“Tomorrow morning, then,” said Don Carlo. “Early. Good.”
“See, Maria. Your father will take care of it.” Her mother led Rosemary into the harvest-gold kitchen with all its bright appliances, the walls lined with framed samplers of old country homilies. She thought of telling her mother about C.C. and the subway, but it seemed impossible now. It had to have been her imagination. She just wanted to sleep. She didn’t want to eat. She couldn’t take anything else tonight.
The bag lady stirred in her sleep and one of the pair of large cats beside her moved out of the way. He raised his head and sniffed at his companion. Leaving the woman with an opossum curled against her stomach, the two cats silently stalked out into the darkness of the abandoned subway tunnel. The neglected 86th Street cutoff took them toward food.
Both cats were hungry themselves, but now they hunted for their woman’s breakfast. Using a drainage tunnel, they exited into the park and out beneath the maples to the street.
When a New York Times delivery truck paused at a light, the black cat looked at the calico and pointed his muzzle at the truck. As the truck pulled away, they leaped aboard. Settled on the back of the truck, the black created the image of mounds of fish and shared it with the calico. Watching the city blocks pass, they waited for the telltale scent of fish. Finally, as the truck slowed, the calico smelled fish and impatiently jumped down from the vehicle. Yowling angrily, the black followed her down an alley. Both stopped when the scent of strange humans overwhelmed the food. Farther down the alley was a crowd of jokers, crude parodies of normal humans. Dressed in rags, they searched through the garbage for food.
A wedge of light spilled into the alley as a door opened. The cats smelled fresh food as a well-dressed man, larger than any of the scavengers, carried boxes into the alley.
“Please.” The fat man spoke to the paralyzed jokers in a soft voice filled with pain. “I have food for you here.”
The frozen scene ended as the jokers rushed together toward the cartons and began ripping them open. They jostled each other and fought for position to get at the rich food.
“Stop!” A tall joker cried out in the midst of the chaos. “Are we not men?”
The jokers paused and withdrew from the boxes, allowing the fat man to dole out the food to each of them. The tall joker was the last to be served. As the host handed him food, he spoke again. “Sir, we thank Aces High.”
In the darkness of the alley, the cats observed the jokers’ meal. Turning to the calico, the black formed the image of a fish’s skeleton and they moved back toward the street. On 6th Avenue, the black sent a picture of Bagabond to the calico. They loped uptown until a slow-moving produce truck provided a ride. Many blocks later, the truck neared a Chinese market and the black recognized the familiar scent. As the truck began to brake, both cats leaped out. They kept to the dark beyond the range of the streetlights until they reached the open-air grocery.
It was still long before dawn and the truckers were unloading the day’s fresh produce. The black cat smelled freshly slaughtered chicken; his tongue extended to touch his upper lip. Then he uttered a short growl to his companion. The calico leapt onto a display of tomatoes and began to claw them to pieces.
The proprietor yelled in Chinese and hurled his clipboard at the marauding cat. He missed. The men unloading the truck stopped and stared at the apparently insane feline.
“Worse’n Jokertown,” one muttered.
“That’s one big sumbitchin’ kitty,” said the other.
As soon as their attention was fixed on the calico cat destroying the tomatoes, the waiting black cat sprang to the back of the truck and seized a chicken in his mouth. The black was a very large cat, at least forty pounds, and he lifted the chicken with ease. Leaping off the tailgate, he ran into the darkness of the alley. At the same time, the calico dodged a broom handle and bounded after.
The black cat waited for the calico halfway down the next block. When the calico reached him, both cats howled in unison. It had been a good hunt. With the calico occasionally aiding the black in lifting the chicken onto curbs, they loped back to the park and the bag lady.
A fellow street dweller had once called her Bagabond in one of his more sober moments and the name had stuck. Her people, the wild creatures of the city, called her by no name, only by their images of her. Those were enough. And she only remembered her name once in a while.
