“It’s about time you showed up,” Sam said, wiping his hands with a towelette. “I thought you’d already gone ahead to the bridge, so I was hurrying to get here.”
“You didn’t say you were coming back,” I said.
“And so soon,” said Tarah.
“I didn’t want to make any promises I couldn’t keep, except to take Sue and Mary to Camp Jackson like I said. And that I did…kind of.” He adjusted his ball cap to return the Old Glory patch to front-and-center. “And now I’m back.”
“’Kind of?’” I asked. “What does that mean?”
“I didn’t even have to take ‘em all the way to Camp Jackson. We ran into a lone Guard unit that had a crowd of…I guess ‘refugees’ traveling to Camp Jackson with them. It helped that I recognized one of the soldiers. Remember Chuck’s cousin, Jerry?”
My mind plowed through hazy memories of Chuck’s family gatherings where we could always scavenge a free meal. “I think I remember Jerry. Younger kid, right?”
“Well, he’s not so young anymore, but because he knew us, they agreed to bring Sue and Mary back with them. It’s not much there, from what they told me, but there are enough people organizing against the revs…at least enough to make an impact. And they’re waiting for us.”
“Sounds too good to be true,” Tarah said.
“As I said, there’s not much there. But it’s secure.”
“Small world, eh?” said one of our masked guides. “It figures you’d all know each other…nuts from the same bowl.” He held out his hand. “I’m Steven. You know Naomi and Paul from our short walk over here.” He nodded at Sam. “We found your friend yesterday, a few blocks west of the hotel. Traveling alone like a lunkhead.”
“We had to use a grappling hook to pull him off the street,” said Naomi. “It was like Mission: Impossible. His legs were kicking like he was running a race in the air.”
Sam didn’t want that humiliation to settle as the full story. “Hey, I was running from about thirty revs who’d popped out of a dance studio when I caught a hook in my pants. These jokers had me dangling like a chunk of meat over a pond of baby piranhas who were wearing tights and tutus.”
“He thought we were bad guys,” Naomi said, pulling her mask down to scratch a scar crossing her chin. “Maybe trying to get something his sorry ass didn’t have. But he still kept his peashooter on us for about an hour, just so he could be sure.”
“Could you blame us?” asked Paul. “We couldn’t believe this guy. We’re supposed to believe a story about a group trying to get into the city? We thought it was some kind of suicide cult’s plan.”
“It’s great you’re helping get people out of the city,” said Tarah, “but why? You some kind of ninja saints or something?”
“Like everyone else, we thought this was a temporary emergency,” said Steven. “But then we knew something was wrong after the evacuation orders came in and our phones bricked out…not like that mattered, since most of the info we got was bunk. So we did what we could do from here, which was to get our families out. Once they were safely on their way, we started working through the neighborhood. And then we helped anyone who made it to us. There was a rush of people for a while and then it seemed everyone who could get out already did. And it was relatively quiet until you came along, headed in the wrong direction.”
“What Steven is trying to say is that we haven’t figured out why we’re still here, now that we’ve run out of things to do around here,” said Naomi.
Tarah shook her head. “Why not leave? You’re just going to live on the top floors of buildings, pissing on the revs until they rot away in the streets?”
“Right now, as long as we keep a low profile, we’re OK,” Steven said. “We’re sticking to the rooftops with the birds and in the sewers with the rats. Adapt and survive…always.” His eyes narrowed. “When times get tough, I always say that something’s gonna break, but it’s not going to be us.”
“So what’s the easiest way to the island with all the revenants clogging the streets?” I asked. “Have any of you been out there?”
“Not a chance. In the beginning, bodies were pouring out and we couldn’t get close even if we wanted to. But if we know anything, it’s that it all started there.”
“The revs with scars and mismatched limbs are the originals,” said Paul. “The OGs. He raised the first ones and they spread the disease to the rest.”
“How do you know that?” I asked.
“People coming out with their stories. All of them pretty grim.”
