“To go where?’” Jamie asked before I could.
“No one gets out, no one gets in; what do they think is going to happen here? Where are we supposed to go?” I took another push to the hip and went face-first against the window, which clanked but held. “But no, we can’t stay here.”
“What’s happening?” Jamie asked, not really expecting an answer, but sensing a new bleakness and urgency to the officer’s mood. “He’s talking about evacuating to higher ground, and talking about roofs. That’s crazy; it won’t get that high, will it? Could it?”
“I don’t know,” I said, but he didn’t hear me and it didn’t matter. I wasn’t looking at him anymore. I was looking back through the window, where my face had left a greasy imprint on the glass. On the other side of the cheek-shaped smudge, out on the street in the rain, I saw someone and knew that nobody else did.
The neighborhood kids called him Catfood Dude because there was a rumor that he’d eat cat food if you gave it to him. He was half homeless, or maybe more than half; and I had always gotten the distinct impression that he was in need of brain-chemical-modifying meds. He chattered to himself and didn’t ever bathe, and he’d do anything stupid on a dare for a dollar. His hair was tangled up in dreads, but not the cool kind that trustafarians cultivate.
For the first time since I’d been aware of his existence, he was looking me square in the eyes. He wasn’t twitching and he wasn’t fretting in that worrisome way that made people on the sidewalks move away from him.
The cop was trying to urge people outside. Without saying a word to Jamie or Becca, I let him herd me around the frame and out the door. As he held it, water came spilling in over the sandbags, but the sandbags were less than useless and we all could see it.
My friends called out to me, but over the din I could pretend I hadn’t heard them. Catfood Dude had something to say and I wasn’t doing anything useful there in the ‘Friar anyway. “All right,” I told him as I pushed my way outside. “All right, what have you got for me?”
It won’t be long now, he said.
“What? What won’t be long now?” Another couple of people trickled and tripped out of the clogged coffeeshop behind me. It was almost better, out there in the rain. You could see the sky at least, you weren’t packed against other people like crayons, and the water didn’t mean much. Everything was wet anyway. What was a little more?
“Eden!”
It was Jamie, behind me now, leaving Becca back inside and forbidding her to follow. I don’t know why she obeyed, but she stayed there, watching from the other side of the glass while he kicked a sandbag over and joined me.
“Go back in there,” I told him. I realized I was still holding my cell phone, but the water wasn’t as bad, tapering off at least for a while. It was coming up fast from the ground level, but the sky was giving us a break. I twisted the phone in my fingers, wondering what to do next.
“Forget it,” he told me. “What’s going on? What are you doing?”
“Trying to sort some things out. There’s not anything you can do to help. Just go back. Take care of Becca. I don’t need any help.”
“Where will you go? You’re not getting back up to the mountain.”
“I know, I know, but . . . I don’t know.”
“Now you’re just—”
“Drop it. I have some things to take care of.” Catfood Dude was watching patiently, waiting for me to finish. I’d never seen him hold still for so long, and I didn’t trust it.
The pigs are right. Everyone should go. It isn’t safe.
Behind us there was more commotion, more shouting, and Becca squeezed around the door to join us. “Let’s go home,” she urged, taking Jamie’s arm in a way that wasn’t whiny so much as insistent. “My place. I live up on top of the hill.” She pointed up Fourth Street and I nodded. It would probably be the driest spot in town short of Cameron Hill. “The blue building. Buzz number eighteen and we’ll let you up if you need a place to crash.”
“Thanks,” I said.
“I guess that means we’re walking,” Jamie said.
“Unless you think your car will start and move in this. They’re blocking the roads anyway. Walk or drown, I think. I’ve got some things to take care of, but I might take you up on your offer later on, tonight maybe. I’ve got—”
“Yeah, we got it,” he interrupted. “Things to do. I get it.”
“Go,” I urged. “Go while the rain is light.”
I left them there. We turned our backs and went our different directions. Jamie went with Becca sloshing up the hill and I went after Catfood Dude, who was walking towards downtown—towards the horses and the Tivoli Theater, and the big bank buildings and the old empty storefronts. I followed as fast as I could.
