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Ian swung a long flashlight in his right hand, his left fingers feeling across the sewer walls with its thick, gelatinous substance lining the bricks. Vanessa darted her eyes all around, thinking twice about her decision to help, with Liam behind her, hiding, jumping at every little mouse squeaking or the water that gushed out near their right hand side. Moira was just behind Ian, watching as the sewer walls blended into each other, obscuring where they were; where they had been. The trio voiced their concern, but Ian only continued with, “Just a little further in.... A little further.”
_____Rufus felt overwhelmed, afraid of what was happening to his master, concerned, but knowing it useless to stop him. Useless to tell him he had brought them all into danger. But then he could smell it — blood. A lot of it. Rufus abandoned them and hurried quickly into the surrounding darkness of the sewers. Ian yelled and ran to catch up with him.
_____“Rufus? Where did you ... why did you —?”
_____“Snowy!”
_____Rufus looked down at Snowy’s crumpled white form, its fur matted in blood. Moira put a hand over her mouth while Vanessa hurried it into her arms, cradling the kitty carefully.
_____“Ew, do we have to bury the thing?” Liam said, plugging his nose. Moira threw a disgusted face at him, wanting to kick him into the gushing sewer waters.
_____“I’ll take her to the vet,” Vanessa said, nodding. “She’s all right ... I think. Just a scratch on her stomach, but the risk of infection is —”
_____“Go,” Ian commanded. “Take the flashlight with you.”
_____“Thanks.”
_____“What?!” Liam said, watching the flashlight swing to and fro with Vanessa’s exit. “That was our only light source, you fool! How are we suppose to find Sasha in this?!”
_____“We’ll be okay,” Ian nodded. “I can see a light up ahead. Plus, if we found Snowy, I know we’ll find Sasha soon.”
_____They continued to move forward until the walls pushed together, until the blackness of their sight confused them. Until they found the light Ian talked about — a burning lamp settling over a figure kneeling near it. Ian rushed over, intending to find Sasha there — crumpled on the ground, but whole and fine. Instead, he touched the figure’s shoulder and found another face — a face from old times. His skin had grown older, with his brown hair lined in gray thistles, fitted in a straight jacket. But the most disturbing about him was his wide euphoric grin, looking at Ian with dark, lined eyes.
_____“Big baby, Ian! Big baby, Ian!” he said excitedly. Ian jumped back into Moira, darting his eyes everywhere.
_____“Todd? But ... why are you here? I thought ... I thought you were locked up.... And what’s ... what is —”
_____Ian went up the lamp light, looking behind it, but found only a pit — a long dark pit of endless black. Ian moved toward it, on the edge of it, taking the lamp to peer into the pit to find something there…. Something moving in the sewer’s standing water; making long dark howls and cackling.
_____He felt his neck hairs stir when he heard it — that long piggy laugh. That same laugh that grabbed the small girl in his arms, throwing her into the pit; the same one he saw at the reclamation facility, now grabbing the lamp out of his hands to shine it onto his face.
_____“So kind of you to join us....”
_____Ian jumped back, nearly falling into the gushing sewer waters. Moira pulled him back into her and they looked at Jimmy with his dark glasses; a hunger in his beady eyes. Moira peered at him.
_____“Who are you? Where’s Sasha?”
_____Jimmy only smiled, searching the sewers in mock surprise and shrugged.
_____“She is part of us now....” he alluded, fixing Ian with a stare. Ian furrowed his brow.
_____“Who are you really? You were with me — with us —” He pointed to Todd who was swooning on the ground with the placement of the lamp light swirling in Jimmy’s hand. “Todd was the one who bullied you! But you pushed the girl in!”
_____“True,” Jimmy admitted. “And my bullying was well deserved. The townsfolk all knew I was different — no one ever made mention of my parents or where I lived, all assuming I had come from the forest … like a dog. But all my planning was for science, all for my predecessors....”
