Or stalking something?

The thought came to Heather out of nowhere, and she tried to banish it.

They were approaching a crossroads where the passage they were following intersected with another. The dimly lit area ahead was empty, and she couldn't tell from which direction of the tunnel the footsteps were coming, but they were definitely getting closer. She was afraid that at any second whoever was approaching would appear around the corner, and then-

Keith's grip tightened on her arm, and when Heather turned to look at him, his eyes were boring straight into hers and his lips mouthed two words.

Two words that her rising panic made utterly incomprehensible until he spoke out loud a second later.

"Where's tha bottle?" Keith slurred. "Didn't lose it, didja?"

Then the words he'd mouthed came into perfect focus: Play drunk!

"Threw it away," Heather mumbled back. "Was empty anyway."

"Fuckin‘ bitch," Keith said, a little louder now, and moving unsteadily toward the cross tunnel that lay ahead. "Thought I tol' you not to drink it all."

Heather shuffled after him, her hair over her face.

A figure stepped out of the intersection then, turning to face them. Heather knew he wasn't one of the people who lived in the tunnels, for there was nothing about him that suggested that he was a drunk or a junkie, or any of the other down-on-their-luck people who had been exiled to the tunnels.

This man faced them with a demeanor of utter self-confidence and authority, an authority strengthened by the ugly rifle he cradled in his arms. Its hard metal surfaces gleamed even in the dim light of the overhead bulbs, and the magazine protruding from beneath its stock told Heather it was some kind of automatic. There was a telescopic sight mounted above the short barrel, and the ease with which the man held the gun told her he would have no trouble using it. He carried a small backpack and was clad entirely in black like a figure out of a movie. His face was so smudged with black makeup that his features were totally obscured. He seemed puzzled that he'd run into them.

"Hey!" Keith said, a goofy smile spreading across his features. "Got anything to drink?"

The man ignored the question. "What are you doing here?" he demanded, his voice every bit as imperious as his stance. "There's a hunt going on-you people are supposed to stay clear of this sector."

Keith raised his hands in mock horror. "Well, pardon me all ta hell. Nobody didn't tell us about no-" He wove slightly, leaning forward as if he couldn't quite make the man out. " Wha'd you say was goin‘ on?"

The man's expression darkened. "Never mind. Just get out of here." He jerked the muzzle of the rifle toward the far end of the passage they were in. "There's a shaft about three hundred yards farther along. It will take you up to the subway tunnel. After that, just find a station and get out." His lips twisted into an unpleasant smile. "And try not to get hit by a train-it messes up the tracks."

"Hey, anything you say," Keith slurred amiably. "Don't want no trouble…" He took Heather's arm and began steering her along, and she did her best to match his shambling stagger. "Jus' lookin‘ for a drink," he muttered as they started past the man. Then, just as he came abreast of the man, Keith appeared to stumble, bumping into him. The man, startled, instinctively pulled away, raising his gun as if to fend Keith off. In an instant, Keith's foot lashed out, his shoe catching the man in the dead center of his crotch.

Wracked by a spasm of agony so paralyzing that only a strangled sound escaped his throat, the man collapsed to the floor, his fingers reflexively tightening on the rifle as he went down. Even before he hit the ground, Keith had pulled his own gun from the waistband of his pants and lashed it across the man's temple. Shuddering, the man sprawled onto the floor. His whole body trembled for a second, then he lay still, blood oozing from the deep gash in his scalp.

Heather stared at the crumpled body in horror. "Is he… dead?"

"Doubt it," Keith muttered, already on his knees, rifling through the man's pockets. "He'll be asleep for a while though-it's not like in the movies, where they wake up two minutes later and start chasing people again." He took the man's wallet and put it in his own pocket, then pulled the backpack loose and handed it to Heather. Last of all, he took the man's braided nylon belt and used it to tie his wrists and ankles behind his back. "Just in case he wakes up," he said. Picking up the rifle, he stood and peered down both the intersecting corridors. There was nothing in the darkness, at least as far as he could see. He nodded in the direction in which the man had been moving. "Unless you've got a better idea, it seems like we ought to go wherever he was headed."

Heather gazed down at the unconscious man lying in the muck on the floor. "What if someone finds him?"

"Then they'll know it's not going to be quite as easy as they thought."

As he started down the passage, Heather fingered the backpack. "Shouldn't we see what's in here?"

"We will," Keith assured her. "But if any of this bastard's friends come along, I don't want to have to explain what I did." Turning away, he moved deeper into the tunnel, Heather following him.

The first rat had caught the scent of blood within a few seconds after Keith's gun had slashed through the fallen man's scalp, and by the time Keith and Heather had disappeared into the gloom, half a dozen of the creatures were slinking toward the unconscious body.

They approached it warily, knowing that this kind of animal could be dangerous, but as they crept closer and it failed to move, they became bolder.

Two of them slithered close enough to sniff at the blood, dipping their tongues into its warm saltiness.

Three more joined them.

Soon four more appeared out of the darkness, and another dropped down from a ledge where it had remained concealed from the moment the man had first arrived.

They began nibbling at the man's fingers first, and when he made no move to jerk away, moved quickly on to his arms and his face, his legs and his torso. Then, as the skin and flesh were torn away and the internal organs were exposed, the cockroaches and ants began to swarm out of the darkness to join in the feast.

By the time the man in the coal black clothes died, nearly a quarter of his body weight had been consumed by the voracious creatures of the darkness.

He was awake for the last few minutes of his ordeal.

Awake, but not screaming.

His vocal cords had already been eaten away.

"That man is going to die, isn't he?"

Heather and Keith had been moving swiftly since leaving the fallen man lying unconscious in the muck, both of them silently keeping track of the turns they took, counting their steps. Keith had come to a halt a moment ago, pausing just outside one of the pools of light cast by the widely spaced bulbs in the low ceiling of the utilities tunnel. His body had fairly quivered with tension as he held up a finger to keep Heather from speaking, and both of them had strained to hear, searching for any noise that might betray the presence of another human being.

All they had heard were the faint scraping sounds of rats creeping along the concrete.

Satisfied that they were at least temporarily alone in the tunnel, he moved closer to the light, and while Heather dropped down to rest on a large pipe, Keith rifled through the backpack the man had been carrying. Only when Heather asked her question did he look up.

"He might," he said. "He would have killed us. As soon as we were past him, he was going to shoot us."

Though she heard the words clearly, Heather's mind rejected what Keith Converse had said. Why would the man have killed them? He didn't know them, had no idea who they were.