The three sandhogs looked at one another again, then two of them started packing up. The third one said, “You the guy looking for rats?”

“Yeah.”

The groundhog shook his head. “No more rats here.”

“I don’t mean to contradict you, but that’s almost impossible. How come?”

“Could be they’ve got more sense than us.”

Vasiliy looked down the lit tunnel, in the direction of the sump hose. “The subway exit down there?”

“That’s the way out.”

Vasiliy pointed in the opposite direction. “What’s this way?”

The sandhog said, “You don’t want to go that way.”

“Why not?”

“Look. Forget about rats. Follow us out. We’re done here.”

Water was still trickling into the troughlike puddle. Vasiliy said, “I’ll be right along.”

The guy dead-eyed him. “Suit yourself,” he said, switching off a tripod lamp and then hoisting a pack onto his back, starting after the others.

Vasiliy watched them go, lights playing far down the tunnel, darkening along a gradual turn. He heard the screeching of subway car wheels, near enough to concern him. He went on, crossing to the newer track, waiting for his eyes to acclimate themselves to the darkness again.

He switched on his monocular, everything going subterranean green. The echoing of his footfalls changed as the tunnel broadened to a trash-strewn exchange near a convergence of tracks. Rivet-studded steel beams stood at regular intervals, like pillars in an industrial ballroom. An abandoned maintenance shack stood to Vasiliy’s right, defaced by vandalism. The shack’s crumbling brick walls featuring some artless graffiti tags around a depiction of the twin towers in flames. One was labeled “Saddam,” the other “Gamera.”

On an old support, an ancient track sign had once warned workers:

WARNING
LOOK OUT FOR TRAINS

It had since been defaced, the T and the N in TRAINS blotted out, and electric tape stuck atop the I to turn it into a T, so that it now read:

WARNING
LOOK OUT FOR RAT S

Indeed, this godforsaken place should have been rat central. He decided to go to black light. He pulled the small wand from his Puma bag and switched it on, the bulb burning cool blue in the dark. Rodent urine fluoresces under black light, due to its bacterial content. He ran it over the ground near the supports, a moonlike landscape of dry trash and filth. He noticed some duller, older, piddling stains but nothing fresh. Not until he waved it near a rusted oil barrel lying on its side. The barrel and the floor beneath it lit up bigger and brighter than any rat piss he had ever seen. A huge splash. Factored out from what he normally found, this trace would indicate a six-foot rat.

It was the recent bodily waste of some larger animal, possibly a man.