Milly was fuming, but she was impressed. Peter was taking control and not being a wimp. She liked it. “That makes sense,” she said.
“Does it now,” Ingo said.
Milly dropped her club and pack and sat against the wall. Ingo and Jerome did the same, and together they watched the rest of the fellowship each put an ear to a pipe. Robin was the first to join them against the wall. She felt her pipe was full and flowing fast. Tye thought that was a good sign because that might mean the others were used less, if at all. Before The Day the coliseum held sixty-two thousand people. That’s a lot of beer and urine.
In the end they chose the top pipe because Peter said he heard nothing more than a trickle in that one. “Give me the hammer,” said Tye.
“We’re really doing this?” Jerome said. “What if there’s no outlet? Shouldn’t we send a scout through first?”
“You have a point, the six of us trying to back out of there would be a nightmare, and it’s at least a quarter mile to the leeching fields.”
“This should dump into something, though,” Tye said. “And waste pipes never scale down in size as they move outward. If anything, they get bigger. We’re OK.”
Silence. Milly almost spoke up, but thought better of it. Should they vote? Did they have any other options? Then Peter surprised her again.
“Tye, keep a look-out up the tunnel, please,” Peter said. Milly was amazed Tye complied. Peter pounded the seventy-two-inch pipe like a blacksmith shaping a blade, with fury and precision. The pipe cracked right away, but the party took two turns each before a small shard broke off and fell into the pipe. There was no splash of water, but the scent that snaked from the crap tube was of petrified rat infested shit and rot.
“Someone’s gonna hear us,” Robin said.
“We’re deep and it would take a while for them to find us,” Tye said. “If we get this done soon, it’ll be fine.”
The echo of screeching rats got louder as the hole in the pipe widened. When a large chunk cracked off the party fell silent.
“I’ll go first. Stay close and one torch should do it. Cover your face and nose. There could be toxic fumes down there,” Tye said.
“Do flames mix with toxic fumes?” Peter said.
“Good question. You can go first,” Tye said.
Nobody spoke.
“OK then,” Tye said. He tied a piece of cloth around his nose and mouth and wriggled into the pipe. He was only gone a few moments when he yelled, “All good. Smells like low tide mixed with shit and rotting flesh, but’s it’s dry except for a layer of crap dust.”
Milly laughed. The way his voice echoed made what he said funny. “I’ll go next,” said Milly.
One by one they climbed into the pipe, crawling on their hands-and-knees behind the flicker of Tye’s torchlight. Rats scurried ahead. The patter of tiny feet. Not rats, but something bigger. Her heart pounded, and she screamed when her hand crushed a large cockroach. The party crawled like that for fifteen minutes. The faint sound of water falling into water echoed far off and got louder as they went, filling the tight space.
Tye screamed, and the pipe went dark. Milly froze and Jerome’s head hit her ass. There was a splash and Tye yelled every curse she’d ever known. He finished with, “Stop. Halt. Stop. Don’t go another inch.”
They waited.
Minutes ticked by, and with each passing second, panic rose in Milly.
“Peter.” It was Tye. “Can you get a torch going?”
“Yeah,” Peter said. Sparks filled the tunnel as he lit a torch.
Light blossomed from the torch. Milly was inches away from falling as Tye had. The pipe opened into a narrow sewer, and directly below, one of the ceramic pipes spilled a toxic mix of urine, feces, and liquid garbage into the channel.
“What do you want us to do?” Milly said. “Are you OK?”
“Fine. Full of shit, but fine,” Tye said.
“You’ve always been full of shit,” Peter said.
“Good thing shit don’t mean shit,” Ingo said.
Nobody laughed.
The remains of a metal grate that had once covered the pipe opening had rusted to nothing, leaving only knife-like protrusions all around the pipe’s mouth. Snakes swam in the sewage below, and the top of the sewer disappeared into blackness. Tye clung to a service ladder on the far wall.
“This leads out to the leeching fields. This ladder should go up to a manhole, but it might be buried. Wait while I check it out,” Tye said.
“10-4,” Milly said. She’d learned the term in one of the sacred texts, but couldn’t remember which one.
Again they waited, this time for several tense minutes. The roar of the shit waterfall, and the stench made Milly queasy, but before she puked, Jerome and Robin beat her to it. Soon all of them except Ingo were retching and spitting. Milly’s eyes stung. The heat of the torch warmed the pipe and reconstituted the dried crap, and it dripped on them as they waited.
Peter said, “I hope we can go that way because there’s only one other way.”
Swimming in the crap canal wasn’t happening. She’d screw Gerall before she’d do that. When she figured fifteen minutes had passed, Milly was worried. There’d been no sounds of a fall, no screams, but the ceaseless water made it hard to focus.
The jerky beam of a flashlight coming down the service ladder silenced the party. She’d seen flashlights in Stadium, but they were rare.
“Who’s there? Milly? Peter? It’s Tester.”
“What have you done with Tye?” Peter said.
“He’s fine. Waiting for us on the surface,” Tester screamed over the sound of waste water.
