Tenth Man

by Tamara Sheehan

Chapter 21, part 1 of 2

Humanity is two meals away from barbarism, Bridget thought as she traversed the grounds of Audel Corp. It didn’t take me long to become a kid from the projects again.

Beyond the great expanse of darkness that was the warehouse was a white hallway lit with buzzing fluorescent lights. By the big grey-painted door that marked the boundary between space and walls, between colossal emptiness and the sterile expanse of corridor, Bridget sat to gather her thoughts.

The great empty hallway stretched off into the distance, white walls, oatmeal floors, white particle board ceiling and pale fluorescent lights. Come Monday the pristine floors would be tracked with dirt, the red clay that made up the golems, pieces of paper, dust from workers clothes and hands. Today it was pristine, silent, her own. Here she could sit and think.

She was surprised by herself. Darkness and fear went hand in hand. The massive emptiness of the factory warehouse had infused her with unease. She imagined the man she’d struck getting to his feet, staggering after her in the dark. She imagined someone waiting behind a stack of boxes, planning to kill her. She fled toward light and sound. When she’d reached the corridor, panic had given way to fierce pride and an optimism that she had never experienced before.

Now she was grinning, looking proudly around her as if at some invisible audience. There were perfectly sensible reasons for her good mood. She had done exactly what was required of her, escaped her little prison without help, played the part of a superhero with only what her body could furnish. Despite her shoelessness and her feet aching from the concrete floors, she was loose and, for all anyone knew, as dangerous as a cornered wolverine. It made her want to laugh out loud.

For food she had stolen a leftover sandwich from a staff fridge humming quietly in a dark, warm room. She took advantage of her solitude, chewing noisily, slurping from a stale can of pop left open on a desk. A women’s washroom had furnished a tap of hot water, soap and paper towel to wash her face with.

She caught her expression in the mirror; hair askew, color high on her cheeks, her breath coming in little puffs that fogged the mirror. She was like a child playing capture the flag, like a rat startled out of a garbage bag. Fed, watered, and washed, she padded down the cold hallway to the bench and sat.

She wondered if Saul had gotten her frantic message yet. She imagined his worried tone when he called Howie to tell him the news. In her mind, she saw the blood draining out of Howie’s face, the cigarette falling from his numbed hands, heard him swearing and swearing. She considered her route.

There would be a fence around the plant, high and crowned with razor wire, but she would be able to escape using emergency exits. Opening a door would certainly set off an alarm, but as long as she could hail a cab before the police arrived, she was certain she could avoid uncomfortable questions, a possible night in a cell.

It wouldn’t matter that Audel had brought her here, that Mbeki had ordered a storage room cleared to house her, that a man had been set to guard her. It would only matter that the plant had been endangered.

Yes, a cab was it. She would get dropped off at Howie’s place and surprise him.

Such was her pleasure at this that she hardly heard the murmurings at the far end of the hall.

It was surreal, the apparition of these two figures, so brightly dressed in the long white hall. Two men were walking toward her, slow, deep in conversation. Both wore dark blue, white, wine-red ties. A flash of gold jewelry was muted by the fluorescent light.

She slid like water from the bench, crouching, crawling toward the women’s washroom. They were talking, both of them talking over one another like men arguing. One of them was pale and suited, the other tall, holding a coat over one shoulder, dark-skinned; Mbeki. The second was Audel.

She slithered to the door, pushed it open and slipped behind it. Crouching, she looked through the vent to see Audel again. He was a small man, growing ungracefully old. The delicate bones of his face were hung with garlands of tired skin, skin collected in dark pools under his eyes. His hair, certainly blond in his youth, was a washed-out color, made slightly greenish by the light.

“It’s not just that, Mbeki,” he was saying. “You know they think they’re heroes. They’ll try to sneak in.”

“Of course.”

“I want to see both of them before anything is final.” His lips twisted in a frown. The clatter of hard-heeled dress shoes stuttered as their pace slowed. “Toven has forgotten what he owes to his family if he’s helping Nick Solomon, and I plan to remind him of his duties.”