It all seemed so unbelievable. A bad actor on an island was not only building bodies from spare parts, like some psychotic Frankenstein, but was raising them from the dead to bring on the end of civilization…and using energy from people like my brother to do it. Talk about a buzz killer. It would‘ve been easier for him to just find a therapist, though once behavior crosses a certain moral Rubicon, there’s only so much that CBT can heal. Aleister crossed that long ago.
“Can you tell us how to get to the island?” I asked. “They took my brother there and we’re going to get him.”
“And if we can also take that Aleister asshole down too, well, that’s a bonus,” Tarah said.
Steven thought for a moment. “Since it’s such a noble pursuit, I’ll take you there, myself. We’ll leave first thing in the morning.” He looked at his silent crew. “Who’s coming with me?”
No response.
“All right. Sleep on it, then. It’d be nice to have a partner to head back here with. The Buddy System’s been working well for us so far, no?”
I didn’t blame them a bit for the lack of enthusiasm. Steven’s “ninja saints” had already risked their lives for us once and at least one of them wanted to leave the city at the first opportunity, especially after hearing about Camp Jackson. And who in their right mind would want to accompany five strangers into a firestorm of death, magic, and even sanity itself? But even with all the absurdity, the foolishness, and the steady guiding good against evil’s sheer chaos, I had no other option but to keep going. No matter how ridiculous this all was, my brother was still in the Body Shop.
***
I slept poorly, even under the circumstances. The eerie moans coming from the mass of revenants on the street below echoed across my eardrums like grim warnings all night. The Ninja Saints could blacken the windows with garbage bags and cardboard, but nothing could silence the noise…and when you heard it once, it imprinted in your memory forever.
Sluggish and stiff after another night sleeping on the floor, we talked strategy while packing our gear. After a night’s consideration, Naomi and Paul threw their lot in with us and, along with Steve, became the same trio who’d come to our rescue on the pedestrian bridge the night before. Steven and Naomi possessed the same adventurous spirit that bordered on insanity as we did, though I suspected Paul’s primary motivation was getting into Naomi’s pants, an arduous task in the face of her obvious interest in Steven. The poor guy was probably going to go through some things at the dead corner of a love triangle.
When everyone was ready to go, the eight of us crept down the stairwell to the basement, where a utility hatch in the wall led further down into the sewers, beneath the street and the revs. Pipes lined the walls, some hissing angry clouds of steam billowing into our path, some dripping condensation that flowed down the concrete walls in narrow paths like snail trails.
We reached the other side of the tunnel and stepped down into the sewer’s main corridor, with narrow concrete paths on each side of the water channel. I shuddered at the rats scurrying away from our headlamps, though working through that fear was still better than being twelve feet above, running for our lives.
“I know it’s not the best environment, but we’re just heading across the street,” said Steven. “Then we’ll be out of the sewer. The entrance we’re looking for is tricky to find because it’s back in the wall a bit. Easy to miss.”
We followed him through another narrow tunnel that joined sewer-to-basement level, this time into a parking garage. We pulled ourselves through a hole in the wall not much larger than a coal chute, pushing out our gear before us to form a softer pile to fall on than the concrete garage floor.
Aside from a nondescript white cargo van, the parking garage was empty. Our footsteps echoed as we approached a stairwell leading to the main floor. Steven stopped at a corner and put up a hand. “Be careful coming up…slow, deliberate movements only. They can see us from here, but might not investigate if we keep quiet. At this distance, they’re mainly attracted to sound, not movement.”
“And that’s not an invitation to shine your lights in their faces,” said Paul. “If they ignore us, it’s probably just dumb luck.”
“I’ll take it,” Steven said.
“So where do we go from here?” Tarah asked.
“We have to pass through a lobby to get to the upper floors. The lobby windows aren’t tinted, so take it easy.” His tone lightened like a tour guide on a pleasure cruise, with plenty of sarcasm. “Other than all that, I’m sure we’ll be fine. Are we ready?”
We looked at each other as though waiting for someone to say no, but collectively left the question in the air with silent consent. Could any of us say we were ready for the uncertainty ahead?
