F Paul Wilson - Novel 10

by Midnight Mass (v2. 1)

  "Slow down a little," she said as she crawled into the rear. "Here we go again."

  She crouched on the back seat and pulled off her T-shirt, then she grabbed a napalm balloon in each hand.

  "What are you doing?" Carole said.

  "I'm about to play hide and seek. Just be ready to burn rubber when I tell you."

  Could she get away with something like this again? If they were half as horny as she thought they were yeah. Maybe.

  Taking a breath, she pressed a balloon over each breast, plastered a big grin on her face, then rose to her knees.

  The left blue-and-white swerved as the driver hit the siren again and a couple of hands popped out the windows to wave the horn sign. The right unit did the same.

  She pulled the balloon off her left breast and held it high.

  The sirens wailed again.

  She bared her right breast and held that balloon aloft.

  Another wail.

  She tossed both balloons at the cars.

  "Hit it!" she yelled as she dove for the seat.

  The last thing she saw as the tires screeched and the Fairlane leaped forward was one balloon splattering harmlessly on the pavement and the other breaking against the grill of the right car. The front of the car exploded, rocketing the hood toward the ceiling, and then Lacey was down, flat on the rear seat. The explosion kicked them from behind like a rear-end collision. A wave of heat rolled over them for an instant before they left it behind.

  Lacey peeked over the back of the rear seat in time to see the burning unit sidewipe its companion. The second bounced off the wall with a shower of sparks, then slammed into the first as someone's gas tank exploded. The second car flipped then and landed against the first. Amid the agonized screech and groan of metal grinding against concrete and asphalt and tile, both slid to a halt across the tunnel roadway in a single, twisted, flaming mass.

  Lacey shook her head. Wow. Powerful stuff.

  She thought she saw something moving, a flaming man-shaped thing crawling out a window, but she couldn't be sure. Suddenly a third explosion rocked the mass. The other gas tank, she guessed.

  Lacey tugged her shirt back over her head and climbed up into the passenger seat.

  "That's it! The last time I strip down for these animals."

  "Let's hope so," Carole said. "By the way, that was an amazing piece of indirection."

  Was that a note of genuine admiration Lacey detected in her voice?

  "Thank you. And my compliments to the chef on that napalm." Lacey pointed ahead at the splotch of brightness ahead in the dark of the tiled gullet. "Look. The light at the end of the tunnel."

  "More Vichy there?"

  Lacey grabbed the shotgun. Her stomach crawled. How long could their luck last?

  But to their amazement, the Manhattan side of the tunnel was deserted. Gasping with relief, they swerved left and roared into the concrete box of an enclosed above-and-below-ground park-and-lock lot on 42nd Street.

  BARRETT . . .

  Neal kicked a piece of blackened metal from the wrecks and sent it spinning across the scorched pavement. He tugged on his beard.

  "What the fuck?"

  "What the fuck is right," Barrett said. "All seven guys gone. Just like that."

  Franco was going to be pissed ... if he found out.

  The relief crews had arrived on the Manhattan side at noon to find smoke billowing from the middle tube. They'd waited till it tapered off, then drove inside. This was what they'd found.

  Lights from the headlights of a couple of cars illuminated the twisted mess of metal. The ceiling and walls were scorched black for hundreds of feet in both directions.

  "You think it was a hit?" Neal said.

  "You mean like what happened at the Lakewood Post Office. I don't know. See any bullet holes?"

  Neal shook his head. "Not a one."

  Neither had Barrett.

  Two carloads of cowboys reduced to crispy critters. It looked like one car had plowed into the other, smashing it against the side of the tunnel. Barrett visualized a bent side panel, showers of sparks, a gas cap tearing off, then kablam!

  What had they been doing—drag racing through the tubes? Assholes. One car was supposed to be stationed at each end of the tunnel, but this wouldn't be the first time they'd got bored and hung out together on the Jersey end. He'd caught them at it before and this was probably another instance. Most of these guys had the attention span of a gnat.

  "Well, without bullet holes in the cars—or what's left of them—how could it be a hit? Must have been an accident. Caused by terminal stupidity."

  Barrett ground his teeth. He had to get out of this job. He had to take the next step. Get turned. He'd go crazy if he had to spend another nine-plus years with these assholes.

  - 13 -

  CAROLE ...

  "Look, Ma," Lacey said. "A double threat: no hands while walking on the third rail."

  Carole knew Lacey had to be as uneasy as she, walking these subway tracks, but she was doing a better job of hiding it. She briefly angled her flashlight beam at Lacey, then back to the tracks again.

  "Under different circumstances I might call that a shocking display of brashness, but after yesterday ..."

  Lacey laughed.

