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“Roger that,” he says, and he struts into the sanctuary, rifle on his shoulder, like he owns the place.
I begin my search for a stairway leading underground. According to Doc, there are not many places in New Orleans with basements because of the city’s high water table. But this old church is one. In its early days, priests and honored parishioners would have been buried beneath the building. It is this home of the dead for which I search.
It does not take me long. There is a hallway behind the lobby, and at the end is a heavy door leaning drunkenly on rusted hinges. At first, the door appears as though it hasn’t been used for a century, but there are footprints in the dust coating the floor. People have been through here recently.
As I pry it open, the door shrieks like a banshee. Beyond is a staircase made of modern plywood and rubber treads. In contrast, the curved stone wall hugging the stairs is original to the structure. After the screeching of the door, the silence of the pitch-black passage presses heavy on my ears. X-Ray saw three people down here. We assume they are prisoners, but they could be friends of Raptor’s. Listening for signs of trouble, I lower my night-vision goggles and begin the descent.
As green-tinted blackness swallows me, I reach out with my Gift to any animals down here.
I am a friend. I am looking for a big man brought here recently. A captive man. Can you help me?
Almost at once, I feel the presence of several small-minded creatures. Mice and rats. They hear me, but they do not see me yet. Their little hearts pound with fear as they huddle well away from where my boots will tread. They do not trust me.
I will not hurt you. I am a friend.
The critters do not communicate back, but I sense them thinking about the prisoners, as if they are registering the bare bones of my request. They understand I am talking about the people held captive down here, but they do not seem to understand more than that. Their little minds seem to be saying simply,There are prisoners here.
I’ve reached the bottom of the stairs, and down here, the floor is made of huge stone pavers. The ceiling is arched and so low I have to slouch so my helmet doesn’t scrape the stone bricks. The air is damp and cold, and the walls are wet. The musty scent of mildew makes me wrinkle my nose.
I have never seen catacombs outside of television shows, but I imagine they are stony alcoves lined with carved out shelves for coffins. I see nothing like that down here. It is just this long, stony passage that makes me feel like a sardine in a can.
If Jud is down here, he would have had to crawl. Or they would have had to drag him.
I try to communicate with the critters again.Show me the prisoners,I try, and I picture myself peering into an alcove at an imaginary prisoner.
A small squeak, almost too high-pitched to hear, has me turning my goggles downward. There along the edge of the passage is a single fat mouse.
“Hello, brave friend,” I say quietly. “Can you show me where the prisoners are?”
The mouse scurries away, but not to hide with his fearful companions. He’s racing down the passage. I hurry to follow, my boots scuffing over gritty stone.
At the end of the passage is a perpendicular chamber with a slightly higher ceiling. All around, caged alcoves line the walls. The catacombs.
The mouse zips to the left, and I follow. When he disappears through the bars of an alcove, I know I’ve found the first prisoner. Hunched on the floor with his head on his knees, the man shows no sign that he has noticed my entrance. Training my goggles on him, I can tell immediately that this is not Jud. The figure is only half Jud’s size. I look in the next cell and see a lanky man with scraggly hair lying prone in his own filth. This is not Jud, either. The next cell is empty, and the one after that contains a fat man in overalls. He smells of piss.
“Hey!” he shouts. “You’re not one of them! Let me outta here!”
Not Jud.
I don’t acknowledge him. If I do, I will feel sorry for him and want to free him, but I can’t do that. I am not Jud. I do not know if this person is good or bad. I could free him only to have him gum up our rescue or harm someone.
I’ve found the three men X-Ray spotted underground, and none of them are Jud. My heart sinks. I hope Scrap is having better luck disabling the security equipment upstairs.
Scrap
St. Patrick’s is a shithole.
I can tell it didn’t used to be. Overhead is an array of arched stone, like the ceilings you see in historic cathedrals, but on a smaller scale. The pews are made of solid, good-quality wood. The windows are stained glass. The floors are stone tile in what used to be a pearly white with black diamonds set in. I bet it looked real fancy in its heyday.
It’s not fancy anymore. Shep keeps the barn back home cleaner than this.
Dust coats everything in a thick layer of grime. Gangs have tagged every surface, including the pews and pillars. The few pieces of furniture original to the place are broken and knocked over. The stained glass is blacked out in places and covered in cardboard in others.
Lighting is provided by strings of bare-bulb lamps connected with power cables, like you see on a construction site. At the front of the sanctuary is the security hub, which is basically three folding tables covered in computer monitors and receivers. Wires like spaghetti make messy tails off the backs of the tables. It’s a rickety, disorganized mess.
If this is how they run things, it’s no wonder me and Shep took out five guards so easily.
I make a beeline for the hub…and the three dead bodies on the floor in front of it. One of the three managed to get his hands on a gun before we took him out, and another got off a call into his comm, but otherwise, their resistance was minimal. Amateur.
