Underground Crisis

It was a Friday afternoon and Jose Ruiz was on his way home from work battling the normal NYC traffic in his outdated yet reliable Toyota pickup truck. Its summertime, hot, humid and unbearable. His air conditioning did not work. Irritability grows` as the stresses of his 9-5 job and the repetitive motions of life wear on him, but it was Friday. All the stresses and worries of bills, work, money, and family were seeming to be of least concern because he knew he was headed home to c***k open a cold one and let these common worries fade away until he starts this routine all over again. Jose worked building maintenance in one high profile New York City skyscraper. A job that he had been at for over 16 years which he took with great importance being that he had started out in this country as an immigrant that had to work twice as hard as the next guy to get where he is now. He had put himself through schooling for English and vocational training. He's a committed individual and he took his work and livelihood very seriously. Jose's 43 years old and a native of Puerto Rico. He walks tall and confident. When you look at him you can tell he hides most of his emotions and gives off a perception of being cool, calm and confident. His appearence is neat, clean shaving and a close skin fade haircut. He's young and healthy standing just under six feet tall with a slight beer belly. He moved his wife and 3 kids to NYC in hopes of a better life which he was able to give them. He's adapted to the culture and enjoys being apart of the tax-paying middle-class workforce. Friday afternoon's pork chops always hit the spot, wife's season put just the right amount of kick to the juicy chops. A full belly and a smie on his face he sits on the balcony of his urban Bronx apartment as he normally does and watching the sun go down. He is able to find peace in this despite all of the distractions and noises of the city playing in the background. While taking a sip of his frosty malt beverage he hears that dreaded noise that no one wants to hear after just getting home after a long work week, The work phone, It rings and all of the joy disappears as he knows the potential of having to return back to work. He was the only staff member on call to respond to building emergencies this weekend, that being the case he has to answer and respond to any issues, he has no choice. He answers the phone and one of the night guards frantically tells him “Jose! Jose!, I was doing my normal rounds and when I checked the lower level of the building you know the basement I saw water coming in from under the door and I could hear water flooding, I didn't thoroughly check because of the severity, but its flooding bad. I just called you right away”. Jose with an instant change of mood and tone of voice replies “I will be there as soon as I can”. He jumped up, put his boots on Kisses his wife on the cheek saying “We have an emergency at the building, there's a flood and I don't know when I will be home, but I'll Make sure i keep you updated”. Lisa, his wife, all to familiar with this situation replies "Okay, be safe honey, Love you, drive safe". "Will do Sweetie, love you too". He rushed to the building and arrived about 40 minutes later . He entered the building and walked past the guard desk only to find it was vacant. He takes the elevator to the basement level to figure out what is going on. When he arrives at the bottom floor he hears nothing, it is as silent as normal. There is a small amount of water on the floor like it was previously saturated. He smells a strong stench in the air. A mix of sewage water and a foul musk that he cannot describe. He is now feeling less urgency than when he arrived and now a strong feeling of interest and confusion has taken over. So he walks down the hall leading to where the main water valve room is to check what exactly is going on. When he opens the door the stench that he had previously smelled has taken over and it is so strong he can feel it burning in his nostrils. He grabs a rag lying on a nearby table to cover his mouth and nose to keep from vomiting due to the horrific stench traveling in the air. He looks to one corner of the room and sees one of the large drain pipes cracked in half with jagged edges as though something had been chipping away at the pipe to break it this way. One side of the pipe feeds down into the sewer leaving the building and the other side of the pipe drains from the building. The weird thing is that no water is draining out of the pipe. It is completely dry. Jose now more suspicious than ever grabs the flashlight from his hip and shines it inside of the broken pipe. When he does this he hears a loud screech and rat comes thrashing out of the pipe right towards his face. He was able to move away before getting attacked and before you know it there were half a dozen or more large rats on the floor of the room scurrying towards him. He noticed that the size of these rats was abnormally large. Jose has worked in the city for years and has had to deal with rats but never ones of this