Reliquary

= 54 =

SMITHBACK FROZE IN the tunnel, listening. There were the footsteps again, seemingly more distant this time. He breathed deeply several times, swallowing hard, trying to force his heart back down out of his throat. In the dark, he’d lost his way in the narrow passages. He was no longer even sure he was moving in the right direction. For all he knew, he’d turned himself around completely and was heading back toward the killers, whoever or whatever they were. Yet instinct told him he was still heading away from the scene of horrible butchery. The slick-walled passages still seemed to lead in only one direction: down.

The hideous creatures he had seen were the Wrinklers, he was sure of that. The ones Mephisto had been raving about, maybe the ones that had killed all those people in the subway. Wrinklers. In the space of a few minutes, they’d killed at least four men… Waxie’s screams seemed to echo and reecho in his ears until he wasn’t sure what was real and what was merely memory.

Then another, very real, sound intruded into his thoughts: the footsteps again, and very close. He twisted around in panic, looking for a place to run. Suddenly there was a bright light in his eyes, and behind it a figure loomed toward him. Smithback tensed for a fight he hoped would be mercifully short.

But then the figure shrank back, squealing in terror. The flashlight dropped to the floor and came rattling toward Smithback. With a flood of relief, the journalist recognized the bushy mustache belonging to Duffy, the fellow who’d been straggling up the ladder behind Waxie. He must have eluded his pursuers, God only knew how.

“Calm down!” Smithback whispered, grabbing the flashlight before it rolled away. “I’m a journalist; I saw it all happen.”

Duffy was too frightened, or winded, to ask what Smithback was doing underneath the Central Park Reservoir. He sat on the brick floor of the tunnel, his sides heaving. Every few seconds he took a quick look into the blackness behind him.

“Know how to get out of here?” Smithback prodded.

“No,” Duffy gasped. “Maybe. Come on, help me up.”

“Name’s Bill Smithback,” Smithback whispered, reaching down and hoisting the trembling engineer to his feet.

“Stan Duffy,” the engineer hiccuped.

“How’d you get away from those things?”

“I lost them back there in the overflow shunts,” Duffy said. A large tear rolled slowly down his mud-streaked face.

“How come these tunnels only lead down, and not up?”

Duffy dabbed absently at his eyes with one sleeve. “We’re in the secondary flow tunnels. In an emergency, water runs down both the main tube and these secondary tubes, right to the Bottleneck. It’s a closed system. Everything around here has to go through the Bottleneck.” He stopped, and his eyes widened, as if remembering something. Then he glanced at his watch. “We have to go!” he said. “We’ve got just ninety minutes!”

“Ninety minutes? Until what?” Smithback asked, playing the light ahead of them down the tunnel.

“The Reservoir’s going to drain at midnight; there’s no stopping it now. And when it does, it’s going right down these tunnels.”

“What?” Smithback breathed.

“They’re trying to flush out the lowest levels, the Astor Tunnels, to get rid of the creatures. Or they were, anyway. Now they want to change their minds. But it’s too late—”

“The Astor Tunnels?” Smithback asked. Must be that Devil’s Attic Mephisto was talking about.

Duffy suddenly grabbed the flashlight and started running down the tunnel.

Smithback took off after him. The passage joined a larger one which continued downward, spiraling like a gigantic corkscrew. There was no light save for the wildly flailing beam of the flashlight. He tried to stay to the sides of the curving tunnel floor, avoiding the standing water that ran along its bottom. Though he wasn’t sure why he bothered; Duffy was splashing straight down the center, making enough noise to raise the dead.

Moments later, Duffy stopped. “I heard them!” he shrieked as Smithback appeared by his side.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Smithback panted, looking around.

But Duffy was running again, and Smithback followed, panic ripping his heart, thoughts of a big story forgotten. A dark opening appeared at the side of the tunnel, and Duffy made for it. Smithback followed, and suddenly the ground opened up beneath his feet. In an instant, he was sliding uncontrollably down a slick wet chute. Duffy’s wail came keening up from below as Smithback spun around, clawing at the slick surface. It was like every dream he’d ever had of falling, except even more horrible, inside a dank black runnel, unguessable depths beneath Manhattan. Suddenly there was a splash in front of him, and the next moment he too landed, hard, in about twenty inches of water.

He scrambled to his feet, aching in numerous places but glad to feel a firm surface under his feet. The floor of the tunnel seemed even, and the water smelled relatively fresh. Beside him, Duffy was wailing uncontrollably.

“Shut up,” Smithback hissed at him. “You’re going to draw those things right to us.”

“Oh, my God,” Duffy sobbed in the darkness. “This can’t be happening, it can’t. What are they? What—”

Smithback reached into the blackness, located Duffy’s arm, and pulled the man toward him brusquely. “Shut up,” he said, lips touching the engineer’s ear.

The sobbing subsided to a soft hiccuping.

