Nocturnal (60 page)

“It’s safe,” Sly said. “Except for this.” He stopped, pointed to an overhead boulder that had been spray-painted with an orange arrow pointing back the way they had come. “The tunnels are all set up to collapse if we knock down supporting rocks. We call them
lynchpins
. If you knock this one down, the entire tunnel behind us collapses.”

Rex wondered what it would be like to feel all of this weight falling on him, crushing him, suffocating him. “Why are these here?”

“We have lairs all over the city,” Sly said. “But only a few tunnels lead home. If the monster discovers any tunnels, we destroy them so he can’t trace the tunnels back to where most of us live.”

The lynchpin rock looked like it might fall out at any moment. “Do they ever fall down by themselves?”

Sly smiled. “Sometimes. That is our existence, being forced to live underground like animals.”

“What happens when there’s an earthquake?”

Sly shrugged his big, blanket-covered shoulders. “When there are earthquakes, people die.” He turned and continued back down the tunnel. Rex and the others followed.

Rex lost track of how long they walked. The narrow tunnel made for slow going, especially considering the size of Pierre and Fort. Sir Voh seemed to compress on Fort’s shoulders, to
flatten
somehow, take up less space. At times Rex had to stoop over and walk in a crouch, which meant Pierre, Fort, even Sly had to crawl through the dirt. It probably explained why their clothes and blankets were so tattered and filthy.

Crawling deep in the dirt, like insects — this was no way for his family to live.

Finally, the narrow tunnel opened up into a big cavern. Rex stood tall and looked around, amazed at what he saw. The cavern was about as big as a city block. The uneven ceiling rose thirty or forty feet above. Dim light filled the space, cast off by assorted light fixtures and naked bulbs attached to any number of things: chunks of dirty concrete, old logs, a rusted-out old streetcar straight from a gangster movie.

And in the middle of the cavern, encrusted with lights of all shapes and sizes, sat a pair of wooden ships.
Big
ships. They looked old, like the
Nina
, the
Pinta
and the
Santa Maria
he’d learned about in school.

Neither ship had masts. The closest one pointed away at an angle, its black hull cracked and broken in a hundred places. The bottom was buried in the ground, as if it were sailing a sea of dirt, frozen in time like a movie on pause. The deck angled a little to the left, matching the ship’s slight tilt. On the ship’s wide back end, Rex saw chewed-up wooden letters that spelled out the name
Alamandralina
.

To the right of that ship sat the second, this one rolled all the way over on its side so the ruined deck pointed up at a forty-five-degree angle. The hull looked barely intact, as if some giant had picked up the whole ship, lifted it up a hundred feet in the air, then dropped it to crack like a melon hitting pavement. He could only make out a few of the letters on the back of this one: an
R
, then space for two missing letters, then an
AR
, another space, then an
O
.

Rex saw lights coming from inside the ships. Through the cracked hulls, he saw beds, walls and makeshift doors. All these things were level with the ground — people clearly lived in there, even though no one seemed to be home.

Some cars were parked in the space between the ships: a battered school bus with windows blacked out, and two pickup trucks that looked like they belonged in a scrapyard.

All this, under the streets of San Francisco? And this place looked
old
, like it had existed since those ships actually sailed the ocean’s waters. A hidden world that had always been here, just waiting for him to find it.

“Sly, this is amazing.”

“This is
Home
,” Sly said. “Welcome to your kingdom.”

Rex tried to take it all in. So stunning, so overwhelming. But if this was his “kingdom,” where were his subjects?

“It’s empty,” he said. “I thought there would be more of us.”

Sly laughed, a hissing, scraping thing that a few days ago would have made Rex piss his pants in fear.

“There is,” Sly said. “Tons more. They’re in the arena. That’s where we’re going, to announce to the people that you have come to lead us to a better day.”

Sly kept saying that phrase. What did it mean? Maybe it was like in the fantasy novels, where a
chosen one
led people to overcome evil. If it was a prophecy, Rex hoped he could fulfill it.

“The arena,” Rex said. “How do we get there?”

“More tunnels,” Sly said. “It will take us a little while. When we’re there, everyone can see you and you can see Mommy. Hillary said it was real important you meet Mommy.”

