An Echo of Death Read online

  “Should we go back?” Scott whispered.

  “We know for sure they’re behind us somewhere,” I murmured. “We’ve got to try forward.”

  Cupping my hands around my mouth and placing my lips against his ear, I explained to Scott how we needed to move. I felt his ear brush against my lips as he nodded that he understood. Each footfall now became a slow-motion quest for noiselessness. We raised each foot deliberately off the floor, moved it several inches farther down the hall, then placed it slowly into nothingness until it touched the concrete with less than a feather’s murmur.

  The gleam from in front of us had ceased to move. Perhaps my eyes had played tricks on me and the light had never moved, or maybe it was just my fears that had made it seem to bob and weave.

  Around fifty feet from the source of the illumination, I touched Scott’s shoulder. He stopped. I wanted to do a lot more observing and evaluating before moving closer.

  What had seemed like the glow from a thousand-watt bulb, I now guessed must be the feeble glimmer from a rapidly fading flashlight. We heard voices, barely kept low.

  “Are you sure we’re ahead of them?” a baritone voice asked.

  A tenor responded, “They don’t have a light. They have to be moving carefully.”

  “Maybe they just ran,” Baritone said. “They could be past us,” he insisted.

  “Not possible. With a light we could move much faster and this was the first junction.”

  “Maybe they found another junction somewhere on their side that led off in another direction. We had one.” Baritone’s deep voice had an unattractive whine mixed in with it.

  “I say we stay here,” Tenor said. “The other guys said they’d go back for more flashlights and follow the other passageway. If there’s another turn, we’ll get more men. Those two guys will be trapped between us and them.”

  Obviously, we couldn’t simply outwait them. Reinforcements would be coming, and we’d be stuck.

  I could make out only the outlines of shadows leaning against the far wall. I could attach no face or feature to their floating voices.

  “I don’t like it,” Baritone said.

  “You want to start going against my decisions?” Tenor voice asked.

  Baritone added a bit of sullen to his whine, “No. I just don’t like being this far underground and these tunnels flooded once before.”

  Now I knew where we were.

  On April 13, 1992, tons of water broke through the walls of the tunnel system that runs under Chicago’s Loop. Water had gushed from the Chicago River into the basements and subbasements of hundreds of buildings. The water used the old tunnel system as a conduit for its flow.

  The tunnels, built between 1899 and 1909, originally were a roadway for small electric trains making deliveries—usually coal—to Loop buildings. The train company went bust in the 1950s, and then in the 1970s utility companies began using the tunnels instead of digging up city streets to lay cable. Most of the rails had been cemented over. The city planned to install bulkheads and steel doors to seal off tunnel sections under the river to prevent any further flooding, but in such a way as to let the advanced technology of the future still use the old system.

  I remembered that there had been more than fifty miles of tunnels. The first shaft had been sunk in the basement of a saloon at 165 West Madison Street.

  Concrete had been applied along the walls to give them a smooth, finished appearance. Generally the opening was 6’9” wide and 7’6” high. Our temporary refuge had been created out of the blue clay under the city decades ago. We must have been at or near the farthest terminus on the north side of the Chicago River.

  I hesitated. The silence between the two of them deepened. I figured: better to try something sooner than later.

  Baritone broke the silence abruptly. “You’d think those guys in the underground garage would have more than one stupid flashlight with crappy batteries. I hope they don’t run out before the other guys get here. I don’t want to wait in the darkness so they can jump us. Those two assholes are probably down here watching us. Why do we have to catch them, anyway? Let’s just kill them and be done with it.”

  “Why don’t you shut up?” Tenor asked.

  Baritone grumbled a little more, but basically did as requested.

  At this point, I figured out why the flashlight didn’t move or waver. They’d placed it on a small outcropping halfway up the wall.

  While Baritone had been talking, I began lowering myself to a squatting position and slowly began to run my hand along the floor, hunting for an article to toss beyond them to distract them. An old trick, but if it worked, I wasn’t going to worry about being saved by the cliche.

  I hoped Scott didn’t try to squat as I was. His knees tended to pop liked cracked knuckles. The kind of noise from a mile away that would start a herd of buffalo stampeding, much less alert our two antagonists in this situation.

  I found nothing in the immediate vicinity of my shoes. I raised my foot and took one careful duck-walk forward. Scott tapped my shoulder and almost unbalanced me. I looked up at him, but I could barely make out the gleam of his eyes. He pointed back the way we had come. A pinprick of light glowed in the distance.

  I fumbled more quickly for some object to throw. Scott tapped my shoulder again. I wanted to shout, “What?”

  He pointed to his other hand. I moved my eyes close and saw the faint gleam of several coins. Obviously, our minds had thought along the same lines, only his worked a bit more logically than mine at the moment. I felt stupid for not thinking of checking my pockets, but grateful that he had.

  I touched the front of my pants. I had my keys in one pocket and what felt like several quarters in another. I also had my wallet in my back pocket. It could serve if necessary.

  I glanced back at the ever-growing light behind us, now the size of a half-dollar. If the guys ahead of us saw it, we’d be in trouble.

