they can drop trucks and where just a few years ago they lowered a mammoth tunnel boring machine, “The Mole”. That beast, a 450-ton driller, meant to do a lot of the dirty work of making the tunnels, work that once necessitated tons of dynamite and guys who knew how to make the right blasting plans so as not to bring half the city down on their heads. Dangerous work – one of the Sandhog mottos is “a man a mile”. Because for every mile of tunnel they dig, another man dies.
This way’s easier for Mook.
The way down the shaft: a blue cage. Meant to hold five men, but Sandhogs cram ten or twelve guys in there, easy. Still. Mookie steps in and it’s cramped. A feeling of claustrophobia tightens around him like a fist: part of it’s the cage, but part of it’s the fact that a whole city is above his head. Like he’s Atlas holding up the Earth on those big-ass shoulders. Once upon a time that feeling comforted him the same way that feeling a belly full of good food comforted him. But time hasn’t been kind to his nerves.
Mookie punches the button. The motor grinds. The cable thrums.
The cage drops.
A pair of wavy yellow cables snake along the wall. A big fan blows air. A pipe for concrete is bracketed against the wall – it’s a “slick line”, used to pump the wet mix over a thousand feet from the worksite above. Glimpses of civilization. Of human work and effort. The Sandhogs have claimed this part of the Underworld for mankind. The trappings of man are all here: a pickaxe in the stone with a hardhat on the handle’s end, a discarded and dented lunchbox, a crumpled-pack of cigarettes, a lone boot crusted and made heavy with dry cement.
So much cleaner than many of the low places he finds himself in. Rooms laden with glowing polyps. Black stalactites like swords dripping blood. Hell, a month ago he found an old subway train car down at in the Tangle when he was looking for a couple wayward Mole Men. The train sat on a soft sand island out in the middle of a steaming subterranean lake – it was the moans that drew him to it, the very human moans. Inside: bodies. Vagrants, by the look of them. Mostly dead but kept alive by the gobbo eggs in their mouths, under their armpits, between their legs. The moist places of the human form.
Mookie burned the whole car. Not much else to do. The eggs, bulbous and red, were ready to hatch. The guys were dead anyway, they just didn’t know it yet.
He wonders what normal people would think of the way the eggs popped and squealed, like bacon fat in an iron skillet. What face they’d make when they saw the bodies thrashing around, the little gobbo hatchlings born premature, splashing up against the sooty train windows before finally expiring in a red squeak down the hot glass.
People just don’t know.
Finally, Mookie gets to the start of the tunnel proper. A massive concrete tube. Lit up like it’s practically daylight down here. Floodlights eliminate darkness. Big fans blow cool, musty air. In the middle of the tunnel runs a set of tracks – the Sandhogs don’t use old-school mine carts anymore. They use powered ones. “Pigs.” That’s what they call them. As in, “Hop on, the pig’s about to leave.”
There’s a small three-man pig nearby, sitting away on an ancillary track. Mookie feels relieved. The powered mine carts don’t move fast, but they move a lot faster than walking. And it’ll save him a ten-mile walk to wherever Davey and his crew are working.
He hops in. Starts it up with a growl.
Doesn’t take long to ease it on the track–
Soon Mookie’s chugging along. Bright lights passing overhead.
Chug chug chug .
This tunnel, Mookie thinks, is the Sandhogs’ legacy.
They’ve been working on this for years. Hell, this tunnel’s where Mookie got his start, and really, that’s what he’s thinking about: how this could’ve been his legacy instead of what it is now. Ex-wife. Daughter who hates him. Breaking the heads of goblins and
This way’s easier for Mook.
The way down the shaft: a blue cage. Meant to hold five men, but Sandhogs cram ten or twelve guys in there, easy. Still. Mookie steps in and it’s cramped. A feeling of claustrophobia tightens around him like a fist: part of it’s the cage, but part of it’s the fact that a whole city is above his head. Like he’s Atlas holding up the Earth on those big-ass shoulders. Once upon a time that feeling comforted him the same way that feeling a belly full of good food comforted him. But time hasn’t been kind to his nerves.
Mookie punches the button. The motor grinds. The cable thrums.
The cage drops.
A pair of wavy yellow cables snake along the wall. A big fan blows air. A pipe for concrete is bracketed against the wall – it’s a “slick line”, used to pump the wet mix over a thousand feet from the worksite above. Glimpses of civilization. Of human work and effort. The Sandhogs have claimed this part of the Underworld for mankind. The trappings of man are all here: a pickaxe in the stone with a hardhat on the handle’s end, a discarded and dented lunchbox, a crumpled-pack of cigarettes, a lone boot crusted and made heavy with dry cement.
So much cleaner than many of the low places he finds himself in. Rooms laden with glowing polyps. Black stalactites like swords dripping blood. Hell, a month ago he found an old subway train car down at in the Tangle when he was looking for a couple wayward Mole Men. The train sat on a soft sand island out in the middle of a steaming subterranean lake – it was the moans that drew him to it, the very human moans. Inside: bodies. Vagrants, by the look of them. Mostly dead but kept alive by the gobbo eggs in their mouths, under their armpits, between their legs. The moist places of the human form.
Mookie burned the whole car. Not much else to do. The eggs, bulbous and red, were ready to hatch. The guys were dead anyway, they just didn’t know it yet.
He wonders what normal people would think of the way the eggs popped and squealed, like bacon fat in an iron skillet. What face they’d make when they saw the bodies thrashing around, the little gobbo hatchlings born premature, splashing up against the sooty train windows before finally expiring in a red squeak down the hot glass.
People just don’t know.
Finally, Mookie gets to the start of the tunnel proper. A massive concrete tube. Lit up like it’s practically daylight down here. Floodlights eliminate darkness. Big fans blow cool, musty air. In the middle of the tunnel runs a set of tracks – the Sandhogs don’t use old-school mine carts anymore. They use powered ones. “Pigs.” That’s what they call them. As in, “Hop on, the pig’s about to leave.”
There’s a small three-man pig nearby, sitting away on an ancillary track. Mookie feels relieved. The powered mine carts don’t move fast, but they move a lot faster than walking. And it’ll save him a ten-mile walk to wherever Davey and his crew are working.
He hops in. Starts it up with a growl.
Doesn’t take long to ease it on the track–
Soon Mookie’s chugging along. Bright lights passing overhead.
Chug chug chug .
This tunnel, Mookie thinks, is the Sandhogs’ legacy.
They’ve been working on this for years. Hell, this tunnel’s where Mookie got his start, and really, that’s what he’s thinking about: how this could’ve been his legacy instead of what it is now. Ex-wife. Daughter who hates him. Breaking the heads of goblins and
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