_____“You’re a lab tech?” Moira surmised, staring at his lab coat and ID badge. Ian shook his head.
_____“No ... a lab tech we know of ...” he said, with realization. “The ones who have died....”
_____“I am their son,” Jimmy answered, “or their father. Their uncle, their mother, a cousin —”
_____“You are a clone?” Ian answered with his last word echoing over the walls.
_____“Clone? I do not know what you mean by that.... I am one of many, or one of a few. I am a failed experiment.”
_____“So the lab techs didn’t even want ya, huh?” Liam said, with a shake of his head. “Must be pretty dense if they threw you out without even killing you. You must not have been worth it.”
_____“I am better than them!” Jimmy said with the lamp light throwing his angry face into its relief “I’ll show them! I’ll show them all!”
_____He snorted through his nostrils, with that same high piggy laugh echoing over the walls. Todd laughed with him, copying the same intensity, still continuing as Jimmy began his story.
_____“Remember the neighborhood kids? And how they thought the sewers were haunted? Well, they weren’t wrong — it was haunted: by me. By my family. I wasn’t forced here ... I goaded Todd into coming here, to have us all come here. To infect you all: to pass it on to your parents, to the whole town.... Instead, I only got the girl — a girl who became a martyr for science—”
_____“She fell down!” Todd said in a maniacal laughter. “Down, down, down! Into the pit! Screaming! Yelling! Begging! And then, nothing — silence! Monsters all around. Monsters dancing! Monsters singing: one of us, ONE OF US!”
_____“What did you do to Sasha?!” Ian bellowed, stepping forward into the shade of the lamp light. Jimmy was smiling that crooked smile.
_____“As I said, the girl — a martyr for the prelude to the G-Virus, you remember the infectious outbreak, don’t you? Well the main carrier of the virus was from us — from my family — the virus that would become a basis for creating a new kind of master race....”
_____In the darkness, lit only by the yellowing of the lamp light, threw the misshapen monster into its relief — a monster with one arm longer than the other, its skin a milky white, with bulbous veins scattered all over its body. Its lips protruded outward where its tusks curved, and heavy brow that shadowed large green eyes. Ian couldn’t believe it but he could see her — see the cropped hair on top, the red sarong ripped and torn along the bottom; a grotesque skirt on a monster.
_____“We synthesized the genetic code with the virus this time, hardly impossible to reverse the effect!”
_____“Ian?”
_____The monster stared at Ian, with its eyes a soft kind of warmth. Ian could feel himself shaking ... feel himself grow cold, feeling the walls close in around him....
_____“Sa — Sasha?”
_____“Ian!” she growled with a soft crooning sound to her voice. “I knew you would see me — see how ... how I..... Do I look, okay? To you, I mean.... I’m not a ... a....”
_____“Sasha, we’ll get you out of here — we’ll get you better,” Moira tried comforting her, looking uncertainly up at her massive face … her misshapen form.
_____“What kind of sick freak are you?!” Liam’s mouth dropped open, waving at her with both arms. “She’s disgusting!”
_____“Liam? Liam!” Sasha turned her huge bulbous face to Liam who shrunk back in horror. “Don’t you love every woman? You use to love me!”
_____Sasha cantered over to him, dragging her long arm in an arch and curled him to her, pulling him closer ... bringing him into a loving caress....
_____“Get off me, you sick monster!” Liam screamed, pushing against her massive skull, elbowing it and fighting against the arm entrapping him, squeezing out and slipping into the water below ... swimming away up the sewer's current.... Sasha looked at his exit with a mixture of surprise and sorrow. The beast inside Sasha erupted, howling over the brick walls of the sewer, echoing. The group covered their ears. Ian uncovered his face to see Sasha’s claws bearing down upon him, swiping at him. Blood gushed out and a small figure hit the walls with a sickening crunch; Rufus slumped on the ground with a large gouge on his stomach. Ian scrambled, picking up the crumpled body of his cat in his arms.
_____“Rufus? RUFUS!”
_____“I’m f-fine,” Rufus said, breathing hard with a forced smile. “It’s a scratch. Only a scratch —”
_____“Just stay here, Rufus, I’ll get you out — I’ll —”
_____Ian stopped, watching with concern, with horror, at the whites of Rufus's eyes as they turned crimson; his canines growing past the brim of his lip. Rufus struggled with a whining cry, kicking out of Ian’s clasp and flinging himself into the watery pit behind Jimmy; falling into endless blackness....
