Part Fourteen (II)
Gina looked up at the gloomy sky with some apprehension, feeling completely in agreement with Rhonda as the rat grumbled, “You had ta pick a rainy day for this!”
“The power-line access tunnel is very close to the surface, and all the gutters should divert rainwater to much lower levels,” Newsie argued, tugging up his rainboots; he hadn’t heeded Gina’s advice to purchase new ones a few months back, and these had an annoying tendency to slide down his shins. “Even if it actually rains, we should be fine.”
“This weather is messing with my perm already,” Rhonda complained, although none of them could even see said perm under the large, fashionable slouch hat she wore. Her London Frog coat looked slick enough to stop any water from drenching her. Newsie and Gina had matching russet trenchcoats and tall Wellington boots, and Gina had brought a mini umbrella and some other gear in a small backpack. Newsie fidgeted with his notepad and a pencil stub, checking his watch.
Gina asked, “Newsie, are you absolutely sure the ConEd guy is going to allow us down there? Isn’t this supposed to be restricted?”
“Their workers refuse to even go in this tunnel for routine inspections now,” Newsie said. “They’re more than happy to let us go check it out.”
“Wait…so we’re going to be alone down there? No guide?” Gina asked. She crossed her arms and frowned down at her investigative love. “First I’ve heard of that.”
“Er,” Newsie gulped.
Rhonda shook her head. “Look, here comes Tommy. Even he beat your contact here.”
“Uh…excuse me! Hello!” Newsie called out to a man in a white hardhat and a reflective vest as he wandered by, looking somewhat lost. “ConEd?”
“Yes,” the man answered gruffly, then stared at the Newsman and the odd crew with him. “Uh…you’re not…”
“The Newsman, KRAK. This is Rhonda Rat, my senior producer, my camerasloth Tony –“
“Tommy,” Rhonda muttered.
Before Newsie could introduce Gina, the bearded, dubiously-scowling man gave her a sharp look, clearly not pleased with her multiple earrings and fierce expression. “And what does this little girl do for you?”
Gina put one hand possessively on Newsie’s shoulder. “I’m his bodyguard for this expedition. Someone needs to make sure we’re safe, since I hear your company is too scared to send an actual guide with us!”
The worker laughed, though he didn’t sound amused. “Nice. Little bit of ‘Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ for ya there, shorty?”
“Are you gonna let us in or what? We need to see the place where your people supposedly saw things. Or would you like us to tell the public that ConEd doesn’t care about it’s own workers’ safety?” Rhonda growled.
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t get your whiskers in a snit. This way,” the worker snapped, and headed for a manhole in front of a long open display of exotic melons and pickled squid and other, less-recognizable Oriental items common to this busy Chinatown street.
Scowling deeply, Newsie muttered to Gina, “How did this jerk even know you have a tattoo like that?”
She stifled a laugh. “He doesn’t. Don’t worry about it.” She smiled at him, and ruffled his windblown hair. “And don’t let idiots get you down. For a Muppet, you’re actually kind of tall, you know.”
“Tall enough for you?” he mumbled, casting a discomfited glance at her as they crossed the street after the ConEd worker.
“Definitely. Among other things,” she whispered in reply, bending over so her lips brushed his ear; Newsie fought back a blush, pleased nonetheless.
When the four of them, in various stages of mood, reached the manhole, the worker wrested the cover off with a special crowbar and waited impatiently. “When you reach the bottom, turn left at the fork and go about three blocks south. That’s about where those guys said they saw an intruder.”
“Their report didn’t say intruder,” Newsie pointed out. “They claimed to have seen some thing moving in the tunnel. And numerous others have filed reports about hearing strange sounds down there!”
“Believe me, you guys weren’t my first choice to go clear out whatever bums are tryin’ to squat down there, but the cops seem to be too busy to bother with it,” the worker snorted. “If whoever’s down there is armed, I suggest you pack up your pretty little camera crew and get out…bodyguard and all.” He sneered at Gina.
Newsie wanted to kick the man’s knees, but he felt Gina’s light touch upon his shoulder and settled for his fiercest patented glower. Gina gave the man a thin smile. “I’m sure, in that case, the civil suit will find in our favor against the neglectful utilities company who failed to provide adequate security in their own access tunnel. I assume you’ll be leaving the manhole open?”
