Chapter 18

Unlike a cat, Isaac did not land on his feet after his fall from the library. Instead, his back broke his momentum with a sickening thud. The pain disoriented him.

Once the dust cleared and Isaac’s eyes adjusted to the dark as best they could, he looked around in all directions and still couldn’t make any sense of his position. All Isaac knew was that he was deep underground again, and the library was somewhere up high overhead.

Whatever hole he had fallen from had closed back up when the debris from the explosion settled into place. In front of him, he could see the exposed entrails of what was left of this section of the sewer system. Some pipes, now broken and cut at odd angles, spewed their payloads wildly into the air, raining shit down on Isaac, who promptly threw up.

As his eyes continued to adapt to the total blackness of his surroundings, Isaac found himself trapped inside an enormous tunnel. This was bigger than just the sewers. His screams for help echoed up and down the abyssal depths that stretched out on either side of him. The tunnel walls were made of nothing but dirt, but before he could ponder the purpose of this hollowed ground, he heard something moving, awakening in the rubble beside him.

Isaac was not alone.

Not knowing where to go, Isaac took off at a run. There were only two options, left or right. With no cat to lead him, he could only guess, choosing the left-handed path and running for his life as fast as his bad back would allow. But no matter how far Isaac sprinted, there was no end in sight. The darkness was impenetrable. This was some real House of Leaves type shit.

Hoping against hope, he ran with a hand against the dirt wall, searching for an opening, a door— any minor imperfection to provide him with a signpost, but there was nothing. All he found was a fistful of rock and dirt. If only Dan from the Annenberg Space for Photography was here to guide him!

Isaac slowed to a walk, frustrated, but that didn’t keep his adrenaline from working in overdrive. He felt so alive he began to wonder if he was dead.

It made sense. What could be the other explanation?

First, there was that horrific explosion to consider. Then there was this long tunnel he was traveling down. He strained his eyes to search for the white light at the end of it, but there was nothing there. Yet. He stopped moving, not wanting to advance another step if each step brought him closer to the end. He wasn’t ready for the unendingness of the afterlife.

There was still so much for him to do! His bucket list still listed the following:

1. Visit Legoland

2. Go back and watch the filler episodes of Naruto

3. Have a first kiss

But more than FOMO, Isaac felt fear, fear for the repose of his soul. If he did die, he knew he wouldn’t exactly be God’s first-round draft pick to get into heaven. The best Isaac could hope for was probably purgatory if he was lucky. So he would have to make his own luck.

That realization had set him down this path of saving the cat in the first place. That’s why he couldn’t die yet. There was still unfinished business to attend to. He had to save the cat.

Isaac turned around to retrace his steps.

Nothing would stop him, but a sudden spark in the dark slowed his progress. A firefly-sized light illuminated a portion of the tunnel, back toward the hole under the library. Isaac had been right. Something had followed him. He watched as the same flame grew larger as it sought the end of a cigarette, illuminating a hairy face that Isaac recognized immediately. There was no mistaking his pursuer.

“You again!” Isaac cried, “Illuminati scum!”

“Oh-oh, ah-ah,” said the smoker cooly. It was his co-worker. The monkey from the writers' room. He greeted Isaac with a wicked smile.

This was not good news for Isaac, who had watched enough Planet Earth to know a monkey’s smile was anything but a friendly gesture. It was a sign of aggression. There would be a fight. Isaac had to defuse the situation.

“I didn’t steal your sonnet! I gave it back!” Isaac explained.

The money didn’t back down, instead choosing to casually blow a smoke ring at Isaac, a final puff before it popped the cigarette into its mouth to extinguish it.

The tunnel turned back to black.

A screech filled the air.

There was a scramble in the dark. Isaac couldn’t see, so he just windmilled his hands quixotically, hoping to hit something. But all he felt was his knuckles graze some fur before his throat tightened under the monkey’s grip. The beast was on top of Isaac. He smelled the monkey’s ashy banana breath on his face. Where was HR when you needed them? But then again, Isaac knew Fox did have a history of ignoring matters of handsy co-workers.

Isaac writhed side-to-side to try and dislodge the monkey, but that did nothing but encourage the monkey to tighten his grip more as he held onto Isaac. Rolling over and over in a stop-drop-and-roll fashion wasn’t any more effective. Isaac was fresh out of ideas, so he tried to play dead, but that only hastened his actual death. The monkey was not fooled in the slightest.

With every passing second, the corners of Isaac’s vision were fading out, somehow getting darker than even the blackest black of the unlit, under-earth tunnel. The last thing he saw before losing consciousness was a hulking presence appearing suddenly next to the monkey. It had fangs where its teeth should have been.

It was the vampire.

Isaac faded to black.

*~*~*~*~ Shoot for the moon

For even if you miss

You’ll land among the stars *~*~*~*~

Isaac couldn’t comprehend what happened next. Despite the monkey’s hold on him, his body lurched upwards on its own accord. It rose into a standing position without any prompting from Isaac. These movements were not of his choosing. Isaac was being operated by some sort of autopilot program as if his temporary blackout caused a power cycle in his psyche and rebooted his nervous system.

