The Manhattan Hunt Club

CHAPTER 35

Jeff shut off the tiny penlight that had been in Monsignor McGuire's small backpack and closed the cleric's notebook. At first he hardly believed what he'd read, but as he slowly turned the pages, he realized that every page bore out the strange story Jinx had told him. He even recognized the name listed on the page before the one that was headed with his own. Jeff knew that Tony Sanchez had been in the Tombs before he himself arrived there. They'd been in adjoining cells for a few days, and the night before Sanchez was to be transferred to Rikers Island, he'd been bragging about how good his lawyer was.

"You shoulda heard him, man," he'd crowed. "Made it sound like it was all the bitch's fault. Shit, man, time he was done, the assholes on the jury figured she musta cut herself up!"

"But they still sent you up, didn't they?" Jeff had asked.

Sanchez's grin had barely flickered. "What's a fuckin‘ year? I'll be out in six months."

But a week or so later someone had told him that Sanchez escaped from Rikers. "Don't know how-dogs tracked ‘im to the bridge and that was it-like the fucker just vanished."

But according to the book Jeff was now holding, Sanchez hadn't vanished at all. He'd been "bagged" in something called Sector 1 of Level 2 at 11:32 p.m. on November twelfth.

The name of the victorious hunter was "Rattler."

A cold numbness had spread through him as he turned the pages of the bizarre logbook, but coming to the hand-sketched maps that filled the last few pages of the book, the numbness was forgotten as he realized what he was holding-the key to the maze of tunnels. As he studied them, though, his hope began to fade, since he had no way of knowing where on the map he, Jagger, and Jinx were located. But on the final page of the section containing the maps, he thought he saw a pattern emerge. He looked more closely, struggling to remember once again the route he'd used when he went to search for water. Slowly-so slowly that at first he thought he was imagining it-the path in his memory began to emerge from the jumble of lines.

Each page mapped a small sector of a specific level, with lines representing tunnels and circles marking the places where shafts connected one level to another. He felt the heat of excitement as he recognized their exact location-even the alcove in which Jagger had hidden was marked on the map. His excitement growing, he turned back through the pages of maps, piecing them together, matching the shafts marked on one page to those on the next, linking ends of the tunnels in the margins of the page until slowly the entire area began to take shape in his mind. And as the fog of confusion that had lain over the labyrinth began to lift, another memory stirred in him-a memory of the class he'd taken in the last semester before he was arrested.

They had been discussing the problems peculiar to construction in the heart of the city, where every site was often surrounded on two or even three sides by other buildings that could not be damaged by either the demolition of the existing structure or the construction of the new building. One morning his class had left the campus to look at a block where the stores had been vacated and boarded up but the demolition crews had not yet begun their work.

Now Jeff tried to recall the details of a new skyscraper's construction schedule. And as it came back to him, so did the beginnings of a plan start to develop.

"It might work," he whispered.

"What might work?" Jagger growled.

"There might be a way to get out of here."

Jagger glowered down at the corpse of Monsignor McGuire. "Only if we can kill ‘ em all. Don't even know how many there are."

"Five, according to this book." Jeff looked at the crumpled body, and when he spoke, his voice was devoid of emotion. "Which means there are only four left." His eyes lingered on the lifeless figure, and he tried to summon up some sorrow or pity for the man. But the contents of the priest's logbook had drained him of any compassion. "You got him with just the spike. Now we've got a gun with a laser sight, and a night vision scope as well."

"And they got the same stuff, and there's four of ‘em," Jagger argued.

"So what do you want to do, just wait here for them to find us?"

"Least that way we could pick ‘em off one by one."

"If they all come," Jeff replied. "But if they're all working different areas, then we could wait here forever." His eyes fixed on the blisters that covered Jagger's forehead. Some of the broken ones were already turning septic, the wounds swelling and reddening. "And those burns have to be tended to. God only knows what's already gotten into them." As if to emphasize his words, some kind of flying insect landed on Jagger's face and began probing one of the wounds, as if searching either for food or a place to lay its eggs.

Jagger smashed it, crushing the insect and spreading a stain of blood and pus across his forehead.

"Jeff's right," Jinx said. "We've got to get out of here."

Jagger glowered at her. What the fuck did she know? he thought. She was just a kid… except not such a kid that she wasn't trying to move in on Jeff. Did she think he couldn't see how much she wanted Jeff? Well, it wouldn't happen-he'd see to that. Muttering a curse, Jagger heaved himself to his feet, then had to reach out and steady himself against the wall as a wave of dizziness broke over him. He eased himself back down on the concrete shelf that was the floor of the alcove.

"Can you walk?" Jeff asked.

Jagger's eyes, closed to narrow slits, were fixed on Jinx. "I can walk," he said. "And that ain't all I can do," he added.

"Try anything and I'll-" Jinx began with more bravado than she felt, but Jeff didn't let her finish.

"If you can walk, then you're going to do it," he said to Jagger, his voice grim. He gazed at the muck that covered the floor, and sniffed at the putrid air that filled the tunnel. "We've got one sandwich and the priest's canteen. When that's gone, you're going to get worse. So let's see if we can get out while you can still stay on your feet."

Jagger heaved himself upright once more, swayed for a moment, but then steadied. "Let's go."

With the maps in the priest's log firmly in his mind, and the rifle slung over his shoulder, Jeff moved off into the darkness, Jinx right behind him, Jagger behind her.

A shiver ran through Heather Randall that had nothing to do with the temperature. Indeed, the temperature in the tunnels never seemed to vary at all. It was as if the climate beneath the city had reached a strange equilibrium-always stale and humid. Most of the people they'd seen were alone, moving slowly along the passages. Their heads were invariably down, and though they might have been looking for something-a dropped coin or a scrap of food-there was an aura about them that told her they had long ago given up searching for anything.

