What if he leaves you? Leaves Adolfa? Leaves you both to the wolves?
The voice that came to Jim's mind wasn't exactly his. It sounded like his voice, but it spoke to him as though it was someone else, like a long-lost twin who had traveled through time and space to find him in this instant, to warn him of the danger that Olik represented.
He's a sex-trader. He's a slaver. He's used you before and he'll do it again.
The big man stepped gingerly between two half-dressed girls, dead girls with dead eyes and teeth that were startlingly white in the light/dark of the subway car. He pulled Adolfa with him. The two zombie girls didn't notice either of them. They stared into nothing, into dreams of their demise, perhaps, or the blank nothings of their futures.
Flash, dark. Flash, dark.
Jim stepped between the dead girls. One of them was wearing the decrepit remains of a cheerleader's outfit. The other wore jeans and a tank top. Both stood slump-shouldered, and he somehow knew that their posture had nothing to do with their state of decomposition. It was something that had been done to them in life. It was the reason for their death.
Flash, dark. Flash, dark.
The front of the car was only a few feet away. Within reach. Within hope.
Hope was the worst. Jim knew that hope was the thing that allowed fear to thrive. Without hope there was nothing for fear to feed on. But when hope bloomed, that meant that there was once again something to lose. Something to be terrified of living without.
Hope came. Came like the bright flash of the lamps all around the ancient subway car. And on its heels, the dark bite of terror.
"Go, go, vámonos, vámonos," said Adolfa. Her voice, whispered in half-dark, half-light, was so intense that Jim knew without having to look at her face that she was feeling the same dread, the same creeping horror that this was it, the last moment they had before all was extinguished, before the lights went out for the last time.
Something was happening behind them. A rustle as the zombies began to move.
"Don't look," said Jim. "Don't look back."
Adolfa jerked, her head moving as though she was going to look, then stopping and forcing herself forward, onward.
The door was close. Would it be open? Unlocked?
Whatever was happening behind them grew more strident. Insistent. It demanded attention.
There were three zombies between Jim, Olik, and Adolfa... and the door out of the car. They stared in different directions, dead to the world. Jim saw Olik eyeing them, obviously determining the best way to thread his way between them without touching them, without drawing the attention of the dead girls. Like the rest of the creatures, they were dressed brightly, almost gaudily. Like the rest of the creatures, their dead eyes gazed at nothing, peered into a void of lost dreams and horrific memories that Jim hoped he would never understand.
Olik stopped suddenly. He stared at one of the ghouls. She was dressed skimpily, a pair of short shorts that showed off thighs whose flesh was peeling away in mottled chunks and a tight tank top that revealed far more than it hid. The kind of thing that Jim hoped Maddie would never wear.
If he was even around to have that argument with her.
Olik remained riveted to the zombie. He bore a strange expression on his face, one that Jim couldn't place. Then he could place it, but didn't understand it: it was... familiarity.
The sounds behind them grew louder. Hisses. Thuds. Jim didn't look back. Didn't have to look back to know that the zombies were attacking one another again. He didn't know why they would be doing that, what would motivate them to tear into one another, but that was what had to be happening.
The three ghouls – including the one that Olik seemed to be transfixed by – suddenly shifted their sightless gaze, latching their eyes onto whatever was happening in the back of the car.
Flash, dark. Flash, dark.
Jim worried that the zombies would see him and Olik and Adolfa – would really see them. But the three girl-things didn't notice them. They shambled toward the back of the car, and Jim and his companions simply stepped aside and let them move past.
The way to the door was clear.
"Home free," said Jim. He looked at Adolfa. Smiled. She smiled back.
They moved to the door in two quick steps.
Flash, dark. Flash, dark.
The disturbance behind them got louder. Louder.
Jim reached for the door to the car.
Something was shrieking.
Jim's fingers stopped moving, halting as though they had run into an invisible force field.
Flash, dark. Flash, dark.
The shrieking wasn't the inhuman sound of the ghouls. It wasn't any of the inhuman noises they had heard on this longest of trips to nowhere.
It was Olik.
SEVEN
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The big man's screams were so raw and ragged that Jim fully expected to turn around and find that Olik had fallen prey to one of the zombies, or that he had been pulled apart like Freddy the Perv had.
But nothing had touched Olik. Nothing at all.
He was standing there in the light/dark/light/dark, screaming and screaming and screaming, and nothing had touched him. He was alone.
The big man was staring behind them. Looking back into the car.
Jim followed his gaze. He saw the disturbance. The zombies in the car had all converged on something. Jim couldn't see what it was for a moment, because the things were packed so tightly that not a single photon could have squeezed between them. There was no way to see what they were huddled around.
Then the zombies parted. They stood as if to accommodate Jim's unspoken need to see what was hiding in their midst. They turned, and he thought they were looking at him, then realized they were staring at Olik.
Olik was still screaming.
Jim didn't scream. But he felt his throat suddenly grow parched, as though he had tried to swallow a handful of sand.