  They'd huddled in the car in the park-and-lock garage all day, venturing out only to relieve themselves. When the sun had fallen and Joseph was awake, he left alone to begin nighttime surveillance on the Empire State Building and the area around it. But he'd returned less than an hour later driving a huge Lincoln Navigator he'd appropriated from a nearby parking lot. He insisted that she and Lacey transfer to it, not because of the comfort its extra size afforded, but because of its hard top. They were already insulated by the garage's layers of reinforced concrete, but he wanted them further sealed in steel. He begged them to stay locked in during the dark hours, telling them their warm blood made them easy to pick out against the cold concrete and granite of the city. If a hybrid like him could sense them, what about the fully undead?

  Carole had missed him, worried about him, but had taken his advice. She and Lacey had slept when they could, and talked when they couldn't—talked about anything they could think of. Except sex. Lacey's lesbianism made Carole uncomfortable. Or was it the fact that she felt a growing fondness for this young woman who happened to be a lesbian.

  She'd been relieved to see Joseph return with the dawn. He was excited. He'd found a place where they could watch the comings and goings at the

  Empire State Building in relative safety and comfort, and told them how to get there.

  So now it was their turn. They'd left the garage at sunrise when the undead were no threat. Only the living.

  They'd walked the deserted pedestrian tunnel from the Port Authority to Times Square, and were now down on the tracks of the 42nd Street Shuttle. This seemed like the safest way to move about the city. Certainly less risk down here of running into a pack of cruising Vichy than up on the street. At least she hoped so.

  Flashlight in one hand, cocked-and-ready pistol in the other; backpacks filled with sharpened stakes, hammers, batteries, and cans of salmon they'd brought from the Shore.

  What a way to travel. What a way to live.

  Carole knew nothing about guns, had never liked them, had never so much as laid a finger on one until a few days ago. She'd always imagined she'd be afraid of them, but had to admit she found something comforting in the weight, the solidity, the pent-up lethality of the semi-automatic Lacey had given her. She'd shown her how to work the safety. All she had to do if the need arose was point and pull the trigger. She prayed that need would never arise. There was no place to practice so she hadn't fired it yet, and had no idea how it would feel when she did.

  "You know," Lacey said, dancing along the third rail like a gymnast on a balance beam, "it's strange. From the instant we jumped off the platform onto the tracks, I had to touch this rail. I was scared to—I mean, what if by some freak chance it was live—but
I had to. Didn't you feel any of that?"

  "Not at all." But seeing Lacey on the third rail made her nervous. The chance of the power coming back on was about equal to that of a subway full of commuters coming by, but still it put her on edge. "We've been told all our lives that we could never touch the third rail because we'd be fried to a cinder. At first opportunity you're up on the rail, walking along it. That's pretty much you in a nutshell, isn't it."

  Lacey snickered. "I guess so. What's the psychology there? It no longer has power over me, so now I'm dancing on its grave?"

  "I never placed much stock in psychology."

  "But look where you're walking, Carole. What does that say about you?"

  "It says nothing's changed. I was quite happy staying off the third rail when it was live, and am just as happy to stay off it now."

  "Ever watch Ren and Stimpy?"

  "Can't say that I have, although years ago at a school picnic I remember some of my students wearing badly drawn T-shirts with those words on them."

  "It's a cartoon show, and in one of the early episodes they're in outer space and they come across this button with all these warnings about 'Do not press or you will destroy the space-time continuum,' or something like that. Anyway, Stimpy just has to press it. And when I saw that I said, Yeah, I think I'd press it too."

  "Good Lord, why?"

  "Well, first off, part of me would be going, Yeah, right, like this button's gonna end the space-time continuum. Uh-huh. And another part would be thinking, Really? What would that be like? Let's find out..."

  "How about a part of you saying, Let's lock the door to this place and throw away the key?"

  "I think when they were giving out parts I missed that one." She flashed her light at Carole and held out a hand. "Come on. I'll help you up."

  "No, thank you. If one of us slips off and sprains an ankle, the other has to remain well enough to carry on."

  Lacey loosed a dramatic sigh, then stepped off the rail and fell in beside her. "Spoil sport." She flashed her beam ahead. "Damn, it's dark."

  Carole nodded. The light-colored tiles—she supposed they'd once been white—in the pedestrian tunnel and in the Times Square station had reflected the glow from their flashes, letting them see more than just what was in the beam. But down here on the tracks, surrounded by grimy steel girders and soot-blackened concrete walls, with no reflective surface except the polished upper surface of the tracks and an occasional puddle, the darkness seemed a living thing, pressing against them. And all those recesses and access tunnels and crawl spaces . . .

  Something splashed behind them.

  Carole heard Lacey gasp. Both whirled and flashed their beams madly about but found nothing moving. Carole could feel her heart pounding.

  "Think it was a rat?" Lacey said.

  "Could have been."

  "I hate rats."

  "They're just animals."

  "Yeah, but I really skeeve them."

  "Skeeve?"

  "Yeah. Heard it from some Italian girl I knew. Means to make your skin crawl. If we see a rat, that'll be a good time for you to get used to firing your pistol. I think we can risk a few shots down here."

