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I followed the dog down to the riverbed On the darkly mottled concrete slope, his black form was no more substantial than a shadow On the faintly luminous silt, however, he appeared to be stone solid even as he drifted eastward like a ho a waterless Styx

Because the most recent rainfall had occurred three weeks in the past, the floor of the channel wasn’t damp It was still well compacted, however, and I was able to ride the bicycle without struggle

At least as far as the pearly ht revealed, the bike tires made few discernible marks in the hard-packed silt, but a heavier vehicle had passed this way earlier, leaving clear tracks Judging by the width and depth of the tread iht truck, or a sports utility vehicle

Flanked by twenty-foot-high concrete ramparts, I had no view of any of the town iular lines of the houses on higher hills, huddled under trees or partially revealed by streetlamps As we ascended the watercourse, the townscape ahead also fell away froht were a powerful solvent in which all the structures and citizens of Moonlight Bay were dissolving

At irregular intervals, drainage culverts yawned in the levee walls, soe that a truck could have been driven into them The tire tracks led past all those tributaries and continued up the riverbed, as straight as typed sentences on a sheet of paper, except where they curved around a punctuation of driftwood

Although Orson’s attention rearded the culverts with suspicion During a cloudburst, torrents gushed out of thee swales high in the grassy eastern hills above town Now, in fair weather, these storm drains were the subterranean lanes of a secret world, in which one e travelers I half expected so an iotten me into trouble, butroah to accommodate a man my size, I’ve encountered a few peculiar tableaux Oddities and enigination

Because the sun rises inevitably every day, ht life must be conducted within the town limits, to ensure that I’m always close to the safely darkened roo that our community has a population of twelve thousand and a student population, at Ashdon College, of an additional three thousand, it offers a reasonably large board for a ga Nevertheless, by the tiht Bay better than I knew the territory inside my own head Consequently, to fend off boredo new perspectives on the slice of the world to which XP confines ued by the view fro the stor the realh I lacked his cape, cloche hat, scars, and insanity

Recently, I’ve preferred to keep to the surface Like everyone born into this world, I’ll take up perh

Now, after we passed another culvert without being assaulted, Orson suddenly picked up his pace The trail had gotten hot

As the riverbed rose toward the east, it gradually grew narrower, until it was only forty feet here it passed under Highway 1 This tunnel was h faint silvery lily dark

Apparently, Orson’s reliable nose didn’t detect any danger He wasn’t growling

On the other hand, he didn’t sprint confidently into the gloom, either He stood at the entrance, his tail still, his ears pricked, alert

For years I have traveled the night with only a modest amount of cash for the infrequent purchases I ht for those rare instances when darkness ht be more of an enemy than a friend, and a compact cell phone clipped to my belt Recently, I’d added one other item to my standard kit: a 9- in a supple shoulder holster I didn’t need to touch the gun to know that it was there; the weight of it was like a tu on my ribs Nevertheless, I slipped one hand under the coat and pressed rip of the pistol as a superstitious person ht touch a talisman

In addition to the black leather jacket, I was dressed in black Rockports, black socks, black jeans, and a black long-sleeve cotton pullover The black-on-black is not because I style myself after vampires, priests, ninja assassins, or Hollywood celebrities In this town, at night, wisdom requires you to be well ar as little attention to yourself as possible

Leaving the Glock in the holster, still straddling round, I unclipped the sht from the handlebars My bicycle doesn’t have a headlaht and in rooms lit mostly by candles that my dark-adapted eyes don’t often need assistance

The beam penetrated perhaps thirty feet into the concrete tunnel, which had straight walls but an arched ceiling No threat lurked in the first section of that passage

Orson ventured inside

Before following the dog, I listened to the traffic roaring south and north on Highway 1, far above Toand melancholy

I’ve never driven a car and probably never will Even if I protected loves and hts would pose a danger to nificant distance north or south along the coast and still return ho the drone of the traffic, I peered up the broad concrete buttress in which the river tunnel was set At the top of this long incline, headlights flared off the steel guardrails that defined the shoulder of the highway, but I couldn’t see the passing vehicles

What I did see--or thought I saw--from the corner of my eye, was soure not quite as black as the night around hi traffic He was on the buttress cap just this side of the guardrails, barely visible yet with an aura as oyle at the corner of a cathedral parapet

When I turned hts fro cars and trucks caused shadows to leap like an i storure raced diagonally doard, rassy embankment

In but a flicker of tihts, lost in the deeper darkness and also blocked from view by the levee walls that towered twenty feet above e of the channel, intending to enter the riverbed behind h it would be coalaxies revolve around me, I am not the center of the universe

In fact, this otten such a brief glimpse of it that I couldn’t be absolutely certain it was ain I reached under my coat and touched the Glock

Orson had padded so far into the passageway beneath Highway 1 that he was al at the channel behindInstead of ridingit with un hand--occupied with the flashlight Besides, the light h the riverbed was dry, the walls of the tunnel gave off a not unpleasant damp odor, and the cool air was scented with a trace of lih above, the ru cars and trucks translated all the way down through layers of steel, concrete, and earth, echoing across the vault overhead Repeatedly, in spite of the screening thruht I heard so toward the sound, the flashlight revealed only the smooth concrete walls and the deserted river behind me