Chapter 17

 

The secret passage was something of a legend here at College Heights. Everyone had heard of it, but no one seemed to know if it really existed. Talk to five people, and you were liable to get five different stories: It had been a stop along the Underground Railroad; Students in the honors dorm, one an experienced combat engineer, had mined it shortly after World War II, just to prove they could; It was a fallout shelter, a legacy of the Cold War stocked with survival provisions; It was older than the university itself, the meeting place for a sinister brotherhood of wealthy men who regularly performed ritual sacrifices and eventually founded the university for their own dark purposes.

These and other theories prevailed. Garrett, however, had told Jessie the truth. Then he showed her.

They’d only been dating a short while. She’d recently broken up with Steve, a fun guy who unfortunately turned out to be a real asshole. She already knew Garrett and thought he was cute. She liked his rough, grungy look, his brains—even the scholarship kids over at Simmington gathered around him—and his soft intensity. That’s how she thought of him. Soft yet intense, all at the same time. He spoke quietly, moved quietly, and listened intently during the class they shared. When he did speak, during class discussions or out on the quad, he spoke with such confidence, such intensity, that even the fidgety kids sat still and listened.

They started with walks. Met at the dining hall. Studied. And then, one night by the bike racks in front of her dorm, after a studying session ended early and they’d opted for a walk, this time holding hands as they strolled the campus, he’d put his arms around her, and they’d kissed. By this time, he’d already told her a little about Green and a lot about what it stood for—common sense environmentalism that mandated serious societal change and a much greener common mindset—and she’d already started making small changes in her daily life, tossing aerosol cans, switching off lights to save electricity, doing any small thing she could to save on waste, and a rift was already growing between Jessie and her roommate, Sydney.

Then, perhaps a week after they’d kissed, she and Garrett ended another studying session early, and she’d gone to bed with him. It was wonderful, Garrett illustrating the same confidence, gentleness and intensity that defined him elsewhere.

From that point forward, they’d been inseparable.

Until tonight.

Tonight, Garrett had gone off with Alan to hack the university website and broadcast Green’s public service announcement. Anyone visiting the site would see the podcast, which would loop continuously until someone at the university figured out how to shut it down, just as the video broadcast, Alan had assured them at the last meeting, would loop continuously on the university television station until someone figured out how to undo his handiwork there.

Garrett had cut the tension at that point, saying he figured it would take the university techies a while, because everybody would be too busy staring at their toilets to think about anything else.

Everybody had laughed. Even Jessie, and she’d been jumpy as hell all night, so jumpy she felt like she couldn’t breathe. Garrett could do that, move people, fire them up or cool them down or make them believe that bright green poop was going to be the only effect of the stuff they’d dumped into the Cougar beer brew tanks.

"We’re not going to hurt them, and we’re not going to smash their shit. We’re going to wake them up!" That’s what Garrett had told them, and they’d all believed him.

And why not?

They’d all tried the stuff in a previous meeting, the one where Garrett had introduced his friend, the Mad Chemist, which was what Garrett called him when he and Jessie were alone. The guy was skinny and weird, way too smiley and more than a little creepy, the way he looked Jessie up and down, grinning, when Garrett had introduced them, saying, "Jessie, I want you to meet the smartest guy I know, Haze Biscoe."

She’d smiled but managed not to laugh, telling "Haze Biscoe" it was a great pleasure to meet him. Garrett had told her about the pseudonym. The Mad Chemist’s name wasn’t Haze or Biscoe. It was Herbert Weston.

Herbert Weston. She’d never forget the name, not as long as she lived. Garrett wouldn’t shut up about what a genius the guy was and how he was a legend at the honors dorm and how he never really thought he’d get Herbert Weston onboard because everybody knew Herbert Weston hated everybody in the whole world. Going on like that, Herbert Weston, Herbert Weston, Herbert Weston, until Jessie had finally said, "What are you, queer for the guy or something?" and Garrett had shut up for a minute, giving her that funny look he sometimes gave her, and laughing.

So the night Garrett introduced "Haze Biscoe" to the members of Green, they passed around pitchers of normal-looking, normal-smelling, normal-tasting beer spiked with the chemical Herbert had custom tailored for them, people pouring out glasses, nervous, joking about rat poison and St. Patrick’s Day and saying things like "Hey, I’m not sure I got enough… pass that pitcher back here", and then, the next morning, when Garrett rose and used the toilet and then called Jessie in, she saw that Garrett had been right again. It had worked. The poop was greener than fresh cut grass.

Later in the morning, she’d used the bathroom, too, and though she refused to let Garrett see the evidence, what came out of her had been just as green as Garrett’s. It was the same for everybody, a total success.

