Tango Key (45 page)

"Tho there, match."

She giggles and crawls on, hugging the side of the tunnel now as it twists, as the ceiling slopes down low over her head again, then rises. She feels a breath of air from somewhere to
her
right. She scoots across the floor of the tunnel on her buttocks, pats the wall here, follows it for a few feet, stops. The tunnel splits. Which way?

"Daddy. Help me. Pleathe help me," she whimpers.

But Daddy is gone.

She pulls her legs up against her, presses her head into her arms her right hand still clutching the meat cleaver. Everything hurts. Her gums, her stomach, her face. And now she feels the roof of the tunnel bearing down on her again. Somewhere above her, the ground is sagging. Caving in. A cold sweat erupts across her back, her face, her hands. She can barely breathe. She's thirsty. She has to pee. Her stomach aches with hunger. The Bad Man will come for her soon. The Bad Man will hurt her. Punish her. She can't go back. Back where?

She has nowhere to go. She lives here in the tunnel. She has always lived here.

Her head snaps up and her grip on the meat cleaver tightens. She heard something, a small sound. Not the bugs. This was a different noise. Voices? Yes, maybe. Voices. The Bad Man is coming for her.

He will hurt her.

Punish her.

No.

She will kill him.

July 6, 8:25 P.M.

A
line had stepped out into a space no larger than a small closet, with a ceiling so low that neither she nor Kincaid could stand upright. The air was cool and damp and smelled thickly of earth. It was the way she imagined the world would smell if she were buried alive.

Just in front of her was an arched doorway about four feet high. She waddled through it, with Kincaid bringing up the rear. One gunshot in here, she thought, and the goddamn walls and ceiling would probably cave in.

"You sure you want to follow this?" she whispered, shining the flashlight ahead of them, where the tunnel twisted like a pretzel.

"You bet. Whoever went nuts in that bomb shelter left through here. My guess is Pleskin made sure he had two entrances and exits out of that room." He ran his hands over the wall. "I bet this is ten or twelve feet of solid concrete."

"Yeah? Then why does the ceiling have cracks in it?" She ran her fingers along the fissures as the beam of light slid over them.

"The place is more than thirty years old." They started down the tunnel, Aline in the lead with the flashlight.

Within minutes, the ceiling had dropped even lower, so that in spots they had to crawl. Whenever she touched the walls now, she felt dampness. She thought of the tons of earth pressing in on either side of them, covering them, thought of the thirty-some-odd years this tunnel had stood, of the storms that had pounded the island, and she wanted to scream,
No farther, let's go back
. But she didn't. Later, when she would pick through what had happened, she would pinpoint her silence then as her gravest error.

They encountered puddles of water that had seeped through the concrete floor. They found pieces of a broken candle. Wet matchbooks. And then, every several yards, the beam of light followed smears of blood along the curve of the wall. Once, when they'd reached a point in the tunnel where the ceiling sloped so low they had to crawl on their bellies, crawl through like reptiles, something wet and slimy slid over her hand and it was everything she could do not to scream. Aline stood up fast, shaking her hand, trying to get whatever it was off, and slammed her head against the ceiling. She literally saw stars and knocked the breath out of herself as she fell back against the tunnel floor.

Kincaid, who was a foot behind her, hurried forward and helped her up. He flicked his hand over the sleeve of her windbreaker, knocking off a centipede, then pulled one from her hair and smashed them both with the end of the flashlight. "You all right?" he whispered.

She sat against the wall where the ceiling was higher now, rubbing her head, wishing for water, air, light, food, anything but this. "No. Let's go back. Whoever left this way is probably already out."

"Yeah, maybe you're right." He shone the flashlight back from where they'd come and the beam struck the ceiling and gorge rose in her throat and she pressed her hand to her mouth to keep from shrieking. The ceiling was dark and thick with centipedes, so thick that their movements made the ceiling seem to quiver with life. Kincaid saw it, too, and his face drained of color and he told her to turn around so he could check to make sure she was free of them. She then did the same for him, running the light over his hair and neck and shoulder, down his back, his legs. She flicked away two centipedes inching side by side up his spine.

