Darkbound 2014.06.12

by Michaelbrent Collings

  I can't do this. I can't do this.

  You have to do it. Get to the girls. Get to your girls.

  He felt the outline of the small book in his pocket. Pictured the smaller photo folded within it.

  Don't give up.

  I won't. I promise.

  The lights flared into brightness again.

  Beside him, Adolfa screamed. Jim didn't blame her. He would have done the same, but his voice had been stolen, completely and utterly, by what he saw all around him.

  He had promised himself only a moment ago – less – that he would not give up. And now he wondered if he would be able to keep that promise. The darkness, so heavy, so crushing and devastating only an instant before, now seemed to beckon to him like a memory of happiness with an old friend.

  He wished the darkness would return. Because then he wouldn't have to see what was all around him. All around them.

  "We're going to die," whispered Olik.

  Jim nodded. The big man was right.

  They were all going to die.

  FIVE

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  ================

  They were everywhere.

  Never in his most crowded travel day had Jim seen a subway car as full as this one was now. He was reminded of stories of the Holocaust: Jews and other "undesirables" packed into railroad cattle cars like diseased livestock and sent off to meet their ends at Dachau or Auschwitz. Those men and women had no choice but to stand, pushed so tightly together that movement was all but impossible.

  That was how Jim felt now. Like he had been packed in tighter than a puzzle piece. A jumble in a human game of Tetris.

  But he had not been packed into a car with other commuters. Not even with people doomed to a death in the gas chambers or work camps of an invading force.

  No, at every turn, within inches of him and Adolfa and Olik... the ghouls. The things that looked like the rotted shells of once-teens, mostly girls, who had perhaps clawed their ways out of shallow graves and were now bent on avenging those who had buried them.

  Adolfa was whispering something under her breath. Jim assumed it was a prayer. "Shhh!" he hissed. But she didn't stop. Probably couldn't stop.

  The lights went out again. Darkness fell once more, blanketing the car in its perfect embrace. But there was no sense of security in that hold. Jim could feel the sway of the things that stood and sat only inches away from him. Could feel the strange cool that emanated from their bodies, the chill of death long overdue. He shivered.

  "They have come for me," said Olik. The big man sounded, for the first time, genuinely terrified.

  "We don't know that."

  "They have! They come for me!" Olik's once-sturdy voice was starting to fray, to come apart at the seams. Jim couldn't figure why the Georgian was so convinced the things were here for him. Then he remembered their snakelike tongues, flicking out and lapping up the big man's blood as it splashed on the door of the subway car.

  And Olik was still bleeding.

  "We have to get moving," Jim said.

  The lights flared again. The effect was strange, like an old-fashioned photo being taken. Only with every pop of the "flash" in this case, they were either one step closer to death, or one step closer to escape.

  You can't escape, Jim. You know that.

  Shut up!

  The outline of the book in his pocket. He could feel it against his thigh. The memories, driving him forward. His memories. His girls. He would survive for them.

  Adolfa was right behind him. He could feel her close to him. Still whispering a prayer in Spanish, strident tones whose rhythm somehow managed to perfectly match the click-clack click-clack click-clack of the subway's wheels on its track.

  And in the darkness behind Adolfa, Jim thought he could hear Olik. Then he knew he could. He heard the distinctive click of a gun being cocked.

  The light flared.

  The things were all looking at them. Like they had heard the gun. Were centered on it. Wanted it.

  "Put it away, Olik," Jim snapped.

  "No," said Olik.

  The things turned as one. Not just looking at them, now oriented on them. On Olik. On the gun.

  "Put it away."

  Olik must have seen what Jim did. There was a clatter of metal on metal. The gun dropping to the floor.

  Jim held himself still. Tense. Expecting to feel teeth tear into him, small bodies cover his and fingers dig into his skin and burrow into his bones.

  Would he be killed/reborn like Xavier? He didn't think so. Whatever had happened to the rapist, he thought it was something that would only happen once.