Bagabond pulled around herself the fine green coat that she had found in an apartment-house dumpster. She sat up, careful not to displace the opossum. With the opossum settled in her lap and a squirrel on each shoulder, she greeted the proud black and calico cats with their prize. Moving with an ease that would have amazed the few street denizens who had anything to do with her, the woman reached out and patted the heads of the two feral cats. As she did, she formed the image in her mind of a particularly scrawny chicken, already half-eaten, being dragged out of a restaurant garbage can by the pair.
The black stuck his nose into the air and snorted gently as he obliterated the image in both his head and Bagabond’s. The calico merged a meow with a growl in mock anger and stretched her head toward the woman’s. Catching Bagabond’s eye, the calico replayed the hunt as she had perceived it: the calico at least the size of a lion, surrounded by human legs much like mobile tree trunks. Brave calico spotting the prey, a chicken the size of a house. Fierce calico leaping toward a human throat, fangs bared…
The scene went blank as Bagabond abruptly focused elsewhere. The calico began to protest until a heavy black paw rolled her over on her back and held her down. The calico stilled her protest, head twisted to the side to watch the woman’s face. The black was stiff with anticipation.
The picture formed in all three minds: dead rats. The image was obliterated by Bagabond’s anger. She rose, shaking off the squirrels and setting the opossum to one side. Without hesitation, she turned and started into one of the tangential, descending tunnels. The black cat bounded silently past and moved ahead to act as a scout. The calico paced the woman. “Something’s eating my rats.”
The tunnels were black; sometimes a little bioluminescence shed the only light. Begabond couldn’t see as well as the cats, but she could use their eyes.
The black picked up a strange scent when the three of them were deep beneath the park. The only connection he could make was with a shifting creature that was equal parts snake and lizard.
A hundred yards farther, they came upon a devastated rats’ nest. None of the rats lived. Some were half-eaten. All the bodies had been mangled.
Bagabond and her companions stumbled on in the wet tunnel. The woman slid off a ledge and found herself hip-deep in disgusting water. Unidentifiable chunks batted against her legs in the moderate current. Her temper was not improved. The black cat bristled and projected the same image as a few minutes before, but now the creature was even larger. The cat suggested they all three back out of this passageway now. Quickly. Quietly.
Bagabond blocked out the suggestion as she sidled along a slimy wall to another ravaged nest. Some of these rats were still alive. Their simple picture of their destroyer was the shadowy image of an impossibly large and ugly snake. She shut off the brains of the mortally injured and moved on.
Five yards down the passage was an alcove that provided drainage for a section of the park above. The entrance was three feet above the floor of the tunnel. The black crouched there, muscles taut, ears laid back, yowling softly. He was scared. The calico disdainfully started for the opening, but the black knocked her aside. The larger cat looked back at Bagabond and sent every negative image he could.
Carried by her anger, Bagabond indicated she would go in first. She took a breath, gasped, and crawled into the alcove.
It was lit by a grating in the roof, some twenty feet above. The gray light fell on the naked body of a man. Heelooked to Bagabond to be in his thirties, muscled but not overly so. No flab. Bagabond noted vaguely that he didn’t look as wasted as most of the derelicts she had seen. For a moment, she thought he was dead, yet another victim of the mysterious killer. But as her mind focused on the man, she realized he was just asleep.
The cats had followed her into the chamber. The black growled in confusion. His senses told him the trail of the lizard-snake thing ended here-it ceased where the man lay.
Bagabond felt something strange about the man. She didn’t usually try to read humans; it was too difficult. Their minds were complex. They plotted, schemed. Slowly she knelt beside him and extended her hand.
The man woke up, caught sight of the dirty street person about to touch him, and jerked away.
“Wha’ you want?” She stared at him.
He realized he was naked and hauled himself to the entry of the cave passage- He heard a deep growl, recoiled, barely evaded a swipe from the claws of the biggest cat he’d ever seen. For a moment, he felt himself sliding into the darkness inside his mind. Then he was into the main tunnel and gone. The cats were crying with questions, but Bagabond had no answers. Almost, she thought. Inside his mind. I almost felt… what? Gone.
Bagabond, the calico, and the black searched for another hour, but they found no more trace of the strange scent. There was no monster in the tunnel.
