Wildcards

DOWN DEEP

by Edward Bryant and Leanne C. Harper

As she dodged cabs, crossing Central Park West and entering the park, Rosemary Muldoon knew she was in for a difficult afternoon. She distractedly maneuvered through a late-afternoon mob of dog-walkers gathered on the sidewalk and looked for Bagabond.

As an intern with New York's Social Services Department, Rosemary got all the interesting cases, the ones no one else would handle. Bagabond, the enigmatic transient she had drawn this afternoon, was about the worst. Bagabond had to be at least sixty, and smelled as if she hadn't bathed in half that time. That was something Rosemary had never gotten used to. Her family was not what one could call nice, but each person bathed daily. Her father insisted on it. And nobody refused her father.

She had been drawn to the detritus of society precisely because of their alienation. Few had any connection with their pasts or their families. Rosemary recognized this but told herself that it did not matter what the reason was; the result was the important thing. She could help them.

Bagabond was standing beneath a grove of oaks. As Rosemary approached her, she thought she saw Bagabond gesturing and talking to a tree. Shaking her head, Rosemary pulled out Bagabond's file. It was slim. Real name unknown, age unknown, place of origin unknown, history unknown. According to the sparse information, the woman lived on the streets. The best guess of the previous social worker was that Bagabond had been released from a state institution to provide space. The bag lady was paranoid but probably not dangerous. Because Bagabond had refused to give any information, there had been no way to help her. Rosemary put away the paperwork and marched toward the old woman dressed in layers of ragged clothing.

"Hello, Bagabond. My name is Rosemary and I'm here to help you." Her gambit failed. Bagabond turned her head and stared at two kids throwing a Frisbee.

"Don't you want a nice, safe, warm place to sleep? With hot meals and people to talk to?" The only response she received was from the biggest cat she had ever seen outside a zoo. It had walked over to Bagabond and was now staring at Rosemary.

"You could take a bath." The bag lady's hair was filthy. "But I need to know your name." The huge lack cat looked at Bagabond and then glared at Rosemary.

"Why don't you come with me and we'll talk?" The cat began to growl.

"Come on…" As Rosemary reached toward Bagabond, the cat sprang. Rosemary jumped back, tripping over the handbag she'd set on the ground. Lying on her back, she could see eye to eye with the very angry feline.

"Nice kitty. Stay right there." As she started to get up, the black cat was joined by a slightly smaller calico cat.

"Okay. I'll see you another time." Rosemary grabbed her bag and the file and retreated.

Her father never understood why she wanted to deal with the poor of the city, the "filth," as he called them. Tonight she was going to have to suffer through another chaperoned evening with her parents and her fiance. An arranged marriage, in this day and age. She wished it was easier to stand up to her father and say no. Her family was a creature of tradition. She just did not fit in.

Rosemary had her own apartment which, until recently, she had shared with C.C. Ryder. C.C. was a vocal hippie. Rosemary had made sure that her father and C.C. never met.

The consequences were too horrible to consider. Keeping her two lives separate was essential.

It was a line of thought that took her too close to the pain. C.C. was gone. She had disappeared into the city. Rosemary was frightened for C.C. and for herself, for what it meant about the city.

Rosemary looked up from the park bench where she had collapsed. It was time to get the file back to the office and head for Columbia and class.

"What a terrific night." Lombardo "Lucky Lummy" Lucchese was feeling great, just great. After two whole years of working numbers and small-time protection, he had at last made it into the foremost of the Five Families. They knew talent and he had plenty. Walking down 81st toward the park with his three friends, he was on top of the world.

He had to go pay his respects to his fiancee, Maria. What a mouse! But a mouse who was the only child of Don Carlo Gambione could be very valuable in the years to come. Later he would celebrate with his buddies. Now he had to get some cash so he could buy mousy Maria some nice flowers to show his devotion. Maybe carnations.

"I'm gonna go downstairs. Pick up some money," Lummy said.

"Want some company?" Joey "No-Nose" Manzone asked. "Nah. You kiddin'? After next week, I'll be in the big money. I just wanna do one more job. For old time's sake. See ya later."

Splashing through oil-iridescent puddles, Lummy whistled as he swung along toward the illuminated globe marking the stairs to the 81st Street subway station. Nothing could bring him down tonight.

What a perfectly dreadful evening, Sarah Jarvis thought. The sixty-eight-year-old woman had never in her life expected to be invited to an Amway party. The very thought. It had taken hours for her friend and her to leave. Of course, it was raining by that time and, of course, there was not an on-duty cab to be found. Her friend lived in the next building. Sarah had to go all the way uptown to Washington Heights.

Sarah hated the subway. That stale smell always nauseated her. She disliked the noisy parts of the city anyway, and the subway was among the loudest. Tonight, though, everything was quiet. Alone on the platform, Sarah shivered under her twee jacket.

Peering over the edge of the platform and along the tunnel, she thought she saw the light of the uptown AA local. Something was there, but it seemed to move so slowly. Sarah turned away and looked at the advertising placards. She examined the poster calling for the reelection of that nice Mr. Nixon. In the adjacent newspaper vending machines, the headlines told of burglars breaking into a Washington hotel and apartment house. Watergate? What a funny name for a building, she thought. The Daily News led with a story about the so-called Subway Vigilante. The police were attributing five slayings over the past week to the mysterious killer. The victims had all been drug dealers and other criminals. The murders had all taken place in the subways. Sarah shuddered. The city was quite different than it had been in her childhood.

First she heard the steps, clattering down the stairs and past the deserted token booth. Then whistling, a peculiar tuneless drone, as the person entered the station. Despite herself, she was caught between apprehension and relief. Somewhat ashamed of her reaction, she decided she wouldn't mind a little human company.

As soon as she saw him, she was not so sure. Sarah had never been all that fond of black leather jackets, particularly those worn by slightly greasy, smirking young men. She turned her back firmly and focused on the wall across the tracks.

As the old woman turned her back, Lucky Lummy grinned broadly and touched the tip of his tongue to his upper lip.

"Hey, lady, got a light?"

"No."

One corner of Lummy's mouth twitched as he moved toward her back. "Come on, lady, be nice."

He missed the tension gathering in her shoulders as Sarah remembered that self-defense class she had attended last winter.

"Just give me the purse, lad-aiee!" He screamed as Sarah turned and crushed his instep with her sensible but sophisticated beige pump. Lummy jerked back and aimed a punch at her face. Sarah evaded him by stepping backward and slipping on something slimy. Lummy grinned and started toward her.

Wind rushed past them from the tunnel as the AA train approached the station.

Neither noticed that a dozen people had all managed to get to the subway entrance simultaneously. Most of the crowd had attended a late showing of The Godfather and were continuing an animated discussion of whether or not Coppola had exaggerated the Mafia's role in modern crime. Someone who hadn't been at the screening was a transit worker who had had a long and trying day. He just wanted to go home and get dinner, not necessarily in that order. The newspapers had been pushing again; even that joker Rights stuff couldn't keep them occupied all the time. The transit man had been pulled off his regular track-checking duties to spend eighteen hours searching vainly for alligators in sewers and subway tunnels, conduit shafts, and deep utility holes. He mentally cursed his employers for kowtowing to the sensationalist press, and especially cursed the bird-dogging reporters he'd finally ditched.

The transit worker hung back a little, trying to stay out of the melee as the group fumbled for tokens and started through the gates. The moviegoers chattered as they went.

With a roar and braking screech of metal on metal, the AA local burst out of the tunnel.

On the platform, all manner of people confronted each other. Swearing in Italian, Lummy let go of his victim and looked around for a bolt-hole.

The first two couples had entered and were staring at the scene in front of them. One of the men moved toward Lucky Lummy as the other man grabbed his date and tried to retreat.

The doors of the local hissed open. At this time of night, there were few passengers on the train and no one got of. "There's never a transit cop when you need one," said the would-be rescuer. Momentarily, Lummy considered leaping for the punk and punching out his lights. Instead he feinted at the man, then half-limped, half-ran into the last car. The doors snapped closed and the train began to move. It might have been the light, but the bright grafitti on the sides seemed to change.