  The light flared.

  The things were looking at the gun.

  "Come on." Jim stepped forward as the light died. He tried to keep an image of the front door in his mind. Tried to imagine a line of rope that ran from him to the door, guiding him there unerringly, perfectly. But he knew it wouldn't happen.

  He bumped into the first body in only a step. It was as cold as he had imagined it would be. Colder, in fact. Not the cold of a winter day, not even the cold of a freezer. It was the cold of a morgue, the cold of a place that is designed to pull away the life from something. To leave it dead and hanging like a fly from a spider's web.

  He hissed.

  "You all right?" Olik's voice. Strained and awkward, though whether because of ongoing blood loss or simple terror Jim couldn't tell.

  "Fine." Jim kept pressing forward. Trying to forget the feel of the corpse he had bumped into. Because that was what it was; of that he had no doubt. The things in the car with them were dead. All of them. They might see, they might stand, they might even think on some level. But there was no life in them. No life but what they perhaps hoped to steal back from the living around them.

  Jim's outstretched hand touched another one. A bit of cloth, crumbling and rotten under his hand; a span of grisly flesh that reminded him of how the things had attacked one another to get to the blood around them.

  The ghoul jerked away. It snarled, but didn't attack. Jim felt dizzy. He almost lost his bearings in the darkness. How could he get through this?

  He could get through this the same way people had been doing the impossible for centuries. For his family.

  Another step forward. The light flared. Pop. The things all around.

  Jim could smell them now, too. The smell of rot, like the smell that escaped a rock when you rolled it over and first saw bugs running for cover, afraid because you had discovered them in their secret darkness. Only this putrescence was much stronger, much deeper. A rot that pushed through every molecule of air in the car, that brought with it an almost tangible sense of hopelessness.

  The light dimmed. Another step forward.

  Pop.

  Another step forward. Bumping another ghoul. A girl who had died an hour or a year before, the skin of her face sloughing off in sheets, her eyes clouded with necrotic cataracts, blind yet somehow able to sense the presence of life nearby. The ghoul made a noise startlingly reminiscent of the sounds Freddy the Perv and Karen of "acquisitions" had made in their final moments –

  (Ung-ung-ung... ung-ung-ung....)

  – and then the lights dimmed again.

  Jim became aware of panting. He thought at first that it was his own, then realized it was someone else's. Adolfa's? No, she was still praying, still half-chanting in a language he didn't speak but that still was easily understandable as something that boiled down to "Deliver us from Evil."

  The panting was coming from Olik.

  "Olik, stay calm," he whispered. Then hissed as his outstretched fingers touched something wet and sticky. He didn't know what it was. Didn't want to know. He shuffled to one side. Tried to move around. Concentrated on the imaginary rope that tied him to the door at the front of the subway car.

  "Can't." Olik started wheezing. "I need my gun."

  Flash. Lights on. And Jim saw Olik turning around. Turning back to where his gun sat on the floor of the car.
>
  "Olik, don't," said Adolfa.

  "Don't go," said Jim at the same time. Both spoke under their breath.

  The zombie things seemed to take no notice of them. No care. Jim wondered what would set them off, if anything. They had seemed to fixate on the gun. He thought about darting after Olik, grabbing the big man before he could get to his gun. But what was he going to do? It wasn't like he could overpower the huge man.

  The lights dimmed.

  Flash. Back on. The lights were popping on and off faster now, faster than was possible for a kerosene lamp. It seemed almost like a series of strobe lights hung along the edges of the car.

  On, off, on, off, on off on off onoff onoffonoffonoff....

  Olik was back with them. Jim sighed in relief. The big man had come to his senses. Had realized that his gun wasn't worth dying for. Or worse.

  They were two-thirds of the way down the car.

  Jim touched another zombie. This one was wearing a pink skirt. A matching pink tube top. It looked like she was getting ready to go clubbing, or had been before death had claimed her, before rot had set in and eaten out her eyes and lips and ears and nose.