The transients, derelicts, bag ladies, and other street people began their day early, when the best cans and bottles were to be found. Rosemary had slipped out of the penthouse early as well. She had barely slept, and that morning, knowing what was almost certainly happening behind the closed doors of the library, she wanted to get out quickly. The dons were declaring war.
Central Park with its trees, bushes, and benches was heaven for a certain portion of the street people. This sunny morning, Rosemary was looking for a few she had undertaken to help . As she reached the second park bench beyond the stone ridge, a man in tattered clothing hid a bottle in a bush beside the bench and jumped to his feet. He wore an olivedrab fatigue jacket with a less-faded place on one shoulder where the joker Brigade “cannon fodder” patch had once been sewn. Rosemary had suggested it was not prudent to wear the patch this far uptown.
“Hello, Crawler,” said the social worker. Somewhere in his late twenties-Rosemary couldn’t tell from the vet’s sunburned face-he had taken his nickname from his Army job in Vietnam: tunnel crawler. He’d re-upped twice. Then Crawler had seen enough.
“Hey, Rosemary. You got my new goggles yet?” Crawler wore a makeshift pair-cheap 14th Street sunglasses, the eyepieces built up with dirty white adhesive tope. Underneath, Rosemary knew his eyes were dark and overlarge, extraordinarily sensitive.
“I’ve requested the funding. It will be a while before we can get them. You know red tape-just like in the service.”
“Shoot.” But the derelict still smiled as he fell in step beside her.
Rosemary hesitated, then said. “You can still check in with the V A., you know. They’ll fix you up.”
“Fuck no,” said Crawler, sounding alarmed. “Guys like me, they go in a VA. and they never come back out.” Rosemary started to say, “That’s nonsense,” but thought better of it. “Crawler, do you know anything about the underground? You know, the subway tunnels and all that?”
“Some. I mean, I need the shelter. I just don’t like bein down there. ‘Sides, there’s creepy stuff goin’ on down there. I hear things about alligators, stuff like that. Maybe it’s all from winos with the d.t.’s, but I don’t wanna find out.”
“I’m looking for someone,” said Rosemary.
Crawler wasn’t listening. “Only the really weird people live down there.” He mumbled something…. even stranger than down on the East Side-you know, the Town.
“She lives down deep.” Crawler pointed at the crone sitting on the ground under a maple tree. She was a hundred yards away, but Rosemary could have sworn there were pigeons sitting on the woman’s head and a squirrel perched on her shoulder. Rosemary cocked her head and looked back at the little man. “That’s just Bagabond,” she said. “No need to worry about her…” Rosemary realized that Crawler was no longer with her. He was panhandling a well-dressed businessman getting exercise by walking to work. She shook her head in mixed disapproval and resignation.
By the time Rosemary turned back toward Bagabond, the pigeons and squirrel were gone. Rosemary shook her head to clear it. My imagination really is working overtime, she thought, walking toward the bag lady. just another lost soul. “Hello Bagabond.”
The old woman with stringy hair turned her head away and stared across the park.
“My name is Rosemary. I talked to you before. I tried to find you a nice place to live. Do you remember?” Rosemary squatted down on the ground to speak at Bagabond’s level.
The black cat she had seen before came up to Bagabond and began rubbing against her. She stroked its head and murmured incomprehensible sounds.
“Please talk to me. I want to get you food. I want to get you a good place to live.” Rosemary held out her hand. The ring on her third finger glittered in the sun.
The woman on the ground drew her legs up against herself and clutched the plastic trashbag filled with her treasures. She began rocking back and forth and crooning. The black cat turned to look at Rosemary and she flinched against its glare.
“I’ll talk to you later. I’ll come back and see you.” Rosemary rose stiffly. Her face tightened, and for just a moment, she felt like crying to ease the frustration. She only wanted to help. Someone. Anyone. To feel good about something.
She walked away from Bagabond and back toward Central Park West and the subway entrance. Her father’s war council had frightened her. She had never liked what he did, and her entire life seemed to be a search for escape and redemption, atonement. The sins of the fathers. Rosemary wanted peace, but whenever she thought she could get it, it retreated beyond her grasp. C.C. had been a last chance. So was each one of the derelicts she failed to help. There was a key to reaching Bagabond. There had to be.