size. He was amazed and scared all at the same time. The rats were much more aggressive than normal and not afraid of humans. He could see the teeth gaping out of these rats' mouths and a snout that seemed to be the size of a small dog. With water now crashing on the ground from the recently clogged drain line, the rats were inching closer to his feet. He could hear screeches from this aggressive species of rodents as they rapidly inched closer and closer by the seconds. Jose realized his current situation and felt the urge to flee. Instead, he became enraged and was not going to let a rodent that he had dealt with in the past scare him away. He lunged to a nearby workbench and grabbed the largest object on the table. It was a large piece of copper pipe. He began to swat and stab these overgrown pests in a violent act. He could hear the bones crunching and the sound of flesh being torn into pieces as he performed this onslaught. With his heart pounding and sweat pouring off of his head from this adrenaline-driven attack he looked up to find all of the rats mutilated. He looked down and saw blood on his clothes and hands. It was all over the floor diluted with the sewage water still splashing out of the broken pipe. He tried to wipe his face and realized he was just smearing blood from one place to another. He had lost control of himself and he was now seeing the aftermath of this. Jose grabbed a rag and cleans off his face and hands. He turned off the main water supply to the building so he could repair the broken pipe. This was an easy repair as he grabbed a rubber coupling and reattached the two sections of the pipe. The repair was done and the water turned back on. He began to clean up the excessive mess of rat corpses and sewage which he had been standing in. Hours later after tons of vacuuming and mopping the mess was finally clean. After washing up and a set of new clothes which he had in his locker Jose was ready to head home and put this evening behind him. 2 Before leaving he felt the urge to check the room where the previous act of violence and mayhem just happened. He entered the room and walked around doing a quick scan hoping all is well before he left for the weekend. He could still smell the same horrible odor. It was much fainter this time so he didn't think anything of it. Probably just the residual from what had happened here earlier. All seemed well so he turned to leave feeling relieved and still shocked after going through such a weird act of killing, something he was not used too. With his hand on the doorknob, he hears a muffled cry coming from somewhere inside the room. He instantly feels chills all over his body. The rate of his heartbeat increased to a point that he had never felt before. Now he hears a second muffled cry. He doesn't know if his mind is playing tricks on him. He's thinking to himself maybe I have been awake for too long? this can't be real? Why is this happening to me? I should walk out of this door and leave this place that has given me feelings of terror and madness. Now he hears a third cry sounding louder than the rest and he sensed which direction it was coming from. There was a dark corner of the room slightly hidden by a large cabinet that seemed to be compiling miscellaneous parts and junk. He walked over to it and shined his light into the corner only to see a large square hole, the size of the hole looked like a small subway grate. He saw a steel grate which used to cover the hole mangled and ripped apart with sharp ends like barbs sticking out in each and every direction. He could not explain it to himself how this could get that way. He shined the light down the opening and he saw a man lying at the bottom of this opening. He is quickly confronted with fear but he pushes these feelings away as the eagerness to save this man overpowers any other feelings he is having. He yells down to the man and asks “are you okay?” He hears the man groaning in pain and hears him say “help me please, I'm injured” yelling this up with all of the strength he has left in his body. “Hold on, I'll be down as quickly as I can”. Jose, thinking the man will die soon, runs and grabs a first aid kit, rope, a bottle of water and a ten-foot ladder hoping the ladder will be tall enough to reach as it seemed to be at least a fifteen-foot drop to the bottom. Back 15 minutes later he ties one end of the rope to the top of the ladder, opens the feet of the ladder and starts lowering it down all while trying to shine his light in the area hoping not to hit the injured man. The ladder hits the bottom and it is standing upright. Jose thinks to himself “well at least something is going right”. He ties one end of the rope to the sturdiest thing he can find which is the largest pipe in the room. He threw the first aid kit down and put the bottle of water in his back pocket. Now sitting on the edge of the hole with his fit dangling down he realizes he is a ways from the top of the ladder. He turns his body and grips the edge of the opening with both hands and lowers himself down using all of his strength to