"Forget about going back," he muttered.

A bubble of hysteria slid up her throat and popped into the air, an inchoate laugh that echoed, that rose and fell. She tensed, waiting for the noise to strike the crucial center of the tunnel, that essential weak spot that would bring the whole thing down on their heads. But nothing happened. They crawled on.

The tunnel narrowed so they had to move in single file. Every few minutes a spasm of fear jerked inside her chest and she felt a scream clawing up her throat and the walls would seem to inch a little closer and she didn't think she could stand it another second. Then she would force herself to suck deeply at the air until that vertiginous feeling receded.

The puddles worsened. They passed more clusters of centipedes and spotted an occasional roach. Her skin crawled every time she felt a drop of moisture or heard something skirring away just out of the flashlight's reach. She worried about the batteries on the flashlight wearing down, plunging them into darkness. The center of her chest burned fiercely now, and the smallest sound brought goose bumps to her arms. Although she knew they hadn't come that far, maybe three or four hundred feet at the most, the tunnel seemed endless. They moved slowly, and the tunnel twisted this way and that, as if to circumvent unseen obstructions.

They reached what looked like a fork in the tunnel, and the hairs at the back of her neck stood on end. They were being watched. She knew they were. She had never felt anything so strongly in her life. Kincaid sensed it too and gripped her hand as they stopped. They backed up to the wall, hunkered down side by side. "You feel it?" he whispered.

"Yes.''

The beam of light glided across the wall on the far side and reached part way into the other fork. She pulled her .38 from inside her windbreaker, knowing she would use it if she had to because this thing she couldn't see or hear terrified her more than the risk of bringing the tunnel down on top of them.

Something gleamed momentarily in the beam. A fleck of rock? Of metal?

Kincaid stepped to the side, down the fork, and she moved with him, as if an invisible cord connected them. He continued to flash the light along the opposite wall, and toward the mouth of the fork, as if the light were a powerful magic that would keep whatever it was away from them. The ceiling of the tunnel was much higher here, and as they straightened, they turned, relinquishing the wall at their backs. As they hurried forward, she heard it, a ripple of air that shouldn't have been there and then a shriek: "No! Bad Man No!"

They spun. For a brief and lucid instant the flashlight illuminated the thing bearing down on them. It was human.

Its face was misshapen, blood was smeared across its skin, its clothes were torn. Its wild, feral eyes seemed to glow hideously in the glow of the flashlight, and then she realized the thing was Eve and she was gripping a meat cleaver in her hand and she was headed straight for Kincaid.

"Eve, it's me, Aline!" she shouted.

But Eve didn't stop. She lunged toward them shrieking, and Aline's thumb disengaged the safety on her gun and Kincaid yelled, "Don't fire in here!" He hurled the flashlight toward Eve. It struck her hard in the temple, knocking her back and the light out.

The dark bit down. Kincaid grabbed her arm and they stumbled blindly down the tunnel for several yards as Eve started to shriek again. The sound rose from the primal depths of this place, echoing, distorting any sense Aline might've had about how close or distant Eve was from them. Then the shrieks diminished to bursts like gunfire. Aline heard the screech of metal against concrete.
The cleaver, she still has the cleaver
. Her heart leaped into her throat and lodged there, pulsing, hammering, pounding against her esophagus.

Suddenly, the tunnel sloped steeply upward. It twisted sharply to the left. Eve had stopped shrieking, and the slap of her feet against the concrete behind them seemed more distant. Kincaid tugged on Aline's hand, hissed, "Wait," and flicked on a lighter. The lambent light licked at the walls and ate away enough of the darkness for them to see the end of the tunnel just ahead—and a ladder that climbed the wall for eight or twelve feet.