Rosemary descended the steps, waited, dropped in her token, walked down the second stairway onto the platform in a daze. The blast of cool air entered the station followed by the AA train. Rosemary barely glanced up from the floor and moved stiffly toward the nearest car.
As she was about to step onto the train, her eyes widened and she stepped back into the crowd, drawing glares and a few curses for breaking the flow. That last car. It had more of C. C.’s lyrics painted on the side in a shade of red that reminded her of blood. C.C. had always been something of a manicdepressive and Rosemary had always known her mood by what she wrote or sang. The C. C. who had written these words was depressed beyond even Rosemary’s experience:
Blood and bones Take me home
People there I owe People there gonna go
Down with me to Hell Down with me to Hell
Approaching the car, Rosemary saw words she knew had not been there seconds ago.
Rosie, Rosie, pretty Rosie Leave this place Forget my face Don’t cry Rosie, Rosie, pretty Rosie
“I’m going to find you, C. C. I’m going to save you.” Rosemary again fought to get into the car she now realized was covered with fragments of C.C.’s songs, some that she recognized, others that had to be new. Once more the car rejected her. Breathing hard, eyes wide, Rosemary watched the car move into the tunnel. She gasped as the side of the car was suddenly covered with tears of blood.
“Holy Mary, Mother of God…” Rosemary absurdly remembered the stories of saints from her childhood. For just a moment, she wondered if the world was ending, if the wars and the deaths, the jokers and the hate, truly prefigured the Apocalypse.
It was noon.
American B-52s were bombing Hanoi and Haiphong. Quang Tri was shaky, as the North Vietnamese were on the march. In Washington, D. C. , politicians exchanged increasingly frantic phone calls about a recent burglary. The question in some quarters was, is Donald Segretti an ace?
The midtown Manhattan rush was ferocious. At Grand Central Station, Rosemary Muldoon looked for raggedy shadows she could follow into the darkness of the under ground. A dozen blocks north, Jack Robicheaux plied his regular trade, clattering through the permanent darkness on his small electric cart, checking track integrity in tunnel after tunnel. And somewhere under the abandoned 86th Street cutoff, just beneath the floor of the south edge of Central Park Lake, Bagabond drifted on the edge of sleep, warmed by the cats and other beasts of her life.
Noon. The war beneath Manhattan was starting.
“Let me quote to you from a speech given once by Don Carlo Gambione himself,” said Frederico “the Butcher” Macellaio. He grimly surveyed the groups of capos and their soldiers gathered around him in the chamber. In the ‘30s, the huge room had been an underground repair facility for midtown transit. Before the Big War, it had been closed and sealed of when the IA. decided to consolidate all maintenance yards across the river. The Gambione Family had soon taken the space over for storage of guns and other contraband, freight transfer, and occasional burials.
The Butcher raised his voice and the words echoed. “‘W’hat will make the difference for us in battle will be two things: discipline and loyalty.”
Little Renaldo was standing off to one side with Frankie and Joey. “Not to mention automatic weapons and H.E.,” he said, smirking.
Joey and Frankie exchanged glances. Frankie shrugged. Joey said, “God, guns, and glory.”
Little Renaldo commented, “I’m bored. I wanna go shoot somethin’. “
Joey said a little louder, so the Butcher could hear, “Hey, are we goin’ to roust some rummies, or what? Who’s fair game? Just the blacks? Jokers too?”
“We don’t know who their allies are,” said the Butcher. “We know they wouldn’t act alone. There are traitors from among our own race helping them for money”
Little Renaldo’s manic grin widened. “Free-fire zone,” he said. “Hoo-boy.” He tugged his boonie hat down snug. “Shit,” said Joey, “you weren’t even there.”
Little Renaldo gave him a thumbs-up. “I saw that John Wane movie.”
“That’s the word from the Man, huh?” said Joey.
The Butcher’s smile was thin and cold. “Anybody gives you problems, just waste ‘em.”