keep from falling. With his arms almost fully extended he feels the top of the ladder at his feet. While grabbing the rope dangling beside him he regains his balance and starts moving down the ladder. The odor that he smelled before is stronger down here. The air feels heavy and stagnant. As he looks around the walls are made up of deteriorating bricks that once held the shape of a uniform pattern which now looked like compressed rows of teeth, jagged and holding no shape. The walls were concave forming a tunnel stretching far in either direction. The ground at his feet was like a mix of loose dirt and sand with mixed debris scattered throughout. He saw small animal tracks on the ground as he shined his light. Without getting lost in his surroundings he shakes the man lying on the ground. He wakes up out of unconsciousness. “Hey - Hey I'm still here”. He notices it was a security guard, possibly the one that called him earlier. He is a large black guy with a stocky build above six feet tall. The man was covered in dirt with blotches of blood all over. From the looks of it, a man this size could survive a fall from that height, but why all the blood Jose thought. What's your name Jose asks? “My name is Lamar, I talked to you earlier about the flood in the basement. I came down here to inspect while you were on your way and something blindsided me from the back, I tried to fight with my baton but it overpowered me. Once I was down here it attacked me head-on. It looked like a big dog but overgrown with rabies or just super angry. I fought for my life and this thing finally backed off”. “I have been falling in and out of consciousness due to the blood loss”. “Don't worry I'm gonna get you outta here. Just be still and try to calm down”. Jose started to assess what the damage was and saw that his leg had a huge gash running from the bottom of his calf up to the lower part of his thigh. It resembled a bite from a large animal like a bear or a large cat. He quickly grabs gauze and disinfectant and cleans the wound. Lamar screams out “OH GOD please stop” and once the wound is wrapped Jose notices cuts and gashes all over his body. He rips his shirt open and buttons go flying. Jose continues to clean and bandage the rest of the wounds working through the screams and moans this man is making. As he is doing this he is feeling a weird presence of something else close by. He continues to help this man but he feels something moving closer to him. He shines his light around and sees nothing. He looks back down and hears a loud screaming growl. After falling on his back from the horrific noise that caused him to nearly have a seizure, he sees what looks like overgrown wolves drooling pools of saliva sprinting in his direction crossing in and out of the beam of the flashlight. Lamar asks “what is it, OH God are they back? I don't wanna die. Now crying I DON'T WANNA DIE! Please help us get through this I can't die like this”. With no time to talk Jose looks around with his light bouncing from his shaking hand, he sees the baton that Lamar once used laying in the dirt. He runs to it, picks up the blood-soaked weapon and turns to run back across the tunnel and the beasts are right on top of Lamar sinking their teeth into his flesh with strings of saliva being flung in the air as the feeding frenzy starts. They had honed in on this man's blood like trained hunters. Over the growls and screams, Jose yells at them “STOP, LET HIM GO! LET HIM GO YOU SICK BEASTS!” holding back tears Jose jumps behind one of the devilish creatures swings and hits it as hard as he can in the head. This thing turned, thrashed its lion size claws across his chest and sent him flying back so far he felt like a boy in the presence of a man. As he looked up the eyes of terror were in his line of sight looking back at him. The beast opened his jaws to the size of a small alligator and snapped them shut with a force that radiated through his body. With adrenaline spewing from his pores, he got up and sprinted away from this horror down the tunnel knowing that he was the main course. He rubbed the burning sensation on his chest and pulled back a palm of warm blood feeling like hot oil in his hands. The screams faded and the growls ceased. Passing an alcove with a door he ducks in and tries to open it but it's locked. Kicking the door repeatedly, harder and harder with all his might the door finally swings open. 3 Sitting on the floor with his back against the door he knows he needs to try and clean his wound and stop the bleeding since the creatures that lurked outside seemed to hone in on blood like a starving man could smell a home-cooked meal from a mile away. He has nothing left from the first aid kit that he once used to aid Lamar, so he rips one sleeve completely off from the button-down shirt he is wearing and wraps it around his chest where the gash is. As his rapid heartbeat starts to ease and his hands stop shaking his mind still races rapidly with questions and thoughts. How could this happen to me? Why am I down here? Was I meant to find this? Lamar should have