Vandermeer, Jeff - Veniss Underground by Vandermeer Jeff

Author:Vandermeer, Jeff [Jeff, Vandermeer,]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-02-18T22:00:00+00:00

SHADRACH DID not know which way would lead to Quin, but he felt a certain affinity for the water, and so he followed the shore in a direction he thought should be north. He was prepared, now that his objective was so close, to walk a thousand miles. He walked with his gun in his right hand, his badge in the left. He walked not like a fugitive or a thief, but like a man who belonged there and knew where he was going.

The image of Nicholas's shattered body lodged in his mind like a ghost, while around him the perpetual night disgorged its mysteries as a magician might, and just as suddenly returned those mysteries to the unknowable realm beyond the limits of his sight.

Slowly, he came to realize that if there were a Hell on Earth, it wasn't in the wastelands between cities, but here, on the city's thirtieth underground level. A thousand lost souls populated the land along the shore, condemned to wander until death. The first he encountered were like Nicholas, or close enough, that, used to compound eyes, flayed skin, the sight of internal organs bobbing like water canteens on the outside of the body, he simply ignored them where they sobbed and flapped in the shadows, seeking some release from their pain. Nicholas must have escaped from this limbo, happy to exchange it for the uncertainties of a garbage zone.

When the rasping cries and fetid, sickly-sweet stench were well behind him, he pulled John the Baptist from his pocket and lashed him to his left forearm with parachute string.

“You shall be my affliction, for all the world to see,” Shadrach said, and he looked at the meerkat with something close to affection. “How much longer do you have to live, Affliction?”

The meerkat sniffed the air. “Nine hours, perhaps. But you have brought me back to the place of my birth. I used to play along the shore. It gives me strength. That, and knowing your day is almost done.”

“This may be true, but maybe you'd help me just this once. Tell me how to find Quin.”

“No. But perhaps you should head for that glowing green light.”

Sure enough, directly ahead, through the darkness, an emerald point of light moved along the shoreline.

“What is it?” he asked.

“It's a light. I thought you liked the light.”

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