The groups began to move out, scouts, squads, and platoons. The men had their M-16s, pump scatterguns, a few M-60 machine guns, grenades and launchers, rockets, riot gas, sidearms, knives, and enough blocks of C-4 to handle any kind of heavy demolition.
“Hey, Joey,” said Little Renaldo. “What you gonna shoot?”
Joey slapped a magazine into the AK-47. This weapon wasn’t from the Gambione armory. It was his own souvenir. He touched the polished wooden stock. “Maybe a ‘gator.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t you read any of them rags that’s been talking about the giant alligators down here?”
Little Renaldo looked at him doubtfully and shivered. “The jungle-jokers are one thing. I don’t want to go up against no big lizards with teeth.”
It was Joey’s turn to grin.
“No such things, right?” said Little Renaldo. “You’re just shittin’ me, right?”
Joey shot him a jaunty thumbs-up.
Jack had lost all track of time. He knew it had been a long while since he’d shunted his track maintenance vehicle off the main line onto a spur. Something was wrong. He decided to check out some of the more obscure routes. It was as though a piece of ice pressed against a spot just north of his tailbone. He’d heard trains, but they had passed at a distance. The tunnels he now traveled were seldom used except for diverted routes during high congestion, track fires, or other problems on the main line. He also heard far-off reports that sounded like gunfire.
Jack sang. He filled the darkness with zydeco, the bluesy Cajun-Black mixture he remembered from his childhood. He started with the Big Bopper’s “Chantilly Lace” and Clifton Chenier’s “Ay-Tete-Fee,” segued into a Jimmy Newman medley and Slim Harpo’s “Rainin’ in My Heart.” He’d just pulled the switch and slid the car onto a spur he knew he hadn’t checked in at least a year, when the world blew apart in a flash of red and yellow flame. He’d had time to sing one line of “L’Haricots sons pas sales” when the darkness fragmented, the pressure waves slammed against his ears, and the car and he took different, spinning, twisting directions through the air.
All he really had time to say was, “Wha’ de hail-” as he fetched up against the stone of the tunnel’s far wall and crumpled to the floor. For the moment, he was stunned by concussion and flash. He blinked and realized he could see smoke swirling, and the hand-held lights that illuminated the smoke.
He heard a voice say, “Jesus Christ, Renaldo! We weren’t going up against a tank.”
Another voice said, “Sorta sorry to do this one. Hate to kill anybody sounded that much like Chuck Berry.”
“Well,” said a third, “at least he had to be a spook.”
“Check it out, Renaldo. Guy probably looks like an open can of Spam, but you better find out for sure.”
“Yo, Joey”
The lights came closer, bobbing in the dissipating smoke. They’re gon’ kill me, Jack thought, reverting to the dialect of his childhood. There was at first no emotion to the realization. Then the anger started. He let the feeling sweep over him. The anger escalated to rage. Adrenaline pricklings agonized his nerves. Jack felt the first brush of what he had used to think was the onset of loup-garou madness.
“Hey, I think I see something! Off to your left, Renaldo.” The one called Renaldo approached. “Yeah, I got him. Now I’ll make sure.” He raised his weapon, taking aim with the light held tight along the stock.
That pushed Jack over the edge. You chill son of a bitch! Pain, welcome pain, wracked him. He… changed. His brain seemed to spin, his mind folding in on itself endlessly down into the primal reptile level. His body was elongating, thickening; his jaw thrust forward, the teeth springing up in profusion. He felt the length of perfectly toned muscles, the balance of his tail. The utter power of his body… he felt it completely.
Then he saw the prey in front of him, the menace. “Oh, my God!” Little Renaldo cried. His finger tightened on the trigger of the M-16. The first burst of tracers went wild. He never had the chance for a second.
The creature that had been Jack lunged forward, the jaws closing around Renaldo’s waist, twisting and tearing at his flesh. The man’s light spun, smashed, and went out.
The other men started firing wildly.
The alligator registered the cries, the screams. The smell of terror. Good. The prey was easier when it located itself. He dropped Renaldo’s corpse and moved toward the lights, the bull roar of his challenge filling the tunnel.
“For the love of God, Joey! Help me!”
“Hold on. I can’t see where you went!”
