Tony nodded.
“We go,” Vernon agreed.
The men ran. The lantern’s wobbly light threw their shadows up the old brick walls in looming, macabre waves. Suddenly, the lantern went out, plunging them into near darkness. There were only Vern’s miner’s hat lamp and Tony’s flashlight now, and they weren’t enough. Their frantic breathing was loud in their ears. Vern knew he should calm down, slow his breaths so that he didn’t faint. They all knew this. It didn’t matter. Whatever lurked in that corridor had them panting like trapped dogs.
“You hear that?” Leon asked, panicked.
The sound was moving closer. They could pick up the individual guttural growls buried inside the collective clamor. What was it? How many?
“It’s coming from behind us,” Vern said. “Where’s the lantern? Leon, get it lit!”
Another screech.
“Leon!”
“Trying, aren’t I?”
A screech came from their right and the men went still. It was very close.
“Thought you said it was behind us,” Leon whispered urgently.
Vernon swallowed hard. “It was.”
“Let’s go back!” Leon said and took off running back toward the vault under the bridge.
“Leon! Wait!” Vern called seconds before Leon’s scream rang out, then stopped abruptly.
Vernon had always wondered what his cousin Clyde had seen in the war that was too terrible to mention. Just now, he thought he might find out.
“Dios mío,” Tony said again. He dropped the flashlight and slid down the wall, putting his hands around his neck. “Ayúdame, Santa María!”
Vernon grabbed the flashlight. “Get up, Tony! We’re moving.” He hauled the terrified Tony to his feet, half dragging him down a set of darkened stairs leading deeper into the underground. A series of twists and turns later, they came out in an abandoned, partially flooded subway station. High above them, once-magnificent brick ceilings arched down into columns striated with years’ worth of water marks. The water was up to Vernon’s waist, but he was well over six feet; Tony, on the other hand, was only five and a half feet tall. The water reached his chest as he prayed fervently.
“Not far now,” Vernon said. He had no idea how far it was, but he needed Tony beside him.
The water rippled from below. In the distance, a splash bubbled up.
“¿Qué es eso?” Tony whispered, his voice filled with terror.
With a shaking hand, Vernon swept the flashlight’s insufficient glow across the wide expanse of the flooded station: The illuminated walls slimed with years of mold and neglect. An abandoned ticket booth sitting like a small mausoleum. Vernon had been in a lot of subway stations, and he knew there had to be stairs leading up and out.
He swung the flashlight beam to the right of the old ticket booth.
A wall.
To the left.
There it was—a corridor!
“Tony!” Vernon whispered. He showed him the corridor in the grainy white light. “Ahí.”
Tony nodded. “Sí.”
The flashlight winked out. Vernon smacked it against his hand, but it was no use.
The sound was back and no longer confined to the distance. It was all around them.
“Move!” Vernon shouted. “¡Vámonos!”
It was hard to run with the weight of water pressing against their bodies and only Vernon’s headlamp to show the way. Vernon bumped into the wall. He gritted his teeth to hold back his scream and plunged his hands under the murky water, searching for the ladder he knew had to be there. His fingers were rewarded with the feel of metal rungs.
“It’s here,” Vern assured Tony. “Ladder.”
The water rippled again with a long and powerful swoosh. Trembling, Vernon swung his head in the direction of the movement, out where the old tracks had been, where only a skeletal fretwork of steel beams now stood.
Just last week, Vernon had celebrated his birthday—twenty-one—in a little joint under the stairs of a brownstone on the West Side. He very much hoped to do the same for his twenty-second. Or maybe he’d gather his small family—his wife and their new baby—and find another place, a better place. Move out to New Jersey or down to Baltimore, where his sister was a teacher. There was a lot of country; he didn’t have to spend his years breathing in dirt and gas, hauling whiskey, gasping for air when he got topside, so thirsty he could never get his fill of water. Yes, they’d go—out like the pioneers, questing for their stake, for what the land had been holding in trust for them.
