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Ad almost like wonder
The coh to provide huhted, but others were dark Those that were illuracefully out of sight
I saw no ters to new branches
A fantastic perception arose that I had ventured into a construction that stood betorlds, or linked them, as if uncountable nautilus shells intersected in es offering pathways to new realities
Beneath the city of New York supposedly lie seven levels of infrastructure Sorand in scale
But this was Pico Mundo, hoest cultural event is the annual cactus festival
At key stress points, arches and buttresses lent reinforcement, and in some places the curved walls were ribbed These elees that didn’t detract froanic quality of the whole
The immense volume of these tunnels seemed excessive for their reputed purpose I found it difficult to believe that, with so many routes to follow, the runoff from even a hundred-year storer arteries
I had no difficulty, however, believing that these tunnels were only secondarily drains and were prih thee to another with a two-maneuver turn
Ordinary trucks or mobile missile launchers
I suspected that this labyrinth lay under not only Fort Kraken and Pico Mundo It also extended h the Maravilla Valley
If you needed tothe first hours of the Last War, to get them out of the devastation of the initial strike zone to points from which they could be taken to the surface and launched, these subterranean highways ht meet your requirements They had been constructed at sufficient depth to allow considerable hardening against blast penetration
Indeed, having accumulated this far below the surface, storm runoff eventually round lake or other geological formation that supported the area water table
How peculiar to think of riddle of the Pico Mundo Grille, frying cheeseburgers, wrecking eggs, turning bacon, dreahways of Areddon lay in silent anticipation of sudden convoys of death
Although I see the dead, whom others cannot see, the world wears many veils and is layered with secrets that cannot be perceived with ressed less quickly than I would have preferred My psychicin uncertainty when I arrived at the option of another conduit
Doggedly nonetheless, I proceeded eastward, or suspected that I did Holding fast to an accurate sense of direction underground is not easy
For the first time, I encountered a depth-marker post--white with black numbers at one-foot intervals--situated in the center of the watercourse This six-inch-square fixture rose eleven and a half feet, nearly to the apex of the curved ceiling
The gray water reached three or four inches shy of the two-foot line, close to the estireater interest was the corpse It had snared on the post
The cadaver bobbed facedown in the flow Thepants and shirt, preventedeven the sex of the deceased from where I stood on the elevated ay
My heart knocked, knocked, and the sound of it echoed through h I were an empty house
If this was Danny, I was done Done not just with the search for hi water could in an instant sweep a grown man off balance This conduit had only adepth of the flow, plus the lazy look of it, suggested that the velocity was--and would continue to be for a while--less than overwhel my backpack on the ay, I stepped down into the channel and waded toward the marker post As lazy as the water appeared to be, it still had power
Rather than dawdle in ods of the drain, I didn’t at once try to roll the body over and look at its face, but grabbed a fistful of its clothing and towed it to the ay
Although I am comfortable with the spirits of the dead, cadavers spook me They seeht take up residence
I’ve never actually known this to happen, though there’s a clerk at the Pico Mundo 7-Eleven that I wonder about
On the ay, I flopped the body on its back and recognized the snaky man who had Tasered me
Not Danny A thin whimper of relief escaped ht and I shuddered The dead man’s face was unlike the faces of other corpses that I had seen
His eyes had rolled so far back in his head that I could not see the thinnest crescent of green Although he could have been dead, at most, only a couple hours, his eyes also seeht force them from their sockets
Had his face been a bloodless white, I wouldn’t have been surprised Had the skin already turned a pale green, as it alithin a day of death, I would have wondered what had hastened the process of decomposition, but I would not have been startled
The skin was neither bloodless nor pale green, nor even livid, but several shades of gray, mottled from ash-pale to charcoal He looked drawn, too, as if life were a juice that had been sucked out of hione I didn’t think anyone had cut it out He appeared to have sed it Aggressively
His head bore no obvious injuries Although I was curious about the cause of death, I had no intention of undressing him in a search for wounds
I did roll hi one