He was now running on pure machine code, a binary choice between flight or fight.

01001011 01101001 01100011 01101011 00101110 00100000 01000110 01101001 01100111 01101000 01110100 00101110 00100000 01000010 01101001 01110100 01100101 00101110 00100000 01001000 01100101 00100000 01100110 01100101 01101100 01110100 00100000 01110011 01110100 01110010 01101111 01101110 01100111 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01100101 01101110 01110100 01100001 01101110 01100111 01101100 01100101 01101101 01100101 01101110 01110100 01110011 00100000 01110000 01110010 01100101 01110011 01100101 01101110 01110100 01100101 01100100 00100000 01100010 01111001 00100000 01100011 01101111 01101110 01110011 01101001 01101111 01110101 01110011 01101110 01100101 01110011 01110011 00101110 00100000 01010000 01101111 01110111 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110011 01110101 01110010 01100111 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01110010 01101111 01110101 01100111 01101000 00100000 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101101 01110101 01110011 01100011 01101100 01100101 01110011 00101110 00100000

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Shocked by Isaac’s revival, the monkey released Isaac’s throat, but he wasn’t fazed for long. Whap! A ferocious slap from the monkey shook some of Isaac’s thoughts loose from their hiding places within the nooks and crannies of his brain, just enough so he could begin to wrestle some command away from the ghost in his shell.

Once he resumed control, Isaac didn’t recognize the body he inhabited. It was different from the one he had left. This one was strong.

“Dios Mio,” Isaac whispered in awe, marveling at himself.

With zero effort, Isaac picked the monkey up, swung it above his head by its tail like a rally towel at a Dodgers game, and released it at maximum velocity. The monkey flew off, pinwheeling end over end. Due to the darkness, Isaac couldn’t see where it landed, so he had to listen for the impact, like a falling pebble into a well. He counted one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi before a quiet thud far, far away reverberated back up through the tunnel to Isaac’s location.

Isaac was delirious with this newfound strength. He felt the same euphoria now as when he had smoked angel dust with Seth after visiting the coroner’s office. Except for this time, the sublime sensation that had flowed through his subconscious, enlightening him and transporting him to a new astral plane called Beverly Hills, was now targeting his physical body, specifically his muscles. Isaac flexed them to feel the rush of potential energy.

The sleeper agent had awoken!

But the glorious high did not last long. The monkey’s partner in crime formally announced itself with a rattling growl, and the haunting sound of it buckled Isaac’s knees with fear. Whatever fanged creature Isaac faced now wasn’t human. It wasn’t even a vampire.

This was something else entirely, something grey-green in color, something scaly, and something that smelled and tasted like it crawled out of the La Brea tar pits. And maybe it did. The creature looked prehistoric and capable of taking down a wooly mammoth. Its forked tongue poked out at Isaac before it slithered back through the same pair of fangs he had imagined while reading his script.

There was never any vampire, Isaac realized. This thing from the black lagoon had always been his nemesis. The lizard-like being was bipedal and had a humanoid stature except for a tail that had a similar diameter to the pipe Isaac had crawled through earlier in the evening. The creature looked as mean as it did powerful.

Isaac would have preferred the vampire.

To further complicate matters, Isaac’s body was still changing. Along with his newfound strength, there was something different about his sense of sight. Instead of complete darkness, Isaac could now see patterns of red and orange and blue where the creature stood. The colors pulsed with each breath the beast took. Isaac understood he was looking at heat signatures. His eyes had leveled up to thermal imaging, like the alien from Predator. It was an important improvement because Isaac could now see that the lizardman was charging him in a full frontal assault and that his attacker was as cold-blooded as they come.

Oof! The wind left Isaac’s lungs when the beast crashed into him. Surprised that he was still standing, Isaac parried the attack, able to push the lizardman away, but not for long.

Again, it lunged at Isaac with barred fangs sharp enough to turn the passing wind into a whistle. Isaac hit the ground, dodging the strike, and watched the monster fly over his head. But the beast wasn’t deterred, landing on all fours with ease. It snapped its tail at Isaac with impatience.

Beginner’s luck. And both of the combatants knew it. Isaac had held his own to start, but this contest was a foregone conclusion.

It was time for Isaac to run, but he didn’t get far. Caught from behind, Isaac fell when the lizard’s whip-like tail lashed out and tripped him. Isaac toppled head over heels until he landed flat on his back for the second time tonight. Also, for the second time tonight, he was pinned to the ground by his attacker.

Isaac gasped as he thrashed and flailed his body to buck the beast off himself, but his efforts were futile. He was trapped. Isaac could feel the blood leaving his body next. Even with his super strength, no amount of struggling could free Isaac from the sharpened claws that nailed his shoulders to the dirt floor.