The corridor was narrow, the materials old and decaying. Caught between two equally tempting morsels, the alligator twisted around in the confined space. He saw flashes of light, felt a few stinging impacts, mainly in his tail. He heard the prey screaming.
“Joey, it busted my leg!”
More flashes. An explosion. Acrid smoke choked his nostrils. Irregular chunks of stone fell from the ceiling. Rotten beams splintered. Deteriorated cement collapsed. Part of the floor beneath him gave way and his twelve-foot length tumbled heavily down an incline. Smoke, dust, and solid debris rained from above.
The alligator smashed into a thin metal hatch that had never been engineered for this kind of force. The aluminum tore like ripping canvas and he toppled into an open shaft. He fell for another twenty feet before crashing into a spider’s nest of wooden beams. Bits of debris followed for a little while. Then there was silence, both above and below. The alligator rested in darkness. When he tried to flex his body, nothing much happened. He was thoroughly jammed into a wooden cat’s cradle. A beam was wedged securely across his snout. He couldn’t even open his jaws.
He attempted to roar, but the sound came out more as a muffled growl. He blinked his eyes, seeing nothing. His strength was dwindling, shock taking its toll.
He didn’t want to die here. He wished to end in the water.
Worse, the alligator didn’t want to die hungry. He was starved.
Bagabond felt something she hadn’t experienced for a long time, sympathy, for Rosemary Muldoon. She knew the social worker wanted to help, but how could Bagabond tell her that she didn’t need help? Puzzled by that emotion, Bagabond discovered another one. She could be happy with the caring and companionship of her friends, however nonhuman they might be.
She did have a warm place to sleep. Her home beneath Central Park was close to the steam tunnels. Bagabond had slowly furnished it with the best the street had to offer. A broken red director’s chair was the only furniture, but there were rags and blankets deeply covering the floor. A velvet painting of lions on the veld leaned against one wall and a wooden carving of a leopard stood in one corner. One of the leopard’s legs was missing but it occupied a place of honor.
Drowsing there in the abandoned 86th Street cutoff tunnel, Bagabond even remembered the person she had once been, Suzanne Melot The surge of pain that crashed across her mind interrupted her thoughts. The strength of the cry caused the black cat to moan in pain. As the wave receded, the black sent to Bagabond the same image he had taken from the creature that had attacked the rats. Bagabond agreed mentally. Neither could she quite nail down the image. The creature seemed to be a huge lizard, but it somehow wasn’t entirely animal. And it was hurt.
Bagabond sighed and rose. “We have to find it if we are going to have peace and quiet.” The black was not in favor of this solution until another wave of anguish came. He snarled and ran into the tunnel to Bagabond’s left. The calico felt only the edge of the pain as it passed through Bagabond and the black. Bagabond replayed a little of the cry of pain and the calico flattened to the ground, ears back. The image of the black appeared in Bagabond’s mind and the calico dashed down the tunnel in pursuit. Bagabond told the calico to wait for her, and they began to track both the black and the injured creature.
It took time to find them. The creature really did resemble nothing so much as a giant lizard. It was trapped beneath a fall of timbers in an unfinished tunnel. The black crouched a few feet away, staring at this apparition.
Bagabond looked at the trapped creature and laughed. “So there really are alligators in the sewers.” The alligator twitched its tail, knocking a few bricks across the tunnel. “But that’s not all you are, is it?”
There was no way she and the cats could free the alligator. Bagabond knelt and examined the timbers trapping the beast as she called her friends to help her. She reached out and stroked the alligator’s head, calming him with the images she sent. She sensed the creature drifting in and out of consciousness.
