Sleep Tight

“Huh.” Tommy swallowed. “Didn’t realize we were actually headed underground.”

“Well, you wa

The Streets and Sans truck shuddered as it rumbled down the tu

“How far are we going?”

“All the way back to downtown. ’Course, we’ll be a half-mile under the streets, at least. Some of the old-timers claim there’s tu

They passed a few intersections, and Tommy caught a quick glimpse of smaller tu

“I wouldn’t want to be down here without a flashlight, that’s for goddamn sure. But I been coming down here, once a week or more, for, let’s see now, over two years now. Something like that.”

After about fifteen minutes, the tu

He found he was having a hard time taking a deep breath. The thought of all that rock above, the weight of the entire city pressing down, down . . . He dried the palms of his hands on his jeans. The motion led him to his boots and he remembered that he wasn’t wearing the right kind of boots and that made things worse.

The El train corpses passed out of sight and the walls swallowed them up again. This one was shorter though, before long they came to a circular area, with a number of smaller tu

“Garbage trucks?”

“Sure. Why do you think we’re here? You want to find rats, you go looking for garbage.”

“Wait, there’s a dump down here?’

“Oh, yeah. An awful damn big one.”

“Why go to the trouble of driving all the way down here?”

Don spread his hands. “Landfills are big business. Nobody wants a garbage dump in their backyard, so these places, they can get away with charging an arm and a leg. ’Specially if it’s Uncle Sam picking up the bill. Your pal and mine, friend of the people Mr. Cornelius Shea, when he found out about this place, he had about a third of his drivers start dumping their loads down here. See, then he charges the city for the regular landfill costs, and pockets the surplus.”

Tommy was quiet for a while. “Jesus Christ. All I can think about are the assholes in my neighborhood, these wa

“What, you saying our elected officials aren’t going into politics to serve their fellow man?” Don laughed. “It’s the Machine, kid. Don’t look so shocked. And it ain’t just regular garbage down there. Shit, you think a landfill costs money? Try finding somewhere legal to dump toxic waste. If I were you, I wouldn’t linger when we’re getting the rats. I try to breathe through my shirt, you know?”

A bobbing light appeared in the darkness, growing in intensity by the second. Don flashed his brights. The approaching lights flashed back. A pale blue garbage truck filled the entrance, with only a foot or two between metal and rock. It rumbled out of the tu

The driver’s window rolled down and a hairy arm held out a red flag on a three-foot PVC pipe to Don. Don said, “Working late.”

The garbage truck driver spit. “Boss got spooked. Heard a rumor that somebody was watchin’. Wanted the times we came dumping staggered even more. Wants at least an hour between each truck, you believe that shit?”

Don shrugged. “Be seein’ ya.”

The driver saluted, and headed back toward the surface. Don put the van in drive and they entered the tu

“What’s above us?” Tommy asked. “I mean, where in the Loop?”

“Du

The right wall fell away into nothingness.

“And here we are,” Don said, turning the van off the road. The headlights illuminated a vast chasm. Fifteen yards out, the ground dropped steeply and disappeared, leaving hulking mountains of rotting garbage. Metal and plastic gleamed dully through the blackened ooze like bone as flesh decayed around it. The smell slithered through the air vents and cracks around the doorframes and sizzled in their nostrils. Tommy had expected it to smell like a bad Dumpster in the summer, but this didn’t have that revolting element that made your gorge rise. It had a burnt, chemical smell, like pepper spray steeped in bleach.

Don wrapped a banda

Don whipped the flashlight around. “Shut your door. Don’t need to come back and find any surprises.” He didn’t have to say it twice. Tommy slammed the door and the sound echoed across the immense cave. He flinched at the noise, feeling as if he’d just woken something dark and massive. Something that could seal off the tu

He hurried to catch up to Don. Don said, “Watch your head,” and shined the light at the cave roof, revealing a slab of rock that sloped down at nearly a forty-five-degree angle. Don squatted under this and turned the flashlight at clusters of rat corpses. “Anywhere else, you try and lay out some poisoned bait, the rats laugh at you. They’re too damn smart. And there’s plenty of food. But down here, I du

He led Tommy back to the van and they put on heavy leather gloves first, then disposable rubber gloves to cover the leather. Don took a box of blue plastic bags back to the rats. Tommy would hold each bag open while Don reached under the ledge and grabbed a rat by its tail. When the rat was in the bag, Tommy twisted the top and sealed it with yellow tape stamped with the three incomplete rings over a full circle, the sphincter-tightening symbol of biological hazardous material.