  I unbent each body part as carefully and quickly as I could and stood up. Scott reared back his right arm to toss his handful of coins. I grabbed his hand to stop him. If he threw the whole handful, they could travel in random directions. It wouldn’t do to have an object whiz by from our direction. I wanted the coin to land beyond them.

  I held Scott’s arm to keep him from throwing and took one of my coins. Carefully, I stretched my hand above my head. I touched the top of the tunnel before my arm was fully extended. I couldn’t pitch them overhand. I lowered my arm to waist high, pulled it back, let it shoot forward, and heaved the coin sidearm down the tunnel.

  The two men performed to perfection. They leaped up, grabbed the flashlight, and pointed it away from us, first down the tunnel we’d been traversing, then down the other.

  “What the hell was that?” Baritone asked. “I don’t like this! They’re around here somewhere.”

  I could tell now that Tenor held the flashlight. He began to swing it back in our direction. Baritone raised a hand and fired down the tunnel where the sound had come from. The report echoed and thundered. We were still too far away to rush them under cover of the noise of the gunshot, but we crept forward slowly.

  Tenor’s hand with the flashlight swung back away from us. “Stop that!” he said. “Orders were no shooting. At least not yet.”

  “I’ll defend myself,” Baritone said.

  When one of them had said, “Catch them” earlier, I thought perhaps they’d been told not to shoot. This new comment confirmed that possibility and gave me some comfort.

  Baritone continued, “I’m not going to get caught. I’ll kill them first.”

  “Shut up!” Tenor said.

  I hoped they would keep talking to cover the sound of our approaching footfalls.

  We were ten feet behind them when the figure with the flashlight looked back. “There’s light behind us.”

  “The guys are coming,” the deep voice said.

  “Someone else is there,” Tenor said.

  “Now,” I muttered. We rushed them.r />
  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Scott dive for the tenor and grab for the hand with the light. The beam wobbled and swung erratically. I jumped toward the hand with the gun which Baritone had begun to raise. My marine training proved to be not all for naught. I slammed his hand against the wall. A shot blasted the darkness. My ears rang. He still gripped the gun. I hoped the shots wouldn’t cause a cave-in.

  The tunnel behind us echoed with shouts. I wrapped both hands around Baritone’s arm and tried to bang the wrist or fingers against the wall. He tried to bite me. I twisted around and managed to get an elbow under his jaw and knock him back a few feet. I’d spun around and was now facing back the way we’d come. At least three separate bright lights bobbed closer. Adrenaline poured into my body. I threw my whole weight behind smashing the hand with the gun against the wall.

  Metal clacked against the cement. I got an arm loose and smashed the heel of my palm up against the bridge of his nose. He crumpled to the ground, and I heard whimpering in the baritone range.

  I whirled to find Scott still locked in combat with Tenor. I grabbed the back of Tenor’s hair and twisted and pulled back, then rammed his head nose first against the wall. He dropped the flashlight, met the floor, and stayed there.

  Voices called behind us. I grabbed the gun off the floor, and Scott snatched up the flashlight.

  Not much time to decide which tunnel. Scott leaped toward the opening leading to the intersecting passage and turned right, farther into the tunnel. He was moving, and I had no time to agree or disagree. No good to try going back. I followed him.

  As my butt cleared the entrance, I heard shots ring out.

  Into the ensuing silence, Baritone yelled, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! You might hit us!”

  A few precious seconds gained in the confusion and silence. Had the decision not to shoot been changed?

  I didn’t bother debating the safety of falling into a dead-fall, well, or cavern. We couldn’t use the flashlight. It might light our way, but it would also make us great targets with them close behind.

  “Run!” I yelled.

  I felt—more than saw—the shadow of Scott’s body speeding beside me. I heard the material on my shirt scrape against the wall as my arms pumped furiously. I glanced back once and saw a light flashing around a corner. I didn’t slacken my pace, but I fired two rounds at random behind me. The two flashes from the gun gave a brief burst of light, but the roar of the firing made an incredible din. I didn’t care whether I hit anything. I just wanted to scare them into not following—or at least hesitating, because now we were armed as well. It didn’t work.

  Out of the threatening darkness behind us a fusillade of bullets thundered and echoed through the tunnel. I dived into Scott, shoved him to the floor, and covered him with my body. Bullets rained for fifteen or twenty seconds. I felt a few faint bits of dust drift onto my cheek, from where a bullet must have hit in the ceiling above. My right arm and shoulder got soaked from a puddle of water.

  “Are you hit?” I whispered in the echoing din.

  “I’m okay,” Scott muttered.

  “We can’t stay here,” I said. “They’ll simply come for us. We’ve got to run.”

  I heard his mumbled agreement.

  “Now,” I whispered.

  We rose. I said, “Keep as close to the sides as you can.” I didn’t want to fire again because the tracings from my gunshots, I now realized, had shown them where to fire. As I ran, I tried rationalizing my not thinking about our being targets, but quickly gave it up amid the desire to keep air flowing into my lungs, and the growing fear that I would plow into something, or trip and break a vital limb leaving myself to the mercy of whoever had killed Glen.