From inside the car, Lucky Lummy laughed and gestured obscenely at Sarah, who was feeling for bruises and trying to rearrange her soiled clothing. Lummy aimed a second gesture at the woman's inadvertent rescuers as the entire group converged on Sarah.

Abruptly Lummy's face contorted with fear and then outright terror as he began beating on the doors. The man who had tried to stop Lummy caught one last glimpse of him clawing at the rear door of the car as the train sped into darkness.

"What a creep!" said the date of the would-be rescuer. "Was he one of those jokers?"

"Naw," said his friend. "Just a garden-variety asshole." Everyone froze as they heard the screams from the uptown tunnel. Over the diminishing roar of the local, they could hear Lummy's hopeless, agonized cries. The train vanished. But the screams lasted until at least 83rd Street. The transit worker moved toward the downtown tunnel as the hero of the hour was congratulated by the mostly unharmed Sarah, as well as by the rest of the onlookers. Another transit employee came down the steps at the other end of the platform.

"Hey!" he yelled. "Sewer Jack! Jack Robicheaux. Don't you ever sleep?"

The exhausted man ignored him and let himself through a metal access door. As he walked down the tunnel, he began shedding his clothes. A watcher might have thought she had seen a man squatting down and crawling along the damp floor of the tunnel, a man who had grown a long snout filled with sharp, misshapen teeth and a muscular tail capable of smashing the watcher into jam. But no one saw the flash of greenish-gray scales as the erstwhile transit worker joined the darkness and was gone.

Back on the 81st Street platform, the spectators were still so transfixed by the echoes of Lummy's dying screams that few noted the rumbling, bass roar from the other direction.

Her last class over, Rosemary walked wearily toward the 116th Street subway entrance. One more task completed for today. Now she was on her way to her father's apartment to see her fiance. She had never had much enthusiasm for that, but these days she had little enthusiasm for anything at all. Rosemary moved through the days wishing that something in her life would be resolved.

She shifted her armload of books to her right arm as, onehanded, she sifted through her purse for a token. Walking through the gate, she paused, standing to one side to stay out of the path of the other students. Judging from the placards carried by a number of the people, the latest antiwar rally must have just ended. Rosemary noted some apparently normal kids carrying signs lettered with the joker Brigade's informal slogan: LAST TO GO-FIRST TO DIE.

C.C. had always been into that. She had even sung her songs at a few of the less-rowdy gatherings. One day she had even brought home a fellow activist, a guy named Fortunato.

While it was nice that the man was involved with the joker Rights movement, Rosemary didn't like pimps, geishas or no geishas, in her apartment. It had caused one of the few fights she had ever had with C.C. In the end C.C. had agreed to check with Rosemary more closely about future dinner guests.

C.C. Ryder had tried and tried to convince Rosemary to become active, but Rosemary believed that helping a few people directly could do as much good as standing around shouting condemnations of the "Establishment." Probably a lot more good. Rosemary knew she came from a conservative family. Her roommate rarely let her forget it.

Rosemary took a deep breath and launched herself into the flood of people. All the late classes had evidently gotten out at the same time.

As Rosemary walked onto the platform, she moved around the rear of the crowd so she could end up at the far side of the waiting area. She didn't feel like being that close to people right now. Moments later she felt the flood of dank tunnel air and shivered inside her damp sweater. Deafening, depressing, the local swept by her. All the cars had been defaced, but the last car was even more peculiarly decorated. Rosemary was reminded of the tattooed woman in the Ringling Brothers show she had seen in the old Garden. She had often wondered at the psychology of the kids who wrote on the sides of the trains. Sometimes she didn't like what their words revealed. New York was not always a nice place to live.

I won't think about it. She thought about it. The image of C.C. lying comatose in the I.C. ward of St. Jude's glittered in her mind. She saw the shiny life-support machines. Because C.C. had had no relatives to notify, Rosemary had even been there when the nurses changed the dressings. She remembered the bruises, the black and poisonously blue patches that covered most of C.C.'s body. The doctors were unsure exactly how many times the young woman had been raped. Rosemary had wanted to empathize. She couldn't. She wasn't even sure how to begin. All she could do was to wait and hope. And then C.C. had vanished from the hospital.

The last car looked to be empty. As Rosemary started toward it, she glanced at the graffito. She stopped dead, her eyes tracking the words written on the dark side of the car:

Parsley, sage, Rosemary? Time.

Time is for others, not for rne.

"C. C.! What?" Disregarding the other people who had spotted the unoccupied car, she pushed her way to the doors. They were closed. Rosemary dropped her books and tried to claw the doors open. She felt a nail break. Failing, she beat on the doors until the train began to pull slowly out of the station.

"Not"

Rosemary's eyes filled with tears at the final sight of her name and another of C.C.'s lyrics:

You can't fight the end, But you can take revenge.

Rosemary said nothing else, only stared after the train. She looked down at her fists. The apparently steel door had been soft and yielding, warm. Had someone given her acid?

Was it a coincidence? Was C.C. living underground? Was C.C. alive at all?

It was a long time before the next train came.

He hunted in the near-darkness.

The hunger was upon him; the hunger that seemed never to be fully satisfied. And so he hunted.

Dimly, ever so faintly, he recalled a time and a place when it had been different. He had been someone-what was that?-something else.

He looked, but saw little. In this gloom and especially in the foul water choked with debris, his eyes served little use. More important were the tastes and smells, the tiny particles that told him both what lay in the distance meals to seek patiently-and of the immediate satisfactions that hovered, unsuspecting, just beyond the length of his snout.

He could hear the vibrations: the powerful, slow movements from side to side as his tail muscled through the water; the crushing, but distant waves beating down from the city above; the myriad tiny actions of food scurrying about in the darkness.

The filthy water broke around his wide, flat snout, the current streaming to either side of the raised nostrils. Occasionally the transparent membranes would slide down across the protruding eyes, then slip up again.

As large as he was-barely able to fit through some of the tunnels he had traversed during this time of feeding-he made very little noise. Tonight most of the sounds that accompanied him came from the prey, were cried out during the devouring. His nostrils gave him the first inkling of the feast to come, but was shortly followed by messages from his ears. Although he hated to leave this sanctuary that covered nearly all of his body, he knew he must go where the food was. The mouth of another tunnel loomed to one side. There was barely enough room in the passageway for even so flexible a body as his to turn and enter the new watercourse. The water became shallower and ended altogether within two body-lengths of the entrance.

It didn't matter. His legs worked well enough, and he could move almost as silently as before. He could still smell the prey waiting for him somewhere ahead. Nearer. Near. Very close. He could hear sounds: squeaks, squeals, the scurrying of feet, the brush of furry bodies against stone.

They wouldn't expect him; there were few predators in these tunnels deep down. He was upon them in an instant, the first one crushed between his jaws, its death-cry warning the others. The prey scattered in panic. Except for those without escape routes, there was no attempt to fight back. They ran. Most who lived longest scurried away from the monster in their midst-and encountered the bricked-up end of the tunnel. Others tried to s Tint around him-one even daring to leap across his scaly back-but the lashing tail smashed them against the unyielding walls. Still others ran directly into his mouth, cowering only in the split second before the great teeth came together.

The agonized squeals peaked and subsided. The blood flowed deliciously. The meat and hair and bones lay satisfyingly in his stomach. A few among the prey still lived. They crawled away from the slaughter as best they could. The hunter started to follow, but his meal sat heavily. For now he was too sated to follow, or to care. He made it as far as the edge of the water and then stopped. Now he wanted to sleep.

First he would break the silence. It was allowed. This was his territory. It was all his territory. The great jaws opened and he issued a penetrating, rumbling roar that echoed for many seconds through the seemingly endless labyrinth of tunnels and ducts, passageways and stone corridors.

When the echoes finally died, the predator slept. But he was the only one.

Rosemary said hello to Alfredo, who was on security duty tonight. He smiled at her as she signed in, and shook his head when he saw the stack of books she carried.