“No, but I’ll be here. Regulations.” The worker practically spat out the reply. “Ever since some idiot stole our barricades one time and some bohunk tourist fell in, we have to keep a man on watch whenever anyone’s underground. Just take your little expedition through there fast. Unlike what you’ve heard, I don’t actually love being paid to sit around and do nothing. So chop chop.”
“You’ve been such a gracious help,” Rhonda sniffed. “We’ll be sure to mention you by name, Mr Grubber.”
“That’s Gubler!” the worker barked.
Rhonda showed her teeth in a grin. “Whatever. Come on, who’s first?” When everyone looked at Rhonda, she stomped a tiny, rubber-booted foot. “Just because I am a rat does not mean I want the point position in the sewer!”
“I’ll…I’ll go,” Newsie said, swallowing down a sudden rush of anxiety.
“Right behind you, cutie,” Gina assured him, and Newsie gave her a grateful look. Slowly he descended the iron rungs anchored in the concrete, and reached the bottom much sooner than he’d expected; the tunnel was indeed no more than twelve feet below street level at its curved bottom, and so tight a fit overhead for Gina that she had to crouch. To their dismay, once they’d all reached the access tunnel, the light from above vanished with an ominous scraping of metal on stone. “He’d better be there when we’re ready to leave,” Gina muttered, pulling the hood of her coat over her head; the roof of the round tunnel was oppressively moist.
“I will hunt him down and bite him myself,” Rhonda promised, then elbowed past Gina to peer into the darkness beyond the small flashlight Newsie held. “Tommy, get up here, and turn on the camera light!”
With a little maneuvering they all grouped in a tight pack, Newsie in the lead; Tommy just behind with the camera perched on a shoulder, its bright light and fuzzy mike sticking out ahead of them; Gina only a step behind him, a flashlight in one hand and a heavy stick in the other; Rhonda darting among them to sniff at the walls, squint ahead, peer fearfully behind, and somehow avoid falling underfoot while she examined everything and tried to set up a good filming. “Okay…straight ahead…Goldie, do some narration here; tell us why we’re tromping through a dirty crowded tunnel just below the street; Tommy, mike and film live, please, and keep running it. We can edit later.”
Nonplussed, Newsie asked, “You’ve forgotten why we’re down here?”
“My brain is not yet Malt-o-Meal like our viewers’, thank you very much!”
“Oh,” Newsie gulped, tried to think past the adrenaline currently filling his veins, and stammered out an opening, though it was far less professional than the one he’d scripted last night. “Uh…We are here below the city, er, in a power-conduit used by workers for ConEd to inspect their tunnels…scratch that. We are here in a tunnel to check on the reports of monsters…no, wait. Uh…”
“You can voiceover later,” Rhonda sighed. “Geez, this place is so narrow and nasty I can’t imagine anyone willingly coming down here! Ya know, when you said tunnels, I assumed you meant something the average person could actually walk in?” She met Newsie’s stare, and indicated Gina with a toss of her head. “How do these workers even move around down here? This is ridiculous!”
“I doubt they come down here often. Probably only when something needs to be checked or repaired,” Newsie said, a little unnerved by the closeness of the walls. He’d never thought he was claustrophobic, but being in a tight spot was not the same as being in a tight spot where there might be monsters… “Er, which way do we go?”
“He said left at the…fork,” Gina said, blinking in surprise at the large chalk drawing of a dinner fork on the wall of a T-intersection in front of them.
“Right,” Rhonda agreed, turning to the left.
“Left,” Tommy objected, slowly trying to puzzle this out.
Rhonda groaned. “Oh no. We are not doing more than one bad joke in five minutes! Move it, genius. That way!” She pushed the sloth down the left-hand tunnel.
Newsie half-turned, shining his flashlight down the right-hand tunnel. “Uh…that way looks like it widens out more…”
Rhonda checked her GPS app; they were close enough to the surface that the signal came through, if not at full bars. “Well, lovely, but the location we want is this way. We can come back and take a look down there later. Come on, give us some commentary! Are you a journalist or what?”
At the moment, he felt less like a journalist than a reluctant spelunker in a possibly dangerous cave. However, he managed to put a few words together, and spoke them aloud for the camera: “Er…we are closing in on the area where two ConEd employees claim to have seen something unusual less than two weeks ago. It seems highly unlikely to this reporter that transients would be using this particular tunnel for shelter, given the close quarters and…and…wah-choo!” Irritated, Newsie yanked out a handkerchief and tended to his cold nose. “And general dampness and moldiness of the location right below Canal Street.”
