Robert Tanenbaum - Enemy within

"Our faithful native guide."

"He's okay," said Lucy reprovingly.

"If you say so," said Karp, suppressing the bourgeois in him who was recoiling from the knowledge that his little dearie was hanging out with people like this. The big man finished his honking conversation with the priest, of which Karp could understand not one word, and strode off into the tunnel, which debouched after a few minutes into a larger tunnel, with two sets of rusting railroad tracks on its floor. They all turned their lights on, but the narrow beams, strong as they were, did little to dissipate the blackness or to give any sense of scale, for they had to direct the light at their feet in order not to constantly trip over the uneven ties. Spare Parts, in the lead, was setting a brisk pace. He didn't have a light and didn't seem to need one. Father Dugan had his light angled to keep track of the guide's legs. He was feeling better than he had since leaving Salvador. This was why he had joined the Jesuits, to go into dark and dangerous places in the service of God and humanity. Nevertheless, his lips moved in prayer.

Karp followed the circle of light in front of him and kept his own lit circle small and tried, not always successfully, to keep his footing in the clumsy boots. In the part of his mind that was not controlling his feet or cursing, he was trying to put in order the chain of events that had led to his being here in a dark, wet tunnel with his wife and daughter, guided by the Son of Frankenstein into who knew what. He was angry, mostly at himself, but also at Brendan Cooley and the district attorney.

Close behind him, Lucy was feeling guilty about her father, sensing what he was going through, wishing he would stop worrying about her. She was fine. They were fine. She had absolute confidence in the ability of her mother and Tran to get them out of any conceivable problem. Bringing up the rear, Marlene was watching the lights of her family before her, thinking of nothing much but the current situation, in full action mode for the first time since the debacle at Kelsie Solette's, and starting to wonder when Tran would show. As she walked, she flicked her light beam from side to side, casting long shadows of her companions against the curved walls and vaulted roof. From time to time she spotted a scurrying shadow along the walls and thought that it must be some trick of light because, although she had heard that tunnel rats grew to prodigious size, she had not imagined anything quite that size. The dog trotted along by her side, snuffling when the rat smell hit his nostrils, perfectly content. He smelled and heard the people following them, but he had not been put on guard and so made no complaint.

Marlene felt the tap on her shoulder and let out a short, involuntary yelp.

"My God, Tran, you scared the shit out of me! Where have you been?"

"Following," he said, and something odd about his voice made her hold up her light to get a better look at him. She was shocked by what she saw. The always calm, competent, imperturbable Tran was sweating and wide-eyed and actually shaking. The plastic raincoat he wore made a slithering sound, and as she watched, he hugged himself tightly in an attempt to make it stop.

"Tran! What's the matter? Are you sick?"

"No, not sick. Or only in my head. I am devastated to have to tell you, Marie Helene, that since the war I am not very able beneath the ground, in the tunnels."

At once, and with a rush of shame, Marlene recalled the story he had told her years ago, of being buried alive for five days and then dug out and informed that his family had been vaporized by a bomb.

"Oh, you poor man! Why didn't you tell me?"

A shrug, a weak smile, a side-to-side movement of his head. "I thought I might have improved. It has been a long time. But I find that, despite the proverb, some things time does not heal. I cannot seem to control my limbs down here, and the deeper I go, the worse it gets."

"Christ! What are we going to do?" She shone her flash back the way they had come. A rat ran from the beam into the darkness, but otherwise the tunnel was empty.

"Where are your guys?"

"I did not bring them. They… it is a matter of face, you understand. They cannot see me like this. I am truly sorry."

She patted his arm. "Okay, no problem. Look, you go back topside and get yourself together. We'll be fine."

"I have a pistol. Do you want it?"

Marlene did, very much, but she declined. "Oh, hell no, we're just going to bring in some poor fool. He's not being held for ransom or anything. Really! Go on up, we'll be fine."

And more cheery words of this sort, which were interrupted by the crackle of the radio in her pocket. She took it out and held it to her ear.

"Marlene!" came her husband's voice. "Marlene, come in. Shit! This fucking thing doesn't work for…" She waited during more of this until his finger came off the button and she was able to talk.

"Butch, I'm fine. I'll be there in a second."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing, I just got a little tied up. Are you there yet?"

"We're at a switch-the tunnel branches off to the right, and Mike says that's the one we're going to take."

"Okay, be right there." She put the radio away. To Tran she said, "Go now. We'll be fine."

"There are two, at least two, other men in the tunnel besides your party. They are moving without lights, but I heard them. They passed me while I was sitting there paralyzed. I had to tell you…"

He looked as if he was about to collapse, and this sight was far worse than the thought of going into Rat Alley without him at her back.

She embraced him and kissed him on the cheek, then trotted off down the tracks and found the branching and took the right-hand tunnel. In a few minutes she saw the lights of the others ahead. They had stopped and were looking at the ground.

"This looks like it," said Father Dugan, indicating the floor with his beam.

Marlene saw that the floor and part of the wall had collapsed, making a pie-slice hole a few inches wide at the tip, swelling to no more than three feet at the widest.

Karp knelt and shone his light down the hole, but could see nothing but sparkling Manhattan schist.

The priest said, "According to Jacob, this goes down about twenty feet, and then you're in the old sewer tunnel. Canman lives up a side tunnel that branches a couple of hundred yards down."

"Is he going to lead us there?" Karp asked.

"No," said Father Dugan, "this is as far as he goes."

"So… just the one branch in there," said Karp, looking down the slit.

"No, a lot of them, he says. It's a sewer, or was."

"Then how will we know which branch is right?"

"Apparently, it's unmistakable."

Spare Parts let out a series of honks and grunts.

"What did he say?" asked Karp.

"He said, 'I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways,'" answered Lucy.

"What does that mean?"

"I don't know. It's from a poem called 'The Hound of Heaven.' Oh! He's going."

The tunnel king was indeed going, as usual without a kiss good-bye. They watched him move out of the circle of light and vanish.

Karp was by that time in a state that often occurs in unlikely adventures, in which everything seems giddily amusing and like a bad movie. Our cast, he thought: here was the kid who never got killed, and Marlene, the female star, ditto, and there were two guys, one of whom had to be eaten by the slime monster while the other rescued the ladies. Karp wondered which one he was. He said, "It's quiet. Too quiet. I don't like it." They all stared at him, but he was gladdened to see Lucy's teeth flash into a grin. Without further thought he eased his legs into the wide part of the slit.

"I'll go first."

"Why?" said his wife. "I got you into this. I'll go first."

"No, because I'm the biggest, and if I can't get through, no one else is going." Cutting short further discussion, he slid deeper until only his head and shoulders showed. "Stay five yards apart and watch out for the Nazis," he said, and vanished down the hole.