  Jim was half-used to the clammy touch of the zombies at this point. Just stay cool, he told himself. Just don't react and you'll be fine.

  But this time it was different.

  He touched the thing's bare skin, a length of clammy gray-white flesh between the tube top and the skirt. And the thing reacted instantly, throwing herself at him. Her teeth – jagged and far too visible between the lips that had been shredded by death and time – snapped at him. Jim fell back with a cry, colliding with Adolfa. She went down as well, both falling at Olik's feet.

  The thing snapped and snarled, her lipless jaws reaching for Jim's face, his flesh, his throat. He pushed at her shoulders with his hands, trying to keep her away from him. She was strong – far stronger than she should have been. And at the same time, her bones seemed able to collapse in on themselves, like they had rotted within her, so there was nothing solid enough for him to grab and get purchase on to push her away.

  The lights were still flashing, almost pulsing now. The strobe was giving him a headache. He didn't know if he was going to be able to hold off this girl, this thing.

  Then a hand, large and strong, wrapped itself around the girl's throat. It hauled her off Jim, yanking her into the air by the neck like a naughty puppy. It was Olik, his one good hand tearing the ghoul away from Jim and then tossing her behind them into the mass of undead in the car behind.

  The ghouls that she collided with fell upon each other in a rage. Teeth and nails, fingers and feet. Howls of pain as thick, dark blood spattered. A contained maelstrom in the center of the car.

  "Get up," said Olik. "We go."

  Jim pushed to his feet. He took the lead again. Careful now not to touch the ghouls. They were changing, growing more alert, more ready to attack. He hadn't sensed it before, but now he could. There was an electricity in the air, a charge that seemed to make the small hairs on his arms and the back of his neck stand up straight as soldiers at parade rest.

  Something's going to happen.

  He knew not to touch the ghouls. The lights popped and dimmed, popped and dimmed, and he led the others between the monsters. Holding Adolfa's hand, and she held onto Olik's. A train of the living among all these dead.

  The going was slow. So slow, because every time Jim came within inches of the things around them, they snuffled and snorted as though they had caught the scent of something delicious. He moved sideways, around. Up and over, around and down. Sidestepping when necessary, climbing on seats when he had to.

  Then he got to a spot where there was nothing. No way forward. He was blocked by a solid wall of the things, an unbroken mass of the undead.

  Flash, dark. Flash, dark.

  He looked back at Adolfa. She shrugged, her eyes wide. She looked terrified.

  Olik was making a motion. Putting his good hand flat, then dipping it down. Jim didn't understand what he was trying to convey, and wanted to tell him to just say whatever it was. But he didn't, because he didn't know if the things around them would be attracted to sound the same as they now seemed to be attracted to touch.

  Finally, though, he realized what Olik was trying to tell him. He shook his head. Impossible.

  Olik made the same motion. More stridently this time, as though to say, "Do it, dammit."

  Flash, dark. Flash, dark.

  Jim was getting disconcerted. Losing control of his sense of up and down as well as his emotional control.

  He shook his head again. Adolfa's hand moved toward him. For a moment he thought she was going to attack him. He almost punched her, almost hit her in her gently smiling face.

  Then her hand fell on his shoulder. Pushed him gently down. She nodded and smiled.

  Flash, dark. Flash, dark.

  "It's the only way," the old lady seemed to be saying. "Just do what you have to do."

  Jim felt the book in his pocket. The square outline that held so many dreams in its pages.

  He turned.

  There were three ghouls, standing so close that they might as well be one devilish monster with three heads. All three were in various states of dissolution, though all were recognizable as once having been girls in their teens. The rags of once-cute clothes hung from their bony frames, t-shirts with fun logos draping sunken breasts, skirts with pleats and ragged frills hanging below hip bones that poked visibly through the girls' flesh.