"I can get you help with that, Miss Maria."

"No thanks, Alfredo. I can manage just fine."

"I remember carrying your books for you when you were just a bambina, Miss Maria. You used to say you wanted to marry me when you grew up. No more, eh?"

"Sorry, Alfredo, I'm just fickle." Rosemary smiled and batted her eyes. It wasn't easy to joke or even be pleasant. She wanted this evening, this day, to end.

She was alone in the elevator and took the opportunity to rest her head against the side of the car for a moment. She indeed remembered Alfredo carrying her books to school. It had been during one of the wars in her childhood. What a family.

When the elevator doors opened, the two men in front of the entry to the penthouse came to attention. They relaxed as she approached, but each looked unusually solemn.

"Max. What's happened?" Rosemary looked questioningly at the taller of the two identically black-suited men.

Max shook his head and opened the door for her. Rosemary walked between the oppressive, dark oakpaneled walls toward the library. The ancient oil paintings did nothing to relieve the gloom.

At the door of the library, she started to knock, but the heavy, carved doors swung inward before she struck them. Her father stood in the doorway, his silhouette illuminated by the lamp on his desk.

He took both her hands and held them tightly. "Maria, it's Lombardo. He's no longer with us."

"What happened?" She stared at her father's face. The areas beneath his eyes were dark. His jowls sagged even more than she remembered.

Her father gestured. "These young men brought the news. "

Frankie, Joey, and Little Renaldo stood clumped together. Joey literally held his hat in his hands.

"We told Don Carlos, Maria. Lucky Lum-er, Lombardo was coming right over here but he stopped for a minute in the subway."

"He wanted to get some gum, I think." Frankie volunteered the information as if it had some significance.

"Yeah, anyway. He didn't come out. We were just hanging around," said Joey, "so we decided to find out what was going on when we heard about… disturbance in the station. When we got there, we found out what happened."

"Yeah, they found him in about two dozen-"

"Frankie!"

"Yes, Don Carlo."

"That will be all for tonight, boys. I will see you in the morning."

The three young men nodded and touched their foreheads in Rosemary's direction as they left.

"I'm sorry, Maria," said her father.

"I don't understand. Who would have done this?"

"Maria, you know Lombardo worked with our family business. Others knew that. And they knew he was about to become my son. We think it may have been someone trying to hurt me." Don Carlo's voice sounded sad. "There have been other incidents lately. There are those who want to take away what we have worked for a lifetime to achieve." His voice hardened again. "We won't let them get away with this. I promise, Maria!"

"Maria, I have some nice lasagna. Your favorite. Please, try to eat." Rosemary's mother spoke from out of the shadows. She rose to take Rosemary to the kitchen, escorting her with an arm around her shoulders.

"Mama, you shouldn't have held supper for me."

"I didn't. I knew you would be late and so I saved some for you. "

Rosemary said to her mother, "Mama, I didn't love him."

"Ssh. I know." She touched her daughter's lips. "But you would have grown to care for him. I could see how well you got along."

"Mama, you don't-" Rosemary was interrupted by her father's voice following them from the library.

"It has to be melanzanes, blacks! Who else would be attacking us now? They have to be coming down from Harlem through the tunnels. They've wanted our territories for years."

"Especially they want a susina like Jokertown. No, jokers would never dare do this on their own, but the blacks could be using them as a distraction."

Rosemary heard silence, followed by tinny squeaks from the telephone. Her mother tugged at her arm.

Don Carlo said, "They must be stopped now or they will threaten all the Families. They're savages."

Another pause.

"I do not exaggerate."

"Maria…" said her mother.

"Tomorrow morning, then," said Don Carlo. "Early. Good."

"See, Maria. Your father will take care of it." Her mother led Rosemary into the harvest-gold kitchen with all its bright appliances, the walls lined with framed samplers of old country homilies. She thought of telling her mother about C.C. and the subway, but it seemed impossible now. It had to have been her imagination. She just wanted to sleep. She didn't want to eat. She couldn't take anything else tonight.

The bag lady stirred in her sleep and one of the pair of large cats beside her moved out of the way. He raised his head and sniffed at his companion. Leaving the woman with an opossum curled against her stomach, the two cats silently stalked out into the darkness of the abandoned subway tunnel. The neglected 86th Street cutoff took them toward food.

Both cats were hungry themselves, but now they hunted for their woman's breakfast. Using a drainage tunnel, they exited into the park and out beneath the maples to the street.

When a New York Times delivery truck paused at a light, the black cat looked at the calico and pointed his muzzle at the truck. As the truck pulled away, they leaped aboard. Settled on the back of the truck, the black created the image of mounds of fish and shared it with the calico. Watching the city blocks pass, they waited for the telltale scent of fish. Finally, as the truck slowed, the calico smelled fish and impatiently jumped down from the vehicle. Yowling angrily, the black followed her down an alley. Both stopped when the scent of strange humans overwhelmed the food. Farther down the alley was a crowd of jokers, crude parodies of normal humans. Dressed in rags, they searched through the garbage for food.

A wedge of light spilled into the alley as a door opened. The cats smelled fresh food as a well-dressed man, larger than any of the scavengers, carried boxes into the alley.

"Please." The fat man spoke to the paralyzed jokers in a soft voice filled with pain. "I have food for you here."

The frozen scene ended as the jokers rushed together toward the cartons and began ripping them open. They jostled each other and fought for position to get at the rich food.

"Stop!" A tall joker cried out in the midst of the chaos. "Are we not men?"

The jokers paused and withdrew from the boxes, allowing the fat man to dole out the food to each of them. The tall joker was the last to be served. As the host handed him food, he spoke again. "Sir, we thank Aces High."

In the darkness of the alley, the cats observed the jokers' meal. Turning to the calico, the black formed the image of a fish's skeleton and they moved back toward the street. On 6th Avenue, the black sent a picture of Bagabond to the calico. They loped uptown until a slow-moving produce truck provided a ride. Many blocks later, the truck neared a Chinese market and the black recognized the familiar scent. As the truck began to brake, both cats leaped out. They kept to the dark beyond the range of the streetlights until they reached the open-air grocery.

It was still long before dawn and the truckers were unloading the day's fresh produce. The black cat smelled freshly slaughtered chicken; his tongue extended to touch his upper lip. Then he uttered a short growl to his companion. The calico leapt onto a display of tomatoes and began to claw them to pieces.

The proprietor yelled in Chinese and hurled his clipboard at the marauding cat. He missed. The men unloading the truck stopped and stared at the apparently insane feline.

"Worse'n Jokertown," one muttered.

"That's one big sumbitchin' kitty," said the other.

As soon as their attention was fixed on the calico cat destroying the tomatoes, the waiting black cat sprang to the back of the truck and seized a chicken in his mouth. The black was a very large cat, at least forty pounds, and he lifted the chicken with ease. Leaping off the tailgate, he ran into the darkness of the alley. At the same time, the calico dodged a broom handle and bounded after.

The black cat waited for the calico halfway down the next block. When the calico reached him, both cats howled in unison. It had been a good hunt. With the calico occasionally aiding the black in lifting the chicken onto curbs, they loped back to the park and the bag lady.

A fellow street dweller had once called her Bagabond in one of his more sober moments and the name had stuck. Her people, the wild creatures of the city, called her by no name, only by their images of her. Those were enough. And she only remembered her name once in a while.

Bagabond pulled around herself the fine green coat that she had found in an apartment-house dumpster. She sat up, careful not to displace the opossum. With the opossum settled in her lap and a squirrel on each shoulder, she greeted the proud black and calico cats with their prize. Moving with an ease that would have amazed the few street denizens who had anything to do with her, the woman reached out and patted the heads of the two feral cats. As she did, she formed the image in her mind of a particularly scrawny chicken, already half-eaten, being dragged out of a restaurant garbage can by the pair.

