Tunnels 01, Tunnels

tried to catch his breath. The pub owner emerged from the throng and nudged Heraldo Walsh's head with his boot. He didn't move.
    "Tam Macaulay!" the owner yelled out to the silent mob, which suddenly erupted with a roar that filled the cavern and must have rattled the windows on the other side of the Rookeries.
    Tam's shackle was removed, and his friends ran over to him and helped him to the bench, where he sat down heavily, feeling his jaw as the two boys took their places on either side of him.
    "Little runt was faster than I thought," he said, looking down at his bloodied knuckles as he flexed them painfully. He was handed a full tankard by someone who slapped him on the back and then disappeared into the tavern.
    "The Crawfly's disappointed," Jesse said as they all turned to see the Styx at the end of the street, his back to them as he stolled away, drumming a pair of peculiar eyeglasses on his thigh as he went.
    "But he got what he wanted," Tam said despondently. "The word will go around that I've been in another brawl."
    "Don't matter," Jesse Shingles said. "You were justified. Everyone knows it was Walsh who started it."
    Tam looked at the sorry, limp figure of Heraldo Walsh, left where he'd dropped. Not one of his cronies had come forward to move him off the street.
    "One thing's for sure -- he'll feel like a Coprolite's dinner when he wakes up," Imago chortled as a barman threw a bucket of water over the poleaxed figure and then returned inside the tavern, laughing as he went.
    Tam nodded thoughtfully and took a huge mouthful of his drink, wiping his bruised lips with his forearm.
    "That's if he wakes up at all," he said quietly.

     

25

    Rebecca's room was filled with the heavy rumble of Monday morning traffic, car horns hooting impatiently from the streets thirteen floors below. A slight breeze ruffled the curtains. She wrinkled her nose distastefully as she smelled the stale stench of cigarettes from Auntie Jean's nonstop smoking the night before. Although the door to her bedroom was firmly shut, the smoke nosed its way into every nook and cranny, like an insidious yellow fog searching out new corners to taint.
    She got up, slipped on her bathrobe, and made her bed as she trilled the first couple of lines of "You Are My Sunshine." Lapsing into vague la-las for the rest of the song, she carefully arranged a black dress and a white shirt on the top of the bedspread.
    She went over to the door and, placing her hand on the handle, stopped completely still, as if she had been struck by a thought. She turned slowly and retraced her steps to her bed. Her eyes alighted on the pair of little silver-framed photographs on the table beside it.
    Taking them in her hands she sat on her bed, looking between the two. In one, there was a slightly out-of-focus photograph showing Will leaning on a shovel. In the other, a youthful Dr. and Mrs. Burrows sat on stripy deck chairs on an unidentified beach. In the picture, Mrs. Burrows was staring at an enormous ice cream, while Dr. Burrows appeared to be trying to swat a fly with a blurred hand.
    They had all gone their separate ways -- the family had fallen apart. Did they seriously think she was going to stick around to babysit Auntie Jean, someone even more slothful and demanding than Mrs. Burrows?
    "No," Rebecca said aloud. "I'm done here." A thin smile flickered momentarily across her face. She glanced at the photographs one last time and then drew a long breath.
    "Props," she said, and threw them with such vehemence that they struck the discolored baseboard with a tinkle of breaking glass.
    Twenty minutes later she was dressed and ready to leave. She put her little suitcases next to the front door and went into the kitchen. In a drawer next to the sink was Auntie Jean's "cig stash." Rebecca tore open the ten or so packs of cigarettes and shook their contents into the sink. Then she started on Auntie Jean's bottles of cheap vodka. Rebecca twisted off the screw caps and poured them, all five bottles, into the sink, dousing the cigarettes.
    Finally she picked up the box of kitchen matches from beside the gas stove and slid it open. Taking out a single match, she struck it and set light to a crumpled-up sheet of newspaper.
    She stood well back and chucked the flaming ball into the sink. The cigarettes and alcohol went up with a satisfying whoosh , flames leaping out of the sink over the fake-chrome faucet and the chipped floral tiles behind them. Rebecca didn't stay to savor