  One of the girls was taller than the others. She could have been a real beauty when alive, with long legs and the kind of slim body structure that graced modeling magazines the world over. Her legs were planted wide, swaying slightly as the subway continued on its trip to wherever it was going.

  Jim looked at her face. One cheek was torn away, the flap hanging against her lower jaw. Her eyes stared sightlessly over him. She wore makeup, a garish amount that made him think of the girls who walked on certain street corners in the less-reputable parts of the city. The makeup was almost the worst thing about her.

  Jim felt Adolfa's hand on his shoulder, still pushing. He knelt. Went to hands and knees. He didn't know if he could do this. Didn't know if it was possible physically or mentally.

  But I'm going to try.

  He edged forward, the metal floor cool under his palms.

  The ghoul's feet came closer. More than shoulder length apart, they were clad in what must once have been bright yellow high heeled shoes. Something that would attract attention, certainly, in much the same way that her makeup would have attracted attention.

  Jim suddenly thought of his mother. She had hated girls like this. Hated them so much.

  (but she doesn't hate anything now. now she's at peace, at peace....)

  The subway rocked for a moment, as though hitting a large seam on the tracks. The ghoul sidestepped. The left foot almost collided with Jim. He managed to roll with the motion, though. Then held himself still, so still that not even a breath escaped him. He could hear Adolfa and Olik, too, both of them inhaling as though to hold their breath in concert with him.

  He resumed pushing forward. No longer room to crawl. Crawling would inevitably knock him into the legs that now straddled him. All he could do was sort of worm his way forward. It took forever. The train rolled and hummed beneath him.

  Where the hell are we going?

  Then he was through.

  He stood. Almost as dangerous as the crawl had been, since there were more dead things on the other side of the ghoul, so close that if he stood wrong he would bump them and trigger what he feared would be a chain reaction, a feeding frenzy.

  Then he was standing. Safe.

  Flash, dark. Flash, dark.

  He caught Adolfa's eye. She nodded. Her face was pale, she looked like she was going to be sick. Jim hoped she could hold back her nausea: he didn't know how the zombies would react to someone vomiting, but he doubted it would be pretty.

  Adolfa sunk down
out of sight. Jim couldn't do anything but move out of the way. He couldn't even lean over to give her a hand. There wasn't enough room for that.

  But Adolfa proved far more agile than her years would seem to allow. She was through the zombie's parted legs and standing beside Jim in less time than it had seemed to take him to traverse the same distance.

  Olik was all that remained.

  The big man took his place. Jim hoped that there would even be enough room for the huge Georgian to get between the zombie's legs.

  Olik sunk out of sight.

  And as he did, the zombies – all of them, every single one in the car – sighed. And as had happened before, it was as though one single entity was expressing itself through fifty mouths.

  And it sounded hungry.

  SIX

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  Flash, dark. Flash, dark.

  Jim blinked, his body trying to turn away the assault of light and dark. But it couldn't do it. There was no way to refuse it, no way to resist it. The darkness was too harsh, the light too sudden. The contrast was destructive, and he knew that unless he got out of this car soon he was going to lose his mind.

  Adolfa pressed into him. Lost as he was in the strobe patterns of black and white, Jim almost didn't understand what was happening for a moment. Then he realized: Olik must be coming through.

  Through? Through what? Through when? Through where?

  The world seemed to gyre and whirl, to dance drunkenly.

  Only it's not the world, is it? Not really. Because then the world would be nothing but the subway. Nothing but this car, nothing but this metal death.

  Adolfa's hand closed on his. "Steady, mi hijo."

  Mi hijo. My son.

  Jim clung to the words and to the endearment beneath them. Clung to them as much as – more than – he clung to her hand. The world steadied.

  Flash, dark. Flash, dark.

  Olik stood.

  "We go," he said. And now he was the one who took point. Jim didn't like that. He wanted to go first. He felt too alone, too exposed at the end of the human train that was being led through the car.