They ran forward, and the flame went out, but by then Aline was scrambling up the ladder and trying to hold on to the gun at the same time. The .38 slipped out of her hand and clattered to the floor. Kincaid, still below her, scooped it up, as the second rung of the ladder broke, and splinters from the wooden railing lacerated her hands as she slipped. Her feet crashed through the first rung. She banged her cheek against the ladder. For a long and horrid moment, she was just dangling there, the muscles in her arms screaming, then Kincaid shoved her upward and her feet found purchase. She climbed. Her chest was on fire. She heard the ragged sound of her breathing, Kincaid scrambling up behind her, and then a noise like pebbles pinging against the concrete floor.

"What're you doing?"

"Marbles. Just some marbles. Go on, move, keep moving."

Eve's scream sundered the air a moment later. "Daddy!" she screeched.

Aline winced. She climbed. The screams stopped. Kincaid flicked on the lighter again. They were ascending into a shaft, and it looked like the ladder went on for another eight or ten feet. At the top of it, peering down at her like a great singular eye, was another metal manhole cover. She threw her shoulder into it when she reached it and nearly toppled from the ladder.

She stepped to the left; Kincaid sidled up next to her and hooked one arm around the railing. The lighter went out, he passed it to her and she flicked it again as he slammed his right shoulder into the cover so hard Aline was sure she heard something break. It gave, but not very much.

Now she heard Eve. Now she heard Eve dragging the cleaver, heard her hissing, "Bad Man, Bad Man, Bad Man, I hurt, you hurt me," heard her hissing it over and over again, the words echoing, shooting up the shaft like a breath of hot, fetid wind, desert wind. She snapped the lid on the old Zippo lighter, dropped it in the pocket of her windbreaker, and as Kincaid heaved his shoulder against the cover again, she pushed with her free hand, pushed with all her feeble might. It gave a little more.

Kincaid climbed up to the last step, preparing to push against the cover with his back. Aline flicked on the lighter, and now she saw Eve below them, peering up, that misshapen face skewed with pain. "Bad Man hurt Evie!" she shrieked. "Bad Man die!" And she slammed the cleaver into the right side of the ladder.

"Eve!" Aline shouted. "It's all right. We're not going to hurt you. It's me. Aline. Remember Aline?"

"Bad Man. Nonono!" And she slammed the cleaver into the railing again. The blow reverberated through the wood. Now she was trying to grab hold of the railing, but with the first and second rungs broken, she couldn't get her feet onto the ladder.

"Take this," Kincaid said, shoving her .38 into her hand. "And if she gets too close, just blow her the fuck away. Otherwise we're not going to get outa here alive."

And then he threw his back into the cover, threw it again, and the lighter went out and Aline heard Eve coming now, climbing, and she pointed the .38 down, knowing she would do it if she had to, but praying that Kincaid would get the cover off first.

"Die, Bad Man, die," Eve hissed, and Aline felt a rush of air that she knew was the cleaver, uncomfortably close to her foot.

"Hurry, Kincaid, c'mon, Jesus, she's too close. If I fire and miss, the bullet's going to ricochet."

"Something's on top of the goddamn thing," he grunted.

Bad Man die, Bad Man die . . .
The words went on and on and got closer and closer, and suddenly the cover gave and Kincaid burst through the hole and hay tumbled through it, raining over Aline's head, her shoulders, her arms, and then he was yanking her up through the hole and they fell back into a pile of hay.

The barn. How did we reach the barn?

She sucked the sweet air into her lungs and blinked against the dark, trying to see something, anything. "Kincaid?" she whispered.

"My gun, my goddamn gun is somewhere in this hay. Jesus."

Both guns were lost, she thought frantically. Both. And now Eve's shrieks rose out of the hole, echoing against the walls of the barn, silencing him. She banged the cleaver against the concrete, and the shaft amplified the sound. Kincaid grabbed Aline's hand and pulled her back into the hay, covering her with it. "Don't move," he whispered, and then she felt him slip away.