Slice

CHICAGO

The huge man wakes in darkness, and fumbles for his flashlight. He switches it on and sees the form of the sleeping woman nearby.

“Wake up,” he rumbles, and she sits up blinking like a bat, the blinding light in her eyes.

“Eh? What? Who's there?"

“Get up. Light the lantern,” he tells her, and she slowly sits up, rubbing herself. “LIGHT THE LANTERN.” She comes awake fully and begins obeying his command. Eventually a coal-oil-kerosene-like odor permeates the stench of their immediate surroundings and he says, “Did you bring me what I told you?"

“Okay. Pippy brings the good boy his fine things.” Amazingly she had brought him a sack containing some of the items he'd asked for. So she wasn't altogether useless. He snatched a can of Spam and quickly keyed it open, slapping the rectangle of meat and congealed grease out into his huge hand. Without even wiping the packing gelatin off, he took a ferocious bite, swallowing two-thirds of the meat in a single bite. In less than five minutes the old woman watched him consume the entire contents of a bag of groceries. “Good Big Boy eats all his fine dinner.” She waited for his next utterance.

He looked at her with some degree of irritation. He had tortured and killed people who had irritated him less than she did. Yet he felt no particular rage against her. She was somewhere along the evolutionary ladder between mankind and animal. He might let her live awhile longer if she didn't annoy him further.

“Look, see Pepper's puppy. He can walk just like the doggies with four foots. You look real close and only see three foots on puppy. See?"

He lurched to his feet, taking the heavy bag in one hand and the lantern in the other.

“Listen to what I tell you, sonny boy,” she commanded in a stern voice that caused him to glance at her, and the hard eyes looked for just a fraction of a heartbeat but she wasn't worth bothering with, and he was too tired to even shrug. Daniel turned away from her, the light sending ghostly movement of oily shadows over them, and he could hear her voice from the blackness behind him saying something about “pretty Pip would eat her dessert” as he lumbered out of the subworld for the last time.

He had known where he was going to come up and he scrutinized the street carefully before he felt comfortable with the idea of coming out of the manhole. There was an alley immediately behind him, and as he slid the heavy cover out of the way and squeezed through the opening, a Billy Batsonizing boom of thunder cracked down out of the sky and Chaingang's mighty lungs filled with the almost overpowering pungency of “fresh” Chicago air.