The black stuck his nose into the air and snorted gently as he obliterated the image in both his head and Bagabond's. The calico merged a meow with a growl in mock anger and stretched her head toward the woman's. Catching Bagabond's eye, the calico replayed the hunt as she had perceived it: the calico at least the size of a lion, surrounded by human legs much like mobile tree trunks. Brave calico spotting the prey, a chicken the size of a house. Fierce calico leaping toward a human throat, fangs bared…

The scene went blank as Bagabond abruptly focused elsewhere. The calico began to protest until a heavy black paw rolled her over on her back and held her down. The calico stilled her protest, head twisted to the side to watch the woman's face. The black was stiff with anticipation.

The picture formed in all three minds: dead rats. The image was obliterated by Bagabond's anger. She rose, shaking off the squirrels and setting the opossum to one side. Without hesitation, she turned and started into one of the tangential, descending tunnels. The black cat bounded silently past and moved ahead to act as a scout. The calico paced the woman. "Something's eating my rats."

The tunnels were black; sometimes a little bioluminescence shed the only light. Begabond couldn't see as well as the cats, but she could use their eyes.

The black picked up a strange scent when the three of them were deep beneath the park. The only connection he could make was with a shifting creature that was equal parts snake and lizard.

A hundred yards farther, they came upon a devastated rats' nest. None of the rats lived. Some were half-eaten. All the bodies had been mangled.

Bagabond and her companions stumbled on in the wet tunnel. The woman slid off a ledge and found herself hip-deep in disgusting water. Unidentifiable chunks batted against her legs in the moderate current. Her temper was not improved. The black cat bristled and projected the same image as a few minutes before, but now the creature was even larger. The cat suggested they all three back out of this passageway now. Quickly. Quietly.

Bagabond blocked out the suggestion as she sidled along a slimy wall to another ravaged nest. Some of these rats were still alive. Their simple picture of their destroyer was the shadowy image of an impossibly large and ugly snake. She shut off the brains of the mortally injured and moved on.

Five yards down the passage was an alcove that provided drainage for a section of the park above. The entrance was three feet above the floor of the tunnel. The black crouched there, muscles taut, ears laid back, yowling softly. He was scared. The calico disdainfully started for the opening, but the black knocked her aside. The larger cat looked back at Bagabond and sent every negative image he could.

Carried by her anger, Bagabond indicated she would go in first. She took a breath, gasped, and crawled into the alcove.

It was lit by a grating in the roof, some twenty feet above. The gray light fell on the naked body of a man. Heelooked to Bagabond to be in his thirties, muscled but not overly so. No flab. Bagabond noted vaguely that he didn't look as wasted as most of the derelicts she had seen. For a moment, she thought he was dead, yet another victim of the mysterious killer. But as her mind focused on the man, she realized he was just asleep.

The cats had followed her into the chamber. The black growled in confusion. His senses told him the trail of the lizard-snake thing ended here-it ceased where the man lay.

Bagabond felt something strange about the man. She didn't usually try to read humans; it was too difficult. Their minds were complex. They plotted, schemed. Slowly she knelt beside him and extended her hand.

The man woke up, caught sight of the dirty street person about to touch him, and jerked away.

"Wha' you want?" She stared at him.

He realized he was naked and hauled himself to the entry of the cave passage- He heard a deep growl, recoiled, barely evaded a swipe from the claws of the biggest cat he'd ever seen. For a moment, he felt himself sliding into the darkness inside his mind. Then he was into the main tunnel and gone. The cats were crying with questions, but Bagabond had no answers. Almost, she thought. Inside his mind. I almost felt… what? Gone.

Bagabond, the calico, and the black searched for another hour, but they found no more trace of the strange scent. There was no monster in the tunnel.

The transients, derelicts, bag ladies, and other street people began their day early, when the best cans and bottles were to be found. Rosemary had slipped out of the penthouse early as well. She had barely slept, and that morning, knowing what was almost certainly happening behind the closed doors of the library, she wanted to get out quickly. The dons were declaring war.

Central Park with its trees, bushes, and benches was heaven for a certain portion of the street people. This sunny morning, Rosemary was looking for a few she had undertaken to help. As she reached the second park bench beyond the stone ridge, a man in tattered clothing hid a bottle in a bush beside the bench and jumped to his feet. He wore an olivedrab fatigue jacket with a less-faded place on one shoulder where the joker Brigade "cannon fodder" patch had once been sewn. Rosemary had suggested it was not prudent to wear the patch this far uptown.

"Hello, Crawler," said the social worker. Somewhere in his late twenties-Rosemary couldn't tell from the vet's sunburned face-he had taken his nickname from his Army job in Vietnam: tunnel crawler. He'd re-upped twice. Then Crawler had seen enough.

"Hey, Rosemary. You got my new goggles yet?" Crawler wore a makeshift pair-cheap 14th Street sunglasses, the eyepieces built up with dirty white adhesive tope. Underneath, Rosemary knew his eyes were dark and overlarge, extraordinarily sensitive.

"I've requested the funding. It will be a while before we can get them. You know red tape-just like in the service."

"Shoot." But the derelict still smiled as he fell in step beside her.

Rosemary hesitated, then said. "You can still check in with the V A., you know. They'll fix you up."

"Fuck no," said Crawler, sounding alarmed. "Guys like me, they go in a VA. and they never come back out." Rosemary started to say, "That's nonsense," but thought better of it. "Crawler, do you know anything about the underground? You know, the subway tunnels and all that?"

"Some. I mean, I need the shelter. I just don't like bein down there. 'Sides, there's creepy stuff goin' on down there. I hear things about alligators, stuff like that. Maybe it's all from winos with the d.t.'s, but I don't wanna find out."

"I'm looking for someone," said Rosemary.

Crawler wasn't listening. "Only the really weird people live down there." He mumbled something… even stranger than down on the East Side-you know, the Town.

"She lives down deep." Crawler pointed at the crone sitting on the ground under a maple tree. She was a hundred yards away, but Rosemary could have sworn there were pigeons sitting on the woman's head and a squirrel perched on her shoulder. Rosemary cocked her head and looked back at the little man. "That's just Bagabond," she said. "No need to worry about her…" Rosemary realized that Crawler was no longer with her. He was panhandling a well-dressed businessman getting exercise by walking to work. She shook her head in mixed disapproval and resignation.

By the time Rosemary turned back toward Bagabond, the pigeons and squirrel were gone. Rosemary shook her head to clear it. My imagination really is working overtime, she thought, walking toward the bag lady. just another lost soul. "Hello Bagabond."

The old woman with stringy hair turned her head away and stared across the park.

"My name is Rosemary. I talked to you before. I tried to find you a nice place to live. Do you remember?" Rosemary squatted down on the ground to speak at Bagabond's level.

The black cat she had seen before came up to Bagabond and began rubbing against her. She stroked its head and murmured incomprehensible sounds.

"Please talk to me. I want to get you food. I want to get you a good place to live." Rosemary held out her hand. The ring on her third finger glittered in the sun.

The woman on the ground drew her legs up against herself and clutched the plastic trashbag filled with her treasures. She began rocking back and forth and crooning. The black cat turned to look at Rosemary and she flinched against its glare.

"I'll talk to you later. I'll come back and see you." Rosemary rose stiffly. Her face tightened, and for just a moment, she felt like crying to ease the frustration. She only wanted to help. Someone. Anyone. To feel good about something.

She walked away from Bagabond and back toward Central Park West and the subway entrance. Her father's war council had frightened her. She had never liked what he did, and her entire life seemed to be a search for escape and redemption, atonement. The sins of the fathers. Rosemary wanted peace, but whenever she thought she could get it, it retreated beyond her grasp. C.C. had been a last chance. So was each one of the derelicts she failed to help. There was a key to reaching Bagabond. There had to be.

Rosemary descended the steps, waited, dropped in her token, walked down the second stairway onto the platform in a daze. The blast of cool air entered the station followed by the AA train. Rosemary barely glanced up from the floor and moved stiffly toward the nearest car.

