Jagger's huge hand closed on his own. "Gonna be okay, buddy," he said, pulling Jeff to his feet. The fire in the barrel had burned low, and the corners of the alcove had disappeared back into darkness. Jagger's eyes darted toward Creeper, who was already on the abandoned tracks, then he nodded toward his other hand. In the fading glow of the firelight, Jeff could see that he held a large railroad spike, the tapered end clutched in Jagger's fist, the head forming a heavy club with a hooked end. Jagger tilted his head toward Creeper. "Soon's we get somewhere where we can see a way out-"

He spoke in the lowest whisper possible, but it didn't seem to matter.

"You're gonna need that thing for track rabbit," Creeper said, not even bothering to glance in their direction. "Whack me with it, and you'll never get outta here." He started down the track, moving in the opposite direction from which they'd come.

Jagger watched him suspiciously. "Maybe we don't need him at all."

Jeff tried to see into the tunnel from which they'd arrived. If anything, the blackness seemed to have deepened. It was only a trick of his mind, he realized-the few short hours he'd spent in the glow of the firelight had deepened his reluctance to return to the pitch-darkness of the tunnels.

He switched on his flashlight, but the bulb barely lit at all, and rapidly dimmed to a small glowing pinpoint.

He remembered the voice-his father's voice?-drifting out of the blackness. Nothing more than a hallucination.

But then he thought of the very real voices they'd heard, and the shot.

"Better go with Creeper," he finally said. "At least he's got a light."

Jagger's eyes narrowed. "I could take that away from him."

"Even if you do, what do we do when the battery runs out?"

"Maybe we'd have found a way out of here by then."

"And maybe we wouldn't," Jeff replied. He jumped down onto the tracks. "You coming?"

Jagger still hesitated, but finally nodded. "I'm with you."

Creeper was already a dozen yards ahead of them, and as they started after him, he glanced back over his shoulder. "I'm shuttin‘ off the light," he said. "Just keep following me." The bright beam of the halogen torch went out, and as the blackness closed around Jeff, sharp-taloned fingers of panic began to rip at his nerves. He tried to move through the darkness, tripped over a rail, yelped with pain as his ankle twisted, then instinctively threw out a hand to steady himself. By pure luck his hand found the wall and he didn't fall. Instantly, the flashlight came back on.

"Fuckin‘ idiot," Creeper said. "Just keep touchin' the wall and you'll be okay."

The light went back out, and Jeff could hear him moving again.

A few seconds later the light flashed on again, then almost immediately went out yet again. Ahead of them Jeff could hear Creeper's footsteps echoing, and even before the light went on again, he knew the other man was moving much faster than he and Jagger.

"Fucker's tryin‘ to lose us," Jagger muttered the next time the light came on and they discovered they'd fallen nearly fifty yards behind.

"He can't lose us if we don't let him," Jeff said. Reaching out with his right hand, he felt the rough concrete of the wall. Somehow, just touching the wall steadied the vertigo induced by the darkness, and he stepped up his pace, ignoring the burning in his injured ankle.

The next time the light flicked on, Creeper was once again only a few yards ahead of them.

A few yards farther on, Creeper stopped and waited for them to catch up.

"How far are we going?" Jeff asked.

"No farther," Creeper told him. "Now we go up." He shined his light on the wall of the tunnel. There was another alcove here-far smaller than the one where they'd eaten and rested-but in this alcove, iron steps had been mounted in the concrete to form a ladder into a narrow shaft that led straight up. "There's another tunnel up above. Water mains." Without another word, he started scrambling up the ladder.

With no other choice than being left in the darkness, Jeff and Jagger followed.

After walking another ten minutes-or maybe half an hour, or even an hour-they'd climbed two more ladders and were in a third tunnel.

Far ahead, Jeff saw light.

Not the flickering, bobbing movement of flashlights, but the steady glow of electric lights mounted on the tunnel's wall.

Creeper, putting the halogen light out for the last time, picked up his pace. The throbbing in Jeff's ankle seemed to ease as a goal finally came into sight. They were in a utility tunnel-cables, pipes, and conduits ran along both walls and hung from the ceiling. Ahead, Jeff could see the first of a series of dim bulbs, each encased in glass and protected by a heavy metal cage, mounted in the ceiling.

As they came to the first one, Creeper stopped and turned to face them. "Welcome to the condos," he said with the same grin he'd offered them hours ago, when he showed them their dinner. "Manhattan's cheapest housing, all utilities included." He stepped through a door in the wall.

Jeff and Jagger hesitated. Jagger glanced at the door, then shifted his gaze to the dimly lit tunnel that stretched ahead of them. "I think maybe we oughta keep goin‘."

Jeff, too, eyed the lights strung along the tunnel like lamps over a pathway. Creeper's voice came from inside the door.

"We got company."

"Anyone we know?" It was a woman's voice, and Jeff thought he heard a note of humor in it.

"Not me. Found ‘em two flights down."

"Well, bring ‘em on in-lucky they didn't die down there. And we got plenty of food-real food, not that track rabbit some people eat."

Creeper reappeared at the door, and along with him came a scent that filled Jeff's nostrils, started his mouth watering and sent pangs of hunger twisting through his belly.

Stew.

Not the thin, flavorless stew that was all they'd been fed when they'd been locked in the room somewhere down in the utter darkness below. This smelled like the stew his mother used to make, pungent with herbs.

"You guys coming in or not?" Creeper asked.

It was the aroma of the stew that ended whatever doubts Jeff might have had. As he stepped through the door, he saw the last thing he would have expected to find in this place.

CHAPTER 20

Whatever Jeff expected as he stepped through the door, it wasn't this. Not that he saw anything extraordinary-in fact, the objects that filled the chamber were utterly ordinary.

A stove-the back burner of which held the pot from which came the mouthwatering aroma of beef stew.

A refrigerator-its avocado green finish chipped, and parts of the worn-out gasket around its door missing. As if to prove it wasn't a mirage, it rattled to life at that moment, its compressor clattering grumpily before settling into a steady hum.

A table-a real table, with a Formica top and tubular metal legs, almost identical to the one in his own apartment. And around the table, half a dozen mismatched chairs. A couple of them were made of badly scarred oak, their finish all but worn off. The others, originally upholstered in various kinds of vinyl, were now mostly covered with duct tape.

Against the wall opposite the stove was the kind of sofa Jeff had seen many times on the streets of his neighborhood, dragged onto the street for the garbage men to haul away. This one looked to be of about the same vintage as the refrigerator. Its cheap pine frame was carved in an ugly Mediterranean style, and though the crushed-velvet upholstery was stained and torn, a bit of its original gold color still showed.

There were two easy chairs, one a recliner that was extended as far as its broken leg rest would allow. The damage didn't seem to bother the man sprawled out on it, sleeping noisily.