Read Online Reliquary by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child - Free Book Online

place-name of Route 666 made sense. But the others confused him. “The Ho Chi Minh trail,” he echoed. “What’s that?”
    “A community, like the rest,” hissed the voice. “Joined now with mine, for protection. Once upon a time, we knew the trail well. Many of us here fought in that cynical struggle against an innocent backward nation. And were ostracized for it. Now we live our lives down here in self-imposed exile, breathing, mating, dying. Our greatest wish is to be left alone.”
    Smithback fingered the tape recorder again, hoping it was catching everything. He’d heard of the occasional vagrant retreating to subway tunnels for shelter, but an entire population ... “So all your citizens are homeless people?” he asked.
    There was a pause. “We do not like that word, scriblerian. We have a home, and were you not so timid, I could show it to you. We have everything we need. The pipes provide water for cooking and hygiene, the cables provide electricity. What few things we require from the surface, our runners supply. In the Blockhouse, we even have a nurse and a schoolteacher. Other underground spaces, like the West Side railyards, are untamed, dangerous. But here, we live in dignity.”
    “Schoolteacher? You mean there are children down here?”
    “You are naive. Many are here because they have children, and the evil state machine is trying to take them away and put them in foster care. They choose my world of warmth and darkness over your world of despair, scriblerian.”
    “Why do you keep calling me that?”
    The dry chuckle rose again from the hole in the cinder block. “That is you, is it not? William Smithback, scriblerian?”
    “Yes, but--”
    “For a journalist, you are ill read. Study Pope’s The Dunciad before we speak again.”
    It began to dawn on Smithback that there was more to this person than he had originally supposed. “Who are you, really?” he asked. “I mean, what’s your real name?”
    There was another silence. “I left that, along with everything else, upstairs,” the disembodied voice hissed. “Now I am Mephisto. Never ask me, or anyone, that question again.”
    Smithback swallowed. “Sorry,” he said.
    Mephisto seemed to have grown angry. His tone became sharper, cutting through the darkness. “You were brought here for a reason.”
    “The Wisher murder?” asked Smithback eagerly.
    “Your articles have described her, and the other corpse, as being headless. I am here to tell you that being headless is the least of it.” His voice broke into a rasping, mirthless laugh.
    “What do you mean?” Smithback asked. “You know who did it?”
    “They are the same that have been preying on my people,” Mephisto hissed. “The Wrinklers.”
    “Wrinklers?” Smithback said. “I don’t understand--”
    “Then be silent and mark me, scriblerian! I have said my community is a safe haven. And so it has always been, until one year ago. Now, we are under attack. Those who venture beyond the safe areas disappear or are murdered. Murdered in the most horrific ways. Our people have grown afraid. My runners have tried time and again to bring this matter to the police. The police!” There was an angry spitting sound, then the voice rose in pitch. “The corrupt watchdogs of a society grown morally bankrupt. To them, we are filth to be beaten and rousted. Our lives mean nothing! How many of our people have died or disappeared? Fat Boy, Hector, Dark Annie, Master Sergeant, others. But one shiny thing in silks gets her head torn off, and the entire city grows enraged!”
    Smithback licked his lips. He was beginning to wonder just what information this Mephisto had. “What do you mean exactly, under attack?” he asked.
    There was a silence. “From outside,” came the whispered answer at last.
    “Outside?” Smithback asked. “What do you mean? Outside, meaning out here?” He looked around the blackness wildly.
    “No. Outside Route 666. Outside the Blockhouse,” came the