Songs of Innocence

Chapter 7

“What are you doing?” she screamed.

“He’s got a gun.” I kept my voice low, dragged her by the elbow. “We’ve got to move.”

“Who’s got a gun?”

“Move!” We turned another corner—Buell Hall has lots of them, bless those 19th century architects. Lots of nooks and crannies for lunatics to lose themselves in.

But behind us, and not far, I heard pounding footsteps. There were still lots of people around, and it was broad daylight, and the rational part of my brain said he’d be a fool to shoot at us with that many witnesses. But he’d already pulled a gun in public. It wasn’t a bet I wanted to take.

I kicked open the front door and pulled Julie in after me. There was a grand staircase leading up to the second story and a not-so-grand stairway leading down to the cellar. “Down,” I said.

“No!”

“Come on.” I whipped one arm around her and levered her into the air against my hip. Her breasts pressed against my arm and she hammered on me to let her go. She was heavy, too—I had to set her on her feet again on the landing halfway down.

“You touch me again—” she said.

The front door burst open above us, slammed against the far wall.

“He has a gun,” I hissed. “You want to see if he’ll use it?”

I dragged her to the farthest corner of the cellar, where a short metal door stood. She could make it through upright, but I’d have to stoop. I grabbed the handle with both hands and tugged furiously. It didn’t budge.

“Julie!” The voice overhead was hoarse, angry. “Julie!”

The door had been painted over since the first time I’d been here, led on a midnight tour by an urban spelunker who called himself “Benoit.” It was one of the things Columbia was famous for, and I’d figured as long as I was going to be a student here I might as well get the whole experience. Chalk it up to the investigative spirit. But it wouldn’t do me a damn bit of good if I couldn’t get the goddamn door open. I braced myself with one foot against the wall and yanked. The door wrenched open with a scream from the hinges that might as well have been a voice announcing where we were. I ducked inside. A long, narrow tunnel lit with a faint orange glow stretched yards into the distance. I held a hand out to Julie through the doorway. Behind us we heard pounding on the stairs. She took my hand and followed me into the tunnel.

We ran. As fast as we could on uneven ground, me with my shoulders hunched and head bent low. The only consolation was the knowledge that our pursuer, with his broader shoulders and extra height, would have an even harder time of it than I was having.

At the first T-branch, we took a left. There were rusty pipes overhead and running in ranks along one wall. Steam pipes, water pipes, who the hell knew what. The ground was dirt, and in some areas leakage from the pipes had turned it into mud, sometimes ankle deep. We ran through it. Across one particularly deep puddle some helpful soul had stretched a warped plank of wood. I pulled it up after we were across, left it leaning against the wall, then thought better and took it with me.

I don’t know who built the tunnels under Columbia. I don’t know if anyone knows. They’re very old, dating back to when coal and steam powered the place, and some people say they were used for transporting fuel from building to building. Maybe so. What I do know is that they connect half the buildings on the campus, basement to basement, in an intestinal labyrinth that has captivated students and frightened their parents for decades. During the riots in the 1960s, the students used them to get around. In the 80s, a kid named Ken Hechtman got expelled for using the tunnels to steal uranium from the physics lab in Pupin Hall where four decades earlier the Manhattan Project had been headquartered. There was a lot of history to these tunnels. None of which meant a damn thing to me right now. All that mattered was finding a way out.

I could hear breathing, ours and his, raggedly echoing in the narrow space; footsteps, too. We kept making turns every chance we got. Anything to avoid a direct line of sight—and of fire.

Ahead of us, the tunnel widened and we could run side by side. We were under Fayerweather Hall, if I remembered correctly, assuming we hadn’t gotten turned around. Ahead of us, the tunnel forked: a short passage on the left led to two narrow steps and a door, while the longer arm on the right just led on into darkness. I mounted the steps and pushed on the door, which had no knob. Locked. I shoved at it with one shoulder. Nothing. I set the plank down and tried again with as much of a running start as I could get in the narrow space. I could feel the door rattle under the impact, but it held.

“Come on,” Julie said, too loudly. In the distance we heard footsteps come to a halt, then start up faster.

I grabbed the plank again and we ran on, to the right.

The lighting was uneven underground. Some flickering fluorescents for a stretch, then nothing, then a bulb in a plastic cage overhead casting a dim yellow glow. Here, as we crossed a long transverse passage, there was nothing at all, and we felt our way carefully, unable to see each other even inches away. I brushed against the stem end of a pipe at ankle level and heard as Julie walked into its mate on her side. She stifled a curse. I reached out, felt her sleeve, and used it to tug her toward me. This time she didn’t complain.

