John Saul: The Manhattan Hunt Club

A streak of light, so thin it was barely visible. He moved faster, broke into a trot, then a run. Behind him he could hear Heather and Jinx and his father, their feet pounding on the concrete floor of the subway tunnel. They were between the tracks, the third rail on the left, and as they ran, the streak of light grew brighter.

Far ahead he saw another light. Though it was just a pinpoint, he knew it was another subway train, racing toward them.

"We've gotta get off the track!" Jinx yelled.

But there was nowhere to go-no alcoves cut into the walls, not even a catwalk! But the streak of light was only a few dozen yards farther along. "Hurry," he yelled. "We can make it!" He ran faster, hurling himself along the tracks, racing straight toward the train.

He could hear it now, even feel on his face the rush of the air the train was pushing in front of it.

The rest of them were right behind him, and suddenly he was there.

A plywood panel, covering a hole in the subway tunnel's wall, fixed to the outside of the tunnel so insecurely that the streak of daylight was obvious now.

"No!" he heard Heather yell as she realized what he was going to do. But it was too late.

Jeff hurled himself at the sheet of plywood, launching his body over the electrified rail, his arms raised, his body twisting so he'd hit the wood with his shoulder. If it held, and he dropped back-

His body smashed against the plywood. The nails holding it to the concrete squealed… but held, and Jeff dropped to the subway bed, missing the deadly third rail by a fraction of an inch.

There was a blare from a horn, and then the scream of brakes. Jeff looked up to see the train still hurtling toward him, and for a moment he froze, caught in the juggernaut's headlight like a jackrabbit. Then another voice crashed through the cacophony.

"Down! Now!"

Instinctively obeying his father's voice, Jeff dropped facedown into the gravel, then heard his father's voice bellow out again.

"Fire!"

Over the roar of the onrushing train there was a blast of gunfire. Jeff shrank away from it, but it was over almost as soon as it began, and when the blasting guns fell silent, everything had changed.

Light, daylight, was pouring through the hole in the concrete that only a moment before had been covered by the now-shattered sheet of plywood. Jeff scrambled to his feet and, with his father on one side, Heather on the other, and Jinx shoving him from behind, hurtled through the opening in the subway tunnel's wall. Then they were all blinking in the brilliant sunlight and breathing in the fresh breeze that was flowing off the river a few blocks to the west. Behind them, the subway train shot past, gone as quickly as it had come. As its roar faded away, Jeff looked out at the great excavation that lay before him.

It had changed since the last time he'd seen it, months ago, when his class in urban construction had taken another tour of the huge site where half a dozen buildings had stood. It had been a vast pit filled with heavy equipment meant for burrowing deep into the earth beneath the city. By now the pit had bottomed out, and the pile drivers were at work-the pile drivers he'd heard from deep within the tunnels-driving huge pilings into the bedrock to anchor the foundation of the skyscraper that wouldn't be completed for another two years.

All around them there were wooden forms for the concrete that would soon begin to fill the pit, and as Jeff gazed at them, he realized that just a couple of weeks later-maybe even less-the opening he'd just come through would have been blocked off forever.

But it didn't matter. None of it mattered, for he was free- free of the Tombs and free of the tunnels and free of the certain death that was all that had awaited him a few hours ago.

Reaching out and pulling Heather close, Jeff drew the cool afternoon air deep into his lungs, then leaned down and put his lips close to Heather's ear. "What do you say we walk home?" he murmured. "I think I'd just as soon skip the subway."

Randall Converse's grip on his father's hand tightened as he gazed down the stairs. "Don't want to," he said, hanging back and tugging his father's arm. Stepping away from the stream of people emerging from the subway onto Broadway, Jeff squatted down so his eyes were almost level with his son's. The four-year-old's features had taken on the stubborn, frowning expression that was a perfect replica of his grandfather's face when Keith had made up his mind and wasn't about to have it changed. "It's okay, Randy," Jeff said, doing his best to keep his voice from giving away his own nervousness about going into the subway. Years later he still felt a twinge of anxiety whenever he went beneath the streets of the city. On the trains and platforms, he constantly found himself glancing over his shoulder, scanning the faces of the homeless who rode the trains and panhandled in the stations when the transit cops weren't around. A suffocating feeling descended upon him when the trains took him into the tunnels, and sometimes he imagined he saw the faces of the herders peering out of the darkness. The claustrophobia lessened when he reached the brilliant light of the stations, but his anxiety only disappeared for good when he was back on the surface. He and Heather were both determined that their son would not fall prey to their own fears, even in the face of Jeff's parents' arguments. "Millions of people ride the trains every day," Jeff had insisted when his parents-for once united, if only on this one issue-had expressed their shock that he would consider taking Randy into the subways. "I'm not going to have him grow up being afraid to use them."

He could now see the same fear in Randy's eyes that he'd seen in his mother's when she'd begged him not to take her grandson into the tunnels. "There's nothing to be afraid of," he said, brushing a stray lock of curly brown hair off the boy's forehead. "This is just another train. You like the train that brings us into the city, don't you?"

Randy said nothing, but Jeff saw the fear in the boy's expression start to fade as curiosity replaced it. "And you want to see where I used to live before you were born, don't you?"

Randy nodded, but there was enough uncertainty in his eyes that Jeff lifted him up into his arms. "How about if I carry you?"

"No!" Randy instantly objected. "I'm not a baby!"

Setting the boy back on his feet, Jeff took his son's hand and together they started walking down into the subway station.

A familiar knot of anxiety began to form deep in Jeff's belly.

"Now, this isn't so bad, is it?" he asked as they settled onto a bench in a well-lit car a few minutes later.

Randy shook his head, but said nothing until the train moved from the station into the darkness of the tunnels. "What if it gets stuck?" Randy asked. "How do we get out? Do we have to walk?"

The thought of actually walking through the tunnels chilled Jeff to his core, but when he spoke, his voice was steady. "It won't get stuck," he reassured the boy. "And even if it does, someone will come and fix it."

As the train moved north, Jeff sensed that Randy was starting to relax. As the stations flashed by one after another, so did his memories of the days he'd spent trapped in the tunnels beneath the city.

But in the end, the nightmare he'd lived since he'd saved Cynthia Allen's life in the station at 110th Street had finally ended. He and Heather had been married a month after his escape, and nine months to the day after the wedding, Randy had been born.

With that, everything in their lives had changed once more.

He finished architecture school and moved back to Bridgehampton, since neither he nor Heather wanted to raise Randy in the city.

In the days following Jeff's escape from the tunnels, there had been remarkably little publicity about the unusual number of prominent people who had died in such a short period of time. Not a word of the real story appeared in the press, and Jeff and Heather knew exactly why: The Hundred had closed ranks, and the members' version had replaced the truth.