  I turned my head back for a second. No lights behind us. Maybe at least one of them had figured out that their lights presented a target for us to shoot at, as well.

  Down the tunnel we fled, reckless in our fear. Our narrow confines allowed the sounds of pursuit from behind to echo and reecho, making it seem, at times, as if our hunters were inches behind us.

  Suddenly the tunnel began to slope down. Then lack of wall touching my elbow and a sense of spaciousness on either side made me aware that we were at a junction.

  I reached out for Scott.

  “Which way?” he whispered. His words seemed as loud as the last trumpet on Judgment Day.

  If I remembered the general idea of the tunnels from all the flood stories, they moved generally west and south from where we were. If we had been traveling south, then we certainly didn’t want to take the left-hand opening, which would lead toward the lake. The tunnels dead-ended or turned back upon themselves before reaching Lake Michigan.

  Not a lot of time to choose.

  “Right,” I said. “At least we’ll be out of any line of fire if they decide to start shooting again.”

  “What if that tunnel that was paralleling ours comes out near here?” Scott asked. “Some of them could have followed it and used lights. They could have leapfrogged ahead of us and be to our right.”

  “Then straight ahead. No more time to argue. Let’s move.”

  The sounds of pursuit grew fainter, so we employed more care now as we rushed forward. The tunnel floor continued to slope downward, apparently for the trip under the river.

  Visions of tons of water breaking through and trapping and drowning us popped into my head. Supposedly the city was making more inspections and bulkheads were being installed to prevent another flood like last time. Which brought another unbidden thought: What if they already had installed the bulkheads along here, and we were rushing headlong into a trap no matter which branching we took? At least now I had a gun. Maybe we could hole up in some obscure cranny. Probably couldn’t hold out long. No one knew where we were. I didn’t know how often they inspected, or whether the workers on the bulkheads put in overtime on weekends.

  We came to another crossing and hesitated, then whirled around uncertainly. I listened for a few moments. Not even an echo pursued us. Maybe we were outdistancing them. I put my arm out to point forward and touched metal. Another couple of steps, and we’d have run into a bulkhead. To the left was the lake. We took the right-hand turn.

  The aroma of a cat-litter box had been slowly turning into that of a monkey house which desperately needed cleaning. Now that stench of unwashed cages began to overpower us.

  “I think we’d better try the light,” Scott said.

  “It’s not too dangerous?” I asked.

  “Whatever is making that stink is more dangerous than what’s behind us. Listen,” he said.

  Silence impenetrable fell. I strained to listen. Then I caught a light skittering, screechy noise.

  Scott switched on the light. At first we couldn’t see anything, but we walked forward slowly. Another fifty feet, and at the far edge of the glow from the light, I thought I caught a glimpse of a moving carpet of gray. We stopped. Hundreds, maybe thousands of verminous creatures barred our way.

  I stifled my impulse to turn and run.

  Scott played the light along the walls. We could see a faint crack through which the animals seemed to move. About forty feet farther along was another junction.

  “Will they attack us?” I asked.

  “Not if we keep moving.”

  “We aren’t going to try and walk through them?”

  “No, but we can’t go back. Let’s try for that junction.”

  Going back was useless. Going close to rats was our only hope. We began inching forward.

  “We haven’t met many so far,” I murmured.

  “I think all the boarding up of exits has taken away their food supply. They won’t stay anyplace that has no food.”

  We proceeded at a slow, steady pace.

  “I think they’re frightened of the light,” Scott said.

  Perhaps it was my imagination or the dimness or the fall of the light that made these critters seem to be the size of the proverbial Toyota. I knew this wasn’t the environment in
which either of us wanted to meet the vermin elite.

  We turned the corner we’d seen and moved away from the rats. I felt a shiver through my body when we finally turned off the light. We had to save the battery. Slowly the smell became less overpowering. After a while, I put the gun in my belt.

  I could hear Scott and touch him, but I desperately wanted to see him. His facial expressions as he talked. The cleft of his chin, the gleam in his eyes when he was about to make me laugh, his broad shoulders, the tiny cone-shaped mole just below his butt on his left leg.

  We strode forward while holding out our hands in front of our bodies. An eerie length of time later, I touched solid metal on my right.

  “Turn on the flashlight,” I said.

  Scott whirled the beam around and caught a shadow to the left. I moved up to examine it.

  Metal rungs. Narrow and rusted. He played the beam upward. The glorious steps led into darkness, but it was up, not forward. I leaped toward the bottom rung. I bumped against Scott. The flashlight fell and winked out. I tried to grab it, missed the step, and sprawled forward, banging my head on the cement.

  “You okay?” Scott called.

  Moments later, I felt his hands touching my left arm.

  “I’m fine,” I said.

  I tapped my hand on the ground to find the flashlight. I could feel Scott next to me doing the same.

  “Got it,” he said a minute later.

  “Turn it on!” I ordered.

  “I’m trying to. I think it’s broken.”

  I felt stupid for screwing up, and now giving commands. Of course he would try to turn it on.

  When the light didn’t reappear immediately, I got truly frightened.

  “It’s not going to work,” I said. “It’s my fault. I’m sorry.”

  “Forget it.”