Chapter 2: Within These Walls
Dead Boy meets Soda down in the first-floor lobby. Soda's a broad-shouldered Asian kid, fourteen years old but already almost as tall as Dead Boy. He's wearing his own equally laden backpack, a bright red padded coat and a good-natured grin.
The lobby's cold, in spite of the large electric space heater humming loudly near the exit. Two yawning parka-bundled guards stand by the large doors, with two more guards leaning against a wall by the stairwell that leads to the topside skyscraper many floors far above. The stairs also descend one flight to an access hallway which connects to the subterranean Embarcadero subway platform where Dead Boy, Soda and a whole bunch of other tunnel rats live. It's common to see people walking up and down the stairs between the tunnels and the topside residences later in the day, but it's still early in the morning now and other than the hum of the heater and some low conversation between the guards, the lobby is unusually quiet.
"Show me what ya got," one of the door guards says as they approach. He's casually holding a shotgun with one hand, its muzzle resting on the floor.
Dead Boy and Soda open their packs to show the contents. Shotgun rummages through each pack for a few seconds and then grunts for them to go on.
"Standard procedure," Dead Boy says as they step through the front door and out into the fog. Soda replies with a diligent nod to affirm that he's taking mental note.
They stand in a bitterly cold narrow corridor constructed of corrugated-sheet-metal walls with no ceiling, crunchy ice-coated sidewalk cement beneath their feet. The thick white fog endlessly rolls above them, obscuring their vision farther than six feet or so down the makeshift hallways that stretch away to the left and right. It's deathly quiet. Arrows are spray painted on the walls at the entrance of each passage, along with short names of the scrapers at the other end of the lines—101 Cali and Pin—in a crude imitation of a subway platform.
"Running is easy enough," Dead Boy says. He doesn't bother keeping his voice overly quiet, as he knows the walls are thickly reinforced this close to the doors. "You just gotta know what to look out for, where to go and how to get there. Don't be an idiot, and stay alert—especially once we leave the halls."
They set off to the left, walking northeast toward the bay as briskly as possible without stomping their feet. The corridors are only barely wide enough for the two boys to walk abreast, so they march in single-file to avoid bumping into each other or the walls. A few dozen steps later, another corridor forks off to the right, with PG spray painted on the wall at the juncture. They turn down this new branch and continue on. The sheet-metal walls are patched here and there with scrap metal and wood, evidence of how hard the community has worked to stave off the fog’s constant encroachment on civilization. But the boys know they're relatively safe in these hallways, as long as they don’t dally or make too much sound—for so long as they stay within these walls, the Frozen can't see them.
According to the map they've both memorized, their next stop's a block southeast of where they started—it would only take two or three minutes if they could walk straight through the fog. But the corridor twists and turns left and right, sometimes hugging a building’s concrete wall and sometimes taking them across pitted, potholed streets covered in chipped ice as the path snakes back and forth in between pockets of Frozen. Many times as they near a wall, they strain to see through the open ceiling to identify a landmark, but it's no use; the rolling fog blinds them and swallows every sound until all sense of direction is lost.
About halfway there, they come upon some fresh damage. A number of large, two-foot holes have been punched through the walls, leaving long, jagged strips of sheet metal buckling inward like razor-sharp fingers. Three thick cylindrical pipes of solid ice have burst through the walls, two of them bridging straight across to matching holes in the opposite wall, while the third ends in a head-high spike of shiny cyan ice jutting out into the middle of the hallway. Other holes remain open to the empty fog in the streets beyond. It's distinctly colder here—the frigid air sucks more humidly into their lungs as the fog drifts through the holes and thickens between the sheet-metal walls that had earlier provided a kind of meager insulation.
Dead Boy motions for Soda to be still and approaches the first open hole alone, cautiously peering out. For a moment, all is blinding white, the fog flowing thick before his eyes. He strains to see anything but a niveous haze, yet hopes to see nothing at all. Then, just as he's about to motion to Soda that it's safe, the fog thins for a moment and he spots them.
Three Frozen stand in the street, ice-encrusted corpses thirty years dead: two men in suits and a skirt-clad woman, their clothing and features mostly preserved under the layer of ice that flash-froze them during the Fall. Though unchanged all these years, they also look distorted, as though seen through a dirty window, making it hard to discern their features or to even be sure they were once human at all. All three are staring up at the sky and facing away from the gaping hole Dead Boy's peeking out of, which is good. No immediate threat if they can't see you—and Dead Boy's not particularly fond of looking at them either.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
But then, as the endless fog pools away before him, Dead Boy notices the fourth Frozen standing a bit closer to him. It was once a woman clad in a long dress that brushes the ground at her ankles, but her torso's completely shattered above her waist. Her entire top half is lying half-destroyed on the ground, her head—snapped off at the neck—is lolling toward Dead Boy, her sightless eyes closed in a permanent grimace of pain.
