“But there have to be programs set up to help “Jeff began.
Violet held up a crooked hand. “I won’t live in a shelter or a hospital where they treat me like an invalid. I need my own space. This is not so bad… for a blind person. At least it’s quiet. I got people who bring me everything I need, a comfortable place to sleep. I’m safer down here than I would be up there.”
“I could help you, Violet,” said Jeff. He thought of his own mother, who’d died five years back from pancreatic cancer surrounded by loved ones. If she had to die, he was happy she’d died like that, knowing that she was loved, that her life had meant something. He would rather have died himself than imagine her like Violet, living in a coffin.
“You’re a nice boy,” she said, not turning around to face him. “But I’m like one of those recidivists. You know, those guys in jail who bitch and moan about how bad they want out of prison. But then they get out and they don’t even know what to do with themselves. They go right back. I don’t think I could live another life.”
“Well, you get in touch with me through Dax and Danielle if you change your mind. You help me get Jed McIntyre and I’ll owe you my life,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder.
She shrugged him off. “I don’t like to be touched,” she said sternly.
“Sorry,” answered Jeff, turning around to look at Dax, who lifted his hands with a grin. He pointed a finger to his temple and made a circle in the air mouthing,
“We’re coming into Rain’s territory now,” she said. “Stay close to me and keep your mouths shut.”
“Who’s Rain?” asked Dax.
“Someone down here that you don’t want to fuck with.”
Dax gave a smug little laugh and Jeff checked the Glock at his waist.
“What did you say?” asked Lydia as the ground and the room around her seemed to disappear. She looked at the wretched man before her and he looked back with a lascivious leer. She wanted to leap across the room and strangle him, but she kept her place by the guard. The room suddenly felt hot and small and she wanted nothing more than to leave except to know why this little psycho thought she was Jed McIntyre’s girlfriend.
“What are you talking about, Jetty?” asked Ford, the sweet lulling tone he’d been using to coax information out of Jetty gone, cast off like a bad disguise. His voice was a fist poised to take care of Jetty’s few remaining teeth.
Jetty turned to look at him in surprise, the smile he wore flickering into a worried frown. He looked sadly at the bag of candy and cigarettes that Ford still had under his hand.
“J-J-J-Jed,” he stammered, “had pictures of her. He talked about her all the time. Said she was waiting for him to get out.”
“When did you have the opportunity to talk to him?” asked Lydia, who had always imagined Jed like Hannibal Lecter, bound, isolated, with a mask over his face. At least that’s how she liked to think of him.
“During art therapy,” said Jetty quietly. “He only drew pictures of you.”
Lydia had to suppress a laugh, even though there was nothing funny about any of it. The ridiculousness of allowing Jed to have art therapy where he fed his obsession by drawing pictures of her was a testament to the idiocy of the psychiatric profession in general and this hospital in particular. No wonder he’d been allowed to get away. “You bastards,” said Lydia under her breath.
“You said a bad word,” admonished Jetty. Lydia shot him a look and he cringed as if he thought she’d strike him. She felt bad for a second. Then the feeling passed as another thought occurred to her.
“Jetty,” she asked, moving toward him and sitting in the free chair beside Ford, “did you tell Jed McIntyre about the tunnels beneath the street?”
Jetty nodded. “He didn’t believe me.”
Ford looked at Lydia guiltily with a shake of his head.
“What?” she said, a frown creasing her forehead and dread burrowing what seemed to be a permanent home in her belly.
As they approached a ragtag group of men sitting around a lopsided card table playing poker by candlelight, Jeff decided that they had entered the twilight zone. They appeared to be playing for bottles and cans, using caps and metal tabs for chips. A few sacks filled with cans and bottles lay scattered on the floor around the table. Engaged in a loud, slurred argument over who had won the last hand, the card players did not acknowledge Violet, Dax, and Jeff as they passed until Dax accidentally shone the flashlight beam on their table.
“Hey, brother,” barked a beefy guy with a red baseball cap. “Mind your own business.”
Jeffrey braced himself for Dax to flip out but he just raised a hand in apology. “Sorry, mate.”
They passed a row of tents that seemed to lean against one another and go on forever. They were lit from inside, and Jeff and Dax could see shadows moving within, heard the occasional voice. Jeff thought he caught the scent of meat cooking.
“Track rabbits,” said Violet.
“Track rabbits?” said Dax with a grimace. “Dare I ask?”
“People down here are hungry. And the rats get pretty big,” she said with a shrug. “It’s not half bad. The concept is harder to swallow than the meat.”
“That is fucking disgusting,” said Dax.
“Spoken like someone who’s never gone hungry,” said Violet indignantly.
“Whatever,” he said, not liking the old lady’s attitude. Jeff rolled his eyes; Dax didn’t even know how offensive he could be sometimes. But his honesty, even when it was inappropriate, was one of the things Jeff liked most about him. There was no artifice to Dax. He didn’t give a shit what anyone thought, and that made him one of the most trustworthy people Jeff knew. Dax was just like Lydia in that way, which was probably why the two were always butting heads.
Jeff felt Dax’s hand on his arm just before he noticed a tall form appear before them on the track, taking up the height and width of the tunnel. Violet seemed to hesitate for a second as though she had sensed something, but then she kept walking.
“There’s someone ahead of us,” whispered Jeff.
“I know.”
Jeff heard Dax click the safety off his gun. As they drew closer, Jeff could see that there was a light source behind the form, creating a shadow that was much bigger than the man who waited in their path.
“You brought cops down here, Violet?” asked the shade, his voice deep and resonant. He stood about six feet tall and seemed to be draped in robes, but the light was dim and Jeff couldn’t make out his clothes or his face. He just looked like a wraith, a dark shadow in a land of shadows.
Violet had instructed Dax to turn his flashlight off a while back and it didn’t seem like a good idea to turn it back on, though Dax was itching to do so. But he had his hands full with his Magnum Desert Eagle, a nasty Israeli gun that had more stopping power than a freight train.
“They’re not cops, Rain. They’re friends of Danielle’s.”
There was a pause and then a deep, cruel laugh. “That crack ho doesn’t have any friends.”
“Yes, she does,” said Dax, offended. He didn’t like it when people insulted his friends, even if what they said was true.
They stood silent for a moment and Rain was so still that he looked as though he could fade into the black and be as gone as if he’d never been there at all.
“What do they want?” he asked finally.
“They’re here for The Virus.”
As they talked, Violet continued to move forward slowly toward Rain and she was dwarfed by his height and size. Jeff and Dax hung back, waiting to see how the standoff would go.
“We’re the cure,” said Dax, his voice quiet but resonating against the concrete.
Rain nodded but kept his ground. “And then what?”
“And then we leave and never come back,” said Jeffrey.
“And you never tell anyone that you came here.”
“Sounds like a deal.”
“Leave the body. We’ll take care of it. No one will ever find it.”
And with that he seemed to meld into the darkness and was gone. Jeff was left with a chill down his spine and
