I’d seen films of what it looks like in the deepest trenches beneath the ocean, but this was perhaps even lonelier, and scarier, too.
We walked.
Occasionally, we would kick things embedded in the dry dirt beneath our feet: bones; several shoes—I wondered why shoes seemed to last longer than anything else—corroded soft drink cans; and an entire television set, the kind with a glass picture tube—an antique in anyone’s world. Griffin uncovered a blue vinyl pouch, the type you’d use to organize roadmaps kept under the driver’s seat in a car.
None of us were paying attention to his discovery. I think we were all nearly blind by concentrating our eyesight on the narrow and dim beams cast forward from our flashlights.
“Fucking sick,” he said.
I stopped, shined my light on him. “What?”
“There’s a dried-up kid’s hand inside this thing. Look.” Griffin turned the pouch over and something that looked like a large gray spider fell out onto the ground at his feet.
My stomach turned.
“But I think this is a map, Jack.” He carefully pulled out a yellowed clump of folded paper, pinching it between two fingers like it was poisonous.
“Let’s see that.”
Ben and Quinn stopped, maybe fifty feet down the tunnel ahead of us. When Quinn swung his light around in our direction, the thing that had fallen from the plastic pouch—the hand—took off, skittering across the top of Griffin’s foot, away into the darkness. I tried keeping my light on it—whatever it was—but it was too fast.
Griffin screamed and kicked wildly at the air. “Fuck! Shit!”
He looked like he was dancing, and the paper he’d been holding fluttered away into the nothingness.
“I don’t think that was a hand, Griff.”
“What the fuck was that?”
I could see Ben’s silhouette in the light cast by Quinn’s torch. He was walking back toward me and Griffin. “You guys okay?” he called.
“Griff picked up something that was alive. It ran off.”
“What was it?”
“Shit!” Griffin said, backing away from his spot. “It was fucking disgusting, Ben.”
Ben looked at me. “Harvester?”
I shook my head. “We thought it was a kid’s hand. It looked like a hand. I don’t know what it was.”
“Welcome to the fucking Nature Channel,” Ben said. “Hope whatever it was doesn’t eat boy meat.”
He had to say it. I was certain at that moment we all were thinking about that kid’s skull hanging on the hook we passed.
“But there was a map or something in there, too,” I said. “Griff flung it over there. Help me look for it.”
I began scanning the ground with my light.
Click. Click. Click. Click.
Quinn came back, shaking his flashlight to recharge it.
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
Ben eyed the kid. He had a button-pushing, fuck-with-you look on his face. I’d been through enough with Ben that I could see what was coming, and I dreaded it.
The last thing we needed down in the Under was for all of us to start getting on each other’s backs.
And Ben said, “You shake that thing pretty good, Red. I bet you practice a lot, don’t you?”
“Huh?” Quinn was reasonably clueless.
Griffin laughed and spit. “Fucking grab my balls, pervert.”
Quinn took one wide step over to Griffin and shoved the smaller boy’s shoulder, spinning him around. “You want to start fucking with me again, not-Ben?”
“Hey!” I spun around and aimed my light directly into Quinn’s face.
He stopped cold. Done.
Click. Click. Click. Click.
“Oooh … Ahhh … Rrredddd…,” Ben moaned.
I felt myself getting hot. “Cool it, Ben. Please.”
Quinn forced a laugh. “Heh-heh-heh … That’s a good one, Ben. I get it! And damned if I’m not pretty good at it!”
Quinn angled the flashlight up, pointing out from his crotch.
Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.
Griffin whispered, “What a fucking dork.”
I ignored them. I scanned the ground behind Griffin. “There it is.”
I bent down and picked up the folded paper. It could have been a hundred years old; it was so faded and clumped together. But it was a map. I glanced back to where Quinn was playing jerk-off with his flashlight, and my eyes followed his beam across the expanse of the tunnel.
Where the light hit the ridges of the steel wall, I saw writing.
“Holy shit.” I dropped onto one knee and aimed my flashlight at the words.
Quinn was oblivious; his light epileptically darted all over the place, clicking and clicking.
Griffin caught on first.
“What the fuck is that, Jack?”
I could only shake my head and stare.
Quinn froze.
“Don’t mind that, Billy. We sometimes used to come down here to play, is all.”
“He’s a fucking liar.” Ben started across the dirt floor toward the smears of graffiti.
I said, “What’s it mean, Quinn?”
The kid dropped the beam of his flashlight down onto his feet.
Quinn said, “Nothing. I told you we used to play down here, Billy. When I used to have other friends.”
And on the wall, scrawled in thick rusty letters that advertised a kind of urgent warning:
I WILL KILL YOU IF I CATCH YOU DOWN HERE AGAIN, QUINN
Below it, in another hand, a response. Some of the letters were backwards, a jumble of lowercase and capitals:
We all saw it.
I shined my light directly at Quinn’s pale and expressionless face.
“That was a game, Quinn?” I said.
“I told you it was,” Quinn said. “We used to play like that down here.”
“You and someone named Billy?”
Quinn’s voice was low and unsteady. “I was just messin’ with you. Uh. Jack.”
Ben stormed toward us. Even in the starved light cast forward by the torches I could see the great clouds of dust he kicked up with his feet.
“He’s a fucking liar, Jack.”
“We shouldn’t have brought him,” Griffin said.
Quinn dropped his flashlight into the dirt and took off running, back in the direction of the ladder up to the firehouse. Maybe it was the darkness, but the kid seemed to almost fly.
Griffin grabbed the collar of Quinn’s T-shirt, and the entire thing ripped from Quinn’s bony and luminescent body as he struggled to get away. Ben launched himself at Quinn, wrapping both arms around his knees.
Quinn tried to kick free from Ben’s tackle, and his pants split right up the middle. He lost a shoe before Ben finally took the kid down.
Then Ben was all over Quinn, punching, pulling his hair, slapping him with such force it sounded like a toy cap gun from another time when kids played games that didn’t involve hanging their enemies’ heads from spikes on the wall.
“You fuckin’ kill that kid, you piece of shit, Red?” Ben panted and swung. “You fuckin’ kill your friend?”
Ben brought his knee up, again and again into Quinn’s balls.
“Get off him, Ben,” I said.
I didn’t care what Ben did to Quinn Cahill. I just didn’t want Ben to hurt himself.
“Ben?” I said.
Ben Miller shoved himself away from Quinn.
His arms were streaked with Quinn’s blood. Ben was a filthy, muddy mess. His eyes shone crazily like twin white stars in the dim light.
He said, “I think we should kill him, Jack. I’ll fucking kill him if you think we should.”
This is what Marbury does to boys like Ben.
I looked at Griffin. I was taking a vote, and Griff knew it.
Ben said, “We’d be better off if we just do it quick.”
Griffin shook his head.
“I don’t think we should kill him,” Griffin said.
I stood over Quinn. His eyes were shut. There was a cut along the swollen ridge of his left cheekbone. Ben had knocked the kid out.
I nudged Quinn with my foot.
“Get up, Quinn,” I said.