This fan-fiction is based on the 2007 movie I Am Legend, starring Will Smith, which is based on the 1954 novel by Richard Matheson. This story and all characters in this chapter are my own, with the exception of any mentions of Robert Neville or Alice Krippin. Any quoted works in this fan-fiction not cited within the body of the text are cited at the end of the chapter in which they appear.
"Even though I was their captive, the Indians allowed me quite a bit of freedom. I could walk freely, make my own meals, and even hurl large rocks at their heads. It was only later that I discovered that they were not Indians at all but only dirty-clothes hampers." — Jack Handy
Tunnels
There were certain things Jeremy had never much cared for. Creepy basements were definitely on that list, and to be honest he'd never even liked venturing into his own to maintain the generator. But then again, these days, you did what you must. And in a search for a missing child, there really wasn't a choice.
He paused midway down the steps. Spiders were another thing he didn't like, not that he felt a compulsion to kill every one of them, especially if they were minding their own business, but in the dark where they might dangle down onto your neck, no thank you. He brushed a cobweb from the corner of the trap door opening and slowly trailed his fingers around the rim of the square opening he had just come through.
From this angle he could see there was a spring mechanism for releasing the trap door lid. On closer examination, he decided that if the catch had been fully engaged he would never have been able to lift the lid from above, unless there was another way to release the catch from the janitor's closet. That was a possibility. Or maybe he'd just gotten lucky.
His fingers touched something else connected to the release mechanism, a slender cable running from the catch, along the bottom of the floor joists and then to a pulley. From there, he could just make it out in the low light, it went off to the side, out of his field of vision. Someone could release the catch by yanking on the cable, thus…opening the lid. Afterward, the lid could be reclosed by further pulling on the cable.
Jeremy thought about it before proceeding. If someone were to close the lid on him, he should be able to reopen it simply enough. He nodded and continued down the stairs. It was good to be careful, although the delays were bothering him. Victoria was down here somewhere, and who knew what those kidnappers were capable of, or what they wanted? On the other hand, he couldn't do her any good if he got trapped. So the extra care was necessary.
His mind swam as he reached the bottom of the steps. Right, Jeremy, keep telling yourself that: Be Careful. But, face it, you're scared. Just when you ought to be busting in on those guys—bashing heads—instead you're sneaking around here, being 'careful.'
Okay. Of course I'm scared, I don't like basements. But Victoria…
His thoughts returned to the day he'd first found the little girl. It seemed like months ago already. It was hard to believe he'd known her only days. She'd been so brave, holding his hand as they descended the stairs to start the generator in his basement. A tear came to his eye and he inhaled quickly and wiped it away. She had trusted in him, in his protection. He couldn't let her down now.
Victoria, I'm coming.
He could see better now. A dim glow from around the corner provided just the right amount of luminescence for his eyes. That was good. At least some light was necessary to see—which was just one aspect of this disease that had handicapped rather than improved him. Contrary to what he'd assumed before about the vampires, he now understood they could not see in complete darkness. It was just that their pupils no longer reacted to brightness.
Self consciously, he reached up and felt for the knob at the side of his goggles. Just checking. They were his personal mechanical advantage, something the others wouldn't have. Down here in vampire-land the goggles would not be much use, but somehow it was comforting to know they were there just in case. Kind of like a security blanket.
Squinting ahead he could see he was in a narrow passageway. Light filtered through slots cut into an iron wall to his right. On the left, the wall was solid, made of concrete. He glanced back at the stairway as he stepped away from it. There was a small pocket off to the side of the steps where a human sized form could potentially hide in the darkness. But there seemed to be nothing there right now.
Again looking forward, his eyes focused on another trap door. This one sat low on the wall facing the steps. It was fixed into a sliding track, and there was another cable attached to a catch at the top of it. This cable again led up to a pulley, then out to his right, through one of the slots cut in the iron wall the same way the first one did.
Jeremy walked up to the sliding door and looked it over. It was made of a heavy gauge iron, even stronger than the kind he and Jonathon had used in the past for their vampire cages. The thing probably weighed a hundred pounds. Could be a formidable shield, he thought, studying it, if there were any handles or some way to hold onto it.
