Nocturnal: A Novel

She smiled, nodded, then backed away. Aggie gently rested the bag on the ground, then stepped through the small hole and out of the death-trap tunnel. He stood on a narrow ledge that ran perpendicular to the tracks. He bent, reached back, and was again holding the boy.

Aggie clutched the bag tightly; the anxiety faded away.

Far down the tunnel to his right, he saw the light of a station.

Hillary worked the plywood shut behind him. Aggie’s eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. The hole he had crawled from was gone — all he could see were the hexagonal tiles of the subway’s walls. The plywood was a tile- covered plug that perfectly fit the hole, sliding home as sure as a puzzle piece. If he hadn’t just come through there, he would have never known it existed.

But that didn’t matter anymore.

He had survived.

Aggie kept his right hand on the tile wall as he walked. He didn’t know which rail was the “third rail,” the one that might electrocute him and the boy. It was probably the one in the middle, but he wasn’t taking any chances.

He drew closer to the opening into the station. The tracks led out of the tunnel’s darkness and alongside the station platform. He saw a few people up on that platform — the trains were still running, so it wasn’t early in the morning.

Aggie carefully stepped off the ledge and over the tracks, moving to the platform side of the tunnel. He slid along with his back to the wall. He felt a hint of a rumble — another train was coming. He had to move fast. The people on the platform would see him, but he didn’t have a choice.

He was still draped in the stinking blanket. That’s how he would get past those people, by just looking, acting and smelling like the homeless bums who wandered down to the Muni stations all the time.

He reached the end of the tunnel. The platform came up to his chest. He lifted the knit purse containing the boy and gently set it on the platform’s warning stripe of yellow. Aggie crawled up. People turned to look, saw what he was, then immediately turned away. Aggie picked up the bag. He held the baby with one arm, and with the other pulled the blanket around them both. His heart hammered in his chest.

So close so close …

Aggie saw the brown sign in the white ceiling, the white letters that spelled out CIVIC CENTER. He looked at the digital sign that told of the next train and saw that it was 11:15 P.M.

He forced himself to walk — not run — toward the escalator that led to the surface. Homeless people didn’t run. All he had to do was keep up the illusion and everyone would ignore him. Illusion? How odd to think of it that way. Wasn’t he a homeless person after all?

No.

Not anymore.

Aggie had done his time in the gutter. He’d lost years mourning, feeling sorry for himself, feeling sorry for his losses. He’d given up and tuned out. That time was over.

He was alive. His wife and daughter were gone. Nothing could bring them back. He should have died down in the tunnels, in the white room, but he had a second chance and he wasn’t going to screw it up. He had a responsibility now, a responsibility to protect the child he held in his arms. He had sworn to find this child a home.

Why don’t I just raise the kid?

He realized that hidden thought had been lurking at the edge of his mind ever since he looked in the bag and saw the tiny baby. You were a parent once. A good parent. That robbery wasn’t your fault, there was nothing you could do.

A second chance … a second chance to get things right.

Aggie felt full of hope, full of a sudden and overpowering love for life. He moved toward the escalator that would lead him to the surface.

And then, the baby cried.

Not a soft cry, not a muffled I just woke up cry, but rather a full-blown I am not at ALL happy cry. Loud. Piercing. The dozen or so people on the platform who had gone out of their way to not look at him now turned to stare.

The baby screamed again.

The kid was probably hungry. This was just a baby being a baby, but Aggie knew what it looked like — a shabby, smelly bum with a screaming child hidden somewhere beneath a filthy blanket.

Aggie saw hands reach into pockets and purses, then come out holding cell phones.

He turned back to the escalator.

A woman stepped toward him. “Stop!”

Aggie took off, his newish boots thumping out a staccato drumbeat on the escalator’s metal steps. He heard and felt similar pounding behind him — the heavy steps of men.

The first escalator took him up to the station’s main floor. One more escalator and he’d be out on the streets. There were more people up here, heading home from bars or from late nights at work.

“Get out of my way!” Aggie ran, carrying the baby-bag in both arms. His legs felt weak. He was already exhausted.

“Stop him!” the men behind him screamed. Most of the people in front of him quickly got out of the way, but one man, a kid of no more than twenty, stepped in front of him.

Aggie slowed, then tried to cut left.

His foot landed on his blanket — the blanket slid across the polished floor, and his foot flew out from under him. In the split second it took him to reach the ground, his only thought was to protect the baby.

The back of Aggie’s head cracked against the marble, and everything went black.

Date Night

The faint but beautiful sounds of a plinky piano echoed from inside of Mommy’s cabin. There were no lights in there, just darkness and music. People lined the arena’s ledges, holding torches that flickered like big stars against the cavern’s blackness.

Alone, Rex stood on the ship’s ruined deck. He held a wicker basket with a present for Mommy. Tonight, he would become a man.

Everything was happening so fast. He and Pierre and Sly had brought the chief of police and her daughters back Home. The chief had given up a bunch of names. They’d even printed pictures of those criminals on Chief Zou’s computer, so the soldiers would know if they had the right people.

The chief’s husband was cooking in the stew. Most of him, anyway. His head was in the basket. Mommy liked brains.

As soon as Rex finished this ceremony with Mommy, he and Sly were going to plan how to use Chief Zou to round up the criminals. Firstborn had allowed the bullies to live, but Rex would not. Once those who knew of Marie’s Children were gone, Rex’s people would become even more of a secret.

Hillary wanted the people to spread, and so did Rex. She said the only way for that to happen was to make new queens. The only way to make a new queen, she said, was for a king to mate with an old queen.

Rex was the king, and that was that. If he was the king, though, didn’t he need a crown? Maybe someone could make one for him — the people had built all these amazing tunnels, surely they could make a kick-ass crown.

He felt so nervous. He’d never had sex before. Would he get it right?

Two white-robed men walked out of Mommy’s cabin. They stood on either side of the door, waiting. The one on the left wore a devil mask. The one on the right wore a mask that looked like Osama bin Laden.

They both waved Rex forward.

Up on the ledge, all the people waited for him to enter. Rex turned slowly, looking up at the ledge, at the torchlight-illuminated faces of his people. Everyone was here. Now was the time to make Firstborn understand that all of this belonged to Rex, and Rex alone.

“I have made a decision,” he shouted. His voice echoed off the arena’s walls. “I am not going to hide in the