There were two girls in the midst of the zombies. Not dead. Alive. Alive, and bright, and terrified. They looked young, perhaps only thirteen or fourteen. Young and horror-stricken as they huddled in the center of the living corpses that encircled them.
Olik was still shrieking, but the wordless scream had morphed to something else: "Nina! Sanatha!"
The two girls in the middle of the circle looked up. They screamed back at him. Fingers reaching for the big man.
Jim felt something tugging at him. It was Adolfa, pulling him back toward the front door. He didn't move. He felt like he had been fastened to the floor, nailed to the spot. He had to watch what was happening. To bear witness.
Olik reached out to the two girls. "Nina!" He stepped toward them, but immediately several of the ghouls moved to intercept him. Jim expected that they would attack him, but they didn't. The zombies just stood between him and the two girls at the center of the car, staring at the big man with eyes that saw nothing of the pain on his face.
The other zombies had watched his approach. Now they turned back to the two girls. The girls were similar in size, but one was blonde and one brunette. They had the same eyes, though. Sisters, Jim guessed. They looked familiar somehow.
They looked, he realized, like beautiful, unhardened versions of Olik.
The zombies surrounded the girls. Sighing in that singular voice, that one voice that came from many throats. And this time it didn't just moan, it spoke. "Huuuunngryyyyy."
The girls screamed. Held each other.
One of the ghouls reached out. Touched the girl with the dark hair.
"Nina!" Olik shouted.
Flash, dark. Flash, dark.
Nina screamed. Screamed louder when the zombie's touch turned into a pinch. Not like it was trying to rip the flesh from her bones, but like it was... sampling her. Seeing how tender she was, checking the quality of her body.
And now from the churning mass of monsters, another hand reached out. It touched the other girl. Sanatha. Sh
e shouted as well, a high-pitched shriek that was as much surprise as horror. She looked at Olik and babbled something in a foreign tongue.
Jim looked at Olik. The big man reached out, still blocked by the ghouls. He was crying.
A claw-like hand swiped at Sanatha. Raked a bloody furrow in her leg. She screamed and fell. Olik screamed as well. He seemed to go insane, trying to break through the wall of zombies between him and the girls. But they held him back effortlessly. He collapsed, weeping, and they hauled him to his feet. Pulled his hair back so he had to watch.
Nina and Sanatha were yanked, pulled. Clawed, bitten. Soon they were bleeding from dozens of wounds, their clothing in tatters.
Jim saw Olik pull away. Saw him clench his face, trying to shut out the vision that he saw in the flashing light/dark of the car.
One of the ghouls that held Olik reached out – almost delicately – and pulled his eyelids off. The girl-thing flicked the bits of skin away as Olik screamed, blood running around his eye sockets, but he could no longer blink, could no longer look away from the vision of the girls being pulled to pieces in front of him.
One of the ghouls pushed through the circle. Most of the things were girls. Most of them. This one, though, wasn't. It was male, and that fact was easy to be seen. It was nude, and visibly excited by what it saw as it moved into the circle.
"No, no, no no no!" screamed Olik. "Not my babies!"
The ghouls paid him no heed. The ones forcing him to watch pulled him toward the circle that surrounded the girls. The ghouls in that circle were no longer clawing at them, they were pulling at their clothes, exposing shivering flesh.
Jim knew what was happening. Knew but couldn't believe, couldn't accept. Not this. Not this.
Olik was screaming.
"Not my babies, not my babies, not my babieeeeezzzzz!"
Jim felt Adolfa's hand on his arm. Pulling him again. He heard a click and knew that she must have opened the door to the next car.
This car had taken its victim.
Olik was still screaming as Jim let himself be pulled away from the obscenity behind him. The stolid criminal was gone, replaced by a hysterical father who saw his world disappearing, defiled and demeaned. The screams of the girls in the center of the circle matched that of the big man. His voice and theirs' mingled and matched in a horrific harmony that bled into madness. Then, in the moment of greatest savagery, the moment when the worst was happening, the zombies gripping Olik took hold of his shoulders and others took hold of his head and both sets of dead girls yanked.
There was a tearing sound, a shearing rip that tore not just through the air but through Jim's mind, pushing him close to madness as well. Olik's head came away from his shoulders. Flesh and bone and blood sprayed and now Olik was in two pieces, both held upright by the rotted hands that clutched his flesh.
But – impossibly – the man still screamed. Still screamed as his daughters screamed, as they were savaged by things come for them from beyond the darkest reaches of nightmare.
Adolfa's hand pulled Jim's. He let her.
He stepped with her into the darkness of the next car.
Olik's scream followed them.
And the subway continued on.
2 FARES
Carolyn wants to move. I love her, but this is the five hundredth time she's asked to do that. She says the neighborhood isn't great.
And how am I supposed to afford something better? I'm just starting out, for Heaven's sake.
ONE
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The next car looked like the first one had, the original car that had started all this. Modern. Glass and aluminum. Graffiti and ads. A car that belonged not to nightmare but to reality – if reality had any meaning left to them.
To Jim was almost depressing in a way, as though the train was telling them that no matter how far along they got, they would always end up back where they started.