Turning to his right and facing the iron wall where the light was coming from, he put his eyes up to a slot. Out there, rows of pipe and conduit of different sizes and colors lined the walls. So, this wasn't really a basement at all. He was standing in an entrance to a service tunnel beneath the factory. Gas lines, electric, even the water pipes ran through these tunnels to feed different areas of the building.
He knew it was common construction practice here in the city to use such tunnels, though most people never saw them or gave any thought to how the utilities arrived in these industrial places. There was almost more of New York below the surface than at street level, what with the subways, basements, and other service passages like this one. And as far as he knew, no survivor with his head still screwed onto his shoulders had ventured into a place like this since the plague began. It was vampire territory if he'd ever smelled it. The danger zone.
Quietly, he placed his hands through some of the slots in the iron wall and gave it a shake, just testing. Solid. What was not common construction practice, he thought, was making a barrier like this. It had apparently been put into place after the tunnel was made. But for what purpose?
As he felt around on the iron wall, his fingers rubbed over a vertical separation on its surface. He was touching a doorframe. The door itself, however, was locked solid from the outside.
He glanced back down at the sliding door. There was only one way to go if he wanted to continue—through there. He was going to have to lift the slider and see what was on the other side. And from the smell of things, he already had his answer.
Vampires… Oh Victoria.
Jeremy put one hand on the cable above him, just beyond where it came up and through the pulley. Sword readied in the other hand, he took a deep breath and began to pull down. The heavy door lifted slowly up its steel tracks and he began to hear the stirrings of beasts within, waking from their trances…
Daylight had been slowly fading outside, but in here, in an office, it was an eternal day. People used to work in offices all the time, under artificial light. Judy remembered. At the end of a day, someone would announce it was quitting time, and then they would just get up, turn off the magic lights and go home. It used to be simple like that, to control things. Most people took it all for granted back then. But not Judy. She had spent enough time in places with no electricity, even before the plague, to not be always grateful for a nearby light switch.
She looked at her watch and again felt the panic gnawing at her. They were running out of time. Luckily this place wasn't in downtown Manhattan. There, the skyscrapers themselves created dusk, blocked the sun, and enforced an earlier curfew for survivors than in areas where the horizon was lower. It would already be getting dangerous over there by now. But why was she thinking about Manhattan?
Focus, Judy.
She turned and paced back to the outer office, considering calling Jeremy again on the P.A. Her fingers touched the microphone lightly and hesitated. It was maddening not knowing where he had gone to beyond those doors, but so much time had passed…he could be anywhere by now.
And Victoria. Her only daughter was now in the hands of men infected with a poison…of the mind. Once, she had believed she held a basic understanding of that poison; now her whole grasp on the Krippin virus was crumbling. At this point it mattered very little. Her fingers dropped away from the microphone. Even if the vampires were now revealing more intelligence than she'd ever expected of them, they were still infected with evil. And they had still taken her little girl.
Judy ran back into the monitor room and knelt in the corner next to the trapdoor. Somehow the vampires had gained access to this room before she and Jeremy ever entered, but Jeremy had not been able to tell it from the smell on the door outside. That meant…what? The solution was suddenly plain. The vampire that attacked them had not entered through the office door. She stared at the flat square cut into the tile floor. The monster had come from below.
Digging fingernails into the groove around the square of the trapdoor, she tried to get under it to pry up, but it seemed to be locked. There was no handle on the door itself. Judy sat back on her calves and tried to clear her mind. Again the scene from the security monitor with Victoria being roughly tossed onto the cart came to her. She closed her eyelids tight, and next thing she knew, words were pouring from her lips as natural as breathing.
"Lord Jesus, help me…"
Jeremy waited outside the open trap door for a snarling vampire to come through to get him. Maybe he could drop the gate on a head if necessary. But so far there were only excited scraping and shuffling noises from the other side, as if the creatures in the darkness beyond were waiting for an expected treat. He bent down and tried to see through, but his hand on the cable above him prevented a good angle for viewing.
There was only one way to go. Taking another deep breath, he released the cable and quickly stepped forward to catch the door with his knee. Now, pressing against it he was able to get one hand under the bottom edge and lift it up. Vampires began screaming in expectation on the other side, shaking and rattling things, but so far nothing attacked his exposed fingers or legs.