Dead Boy quickly ducks back down behind the wall with a hiss of surprise. He closes his eyes hard to think, then opens them, breathing slowly. He still hasn't been seen, so they're safe for the present. But for how long?
"Someone was out there," he whispers to Soda. "Busted one of the Frozen."
"When?" Soda whispers back. He reaches for the gun he carries in his pocket—as if it would do him any good. Dead Boy knows he only has three bullets.
"Not long. Probably last night." Dead Boy pokes Soda with the haft of his axe to make him pay attention. "You know it only takes Frozen a few hours to regenerate."
"Ah, yeah." Soda sinks back against the wall. "But that means…"
"The wraith," they both exhale in unison as they hear a crunching, slithering sound outside the walls. Neither boy breathes as the sound slides past them, like a sled being dragged across the flat icy ground without any footsteps to mark its bearer. The uncanny sound grows louder, now scratching and shuffling mere feet away on the other side of the thin metal sheet the boys have their backs to. They sit poised with weapons ready and calf muscles tense in anticipation of fight or flight.
But the wraith seemingly does not hear them, as it continues slithering onward. The sound recedes, grows fainter, then disappears entirely before either boy lets out their breath and relaxes once again.
"You ever fight one of those head on?" Soda asks.
"Once," Dead Boy replies. "Though I mostly run away—which is what we should be doing right now. Come on."
###
"You seen Jamar in the past couple weeks? Big black kid, lugs around a wooden baseball bat? We'll trade food for tips. Whole sack of grub for information that leads us to him."
The boys have been working their way southward building after building for the past few hours, asking the same questions of each door guard in turn, to no avail. Nobody they talked to had seen or heard tell of Jamar since he left. Now Soda’s speaking to a guy outside the Marriot not far from the Powell Crypts entrance, and they've already made up their minds that their next step will be to head back underground for a spell so they can warm up as they travel farther south.
Truth be told, they also want to duck back into the tunnels to calm their nerves for a bit. On the walk down here—safely confined within metal-walled corridors the entire way—they'd seen more carnage. While holes in the walls are not uncommon, especially out in the streets, they'd also seen more shattered Frozen, an ominous sign. Someone was out there causing trouble last night, waking up the Frozen and drawing out the wraiths to roam the city. Luckily, they haven’t yet run into any more of the monstrosities.
"Jamar? He stopped by a while back… Yeah, maybe around two weeks." The guard's an older man, bundled up with multiple scarves mostly hiding his face, wrinkled beady eyes peering at the two boys with a mixture of suspicion and greed. "Said he was heading out to the hills down Twin Peaks’ way. Can I have a carrot?"
"We have potatoes," Soda says, handing over a tuber. "Did he say anything else?"
The guard shoves the potato into his pocket and shakes his head, then reaches one grasping hand toward Soda's backpack, his other hand resting on a holstered pistol that may or may not be void of ammo. "You got anything else in there, boy?"
Soda and Dead Boy both back up a few steps, raising their own weapons a couple of inches in warning. The old man chuckles and slinks back against the closed front door of the Marriot, fingering his pistol and watching them with the look of a hungry animal. Hungry, but not desperate enough to press us, Soda knows. Not in broad daylight while we’re still inside community borders.
The boys boldly walk away toward Powell station. Others have tried to intimidate them five times already this trip, but no actual violence has come of it. Soda feels emboldened by the lack of incident, but Dead Boy’s cautioned him time and time again that it won't be the same once they leave the NBAZ. Outside of Downtown, with its rules and pretense of "civilization," people are prone to being much more unpredictable.
After fifteen minutes of quiet walking—Dead Boy has long run out of training lectures to lay on Soda, and both boys are more concerned with wriggling feeling back into their cold toes—they arrive at a short flight of stairs. The corridor twists once more on the staircase to jag around a Frozen who perished mid-ascent and then leads across a small landing to a broken escalator heading down into the Crypts. Another corridor branches off, H spray-painted on the wall.
"Leave it," Dead Boy says with a jerk of his head toward the new hallway. "Not many people live topside past this point anyway."
Soda's more than happy to comply. Turning their backs on the cold confines of the metal walkways, the two traveling companions descend into the relative warmth and lively chaos of the underground Crypts, their hearts lightening even though they know it'll be but a short stop on the much longer journey ahead.
###