As she was about to step onto the train, her eyes widened and she stepped back into the crowd, drawing glares and a few curses for breaking the flow. That last car. It had more of C. C.'s lyrics painted on the side in a shade of red that reminded her of blood. C.C. had always been something of a manicdepressive and Rosemary had always known her mood by what she wrote or sang. The C. C. who had written these words was depressed beyond even Rosemary's experience:

Blood and bones Take me home

People there I owe People there gonna go

Down with me to Hell Down with me to Hell

Approaching the car, Rosemary saw words she knew had not been there seconds ago.

Rosie, Rosie, pretty Rosie Leave this place Forget my face Don't cry Rosie, Rosie, pretty Rosie

"I'm going to find you, C. C. I'm going to save you." Rosemary again fought to get into the car she now realized was covered with fragments of C.C.'s songs, some that she recognized, others that had to be new. Once more the car rejected her. Breathing hard, eyes wide, Rosemary watched the car move into the tunnel. She gasped as the side of the car was suddenly covered with tears of blood.

"Holy Mary, Mother of God…" Rosemary absurdly remembered the stories of saints from her childhood. For just a moment, she wondered if the world was ending, if the wars and the deaths, the jokers and the hate, truly prefigured the Apocalypse.

It was noon.

American B-52s were bombing Hanoi and Haiphong. Quang Tri was shaky, as the North Vietnamese were on the march. In Washington, D. C. , politicians exchanged increasingly frantic phone calls about a recent burglary. The question in some quarters was, is Donald Segretti an ace?

The midtown Manhattan rush was ferocious. At Grand Central Station, Rosemary Muldoon looked for raggedy shadows she could follow into the darkness of the under ground. A dozen blocks north, Jack Robicheaux plied his regular trade, clattering through the permanent darkness on his small electric cart, checking track integrity in tunnel after tunnel. And somewhere under the abandoned 86th Street cutoff, just beneath the floor of the south edge of Central Park Lake, Bagabond drifted on the edge of sleep, warmed by the cats and other beasts of her life.

Noon. The war beneath Manhattan was starting.

"Let me quote to you from a speech given once by Don Carlo Gambione himself," said Frederico "the Butcher" Macellaio. He grimly surveyed the groups of capos and their soldiers gathered around him in the chamber. In the '30s, the huge room had been an underground repair facility for midtown transit. Before the Big War, it had been closed and sealed of when the IA. decided to consolidate all maintenance yards across the river. The Gambione Family had soon taken the space over for storage of guns and other contraband, freight transfer, and occasional burials.

The Butcher raised his voice and the words echoed. "'W'hat will make the difference for us in battle will be two things: discipline and loyalty."

Little Renaldo was standing off to one side with Frankie and Joey. "Not to mention automatic weapons and H.E.," he said, smirking.

Joey and Frankie exchanged glances. Frankie shrugged. Joey said, "God, guns, and glory."

Little Renaldo commented, "I'm bored. I wanna go shoot somethin'.

"

Joey said a little louder, so the Butcher could hear, "Hey, are we goin' to roust some rummies, or what? Who's fair game? Just the blacks? Jokers too?"

"We don't know who their allies are," said the Butcher. "We know they wouldn't act alone. There are traitors from among our own race helping them for money"

Little Renaldo's manic grin widened. "Free-fire zone," he said. "Hoo-boy." He tugged his boonie hat down snug. "Shit," said Joey, "you weren't even there."

Little Renaldo gave him a thumbs-up. "I saw that John Wane movie."

"That's the word from the Man, huh?" said Joey.

The Butcher's smile was thin and cold. "Anybody gives you problems, just waste 'em."

The groups began to move out, scouts, squads, and platoons. The men had their M-16s, pump scatterguns, a few M-60 machine guns, grenades and launchers, rockets, riot gas, sidearms, knives, and enough blocks of C-4 to handle any kind of heavy demolition.

"Hey, Joey," said Little Renaldo. "What you gonna shoot?"

Joey slapped a magazine into the AK-47. This weapon wasn't from the Gambione armory. It was his own souvenir. He touched the polished wooden stock. "Maybe a 'gator."

"Huh?"

"Don't you read any of them rags that's been talking about the giant alligators down here?"

Little Renaldo looked at him doubtfully and shivered. "The jungle-jokers are one thing. I don't want to go up against no big lizards with teeth."

It was Joey's turn to grin.

"No such things, right?" said Little Renaldo. "You're just shittin' me, right?"

Joey shot him a jaunty thumbs-up.

Jack had lost all track of time. He knew it had been a long while since he'd shunted his track maintenance vehicle off the main line onto a spur. Something was wrong. He decided to check out some of the more obscure routes. It was as though a piece of ice pressed against a spot just north of his tailbone. He'd heard trains, but they had passed at a distance. The tunnels he now traveled were seldom used except for diverted routes during high congestion, track fires, or other problems on the main line. He also heard far-off reports that sounded like gunfire.

Jack sang. He filled the darkness with zydeco, the bluesy Cajun-Black mixture he remembered from his childhood. He started with the Big Bopper's "Chantilly Lace" and Clifton Chenier's "Ay-Tete-Fee," segued into a Jimmy Newman medley and Slim Harpo's "Rainin' in My Heart." He'd just pulled the switch and slid the car onto a spur he knew he hadn't checked in at least a year, when the world blew apart in a flash of red and yellow flame. He'd had time to sing one line of "L'Haricots sons pas sales" when the darkness fragmented, the pressure waves slammed against his ears, and the car and he took different, spinning, twisting directions through the air.

All he really had time to say was, "Wha' de hail-" as he fetched up against the stone of the tunnel's far wall and crumpled to the floor. For the moment, he was stunned by concussion and flash. He blinked and realized he could see smoke swirling, and the hand-held lights that illuminated the smoke.

He heard a voice say, "Jesus Christ, Renaldo! We weren't going up against a tank."

Another voice said, "Sorta sorry to do this one. Hate to kill anybody sounded that much like Chuck Berry."

"Well," said a third, "at least he had to be a spook."

"Check it out, Renaldo. Guy probably looks like an open can of Spam, but you better find out for sure."

"Yo, Joey"

The lights came closer, bobbing in the dissipating smoke. They're gon' kill me, Jack thought, reverting to the dialect of his childhood. There was at first no emotion to the realization. Then the anger started. He let the feeling sweep over him. The anger escalated to rage. Adrenaline pricklings agonized his nerves. Jack felt the first brush of what he had used to think was the onset of loup-garou madness.

"Hey, I think I see something! Off to your left, Renaldo." The one called Renaldo approached. "Yeah, I got him. Now I'll make sure." He raised his weapon, taking aim with the light held tight along the stock.

That pushed Jack over the edge. You chill son of a bitch! Pain, welcome pain, wracked him. He… changed. His brain seemed to spin, his mind folding in on itself endlessly down into the primal reptile level. His body was elongating, thickening; his jaw thrust forward, the teeth springing up in profusion. He felt the length of perfectly toned muscles, the balance of his tail. The utter power of his body… he felt it completely.

Then he saw the prey in front of him, the menace. "Oh, my God!" Little Renaldo cried. His finger tightened on the trigger of the M-16. The first burst of tracers went wild. He never had the chance for a second.

The creature that had been Jack lunged forward, the jaws closing around Renaldo's waist, twisting and tearing at his flesh. The man's light spun, smashed, and went out.

The other men started firing wildly.

The alligator registered the cries, the screams. The smell of terror. Good. The prey was easier when it located itself. He dropped Renaldo's corpse and moved toward the lights, the bull roar of his challenge filling the tunnel.

"For the love of God, Joey! Help me!"

"Hold on. I can't see where you went!"

The corridor was narrow, the materials old and decaying. Caught between two equally tempting morsels, the alligator twisted around in the confined space. He saw flashes of light, felt a few stinging impacts, mainly in his tail. He heard the prey screaming.

"Joey, it busted my leg!"

More flashes. An explosion. Acrid smoke choked his nostrils. Irregular chunks of stone fell from the ceiling. Rotten beams splintered. Deteriorated cement collapsed. Part of the floor beneath him gave way and his twelve-foot length tumbled heavily down an incline. Smoke, dust, and solid debris rained from above.

