Free Primeval (Werewolf Apocalypse Book 2) by William D. Carl Page A

answered, not slowing for a second. “Couple thousand maybe. I know of several hundred, myself.”
    “That many? I thought most of them were rounded up when Giuliani swept through and Disney-fied the streets. He said he cleaned out the homeless people.”
    “He’s a politician. He was saying what people want to hear. There will always be homeless people, and these people will always seek out the warmest place to stay.”
    “Doesn’t feel very warm to me,” John said as they reached a series of rungs built into the wall. “Feels downright damp, actually.”
    “It’ll get warmer as we go. You’ll see. All those steampipes and sewer grates. We go down here,” he said, descending the rungs in a spritely manner. John followed in a much more careful and vigilant manner.
    “During Reagan’s reign,” Michael continued, “a lot of the mentally ill were released into New York City when the state could no longer fund their welfare. They immediately took to the streets, but the smartest ones went below the streets. There were whole communities down here, people with places almost as nice as any apartment building. Since Giuliani’s time, however, there’ve been a bunch of sweeps through the tunnels. Policemen were sent to remove everyone, putting them back out on the streets again. Some lucky ones were put in shelters or halfway houses. The smart ones just dug in deeper.”
    They prowled down another corridor; this one had dark brick walls that sweated profusely. The air was warmer, however, and long pipes ran overhead, covered in spray-on asbestos. Long streams of what looked like mucus-covered flypaper hung from the pipes, and John had to duck his head to avoid bumping into the nasty things.
    “I call these things snot-cicles,” Michael said, shining his light upwards so John could see the thousands of dangling grotesque oddities. “I don’t know what’s in them, but they’re sticky as hell, so don’t touch any of them.”
    “I’ll try not to,” John replied, ducking his head even farther.
    They descended another set of rungs pounded into a wall. This time, the iron treads were loose, and brick dust clouded into John’s eyes as he followed Michael. The tunnel he found himself in was even wetter, with a small stream running down the middle. Plastic bags full of what looked like wet rags lined the sides of the hall. There were no lights spread out along the sides of the wall, or, if there were, they were permanently extinguished.
    “Hope you don’t mind getting your feet wet,” Michael said cheerfully. “The guy I’m looking for stays over here in one of these empty rooms.”
    He led John another hundred feet or so before stepping into a small cubbyhole that the reporter couldn’t graciously call a closet. There was a filthy single mattress along the far side of the wall, wet and stained with God knows what. A shopping cart was parked on the left side, overflowing with black trash bags and a broken tennis racket. A small bowl full of what looked like dog food lay at the far end of the cart. A huge rat was devouring the chunks of kibble, and it looked up at them, hissing. Its yellow eyes glowed under a protruding brow in the near-dark. It started for them, its two-foot-long body sliding along the wall.
    Without a word, Michael pulled the tennis racket out of the shopping cart and started whaling on the beast. It screeched, snapping its jaws, but the homeless man made a perfect swing into its skull, and it fell to the damp floor, its body shuddering for a moment before it died.
    “That bastard’s huge,” John said, pulling his camera from his pocket and snapping pictures of the deceased rat.
    “There are bigger ones down here,” Michael said nonchalantly.
    “Bigger than this monster? Jesus, how do you people live down here?”
    “Never said it was easy. You do what you have to do.”
    John was thinking, Monster rats. I don’t know how much longer I want to stay underground. I need a weapon, and I