Jabberwock Jack (15 page)

"What? Those lenses are too thin," she said, grabbing the goggles and yanking Szandor's neck forward. She looked through the lenses. "Those... surprisingly work. Huh. I might want to look at these later. They're way too light for what they do. Should be much heavier."

"But they do work," I said. "Even in total darkness."

She looked at me with disbelief and then shrugged. "Your loss if they don't work later. Okay, what crappy weapons do you think you'll be using?"

"Lead pipe?" suggested Szandor.

"Nope," she said.

"Crowbar?"

"Nope."

"Baseball bat with a nail in it?"

"Nope."

"Shotgun?"

"With your aim? Hahahaha. No."

"I don't know, then," conceded Szandor.

She turned to me. "What do you think you're using?"

"Whatever you think I should be using," I said, realizing how this would go.

"Smart answer," she said.

Delilah reached into a gray plastic box, much like the others she was pulling stuff from. She pulled an impressive weapon out and put it on top of all the other things Szandor was carrying in his arms. It was somewhat like a crossbow, but without the wide arms. It was somewhat like a gun, just with a gigantic arrow-like head in front.

"Spear gun," said Delilah.

"Spear gun!" said Szandor in a voice that contained both fear and excitement.

"Why a spear gun?" I said.

"It' a solid weapon that's less likely to break if dropped," she said. "It's got a single high powered shot, which will be useful on the tough hide Jack is likely to have. While I'm bringing my P90, I would really prefer we have some weaponry putting a large bolt in the enemy in case my bullets are easily ignored. And let's be honest. We're going into an area I hear will have lots of drainage. The spear gun will work underwater and even if not using it underwater, we don't have to worry about it getting ruined if it gets wet. Though, Szandor, if I end up with a spear bolt through any part of me, I will end you, you understand?" Her eyes were very intense.

Szandor swallowed and nodded. His poor aim was a matter of public record.

"So then what do I get?" I said.

Delilah reached into her box... and pulled out another spear gun.

"Ha!" said Szandor. "It's not just me! You suck too!"

Delilah shook her head. "It's just where we're at. We're going after a large, water-friendly creature. We're not bringing scuba gear, but if we need to shoot through water, this is going to be better than conventional arms. And we want to keep real gunfire to a minimum. Even with suppressers, there's not a lot of noise down there. Sounds will echo. If we fire a gun, we might as well be saying
come get us
to everything down there. Spear guns are fine for you two and will reduce the noise footprint."

"Anything else we need?" I said, taking the spear gun.

"Ammo and rations," she said. "Here's some MREs." She stacked the ammo and food allotments for both Szandor and I on the gigantic stack of items he was struggling to hold. "That should be it. You two should get ready."

We turned away. I took a few steps before I turned around and saw my brother was walking much slower. The shifting bundle of items in his arms was making it hard to walk.

"Just what have we got ourselves into?" he said.

"Once in a lifetime opportunity," I reminded him.

"I'm hoping that it's not because our lifetimes will be so short," he said.

Down

Once we were all ready, our backpacks overflowing with gear, we got into our vehicles. While we could have gotten into the tunnels from Jericho's building, we'd have many miles of underground to go through. We needed an entry point closer to the action. While Szandor and I usually go down any manhole in an alley that we know gets us to a known place on our maps, on this trip we couldn't do that. We had too many people and too much gear. Someone was going to notice us crowded into an alley and that would be a problem. Luckily, Meat had us covered. He had a connection in Chinatown.

Szandor was still driving the van. I was feeling much more like myself, but he still didn't trust my hangover. I didn't trust him handling the Pork Chop Express on wet roads, but his argument carried more weight, since I was still acting sort of spacey. I decided instead to pull out my phone and finally text Carly.

"You're doing that shit again?" said Szandor.

"We're doing something dangerous. I just wanna say something. I don't want last night to be the last thing we had." I paused. "Also I think brunch is over now."

"She'll just put you off your game," said Szandor. "She's gonna get you killed."