The ghost led me forward, and as I went deeper into the valley, the water became less troublesome. A couple of blocks made a huge difference—the difference between knee-deep and puddle-deep. I even started seeing cars moving again, though not fast and not very far. But it was drivable, except for the way the streetlights were failing more often than they were working.
The buses weren’t working, not the gas ones or the electric shuttles, but the horses were. Tourist guides with hansom cabs were piling as many people onboard as the beasts could drag—mostly triaged to the elderly, the handicapped, and kids, or that’s how it looked to me. They took the carts up onto the sidewalks and along the alleys where cars don’t go because they can’t or shouldn’t.
So people were leaving—they were getting out, maybe to the ridge tunnels or to the mountains. Not many people, but some people. The most vulnerable people, I hoped. It wasn’t the world’s fastest evacuation because there weren’t that many horses and the going was slow; but it was happening. It was underway. It was better than nothing.
Foot power or hoof power—fastest and best. I ran after Cat-food Dude and he led me to a square, squat building with boarded windows and an ornate front that was sad under the plywood.
Inside, he said.
I stood there and caught my breath, hands on my knees. “What’s inside?”
Nothing, yet.
He vanished, and I was alone except for the dimmer chaos of the confused city’s heart, where the water was still a threat and not a reality. The roads were jammed and cars were being abandoned even as I watched. Why not? Everyone could see the horses, and with the sweating, steaming, determined animals in our midst the writing was on the wall. Get out however you can. But get out.
No one was watching me, and the police I saw weren’t watching for the kind of looting I was likely to do.
I think it might have been a bank like the old furniture building had been, once upon a time. The lettering was faded above the door and on the side plaque, and I didn’t take the time to squint for it. The place had been empty as long as I could remember. I only remembered it at all because it was odd, a place in such a good location sitting so vacant and old, and no one had torn it down or built anything new to replace it.
But the ghost had said “inside,” so I took him at his word. I pulled my knife out of my belt holster and used it to pry at the sodden wood and rusty nails covering one of the lower windows. It didn’t take any time at all to pull it free. The window it covered was broken and ragged.
When I got the sheet of wood free, I held it on the ground and stepped on it until I broke it, and then I took the biggest piece and used it to swipe the glass away from the termite-eaten frame. I climbed inside and blinked.
The interior was as dark as night. Time to find out how waterproof that tiny flashlight was.
I wrested it free of my bag and flipped it on. It surprised me by sparking to life.
There wasn’t much to see—just the usual crates and trash, though not much indication that people had been squatting there. Usually abandoned buildings in that area have clear signs of teenagers or the homeless, but not this one. Instead I found a stray cable or two—like for audio equipment—which was weird. I stepped forward and heard a change in my footsteps’ echo; when I looked down I saw that the original flooring surface had transitioned to something new.
I retreated for fear of falling through into heaven knew what. But when I found the edge I tapped at it and shined the light down low.
It was metal, a grate. On top of it, someone had thrown a couple of shipping pallets. It took some real effort, but I pushed them aside and saw the rusted square of grating that covered . . . what? I thought of the street elevators built into the sidewalks—the ones that allow city workers access to the sewers. This looked something like that, only I didn’t think it had been used in years.
And it wasn’t locked. The grate was only laid down atop the hole.
I beamed the light down and saw nothing of interest. It could have been a basement or an unfinished cellar.
Or a tunnel.
I looked down as hard as I could and saw no sign of the cement work that identifies the undersides—not even any walls, or support structures. No floor. No, this was more like a tunnel than a water runoff system.
“The underground?” I said aloud.
I felt ridiculous the moment it was out of my mouth, whether or not there was anyone to hear. Everyone sort of believed in the underground, but no one actually took it as a point of fact.
The true facts are slim pickings, but you know how it goes. In old cities where the water level is unpredictable, sometimes things stack. Where the old buildings are too damaged to restore, and the sediment level has grown high enough, sometimes builders wind up constructing right on top of them.
Everybody knew about the underground like everyone knew about Old Green Eyes out at the battlefield; and everyone had a story about winding up in a clammy spot of dirt beneath a building or beside the river. Most of it wasn’t true, or it referred to the concrete water runoff system we called “the undersides.” But enough of the bullshit tales had legs to make you wonder if it wasn’t something else, maybe.