I leaned over, found her ear with my lips. It was strangely intimate, like a kiss in the darkness. “I think there’s a branch coming up,” I said, so softly there was hardly any sound at all. “Feel for it on your side.”

A moment later, I felt her hand on my sleeve. I moved over to her side of the tunnel, touched the rough stone of the wall with my fingertips. I reached the corner she’d found, paced forward till I touched the opposite side. It was an opening about three feet wide. More than just an alcove: I went five or six steps into it and came back. I found her ear again. “Matches.”

She dug the matchbook out of her pocket. I heard a scratch and a tiny bead of orange light flared between us, too weak to illuminate much other than her hand and, as she raised it, her face, creased with deep shadows. She looked frightened. I’m sure I did, too.

I took the matchbook from her, carried it deeper down the new tunnel. It ended after about ten feet in a solid wall. In the instant before the match went out, I saw that the wall was a relatively recent addition, a layer of cinderblocks spanning the rough-hewn tunnel from one side to the other. Maybe they did this after Hechtman’s spree, to keep people out of Pupin. Didn’t matter—what mattered was that we weren’t going any further this way.

I returned to Julie and was about to lean over and whisper to her again when a bellow split the air.

“Julie!”

It came from right beside us.

I pressed Julie back against the stone wall with one arm. Thank god she didn’t make a sound.

From inches away: “Where are you?”

I bent the four remaining matches down with my left hand, the way I’d seen Julie do it. With my other arm, I raised the wooden plank. I pressed down on the match heads with my thumb. From the main tunnel came the sound of movement, footsteps.

I snapped the matches against the friction strip. All four flared to life at once, burning the pad of my thumb. In the sudden flare, I saw him, slightly farther away than I’d thought, wheeling to face me. One arm extended. Finger on the trigger.

I threw the matches at his face and swung the plank.

I saw flashes, reflections, before the flame went out. The side of his gun, narrowing, vanishing, as it swung in my direction. His face, furious. The edge of the plank, sweeping toward him in a wide arc, striking his forearm.

Then darkness. And the gun went off.

The explosion was like a thunderclap, deafening, though in its aftermath I could hear the metallic zing! of the bullet ricocheting from wall to wall. In this confined space, he’d be as likely to hit himself as he would to get me or Julie. Maybe he realized this because he didn’t fire again.

I could hear him coming toward me. I tried to swing the plank again, but it stopped halfway through the swing and was wrenched out of my hands. I heard it clatter to the ground some distance away. Then a pair of muscular arms wrapped my torso and his forehead crashed into mine. My knees buckled and I felt bile rising in my throat. Only the pressure of his arms around me kept me upright. I could smell his sweat, and his breath. His sandwich—salami, I thought. Onions. Jesus. His head cracked against mine again.

I tasted blood inside my mouth, where I’d bitten myself. I tried to clear my head by moving it side to side, tried to struggle against his grip, but I felt myself lifted off the ground, my feet dangling. All this in nearly total darkness. With Julie it had felt intimate, the brush of her hair and skin against my lips. With this man it felt like a nightmare—buried alive, two to a coffin, fighting to breathe.

He squeezed and I felt one of my ribs snap. I gasped, cried out.

I tried to raise my knee to his groin, but I had no leverage.

I ducked my head forward, felt his chin with mine, his cheek, his nose. I gripped his nose between my teeth and bit down. He howled and let go, dropping me.

I tried to roll away from him, but something drove into my side, hard: a foot. For an instant, I couldn’t even think. All I knew was pain.

Then I heard Julie’s voice, shouting “Hey!” and heard the man take a step toward it. Then a whack, the sound of splintering wood. I heard the man groan, followed by a sound like a heavy bag of laundry dropping.

A cluster of matches flared to life. Julie stood above the man’s still form, half the plank nestled in the crook of her right arm. I saw beads of sweat on her face. She didn’t look well.

“My hand,” she said. “I need a doctor.”

I got to my knees, felt the rib grate in my chest. I didn’t say anything. The matches went out. She lit some more.

“How many of those things do you have?” I said.

“I smoke two packs a day,” she said, wincing.

“Good for you,” I said.

“Fuck you,” she said. “Just get us the hell out of here.”