The cover didn’t budge, so Grant pushed harder. He could only use one arm, having to keep the other hooked through a rung. Breathing heavily from the exertion, he shoved again, straining, and finally the metal disk shifted. Rust and dirt showered down from the rim. With a screech of iron against stone, he forced the hatch cover up several inches, held it there until he climbed another rung, then shouldered the heavy disk aside. Before he dragged himself up and out, he turned off the flashlight.
He found himself standing in the same alley he and Kane had climbed into years before. A draft carried the strong stench of rubbish and excrement. Looking up, he saw the sky was beginning to lighten with the approach of dawn.
“Tartarus at sunrise,” he whispered. “Somebody ought to sell tickets.”
Chapter Twenty
Grant kept to the side lanes, avoiding the main thoroughfare just in case Salvo had indeed ordered a Pit sweep. Even his ingenuity would fail if he were stopped and questioned by a Mag.
It was either too early or too late for most of the Pit dwellers to be up and about. Grant saw only one person, an ancient woman with skin blackened and seamed, eyes perpetually lowered so she wouldn’t have to see the Enclaves or the Administrative Monolith. She was pawing through a heap of stinking, fly-infested vegetable matter outside a food shop. Her voice was cracked but passable as she sang a snatch of an old song
“In a world of chaos, without plan,
came the mighty one-eyed man.
He’d been to places near and distant,
seen wonders thought nonexistent.
When Marie Mandeville spread her pain,
the one-eyed man turned it ’round again.”
Grant repressed a smile of amusement at how some folkways survived, along with the need to create heroes. And Ryan Cawdor, the one-eyed man, apparently was one of those who enduredin a time when survival was a heroic act.
He walked along a street that was little more than an alley of abandoned tar-paper shacks and shanties. Though he knew where he was going, he had to approach it by an unfamiliar route, and it cost him time. Dawn was breaking up the dark sky with scraps of yellow and orange when he sighted the corrugated metal warehouse.
It took him something over fifteen minutes to make a slow, careful circuit of the warehouse and the squat, low-roofed, windowless building attached to it. At the end of that time, he had satisfied himself there were no trip wires or vid cams or even a sentry. It was possible Teague had pulled up stakes and either ducked into a bolt-hole or struck out for the Outlands. Neither seemed likely, though it was common knowledge there were secret ways into and out of the villes, known to a select few Pit dwellers.
The only way into Teague’s home was through the warehouse. Grant walked briskly to the side door. Lifting it against its hinges by the shank of the handle, he turned the handle slowly, producing a single, almost inaudible squeak and faint metallic jingling. The door was held fast on the other side by a chain. Alert for any sounds from within, he leaned his entire weight against the door. The bracket holding the chain pulled out of the rotten frame. Wood creaked and tore, but the sound wasn’t loud, at least not loud enough to wake anyone from slumber.
As he stepped warily into the warehouse, Grant’s eyes swiftly took in the interior. There were boxes and crates stacked in helter-skelter fashion all over. The only attention to any kind of precision was a sprawling, tall pyramid of boxes, wooden pallets and square containers against the far wall.
The flagstone floor shone with moisture, and the bare ceiling rafters were festooned with cobwebs. The light illuminating the warehouse was daylightpale, dirty daylight peeping in through a high, grilled window.
Grant sniffed the air experimentally and smelled nothing but mold, mildew and urine. He waited for some sound, but there was none. All of his training and hard experience had instilled in him the ability to read the atmosphere of a place. There was no mistaking the aura of slaghole that hovered over the warehouse.