Still, earlier today, when she realized it was all real, that they really had spiked the beer supply of the town and that her boyfriend, whom she loved more than she ever knew she could love a person, really was, later that very night, going to leave her and go off with Alan to broadcast the message of Green—Wake up, College Heights! Take this day to consider the things you are putting in your body, the pesticides and herbicides, the genetically engineered Franken-foods!—she’d gotten panicky all over again, freaked out and called Greggers and even her old boyfriend, Steve. She didn’t even know why, but maybe it was because Steve was always so chilled out and knew drugs so well and because she knew, even though he never had and never would finish college, Steve was smart, smarter even than Garrett in some ways. However, Steve had neither answered his phone nor returned her messages, and then, when she and Garrett got together just before he left for Alan’s place, she tried to stop him, and, failing there, demanded he take her along.

Garrett wouldn’t hear of it.

This was the big time. Police would be involved. Things could get ugly. Very ugly. As things stood, he told her, the cops wouldn’t have anything on Jessie or the other members of Green, just on him and Alan. He’d already told her what this meant, the possibility that he might be sent away, incarcerated, so she cried and told him not to do it, and then they’d both laughed because it was all so cliché, the whole scene, but the laughter hadn’t done much to ease her anxiety. At last, they’d said goodnight, and at that point, she really believed that everything was going to work out, that tomorrow half of College Heights would wake up to green poop in the toilet and by the time word spread about the university site and station, everyone would be more than ready to receive the big broadcast. Garrett would be in a stocking cap and army field jacket, lecturing about the power of consumers and the toll big agribusinesses were having all across the third world.

Yes, she’d really believed it would work.

But it hadn’t.

We did this.

Jessie tried and failed to block the thought.

Meanwhile, the pounding continued on the outer door.

She never wanted to leave the tunnel. She was safe here. With all this craziness going on, and regardless of what happened to Garrett or Green or the goddamned environment, she was just glad to be alive, safe in her secret burrow. It was dark and dank and musty and cobwebby, but it reminded her of happier times, times with Garrett. Now, she forced herself to think of those happier times, and she remembered the night not long after Garrett and she had made love for the first time, the night he had brought her here and shown her the legendary tunnel.

"It really exists?" she’d asked.

They were in the dining hall, lingering over dinner, their friends having left the table to dump their trays. Garrett smiled at her, polishing an apple on his shirt. "It does."

The tunnel was no great mystery, he explained, its history available to anyone who cared enough to check the library. Early in the history of the university, the tunnel had served as a rainy-day passageway for scholars and a subterranean shortcut for facility managers and custodians. It had been closed during the eighties as part of a massive asbestos abatement campaign… a campaign so massive, in fact, that university officials early exhausted all funding. With the money gone and no new allotments scheduled, the abatement project ground to a halt, and the university sealed the passage and its asbestos-wrapped pipes forever in 1986.

She told him she wanted to see it.

He took her through the Simmington side first, waiting for a moment alone, explaining that only he and two others knew where to find the hidden keys. That first night, she’d been thrilled. A little frightened, sure, and a little skeptical, too, but mostly, she’d just been excited. They were public in their affection now, officially boyfriend and girlfriend, and she’d already joined Green and started changing out her old clothing for things Garrett pointed out to her in earthy shops downtown, environmentally and culturally friendly sweaters and dresses that made Garrett immensely happy and her father, upon receiving her Visa bills, incredibly unhappy. It felt like, in joining with Garrett, she had joined into a world of secrets. This one was satisfactorily tangible. Who hadn’t heard of the mystery tunnel? Well, she, Jessie Knapp, girlfriend of Garrett Fiske, the head of Green, was going to enter the tunnel.

The tunnel turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. If the basements here were damp and sour-smelling, this was trebly so. The air was thick and thin all at the same time; thick in its stagnant sootiness, thin in its seeming lack of oxygen. She’d coughed. He’d laughed. She’d laughed. And they’d closed the door and done it, standing up, right there in the tunnel. She remembered opening her eyes after they’d finished, opening her eyes and shrieking at the sight of the brown rat squatting not three feet away, watching them from an asbestos-lined pipe. Her cry scared both the rat and Garrett, who ended up making fun of her about the whole thing.

"They’re more afraid of you than you are of them," he’d told her.

"Don’t be so sure about that," she’d said, and then they’d done it again. This time, she’d bent over and pressed her hands against the rough stucco of the wall, and he’d entered her from behind, thrusting away, more intense than gentle. She’d been too distracted by the rat to climax again, but Garrett had, and they’d left the tunnel holding hands, and later he’d shown her the key to the door hidden in the shadowy recesses toward the back of her basement.