The alligator smashed into a thin metal hatch that had never been engineered for this kind of force. The aluminum tore like ripping canvas and he toppled into an open shaft. He fell for another twenty feet before crashing into a spider's nest of wooden beams. Bits of debris followed for a little while. Then there was silence, both above and below. The alligator rested in darkness. When he tried to flex his body, nothing much happened. He was thoroughly jammed into a wooden cat's cradle. A beam was wedged securely across his snout. He couldn't even open his jaws.

He attempted to roar, but the sound came out more as a muffled growl. He blinked his eyes, seeing nothing. His strength was dwindling, shock taking its toll.

He didn't want to die here. He wished to end in the water.

Worse, the alligator didn't want to die hungry. He was starved.

Bagabond felt something she hadn't experienced for a long time, sympathy, for Rosemary Muldoon. She knew the social worker wanted to help, but how could Bagabond tell her that she didn't need help? Puzzled by that emotion, Bagabond discovered another one. She could be happy with the caring and companionship of her friends, however nonhuman they might be.

She did have a warm place to sleep. Her home beneath Central Park was close to the steam tunnels. Bagabond had slowly furnished it with the best the street had to offer. A broken red director's chair was the only furniture, but there were rags and blankets deeply covering the floor. A velvet painting of lions on the veld leaned against one wall and a wooden carving of a leopard stood in one corner. One of the leopard's legs was missing but it occupied a place of honor.

Drowsing there in the abandoned 86th Street cutoff tunnel, Bagabond even remembered the person she had once been, Suzanne Melot The surge of pain that crashed across her mind interrupted her thoughts. The strength of the cry caused the black cat to moan in pain. As the wave receded, the black sent to Bagabond the same image he had taken from the creature that had attacked the rats. Bagabond agreed mentally. Neither could she quite nail down the image. The creature seemed to be a huge lizard, but it somehow wasn't entirely animal. And it was hurt.

Bagabond sighed and rose. "We have to find it if we are going to have peace and quiet." The black was not in favor of this solution until another wave of anguish came. He snarled and ran into the tunnel to Bagabond's left. The calico felt only the edge of the pain as it passed through Bagabond and the black. Bagabond replayed a little of the cry of pain and the calico flattened to the ground, ears back. The image of the black appeared in Bagabond's mind and the calico dashed down the tunnel in pursuit. Bagabond told the calico to wait for her, and they began to track both the black and the injured creature.

It took time to find them. The creature really did resemble nothing so much as a giant lizard. It was trapped beneath a fall of timbers in an unfinished tunnel. The black crouched a few feet away, staring at this apparition.

Bagabond looked at the trapped creature and laughed. "So there really are alligators in the sewers." The alligator twitched its tail, knocking a few bricks across the tunnel. "But that's not all you are, is it?"

There was no way she and the cats could free the alligator. Bagabond knelt and examined the timbers trapping the beast as she called her friends to help her. She reached out and stroked the alligator's head, calming him with the images she sent. She sensed the creature drifting in and out of consciousness.

The animals arrived at different times. An uneasy peace held as Bagabond directed each according to its abilities. Rats gnawed, a pair of wild dogs provided muscle, the opossums and raccoons carried off small stones. The black and the calico aided Bagabond in controlling the volatile mix of animals. When the smaller debris had been cleared away and timbers and boards shifted or gnawed through, Bagabond began hauling on the alligator. Between her tugging and his struggles, Jack fought his way free. Bagabond ended up with a very tired and bruised alligator across her lap. The black and the calico told the creatures who had helped to leave. The two cats watched as Bagabond rubbed the underside of the alligator's jaw, calming the creature. As she stroked it, the snout and tail began to shorten. The scaly hide became smooth, pale skin. The stubby limbs elongated into arms and legs. In a few minutes, Bagabond was holding the naked, bruised body of the man they had found before. As the change took place, Bagabond realized that at some indefinable point, she could no longer control this creature or read his thoughts. Somehow she had missed the critical division between man and beast.

She got up, lifting the man off her, and walked toward the end of the tunnel. The calico accompanied her. The black stayed beside the man.

Why? Bagabond thought.

Why? the black countered. The work they had just done, as seen through the cat's eyes, played across her mind. The calico looked from one to the other. She had not been invited into this conversation.

Alligator, Bagabond explained, not human. In her mind the alligator became a man.

"Curiosity…" Bagabond spoke aloud for the first time since the rescue operation had commenced.

The black sent a picture of a black cat on its back with paws in the air.

Bagabond sat down beside the man. In a few minutes he began to move. Painfully he sat up. In the dim light filtering from above, he recognized Bagabond as the old woman he had seen the day before.

"Wha' happen? I remember running into a bunch of crazies with guns, and then things get fuzzy." He tried to focus on the crone, who kept splitting into two images. "I think maybe I've got a concussion."

Bagabond shrugged and pointed at the beams from the roof-collapse behind him. By straining his eyes, he could see what looked like hundreds of pawprints on the floor and the walls around the cave-in. In the center of the devastation, Jack also saw the imprint of a monstrous tail.

"Christ, not again." Jack turned back to Bagabond. "When you got here, what did you see?"

She turned partly away from him, still silent. He saw her mouth quirk in a partial smile beneath the stringy hair. Was she mad?

"Merle. What am I going to do?" Jack was almost bowled over by the pair of black paws that struck his chest. "Easy, boy. You're the biggest kitty I've seen since I left the swamps." The black cat's eyes stared into his with an odd intensity. "What is it?"

"He wants to know how you do it." The old woman's voice did not match her appearance. It was young and held a touch of humor. "Be careful. You're spaced, just like you were coming out of Thorazine." She took his arm as he tried to stand.

When he was upright, she said, "You're not going to make it far like that." She began to take off her coat.

"Mon Dieu. Thanks." Feeling his skin flush, Jack shrugged into her green cloth coat and wrapped it around himself. It covered him from neck to knees, but left his arms bare.. from the elbows down.

"Where do you live?" Bagabond gazed at him without expression. Jack appreciated the kindness.

"Downtown. Down on Broadway near the City Hall station. Are we anywhere close to a train?" Jack was not used to being lost, and found that he disliked the feeling intensely.

In answer, Bagabond picked her way to the tunnel entrance. She didn't look back to see if he was following when she turned to the right.

"Your mistress, she is a little strange. No ofense," Jack said to the black cat. It paced him as he trailed the bag lady. The cat looked up at him, sniffed, and twitched his tail. "Who am I to talk, eh?"

Although Jack attempted to keep up with Bagabond, he quickly fell behind. Eventually, at the black's appeal, she returned and helped support the man, pulling his arm across her shoulders.

Jack finally recognized the tunnels as they came into the 57th Street station. He was amazed at the change in Bagabond as they made their way onto the platform. Even though she was still holding him up, the woman seemed to hang off him. She shuffled now instead of striding, and kept her eyes on the ground. Those waiting on the platform gave them plenty of room.

The subway pulled in, the last car covered with unusually bright graffiti. Bagabond hauled Jack toward the vividly decorated car. Jack had time to read some of the more coherent phrases covering the side.

Are you unusual? Did you feel the fire? Are you burning inside?

The flames devour us all, But never let us die; it never ends, forever in flame.

Jack thought some of the phrases changed as he watched, but that had to be an effect of his concussed brain. Bagabond pulled him inside. The doors closed, leaving some very angry transit customers outside.

"Stop?" Bagabond was nothing if not economical with her words, Jack thought.

"City Hall." Jack slumped and rested his head against the back of the seat, closing his eyes as the train rolled downtown. He did not notice that the seat molded itself around his body to support it while he slept. He failed to realize that the doors never again opened until they reached his stop.

The cats were not entirely happy with this subway ride. The calico was flatly terrified. Ears laid back, tail straight and fluffed out, she leaned into Bagabond's side. The black gingerly kneaded the floor of the car. The texture was only partially familiar. He wondered at the heat and the confusing scent all around him.