Jeremy dropped his weight, rotating under the palm of his hand which still held the gate. The move brought him smoothly around and through the opening, sword first. He stopped cold and stared at the view before him.
The lighting on this side was about the same intensity as the other, and he could dimly make out the boxy shapes of eight narrow four-foot tall iron cages, evenly distributed along both walls. Nothing came racing toward him as he had expected. Instead, at the entrance of nearly every cage, the face of a human vampire appeared. Each one hunched at the mouth of its cage with translucent knuckles gripping bars. They drilled him with their enormous pupils and unblinking eyes. Jeremy stared back in astonishment. The monsters were captive! Someone had…put them here, had been using them for…attacking him.
One of the cages housed a non-human occupant. A hairless canine came to the entrance and peered through its bars at him. Dog and humans alike had now quieted down and were simply looking at him, saliva dripping from their panting tongues. The expression on each face seemed identical, but to Jeremy it was unreadable. Was it a hunger? Curiosity or fear?
Or maybe…they just want to be free, he thought. I know I would.
There was a narrow path between the cages and a door at the other end. That path was the only way forward, but if the door was locked when he got there… Jeremy felt the weight of the heavy gate on his shoulder and realized if he set it down now he might not be able to get his fingers under it again. And the catch on the outside would engage. He would be trapped in here.
There was a large bone lying nearby. Using the sword, he raked the bone to himself, then positioned it upright, allowing the gate to slide back down and rest on it. The bone made a cracking sound and flexed slightly under the weight, but looked like it would hold. Now if he had to make a run for it, he could simply kick the bone out of the way as he dove through.
He stood up and began walking slowly between the two rows of cages. The motion seemed to break the vampires from their spell. Out came the bony hands with their long, gnarled fingernails, reaching from either side; and all pandemonium broke loose as screams of hunger filled the room. Jeremy managed to keep himself just out of range from either side by staying to the centerline. Finally he was to the door. His fingers closed around its handle and tried to turn it. The latch didn't budge. He pressed harder. Nothing.
Great, its locked. Now what? It's creepy in here. Go back.
He turned to go the way he'd come but something caught his attention. He found himself gazing at the sliding trap doors on the front end of each iron cage. From every one, a single cable rose to the ceiling, through a pulley and again out through the iron wall. Someone outside the iron wall could open these cages and release vampires on him, one at a time, or all of them at once. Panic surged into his limbs and he instinctively raised his sword.
In perfect timing with his thoughts, something flashed across the lighted slots in the wall to his left. He swung to look. A shadow had appeared there, closing off several of the slots. Was someone out there? The vampires in the room could have alerted the entire underworld with their cries.
Just then, another dark form rose up the wall, blocking more of the slots. There were now two figures out there, looking in at him. Perspiration began steaming from Jeremy's neck. The scent of the onlookers' bodies drifted in to him. It was Victoria's kidnappers!
"Givvve her backkk! You hearrr me?" He stood erect and pointed the tip of his sword at them. He could poke it right through the slots in the iron, run them through their eyeballs before they had a chance to blink.
Neither form moved. They continued to stare.
He tilted his chin and shielded his eyes for a better view. In the darkness it was difficult to tell features, but he could just make out two sets of fully dilated pupils staring back at him. One of the forms turned to the other and made some kind of hand gesture, a downward jerking motion in the air. The second form turned to move in response to the command, and the terror of what they were planning hit Jeremy.
The cages! They were going to raise the gates on the cages!
He whirled into action now, faster than he had dared move in a long while. His own arms blurred in motion before his eyes, like the turning of fan blades, chopping at cables with the sword, severing them from their gates.
Quickly he moved down the line. Gates were beginning to lift off the floor but just as quickly Jeremy's sword struck against them. Broken cables whipped up and over his head, and on he went, ignoring the hooting of the caged vampires and staying clear of their reaching arms.
He was almost to the end of the row, staying just ahead of the gate pullers, but then one of the cables didn't quite break with his first swipe. Jeremy turned and hacked at it again. The gate fell onto the head of an infected male. It let out a cry and jerked itself back into the cage. But that extra second had put him behind. One of the cages opened far enough for the dog to slide through before Jeremy could get there.