What's worse than the return of hot button issues and arguments with Carly? The return of hot button issues and arguments with Szandor
about
Carly. That my brother and my girlfriend-now-ex-girlfriend-maybe-girlfriend-someday didn't like each other was not a strange thing. That's just something that happens in people's lives. The ironic twist of the universe was that they both accused each other of the ultimate cause of getting me killed. Szandor said that she put me off my game, she killed my reflexes, she made me distant. All those things could kill me in the moment. I understand his argument, but I don't think it would happen. I would think wanting to return to her would keep me alive.

Carly's argument was that my brother was extremely reckless and that he'd get me killed with his antics. I understood this too. Szandor depended on luck and a begrudging bravery far more often than he should. He loved danger, despite his public attitude of reluctance toward it. The
Does Szandor Have A Deathwish?
question was one bandied around by Paulie, Meat, and myself when my brother wasn't around. I personally don't think he consciously had one, but unconsciously? Maybe. He even jokes about it. And Carly has called him on it, something that didn't help their relationship.

Let me paint the picture for you. An almost typical night at Twin Eagles. We had taken up a booth. It was Szandor, Lem, Dickie, and a few other friends from the old neighborhood as well as from Szandor and Dickie's former bands. Carly and I were sitting in the booth too, but we were a little aloof from the rest of the group. Szandor was drunk and telling stories. They all knew we hunted, so that wasn't a secret Szandor needed to keep. I think he was talking about some zombies we had killed, interweaving the dangerousness with how awesome we were at killing them.

Szandor lit up a cigarette - one of those Pall Malls he was infatuated with. Someone mentioned that those things were gonna kill him. Obviously not one of his usual friends if they were bothering to say that. Even if they truly did frown on smoking, they knew how useless that statement was on Szandor.

In response, my brother took a dramatic drag on the cigarette then blew the smoke out in the air, looking at it pensively. I had seen this move far too many times to know it as anything other than Szandor trying to look cool. With a grin he said, "Well, we all know it's not cigarettes that are going to kill me."

"So what do you mean by that?" said Carly. I could tell by her tone that she knew what he meant, but she was trying to play Devil's advocate. I knew this wasn't going to go well.

"What?" said Szandor, jarred from his posturing.

"What do you
actually
mean when you say that?" continued Carly. "You're not going to die from cigarettes. So then, what? Your dangerous job? Zombies? Are you sitting here implying that you're going to die from a monster? A zombie bite? Is that actually what you think? You're living your life, expecting that you're going to end it bitten by a creature and lurching around the sewers in some mindless undeath? That's your life's final destination? That's all you expect for yourself?"

There was a moment of silence, then Szandor's friends started laughing - not full on laughter, but half stifled background laughter. My brother had a hurt expression that ended in a frown. "Lay off, okay."

"You're the one who has my boyfriend's back," said Carly. "I worry about you keeping him alive if you don't give a damn about yourself."

"We're just talking here," said Szandor.

"Is it really just talk?" said Carly.

"As much as your being an ass right now is talk," responded my brother.

And that's around where I stepped in to calm down the situation, cutting off raised voices and hurt feelings. I took Carly home, which defused that moment. But it had blown the curtains off what Szandor and Carly thought of each other. Where before there were just undercurrents, after that they were more openly hostile, even if it was still passive aggressively. As brother and boyfriend, I had always wanted them to get along and of course that had failed miserably.

So now as I typed up a text message to Carly in the van, I shrugged off Szandor's suggestions she was bad for me or the hunt. That's not to say some of his barbs didn't stick. It softened the text I was going to send to something a bit more simple:
Was thinking of you. Going to be unavailable for a day or two, will talk soon.
Nothing major, just a quick and neutral text. Playing it safe. Then I put my phone away and went back to criticizing my brother on his driving.

Our caravan of hunter vehicles had pulled into an underground parking garage. We ignored the parking stub the machine gave us and followed the others down to the lowest level of the garage. Just before getting there, we saw two men who were standing by a chain link fence gate. One was wearing overalls with the parking garage's logo, the other was wearing a wrinkled brown suit. Once he saw Meat, the guy in the suit ordered the other to open up the gate and let us all through. We all parked and started pulling out our gear.