Bagabond tried to focus on the interior of the dark car. There were no sharp angles here. Dim shapes seemed to change form subtly in her peripheral vision. I've felt nothing like this, she thought, since the acid trip. She extended her consciousness beyond the cats and Jack. She couldn't define the who that she briefly contacted. But she felt the overwhelming comfort, the warmth, and the protectiveness that surrounded them here.

Cautiously she settled back in her seat and stroked the calico.

"This is it," said Jack.

He had recovered sufficiently to lead their small party through the City Hall station, beyond a bewildering succession of maintenance closets, and into another labyrinth of unused tunnels. He'd rigged sections of the passages with lights which he turned on and off as needed as they proceeded toward his home. When he opened the last door, he stood aside and waved Bagabond and the cats inside. He smiled proudly as they stared around the long room.

"Wow, man." Bagabond flinched as she took in the opulent furnishings and decor. The immediate impression was of red velvet and claw-footed divans.

"You are younger than you look. That was my reaction too. Reminded me of Captain Nemo's stateroom…" "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."

"Yeah, right. You saw it too. One of the first movies I ever saw over to the parish theater." They walked down the crimson-carpeted stairs flanked by gold stanchions and plush velvet ropes. Both cats ran ahead of them, the calico using the Victorian armchairs as hurdles. The electric light was augmented by flickering gas flames that gave the room an atmosphere out of the last century. The black cat trotted over the Persian carpets to the edge of the platform and looked back at the two humans.

"He wants to know what this is and what's behind that door." Bagabond steadied Jack as they moved slowly down the staircase. "You need to lie down."

"Soon enough. This is my home and behind the door is my bedroom. If we could head in that direction…" They started across the room. "This was the first subway in New York, built by a man named Alfred Beach back after the War Between the States. It only ran for two blocks. The Boss Tweed didn't want it so he shut it down, then they forgot about it. I found it a while after I started working for the Transit Authority-one of the benefits of the job. Don't know why it held up so well, but it's a good place for me. Just took a little cleaning up, is all." They had walked to the other end of the room and Jack reached out to turn the handles on the ornate cast-bronze door. The center circle swung open. "This used to be the entrance to the pneumatic tube."

"I didn't expect this." Bagabond was surprised to find that the interior of the tunnel was sparsely furnished. There was a homemade bed constructed out of pine boards, an equally homemade bookcase, and a plank chest.

"All the comforts of home. Even my complete collection of Pogo books." Jack looked innocently at Bagabond and she laughed, then seemed surprised at it.

"Where's your iodine?" Bagabond looked around for a first aid kit.

"Don't use that stuff. Can you get me some of those?" Jack pointed up at the spiderwebs.

"You're kidding."

"Best poultice in the world. My grandma taught me that." When Bagabond turned back to him, he had pulled on a pair of shorts and had a shirt in his hand. She handed over the spiderwebs and helped him bandage the worst abrasions.

"So how did you end up down here?" Jack lay back on the bed, wincing slightly, while Bagabond perched gingerly on the edge.

"You're sure not like those social workers." Bagabond watched the cats outside the door as they chased each other around the room. She turned back to him with an appraising look. "And they like you."

"They let me out a while ago and I ended up back in the city. No place else to go. Met the black, started talking to him, and he talked back. So did a lot of the other animals, the ones that aren't human, anyway. I get along. I don't need people, don't want people around. People always mean bad luck for me. I can talk to you, too, when you're that other one, you know? Out there they call me Bagabond. I had another name once but I don't remember it much."

"They call me Sewer Jack." Jack said it bitterly, in contrast to Bagabond's flat recitation. The burst of emotion she caught held screams, bright lights, and fear, and the haven of the swamp.

"It was here-the creature. What are you?" Bagabond was confused; she had never before met this mixture of man and animal, with whom she could only sometimes communicate.

"Both. You saw."

"Do you control it? Can you make yourself change?"

"Did you ever see Lawrence Talbot as the wolfman? I change when I lose control or when I allow the beast to take over. I'm not cursed by the full moon; I'm cursed all the time. The loup-garou is a legend where I come from. The Cajuns all believe in it. When I was young, I did too. I was afraid I would hurt someone, so I went as far away as I could go. New York was a foreign country; no one would know me or bother me here."

His eyes focused on her now instead of the past. "Why the act? You can't be over forty-five."

"Twenty-six." She looked down at Jack, wondering why it mattered. "It keeps them from bothering me so much." Jack glanced through the open door at the railway clock on the opposite wall. "I'm getting hungry. How about you?"

Rescuing C.C. What had seemed to be a wonderful idea had turned into a nightmare. Rosemary had followed some derelicts into the steam tunnels beneath Grand Central Station. At first she tried asking anyone she met about C. C. But as she moved farther into the dank passages, those living there scuttled away. There was only occasional light from gratings in the street above, or from the derelicts' smoky fires. Her fatigue and fear began taking their toll; she fell again and again into the muck on the tunnel floors.

One horrible moment, she was attacked by a filthy creature who clawed at her, cackling. She fought him off but her purse was gone now. Rosemary was hopelessly lost. She heard occasional sounds that seemed to be gunshots and explosions. I'm in hell.

Ahead were two glowing spots that glared at her through the darkness. They receded as she came nearer. The iridescent green lights mesmerized her.

The spots came into focus and Rosemary saw the cat crouched in the darkness. Retreating a few feet and growling, it watched as Rosemary approached a wounded cat, the comrade it guarded. Chest crushed, one leg nearly severed from its body, the injured cat was dying. The guardian would allow no more pain to be inflicted. When she heard the low crying, she ignored the eyes and knelt beside the injured cat.

Rosemary realized there was nothing she could do, but she held it. The cat began to purr before it choked and died. The guardian lifted its head and howled a eulogy before pivoting and running into the gloom.

Rosemary laid the body on the ground in front of her and placed its head and legs in comfortable positions,. sat back, and began sobbing. It seemed as if she cried forever before she started walking toward the sounds of the guns, gasping from her sobs.

After raiding the refrigerator-Bagabond could understand why Con Ed never noticed the power tap, but how did he ever get the refrigerator down here?-Jack went back into his bedroom to get some sleep. Bagabond and the cats explored Jack's domain, which included making sure they could get out the door he had locked behind them.

They quickly discovered the limits. Bagabond sat down on an overstuffed horsehair sofa. The black joined her while the calico continued her game of crossing the room without touching the floor. Bagabond pondered and, for the first time in years, the black was not invited to join her. Bagabond was amazed at the way Jack lived. It made her life of moving from one temporary home, a pile of rags, to another, suddenly seem wrong and filled with discomforts she had previously ignored.

She and Jack had discussed the probability that they were both aces. What luck. The virus had ruined both their lives. She would never again be the innocent child she was before the acid and the virus flooded her mind with the alien perceptions of the animal world. She thought she had had a miserable childhood. It was why she left home. But to grow up thinking you were something like a werewolf, a creature cursed by God.

Why had she been so open with him? There was no one still alive in the city who knew as much about her as Jack now did. It was because they were alike; they knew what it was like to be different and to have stopped looking for ways to be like everybody else.

The claws across the back of her hand drew blood before her attention came back to the real world. Her eyes met those of the black cat, and horrifying images filtered through others' eyes began pouring into her mind: rat nests destroyed by machine-gun fire; yelling men frightening an opossum, her children clinging to her back as she ran, one falling, dying; cats fleeing, being shot, murdered; a cat fighting to protect her kittens before a grenade destroyed the litter, leaving the mother with a leg nearly blown off; a woman who looked like that damn social worker cradling a dying cat. The blood-more and more of it-of those who were her only friends.

"The kittens. They can't!" Bagabond stood up and found herself shaking.

"What's goin' on?" Jack, awakened by Bagabond's cry, emerged from his room still half-asleep.

"They're killing them! I've got to stop them." Bagabond clenched her fists, turning away from him. Flanked by the cats, she headed for the stairs.

