“Just try to look happy, okay?”
Karnage bared his teeth. “How’s this?”
“Hideous. Just keep your mouth covered.”
The desert stretched out in a flat plain before them. Nothing marred the view but the occasional bit of debris on the gravel shoulder. Slowly, a cloud-covered mountain peak appeared on the horizon.
“There it is,” Sydney said. “Mount Dabney.”
The mountain slowly revealed itself. It sat alone on the flatlands. A gleaming white wall ran around the mountain’s perimeter. Roof peaks and spires jutted up behind the walls, running up the mountain’s sides in an erratic spiral. A needle-thin tower with a bulbous top dwarfed all the other buildings, its antenna peak just touching the clouds above it.
“Seems kind of weird. A single mountain sittin’ out there all by itself,” Karnage said.
“Used to be a whole range of mountains out here,” Sydney said. “But they tore ’em all down. Used the aggregate to build Dabneyville.”
Ahead of them, the road began to rise. Sydney pulled the car off the road and started driving on the plain.
“What are you doing?”
Sydney pointed to the road as it rose up from the desert floor, revealing giant pillars of pitted concrete underneath. “That’s the GDE. Don’t want to get caught up there.”
“GDE?”
“Gail Dabney Expressway,” Sydney said. “It’s the only road in or out. They call it the Bridge to Nowhere, cuz no one in the city ever wants to leave, and no one outside of the city ever wants in. They all think they got it better than each other.”
Karnage thought about the squidbugs. “Little do they know they’re all screwed.” He looked up at the road. “If that’s the only road into town, then why aren’t we on it?”
Sydney pointed to cameras mounted on lampposts above them.
“They monitor all traffic in and out of the city. Not that there’s much of it.”
“Wouldn’t they have spotted us already?”
Sydney shook her head. “Cameras don’t work this far out. Those are only for show. It’s once you get closer to the city you have to worry.”
She pulled the car under the GDE, and tucked it up on the inside of one of the pillars. “We walk the rest of the way,” she said.
Karnage looked out towards Dabneyville. “Looks awful far to walk.”
“We’re almost inside the perimeter of aerial surveillance. If we don’t ditch the car soon, they’ll pick us up for sure.”
They stayed under the shade of the road, picking their way through the rocks and debris. Garbage littered the underside of the road: broken electronics, tatters of clothing, crumpled potato chip bags and coffee cups, all emblazoned with the Dabney Corporation logo.
“Is there anything the Dabney Corporation doesn’t make?” Karnage said.
“No,” Sydney said. “They own everything. And everybody.”
“And now they’re handin’ it all over to the squidbugs.” Karnage touched Patrick’s pistol in his pocket. Only seven rounds. He hoped he wouldn’t blow his own head off when he used them.
They heard a high-pitched buzzing overhead. Sydney pressed Karnage against the pillar. He peered around the side. He saw a small circular shadow flowing across the desert floor. He looked up. A Dabneycop flew overhead. He had a pair of hoverballs strapped to his back. A pair of arching handles rose over the hoverballs into the pilot’s hands. It sounded like a giant wasp. Karnage fought the urge to swat him with the pistol. They waited until he disappeared from sight.
“There’s the welcoming committee,” Sydney commented.
“Something tells me they won’t be that welcoming,” Karnage said.
“How very perceptive of you.”
“How are we going to get in?”
Sydney pointed into the distance. “There’s an unused maintenance hatch around the west side of the wall. We can make our way in through there.”
“Don’t they know about it?”
“When you’re in the business of wilfully forgetting your failures, there’s a lot of things you train yourself not to know about.”
“So how come you know about it, then?”
“Because I make it a point to remember everything.”
The sun was setting when they finally reached the gleaming white walls of the city. They waited under the bridge for night to fall, then Sydney led them out along the perimeter of the outer wall.
The walls were at least a kilometre high. Moisture had flaked the paint off along the bottom, revealing pitted grey concrete underneath. They heard the buzz of an air patrol above them and saw a spotlight fly across the desert. Karnage was reminded of the pools of light that had helped them on the squidbug ship. Except this particular light was anything but friendly. Karnage held his pistol tight in his fist. The light passed by, missing them completely, and disappeared around the curve of the wall.
Sydney pointed ahead of them. “There it is.”
Karnage squinted in the gloom. He could just make out a faint dark patch on the wall. As they approached, he saw it was a ruststained door. It was slightly ajar. Sydney tucked her hand behind it and pushed it open. The door’s hinges groaned in complaint. Sydney looked into the darkness beyond, then turned to Karnage and winked.
“Open sesame,” she said.
CHAPTER TWO
Karnage ducked his head to avoid hitting a pipe as they walked through the dank narrow corridor. “What is this? Some kinda sewer system?”
“No.” Sydney kept her flashlight in front of her. “It’s the old subway system. They shut it down decades ago.”
Karnage eyed the narrow corridor. “Must have been one hell of a skinny subway.”
“This is just a steam tunnel,” Sydney said.
“Why do they call it a steam tunnel?”
Sydney pointed to a giant pipe running along the wall beside them. The words CAUTION: STEAM – HOT! were stencilled onto its surface.
“That explains that mystery,” Karnage said.
“We’ll hit the main system up ahead,” Sydney said. “These tunnels run under almost every building in the city. You can get anywhere you want, so long as you know the right route to take. Problem is there are no maps. They purged everything when they shut it down. Most people don’t even know these tunnels exist.”
“How do you know about it, then?”
“I told you. I was stationed here. I made it a point to know about them.”
“That mean the other Dabneycops know about them?”
“Not like I do,” she said. “There are a few main routes they patrol, looking for fugitives and the like. But that’s about it. They don’t bother with the rest.”
“But you did.”
“As much as I could,” Sydney said. “These tunnels go on for days. It’d take years to find them all.”
“Sounds like a helluva big subway,” Karnage said.
“It’s a helluva big city. It’s not just subway tunnels, though. There are maintenance corridors, steam tunnels… it’s crazy. If you’re not careful, you could end up anywhere.”
The corridor ended at a half-open door. They squeezed through, and found themselves on a subway platform. A row of rusted turnstiles divided the platform in half. On one side, wide stairs led straight up to a brick wall. On the other, the platform led off to a steep drop into darkness. The floor was covered in mosaic tiles of Dabby Tabby’s grinning face. A torn poster on the wall showed Dabby Tabby wearing a train engineer’s cap and sitting astride a long gleaming bullet-shaped subway train. RIDE THE BLUE ROCKET ran across the bottom of the poster in faded blue text.
They climbed off the edge of the platform down onto the tracks. The floor of the tunnel was covered in ankle-deep water. Karnage recognized the toxic smell of squidbug. The beam from the flashlight caught glimpses of orange creeper and pinkstink hanging on the walls. Bright red lily pads with yellow veins drifted past their legs.