Nocturnal

Homecoming

Rex let his fingertips trace along rough tunnel walls made of dirt, rocks, mismatched bricks and half-rotted timbers. The timbers formed steep, inverted V-shapes that supported larger boulders above. The whole thing looked horribly fragile and delicate, as if it might collapse at any moment.

“This doesn’t look very safe,” he said. Sly was ahead of him, Pierre behind him and Sir Voh and Fort in the rear. Rex didn’t need to ride Pierre anymore, nor could he — Pierre had to duck to get through the tight space. The big creature looked up frequently, constantly checking his head height. He seemed quite wary of bumping the timbers above them.

“It’s safe,” Sly said. “Except for this.” He stopped, pointed to an overhead boulder that had been spray-painted with an orange arrow pointing back the way they had come. “The tunnels are all set up to collapse if we knock down supporting rocks. We call them lynchpins. If you knock this one down, the entire tunnel behind us collapses.”

Rex wondered what it would be like to feel all of this weight falling on him, crushing him, suffocating him. “Why are these here?”

“We have lairs all over the city,” Sly said. “But only a few tunnels lead home. If the monster discovers any tunnels, we destroy them so he can’t trace the tunnels back to where most of us live.”

The lynchpin rock looked like it might fall out at any moment. “Do they ever fall down by themselves?”

Sly smiled. “Sometimes. That is our existence, being forced to live underground like animals.”

“What happens when there’s an earthquake?”

Sly shrugged his big, blanket-covered shoulders. “When there are earthquakes, people die.” He turned and continued back down the tunnel. Rex and the others followed.

Rex lost track of how long they walked. The narrow tunnel made for slow going, especially considering the size of Pierre and Fort. Sir Voh seemed to compress on Fort’s shoulders, to flatten somehow, take up less space. At times Rex had to stoop over and walk in a crouch, which meant Pierre, Fort, even Sly had to crawl through the dirt. It probably explained why their clothes and blankets were so tattered and filthy.

Crawling deep in the dirt, like insects — this was no way for his family to live.

Finally, the narrow tunnel opened up into a big cavern. Rex stood tall and looked around, amazed at what he saw. The cavern was about as big as a city block. The uneven ceiling rose thirty or forty feet above. Dim light filled the space, cast off by assorted light fixtures and naked bulbs attached to any number of things: chunks of dirty concrete, old logs, a rusted-out old streetcar straight from a gangster movie.

And in the middle of the cavern, encrusted with lights of all shapes and sizes, sat a pair of wooden ships. Big ships. They looked old, like the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria he’d learned about in school.

Neither ship had masts. The closest one pointed away at an angle, its black hull cracked and broken in a hundred places. The bottom was buried in the ground, as if it were sailing a sea of dirt, frozen in time like a movie on pause. The deck angled a little to the left, matching the ship’s slight tilt. On the ship’s wide back end, Rex saw chewed-up wooden letters that spelled out the name Alamandralina.

To the right of that ship sat the second, this one rolled all the way over on its side so the ruined deck pointed up at a forty-five-degree angle. The hull looked barely intact, as if some giant had picked up the whole ship, lifted it up a hundred feet in the air, then dropped it to crack like a melon hitting pavement. He could only make out a few of the letters on the back of this one: an R, then space for two missing letters, then an AR, another space, then an O.

Rex saw lights coming from inside the ships. Through the cracked hulls, he saw beds, walls and makeshift doors. All these things were level with the ground — people clearly lived in there, even though no one seemed to be home.

Some cars were parked in the space between the ships: a battered school bus with windows blacked out, and two pickup trucks that looked like they belonged in a scrapyard.

All this, under the streets of San Francisco? And this place looked old, like it had existed since those ships actually sailed the ocean’s waters. A hidden world that had always been here, just waiting for him to find it.

“Sly, this is amazing.”

“This is Home,” Sly said. “Welcome to your kingdom.”

Rex tried to take it all in. So stunning, so overwhelming. But if this was his “kingdom,” where were his subjects?

“It’s empty,” he said. “I thought there would be more of us.”

Sly laughed, a hissing, scraping thing that a few days ago would have made Rex piss his pants in fear.

“There is,” Sly said. “Tons more. They’re in the arena. That’s where we’re going, to announce to the people that you have come to lead us to a better day.”

Sly kept saying that phrase. What did it mean? Maybe it was like in the fantasy novels, where a chosen one led people to overcome evil. If it was a prophecy, Rex hoped he could fulfill it.

“The arena,” Rex said. “How do we get there?”

“More tunnels,” Sly said. “It will take us a little while. When we’re there, everyone can see you and you can see Mommy. Hillary said it was real important you meet Mommy.”

“Who’s Hillary?”

Sly grinned his toothy grin. “She’s the reason we came to get you, my king. You’ll like her. But this won’t all be fun — Firstborn will be there. He will not be happy to see you. But don’t worry, we will protect you.”

Rex looked at Sly, then at Pierre, at Sir Voh and Fort. These men were so big, so strong. How could Firstborn possibly threaten them all?

From the tilted ship, an echoing voice called out. “My king!”

A little man stood on the high rail. As Rex watched, he jumped off and dropped to the ground twenty feet below. The man should have splatted, but he landed on his feet and didn’t even slow down. He ran forward, covering the distance faster than Rex would have thought possible.

He’s really fast. Marco was fast, too. Is everyone like that?

The man stopped a few feet away. Rex felt the ba-da-bum-bummmm in his chest. Such a great feeling! This man was family.

He was short, only a few inches taller than Rex. He had a bald head with yellow, mottled skin. His nose was so strange — a hooked, hard thing that curved down and out to end in a sharp point. It started out yellow where it grew out of his face, fading to black at the sharp tip. It was more like a beak than a nose. Rex saw two little holes above the beak, just below and inside the eyes. Ah, those were his nostrils.

The man smiled a wide smile. Behind the wickedly curved beak was a mouth full of tiny, stubby teeth. He wore raggedy clothes, just like the rest, all dirty and smelly and torn up. His right arm was in a white sling. Rex could tell that he was young, like Sly and the others.

“My king! I am Sucka! I have fought and killed for you.” He stuck out his left hand, the skin there as yellow as his face. He wanted to shake Rex’s hand, like Rex was a grown-up or something.

Rex shook it.

Sly reached out and held Sucka’s left shoulder. “Sucka proved himself, my king. He killed Issac and the mother of Alex. Then he fought the monster himself.”

Rex drew in a surprised breath. “You fought the monster?”

Sucka grinned and nodded. “He shot me with the magic arrow! It was real scary. He would have taken me, but a cop came onto the roof just in time. I jumped away. I haven’t healed as quick as normal, but they got the magic arrow out and it’s getting better.”

Sly’s green hand mussed Sucka’s nonexistent hair. “Sucka is a brave one. He’ll serve you well.”

Sucka’s face turned a pale orange. He was blushing.

Sly’s smile faded. He looked very serious. “My king, are you ready to go to the arena?”

It would be dangerous. Firstborn would be waiting, but Rex’s new friends would protect him.

He nodded. “I am. Take me to meet my people.”