Free A Necessary Kill by James P. Sumner Page B

which is dimly lit by fading lights affixed to the walls on either side. The ground is plain concrete with patches of water all around. Overhead, exposed piping wrapped in silver duct tape runs along the ceiling.
    The corridor is narrow, and after a few hundred yards a metal staircase descends into more darkness.
    “Well, this isn’t creepy at all…”
    She ignores me and makes her way down. After a few steps, lights flicker into life above us.
    “You happy now?” she calls back over her shoulder.
    “I am, thanks.”
    We reach the bottom and follow the corridor around. It opens into another hub of sorts, a central space with corridors stretching out on every compass point, presumably running underneath the entire building.
    It’s damp and dark and the air is stale.
    “Which way?” I ask her.
    “I don’t know,” she replies abruptly. “You’ve been down here as many times as I have.”
    “Okay, let’s think about this and—”
    “You two alright?”
    The voice startles us and we jump, spinning around to find the source of the question. Over in the doorway of a small room is a man wearing maintenance coveralls and a baseball cap. He’s skinny, probably late fifties, with a thick, gray beard.
    “Who are you?” I ask urgently, taking a step toward him.
    He holds his hands up defensively. “Hey, I’m just the janitor. I didn’t do nothing.” His voice is raspy and his hands are trembling.
    Ruby moves in front of me. “We need to get out of here. The inmates are loose and running riot upstairs. Is there another way out of the building down here?”
    He thinks for a minute as he looks both of us up and down. “Sure, there’s the back door I use.” He nods over to his right, down the corridor opposite us.
    “That’s great!”
    She takes a step toward it, but I grab her arm to stop her. “Hang on—if it’s a main door, it’ll be covered by the Fed—” I look at the janitor. “…The other guys. Any other ways?”
    He shakes his head. “No… well, except…”
    I raise an eyebrow. “Except? We like except … Except what?”
    “There’s a service tunnel contractors use when they clean the sewers.” He points down the next corridor directly ahead of him. “There’s an access point that leads into the main sewer network beneath the city. It runs for miles.”
    “Sounds perfect, thanks. And if anyone comes down here asking, you didn’t see us, okay?”
    The guy shrugs. “I don’t see nothing. I’m just the janitor.”
    “Good man.”
    I jog over to the corridor. Lights flicker on as I approach. It’s short and a dead end. On the left is a small room containing cleaning supplies with the door open. Against the wall at the end is a large machine for buffing the floor tiles.
    In one wall is a hatch. I move over to it and spin the circular handle in the middle, unlocking it. I pull it open to reveal a tunnel, maybe three feet high and the same across.
    Oh.
    “No way,” says Ruby next to me. She leans forward and sniffs. “I’m not going in there—the place stinks!”
    “Oh, well, that’s fair enough. Tell you what, you head back upstairs and distract the crazy people until the FBI arrives so I can get out of here…”
    She flips me the middle finger but says nothing.
    “Look, I don’t really want to crawl on my hands and knees through shit, either, but it’s that or leave in the back of a van surrounded by two SWAT teams. It’s your call, sweetheart, but I know what’s getting my vote.”
    She briefly looks down at herself. “I’m wearing nothing but this dress…”
    I shrug. “So you’ll have less laundry to do afterward—bonus. You wanna go first?”
    She shakes her head and sighs heavily, then steps aside gesturing to the entrance. “Age before beauty.”
    I roll my eyes. “Whatever.”
    I climb inside. I’m struggling to fit comfortably, even on all fours. It’s as if the tunnel itself is smaller than the entrance. And, it really does stink in here! The sides are