The Prisoner - Carlos J. Cortes [29]
Dumping the bags, weighed down with loose bricks—one of them containing a now-unnecessary suit and waders—had been the hardest part. Raul had picked up the now-spare flashlight and nodded when Laurel pocketed Bastien’s watch. Then he gazed for a long time as the lump sunk in a pit of slime, until Laurel kissed his cheek and squeezed his shoulder to pull him out of the dark lair where he’d sought refuge.
Panning their powerful new flashlights, Laurel and Lukas waded to their midriffs through streams of foul water, followed by Raul with the unconscious Russo wrapped in gold foil and draped over his shoulder. They had been shuffling and treading for the best part of an hour through a rat-plagued and endless subuniverse of alleys, pipes, tunnels, and side tunnels.
Laurel checked the Metapad, where she’d tapped the coordinates she now knew by heart. Two miles left.
The darkness of the sewers enhanced noises. Ears needed to work as hard as eyes to aid navigation through the maze of tunnels. Down in the sewer, your ears and sense of smell could save your life. Their trainer had been thorough. Her feet squelching inside flooded waders. Laurel wondered how Shepherd had gathered his knowledge.
“Now what?” Lukas kept his flashlight trained on a dark wall one hundred feet ahead, seemingly blocking the tunnel.
As they drew near, it became clear the tunnel continued, although the roof dropped down to half its previous height.
“We carry on straight ahead,” Laurel said.
Inside the confined vault, they couldn’t walk upright but had to crouch down, their noses scant inches over a whitish fluid dusted with a flotsam of condoms, plastic bags, Q-tips, shit, tampons, and fat. After one hundred yards, they entered a wider tunnel, with a dry four-foot-wide walkway on one of its sides.
“Let’s rest a few minutes,” Laurel suggested.
Lukas jerked his head. “Rest? Are you kidding?”
“No.” She doubled back past Lukas and gave Raul a hand lying Russo on the dry ledge. In their mad rush through the station’s drainpipe, she’d worried that Raul couldn’t carry Russo for much longer. He’d been huffing like he was out of breath, but Laurel must have misinterpreted. He didn’t look tired, let alone winded.
She drew aside the gold-foil wrapper and checked Russo’s pulse by touching his neck on both sides of his throat: thready but regular.
“He’s hanging on to life tooth and nail.” Laurel glanced down at Raul, propped her back against the curved wall next to him, and ran an eye along the tunnel: a horrible place with thin skeins of skeletonlike roots threading their way down the roof and walls.
Lukas checked his watch and glared in their direction. Something dark and bulky sailed past, turning over and dropping below the surface to bob a little farther on, bloated and shiny under a film of fat. Raul turned his head to follow its passage.
“A friend told me about these giant hairballs clogging the sewers under the city streets.”
Laurel raised an eyebrow. “Hairballs?”
“It seems that over the decades, strands of hair molted by millions of citizens have built up.”
Lukas checked his watch again and stepped closer.
“You’re joking,” Laurel said.
“I’m not. Coated in grease and dirt, tons of hair have been shaped into huge knotted boulders that swell as they trundle through the sewers.”
“That’s a lie,” Lukas muttered.
“Wanna bet?”
Lukas bit his lower lip, shook his head, and checked his watch again. “We should get going.”
After a curt nod, Raul stood up and offered his palm to Laurel. “You’ve lazed enough.”
“Me? I thought you needed a rest.”
“A shower is what I need.” He squatted, checked Russo’s pulse, adjusted the thermal blanket, hefted his cocoon over his shoulder with an easy swing, and straightened. Then he froze and turned slowly to peer at the darkened end of the tunnel.
Laurel lowered her head to hide a smile.
“Hear that?”
“What?” Lukas croaked, his flashlight slashing in all directions.
“I bet it’s one of those giant hairballs.”
Lukas