Rhonda shook her head. “I think we’re moving under Mott right now, or under the sidewalk maybe. We’re heading south-southeast.” She prodded Newsie as they crept along. “Keep talking, sunshine.”
Gina gave Newsie’s shoulder a squeeze, and emboldened, he picked up his pace a bit. “Uh…you can see the power lines snaking along the sides of the tunnel here, with junctions feeding up to the buildings above us. Although we’re being careful not to touch anything, it seems as though it would be a serious deterrent for anyone even considering coming down here unescorted! So the question remains: if the sounds and glimpses of movement the workers have reported in this tunnel were not in fact simply homeless people looking for shelter, or urban explorers who took a wrong turn, then what exactly did the workers find?” He shivered, and tightened the russet-wool scarf around his neck, retucking the ends beneath his overcoat.
Rhonda’s phone beeped, and they all stopped, startled. “This is the spot,” Rhonda announced. “This is where they said they saw something…”
“And where their colleague said he last saw them before they were supposed to go up and go home for the day,” Newsie added anxiously. All of them looked around. The tunnel seemed exactly the same as it had for the last block: tight, low, depressingly clammy, and with endless insulated cables heading in several directions along the walls.
“I don’t see anywhere anyone could hide,” Gina observed.
“Not anyone person-sized,” Newsie muttered, checking up under the lines of cables and the dirt along the floor. Despite not being designed to carry water, clearly there was a leak somewhere, as patches of mud showed darker in their lights along the narrow path. “Maybe they were down here looking for the leak to begin with?”
“Water and electrical lines are definitely not a good idea,” Rhonda agreed grimly. “Come on, keep going. Let’s see if we can locate that mysterious blank spot.”
“Do you really think it’s a hidden room?” Gina asked. “It could just be a chunk of bedrock. That’s all over Manhattan; they had to dynamite out all the subway lines. Maybe it’s just an area no one could blast through.”
“Please don’t use that language,” Newsie begged her. “Crazy Harry has a strange way of knowing when someone does that!”
No one popped into the tunnel, and no wild laughter was heard. “Not this time,” Rhonda muttered, a little unnerved herself by the silence and close air. Slowly they proceeded along, until suddenly Gina stopped, put her nose next to the wall and sniffed. Everyone stared at her.
“Salt,” she said, and beckoned for Newsie’s more sensitive nose. “Isn’t that salt water?”
Small grey crystals festooned a crack in one wall. Newsie cautiously smelled them, and nodded. “Sea salt! But…we’re still blocks from the harbor…”
“I hear water,” Rhonda said, and they all listened. A faint sloshing sound could barely be heard on the other side of the salt-spattered wall.
“Newsie…this must be an inlet,” Gina suggested. “Maybe there are no tunnels in that blank area because the ocean comes up under the island there! That could be the Atlantic trying to…get through…”
As one, they all raised their eyes to the ceiling, where just below the apex of the tunnel, other small cracks dotted the concrete pipe. Many small cracks.
“’Kay. It’s a wrap,” Rhonda decided. “Let’s go. Who wants coffee?”
“Those are pretty,” Tommy murmured, filming closeups of the crystalline cracks. “Like, wow…if it’s sea salt, we should take some! It’s really good for your heart. Hey…maybe those guys were stealing salt? There could be a whole salt mafia down here!”
They all stared at him a moment. Rhonda shook her head. “Tommy, remind me to introduce you to Beau sometime. You’d get along great, assuming you could understand one another at all. I say mystery solved. The ConEd guys probably saw this and decided to get the heck outta Dodge before the whole tunnel caved in! Or maybe the company tried to silence them when they tried to blow the whistle!”
“That can’t be it,” Newsie argued. “What…what about the things that attacked my aunt? She’s still completely unresponsive! I saw those things go into the sewers, Rhonda! And there are more people missing than just these two workers! There has to be a connection!”
“Newsie,” Gina said, softly touching his shoulder, “Maybe…maybe Rhonda is right. That tunnel wall looks pretty bad, but there really doesn’t seem to be anything else down here. Maybe the missing people all had different reasons for going missing.”
Frustrated and dismayed, Newsie looked hard into her eyes; although she tried to appear sympathetic, he could read her skepticism plainly. “Don’t you believe me?”
“My love,” she sighed, “I believe you, and believe in you, with all my heart…but so far I’m just not seeing anything weird down here. Some definite public safety issues, yeah; but no creepy-crawlies.”