He paused. When he spoke again his voice was tight with rage. “He’s disobeyed me, that little shit. Disobeyed me for the last time.” He hissed out a breath. “I’m not a cruel man, Mbeki. You know I’m not a cruel man.”

“Yes, sir.” Mbeki’s voice was careful, neutral.

“But he has to see what disobedience means. That boy has to be taught a lesson.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where is Ian? I want him here.”

“He’s watching an apartment. A fellow named Chris Howard was listed in the girl’s address book. We think it’s the tenth man, the Howie that the golem talks about.”

“Worry about him later. I want Ian here for when I need him. I want him hungry.”

“I’ll call him back, sir, and tell him not to feed along the way.” A long pause. “And what about the girl?”

Her voyeuristic pleasure suddenly became ash. The giddy joy of eluding capture transformed into something more serious. That cooling of her optimism triggered some profound and basic urge for survival, she held her breath, remembered Saiid, looked around as if waking. What about me?

Audel looked up at Mbeki. “Is there a problem with getting rid of her?”

“She’s in her last year of law, articles due to start at TN and F in April. Someone will notice if she just goes missing.” His big shoulders went up and down in a shrug.

“Does she have family?”

“Her mom lives in Westly; older sister across the water in Rangoor.”

A sucking sound. Audel was chewing his pinky nail. He spat the crescent on the floor. “Then be careful how you do it. Dump her in the bay with her books when you’re done.”

The shoes moved on, clattering toward the dark colossus of the warehouse. She hugged the door, heard the surging hum of overhead lights brought to life, heard the inevitable shout muffled by the door that dived warehouse and hall. Guard found, escape detected.

A long time Bridget crouched by the vent to listen to the sounds from the warehouse. When she got to her feet, the world was not as it had been. She was cold with determination, her teeth set, her jaw thrust out. Logic took over.

It was like an exam: The place was littered with security cameras. The doors would soon be guarded, the hallways trawled with electronic eyes. She’d wasted her head start, she realized, and came to her feet. She needed to get out and get help, but the conventional ways were closed to her. What now?

The hall was silent. She stepped out of the washroom and ran down the silent hall. Grey doors flashed passed. She remembered Howie’s long-winded treatise on elevator shafts and subbasements and sewers. She breathed a quiet thanks to him. The door to the room by the elevator was unlocked. Bridget went in.

* * *

Brickland. It was what Howie had once called the sewers. Saul pulled the collar of his borrowed coat tighter around his neck. Water ran down his face, plastered his hair to his forehead, wound in trickles down his neck. Dripland more like.

“Saul, come on.” A hiss from the dark ahead of him.

He could sense Howie’s impatience, his perfect ease, his frustration with Saul’s slow progress.

“I’m coming.” He was half-squatting, bent almost double in the tunnel, one hand out thrust to break a forward fall, the other sticking out to the side to brace against the slick, rounded walls.

Toven was ranging far ahead of them, perfectly unconcerned, as comfortable as Howie in his confines. His eyes easily adjusted to the gloom, his feet knew how to walk along a sloping wall, how to grip the mucky ground. He knew the hissing from the dark was merely the sound of rats, had long ago made the darkness friend rather than enemy.

Saul scrambled and slipped and lagged behind, fighting with himself. Anxieties about Audel, about their destination, their plan, became phantoms in the dark. Simple fear of the dark was being transmuted into something greater, more terrible: fear of what he could not know.

This tunnel was old, sopping, claustrophobic. Howie said we’d take the same route we took to the warehouse last time, but I don’t remember this.

In his memory, the tunnels were larger, cleaner, with ten of them and their packs, and all the flashlights, the place had been as alive and noisy as a club. Now it was alien and silent.

It was so narrow, so unlike the tunnel by the Janion, so squeezing that Saul kept falling further and further behind to get more space. Things moved in the dark, echoing down the length of the tunnel, contrary to the rhythmic splashing of Toven and Howie, now distant stars ahead of him.

Was this what Toven had known when he first plunged into the sewers? Claustrophobia, a constant prickling of his skin? The sensation of a thousand malevolent eyes watching from shadows unplumbed? He shivered.

Proceed to part 2...