The monster's inner organs shown through its hairless, transparent skin. Ribs heaving, the dog wasted no time with hesitation. It sprang at Jeremy's throat, a gurgling and growling bark emitting from its snapping teeth as it came through the air in slow motion toward him.
Jeremy felt himself rotating instinctively through the narrow path between the rows of cages, toward the animal before he realized what he was doing. The sword caught the beast vertically along its right shoulder, effectively altering its course in mid-flight and sending it hurtling past him as through the revolving spikes of a turnstile in the subway.
The dog struck the top of an iron cage and bounced off the concrete wall. Jeremy turned and glanced at his audience again outside the iron wall. The two forms were jumping up and down with excitement, watching the display. They were causing as much racket out there as the other vampires inside with him. Jeremy backed toward his escape route as the dog scrambled to its feet and came at him again.
It was enough. Jeremy saw the outstretched arms from the cages and knew there was only one way this ended if he allowed the battle to continue, and that was badly for him. Taking a step forward again to meet his airborne assailant, he drove the hilt of the sword into side of the animal's skull, somehow managing to turn himself out of the way by revolving around the dog as before.
This time the beast bounced into the waiting talons of an infected human. Jeremy stood aghast at the scene that followed, hardly believing his own eyes at how quickly the dog was then dispatched by the raking fingernails. As if through a meat grinder the beast entered, piece by piece, past the bars and into the belly of the iron cage. Into the gnashing teeth of the human beast within.
The excitement in the small room was now nearly deafening. Jeremy swung around and looked back up at the kidnappers. They were silent again, not moving. Both of their heads then turned slightly to their left and something like an electric spark touched Jeremy's mind. They were looking at the bone he had lodged under the heavy trap door!
One of the vampires outside the wall began moving swiftly alongside the slots. And suddenly Jeremy was in motion, too, heading for his escape hatch. He began his dive just as the sound of the outer iron door, its heavy hinges creaking open, met his ears.
A thin, slimy hand entered toward the bone, inches away from grabbing it before Jeremy was also there, sliding through the opening. He met the wrist with his own fingers splayed wide, slapping down around it and jerking it away from touching the bone.
The kidnapper yelped and tried to pull back, but Jeremy was now completely through the opening and on his feet again, still holding the man's wrist. He followed the momentum of the skinny arm back through the doorway and out beyond the iron barrier wall into the main service tunnel.
He was now free in the tunnel, but not yet safe. Jeremy began twisting the vampire's arm, pulling the monster down to the ground. He had switched his sword into his left hand and now ducked his entire body under the skinny one's armpit and used the hilt of the sword to drive into the man's shoulder blades. They landed together with Jeremy's knee in his opponent's spine and the infected man's chest thumping on the hard floor beneath them. There was a satisfying oomph as they hit the concrete floor of the tunnel.
The second kidnapper was jumping up and down through all of this, still positioned in front of the iron wall, and Jeremy glanced up at it. He could now see that the kidnappers had been standing on a low bench for better viewing of the cage room where he had just defeated the canine.
Seeing Jeremy on top of its fallen comrade, the second kidnapper stopped jumping. Their eyes met for a second and Jeremy noticed the ragged green army jacket for the first time. The infected man turned and fled down the service tunnel.
Jeremy thought about chasing immediately. But, what to do with the one beneath him? The creature was already beginning to struggle against the joint lock he had it in, somehow ignoring the pain. Jeremy stood up, wrenching on the arm still twisted behind the vampire's back. With the hilt of his sword flat in the palm of his other hand he grasped his opponent's left shoulder and lifted the monster to its feet. Together, they marched back through the iron doorframe. Jeremy bent down and slung the monster through the sliding trap door, then kicked away the bone. The heavy slider came down with a sshhhlock! and Jeremy had to check to make sure neither of them had lost a toe or other appendage in the affair. That thing could make an excellent guilotine. Nope, it was all good. They were both safe on their respective sides of the cage room.
One down, two to go…
Jeremy came out the door, latching it behind him, just in case. Then he too was running down the tunnel, nose to the air, following the direction Green Jacket had taken. If he was right about his bearings down here, the tunnel led in the direction of the inner office. Which was where he had left Judy…