Now she sat in the tunnel, alone here for the first time, key in hand, as some homicidal lunatic sobbed and pounded on the metal door like a two-hundred pound toddler in a temper tantrum.

She thought of Garrett. Was he all right? Had he made his broadcast? God, she hoped not. If he made that broadcast, this entire whatever-this-was, this craziness, everything that was happening, would be blamed on him. Him and Green. And her, too.

Garrett had been so sure that everything would work out, and he had assured her she’d be okay, that none of this, no matter how pissed the university and cops got, none of this would come down on her. She’d believed him.

Now, though, with everything that was happening, with crazy bastards like the big toddler pounding on doors all over town, she definitely would not be okay. This was big news. CNN for sure. And the FBI or ATF or whoever would be in charge on this sort of craziness wouldn’t stop until they had every member of Green rounded up and locked away. They would hit her with conspiracy charges, call her a leader, claim she’d helped to plan everything, and, along with everyone else—for Garrett had insisted everyone have a hand during this stage—she would be charged with dispensing the serum. She wondered if they would come down harder on her since she had dosed food in the dining halls rather than beer at the brewery, as most of the others had. The prosecutor might really play up that angle, dramatizing to the jury how Jessie had ruthlessly poisoned unsuspecting children eating their Saturday lunches. This young girl deserved to be tossed in a hole forever, he’d tell them.

He’d be right.

She thought of her family.

Home. That’s where she wanted to be. Home and safe. And she wanted Garrett there with her, as impossible as that little fantasy might be.

Was he safe? Knowing he’d go to jail for this, was bad, but the idea of the crazies getting him…

No. She wouldn’t consider it. Garrett was fine. In trouble, sure, but fine.

She tried to calm herself, which was no easy task with that psychotic asshole pounding the door and howling, and imagined the door at the other end of the tunnel opening, washing everything with light, Garrett stepping through, here to carry her off to safety. But first, for old times’ sake, she’d turn and put her hands on the rough wall, and he would lift her skirts, and this time they would both climax at the same time, regardless of rats and blubbering maniacs and everything else. But the door did not open. She was alone in the dark and the stink.

At last, the pounding stopped. She heard the sounds of struggle, a fight in the basement beyond the door. She heard screaming, and then the door shivered beneath renewed pounding, and she knew that there were two people now, the fat kid and someone else, one of them slamming the other against the metal door over and over until at last the pounding stopped and all was quiet.

She sighed with relief.

Soon after, however, she wished the pounding would start again. It had been so loud that it had masked the other sounds she now heard, the tunnel sounds: dripping water and squeaking. Lots of squeaking.

Rats.

Squeaking came from all directions. She gasped and backed against the wall, her skin seeming to squirm over her arms and legs and back. Oh, how she hated rats, their pink, scrabbling feet and long, hairless tails. Dumpster diners. The bubonic plague. New York babies, dead in the crib, faces chewed to bloody bone.

Stop! Get control. They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.

That’s what Garrett had told her, but she hadn’t been so sure then, and she certainly wasn’t sure now. She was plenty scared of them, and that squeaking didn’t sound like they were scared of her. Was it getting louder? Closer?

Definitely.

This time, she didn’t have Garrett with her, didn’t even have a flashlight. All she had was her lighter. That was it, her only shot at scaring them off.

As she searched, something brushed her leg. A rat! A rat had touched her!

"Stay away from me!"

Shouting was stupid. It could draw the attention of the crazies. She knew this yet she could not abide by it, could not keep from screaming even louder when fur again brushed her bare ankle. Spitting curses, she dug in her purse until her hand closed around the lighter. This would work. All animals feared fire.

She pushed the fuel feed lever to full and a nearby rat squealed long and strange, sending gooseflesh over her entire body. She thumbed the igniter, and flame illuminated the tunnel around her, the asbestos pipes just inches away, the crumbling stucco of the far wall cracking away in places to reveal old brick, everything washed in flickering shadow, and, of course, the dozens and dozens of rats scampering toward her along the pipes and the walls and the floor…

Jessie dropped the lighter and screamed, screamed louder than she’d ever screamed before, so loud that the scream became a light inside her head, a light a thousand times brighter than the lighter she’d dropped to the carpet of rats starting now to climb her dress, her legs…

Green. The rats are green, too.

In her brief glimpse, she’d seen them clearly, seen them leering at her. Who knew rats could grin? She had seen the green slime oozing like venom from their fangs.

It was something she couldn’t understand and never would. When they started biting her, she lost all thought, reduced as she was to her pain and her screams and the bright, bright light within her skull, while somewhere a million miles away on the campus above ground, more rats snuffled through dumpsters, feeding as they always had and always would, on the castoff lunches and dinners of university students, including tonight’s special cuisine and the secret ingredient Jessie herself had added.