Bad Glass

My head was pounding and I felt dizzy, still drunk but getting sober now. Possibly concussed. As I turned back from the door, my vision swam and the back of my throat filled with prevomit saliva. I reached down and grabbed the corner of Taylor’s bed, trying to keep myself steady. When my stomach finally settled, I bolted down two more Vicodins, hoping to push back the pain and nausea, wanting nothing more than numb, unconnected distance between me and my injured, chemically unbalanced head.

But the anger remained. And the fear.

Mac had waltzed right in and taken her. Easy as could be. Danny and me, sloppy drunk on the sofa. Floyd and Charlie, asleep and oblivious. And Taylor … all alone, she hadn’t stood a chance.

“Get flashlights,” I said. Floyd and Charlie were sitting on the edge of the bed. They had the camera balanced between them, propped up on Floyd’s knee and tilted back in Charlie’s hand. At the sound of my voice, they both looked up from Taylor’s picture. There was fear in their eyes. They looked like children. Lost, frightened children.

“And get weapons,” I said. “Anything you’ve got. We’re going to get Taylor back, and Mac isn’t going to stand in our way. At least not for long.”

Danny and his soldiers weren’t at the tunnel by the time we got there. I wasn’t surprised. They had farther to walk, and I hadn’t exactly taken my time getting us out the door and on our way—walking and running through the dark streets, but mostly running. Floyd, Charlie, and I were all panting for breath by the time we reached the dark opening.

We didn’t have the breath to talk, and for that I was grateful. This situation was wrong, all sorts of fucked-up, and I didn’t need Charlie or Floyd to tell me that.

It was dark, predawn. The sky overhead was clotted with clouds—the stars hidden, the moon long since crashed beneath the horizon. The rain had stopped, but the grass and trees were still dripping wet, and it was freakishly quiet. There were no animals rustling in the leaves and not a whisper of wind. If there were wolves here, stalking us through the night, they were being very quiet.

I had a baseball bat clenched in my hand, scavenged from the house’s garage. Floyd had a kitchen knife. Charlie had a longhandled shovel.

I also had my camera. I hadn’t even thought about it, just automatically dropping it around my neck after we finished looking at Mac’s horrible photograph. It was a comfort, having it there. The camera had always been a comfort for me, a wall to hide behind, a distance to place between myself and the subject of my eye. I was seeing that now for the first time. The camera was my way of escaping from the world.

I gave Danny a couple of minutes. The tension grew with each passing second as my imagination ran wild: Mac, dragging Taylor through the tunnels, hurting her; wolves and spiders, stalking through the dark; buried limbs and faces; the gigantic hand of God, entombed somewhere beneath the city, dead and drained of blood. When it got to be too much, I gathered up all my strength and headed toward the dark opening in the grassy hill.

“Wait, wait!” Floyd called, the first syllable loud before his voice dropped into a scared whisper. “Shouldn’t we wait for Danny? And the soldiers?” Then, after a brief pause, “Shouldn’t we wait for guns?”

“You can wait if you want,” I said, trying to sound stronger, more confident than I actually felt. “But I can’t do it. I can’t wait … not while he’s got her in there, not while she’s in danger.”

I headed toward the tunnel, making a show of not looking back. Maybe this feigned nonchalance came across as confidence, but really, I just didn’t want Charlie and Floyd to see my pleading, desperate eyes. I wanted to be strong … but I wasn’t. I was scared. And that fear—a fear of paralysis, a fear of loss—was what got me moving.

After a moment, I heard Floyd let out a string of expletives. Then he and Charlie followed me into the tunnel’s gaping maw.

Photograph. Undated. Danny:

The room is small and dark. Concrete walls, underground. Dirty and wet, every surface glistening with moisture. There’s a road flare burning on the far side of the room. A violet-red bloom—weak, but strong enough to illuminate the enclosed space in an eerie crimson glow.

There’s a body on the floor—a male body, fairly young—lying supine in the middle of the room. It is illuminated in the light of a half dozen flashlight beams.

The body is that of a soldier dressed in fatigues. Probably dead. Lying on his back with his head craned toward the wall behind him. He’s clawed open his shirt, but his arms are thrown to the side, one hand inches away from a fallen flashlight.

There is pain on his face, a frozen mask of terror and open-eyed agony.