The Getaway God (Sandman Slim 6)

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’r

e 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.