Fet remembered something he had read in National Geographic, or maybe watched one night on the History channel: the story of a colony of settlers in the pre-America era—in Roanoke, maybe—who vanished one day. Over a hundred people, gone, leaving behind all of their belongings but no clues to their sudden and mysterious departure, nothing except two cryptic carvings: the word CROATOAN written into a post on their fort, and the letters CRO whittled into the bark of a nearby tree.
Fet looked again at the mosaic SF tiled onto the high wall.
“I know you,” said Eph, keeping a polite distance from the reeking Cray-Z. “I’ve seen you around—I mean, up there.” He pointed toward the surface. “You carry one of those signs, GOD IS WATCHING YOU, or something like that.”
Cray-Z smiled a mostly toothless smile and went and pulled out his hand-drawn placard, proud of his celebrity status. GOD is WATCHING YOU! !! in bright red, with three exclamation points for emphasis.
Cray-Z was indeed a semi-delusional zealot. Down here, he was an outcast among outcasts. He had lived undergr
ound as long as anyone—maybe longer. He claimed that he could get anywhere in the city without surfacing—and yet he apparently lacked the ability to urinate without splashing the toes of his shoes.
Cray-Z moved alongside the tracks, motioning for Eph and Fet to follow. He ducked inside a tarp-and-pallet shack, where old, nibbled extension cords wound away up into the roof, wired into some hidden source of electricity on the great city grid.
It had begun to drizzle lightly within the tunnel, weeping ceiling pipes wetting the dirt, their water splattering onto Cray-Z’s tarp and running down into a waiting Gatorade bottle.
Cray-Z emerged carrying an old promotional cutout of former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, flashing his trademark “How’m I Doing?” smile. “Here,” he said, handing the life-sized photo to Eph. “Hold this.”
Cray-Z then walked them to the far tunnel, pointing down its tracks.
“Right into there,” he said. “That’s where they all went.”
“Who? The people?” said Eph, setting Mayor Koch down next to him. “They went into the tunnel?”
Cray-Z laughed. “No. Not just the tunnel, shithead. Down there. Where the pipes at the curve go under the East River, across to Governor’s Island, then over to mainland Brooklyn at Red Hook. That’s where they took them.”
“Took them?” said Eph, a chill trickling down his spine. “Who—who took them?”
Just then, a track signal lit up nearby. Eph jumped back. “This track still active?”
Fet said, “The 5 train still turns around on the inner loop.”
Cray-Z spat onto the tracks. “Man knows his trains.”
Light grew inside the space as the train approached, brightening the old station, bringing it briefly to life. Mayor Koch shook under Eph’s hand.
“You watch real close, now,” said Cray-Z. “No blinking!” He covered his blind eye and smiled his mostly toothless smile.
The train thundered past them, taking the turn a little faster than usual. The cars were nearly vacant inside, maybe one or two people visible through the windows, here and there a solitary straphanger. Abovegrounders just passing through.
Cray-Z gripped Eph’s forearm as the end of the train approached. “There—right there —”
In the flickering light of the passing train, Fet and Eph saw something on the rear exterior of the final car. A cluster of figures—of bodies, people—flat against the outside of the train. Clinging to it like remoras riding a steel shark.
“You see that?” exulted Cray-Z. “You see ’em all? The Other People.”
Eph shook loose of Cray-Z’s grip, taking a few steps forward away from him and Mayor Koch, the train finishing its loop and dwindling into darkness, the light leaving the tunnel like water down a drain.
Cray-Z started hustling back to his shack. “Somebody has to do something, right? You guys just decided it for me. These are the dark angels at the end of time. They’ll snatch us all if we let ’em.”
Fet took a few lumbering steps after the receding train, before stopping and looking back at Eph. “The tunnels. It’s how they get across. They can’t go over moving water, right? Not unassisted.”
Eph was right there with him. “But under the water. Nothing stops them from that.”
“Progress,” said Fet. “This is the trouble progress gets us in. What do you call it—when you figure out you can get away with shit that nobody made up a specific rule for?”
“A loophole,” said Eph.
“Exactly. This, right here?” Fet opened his arms, gesturing at their surroundings. “We just discovered one giant gaping loophole.”