The Manhattan Hunt Club

CHAPTER 30

"What time you think it is?"

Jeff suspected the question was motivated only by Jagger's desire to break the silence they had fallen into, since the time of day was no longer relevant to either of them. Long ago, Jeff had stopped trying to estimate what hour of the day or night it might be. His stomach told him when it was time to eat, his mouth and throat when he needed water, and his muscles and brain when he needed rest. They'd all been complaining for the last… what? Hour? Maybe two? Five?

With an effort, Jeff banished his speculation, reminding himself that it didn't matter. All that mattered was that the emptiness in his stomach had turned into a gnawing hunger demanding to be fed, that his mouth and throat had become so dry he had difficulty swallowing, and that his muscles- deprived of both food and water-would soon rebel.

He had no idea where they were. After the cell phone had failed, he tried to keep track of where they were going, at least in relation to the shaft with the tantalizing rays of daylight shining down through it.

After the last bar of the cell phone's battery indicator had flickered away, along with the rest of the display on the screen, they had gone in search of something to use as a ladder. When they found a utility tunnel, Jagger thought they would find some kind of storeroom. "They gotta work down here, and they gotta have tools. And what are they gonna do-drag ladders down every time they need one?" Jagger's grip on the railroad spike-still stained with blood-tightened in anticipation of using it to pry open whatever lock might secure a door that Jeff didn't think they would find.

He hadn't bothered to argue that if the shaft they'd located all those hours ago existed to provide access to the tunnel, then surely any work crew using it would lower a ladder from the top to get down, rather than pushing one up from the bottom to get out. His own hope was that if they didn't find a ladder, they might find something else-a pole, or a discarded section of track-anything that might help them lift the grate and climb to the surface. Better to take some kind of action than to wander aimlessly through the gloom.

It happened that in their search for ladders they'd come to a railroad tunnel, a wide one, which Jeff was fairly sure ran under Park Avenue. Eventually the tunnel widened into the vast track yard of Grand Central Station. That was where they'd found the ladders. Bolted to the walls, they led up to a maze of catwalks, and above the catwalks they could see glimmers of daylight shining through grates far overhead.

At first the yawning space seemed to be devoid of people, and the two men felt cautiously hopeful as they moved to the foot of one of the ladders. But as they started climbing, Jeff in the lead, he'd become aware that the catwalk above him wasn't deserted at all. Two faces were peering down at him. Hard, unshaven faces-the same kind of faces he'd seen on the men loitering near the river when he and Jagger had emerged from the tunnels. Jeff paused on the ladder, and when one of the men looming above smiled down at him, he felt a flicker of hope once again.

Then the man opened his fly, and a moment later a hot, stinking yellow stream stung Jeff's eyes. If Jagger hadn't caught him, he would have fallen ten feet to the rock-covered ground at the ladder's foot. Raucous laughter from above burned in Jeff's ears as Jagger got them both safely off the ladder.

"Fuckers," Jagger muttered as Jeff wiped his stinging eyes with a filthy sleeve. Though Jagger's voice was low, it was choked with fury. "Just let me get my hands on one of ‘em…" His voice trailed off as he scanned the catwalks, and he shook his head. "Bastards are everywhere-what the fuck do they want? If they're gonna kill us, why don't they just go ahead and do it?"

Jeff knew the answer to that. "Because it's a game." He gazed up at the faces leering down at him. "They're not here to kill us-all they want to do is keep us here." He felt Jagger's hand tighten on his shoulder, and his own fist clenched as some of the other man's rage flowed into him. "But they can't be everywhere. Somewhere, there's a way out-there's got to be. So let's find it."

The sound of laughter followed them as they headed back the way they'd come, then chose a passage leading to the right. Jeff was right about their location, they were heading toward the East River. But soon they came to a fork in the passage, and then another and another, and at some point he realized that he no longer knew in which direction they were headed.

In another few yards they might find the Lexington Avenue subway, or be back on the tracks beneath Park Avenue. As their bodies inexorably consumed their small reserves of food and water, all hope began to fade. Finally, minutes or hours later, they found an alcove in the tunnel just large enough for both of them to sprawl out in, and decided to rest.

