IN THE MORNING, way too early in the goddamn morning, I’m back in a Vigil van moving through Hollywood. The streets are empty except for a -couple of homeless -people huddled asleep in the doorway of the wax museum near Highland. The traffic lights have stopped working, which doesn’t matter since there’s no traffic. Most stores are deserted, though a few places forgot to lock the door. Water sloshes up over the curb to soak their carpets. But the merchandise stays where it is. There’s no one left even to loot the place.
An LAPD cruiser riverboats past us, too smart to slow or do anything but stare at our blacked--out caravan.
We pull over at the Hollywood and Vine underground metro stop. The place is locked down tight. There’s a big “Closed for Maintenance, Sorry for the Inconvenience” sign on the gate blocking the stairs. Julie Sola jumps out of the second van, unlocks the gate, and pushes it out of the way. Just like at the funny farm, Wells’s crew starts unloading personnel and forensic gear for our trip down the rails. The Shonin is back at headquarters, warm and dry. Mummies don’t much like wading through ankle--deep water, and when we’re downstairs, let’s face it . . . the jerky on the guy’s bones is going to attract rats. Best for everyone if he stays at the HQ sipping his poison book.
“Stark, stay close to me,” says Wells.
“I didn’t know you cared.”
“I don’t. I just don’t want you making up your own mission and wandering off.”
Someone gets the lights turned on below and we head down.
The Hollywood and Vine subway is a themed stop, a municipal tourist trap, trying to keep travelers out of their cars while they’re in town. The concrete support columns below are tiled to resemble shiny palm trees. The ceiling is covered in empty film reels and along the walls of the tunnel are decorations that look like lengths of movie film.
The trains had been running less and less the last few weeks, and with no one left to ride them, they’ve stopped completely. A shallow channel of water flows from the surface all the way down to the platform and falls onto the tracks.
Around us, Wells’s crew talks quietly as they calibrate their equipment. There’s a few nervous laughs. A few brave ones and a -couple that sound like I feel. Uncertain.
“Tell me why we’re down here, Wells.”
He drags his fingers along a map on a minitablet, enlarging the image. He doesn’t look up while he studies photos that pop up as he moves his finger down the screen. I look over his shoulder. It’s a subway map, but with more detail than the one commuters get, and with the tunnels between the stations laid out.
“Some of the lower tunnels run parallel with the cave system that held L.A.’s dead.”
I look at him.
“You knew about them?”
He glances up at me then goes back to his screen.
“Of course. We’re the Golden Vigil, we know everything about everything.”
He raises his eyes again for a second.
“All your dirty little secrets.”
“If you know my secrets then you know I’m not Saint Nick.”
“You know what they say. Only a man with a guilty conscience keeps reminding you of how innocent he is.”
“Okay, you got me. I am Saint Nick. And Mr. Bubbles. And the Easter Bunny.”
Wells ignores me. The Vigil crew stops chattering, their gear pretty much squared away.
“If the Vigil knew about the corpse tunnels, why didn’t you do anything about them?”
Wells slaps the cover shut on the tablet and puts it in his pocket.
“What was there to do? Move hundreds of thousands of bodies? To where?”
For a second he sounds like Mr. Muninn.
“Besides,” he says, “before Jan and Koralin Geistwald came to town and turned the horde into a bunch of kill--crazy zombies, they weren’t a problem. The Vigil has learned to let many of these things be and not to tamper with the balance of supernatural forces in the city, no matter how revolting and profane they might be.”
A -couple of the Vigil crew unfold portable staircases that extend from the platform to the tracks. Wells is the first person down. I follow him.
“You’re not saying there’s access to those dead tunnels from the subway, are you?”
“Don’t be an idiot,” he says. “I said they run parallel. There were never any stops in zombie country.”
“Then why are we here?”
“We’re looking for breaches.”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ll know it if we find one.”
Sola walks over.
“We’re ready to go anytime you are, sir.”
Wells turns to the troops like General Patton.
“Let’s move out.”
Sola hands him a pair of night--vision goggles and puts on a pair herself. The rest of the crew does the same thing.
“Where’s mine?” I say.
Wells takes something out of his pocket and hands it to me. A cheap plastic LED flashlight.
I say, “Gee. How does this work?” and shine it into his eyes for a second.
“What’s wrong with you?” he says, his voice just a notch below rage. “This is no time for your playing.”
“Sorry. I’m not used to this advanced Vigil technology.”
As Wells starts down the tracks he says, “Stay behind me. But close behind. Marshal Sola, make sure our pixie doesn’t flutter off.”
“Yes, sir,” she says.
Not far into the tunnels, the water rises to almost ankle depth. I guess monsoons weren’t high on the worst--case--scenarios list when they built the place.
I play the light ahead into the tunnel. I can’t see much of anything. The tops of the tracks. Bare concrete walls with occasional maintenance access doors. Long lines of metal conduits carrying power up and down the station.
“See anything interesting?” I say to Wells.
“Not much more than you, but we didn’t expect to see anything out here. We’re taking a spur line up ahead. Employees and maintenance personnel only. A line the public never sees.”
“Great. If you spot any Angra roadside--attraction signs let me know. I’ll pick up a pecan log and a belt buckle.”
Wells ignores me.
Sola whispers, “Why do you do that?”
“What?”
“Go out of your way to aggravate Wells?”
“I have to do something. I can’t bring my knitting along.”
“No. Seriously.”
“Wells agrees with Aelita a hundred percent about me. I’m an Abomination. A monster. So I give him what he wants.”
“Why don’t you try to show him you’re more than that?”
“Try to convince him I’m a good guy? That would scare him more than if I showed up like Kali with ten arms and wearing a belt of severed heads.”
Sola is quiet for a minute. Then she says, “I’m trying to see you as a serious person.”
“What do you care? Are you spying for him?”
“No. I told you before. Maybe we can work together when this is over. I can restart my PI ser-vice. But I need to know you’re someone I can depend on.”
“When this is over.” I never took Sola for that kind of optimist. But I guess anyone who goes out on her own and hangs out her detective shingle has to believe there’ll be something down the road.
“How’s this? I’ve saved this world more than once already. I have friends here and I’ll kill anything that walks, crawls, flies, or oozes out of the ground if it hurts one of them. I know God and the Devil and their worst secrets. I know how to pull the plug on this whole rotten world and I don’t do it. You know why?”
“Why?”