Adolfa looked around the car as though afraid it might disappear from around them. She muttered something under her breath.
"What was that?" Jim asked. He didn't really care what it was. He said it for something to say, for a way to blank out the terrible sound of Olik's screams, and the worse sound of his daughters' shrieking.
"Spanish," said Adolfa. "Something that means, 'Last to first, first to last.'"
"Sounds like something out of the Bible."
"It is."
She crossed herself and stepped forward, pulling Jim along with her. But only a step or two. Then she started to cough. The cough doubled her over, a chopping, grating hack that sounded wet and slimy, the cough of someone well into serious illness.
Jim put out a steadying hand. "You okay?"
Adolfa nodded, but didn't stop coughing. She kept hacking, and though Jim couldn't see her face, the sliver of her profile that he could see turned deep red.
Finally the coughs seemed to dissipate. Adolfa gripped his arm as though the attack had stolen her strength, as though she might keel over. Then she pushed herself fully upright. She was panting.
"You sure you're all right?"
She nodded, gulped, nodded again. "Maybe I will sit down for a moment," she said.
Jim led her to one of the plastic seats that jutted like shiny tumors out of the walls of the subway car.
"At least the lights are on again," he said.
Adolfa nodded and smiled. But the smile crumpled in on itself as another coughing fit seized her halfway to the seat. This one was worse than the first.
After all that had gone before, Jim half expected her head to explode, or some alien parasite to crawl out of her eyes. But she just coughed. It was mundane, almost banal considering all that they had been through.
Just a cough.
And this is how the world ends, he thought insanely. Not with a bang, but with a cough.
Jim looked out the windows. The subway seemed to be traveling faster than ever, the lights rocketing by at eye-scorching speeds, so fast that they were streaks in the otherwise pure darkness of the tunnel. He wondered what he might see if the train were to slow down enough to allow them a view of their surroundings.
He wondered if he wanted to see.
For a moment a part of his mind knew. A part of him understood what was happening. And it screamed deep within him, in a hidden part that kept his darkest moments, his blackest memories. The place that remembered the things that frightened him most, that had made him who he was and had motivated him to seek out people like Carolyn and Maddie, good people who would keep him safe from the evils that seemed to rear themselves at every turn in a wicked world.
Then the knowledge was gone. Gone like the lights that streaked past, dazzling and blinding but too fast to track, too quick to comprehend.
"You all right, mi hijo?"
Jim blinked. He was staring at the darkness beyond the window glass. How long had he been lost in thought, in almost-comprehension? He didn't know. He looked at Adolfa. She was still red, still panting, so it couldn't have been too long.
He forced a smile. "Isn't that my line?" He sat next to her and put an arm around her shoulder. "Are you okay?"
Adolfa tried to smile. No cough this time but the smile still died before it was properly born. She shrugged. "Not sure I'll ever be okay again." Her body shivered, a shudder so severe it was nearly a convulsion. "What happened to Olik…."
Jim nodded. He squeezed Adolfa's shoulder. "I know."
"Will that happen to us?"
"I don't know." How could he know? How could any of them know what was going to happen next, if none of them knew what was going on around them?
Sorta like life.
Jim frowned. He didn't like that train of thought. Life was a good thing. It meant something. There was more to it than just pain and fear. So he wasn't going to fall into a pit of cynicism and permanent angst just because of what was happening right now.
What about because of what happened before? What happened to her? To
all of them?
No. No. NO!
"Jim? Jim?!"
Again he blinked. Again he didn't know how long his mind had been away. Lost in thought and in a burgeoning madness that crept ever closer, ever closer. The subway seemed to be dragging him to it. Last Stop: Insanity.
"We have to get off this thing," he said.
"I'd love that," said Adolfa. "Any ideas?"
He looked around. The car presented nothing new. Seats. Poles. Ads.
A map.
He got up. He went to it.
Like the map that they had seen in the earlier car, this one bore only the barest resemblance to a typical New York subway route map. The colors, the symbols – even the lettering itself – were all wrong.
But there was one thing he understood. A black "X" that all the routes now seemed to run to. And above it: "LAST STOP." His thought of a moment ago seemed suddenly prescient.
Last Stop: Insanity.
He shivered, then forced his mind away from that idea. There had to be an answer here.
Below the words "LAST STOP" there were other letters in languages he didn't understand. But though he didn't understand them, he got a definite chill looking at them. A sense of finality.
No, not just finality. Oblivion. Like the stop meant not merely an end to the train's forward motion, but to everything. As though eternity itself would end in the moment the subway car pulled into that station.
And next to the "X," next to the "LAST STOP" marker… a dot.
It was moving.
"Is that us?" said Adolfa. She had gotten up and now stood beside him. And Jim could tell from the breathy quality of her voice that she, too, felt his fear, felt the terror that he felt. The sense that whatever happened when the train reached its final destination would make everything that had happened before seem like a pleasant daydream in comparison.
The dot phased into a position a tiny bit closer to the LAST STOP.
"Is that us?" repeated the old woman.
"Yes," said Jim. "I think it is."
Darkbound 2014.06.12 Page 17