“Who’s Hillary?”

Sly grinned his toothy grin. “She’s the reason we came to get you, my king. You’ll like her. But this won’t all be fun — Firstborn will be there. He will not be happy to see you. But don’t worry, we will protect you.”

Rex looked at Sly, then at Pierre, at Sir Voh and Fort. These men were so big, so strong. How could Firstborn possibly threaten them all?

From the tilted ship, an echoing voice called out. “My king!”

A little man stood on the high rail. As Rex watched, he jumped off and dropped to the ground twenty feet below. The man should have
splatted
, but he landed on his feet and didn’t even slow down. He ran forward, covering the distance faster than Rex would have thought possible.

He’s really fast. Marco was fast, too. Is everyone like that?

The man stopped a few feet away. Rex felt the
ba-da-bum-bummmm
in his chest. Such a great feeling! This man was family.

He was short, only a few inches taller than Rex. He had a bald head with yellow, mottled skin. His nose was so strange — a hooked, hard thing that curved down and out to end in a sharp point. It started out yellow where it grew out of his face, fading to black at the sharp tip. It was more like a beak than a nose. Rex saw two little holes above the beak, just below and inside the eyes. Ah, those were his nostrils.

The man smiled a wide smile. Behind the wickedly curved beak was a mouth full of tiny, stubby teeth. He wore raggedy clothes, just like the rest, all dirty and smelly and torn up. His right arm was in a white sling. Rex could tell that he was young, like Sly and the others.

“My king! I am Sucka! I have fought and killed for you.” He stuck out his left hand, the skin there as yellow as his face. He wanted to shake Rex’s hand, like Rex was a grown-up or something.

Rex shook it.

Sly reached out and held Sucka’s left shoulder. “Sucka proved himself,
my king. He killed Issac and the mother of Alex. Then he fought the monster himself.”

Rex drew in a surprised breath. “You fought the
monster
?”

Sucka grinned and nodded. “He shot me with the magic arrow! It was real scary. He would have taken me, but a cop came onto the roof just in time. I jumped away. I haven’t healed as quick as normal, but they got the magic arrow out and it’s getting better.”

Sly’s green hand mussed Sucka’s nonexistent hair. “Sucka is a brave one. He’ll serve you well.”

Sucka’s face turned a pale orange. He was blushing.

Sly’s smile faded. He looked very serious. “My king, are you ready to go to the arena?”

It would be dangerous. Firstborn would be waiting, but Rex’s new friends would protect him.

He nodded. “I am. Take me to meet my people.”

T
he white dungeon led out into a white hallway. The hallway had the same poorly fitted stones, the same countless slathered-on coats of white enamel paint. Mismatched lights lit the curved roof. A thick, brown electrical cord, painted over in some parts, ran from light to light, hanging down slightly in some places, nailed up to ceiling beams in others.

Where the ceiling was only stone, the stones looked well fitted, like the angled blocks of some medieval craftsman. In more places than not, however, random pieces of rock, tile and chunks of wood patched the ceiling in a white enamel kaleidoscope of shapes.

Aggie saw smears of blood on the white floor — the path of the boy with no tongue. Hillary pushed Aggie on. They walked past a white-robed man wearing a Richard Nixon mask: the long nose, squinty eyes and wide grin. The man stood behind a scratched yellow mop bucket that stank of bleach. He swabbed a wet mop across the trail of blood.

“Wait,” Aggie said. “Can I ask a question?”

“Maybe,” Hillary said.

Aggie didn’t know what that meant, but she hadn’t said no. “What’s with the masks? You don’t wear one.”

Hillary let out a huff of disgust. “Because I am
la reine prochaine
. The
ouvriers
wear the masks in tribute to the
guerriers
who risk their lives to bring us food. You understand?”

Aggie didn’t. Was she speaking Italian?

His confusion must have shone on his face. Hillary shook her head, then reached out and pulled off the Nixon mask. As it slid free from under the white hood, Aggie held his breath, expecting to see something horrible — but it was just a man. A light-skinned black man. He stood there, mop still in hand, half-lidded eyes staring out. His mouth hung open. The tip of his tongue was touching the inside of his lower lip.

“Hey,” Aggie said, “is he retarded?”

