chapter 12

19:17

In the last two centuries, only a portion of the Washington sewers had been upgraded to concrete. The section the group now crossed was formed of brick, crumbling in places. “At the next junction we bear left,” Laurel said, after checking her GPS.

Lukas nodded and trained his flashlight along the left side of the tunnel until the jutting fork of a Y junction came into view. Behind her, Raul plodded like a work horse. He hadn’t spoken a word since they entered the city sewers. The anonymous workers had welded the curved panel back with remarkable speed after gesturing to several oversize carryalls loaded with treasure: four sets of waders, two-piece suits of stout reinforced polymer in sewer-regulation yellow, flashlights, waterproof plastic watches, a gold-foil thermal blanket, and a waterproof, military-issue Metapad carefully programmed with a map provided by Shepherd.

While they dressed, Laurel watched the closemouthed workers. Each of the three must have been close to seventy—far too old to be in active service and probably brought out of retirement for this one job. As soon as they finished the last piece of welding, they gathered their tackle, nodded, and splashed away down a side corridor.

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’s face sagged an instant, only to rearrange into a weak smile of relief. “Very funny.”

They set off again and headed along a narrow ledge stretching through a winding tunnel. The atmosphere changed; unbelievably, it became darker and stuffier. After a tight bend, Laurel rechecked the Metapad and pushed forward, listening to a muted rush of distant waterfalls punctuated by their squelching waders, the rolling fetid water, and the squeak of rats. “We’re almost there.”

The light from her flashlight bounced off greasy streams. At another junction, they stopped an instant, enough so that Laurel could make out the leg scratching of angry red cockroaches. Startled by the light, the insects on the curved roof swarmed, collided with one another, and rained down on mounds of brownish matter that glistened in places. She cringed.

In the last tunnel leading to the station, you’ll come across roaches and big rats feeding on the fat fields: thousands of tons of fat solidified into huge iceberglike formations. Millions of gallons from cafés, leftover breakfast dishes, frying pans, and fast-food joints.

“Holy shit,” she heard Lukas mutter somewhere behind her.

“Fat: the effluence of affluence,” Raul muttered.

Laurel stepped forward to stare at a vast tunnel, its surface seemingly solid and swarming with insects. The stench was indescribable.

“Well, he certainly didn’t make it.” Lukas trained his flashlight on a figure wedged between two solid-looking mountains of brownish matter.

Laurel’s eyes widened as she took in a skull and a mass of bones sprinkled with a few buttons and pieces of shoes: the remains of a man, probably a vagrant, his flesh and dress devoured piecemeal by the rats.

“Through there?” Lukas asked.

Laurel noted that the beam from Lukas’s flashlight fought to remain fixed in one place without much success.

“That’s right. A few hundred yards.”

Lukas coughed, then leaned to the side to dry-retch a couple of times before drawing a hand across his lips. “I’ll take his fucking hairy balls anytime.”

Raul stopped dead in his tracks. “My hairy balls?” He turned around, pouted his lips, and blew a kiss in Lukas’s direction. “Can’t fault you for your taste.”

Lukas huffed and stepped forward into the greasy quagmire.

Laurel likewise ventured through solidified slabs of fat, careful to plant the soles of her waders with care before taking another step; a fall would be nasty, and probably fatal. Fat roaches darted in all directions before the powerful beams. Dark shapes scurried, filling the air with curious chirps. They waded through the fat for what seemed an eternity. The ground felt strange—at once brittle and squishy, like rotting cereal. Brown and white and gray—a pigeon-shit stew scattered with a top layer of tampons, disposable diapers, and condoms.

Leaving behind the fat fields, they entered a wide tunnel, mostly clear and with narrow sidewalks at either side, its air thick with the rancid stench. After ten minutes of marching single file, their oilskins rubbing against the brickwork, they reached a narrow side tunnel. Laurel’s eyes watered and her throat felt raw from repeated retching. Runny fat had invaded her waders, and her toes squelched in warm slime.

Suddenly, six feet ahead of her, a torrent of light spilled into the passage after a protracted groan of rusty hinges. A blond man in a blinding white lab coat over a blue shirt and tie leaned into the tunnel, wrinkled his nose, and grinned as if greeting a favorite aunt.

“Hello! I’m Dr. Carpenter. What took you so long?”