Page 15 (1/2)

Chapter 15

THE PATH BELOW

Joseph Moore was still unconscious, snoring softly on the feathers Maybe drea of his cat master

I wondered if Dr Rat would try to explain this new development away as just another hopeful monster Surely a huenerations to evolve Of course, people and cats have been getting along for thousands of years, since the Egyptians worshipped theods Maybe this was just a neist on that, or on the toxoplas on, I had to catch this cat The yowl I&039;d heard fro pool must have come from the other end of the ventilation tunnel, doind Which

"Fine," I whispered I was armed with onethe tunnel, I realized thatthe afternoon sun across the Hudson had left ainst the darkness I closedslowly back down the tunnel

Then I heard a noise, faint footfalls in the dirt

My eyes sprang open, but the tunnel ahead remained absolutely black The only scents ca peep I swore softly no longer so proud ofinstincts Just like Joseph Moore, I had been cornered, blind and upwind And

I crouched in a defensive stance, listening hard

No sound at all cained the footsteps?

My stuff had to be up there sorittedfor the cold li out of the darkness and crashing into me, as hard and solid as a suitcase full of books The i fingernails rakeda fist and connected with hard runt fro, and she hissed at the sound, scraht - it was Joseph&039;s wife The light ca halo of feathers wound into her hair and sticking to her skin With her long fingernails and half-starved face, she looked like a human partly transformed into an awful bird of prey

She readied herself to spring at ot friends in low places,&039; " I sang - the only Garth Brooks song that cah for me to tear the shredded hazmat suit the rest of the way open

Patricia Moore stared at er stared back

"Oh, yeah!" I said "She&039;s my cowboy Cadillac!"

Her eyes widened and she screaht

Another anathema awaited her there: her husband, faceup on the floor I turned and scra the dirt floor wildly withbrain wondered how long she&039;d been tracking me Had she followed me from doind since I&039;d dropped into the tunnel? Or maybe she always lurked near her husband, just as Sarah had stayed close to Manhattan

Suddenly ht&039;s cylinder rolling farther into the darkness I reached out, grasping blindly, and at that moment my ears split with Patricia Moore&039;s screaht of his beloved face, h the tunnel

My hand closed on the flashlight

She was already headed back, loping towardlike a wolf

I covered ht on her, and switched it to full power Her feral grunts choked off, and the tunnel flooded with light so strong that the blood-pink veins in my eyelids were burned into my vision

A ainst the sunlight strea in the center of the tunnel, head pressed against the feather-strewn dirt, motionless, as if paralyzed by one too ht on low and foundout the spare injector and loading it, finally thankful for all those tedious drills in Hunting 101, I whirled to face her She still hadn&039;tthat her husband was dead, orin a world that included my rendition of "Cowboy Cadillac" But for whatever reason, she didn&039;t move a muscle as I approached across the feathered floor

I reached out and jabbed her in the shoulder She winced as the needle hissed, lifted her head, and sniffed the air

"You&039;re one of Morgan&039;s?" she asked

I blinked My vision was still spotted with tracers, but her expression seehtful, almost curious Her voice, like Sarah&039;s, was dry and harsh, but the way she said the words sounded so reasonable, so human

"Yeah," I answered

"You&039;re sane?"

"Uht you&039;d gone bad, like Joseph" Her eyes closed as the drug took effect "She says it&039;s co soon"

"What is?" I asked

She opened heranother sound

Maybe I should have headed back to the surface to rest up, reload, and share my revelations about the parasite&039;s new tricks Maybe I should have waited right there for the transport squad, brought them in by GPS and cell phone

Both of e late-afternoon sun as if the light didn&039;t faze hi so clearly once she&039;d identified ht I wasn&039;t the one living in a tunnel

But it reed after I&039;d cornered her, asking about Elvis, peering into my eyes without terror Maybe I should have ht away

Maybe I should have wonderedsoon

But I didn&039;t wait around I still had a peep cat to catch

After handcuffing Patricia Moore, I called the transport squad, giving them precise GPS coordinates for the captives They wouldn&039;t even have to disturb Manny and his tenants to collect the peeps They could simply put on Con Edison uniforms, set up a fake construction site on the Hudson River walk, and cut their way in through the rate at the end of the ventilation tunnel

They didn&039;t need h-priority work order from the Mayor himself in hand, it made perfect sense to follow the tunnel in the other direction: down the slope, the steady breeze at e exhaust fans

Under the swi down the shattered drain The basement overhead sounded the sa a had touched the cat food I&039;d left behind

I wondered how far down the tunnel the scent would travel, if floating molecules of Crunchy Tuna would tempt the peep cat out into the open With the wind atto catch it by surprise I kept et jurew steeper, descending as the tunnel continued The air becaan to plink frorew in the distance, throbbing like a massive heartbeat at the core of the city

Then another sound floated up the tunnel, an i The cat could s I wondered if it also kneo of its pet peeps had been dispatched

Just how s?