“He is an
ouvrier
. He does the work that needs to be done. Now you stop talking and walk, or we will miss it.”

Hillary pushed Aggie in front of her. Each shove was just hard enough to keep him going, but he felt strength every time her hands connected with his body. They moved quickly. He got the feeling she didn’t want to be seen.

The narrow hall curved and twisted. Soon the white gave way to
browns and blacks and grays, the colors of deep earth. Other tunnels branched off. There was no pattern to the branches, no regularity, just a seemingly endless choice of dark options. Stone and brick walkways changed to dirt floors. The hallway widened at one point. When it did, Hillary pushed Aggie into a side tunnel. He walked in, eager to please, but she grabbed him, turned him and held him so close that they were almost kissing.

“What you see now, no one sees,” she said. “You be very quiet, go where I tell you. You make one noise, they will tear you to pieces. Understand?”

Aggie nodded.

She pushed him through a hall so cramped he had to turn sideways to fit. Dirt and stone ground up against his face and chest. The walls here looked like an archaeological dig: dirt and stone, sure, but also blackened wooden boards, rotted timbers, worn bits of broken glass bottles, ceramic shards and rusty metal from old tools, gas cans and pipes. This was a tunnel dug by laymen’s hands, carved through old landfill. The junk hallway led up at an angle steep enough to make him winded after only twenty steps.

As he climbed, a heavy scent started to fill the air. It wasn’t a perfume, it was thicker, more … 
animal
. He stopped to breathe it deep into his nose. Whatever it was, he couldn’t get enough of it.

Hillary pushed him. “Hurry. You must see this.”

He kept climbing. Of all things, his dick twitched. He couldn’t
possibly
be horny at a time like this, could he?

The floor leveled out. Aggie found himself in a tiny room with a ceiling so low that he had to crawl in on his hands and knees. The floor was a random collection of metal grates and old jail-cell bars set into the ground — he could look through them into the dark void below.

Hillary leaned in close to his ear. “We made it in time.”

He whispered back: “Made it for what?”

“To see what will happen to you if you don’t do what I say.”

A tiny light appeared below — a single candle, carried by a white-robed man. This one wore the mask of a twisted, smiling demon. Aggie saw the floor was perhaps ten feet below the grates. He was close enough that if he reached through the bars and stretched, he might be able to touch the top of the masked man’s hood.

Another white-robed masked man entered, also carrying a candle. Then another. And another.

The candles began to chase away the darkness, revealing a rectangular room maybe twenty feet long by fifteen feet across. At one end of the
room, the feeble light illuminated a patchwork tarp that covered something big, a mound about the size of an elephant lying on its side.

More candle-carrying, white-robed masked men entered. They walked through a narrow door that was in the middle of one of the long walls. The door appeared to be the only way in or out. Aggie saw that the earlier masked men were leaving, saw that it was a procession — they entered, found a place to set their candles, then quietly shuffled out. The room grew brighter, as did the flickering light playing off the patchwork tarp.

One end of the tarp moved. From that end, Aggie heard the moan of a woman. A masked man ran to the tarp’s opposite end. It reached under, picked something up, then stood, holding that something tight to its chest. What was that stain on his white robe? Was it blood?
Fresh
blood? The masked man pushed past his own kind and left the room.

Hillary grabbed his ear, twisted it. “Make no noise. If they see you, you die.”

That strange smell intensified. Aggie’s face felt hot. His dick started to stiffen.

The stream of incoming masked men set their candles down on shelves, on a table, on the floor, on whatever space was available, then they turned and walked out, sliding past other masked men who were bringing in more candles.

The room grew brighter.

Music started playing, a thin, plinking, metallic melody. Aggie looked to the side of the room opposite the mound. A white-robed man was sitting at a white wooden table. Another masked man walked up to it, this one holding a metal stand with eight candles, all tall and parallel — a candelabra. And wait … it wasn’t a table, it was a little
piano
, like a smaller version of one of those big grand pianos.

A second candelabra joined the first. Now there was enough light that Aggie could see the piano player wore a Donald Duck mask. The small piano wasn’t really white, but more of a pale yellow, the paint chewed up and scarred, chips showing the dark wood beneath.