“Let’s check out the other end of the tunnel,” Newsie argued, setting his jaw, trying not to show how upset he was. “Maybe the monsters are…are using the salt water for something, and when the workers noticed the wall here, they were ambushed on their way back up!”
Everyone looked behind them, the tunnel dark the way they’d come. “Sheesh, Goldie,” Rhonda said, glaring at him. “Will you stop it with all this monster stuff? It’s starting to get to me! Come on, let’s get out of here. This wet air is gonna give me the plague or something!” Determinedly the rat did an about-face and tromped back along the tunnel.
The Newsman lingered at the salty wall, examining it closely for any sign of imminent collapse, but it seemed solid enough despite the cracks. I can’t believe Gina doesn’t agree with me! Doesn’t she think my news instinct is sharp enough? Does she really think I’d allow my opinions to color my view of the facts? People ARE missing and monsters ARE using the sewers and it all MUST be linked somehow! I don’t know what they’d need with salt water, but if this is the empty spot on the maps, there must be something…here… Startled, he straightened his shoulders, listening intently at the wall. Is that music? He looked up at Gina, who was watching him worriedly. “Do you hear music?”
Gina sighed, removed her hood and pushed her hair away from one ear to lean in and listen. “All I hear is sloshing. Newsie…”
“Never mind,” he snapped, and turned to follow Rhonda. Tommy realized everyone was leaving, and hurried to catch up. Hurried in a relative sense, that is.
Gina put her hand on Newsie’s shoulder; he repressed the angry impulse to shake it off. “Aloysius…I adore you and I believe you. If you say you heard music, you must’ve heard something…but it is pretty close to the surface. Maybe that was from a building above us.”
“Maybe,” he muttered, trudging along. “But it sounded…odd.”
“Odd how?”
“Like…” He paused, but couldn’t come up with a good description of that strange snippet of sound, all brass band and wild swoops and forced cheerfulness. “Like Sousa on steroids. I don’t know.”
Gina laughed, but Newsie wasn’t amused. “Okay, so maybe someone had their satellite radio on the Marching Band Station – all Sousa, all the time! Who knows?” She sighed, seeing he wasn’t happy at all. “Newsie, I’m sorry. Maybe you are right about monsters. But think logically: we haven’t seen any evidence –“
“Are you saying I’m not thinking clearly?” Newsie demanded, and the two of them stopped, staring unhappily at one another.
Rhonda picked that moment to come pushing past. “Hey, I just realized what great footage that wall will make! Come on, Goldie, give me some good hard investigative sound bite to go with that! Tommy, shake a paw, back this way!”
Newsie didn’t move. Rhonda, caught up in the exposé-of-public-works-neglect possibilities, didn’t notice, and Tommy shuffled after her. When they’d wandered far enough away for Rhonda’s voice to be distorted by the tunnel echoes, Gina knelt uncomfortably in the muck to look her Newsman in the face as an equal. “I’m saying, I don’t see any monsters, Aloysius. Do you?” Gina asked quietly.
He grimaced. “I know they’re down here. Gina…that smell is down here. That wet dirty fur smell.”
“Are you sure that’s not your cameraman?”
“I’m not joking!”
“I’m sorry,” Gina said. She gave him a long, concerned stare, and he had to look away finally. “I love you. I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m saying you need better evidence, if you want to convince the authorities something awful really is going on down here. You need proof, not just a smell or a sound.” She stroked his cheek; depressed though this whole conversation made him, he closed his eyes and savored the feel of her fingertips, just for a second. “I love you. I’ll help you look. But I need you to realize how it’s going to sound if you just—“
Newsie blinked back a tear of frustration, looked past her, and felt his heart stop:
The filthy, dripping, mildewy-furred thing with open fangs was an inch away from Gina, its ragged claws stretching toward her arm from behind.
He shrieked. Gina jumped, dropping her light. The monster leaped back a foot, then turned and raced away. Without thinking, Newsie tore after it, yelling angrily, “Come back here!”