The echoes of the cat&039;s cry suggested a large open space in front of thened, and the pulsing beat of the exhaust fans grewin the earth Unlike the ru steadily under my feet, until it made the stones in the tunnel walls vibrate visibly I knelt on the quivering dirt, suddenly feeling trapped in the narrow tunnel I peered deep into the darkness, one way and then the other, searching for whatever was coht off panic

Then the ru into the distance, just likethe sound of a passing train

Chip had been right The PATH tunnel was nearby, and the rush-hour co The disturbance hadn&039;t been so creature from the depths, just a trainload of New Jerseyites headed ho like an idiot

But the earth-shaking passage had left so illuht off, I saw shafts of light filtering into the tunnel They pulsed brighter and then darker in ti - I had to be close to the exhaust fans now

The tunnel ended a little farther on, and I stepped down fro turbines filled the air with the se pair of fans turning at a stately pace, the blades eighty feet across; this was Chip&039;s ventilation syste blades the sky showed through, the dark blue of early evening

In an&039;s apart fronificent coluh, like a prison balanced on the river&039;s edge The inside was just as cheerless, the greasy ray paint and bird droppings The scant sunlight pulsed in time with the fans&039; rotation The air was drawn steadily toward the fans, carrying dust and the occasional stray feather upward

I searched the huge space nervously -unexpected in the jue, and estanding strain of the disease - its pet peeps weren&039;t preying on the workers who kept these fans going

But where had the cat gone? That last echoing yowl must have come from in here, but the doors to the boardwalk and piers outside were locked

The only way out that I could find was a set of ht on the handrail, sending a clanging beat into the depths A few seconds later, the peep cat let out a long nyeeeeow

The creature was leadinght back on

Beloas a world of pipes and air shafts, cold water seeping through the concrete that held back the river, staining it with black bruises The stairs kept going down, angling away from the river until the salt smell of the Hudson faded behind ranite bedrock of Manhattan I was under the PATH tunnel now, in the service area that accessed its tangle of cables and shafts Chip had a picture in his office of the huge machine that had bored this tunnel: a steah the earth, the source of all his night from chains draped across the stairs:

DANGER

Area Closed

As if answeringup fro the air, the hair on s, a strange scent lay, massive and unfamiliar, like a heavy hand on my chest, it wasn&039;t the scent of peeps or of the deep earth It was the same foul seneticoff

I sed and stepped over the sign Asbrushed the chains, they creaked sullenly with rust

This far down, the earth looked wounded, wet fissures splitting the granite walls The darkness inside see echoes from my footsteps I saw no e looked smoothed down by ti that PATH workers had abandoned this place, and I could see why

Or at least, I could feel it: a cold presence on top of the evil smell

Finally the stairs ended at a rupture in the rock, a fissure large enough to walk into I stepped inside, ranite The shadows around ed

This was the deepest I had ever been

The air had fallen still, so I sether in a ravine of stone, a few thousand rats and their peep cat Myriad eyes glittered back at ht

The cat blinked, yawning, its eyes glittering red

Red? I thought That was odd Cats&039; eyes should be blue or green or yellow

"What&039;s with you anyway?" I asked the peep cat softly

It just sat there

The posse of big fat rats still surrounded it, an entourage of heavy, pale bodies, larger than any rodents I&039;d ever seen on the surface All the rats were the color of dried chewing guenerations in darkness

I carefully pulled a video ca and swept it across the brood Dr Rat would be thrilled to have footage of these deep-dwellers in their natural habitat

In the silence, a barely audible sound began to ht it was the PATH train ruain But the noise didn&039;t build steadily It came and went, much slower than the sound of the fans I felt the tiny hairs onone way and then the other and realized that the air in the cavern was being pushed in and out, as if a slow and huge belloas operating

Soe

"No," I whispered

In answer, a spine-h the cavern on a fetid breeze, like the moan of some titanic beast It was so low-pitched that I felt more than heard it, like the buzz of power lines that my peep senses sometimes detect Every nerve in my body screamed at me to stand up and run away, the sort of panic I hadn&039;t felt since I&039;d becoh the air still shifted back and forth

The peep cat winked its eyes atnowand taking the cat withto have to run fast, carrying as little as possible

I pulled out loves on There was no point in using my knockout injector, which would overdose the cat

The brood stirred when they s the scent carry to the peep cat

The alence on its face faded, replaced by the sa time: pure animal desire At least the creature wasn&039;t soenius - it was just a cat, really, and a diseased one at that "Come on, kitty," I said

It took a few steps toward ain

"You know you want it," Ithe s stirred, and a trickle of sweat coursed down erly across the horde of rats, like so people They barely stirred as it passed