Reliquary

= 54 =

SMITHBACK FROZE IN the tu

The hideous creatures he had seen were the Wrinklers, he was sure of that. The ones Mephisto had been raving about, maybe the ones that had killed all those people in the subway. Wrinklers. In the space of a few minutes, they’d killed at least four men… Waxie’s screams seemed to echo and reecho in his ears until he wasn’t sure what was real and what was merely memory.

Then another, very real, sound intruded into his thoughts: the footsteps again, and very close. He twisted around in panic, looking for a place to run. Suddenly there was a bright light in his eyes, and behind it a figure loomed toward him. Smithback tensed for a fight he hoped would be mercifully short.

But then the figure shrank back, squealing in terror. The flashlight dropped to the floor and came rattling toward Smithback. With a flood of relief, the journalist recognized the bushy mustache belonging to Duffy, the fellow who’d been straggling up the ladder behind Waxie. He must have eluded his pursuers, God only knew how.

“Calm down!” Smithback whispered, grabbing the flashlight before it rolled away. “I’m a journalist; I saw it all happen.”

Duffy was too frightened, or winded, to ask what Smithback was doing underneath the Central Park Reservoir. He sat on the brick floor of the tu

“Know how to get out of here?” Smithback prodded.

“No,” Duffy gasped. “Maybe. Come on, help me up.”

“Name’s Bill Smithback,” Smithback whispered, reaching down and hoisting the trembling engineer to his feet.

“Stan Duffy,” the engineer hiccuped.

“How’d you get away from those things?”

“I lost them back there in the overflow shunts,” Duffy said. A large tear rolled slowly down his mud-streaked face.

“How come these tu

Duffy dabbed absently at his eyes with one sleeve. “We’re in the secondary flow tu

“Ninety minutes? Until what?” Smithback asked, playing the light ahead of them down the tu

“The Reservoir’s going to drain at midnight; there’s no stopping it now. And when it does, it’s going right down these tu

“What?” Smithback breathed.

“They’re trying to flush out the lowest levels, the Astor Tu

“The Astor Tu

Duffy suddenly grabbed the flashlight and started ru

Smithback took off after him. The passage joined a larger one which continued downward, spiraling like a gigantic corkscrew. There was no light save for the wildly flailing beam of the flashlight. He tried to stay to the sides of the curving tu

Moments later, Duffy stopped. “I heard them!” he shrieked as Smithback appeared by his side.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Smithback panted, looking around.

But Duffy was ru

He scrambled to his feet, aching in numerous places but glad to feel a firm surface under his feet. The floor of the tu

“Shut up,” Smithback hissed at him. “You’re going to draw those things right to us.”

“Oh, my God,” Duffy sobbed in the darkness. “This can’t be happening, it can’t. What are they? What—”

Smithback reached into the blackness, located Duffy’s arm, and pulled the man toward him brusquely. “Shut up,” he said, lips touching the engineer’s ear.

The sobbing subsided to a soft hiccuping.

“Where’s the flashlight?” Smithback whispered.

Sobbing was the only reply. But then a dim light switched on nearby. Miraculously, Duffy was still clutching it.

“Where are we?”

The hiccuping subsided.

“Duffy! Where are we?’”

There was a stifled sob. “I don’t know. One of the spillover tubes, maybe.”

“Any idea where it goes?”

There was a sniffle. “It bleeds off excess flow from the Reservoir. If we move downstream to the Bottleneck, maybe we can reach the lower drain system.”

“And from there, how do we get out?” Smithback whispered.

Duffy hiccuped. “Don’t know.”

Smithback mopped his face again and said nothing, trying to roll the fear, the pain, and the shock into a little ball he could stuff down inside himself. He tried to think about his story. God, he’d be a made man with a story like this, following on the heels of the Museum Beast murders. And with luck, he’d still have the Wisher piece in his pocket. But first…

There was a splashing sound, its distance hard to gauge because of the echoes but clearly approaching. He leaned into the darkness, straining to hear.

“They’re still after us!” Duffy yelped, inches from his eardrum.

Smithback grabbed the arm a second time. “Duffy, shut up and listen to me. We can’t outrun them. We need to lose them. You know the system: you’ve got to tell me how.”

Duffy struggled, making an unintelligible sound of fear.

Smithback squeezed harder. “Look, we’re going to be all right if you just calm down and think.”

Duffy seemed to relax, and Smithback could hear him breathing heavily. “All right,” the engineer said. “The emergency spillovers have gauging stations at the bottom. Just before the Bottleneck. If that’s where we are, maybe we can hide inside—”

“Let’s go,” Smithback hissed.

They splashed through the darkness, the flashlight beam jogging from wall to wall. The low tu