Then we were off, treading lightly across the marble floor of the large office building lobby, moving diagonally across the room to where the staircase began. The revenants outside tittered with our movement, but not enough to warrant further investigation. Moving slow and steady, we were too subtle to catch full sight of, like rats blurring across floorboards or trash being blown along the wall by a silent breeze, from there to not there…at least until Naomi slid on a stray shard of glass and jerked to keep her balance, her sudden movement and echoed gasp exciting the crowd outside.
With a tremendous crash, revs smashed through the doors and windows, cascading across the floor in a flood of rotting flesh and jagged glass.
“Turn around!” Steven yelled. “We’ll have to take another route!” He took off running and the rest of us followed, with a street full of animated bodies behind us seeking to break the distance. We rounded a corner and found the rear fire exit. Steven pushed hard on the metal bar like a football lineman and we poured into an alley between two streets filled with a couple thousand undead, where we’d connect with one of the loose groups of revs that would soon blend into a larger one.
“Keep moving! Don’t get separated!”
With Steven in the lead, we returned to speed on the surface street, the agitated horde closing in from both sides. We ran for the next intersection, where Steven stopped at a maintenance hole and, with the fluid motion of someone who opens street covers on the regular, used a short pry bar to flip it up. Then, after clearing out a few revs in the immediate area with pistol fire while waiting for the rest of us to catch up, he yelled: “Climb down! Hurry!”
One by one, the soles of our shoes found the metal rungs in the darkness below and we returned to the sewers, almost overcome by rampaging bodies in hot pursuit. We fought them until Steven slid the cover closed and climbed down the ladder with Hector, accompanied by three more revs that had fallen in behind them. Tarah took two down before they got to their feet, while Steven and Naomi took the third, leaving the corpses floating in the shallow water like logs headed to a sawmill.
Steven pointed the business end of his flashlight at us, looking us over. “Is everyone okay? Check yourselves. Bite marks…scratches. You could be injured and not feel it yet. Then it’s too late and we gotta kill ya before we move on. Nothin’ personal, folks, but this trip is reserved for the living only.”
Under the sobering glow of flashlights and headlamps, we inspected ourselves as the revenants above buzzed in frustration. After a few minutes, we praised our luck.
“It doesn’t look like none of us are getting shot,” I said, relieved.
“OK, we head east from here,” said Steven. Then, to Naomi: “I don’t know if we’ll be able to come back this way. They’re stirred up something fierce.”
“I’ve never seen ‘em like this,” she replied. “It’s like they know where we’re trying to go.”
The tunnel narrowed, the walls devolving from cracked concrete to the original bricks laid for the first sewage lines generations ago. Steven climbed up the metal rungs in the walls and up to another hole, pushing upwards with both arms to try to move the cover while using the metal rungs in the wall for balance. “It won’t budge,” he said. Then he braced himself on the top rung and put more weight behind him with his shoulder. The cover gently flipped open on one side like a vent, allowing him to peek through the crack between the cover and the frame. I heard something slide off the top of the cover with a hollow clacking sound as he moved it. We watched him as he scanned the ground level above us, our lamps shining on him as though he was about to deliver a key monologue. Despite the lighting, I couldn’t see his face to gauge his reaction to whatever he was seeing.
“What’s going on?” Naomi asked.
“Can we just get out of the sewer now?” Paul asked. “I’d rather take my chances on the street. If I see another rat, I’m gonna lose it.”
Steven lowered the cover and climbed back down, facing us. “Good news: We’re right at the bridge. We couldn’t be closer, honestly. I thought we’d need to keep going another block or two, but this is perfect.”
“Good news,” I said. “Did you see anything out there that might try to kill us when we climb out?”
“No, but it’s hard to get a good look because of all the bones in the way.”
“Bones?”
“Yeah…bones everywhere. You’ll see for yourself in a minute.” He turned to Naomi and Paul. “This is where I’d planned to head back to the hotel, but I don’t think we can make it back that way. Any thoughts?”
Paul shrugged. “I figured this would happen. No one listens to me.”
“I appreciate your optimism, but have some faith in our ability. We made it this far. But if we turned around, we’d have to fight or run all the way back and that might be a bigger risk than what’s ahead.”