The animals arrived at different times. An uneasy peace held as Bagabond directed each according to its abilities. Rats gnawed, a pair of wild dogs provided muscle, the opossums and raccoons carried off small stones. The black and the calico aided Bagabond in controlling the volatile mix of animals. When the smaller debris had been cleared away and timbers and boards shifted or gnawed through, Bagabond began hauling on the alligator. Between her tugging and his struggles, Jack fought his way free. Bagabond ended up with a very tired and bruised alligator across her lap. The black and the calico told the creatures who had helped to leave. The two cats watched as Bagabond rubbed the underside of the alligator’s jaw, calming the creature. As she stroked it, the snout and tail began to shorten. The scaly hide became smooth, pale skin. The stubby limbs elongated into arms and legs. In a few minutes, Bagabond was holding the naked, bruised body of the man they had found before. As the change took place, Bagabond realized that at some indefinable point, she could no longer control this creature or read his thoughts. Somehow she had missed the critical division between man and beast.
She got up, lifting the man off her, and walked toward the end of the tunnel. The calico accompanied her. The black stayed beside the man.
Why? Bagabond thought.
Why? the black countered. The work they had just done, as seen through the cat’s eyes, played across her mind. The calico looked from one to the other. She had not been invited into this conversation.
Alligator, Bagabond explained, not human. In her mind the alligator became a man.
“Curiosity…” Bagabond spoke aloud for the first time since the rescue operation had commenced.
The black sent a picture of a black cat on its back with paws in the air.
Bagabond sat down beside the man. In a few minutes he began to move. Painfully he sat up. In the dim light filtering from above, he recognized Bagabond as the old woman he had seen the day before.
“Wha’ happen? I remember running into a bunch of crazies with guns, and then things get fuzzy.” He tried to focus on the crone, who kept splitting into two images. “I think maybe I’ve got a concussion.”
Bagabond shrugged and pointed at the beams from the roof-collapse behind him. By straining his eyes, he could see what looked like hundreds of pawprints on the floor and the walls around the cave-in. In the center of the devastation, Jack also saw the imprint of a monstrous tail.
“Christ, not again.” Jack turned back to Bagabond. “When you got here, what did you see?”
She turned partly away from him, still silent. He saw her mouth quirk in a partial smile beneath the stringy hair. Was she mad?
“Merle. What am I going to do?” Jack was almost bowled over by the pair of black paws that struck his chest. “Easy, boy. You’re the biggest kitty I’ve seen since I left the swamps.” The black cat’s eyes stared into his with an odd intensity. “What is it?”
“He wants to know how you do it.” The old woman’s voice did not match her appearance. It was young and held a touch of humor. “Be careful. You’re spaced, just like you were coming out of Thorazine.” She took his arm as he tried to stand.
When he was upright, she said, “You’re not going to make it far like that.” She began to take off her coat.
“Mon Dieu. Thanks.” Feeling his skin flush, Jack shrugged into her green cloth coat and wrapped it around himself. It covered him from neck to knees, but left his arms bare.. from the elbows down.
“Where do you live?” Bagabond gazed at him without expression. Jack appreciated the kindness.
“Downtown. Down on Broadway near the City Hall station. Are we anywhere close to a train?” Jack was not used to being lost, and found that he disliked the feeling intensely.
In answer, Bagabond picked her way to the tunnel entrance. She didn’t look back to see if he was following when she turned to the right.
“Your mistress, she is a little strange. No ofense,” Jack said to the black cat. It paced him as he trailed the bag lady. The cat looked up at him, sniffed, and twitched his tail. “Who am I to talk, eh?”
Although Jack attempted to keep up with Bagabond, he quickly fell behind. Eventually, at the black’s appeal, she returned and helped support the man, pulling his arm across her shoulders.
Jack finally recognized the tunnels as they came into the 57th Street station. He was amazed at the change in Bagabond as they made their way onto the platform. Even though she was still holding him up, the woman seemed to hang off him. She shuffled now instead of striding, and kept her eyes on the ground. Those waiting on the platform gave them plenty of room.
The subway pulled in, the last car covered with unusually bright graffiti. Bagabond hauled Jack toward the vividly decorated car. Jack had time to read some of the more coherent phrases covering the side.
Are you unusual? Did you feel the fire? Are you burning inside?
The flames devour us all, But never let us die; it never ends, forever in flame.
Jack thought some of the phrases changed as he watched, but that had to be an effect of his concussed brain. Bagabond pulled him inside. The doors closed, leaving some very angry transit customers outside.
“Stop?” Bagabond was nothing if not economical with her words, Jack thought.
