Part 19 (1/2)
He studied one of the dirty white walls as if to find his story in it. ”Me and Davey worked everyday and real good, 'cause we was the best, dolly, the best. But then dis big rattler came through and turned the tunnels to s.h.i.+t and rubble. Me, I was out gettin' supplies. Was Davey hitchin' the line when she tore through like a mad b.i.t.c.h.”
”Was Davey trapped?”
The hobo's eyes floated back in their sockets as if to see something far inside, far away. ”Three days we work, me besides 'em all, pickin' and diggin', and Davey tappin' and tappin', and me goin' on and on, for the sound, for my Davey. And yellin' whole time: '
I'm com in', Davey. Little while yet. I'm comin'. Hold on, Davey, hold on.' But it stopped, dolly. It stopped. Davey didn't listen to me. The tappin' stopped and the silence was white. All white. Me, I carried Davey out on my back. He didn't listen. The silence was all white.”
”And the door to the cave-in?”
”Healed her all up. All gone. Built her over. Healed her. Couldn't heal my Davey, though.” A dirty grey hand rasped past the wall behind him. ”I come here now'n talk to Davey. He don't answer, though.”
”Thank you.”
He smiled, and it was the smile of a young man, a man thirty years ago. ”Sure, dolly. You a good girl. I know.”
She smiled too, and it was ancient. ”You miss Davey, don't you?”
”I gonna see Davey again one day.”
”Yes, you will,” she said. ”You can, you know. Now.”
”Really, dolly?”
”Yes.” Her eyes blinked black, glittering in the forced light. She nestled against his soft, filthy clothing and kissed his cheek.
”How?” His voice was a rattle, weary and desperate.
”Kiss me and Davey will come for you.”
”Magic princess.”
”Yes.”
No, oh G.o.d, no, not again. Alek turned his back on them. And then he was walking, walking, the clocking of his bootheels on the scarred, ancient tiled floor an empty drumbeat, beating, beating a little faster, faster. The beat became a pounding as barbaric as the angriest music, and now the walls leaned in, falling down on him in their suffocating purity, falling in to crush him, to bury him alive here a hundred feet below the earth...
He was running full tilt by the time he reached the great felled escalator. He tried to climb the long slain beast, but his legs were water and they spilled him onto the second step. He covered his face with his hands and felt a wet mask of grief gathering there. And the punks and prost.i.tutes and the few late-night commuters who pa.s.sed him on the stairs watched him curiously and pointed and whispered secrets to one another but did not ask him about his misery.
18.
”Alek Knight.”
Still he knelt on the dead stairs, but now there was no pain. There was nothing. He was a husk, a chrysalis, finished.
”It is near morning,” she said from behind.
Her presence closed in on him like a shadow, and the fine hairs of his neck came alive. ”Don't, please,” he pleaded.
She stopped. ”Why are you mourning?”
”Don't act innocent, b.i.t.c.h. It doesn't become you.”
It would come now, he knew, a cry of rage that would rattle the skeleton of his sanity apart, a flash of anger like an open-mouthed furnace at his back. He tensed, expected, even antic.i.p.ated it, yet all he heard was the purity of the unbroken silence around him.
”I am not Debra, Alek Knight,” she whispered with her perfect sense, ”you are. And you would do yourself a service to remember that.”
He pulled his fingers through his tangled hair. ”I hate you sometimes.”
She laughed at him. ”What a strange creature, priest, to believe that all things are trapped within the perimeters of conception and death.”
She hesitated. She was being wise and playful with him again, making him the fool with her philosophies.
Eventually she tired of the game, however, and she sighed. ”He's with Davey now.”
Alek shook his head. ”Jesus, I can't think like you.”
”You don't have to.” And all at once the mocking wisdom was gone and her voice only seemed frail and so very human. ”I don't want you to,” she whispered. ”Spare a little hate for me.”
”That's an awful request.” ”It is what the man in you feels and I think it is that that I love best in you.”
”You love that I'm weak?”
”That you are strong enough to be weak, to change. You are so evolved, so better equipped for this world than I.”
He smeared the mask of tears on his face. ”G.o.d help me, I wish there was a way out of this. I want to be dead or finished with this.”
A m.u.f.fled, echoing laugh: ”That can be arranged, pardner.”
Alek turned at the sound of Kansas's savage Midwestern drawl and glanced around the tunnels, up the curving spine of the elevator, down the branching corridors. f.u.c.k. There he was. There they were. A pair of faceless silhouettes standing against the wall about twenty yards behind them, anonymous as shadows.
”Where are they?” Teresa asked, spinning on her heels.
As if on cue, they peeled away from the wall and started to stalk casually toward the two of them. Because of the partial shadow thrown by the doorway of an un.o.btrusive service elevator he still could not make out their features, but their longcoated forms conveyed an archetypal air of doom: undertakers, n.a.z.is, vultures.
Slayers. His paralysis broke, and Alek got to his feet and frantically scanned the sub tunnels for an alcove or an exit sign, any means of escape, anything at all. Nothing.
He retreated a step, but there was nothing so spare as even a shadow to hide in. The f.u.c.king lights overhead shone down on them both like spotlights.
”I don't see anything,” Teresa admitted, though the two shadows were as plain as day to him. ”Are you sure?”
He swallowed. He understood the game now. They planned on staying on the periphery of everything, making the kill quick, like a pair of African lions on the prowl. They weren't safe, not even in public. Not anywhere. Not anymore. Metal s.h.i.+mmered blue. This was it.
”Madre,” Teresa whispered under her breath. And now she too saw them. Now. Because they chose that she should. ”I can see them, but only from the tail of my eye.”
”Takara.” He let out his breath in frustration. The terminal was down the tunnel the two slayers were emerging from. For them it was up the elevator and onto the thoroughfare overhead or nothing. He drew his sword and made a sweeping underhanded arc over his head. Buzz and spit. The long fluorescent light clapped dark and filled the tunnel with the stink of ozone. Alek grabbed Teresa's arm and dragged her with him toward the escalator. ”Maybe we can shake them now.”
They all but flew down the dark, empty pa.s.sageways, their shoes clocking against the floor and walls like the explosion of gunshots in this close place. ”Keep your eyes open,” he panted. ”Tell me if you see them.”