lived? I could have saved him? I am a coward, these were just dogs and this was all in my head. My imagination ballooned this into something that it wasn't. I need to get home to my family, they must be worried sick. They must have someone on the way to check on me? Sitting on some abandoned valve room floor bloodied and dirty he reaches in his pocket for his phone hoping it was not broken from the recent events and if it wasn't hopefully it still had some battery life. The phone had made it, it was intact. It's 4 o'clock in the morning. He dials his wife's number and the call doesn't go through arghh no signal! He silently screams in his head. Walking around the small enclosed room aimlessly with the phone in the air and eyes peeled hoping for that little x on the signal bars to go away, it never does. He sits back down defeated, he knows he needs to get back to the ladder. If someone is looking for him he needs to warn them of the horrors that lie within before it's too late. Bent down crouched over his knees with an ear pressed on the door he listens. Waiting for whatever was out there to pass or let silence prove that the coast was clear. At Least an hour later he still hears nothing sweat dripping off of his head and halfway asleep still pressed on the door he looks at his phone, still no signal but it's approaching 6 o'clock people will be at the building by now for the weekend shift. I can make it to the ladder, get out of here and get help. He opens the door slowly peeks his head out and looks both ways with his night vision more keen from hours underground. His senses are heightened to a level of extreme precaution after knowing the intensity and ferocity involved with a simple walk back to his point of entry. It was clear, no smells and no noise, he walked back the way he came sticking to the walls walking slowly and silent. As alert as he has ever been in his life and the smell of freedom from this place burning in his nostrils, he sees a faint glow of something up ahead. It's the ladder but there was no light seeping through from the opening above. His pace picks up quickly while trying to maintain stealthiness as he approaches the scene. He stumbles into the ladder and looks up to see that the opening has been covered and the rope is gone. Chills shot up his spine, his heart fluttered with fear what? how could this be? This isn't possible, I'm never gonna make it outta here. Who could do this? He quickly and angrily moves the ladder beneath the covered opening, climbs it and starts banging and screaming. “I'm trapped, someone help me, please? I'm down here, help me please someone? Anyone?” The opening seems like it had been covered with steel and screwed down. Jose couldn't believe it. He continued to bang and yell out of an act of desperation feeling beaten like he had fallen and couldn't get back up. With no concerns besides hoping he gets heard and can get out of this dark place. He starts to smell what is becoming that oh too familiar smell. He shines his light down the tunnel and sees what looks like a small pack of these creatures coming back to what is now starting to become their favorite feeding spot. He senses that this is the end and somewhat gives up sitting slouched on top of the ladder thinking to himself there is no way out of this now with nothing to distract these beasts I cannot get away. As what he thinks are his final thoughts zipping through his mind like a short film pondering his entire life, he hears a man's voice. “Hey, would you come on you're gonna get us both killed”. Squinting through the saturated dark he shines his light and sees a man sticking outside of what looks like a small hallway a couple of hundred feet away. The beasts were closing the gap to where the man was. “Are you just gonna look at me or do you actually wanna die?”. The man runs out into the middle of the tunnel firing a flare towards the direction of the pack sprinting towards them. They pause for a brief moment confused by what happened and before they could start sprinting again Jose perks up full of life as if he had been jolted with electricity. He yells “don't leave me I'm coming”. “Well, you better hurry” the man yells back. Jose races down the ladder which turns into a jump landing on his feet. He grabs the baton and first aid kit and runs towards the man. “Come on this way”. He finds himself in a small corridor following this man in a foot race against these much quicker k9 savages. He can hear them grunting and snarling like predators getting ready for the kill. Jose has confirmed that this was no allusion of his mind.This was real and his life is now in more danger than ever before. “ They are gaining on us” he yells frightened at the unknown tunnel dweller. “Don't worry we're almost there, we're gonna make it”. The walls suddenly disappeared and the corridor opened up into another tunnel system. They run across the tunnel the man yells “quickly get on the ladder”. It was a metal ladder fixed to the overly compressed bricks which made up the side of the tunnel. The man climbed first and Jose was right