The fight was finished. Isaac went limp, waving the white flag. The weak link in this food chain, he was no match for this apex predator. The monkey business was over.

All Isaac could do now was consider the afterlife again, a topic he had never devoted much critical thought to before tonight. He didn’t even know how many circles of hell there were! Nine? How were they organized? Was circle nine the worst, or was that circle one’s honor? But his fiery fate would have to wait because the lizardman’s kill shot never came. His throat remained free of fang marks.

Instead, Isaac was a captive. He was being saved for later, but why? And for what? Would he be interrogated? Was he a prisoner of war? Was his meat meant to be dry-aged?

As usual, Isaac didn’t know anything!

Oh, how Isaac wished he had his gun on him. Not to fire at the lizardman, whose scales Isaac assumed were bulletproof, but to turn the barrel onto himself, as was always his intention when he had purchased the firearm. They would never take him alive! But his gun was gone. Christ, he cursed. Why didn’t he invest in a cyanide capsule fitted to a fake molar? It had been on his weekend to-do list for far too long.

A resounding roar brought Isaac back to the matter at hand. It echoed off the tunnel’s walls as the lizardman was thrown off Isaac. A streak of red hot, pulsating muscle flashed by Isaac like a missile.

Fwoosh!

When he got to his feet, Isaac saw his savior. It was a cat. A big fucking cat. A cat Isaac recognized even with thermal imaging. “P38,” he muttered in awe, watching the cougar slash and swipe at the lizardman, who did not take the attack lying down.

The two beasts locked themselves together, engaging in a death roll. They scratched and clawed at each other as they hunted for an advantage but found none. It was ugly. Isaac watched cat blood fly through the air and splatter the tunnel floors. But the lizardman was taking its share of shots too. Isaac could hear it hissing in pain.

Isaac didn’t wait to find out the winner. Instead, he recalled his safety training. The first lesson was to secure your safety before the safety of others, so Isaac ran and ran and ran. He ran until he couldn’t run any farther. When he stopped, it was not because his body gave out with fatigue but because his supercharged body carried him as far as the tunnel would allow.

Indeed there was no white light at the end of this tunnel, but there was an empty construction site instead. Blocking Isaac’s passage was 50 feet of heavy equipment that reached from floor to ceiling and wall to wall in a perfect circle. This monstrous machine must have excavated the trail he had been following from the library.

He now recognized this thing as a Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM), having seen them on the promotional materials lining the sidewalks of Century City, which advertised the new Metro line extension. These were the machines responsible for digging the train lines. Isaac knew every TBM was named as part of their marketing campaign. The Century City TBM was called Harriet. It was an unsubtle nod to the underground railroad, and Isaac thought it was an apt reference because he could not wait to be free at last, free at last from the heavy yoke of slavery that was traveling on the 405.

“Alice” was written in big block letters on the TBM in front of him. Truly, Isaac was through the rabbit hole now. But lucky as a rabbit’s foot, there was a nearby service elevator to make his escape and climb back up to the service.

Whatever black magic invaded Isaac’s system during his fight with the lizardman ran its course by the time he reached ground level. He noticed it when he exited the caged service elevator that brought him up from the tunnel. The only red and blue hues he saw now belonged to the rays of the rising sun and the banners that flew over Dodgers Stadium, which stood a parking lot away from him.

Surrounding him were trucks and work tents, but all the tools were gone, and no workers could be found anywhere. It was a ghost town. If Isaac hadn’t just witnessed a ritual homicide and been attacked by a lizardman, he would have been spooked.

A construction notice told Isaac this was, of course, yet another metro line extension, and he was trespassing on the new Dodger Stadium stop, set to open by next season’s opening day. Isaac’s stomach fluttered with excitement. So intoxicated by the idea of easier transportation, he forgot all about his recent torments.

On the notice, a prospective map of the LA Metro system showed each stop, new and old, as dots connected by various colored lines. To Isaac, they formed a pattern as beautiful as any constellation he had ever seen. It was glorious!

In his mind’s eye, Isaac couldn’t help but attach a tiny, wiggling flagellum to each new dot on the Metro map, for each of these beautiful new stops were children fathered by the infrastructure demands of the upcoming 2028 Olympics. It was a bitter competition to secure the games, but Los Angeles was awarded the honor after the city’s compelling campaign, headlined by their slogan, “Follow the sun!” How could the IOC resist?

Despite the honor of being host, mocking the Olympics was considered a cool conversational topic for LA residents. The tourists! The added traffic! Who needs it? But Isaac knew the games would be worth it in the long run. He saw the bigger picture. To Isaac, the public good of good public transportation was the only difference between LA and the utopia of Kubla Khan. It was all the city needed. If the devil had come to Isaac with a deal for reliable rail, his only question would be: “Where do I sign?”

Inspired, Isaac decided to follow the sun, praying it would lead him home and that the sun’s heat wasn’t a false facade disguising the gates of hell.