Jeff fell asleep, and when he woke up, he felt Jagger's arm curled protectively around him. He remained perfectly still for a moment, but the ache in his back from lying on the hard concrete finally compelled him to move. That movement awakened Jagger, whose arm momentarily tightened around Jeff. But a second later the big man, too, had come fully awake, sitting up and pulling away from Jeff almost as if he were embarrassed that their bodies had come together, even in sleep. Now, as they both sat up and tried to stretch the chill and stiffness from their limbs, the same thought occurred to both of them, though it was Jagger who spoke it out loud.

"We don't find some food pretty soon, we're gonna starve to death." He stood up and spoke again without looking at Jeff. "Which way?"

"Left," Jeff said. "At least it's someplace we haven't been yet."

They set out along the tunnel, and a hundred or so paces farther on, they came to an intersection. Off to the right, barely visible, a shaft of something like daylight seemed to be glowing, and they started toward it.

As they came closer and the light grew brighter, they heard sounds from above.

Real sounds, the sounds of the city, not the dripping of water and rumbling of trains that were the constant background noise of the tunnels. Now they were hearing the sound of car horns and the drone of automobile engines. They reached the pool of light and looked upward.

A grate, and beyond that, a patch of brilliant blue sky.

And a ladder! An iron ladder, bolted securely to the concrete wall of the shaft, its lower end reaching within two feet of the tunnel's floor, its top appearing flush with the grate that was all that lay between them and freedom.

They gazed at the ladder as if it were the Holy Grail and might vanish before them if they tried to touch it. Finally, Jagger reached out, his hands grasping the vertical rails.

He jerked hard, testing the ladder.

It was as real and solid as it looked.

While Jeff waited below, Jagger started climbing toward the light.

Fritz Wyskowski hadn't been expecting anything to happen at all. When Blacky had come up to him early that morning, stuffed a bunch of money into his hand, and told him that all he had to do was keep an eye on the grate and make sure no one came out of it, Fritz figured the money would keep him drunk for a week at least. And it would have, too, if only he weren't going to have to use part of it in a couple of minutes. For a second he wished he'd just taken Blacky's money, waited until Blacky left, then started drinking right away. In fact, he might have done just that if Blacky hadn't explained to him what would happen if he fucked up. So he'd agreed to do everything that Blacky told him, and sat down on the sidewalk, leaned back against the wall, and stuck his hat out in front of him just in case any of the suckers walking along the sidewalk decided to drop some change in it.

Around noon, he'd spent a couple of Blacky's bucks to buy a hot dog from the vendor on the corner, and while the guy- who insisted on being paid even before he pulled the wiener out of the kettle-slathered some mustard on the dog, along with some chopped onions, Fritz kept half an eye on the grate just in case.

Nothing, of course, had happened, and as he'd sat back down and munched on the hot dog, he wondered how much longer he was expected to wait.

"You stay until I tell you it's okay," Blacky had said, but with his stomach as full of food as his pocket was of money, Fritz was feeling a lot more cocky than when he'd talked to Blacky that morning. The siren song of a fifth of Black Label- or even two-was filling his brain now, and maybe he'd just call it a day and head for the liquor store around the corner. But then, as he was about to come to a decision, he heard something.

Something from beneath the grating.

Getting to his feet, he stepped over to the edge of the grate and looked down.

Someone was coming up. Fritz couldn't see what the guy looked like, and the guy wasn't looking up, but it didn't matter-he knew what Blacky had told him to do, and despite the fact that it was going to cost him half the money in his pocket, he knew he had to do it.

Pulling fifty dollars out of his pocket, he went over to the hot dog vendor, dropped the money on the counter of the cart, then picked up the steaming kettle. "Hey, motherfucker, what you think-" the vendor began, but Fritz ignored him.

Turning away, he stepped back to the grate, glanced down at the man who was now only five feet below, and upended the kettle.

A stream of scalding water, accompanied by a couple of dozen overcooked wieners, poured down onto the grating.

