“Where we’re headed, it’s a little off the beaten path,” Don said with a sly grin. “Like everything else our esteemed commissioner has got his fingers in, it’s in that gray area in between of not exactly legal and a fuckin’ war crime.”
Don turned off into an industrial wasteland. “Take a deep breath. Just south of here, there’s the biggest raw sewage treatment plant you’ve ever seen. You ever hear of the Deep Tunnel?”
“Storm runoff?”
“Yeah. It’s so all the water has somewhere to go, so all our shit, and I mean that literally, understand, doesn’t wash out into the lake.” He turned into an industrial section, followed a few of the smaller streets that wove through the warehouses and deserted factories until they came to a shipping yard. Don nodded to the gate’s watchmen and followed a gravel road that wound around the trucks and down into a surprisingly deep quarry.
Down at the far end was a tunnel.
A set of narrow gauge train tracks that hadn’t felt steel wheels in decades, nearly obliterated in dirt and gravel, stretched into the darkness. Don didn’t even slow down and before Tommy could say anything, they were hurtling into the tunnel. Rough-hewn rock whipped past his window.
“Huh.” Tommy swallowed. “Didn’t realize we were actually headed underground.”
“Well, you wanna catch rats, you ain’t gonna catch ’em sipping cocktails at the Drake.” Don considered this for a moment. “Well, that’s a different kinda rat now, isn’t it?” He caught sight of Tommy’s wide eyes. “Relax. We got a ways to go. You’ll get used to it.”
The Streets and Sans truck shuddered as it rumbled down the tunnel. The headlights trembled, throwing crazy, flickering shadows across the uneven surfaces. The tunnel was big enough that two medium trucks could drive along side by side. Don kept the needle at a steady thirty-five miles an hour. “Believe it or not, we make better time down here than up top. No goddamn stoplights.” He laughed.
“How far are we going?”
“All the way back to downtown. ’Course, we’ll be a half-mile under the streets, at least. Some of the old-timers claim there’s tunnels that go down damn near a mile or more. See, the whole thing’s like goddamn Swiss cheese. You wouldn’t believe how many abandoned rail lines, storm drains, and God knows what else crisscross under the city. The Deep Tunnel engineers, they knew this, and they connected a bunch, so when it rains the lake doesn’t turn into a goddamn Porta-Potty.”
They passed a few intersections, and Tommy caught a quick glimpse of smaller tunnels before they were swallowed in the gloom. “You sure we shouldn’t be leaving a trail of breadcrumbs or something?”
“I wouldn’t want to be down here without a flashlight, that’s for goddamn sure. But I been coming down here, once a week or more, for, let’s see now, over two years now. Something like that.”
After about fifteen minutes, the tunnel opened up. There were no lights save the headlights, so Tommy couldn’t tell how large it was. But he couldn’t see the ceiling, and the place was full of rusting El cars. The truck bounced over a dozen sets of tracks, then followed the road as it ran down between the long lines of derelict hulks. The spill of the headlights briefly illuminated the dusty, opaque windows, reflecting distorted, ghostly images of the truck. It gave Tommy a skittish feeling.
He found he was having a hard time taking a deep breath. The thought of all that rock above, the weight of the entire city pressing down, down . . . He dried the palms of his hands on his jeans. The motion led him to his boots and he remembered that he wasn’t wearing the right kind of boots and that made things worse.
The El train corpses passed out of sight and the walls swallowed them up again. This one was shorter though, before long they came to a circular area, with a number of smaller tunnels branching off. It was clear which tunnel to use; the tire tracks had crushed the gravel into two easy-to-follow paths. Don pulled off to the side of the tire tracks and shifted into park. He pointed to an empty ring on the wall next to the tunnel. “Flag’s gone. That means somebody’s down in there. Tunnel isn’t wide enough for two vehicles. ’Specially garbage trucks.”
“Garbage trucks?”
“Sure. Why do you think we’re here? You want to find rats, you go looking for garbage.”
“Wait, there’s a dump down here?’
“Oh, yeah. An awful damn big one.”
“Why go to the trouble of driving all the way down here?”
Don spread his hands. “Landfills are big business. Nobody wants a garbage dump in their backyard, so these places, they can get away with charging an arm and a leg. ’Specially if it’s Uncle Sam picking up the bill. Your pal and mine, friend of the people Mr. Cornelius Shea, when he found out about this place, he had about a third of his drivers start dumping their loads down here. See, then he charges the city for the regular landfill costs, and pockets the surplus.”
Tommy was quiet for a while. “Jesus Christ. All I can think about are the assholes in my neighborhood, these wannabe crooks and gangbangers. They’ll bust open the back window of somebody’s piece-of-shit car, crawl in, see what they can steal. If they get a stereo, they’ll take off down the block, hoopin’ and hollerin’, thinkin’ they hit the jackpot. What a score.” He shook his head. “Those douche bags got nothing on these goddamn politicians.”
“What, you saying our elected officials aren’t going into politics to serve their fellow man?” Don laughed. “It’s the Machine, kid. Don’t look so shocked. And it ain’t just regular garbage down there. Shit, you think a landfill costs money? Try finding somewhere legal to dump toxic waste. If I were you, I wouldn’t linger when we’re getting the rats. I try to breathe through my shirt, you know?”
A bobbing light appeared in the darkness, growing in intensity by the second. Don flashed his brights. The approaching lights flashed back. A pale blue garbage truck filled the entrance, with only a foot or two between metal and rock. It rumbled out of the tunnel and pulled abreast of their van.
The driver’s window rolled down and a hairy arm held out a red flag on a three-foot PVC pipe to Don. Don said, “Working late.”
The garbage truck driver spit. “Boss got spooked. Heard a rumor that somebody was watchin’. Wanted the times we came dumping staggered even more. Wants at least an hour between each truck, you believe that shit?”
Don shrugged. “Be seein’ ya.”
The driver saluted, and headed back toward the surface. Don put the van in drive and they entered the tunnel. Their van was smaller than the garbage truck, but the walls were still uncomfortably close. Tommy never thought he would ever worry about claustrophobia, but this shit was getting old.
“What’s above us?” Tommy asked. “I mean, where in the Loop?”
“Dunno exactly. All I know is that we’re far enough down, you can’t even hear the subway.”
The right wall fell away into nothingness.
“And here we are,” Don said, turning the van off the road. The headlights illuminated a vast chasm. Fifteen yards out, the ground dropped steeply and disappeared, leaving hulking mountains of rotting garbage. Metal and plastic gleamed dully through the blackened ooze like bone as flesh decayed around it. The smell slithered through the air vents and cracks around the doorframes and sizzled in their nostrils. Tommy had expected it to smell like a bad Dumpster in the summer, but this didn’t have that revolting element that made your gorge rise. It had a burnt, chemical smell, like pepper spray steeped in bleach.
Don wrapped a bandanna around his nose and mouth and tied it in the back. He hefted a Maglite, saying, “Time to earn our keep,” and climbed out. Tommy followed, still stunned at the amount of garbage. The cavern stretched as far as the headlights shined; the place must have been as large as a football field. Probably bigger.
Don whipped the flashlight around. “Shut your door. Don’t need to come back and find any surprises.” He didn’t have to say it twice. Tommy slammed the door and the sound echoed across the immense cave. He flinched at the noise, feeling as if he’d just woken something dark and massive. Something that could seal off the tunnel before they got out.