“Where’s the flashlight?” Smithback whispered.

Sobbing was the only reply. But then a dim light switched on nearby. Miraculously, Duffy was still clutching it.

“Where are we?”

The hiccuping subsided.

“Duffy! Where are we?’”

There was a stifled sob. “I don’t know. One of the spillover tubes, maybe.”

“Any idea where it goes?”

There was a sniffle. “It bleeds off excess flow from the Reservoir. If we move downstream to the Bottleneck, maybe we can reach the lower drain system.”

“And from there, how do we get out?” Smithback whispered.

Duffy hiccuped. “Don’t know.”

Smithback mopped his face again and said nothing, trying to roll the fear, the pain, and the shock into a little ball he could stuff down inside himself. He tried to think about his story. God, he’d be a made man with a story like this, following on the heels of the Museum Beast murders. And with luck, he’d still have the Wisher piece in his pocket. But first…

There was a splashing sound, its distance hard to gauge because of the echoes but clearly approaching. He leaned into the darkness, straining to hear.

“They’re still after us!” Duffy yelped, inches from his eardrum.

Smithback grabbed the arm a second time. “Duffy, shut up and listen to me. We can’t outrun them. We need to lose them. You know the system: you’ve got to tell me how.”

Duffy struggled, making an unintelligible sound of fear.

Smithback squeezed harder. “Look, we’re going to be all right if you just calm down and think.”

Duffy seemed to relax, and Smithback could hear him breathing heavily. “All right,” the engineer said. “The emergency spillovers have gauging stations at the bottom. Just before the Bottleneck. If that’s where we are, maybe we can hide inside—”

“Let’s go,” Smithback hissed.

They splashed through the darkness, the flashlight beam jogging from wall to wall. The low tunnel took a turn, and a vast, ancient piece of machinery rose up before Smithback: a giant hollow screw, or something like it, placed horizontally on a bed of granite. Heavily rusted pipes protruded from either end, and a convoluted mass of pipes lay farther back, like coiled iron guts. At the base of the machine was a small railed platform. The main body of the stream ran down past the station, while a small side tunnel snaked its way into the blackness to their left. Taking the flashlight, Smithback grabbed the railing and swung himself up, then helped Duffy to a position beside him.

“Into the pipe,” Smithback whispered. He pushed Duffy inside, then wriggled in himself, tossing the lighted flashlight into the stream before retreating into the darkness.

“Are you crazy? You just threw away—”

“It’s plastic,” Smithback said. “It’ll float. I’m hoping they’ll follow the light downstream.”

They sat in absolute silence. The thick walls of the gauging machinery muffled the tunnel noise, but in a few minutes Smithback could tell that the splashing sounds had grown more distinct. The Wrinklers were approaching—swiftly, too, by the sound. Behind him, he could feel Duffy twitch, and he prayed the engineer would keep his head. The splashing became louder and now Smithback could hear them breathing, a heavy wheezing, like a winded horse. The splashing sounds drew alongside the gauging station, then stopped.

The foul goatish reek was thick now, and Smithback shut his eyes tightly. In the blackness to his rear, Duffy was trembling violently.

He heard splashes in the water outside the station as the things milled about. There was a low noise that sounded like snuffling, and Smithback froze, remembering the Mbwun beast’s keen sense of smell. The splashing continued. Then—with an enormous feeling of relief—Smithback heard it begin to retreat. The things were continuing down the tunnel.

He breathed slowly and deeply, counting each breath. At thirty, he turned to Duffy. “Which way to the storm drains?”

“Out the far end,” Duffy whispered.

“Let’s go.”

Carefully, they turned around within the cramped, fetid space and began wriggling their way toward the rear of the pipe. Duffy emerged at last into the open air. Smithback heard first one, then both, of the engineer’s feet drop into the water, and was wriggling forward himself when a sudden piercing scream cut through the pitch black, and a spray too thick and warm to be water spattered his face. He backed frantically into the pipe.

“Help!” Duffy blurted suddenly. “No, please don’t, you’re gonna—Oh, God, that’s my guts—Jesus, somebody get—”

The voice changed suddenly to a frenzied wet wheeze, then died beneath the heavy thrashing of water. Smithback, scrambling backward in mindless terror, heard a thudding sound like meat chopped with a cleaver, followed by the knuckle-crack of bones being wrenched from their sockets.

Smithback fell out the near end of the pipe, landed on his back in the stream, scrambled to his feet and ran blindly down the side tunnel, not hearing, not caring, not thinking about anything except running. He ran and ran, careening off the sides of the tunnel, scrabbling and thrashing down the endlessly forking paths, deeper and deeper into the dark bowels of the earth. The tunnel joined another, and another, each one larger than the last. Until, quite suddenly, he felt an arm, wet and horribly strong, slide around his neck, and a powerful hand clamp down simultaneously over his mouth.