It loped on six legs, moving astoundingly fast; he couldn’t tell how large or long it was, since its whole body contracted and expanded as it ran like some crazed giant caterpillar. Panting, Newsie chased it past the T-intersection into a tunnel which suddenly widened and then branched out in multiple directions; he was only just close enough behind the thing to see which opening it took, and pounded after it. Splashing muck made him wince and shake the dirty droplets from his face, his glasses spattered, the smell of it rank and rotting. Son of a --! Horrible dirty creeping – A few of the more unfriendly words he’d heard Gina use when annoyed at her theatre work sprang to mind. This thing was fast and unpredictable; he’d almost caught up to it when it suddenly whipped its body around a corner he hadn’t even seen until he was upon it, and he swore he glimpsed it running along the side of the tunnel like an insect before it went around a bend and out of the range of his flashlight. Newsie’s right foot slid, and he skidded down painfully, knocking a knee and an elbow. Gasping, dragging himself out of the sucking puddle, he lost a rainboot. D—it! That thing would escape! It would get so far ahead at this rate he’d be…lost…
The Newsman looked around himself in growing panic. He didn’t recognize this tunnel at all. There were no power lines along it that he could see, the roof seemed taller and had a greenish tint, the floor was…brick? Brick, under a layer of muck… With a start, Newsie realized he’d somehow taken a turn into a deeper tunnel. What the hey? If this isn’t a power-grid tunnel, where the heck am I?
Then he heard the noises…whispering, scraping, scuttling noises…
Newsie didn’t want to see what was making them. He turned and bolted, one boot gone, running as fast as he could and desperate to recall exactly what turns he’d made in this suddenly confusing warren of tunnels. The scraping sounded louder off to his left. “Gina!” he yelled, cursing himself; how could he have run so blindly down here? That thing had probably led him farther and farther into its lair! What an idiot he was! “Gina! Rhonda!” he cried, his voice hoarse, forced to stop and kick off his other boot when twice he nearly tripped and fell, unbalanced. The chill, wet tunnel floors soaked his socks immediately, but a cold was the least of his worries. That tunnel there, did I come that way? Was it a right or a left?Oh frog! I’m lost! I’m completely lost! I—
“Newsie!” a voice echoed, but he couldn’t tell from which direction.
“Monsters!” he yelled as loud as he could. “There are monsters!”
“Newsie?” The echoes bewildered him; he started down one turn, stopped, backtracked, listened. His hearing, though fairly good, was unable to pinpoint the origin of his beloved’s voice. Oh frog! What if they hear her? What if they go after her? What if this was all a trap to separate us? No! Gasping, he turned in the direction he thought he might have run, and increased his pace, still aware of the other noises. Impossible to tell which way those were either!
And then his flashlight blinked. He smacked the side of it, and it came back on. “No,” he moaned, hurrying on, “No, no, no, no, no…”
It went out. Repeated smacks of his palm did not revive the light. The battery was dead. Why hadn’t he bought a new one? Now he couldn’t see, he couldn’t rely on his hearing, those things could be right next to him for all he –
Smell. He could smell them. Pausing in terror, he took a deep whiff, and caught the scent of wet woolen socks too long unwashed…except he was certain socks couldn’t actually creep up right…on his…side…
With a cry of desperate anguish, Newsie swung the flashlight like a club, and staggered at the hard thunk it made against something’s chitinous body. Keeping tight hold of the dead light, he fled, running in complete darkness, one hand outstretched before him to try and avoid walls, the scent of horrible things bred in musty sewers trailing off behind him, fainter, thank frog fainter, and a small breeze brushed his cheek as he passed an intersection, and he caught a whiff of amber and spices, and he—
He stopped so fast he nearly cartwheeled over, one hand somehow finding the tunnel wall and scraping his felt along it to right himself. Gina! Sniffing wildly, he found the opening, climbed through it, felt the soft mud and narrow walls around him again. He was back in the ConEd tunnels. “Gina!” he called, and nearly burst into tears when he heard her yell his name back. Hurrying, stumbling, he followed his nose until he saw a bobbing flashlight up ahead, and as he came around a bend in the pipe he crashed into her. Her arms flew around him, he hugged her tight, the breath knocked momentarily from them both. “Gina…oh frog…”
“Where did you go? Why did you run off?” Gina asked, kissing him all over his face.
“M-monsters! I saw – I chased – was a trap! Monsters! We have to get out of here!” he gasped. Rhonda caught up to them, eyes wide, whiskers atwitch.
“Good grief! What the heck is going on?” the rat demanded.
“Get Tony. We have to leave. Now!” Newsie gulped, trying to get his voice back, breathless and shaking all over.
“Why? Is there a cave-in?” Rhonda looked along the intersection nervously. “Is the ocean about to come surfing all over us?”
“Monsters! I told you! They are down here! I saw them!” he insisted.
Gina looked past him, shining her powerful LED light, but saw only an empty tunnel. “You actually saw them? Where?”