The parking garage was owned by Vic Fontaine, a legitimate businessman who owned a few buildings in town. He was the one in the suit. Meat had cleared out a particularly bad infestation in one of his buildings, so there was a favor owed. Fontaine exchanged a few words with Meat, handed him a spare key for the fence, then he and his worker headed up toward the exit.

Rather than a simple manhole cover, the garage had a whole access panel, probably intended for the city's use. Two metal doors on the floor folded out. They were usually kept locked, but considering our accumulated lock picking experience, it might as well have been unlocked.

As we started lowering ourselves down, Delilah placed a relay at the entrance. The relay was attached to a long cable went that to her car. Using a system of batteries in the car, the relay would boost the signal and in theory link up with Paulie's mysterious relays around the city. Once underground, she'd be placing them along our path, hopefully to keep better contact with Paulie. But based on the terrible phone coverage we got in the Avalon sewers, this seemed like a waste of time. Of course, if having this communication actually worked and saved our lives, I was more than willing to eat my share of crow.

I took a quick look over the group, comparing their equipment. Szandor and I were carrying spear guns and otherwise were dressed as we normally were for underground delves, albeit with heavier backpacks. Meat was carrying a spear gun like us, but I noticed he still had at least two visible pistols on him. Knowing him, he probably had more pistols hidden on his person. He was also helping to carry the large amount of electronic gear that Delilah needed for this trip. That made sense, as he probably had the most raw physical strength of anyone. Delilah herself had her custom P90 rifle slung over her shoulder. Her backpack seemed overfull even with Meat helping; the top of that backpack was at least a foot over her head, maybe higher. As soon as we were underground and lights were on, she took out some devices that looked like GPS and started fiddling with them, following the group out of the corner of her eye. Diego was dressed as he had been above ground. He carried a long hunting rifle over his back and a lighter backpack than most of us. He still wore his snakeskin boots, which seemed ill-suited for the underground.

"Look at those boots," whispered Szandor to me.

"That just means it's even more important for you to kill and skin Jack for your footwear," I said with some amusement.

"For sure," said my brother.

We were in a long sewer tunnel. A long stream of water and waste ran down the middle of it with cement walkways on either side. Occasionally it intersected with another tunnel channeling the water and there were walkways over the water. Side access tunnels also occasionally dotted the walls. About every one hundred yards there should be a ladder and a manhole, but many of the ladders were broken and some Avalon manholes had been built over, leaving the task of finding exits from the sewer a matter of luck or knowledge rather than finding the first working ladder.

It was a sewer, so of course it was dirty and smelly. The fact that Avalon Maintenance crews only did limited work down here due to danger meant it was even dirtier and smellier, as certain nonessential pipes which burst weren't fixed and blockages that didn't significantly affect drainage were left unfixed for a long time.

"Ugh, what is that smell?" said Diego. He was clearly not well suited for the sewers.

"It's a sewer," said Szandor. He gestured toward the stream of water and waste next to us. Normally it would be a small bubbling stream, but it was now a quick moving river after the recent rains.

"The Russian sewers weren't this bad!" responded Diego.

"Well, this is a bunch of crap that's been shit out of some good old American guts!" said Szandor sarcastically. "Seriously, are you going to start comparing shit smells now? It's all bad!"

"Just put on your mask," I said.

Diego nodded and pulled his gas mask on. The rest of us might put on our masks later, but this smell was not nearly as bad as Diego thought. It got way worse. On the plus side, we didn't need to listen to him complaining anymore, since the mask muffled his voice.

Fala lowered herself into the tunnel with surprising grace. She had changed into a strange jacket. It had originally been a black hooded jacket, but it had been painstakingly modified. The shoulders were covered with black feathers. The hood, which she kept down most of the time we were underground, had two yellow eyes painted on it. She looked like some black bird, which was probably her intent. At her waist were sheathed two long knives.