JANISSARY PROJECT: Book VII
Babylon
Washington, DC. Dark Side Towne.
The Uohali Red Sun was in one of the worse parts of any
city Benny ever saw. He thanked the woman, Downey, and ate a meal with her.
A young boy of about five years of age charged into the
room screaming, “Big Mama, Big Mama.” He dodged a bold rat and threw himself
at Downey.
“Cops, Big Mama,” he yelled.
“Calm down, Wessy honey, and you tell Big Mama where at
they be.” She raised him up, and he pointed south.
“This many cars, Big Mama.” He raised both hands. A rat
had bitten off the little finger of his left hand when he was two, but he jerked
them closed and opened again. “So many, all them big blue ones.”
“Thirty?” She gasped, glancing at Benny who sat frozen,
the mush and tomato soup ashes in his mouth.
Benny leaped to his feet. “I better split, Mrs.
Downey.”
“No-”
He shook his head. “I stay, and they'll take us all.”
“You don’t know they're here for you, Benny.”
He strode to the window. “How often do the cops come down
here like this?” he snapped. “And do they come in suits or uniforms. It’s
me,” he said, grim and cold.
The woman hugged him. “Here, you just wait up a minute
boy. Mama Long would have my butt if I were to let you just give yourself to
them.”
Footsteps could be heard pounding up the stairwell. She
grabbed the stove.
“Help me.”
“They’re comin’, Big Mama.”
“I hear them, baby. You keep watch.”
“Yes, Big Mama,” came a frightened voice from the
doorway.
Benny picked up the stove and heaved it away.
Mrs. Downey tugged up a strip of linoleum. Benny grinned.
“Had a time, once, when I needed to use it my own
self,” the big woman told him.
He pulled up the trapdoor and lowered himself down. A musty
rodent stench filled his lungs.
“Thanks-”
“Shut up and get out of here, Grey-Wolf,” she told him,
her eyes and voice fierce, despite the pain in her tear filled eyes.
Benny closed his eye and dropped. He landed with a thud on
a wooden floor.
“Go twenty feet to your right. You’ll find a small door
there. Mind the smell, it goes to the storm sewers.” There was a deep chuckle.
“Hope you ain’t afraid of a few rats.”
The trapdoor slammed shut, and the stove being thumped down
over it. Darkness crashed in on him.
Groping on hands and knees to the other trapdoor, he
stumbled. His knee came down on something soft. It squealed and died. He decided
it was better not to light his way.
A rusting ring set in the grating creaked. Benny braced
himself and pulled. Like the Gates of Hell, it came up with a groan that
shriveled his soul.
A moldy, rotting smell came to Benny. He slid in, his feet
sinking into a decaying slime. He took out his lighter and stopped at the sound
of small popping.
Swamp gas. The same stuff Uncle Charlie made out of manure
and bedding. It was as explosive, if not more so, than propane. This whole
neighborhood was a death trap if a lot methane was laying down here. He shoved
the lighter in his back pocket and reached up to lower the grating.
Through the grating came the sound of a crash. He heard
Mrs. Downy cry out and shots were fired.
Benny reached up for the grating, but it was stuck. He
shoved on it, slipped in the muck, and tried again, growing desperate.
A faint glow of light came through the grating. Benny
shrank from it.
“It’s only the sub-flooring,
man,” he heard the woman exclaim. “Plenty of rats down there, and nothing
else. Hell, you want to go down, sure, you do that, but I ain’t going.”
Picturing the huge woman standing there, eyes flashing,
arms folded under ponderous breasts, Benny grinned. Those creeps had a war on
their hands, and they didn’t know it yet.
“Well to hell with you.” A fist met flesh in the
kitchen above. Benny covered his mouth with his hand and bit his lips to keep
from laughing.
“You’re under arrest.”
“What for?”
“Aiding and harboring a fugitive.”
“Who the hell you talking about, boy?”
“Benjamin Wya Grey is wanted in two states for murder and in Virginia for kidnapping an officer of the Marine Corp. He killed an old
couple down in North Carolina.”
“You mean the Longs?”
There was a moment of shocked silence.
“You knew the Longs?”
“Knew ‘em? Hell, Mama Long was my mother, boy. You
seriously think I’d give sanctuary to my parent’s murderer?”
Low voices of the men came to Benny. He closed his eye and
bit off a curse. The Longs were good people. Why the hell did he stay with them
instead of leaving the moment he was on his feet again? The agents who murdered
them were dead, killed by his knife and by the axe he had used to chop Mama
Long’s firewood.
Josh’s cold, staring eyes came to him in the dark. The
sound of the agent’s gun filled his mind. He saw the elderly couple, strong
and courageous to the end, blasted away by the heavy-set Josh. Saw Josh turn,
gun firing at him, and heard the chunk
of the axe as it left his hands and split Josh’s skull.
Two loving and wonderful people dead, sacrificed on the
altar of Cindy VanTur’s lust for a Nobel Prize.
The scrape of a shoe on cement hissed a warning at Benny.
He slid away from the grating, down the long tunnel and
stopped. A light flashed, rats squealed and fled.
“Christ, you should see the fucking size of these sewer
bunnies down here.”
Benny sagged to his knees. Guilt over the Longs was a knife
in his heart.
“You see anything?”
“No. Just mountains of rat shit.”
“So get your ass down there.”
“Hey, screw you, man. I am not going to ruin good clothes
in that hole.”
“Move it, Joborski, or I’ll report you.”
The man snarled and a battle of words raged back and forth.
Grandson, please.
Slowly, Benny raised his head.
“Grampa Wya?”
Shh. Come on, Benny.
Let’s get out of here.
He whispered it to the ghost of the old man.
“No.”
Please, Benny.
Louder, Benny said, “Forget it. I ain’t running no
more.”
Benny, if you
don’t, they’ll get me, too.
Benny swallowed at lump in his throat. “Why did you have
t’ die, too, Grampa? I love you.”
Because it was
exactly the right time. I love you, ayotli, but
I missed your grandmother so much . . . . Benny’s mind stilled. I
was glad to go. I’m so sorry I had to, I miss holding you, miss playing pocatoc
with you. But it was time.
“You didn’t have to go.”
The skean-dubh was
feeding on me, Benny. There was so much pain, my blood filled my lungs, and
drowned me.
“I know,” Benny whispered, remembering their last
hours, spent in the trunk of Leda Melancowski’s car. “I could taste it. It
was all over my face.” He choked off a sob. “And all you kept sayin’ was I
was gonna be OK. I love you, Grampa.”
Something heavy plopped behind him. Benny stilled. He saw a
dark flash in the blackness. A fleeing rat. The sounds drew closer. Benny’s
head sagged in defeat. A groping hand touched him, drew back. Benny could sense
the triumph in the man.
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