Chapter 3 - Lower Wacker Drive
To those who lived above it, Lower Wacker Drive was just a multi-level service road used to bypass downtown traffic. To those who lived below it, it was an underworld of exhaust fumes, concrete pillars, and shadows where the city’s discarded souls gathered to hide from the wind.
Nathan Whitmore’s handmade shoes crunched against shattered glass and gravel. He had left his vehicle three blocks away, choosing to walk down the concrete ramp into the subterranean darkness alone. The air down here smelled different—it smelled of damp earth, diesel smoke, old grease, and the bitter tang of human desperation.
He held a flashlight in one hand, the beam cutting through the gloom, illuminating piles of discarded clothes, milk crates, and makeshift shelters made of blue plastic tarps and heavy cardboard box walls.
"Hey! Turn that light off, man!" a voice shouted from a shadow beside a massive concrete column.
Nathan lowered the beam. "I’m looking for a boy. About ten years old. He draws. He uses white chalk."
A low chuckle echoed from a pile of blankets. An old man with a long, matted gray beard sat up, squinting into the darkness. "You’re the guy from the tower. The one who stepped on his picture this morning."
Nathan stopped. "You know him?"
"Everybody knows Jonah," the old man said, spitting onto the concrete. "The kid’s got a gift. He draws the faces of the people who pass by. Says it keeps them from disappearing completely. He was crying when he came back down here today. Said a monster in a fancy suit broke his favorite girl's face."
The word monster hit Nathan like a physical blow. He had spent his entire career building an empire, thinking he was a king, but to a ten-year-old child who had known his daughter's kindness, he was just a monster who wore five-thousand-dollar shoes.
"Where is he?" Nathan pleaded, taking a step closer. "I need to speak with him. I need to help him."
"You’re too late, mister," the old man said, pulling his blankets tighter around his shoulders. "Some guys in dark suits came through here about an hour ago. Big guys. Looked like security types. They were asking for him too. Jonah saw them coming and bolted into the old transit tunnels. If he’s lucky, he’s deep enough under the city that they won't find him. If he’s unlucky..."
Nathan didn't wait for the old man to finish. "Which way are the transit tunnels?"
May you like
The man pointed a dirty finger toward a rusted iron door set deep into the concrete wall of the overpass, half-hidden by a pile of discarded tires. "Through there. But don't go alone, man. Those tunnels haven't been used since the sixties. There are holes down there that go straight down into the water tables. You fall in, nobody hears you scream."
Nathan didn't hesitate. He pulled open the heavy rusted door, the hinges groaning in protest, and stepped into the pitch-black maw of Chicago’s forgotten underbelly.
