“Come on,” Ryan said to his friend as the two men raced hurriedly away. “I think we’ve done enough shopping on this trip.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Morgan had taken the group back into the catacombs that lined the far interiors of Freedom Mall, bringing them past unfinished walls and ancient pipes kept behind heavy wire fencing. The padlock holding a chain around the front of a solid sec door was unlocked with a key on a ring hanging from the former mall leader’s waist. He led the way down a flight of flimsy metal stairs, which vibrated from all of their combined weight.
At the bottom was a bank of equipment lockers with a padlock and chain identical to the one that had kept the door to the small chamber closed, a folding card table weighed down with a toolbox and some scattered papers and files, a relatively clean portable gasoline generator and a half-bubble-shaped hatch sticking up like a boil in the center of the floor.
“Open the floor hatch,” Morgan said as he pulled on the cord and caused the gen to chug into a steady heartbeat of sounds. “Probably take two of you. Damn thing sticks.”
Ryan and Jak turned the floor-level locking wheel, straining until it broke free with a wrenching of metal and allowed them to lift up the half-egg-shaped hatch. The second the seal between floor and hatch had been pried loose with a soft sucking sound, Jak went skittering back with a crazed look on his pale face.
“Gaia!” Krysty gasped, her green eyes popping open in shock.
“By the Three Kennedys!” Doc wheezed as he turned and staggered away from his earlier position of wanting to see what the opening of the hatch might unveil.
Mildred, who had autopsied the dead and cut into the living, involuntarily gagged.
Dean’s chest heaved as he struggled not to vomit. The boy was afraid to even try to speak until he regained control of his senses.
Only J.B. appeared not to have been struck totally by surprise over the odor that had been unleashed, and that was because of his long-practiced poker face. Behind the lenses of his glasses however, even his pale eyes were involuntarily watering.
“Fireblast, Morgan, what the hell is that smell?” Ryan asked, his own eye tearing as the ghastly odor wafted up.
“Human waste, I imagine,” the former leader of Freedom Mall said succinctly as he searched his ring for yet another key to unlock the equipment lockers. “Stinks, doesn’t it?”
“‘Stink’ is entirely too polite a word,” Doc quipped.
“You mean the way out of here is through the bastard sewer?” Ryan demanded.
Morgan shrugged. “What better place to have a secret tunnel?”
“Only secret is how something can stink so bad.”
Dean said, his voice pitched deeper since he was using a hand to pinch his nostrils closed.
“Waste has to go somewhere. We modified the original plumbing as best we could, but despite its immense size, Freedom was never designed for twenty-four-hour inhabitation,” Morgan explained as he inserted yet another key in hopes it would be the right one for the lockers’ padlock. “Bringing in fresh water and disposing of waste was starting to be a logistical nightmare for which I had no real solution. Guess I can thank the stickies for ridding me of the problem of having to deal with yet another crisis.”
“Smells like shit,” Jak said bluntly.
“That’s because it is shit,” Morgan said in reply as he finally found the right key, and the chain around the bank of lockers fell with a clank to the hard ground. “And piss. And gallons upon gallons of shower water, sink water, tub water, any liquid that goes down a drain. Been a while since I made the trip. All I can say is hold your nose and walk fast. You’ll get used to it.”
“How are we going to see?” Krysty asked as she bent and tried to see down the odorous crawlway.
“There’s some lighting courtesy of the generator,” Morgan replied, gesturing to the small engine that was chugging in place near the entrance down into the tunnel. “However, I would advise against lighting any matches or firing your weapons down there. It might ignite stray gases and toast all of your asses.”