“Back that way somewhere,” he wheezed. “One was…right at you…I…I chased it…was stupid…could’ve got me…I…ah…ah…ahhhchooo!”
“We’re leaving,” Gina growled. “Where’s your sloth? Let’s go.”
Relieved, Newsie clung to her, peering as hard as he could into the darkness past her light. They started back along the first access tunnel while Rhonda ran to urge Tommy to move faster toward the exit. “You…you believe me?” he asked, and then suffered a coughing fit.
“Let’s just get you out of here before you collapse,” Gina said, hauling him up and half-carrying him to the iron ladder. She yelled up the vertical shaft: “Hey! Open the manhole! We’re coming out!”
To everyone’s great relief, the worker was there, and opened the cover for them to all climb out, impatiently waiting four extra minutes for the sloth to emerge. While Tommy slowly attempted to cover the camera as a light rain drizzled down, the ConEd worker scowled at them. “Well? Find any tramps?”
“Six-legged ones!” Newsie snapped, then succumbed to a sneezing fit.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” the man demanded.
“Watch the news tonight,” Rhonda shot back. “Oh, and…you might want to get a raft next time you have to go down there. So long, Cap’n Crunchy.” She stalked off, following Gina and a very weak-legged Newsman. “Ha! I’ll bet the city will just love finding out part of the Lower East Side is on the verge of becoming beachfront property!”
“R-Rhonda, I s-saw monsters,” Newsie choked out, shivering as he tried to walk. “Well, okay, I saw one…but I h-heard lots of them. I smelled lots of them!”
“Uh huh,” Rhonda replied, shooting a questioning look at Gina. Gina gave a small shrug out of Newsie’s line of sight, and hailed a cab.
“I did! We – we have to go back there, but with m-more Muppets…and big sticks…really big sticks…” Newsie said, still holding tightly to Gina’s waist and unable to stop shivering, the cold muck coating his lower legs.
“Come on. We’re going home. You can tell me everything when you have a cup of broth in you,” Gina insisted, helping him into a cab. “See you, Rhonda. Bye, Tommy.”
“He better be able to make it in for the edit. I wanna run this footage tonight,” Rhonda grumbled, then looked up at the sloth still carefully putting a protective cloth over the already-wet lens. “Geez…give me that, and go get the van, Speedy Gonzalez! Honestly! You think we have the budget for a fourth replacement camera this year? Come on!” She sighed, threw her designer coat over the camera, and stood in mounting irritation while the sloth ambled off to remember where he’d parked. The rain was just enough of a shower to ruin her perm completely. “Monsters. I think somebody needs some meds, and to stay away from underground places…”
In the cab, the Newsman tried to relax, hugging Gina; she held him close, taking his glasses off to clean them. “You really had me worried! Why did you run like that?”
“I told you, I saw a monster! It was…it was trying to grab you,” Newsie gulped.
Gina hesitated, then said gently, “Newsie…no one else saw it. Are you absolutely sure? What did it look like?”
“Of course I’m sure!” he yelled. Gina winced. Hurt, he exclaimed, “You don’t believe me! You think I – I hallucinated it all! You think I panicked!”
“Newsie –“
“I don’t believe this! Gina! I am a rational Muppet, not some…some chicken who’d go running off at the word ‘fox’!” He glared at her, shaken and feeling betrayed.
Gina took a deep breath. “Aloysius, it’s not that I don’t believe you, it’s just that…that…” She paused, and stared at a large dark purplish glop on Newsie’s glasses.
“You don’t believe me! Gina, I know what I saw – I know what I smelled! There was a weird caterpillar thing, and it ran along the walls, and it…it…” He peered hard at her, realizing she wasn’t even looking at him. “Gina?”
Wordlessly, she held out the glasses to him. The Newsman took them, confused, bringing them close to his squinting eyes to see what had silenced her. With trembling fingers, he plucked off the piece of coarse fur stuck with mud to one lens, and held it up. The fur reminded them both of wooly caterpillars.
Newsie stared at Gina. Gina swallowed. “Okay,” she said softly.
Newsie leaned in for a hug. She held him tight in silence the rest of the way home.
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, they're climbing down the vertical water drain into the subterranean sewers. At least they have someone topside to lift up the manhole cover again. That, and the fact they weren't chased in there seeking safety from a large predatory pterodactylish bird like a young Mike. Although... Would Newsie be Ben and Gina be Beverly? Given the fact we now have Gina to consider as well makes this work.