behind him. One foot over the other he was almost up and he felt a snap then hot rush of pain that started from his right calf and moved all the way up his body. “Give me your hand I can pull you up” Jose tries this and as the beast thrashes at his leg back and forth in a killing motion Jose takes the baton and shoves it in the jaw opening that he can see as his leg is bitten. He shoves it down into this animal's throat and he hears the first sound that lets him know they are not demons, they feel pain. The animal squeals and falls from the grip of Jose's leg and hits the dirt getting up and jumping right back at Jose. Before it could get another taste the man yanked him up onto the ledge. He heard the jaws snap shut right below his feet as he made it up. The man helped him to his feet and they moved further down the landing to what seemed to be the man's living quarters. 4 Jose wakes up in a daze with fuzzy thoughts of what happened. His head is pounding. He looks around at a dimly lit loft of a bachelor pad while laying on an old musty blanket with a rolled-up shirt for a pillow. Old milk crates for stools and counters. Random pieces of pallet wood fastened to make this environment somewhat cozy. Mini torches in old cans for light. A tiny fire pit bordered by old bricks and a large can for boiling water. This man has been self-sustaining in these tunnels of darkness. He sees the man standing above him moving about. “Hey, you're up. You've been asleep for a while. I didn't want to wake you. You seemed tired and crashed right after that close call we had back there”. Jose replies “who are you? “My name is Charlie, and you?” “I'm Jose”. “Well nice to meet you, man. I don't get much company, well no company to be exact. It's been a while since I've talked to anyone.” Jose feels his leg aching with a dull pain that has a needle-sharp bite at the end like taking a strong shot of an aged whiskey that has a certain bite at the end. Tape and gauze pads make a decent bandage to the leg wound. The same has been done for the claw marks across his chest. “Thanks for saving me back there”. Charlie replied “no sweat, I barely did any saving you handled that thing like you've had a run-in with them once or twice before. Then you slept like a teenager after partying all night”. “Well that's the second time I've had to fight one of those but it's the first time been bitten.” Charlie replies “I can tell, that wound on your chest wasn't looking too good but I think we got you squared away now”. Charlie hands him a cup of room temperature water in an old can that looks like it's been heated over and over. He takes a needed gulp than a few more. He notices a skewer of some type of small rodent stuck through from end to end roasting over the fire pit resembling a type of makeshift spit. The looks of the food do not leave him feeling excited about a meal but when the smokey hints reach his nose knots form in his belly and the skepticism leaves as quickly as it came. “Hey Charlie, do you mind if I have a taste of that?” “Sure thing man. It was just about to be done and I was gonna offer you some. It's not the finest meal but it gets the job done given the circumstances”. He grabs the skewer and gives it a series of long blows then grabs it by the head and slides it off the stick. Juices dripping on the dirty concrete and Jose’s mouth begins to water thinking, I don't think I've ever been this hungry. Charlie grabs a hind leg one by one, rips them from the midsection and hands the dripping thighs to Jose. In a series of quick bites struggling to breathe in between and the meat is gone. Charlie had just sat down to enjoy his portion. Jose catches a shimmering light illuminating the man as he sits at the other corner of the landing delicately enjoying every morsel of meat piece by piece. He is an older white man, mid to late forties but the cost of survival in this dark place shows on him. The pale skin on his face shows crevices of age and blue eyes peek through his dirty blonde hair draping over his face. He is covered in old sweaters and garments hanging from his body sewn together with mitch matched strings and twine to make an overcoat. The way one would do with trapping furs. Hiding underneath you can see an old navy blue button-down shirt resembling a uniform with matching navy blue pants discolored and the knee pads are worn out. Boots that have lived their life and then some. Jose, not wanting to pry at the man after just saving him and tending to his wounds and well being can't help himself but to ask him “ how'd you get down here?” “Probably the same way you did. I used to work for the transit authority. They sent us down to survey the old rail systems to assess conditions. It was me and my co-worker, Travis. We had been walking for 7 hours. Travis took a break while I was documenting one area of the tunnel. When I went back to the area that he was in he was gone. I saw traces of blood and followed it for at least a quarter-mile to a pack of hellhounds feeding on his corpse. One of them honed in on me and chased me. I was weaving in and