As an agonized howl erupted from the shaft below the grating, Fritz dropped the kettle and shambled off down the street as quickly as he could.

By the time the vendor got around his cart, it was all over, and as he picked up his kettle and watched Fritz disappear, he decided that the fifty dollars the bum had left on the counter was worth a lot more than the hassle it would take to report to the police what had happened. Leaving the few hot dogs that hadn't fallen through the grating where they were, the vendor stowed the kettle in the cart then began pushing the cart away.

If any of the pedestrians moving along the sidewalk had even noticed what happened, they gave no sign.

Better not to get involved…

His initial scream of agony ending in an abrupt grunt as he struck the floor at the foot of the ladder, Jagger moaned and writhed as he instinctively tried to rub away the pain of the scalding water. Had he been looking up and taken the water directly in the face, he undoubtedly would have been blinded-as it was, blisters were already starting to rise on his scalp and neck, and the skin of his face was turning a bright red. Dropping to his knees, Jeff pulled Jagger's hands away from his head.

"Don't rub it-you'll pull the skin off!"

Jagger tried to pull his hands loose, but Jeff held fast, and slowly, as the worst of the scalding agony eased, his struggles weakened. "Wh-What happened?" he finally stammered, gazing up at Jeff with eyes glazed by pain and dazed in confusion.

"Someone dumped a kettle of boiling water on you," Jeff told him. Seeing the wieners that had fallen through the grate along with the water, he added, "Looks like it must have come from a hot dog wagon." Jagger still looked dazed, and Jeff tried to pull the big man to his feet. "Can you walk?"

With Jeff steadying him, Jagger heaved himself up. For a moment it seemed his knees might buckle, but then he regained his balance. As Jeff started to lead him away from the shaft before anything else could cascade down on them, Jagger stopped, his fingers closing on Jeff's arm like a vise.

"The hot dogs," he said. "Pick ‘em up." When Jeff hesitated, Jagger said, "Fuck, man-we can eat 'em!"

Jeff peered down at the wieners covered with the scum that made the floor beneath their feet slick. The thought of eating them made his gut tighten. But then a hunger pang hit him, and he knew Jagger was right. Filthy as they were, at least they were food, and with any luck at all, they'd find a dripping pipe that would at least allow them to wash the worst of the muck away. As Jagger steadied himself against the wall, Jeff began gathering up the hot dogs and stuffing them in the pockets of his jacket, which was almost as filthy as the food itself.

"How bad is it?" Jeff asked as they started back the way they'd come.

"Feels like my whole head's burning," Jagger muttered. "Where we going?"

"To find some water," Jeff replied, his voice grim. A few minutes later they were back at the shelved alcove in which they'd found shelter before. "Stay here," Jeff told Jagger as the big man eased himself into the cavernlike space. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

Jagger's hand closed on Jeff's wrist, his fingers digging painfully into Jeff's flesh. "No…" he said, the word emerging from his lips more as a plea than an order.

Jeff gently loosened Jagger's fingers from his arm. "I've got to find water," he said. "If I can't find some, we'll never make it."

"We ain't gonna make it anyway," Jagger said, the usual truculence in his voice giving way now to a tone of defeat. "Fuckers are never gonna let us out. What the fuck did we ever do to them?"

"It doesn't matter what we did or didn't do," Jeff replied. "Don't you get it? It's just a game, Jagger. The whole thing's nothing but a game."

Jagger, his skin burning wherever the scalding water had touched it, gingerly reclined, resting awkwardly against the concrete wall. "So what are we gonna do?"

"We're going to win," Jeff said.

The two men's eyes met for a moment, then Jagger's gaze left Jeff's face and moved slowly down his body with an intensity Jeff could almost feel.

It was as if Jagger's eyes were touching him, stroking his skin, exploring every contour of his body.

Turning quickly away, Jeff slipped into the suddenly welcome darkness, but even as he moved down the tunnel, he could still feel Jagger's eyes on him. His skin crawled, a shudder shook his body, and he unconsciously hurried his step until the blackness hid him from Jagger's burning gaze.