’re in there, waiting?
“Just a little ways,” I said. “Just to see where the wire goes.”
Floyd’s hand remained on my elbow, an unyielding vise, holding me in place.
“Don’t you want to know what Devon’s doing?” I pleaded. “Don’t you want to know who he’s working with and why they’re watching us?” After a moment of silence, I let my voice drop down into a whisper: “C’mon, Floyd. He was asking about me!”
Finally, Floyd’s grip loosened on my arm. “Just a little ways,” he whispered. “Just in and out.”
I nodded and started forward.
I tried to take pictures inside the tunnel, but the camera refused to focus in the dark and its flashes illuminated nothing but dirt—just dirt and more dirt, proceeding into the distance. I tried to take a candid shot of Floyd in the tunnel behind me, but he wouldn’t cooperate; he just pushed me forward with a frustrated growl.
The tunnel slanted down. Its walls were marked with long regular grooves that looked too precise to be the work of unaided hands. Some type of earthmoving machine, I thought. Or a finishing tool, something to even out the dirt. The thin white wire was embedded in one of these grooves, about shoulder-high in the right-hand wall.
“Do you know what Devon used to do?” I asked, trying to push aside the claustrophobic silence. “Before the city went to hell?”
“I… I don’t know,” Floyd said. His voice was hesitant, shaky, torn between anger and fear. “Mac says he saw him working at a Jiffy Lube once, before all of this started, but Devon never says…” Floyd trailed off, suddenly lost in thought. “Wait a minute! Do you think he could be involved in this somehow? I mean, really involved? Do you think he helped get it started, working for the military, or terrorists, or something like that?” He paused abruptly, and when he continued, that brief spark of excitement was gone from his voice. Now there was nothing but breathless terror. “Or maybe he didn’t even exist back before all of this started. Maybe—”
“Get a grip, Floyd,” I said. “You’re starting to sound crazy.” I swung the light forward, indicating the wire. “Let’s just follow the line and find out where it goes.”
Floyd grunted at my abrupt dismissal, but he didn’t complain, following me wordlessly into the continuing dark.
After a couple of hundred yards, the walls of the tunnel fell away, opening into a circular room about ten feet wide. A chill broke over my flesh as soon as we entered; it felt at least ten degrees colder inside this small space. The ceiling remained low, and we had to stay hunched over to keep from hitting our heads.
I slowly panned the camera from left to right, spilling light across the dirt floor. There were tunnels reaching out in every direction, like spokes sprouting from a circular hub.
“What the hell is going on?” Floyd whispered, moving up to my side. “Who could have done this?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I wouldn’t even think it was possible.” I moved to the mouth of the nearest tunnel. Its dimensions seemed to match the earlier passage: about five feet around, with a flattened floor. A trickle of wind blew in from the darkness. It smelled of autumn leaves and fresh clean snow. “There are no supports on the walls or ceiling, nothing to prevent a collapse.” I drew my finger through the damp earth at my side, watching as it spilled to the floor. “Nobody would do it this way. It’s too dangerous. Damn near suicide.”
I turned and found Floyd perched on his knees in the middle of the room, his eyes pointed down at the floor. It was a strange position, and for a moment I thought I’d caught him in midprayer. Or maybe he’s fainting, I thought. Maybe this is all just too much for him and he’s ready to topple face-first into the dirt. Then he raised his hand and beckoned me over. He had his little flashlight out, and he was shining it down at a box embedded in the middle of the floor.
The box was constructed from matte-black industrial-grade plastic. It had eight thin white wires sprouting from its squat body—two on each side—and a corresponding row of pinpoint LEDs glowed on its top. I turned and raised my camera, following a wire across the floor and into one of the gaping maws.
“It’s a junction box,” Floyd said. “It links wires from all of these tunnels.”
“A network?”
“A secret underground network,” Floyd said, glancing up at the dirt above our heads. “And I mean that in both a literal and figurative sense.”
After a moment of silence—both of us lost in thought—I stood up and started taking pictures of the box. “For Charlie,” I muttered when Floyd glanced up. “He knows about this type of shit, right? He might be able to tell us something.” The light from Floyd’s flashlight helped me focus on the box. I got a couple of midrange shots, then cranked the lens down into macro mode to catch the finer details.
When I was done, I settled back into a crouch and started to flip through the pictures on the LCD screen. The pictures looked good. The focus was sharp, especially on the macro shots, and I could make out a product number on the box’s bottom edge: PDL-0001A.
As the seconds stretched into minutes, Floyd started to fidget at my side. He stood up and paced the length of the room a couple of times, then moved over to the mouth of one of the tunnels. He pointed his flashlight down the tunnel’s length, but its meager light did nothing to illuminate that inky-black space.
When I finished checking out my shots, I glanced up and saw his outline in the dark. Its edges were barely visible, gradients of gray in a sea of black. It was a beautiful scene: Floyd standing at the mouth of the tunnel, staring into its deepest, darkest heart. I raised the camera and took a couple of pictures. The strobe flash shattered the darkness, replacing black with omnipresent earthy brown. And in those brief instances, Floyd’s bright clothing stood out like a neon sign, a flare of color in an otherwise drab world.
Suddenly, Floyd let out a startled gasp and stumbled back from the opening. The gasp was a panicked, frantic sound, a loud hisssssssss, like the sound of gas leaking from a pressurized tank.
He dropped his flashlight, plunging the chamber into complete and total darkness.
I fumbled with the camera, turning it back around and frantically working the buttons with my uninjured hand. By the time I had it lit, Floyd was at my side, his hand gripping my arm. “Did you see him?” he whispered, his face pressed up against my ear. “Down the tunnel? In the flash?”
“I didn’t see a thing,” I said. “What is it? What did you see?”
“It can’t be,” he whispered. “Those eyes, those eyes… like they were underwater, like they’ve been underwater for a year. Since… since…” Then a deep shiver ratcheted through his bones, stealing his voice.
And I could see his fear. All of it. It was in his eyes, the scathing, terrified depths of the thing, that primal, bestial terror. He watched the tunnel for a couple more seconds, then abruptly turned my way, fixing me with that same unbreakable stare.
“Let’s go. Let’s go right now!”
He pulled me to my feet, not waiting for an answer, and plunged us into the nearest tunnel.