Every now and then she and Keith had come upon an alcove that was occupied. The first time it happened, Heather had felt a sense of shock and outrage that anyone should have to live in a nest of rags hidden away in a world of eternal twilight.

The man in the alcove, though, had barely glanced at her before turning away, his hands more tightly clutching the bottle he was nursing.

Now they were standing in one of the pools of light while Keith studied the maps he'd found in the notebook. As he pondered the diagrams, Heather uneasily searched the shadowy darkness that lay beyond the dim glow of the light for any sign of danger.

A memory of something Jeff had once said suddenly came to her: it's safer to be in the dark and peer into the light than the other way around.

The thought had induced the shiver, and as the icy finger ran over her skin, she scanned the darkness again, wishing that she, like the man in the alcove and the rats she could hear scurrying along the floor, were in the darkness rather than the light.

"I think we're right here." Though he barely spoke above a whisper, Keith's voice echoed off the walls, startling Heather. His right forefinger was touching an intersection on the map, and as she studied it, she tried to remember the turns they'd made, the ladders they'd used. But it was all muddled in her mind, and besides…

"What good does it do?" She unconsciously spoke the question out loud, then added, "What does it matter where we are if we don't know where we're going?"

"According to this, most of their ‘hunts' wind up on what they call Level Four. Near as I can figure, we're on Level Two." He tipped his head toward the darkness ahead. "There should be a shaft up there somewhere."

Wordlessly, Heather followed Keith deeper into the darkness, and as they moved from the pool of light into the concealing darkness, her anxiety eased.

They came to the shaft, and Keith shined his light into its depths. The walls were slick with slime, and some of the rungs embedded in the concrete had rusted completely through. "I'll go first," Keith said. "If they'll hold me, they'll hold you."

Heather gazed down into the black pit and shook her head. "I'll go first. We'll tie the rope around my waist so if a rung breaks…" Her voice died away, but Keith understood what she was saying. If he was above, at least she'd have a chance. If it was he who fell, there'd be no chance at all. His weight would probably just pull her in after him.

As she tested the knot a minute or so later, Heather peered into the inky well below. Then she crouched down and extended a leg, feeling for the lowest rung she could touch. As Keith held the line taut, she found a rung and eased her other foot down, while still supporting her weight on the lip of the shaft. "Ready?" she asked.

"Ready."

She shifted her weight from her elbows to her feet.

The rung held.

Her fingers closing onto the top rung, she lowered herself deeper into the shaft.

The next rung held, too, and the one after that.

She began moving more quickly, her confidence growing, Keith playing out the rope as quickly as she descended.

Then, so suddenly that she had no time to prepare herself, one of the rungs gave way beneath her, snapping away from the wall.

She felt herself falling, and a scream erupted from her throat, a visceral cry of terror cut suddenly off as the loop around her waist jerked upward, caught under her armpits, and snapped tight. She swung loose then, dangling in the darkness, until her hand found a rung and her fingers instinctively closed around it. Pulling herself close to the wall, Heather clutched the rung with both hands while her feet felt for another. Meanwhile, she gasped to catch the breath that the tightening rope had driven from her lungs.

A wave of dizziness came over her as she gazed down the shaft, and for a moment she was afraid she might fall again. Then Keith's voice drifted down from above. "You okay?"

A groan was the only sound Heather could muster until the dizziness passed. Finding her voice, she said, "A rung broke, but I'm all right now."

She took a deep breath and cautiously continued down, but now tested each rung before trusting it with her weight.

One more broke away, and two bent but held. Then she was at the bottom. Untying the rope, she called to Keith, and he pulled it up. Then he lowered it again, this time with the backpack attached to the end.

Two more of the rungs gave way as Keith made his way down the ladder, and when he dropped out of the shaft, he looked up grimly. "We're not going to get back up there," he said, then grinned in the gloom. "But on the other hand, no one else is going to be able to come down, either." His gaze shifted to the tunnels, and he studied the maps for a moment. "That way," he decided.

Heather looked at the map, but could see nothing in it that hinted about which way to go. "Why?" she asked.

Keith shrugged. "To tell you the truth, I don't have a clue. But we can't stay here." With Heather following, he headed into the darkness.

They'd gone no more than a hundred yards when they found the body. At first Keith thought it was another of the derelicts who were everywhere in the tunnels, either asleep or passed out. But shining his flashlight full on the man, he saw the crimson stain that soaked the clothes, and when he knelt down to look more closely, he noted the deep gash that had been slashed into the dead man's chest.

He was checking the inside pockets of the man's jacket when Heather gasped. He looked up at her and saw that it wasn't the gaping wound at which she was staring, but the man's face.

"You know him, too." It was a statement, not a question.

"Monsignor McGuire," she said softly. "He-he runs a shelter for the homeless."

But Keith wasn't listening. He was paging through the notebook again, turning to the page on which his son's name had been entered. He stared at the list of hunters. Adder, Mamba, Rattler, Viper, and Cobra. "This guy's another friend of your dad's, right?"

Heather nodded.

Keith looked at the list again, remembering the man he'd killed earlier.

Carey Atkinson.

Now here was Monsignor McGuire, with a hole torn in his chest.

Atkinson and McGuire.

Adder and Mamba?

He sensed Heather close behind him, felt her breath on the back of his neck as she, too, stared at the page of the open notebook.

And heard her gasp as she, too, made the connection.

"It can't be," she whispered. "My father can't be doing this."

But even as she said it, she knew that no matter how often she repeated the words, the seed that had taken root in her mind would continue to grow.