“City Hall.” Jack slumped and rested his head against the back of the seat, closing his eyes as the train rolled downtown. He did not notice that the seat molded itself around his body to support it while he slept. He failed to realize that the doors never again opened until they reached his stop.
The cats were not entirely happy with this subway ride. The calico was flatly terrified. Ears laid back, tail straight and fluffed out, she leaned into Bagabond’s side. The black gingerly kneaded the floor of the car. The texture was only partially familiar. He wondered at the heat and the confusing scent all around him.
Bagabond tried to focus on the interior of the dark car. There were no sharp angles here. Dim shapes seemed to change form subtly in her peripheral vision. I’ve felt nothing like this, she thought, since the acid trip. She extended her consciousness beyond the cats and Jack. She couldn’t define the who that she briefly contacted. But she felt the overwhelming comfort, the warmth, and the protectiveness that surrounded them here.
Cautiously she settled back in her seat and stroked the calico.
“This is it,” said Jack.
He had recovered sufficiently to lead their small party through the City Hall station, beyond a bewildering succession of maintenance closets, and into another labyrinth of unused tunnels. He’d rigged sections of the passages with lights which he turned on and off as needed as they proceeded toward his home. When he opened the last door, he stood aside and waved Bagabond and the cats inside. He smiled proudly as they stared around the long room.
“Wow, man.” Bagabond flinched as she took in the opulent furnishings and decor. The immediate impression was of red velvet and claw-footed divans.
“You are younger than you look. That was my reaction too. Reminded me of Captain Nemo’s stateroom…” “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.”
“Yeah, right. You saw it too. One of the first movies I ever saw over to the parish theater.” They walked down the crimson-carpeted stairs flanked by gold stanchions and plush velvet ropes. Both cats ran ahead of them, the calico using the Victorian armchairs as hurdles. The electric light was augmented by flickering gas flames that gave the room an atmosphere out of the last century. The black cat trotted over the Persian carpets to the edge of the platform and looked back at the two humans.
“He wants to know what this is and what’s behind that door.” Bagabond steadied Jack as they moved slowly down the staircase. “You need to lie down.”
“Soon enough. This is my home and behind the door is my bedroom. If we could head in that direction…” They started across the room. “This was the first subway in New York, built by a man named Alfred Beach back after the War Between the States. It only ran for two blocks. The Boss Tweed didn’t want it so he shut it down, then they forgot about it. I found it a while after I started working for the Transit Authority-one of the benefits of the job. Don’t know why it held up so well, but it’s a good place for me. Just took a little cleaning up, is all.” They had walked to the other end of the room and Jack reached out to turn the handles on the ornate cast-bronze door. The center circle swung open. “This used to be the entrance to the pneumatic tube.”
“I didn’t expect this.” Bagabond was surprised to find that the interior of the tunnel was sparsely furnished. There was a homemade bed constructed out of pine boards, an equally homemade bookcase, and a plank chest.
“All the comforts of home. Even my complete collection of Pogo books.” Jack looked innocently at Bagabond and she laughed, then seemed surprised at it.
“Where’s your iodine?” Bagabond looked around for a first aid kit.
“Don’t use that stuff. Can you get me some of those?” Jack pointed up at the spiderwebs.
“You’re kidding.”
“Best poultice in the world. My grandma taught me that.” When Bagabond turned back to him, he had pulled on a pair of shorts and had a shirt in his hand. She handed over the spiderwebs and helped him bandage the worst abrasions.
“So how did you end up down here?” Jack lay back on the bed, wincing slightly, while Bagabond perched gingerly on the edge.
“You’re sure not like those social workers.” Bagabond watched the cats outside the door as they chased each other around the room. She turned back to him with an appraising look. “And they like you.”
“They let me out a while ago and I ended up back in the city. No place else to go. Met the black, started talking to him, and he talked back. So did a lot of the other animals, the ones that aren’t human, anyway. I get along. I don’t need people, don’t want people around. People always mean bad luck for me. I can talk to you, too, when you’re that other one, you know? Out there they call me Bagabond. I had another name once but I don’t remember it much.”