Finally, it was time to drive into the city and become parents. All they had been told was that their soon-to-be child was a healthy baby girl. They had endured a long and arduous screening process which boosted Mr. Troma’s confidence in the order immeasurably but made Mrs. Troma impatient. Mrs. Troma asked during one of many screening interviews what had happened to the little girl’s parents. The only information offered was that they were both dead.
*****
Lucy’s mother trudged through the murky sludge, shifting her daughter to her left hip. What at first seemed to be empty darkness, a passage to nothingness, now showed itself to be a low-slung portal of chipped stone, and like the painted frieze she had just examined, much older than the building housing the coffee shop above.
As she moved forward into the blackness, she felt movement, a slithering around her ankles. She hoped she had imagined it, that it was just the inevitable shifting of water and silt. It wasn’t. An unseen something brushed past her ankle. She shut her eyes hard, opened them, saw spots and continued to walk, holding Lucy tightly to her chest.
* * * * *
Poor little thing, thought Mrs. Troma. She was glad she would be able to give this child a home and she vowed it would be a happy one. Mrs. Troma hadn’t had a particularly happy childhood. Her mother drank too much and her father used to tell her folk dancing was completely useless and if she ever made it to those places she used to look at pictures of in books she had taken out from the library, she would be sorely disappointed. People in those kinds of countries didn’t wash properly, they ate all kinds of weird food, spoke funny languages no sane person could be bothered to learn, and their plumbing was a joke. In lots of places they didn’t have real toilets even, just smelly, unsanitary holes in the ground. Old Mr. Chicklets (this had been Mrs. Troma’s name before she married Mr. Troma) had been in the Official Socketry Naval Forces when he was young and once spent a weekend in Constantinople and he knew what was what. When Mrs. Troma read about dances from Argentina or Bali and tried to work out how to do them in the living room, Mr. Chicklets would laugh at her.
Mr. Troma might be a little bit of a stick in the mud but he never ever laughed at her. He was proud of his wife and all the interesting things she knew and enjoyed her cheerful enthusiasm. Mr. Troma just hoped that he wouldn’t one day begin to bore her. Mr. Troma liked children but the main reason he was so enthusiastic about the adoption was that the prospect made Mrs. Troma so happy.
* * * * *
Lucy’s mother told herself it was nothing, no different than swimming in the ocean and seeing or feeling a fish swim by, something she had enjoyed in the past. Something else in her head said, “man o’wars and stingrays, they live in the ocean too, and you wouldn’t want them swimming along side you.” Then she told herself jellyfish and stingrays didn’t live in flooded basements. She took a deep breath, her throat catching at the foul stench, and took a step forward.
As she plunged farther into the dankness ahead, she heard one of the most unwelcome sounds possible. The door at the top of the steps behind her, the door she had found locked a few moments earlier, clicked and then opened.
Just then, a pain so sudden, so sharp, it took a moment to register, drilled itself into her right ankle. She kicked out, smashing her foot against the wall, attempting to dislodge whatever horror was attached to her by teeth and blood. She looked down and saw grey fur and a long hairless tail. The rat-like thing hissed and looked her in the face. Was it the gloom or did the rodent have green human eyes in its pointed face?
She heard footsteps hurrying down the stairs. Lucy’s mother limped forward as her sharp-toothed attacker disappeared. The water stung viciously in the wound which now bled profusely. As she stepped into the filthy water she hoped whatever was entering her body through the bite didn’t kill her. She ran. Steps splashed behind her. Numbness crawling up her foot, she limped and stumbled and tried not to fall.
* * * * *
Mrs. Troma sat in the passenger seat and watched streetlamps and signs flick by as Mr. Troma drove. Soon neat suburban homes gave way to the forbidding warehouses and seemingly endless industrial tracts that bordered the edges of the city.
“Hon. What do you think of the name Wendy?” Mrs. Troma asked.
“I like it fine.”
“Good. She’ll be Wendy Troma then. Unless when we see her she looks like something else. Then we’ll name her whatever she looks like.”
“Sounds like a plan to me.”
By this time they were cruising down city streets, catching the green lights, honking street arabs, feral dogs and bands of grubby children out of the way. As they neared the heart of the city, the streets widened. They were getting close. The entrance to the Blue Sector was right in front of them. They pulled up to the guardhouse that marked the entrance. A man in a dark suit leaned out and spoke to Mr. Troma.