“Going back home is a bigger risk than charging into the bad guy’s lair with all the undead people and magical shit? This plan is a recipe for disaster.”
“Paul, Steven’s got us this far,” said Naomi. “If you want to head back, feel free. But you’re going back on your own.”
Paul looked at Steven and Naomi and scoffed. “So much for the Buddy System. I knew this was going to happen.”
“No, you didn’t, Paul,” Steven said. “You came with us because you were following Naomi’s ass into the sewer.”.
“Come on, boys,” said Naomi, unfazed. “One more run? Are we doing this or not?”
“We are doing this,” said Steven. “We have a chance to end this…to take the fight right back to Goliath. Not just for us and the people we love, but for everyone.”
“There’s no better cause to fight for than the glory of good over evil,” said Payton. He raised a fist. “Let’s go, Sewer Squad!”
***
One by one, we climbed up through the hole and onto the street, taking deep breaths of smoky air from the fires roaring through the city that remained large enough to withstand the rain. Even a bitter odor of smoke in our nostrils was an improvement compared to the stench of the sewer below.
The surrounding streets were covered with bones, leading all the way to the bridge and the road on the island beyond. We had no option but to kick them to the side with a clatter so we could walk, until we stopped at the foot of the bridge and look at the Bridge of Bones with morbid reverence.
The bridge’s deck—two lanes wide—was not only covered with bones, but the railings, columns, and arches spanning the center were all made from it. Long femurs and tibia connected into frames and sides, with support from broken rib cages and phalanges filling smaller gaps. Craniums and mandibles were present, denoting a human origin for at least some of them. Irregular shapes left gaps along the decking where we could see through to the churning black river below as steady rain pelted the water’s surface.
“You think it’s safe to walk across?” asked Payton.
“It’ll hold,” said Hector. Then: “It should hold.”
“It’s a bridge,” I replied. “Why go through all this trouble to build it if it’s just for show?” I held my breath and took a step where it looked the most solid and stood with the other foot still on the concrete, as though I could somehow keep my balance if the whole thing collapsed into the water.
The bridge held my weight, though I wouldn’t be comfortable jumping up and down on it like a birthday kid in a bounce house. I felt it swaying in the wind under me, but I remained upright and wet from the rain, not the dark slurry below.
The rest of the group followed suit, their first steps as cautious as mine.
“This is fucked up,” said Tarah.
“Yeah, I don’t even wanna move,” said Paul.
“We can do it,” Steven said, though his tone wasn’t convincing. “One foot in front of the other.”
We pushed our feet through layers of bones as though wading through high brush, kicking a femur to the side only to slip on a finger bone hidden underneath. At times a couple of us dropped to our knees, losing balance and cringing at the grossness of it all. The bones were rough and pointy and sharp.
I heard splashing in the water below and looked behind us, almost losing my balance again as I slipped on a cylindrical leg bone.
I heard splashes from below and looked behind me. The bones that had formed the bridge had loosened and fallen into the river right after we’d passed, leaving nothing but open air where our feet had just been. They stopped falling as we stopped moving.
Coming back to join me at the edge, Paul said in a loud whisper, “Probably not a good place to stop and take a break right now, buddy.”
I turned back around. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“Remember,” said Tarah, “he knew this was going to happen.”
“No one could see this coming. Only a nut job could conjure up this kind of insanity.”
“Hopefully, you’ll get a chance to tell him that yourself.”
Our pace on the bridge quickened as the bones continued to fall behind us, the urge to run nearly overpowering. Once we reached the island, we stopped to give silent thanks to the solid concrete at the other side. Simple wooden traffic gates and narrow, empty guardhouses stood before us with broken windows like black eyes. Rusty signs posted here and there advised of truck weight limits and pointed arrows to various shipping docks around the island.
We staggered onto the island like hardscrabble castoffs from a deserted army, prepared for anything because we felt we’d already seen it all. We found ourselves alive, intact, and surrounded by rusting metal, industrial concrete, and mud spit up from the ground from the rain. We had arrived on the island, with the Body Shop ahead.
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