_____“RUFUS!” Ian yelled, stretching his hand out in vain. Jimmy was laughing and Ian jumped up and punched him. The lamp cracked into the wall and the oil dripped out of it. Ian’s arm was at Jimmy’s neck with his face rutted in disgust, looking at Jimmy's glass eye swiveled to one side.
_____“I’ll kill you! I’ll — I’ll —”
_____“Go ahead,” Jimmy said, tongue licking at the blood from his nose. “I would never die. My children are here to build on my legacy.... It’s all thanks to you, Ian. Thank you for leading me to the grave site where the other lab techs are buried. Without their DNA ... all would be lost....”
_____“Ian?”
_____Moira’s voice came from behind him, looking uncertainly ahead as the monsters crawled out of the pit; the babies of the creatures shadowing walls of black. Ian threw Jimmy into the pit, hearing his high euphoric voice of: “My family! My true family! My creations!” and heard a splash just as the lamp light went out. The darkness enfolded around them and Moira shivered into Ian’s side, feeling a spitting monster to her left as she swiped at it. Todd began laughing again, “Here they come! Here they all come! Dancing! Singing!” until a monster fell from the wall and sunk his teeth deep into Todd’s neck. Ian hesitated, but knew what to do.
_____“I’m sorry, Moira,” he said, wishing he meant it as he pushed her surprised face into the gushing waters below ... sinking into the abyss of the sewers. Ian plugged his nose and went in next, feeling weightless until his body collided with the water, moving with the current, sucking in that fierce cold tide of the sewers.... Down, down, down until he could no longer hear the long hot howls of the monsters.




When Ian woke up, he was lying down in the still cold waters of a huge pipe, a pipe that led out of a mountain, high above the Gaian islands. The sunset light was just hitting Gaia as massive clouds still hovered just over the mountain, waiting to cover the whole island tomorrow; waiting for a storm.
_____Ian heard a sputtering and found Moira coming up to surface, spitting out whatever water went through her nose and out of her mouth. She wiped away what little water she could and looked at Ian. She gazed back into the pipe, but her face mirrored that of someone lost for words, afraid of facing the monsters again. She staggered up to Ian’s back and rested on the wall, breathing in deeply.
_____“Liam was probably eaten by one of the monsters,” she said, in some form of comedic relief. “I don’t see him any —”
_____“I’m here!”
_____What little satisfaction showed on Moira’s face was quickly dashed with Liam as she surveyed his waterlogged clothes, his soiled hair over his eyes. She spit at his feet.
_____“Glad to know you’d abandon us at the first sign of trouble, Liam,” she said, massaging her head. Liam gaped at her.
_____“She was going to eat me!”
_____“She was just going to kiss you. Stop crying you big baby.”
_____There was a silence that followed this as Liam sat in the standing water of the sewer to empty out his shoes and Ian still at the mouth of a massive pipe, looking over the Gaian land with the sun setting far and wide across its great plains. The trees were a scattered color of indistinct greens, reds and yellows: the color of fall. But this Halloween wasn’t going to be filled with treats and candies and dress up. Not now that the sewers were the harbinger of war on Gaia.
_____“Ian, I’m sorry,” Moira finally spoke up, watching him with sadness. “I’m sorry about Sasha ... about Rufus ... about Gaia.... Everything....”
_____Ian looked at her with no expression, feeling that now, above all, wasn’t the time for apologies. Now was the time to fight the demons, to fight against the thing he tried to forget; something he could never forget. But this time he had something to fight for.
_____“Hey ...” Liam said, looking up tiredly at Ian, at Moira, and scratching his head. “So ... what happened to that cat? And Vanessa?”
_____The surprise hit Moira and Ian — at some point, all of Gaia would be infected again, not even knowing it; without any warning of a fight. They both looked out at the expansive Gaia, hearing it, that long steady howl of the monster as the sun sunk lower, breeding Gaia into an uncertain and terrible new underworld ... a new world they had unknowingly brought upon themselves.