“Papers?”
Mr. Troma showed him the identification card he had been issued by Socketry International and they were waved through. They drove on.
When they were within a couple of blocks of their destination Mr. Troma began to look for parking.
* * * * *
Lucy’s mother glanced over her shoulder and hobbled forward as quickly as she could. She saw the silhouette of a man, the backlight erasing all features in the gloom. She stopped and turned to face him. With her injured leg, she knew there was no way she would outrun whoever it was and she might as well make some sort of a stand.
The figure rushed toward her, quickly reaching the low portal. As he ducked his head, about to enter the tunnel, he let out a terrific shriek and dropped to the floor with a tremendous splash. Lucy started to scream. Her mother made no attempt to quiet her as she watched the mad, flailing struggle in the few inches of murky water. Dozens of the rat-like creatures were coming out of the walls.
Rodents scrabbled over his body as he splashed helplessly. Lucy’s mother thought she could see panicked hands attempting to fling rats from his body, them leaping back onto his desperately fighting form, biting, scratching and squeaking. It was horrible. The water clouded with blood. An arm reached up out of the murk and she could see bone from wrist to elbow. That was enough. Lucy’s mother turned and ran down the tunnel, lopsided and awkward, with her deadened leg and broken heel.
Her mind was blank save for pain, blood and fear. She expected sharp teeth and claws to leap out at her from the ceiling and walls. She was terrified she’d see green human eyes peering out at her from rat faces; certain they’d drag her down to the floor and get at Lucy. She held her child closely to her, feeling her warmth, feeling the beat of her heart and walked on.
As she plodded onwards, comforting her daughter as she went, she realized the tunnel didn’t seem to be turning much at all and if nothing else leapt out and attacked her, if she ever found her way back up to the surface where there was air and light, she was at least going in roughly the right direction. And if nothing else was tracking her, now that whoever lay behind her skeletal and dead was out of the game, she would be damn near untraceable.
She walked on and on, the universe shrunk to this world of dark and bad smells. Thankfully, the passageway was inclining upwards. The thought of plunging deeper and deeper into the earth was a horrible one to ponder. She hoped she was right. It was impossible to be certain of anything in dark that thick.
She walked on.
Hours might have passed or it might have been as brief a time as fifteen or twenty minutes. It was impossible to tell and when she took out her phone on the chance it might lend her some light, give her the time, be a reminder of the upstairs daylight world, she found the battery was dead. She stuck it back in her pocket and trudged on. She kissed Lucy’s forehead and began to sing. She no longer cared how dangerous making noise might be. She sang every song she could remember from her childhood, pop songs, lullabies, and the old sea shanties her grandfather used to bellow.
Time passed.
Her eyeballs prickled. It wasn’t precisely light she saw around her, more a slight, nearly imperceptible lessening of the all-consuming darkness. She might have thought she was imagining it if it didn’t travel through her eyes into her brain, making her head hurt.
She could see Lucy’s face.
The tunnel got narrower as the air around her brightened. Lucy’s mother found she was no longer trudging through fetid water, although her feet, numb long ago, couldn’t feel the difference. The greasy surface of puddles shone in the welcome, but still meager light. She could see a stone wall ahead. A throb of panic bisected her brain before she saw the passageway was not coming to an end just veering off sharply to the left. She made the turn. Light pierced her eyes. A breeze brushed past her cheek. She looked around, gratefully. There were old candy wrappers on the concrete floor, a discarded newspaper with yesterday’s date.
It was a subway station. She could have laughed. Cattercomber Street Station. She’d been there a thousand times and never suspected the presence of a passageway, of catacombs under the city, apparently giving the street its name. It was completely deserted, the booth of bulletproof glass was empty and shuttered. Unfortunately, this subway line (the Purple) wouldn’t take her where she wanted to go, deep into the Blue Sector. And everyone knows how unreliable trains are late at night. She could wait for hours. No, she decided. It was time to venture above ground.
She made her way through the turnstile and up the concrete steps. She sucked the fresh air deep into her lungs, tasting better than fresh bread, better than strawberries, better than anything. She blinked into the brightness of the streetlamps, the wide sprawl of Cattercomber Street spread empty before her. She again kissed Lucy’s forehead and started what she hoped would be the last leg of her journey on foot, the perilous street level crawl to the Blue Sector.
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