"Not without me." Jack ducked back into his room, grabbed Bagabond's green coat, flashlights, and a pair of sneakers, and followed them up the staircase.

Slowed by tying on the sneakers as he ran, he caught up with them at the first tunnel junction.

"Not that way." Jack stopped the trio as they entered the righthand tunnel. He thrust Bagabond's coat at her. He aimed one of the flashlights at the other passage.

"It's how we came in." In her panic, Bagabond had lost much of her trust in Jack.

"It'll just take you to the subway. There's a faster way to get back to the park. I've got a track-car. Follow me?" Jack waited for Bagabond's nod and plunged into the lefthand tunnel at a trot.

The scenes of carnage in Bagabond's mind grew sharper as they approached Central Park and abandoned the car. As they came up on the next branching of the tunnels, Jack lifted his head and sniffed. "Whoever they are, they're using up an army's worth of gunpowder. What's the plan?"

"We need to find out who they are so we know how to stop them. Right?" Bagabond wasn't at all sure what to do.

"I bet they're mes amis with the guns, but I have no idea who's the boss."

An image appeared of the calico walking with Jack, the black with Bagabond.

"Far out." Bagabond patted the head of the immense black cat. "Good idea. "

"What idea?"

"The black thinks we should split up until we find out what is going on. If one of the cats is with each of us, we can stay, um…"

"In communication. Yeah. You can at least see what's going on." Jack nodded thoughtfully. "I used to love war movies, but I get lousy reception at my place. Let's go, Sarge."

He spoke to the calico, who leaped ahead of him. "Bon chance."

Bagabond nodded and moved in the other direction.

In a profound darkness barely relieved by darting beams from the caving helmets worn by armed men, Don Carlo Gambione surveyed the desolation that was his kingdom.

His lieutenant sounded almost apologetic. "Don Carlo, I fear our troops became too enthusiastic about their task." Don Carlo looked down at the bodies illuminated in the light from the Butcher's flash. "Zeal in a matter such as this," he said, "is no vice."

"We've found their headquarters," said the Butcher. "Our men discovered it less than an hour ago." He stabbed a finger at the map. "About 86th Street. Under the park. Close to Central Park Lake. It looked inhabited. That's when I called you."

"I am grateful," said his leader. "I want to be present when the flame of our enemies' ill-conceived brushfire rebellion is extinguished. I knew there must be a reason why they should rise up now." Don Carlo's voice rose as well. The Butcher stared at him.

"I want their heads," said Don Carlo. "We shall set them on spikes at Amsterdam and 110th Street." Wide, his eyes shone ferally in the electric lamplight.

The Butcher gently put a hand on the Don's wrist. "We'd better go uptown now, Padrone. I told the men to wait in place, but they are so-enthusiastic."

For a moment, Don Carlo's gaze swung around wildly at the bodies littering the dirty concrete. Rags soaked with blood. "Such tragedy! The pain, the pain…" He stared directly down at the corpse at his feet. It was a white man, the gangling arms and legs sprawled out like the limbs of a broken marionette. There was no peace in the lined, sun-scorched face. Only agony reflected in the too-wide dark eyes. Smashed makeshift goggles lay in the blood pooled from the man's head. The don unconsciously nudged the shoulder of the faded fatigue jacket with the toe of one polished boot. "This one was a true jungle joker…" His voice trailed off.

Don Carlo looked away. He drew himself straight, taking strength from the almost-holy knowledge of what he must do. He leaned closer to the Butcher's sober face. "These things we do…" he said. "It is sad, very sad. But sometimes we must attack and even destroy the way of life we love in order to preserve it."

Despite his bravado-why am I trying to impress that raggedy woman?-Jack took his time moving into the tunnels. The long ride back up to the park had returned to him his limp and considerable pain. Whenever he heard a noise, he froze. The calico showed remarkable patience. She ranged fifty feet or so ahead and then returned if it was clear. Jack wished desperately he could talk to her.

The sounds now were not imaginary. They grew louder. Jack began to hear unintelligible shouts. He jumped at every gunshot or explosion. He stopped using the flashlight because he was afraid someone would see it. The calico stayed a few feet away now. Jack had rubbed dirt on his face to cut down reflection.

Boots scuffed against the concrete floor just ahead of him. He started to back up and ran into one of the hunters, who was as surprised as he was.

"What the hell! Joey! Joey, I got one!"

The man in the hardhat with the attached light swung the butt of his gun at Jack's head.

"Where is he, Sly?"

The rifle-butt had just grazed Jack's skull. He managed to sprint out of the light and up an apparent dead-end passage. Jack tried to mold himself to the wall and wished he could change into something useful, like concrete or dirt. As the thought crossed his mind, he recognized the itching that meant he was getting scaly. Jack fought it off by slowing his breathing and exerting control. That's all he needed now. Where's the calico? he thought. Bagabond'll kill me if that cat's hurt.

"He has to be down here, Joey. There's nowhere else to go." The voice sounded as if it were an inch away.

"Toss in a grenade and keep movin'. We're supposed to be sealing off their base. "

"Aw, Joey, come on."

"Sly, you're crazy, man. Move it."

There was the sound of metal bouncing on rock. Jack caught a glint of light from the grenade before the adrenaline wiped his brain clean. Merde was his last conscious thought. The blast roar was accompanied by some rockfalls, but there hadn't been as much graft in this section. The roof held. "Check it out, Sly."

"All right, Joey. Thanks." Sly was known for being almost as crazy as Little Renaldo.

Why me, Joey wondered.

"Nothing's left. Just a few rags and a sneaker. The right one, then. We've got a lot of ground to cover." Neither man noticed the calico crouched on a rock projecting from the wall near the ceiling. The calico leaped down and nosed through the torn and bloody clothing. She sent the scene to Bagabond and set out to meet her.

Bagabond stood quietly against the far wall of the 86th Street cutoff. She petted the calico gently and did her best imitation of a harmless old woman. The black had warned her the mafiosi were coming, but they were behind her by the time she tried to retreat. Too many to fight, so she came passively. Now she silently gazed at the shambles they had made of her place. Her single guard had his attention fixed on Don Carlo.

"Somehow they must have escaped," said the Butcher apologetically.

"I want them," said Don Carlo. He stared around at the large velvet painting in its cheap wooden frame, one corner torn: a pride of lions stalked zebras on the veld. "They were here," he said. "Savages."

"Don Carlo, sir,…" It was Joey. "What?"

"It is Maria, Don Carlo. I found her wandering down here." Joey escorted Rosemary up to her father. She did not appear to see him or register anything else. Her face was vacant, almost peaceful. Rosemary was a docile rag doll, lost somewhere back in the tunnels.

Don Carlo looked at her with astonishment and then concern. "Maria, what is wrong, mia? Joey, what happened to her?"

"I don't know, Don Carlo. She was like this when I found her."

Bagabond looked up from under her stringy hair. "Rosemary, couldn't you stay out of this either? Social workers… so nosy." Bagabond spoke under her breath. The guard turned around at her muttering, but shook his head and returned his attention to the excitement.

"Take care of her for me, Joey, until I finish with this." Turning to the Butcher, Don Carlo said, "Does the old woman know anything?"

"That's what we're going to find out." Light caught the blade of the Butcher's stiletto as he started toward Bagabond. Then he stopped and listened attentively.

Everyone in the tunnel was listening. The rumbling that had at first seemed to be just another train in the distance got too loud, too quickly. There were yells from the west tunnel, even a scream of pain as the subway car appeared out of the darkness, traveling where no car could possibly be, with no third rail, on ruined tracks. The car glowed with a white phosphorescence, wraithlike. The route sign read CC LOCAL. It came to a stop in the middle of the gathering. The garish designs on its sides changed so rapidly it was impossible to focus on them.

"C. C.!" Rosemary, who had been standing to one side with Joey, eluded his grasp and ran to the phantom car. She stretched out her arms as if to embrace the thing, but as she touched the side, she recoiled. Then Rosemary extended one hand to touch what was not metal.