posted 06-27-2002 04:37 PM            

http://www.lasvegascitylife.com/display/inn_cover_story/cover.txt

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We slowed down, playing our flashlights over the carts. I couldn't make out much of what was in them: One contained a brown leather satchel, another the head of an electric broom nestled in unidentifiable gomi. There were shoes and jackets and broken household appliances and cardboard boxes and God only knows what else.

The carts were placed in a perfect row against the wall, as if they'd still been in front of the supermarket they'd come from. And beyond the carts was the house.

Imagine a kid's playhouse made of pine wood - three walls, a ceiling and an Army blanket for a curtain. Imagine that it's surrounded by folded clothing, bicycles, empty shopping carts, car batteries and Coleman lamps. Imagine that next to the house was a fire pit comprised of cinder blocks.

Matt and I suddenly understood where the smoke smell was coming from. The ceiling and the top of the walls of this section of the tunnel were black with soot. I flashed the Mag-Lite in the house. Inside were two men sleeping on a futon mattress, wearing only boxer shorts.

I was in a state of complete mental disorientation. Not fear, but something close to cultural panic.

"Shhhh," I said to Matt, "there are people in there. Let's just get the hell out of here."

We crept past the house. At the far edge of the encampment, the edge closest to the exit, a long piece of rebar (round metal with spiral ridges) was wedged between the tunnel walls like the velvet rope of a nightclub. As I crawled under it, it caught on my jacket and scraped loudly across the wall.

A voice came out of the darkness. "Who's there?" There were fumbling sounds.

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posted 06-29-2002 11:03 AM            

Two miles never seemed so long as the bowels did that day of the walk in hell.

After an eternity, a faint light could be seen in the distance. With steady breathing I focused on that light until it was my world and all I knew. The visions of huge rats and spiders taunted me, and if I let myself be consumed by the taunts, I knew my mind would have been lost and never found.

The pin-point light grew slowly bigger, while we walked further up the sides of the sewer to avoid the black water.

When we reached the end of the tunnel and sanity once again I was relieved and proud that I had conquered another fear...the unknown dark, and came out unscathed.

"Anyone want to go again?" someone chirped.

posted 06-29-2002 05:18 PM            

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Since Josh had ruled out a gun, noting the ricochet factor and the amplified acoustics of the drain, I headed straight to the knives section. It was depleted.

"Do you carry any swords?" I asked the salesman, in the same tone a Summerlin soccer mom would ask for fresh bread at Raley's.

"Nah," he answered, as if ashamed. "We don't."

On the way to the exit, I cut through the sports section. The first item I came across was a golf bag full of clubs: "Eureka!" A 7 iron, I quickly decided, was the perfect tool to take into the tunnels. It could be used as a walking stick, to flip debris out of my path and to knock down spider webs. It wasn't as intimidating as - say - a chainsaw. And it had at least a foot in length on any crowbar I'd encountered.

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