  "I'm not shooting a rat. And neither are you. They're no threat to us, it's a waste of ammunition, and besides, they were here first. It isn't rodentia you should be worried about down here. Genus Homo offers the main threat right now."

  They started walking through the dark again, but every so often one of them—they took turns—would turn and flash her light behind them.

  Lacey whispered, "I remember hearing about homeless people who used to live in the subway tunnels. I wonder if any of them are left."

  "If I were a betting woman—and I'm not—I'd say no. Underground is where the undead go to hide from the light. Once down here they'd sniff out the living in no time."

  Lacey grabbed her arm. "Speaking of sniffing, what is that?"

  Carole felt her nose wrinkling. She knew the odor: carrion. "Something died nearby."

  "Which means there's a good chance one of them is nearby."

  They followed the stench to a recess in the right wall that led to an alcove beyond it. Carol flashed her beam down the narrow passage. The floor was littered with the bodies, of beheaded rats, some of them acrawl with maggots.

  "What's with the dead rats?" Lacey whispered behind her.

  "I don't know."

  "We don't want to go in there."

  "Right," Carole said. "But we must."

  "Like hell."

  "We can't leave any undead along our route. What if we're delayed coming back and we're caught down here after sundown? We can't see in the dark; they can."

  Lacey was silent a moment, then grumbled, "All right, but let's go in with all bases covered." Carole felt a tug on her backpack. "I'll handle the gun and flashlight—in case whatever's in there is human—while you take the hammer-and-stake detail."

  A moment later Carole had her crucifix and a stake in her left hand, thrust out ahead of her, the hammer clutched in her right. Lacey was squeezed beside her, manning the flashlight. Carole wished she had a third hand to hold a cloth over her mouth and nose. The stench was unbearable.

  They edged down the passage, shuffling to avoid stepping on the dead rats, and entered a small square alcove, maybe ten feet on a side. The first thing Carole saw was a naked corpse crumpled in the far corner, face to the wall; the position made it impossible to determine its sex. The floor was littered with more dead rats, most of them clustered around the naked emaciated male figure that lay in the center of the space. When Lacey shone the light on its face, the gummy lids parted slowly. It let out a feeble hiss and bared its fangs. Although this one didn't quite qualify as a feral, its appearance was a long way from human.

  Carole wasted no time. "Keep the light on it," she told Lacey as she knelt beside the thing.

  She touched the crucifix to its sunken belly, eliciting a flash and a puff of smoke. That proved beyond doubt it was undead. The creature writhed as she raised the stake—she'd have no trouble finding a space between the jutting ribs of this washboard chest. But just as Carole pressed the point of the wooden shaft against its skin, Lacey let out a cry of terror and the flash beam darted around the room.

  Carole turned and saw Lacey struggling as if her foot was caught.

  "It's got me!" Lacey cried. "Damn it to hell, I thought it was dead!"

  In the wildly wavering light Carole saw that what she too had assumed to be a human cadaver had locked its fingers around Lacey's ankle. Lacey was trying to kick herself free but the creature clung to her like a weighted manacle. Panic bloomed in the hollow of her gut. Were there more?

  Something hit Carole's hand, knocking the stake from her grasp. She turned back to her vampire and felt it reaching for her. She patted the floor around her but found only dead rats.

  "Lacey! The light!"

  But her words didn't penetrate Lacey's stream of shouted curses as she frantically tried to free her ankle. Carole could feel things spinning out of control as events accelerated, becoming increasingly surreal, chaotic, epileptic. The creature before Carole clutched her wrist as Lacey began shooting at the one grasping her. The shots were deafening in the small space. Lacey's wildly gyrating flashlight beam raked across Carole, revealing the lost stake. Ears ringing, she swung the hammer at the forearm of the hand holding her wrist, heard a bone snap, felt the grip break. She grabbed the stake and in the dark, placed it on the creature's chest over where she hoped its heart would be, then hammered it into the flesh. Its limbs flailed, back arched, chest heaved, but Carole kept her grip on the stake, taking a second swing, the hammer head glancing off the end of the stake and grazing her hand. She clenched her teeth against the pain as Lacey fired again, the strobe of the muzzle flash giving Carole just enough light to see where to strike a third blow. This one landed solidly, driving the stake through the heart beneath it. The creature spasmed and lay still.

  Carole looked around for Lacey,
saw her limping away down the narrow corridor, dragging the still-attached vampire after her through the maggoty rats. Carole reached around and pulled another stake from her backpack, then followed.

  "Lacey, stop."

  "Carole, get this damn thing off of me!"

  "I will. Just hold the light steady."

  Lacey stopped moving. Carole knelt on the back of the thing, placed the point of the stake to the left of the spine, and drove it through with three swift blows. The thing shuddered and finally released its grip on Lacey's ankle.

  Lacey lurched away and leaned against a steel support beam, gasping.

  "I think I'm going to be sick. The undead always disgusted me, but these things . .. what the hell?"

  Carole rose and leaned against the wall, waiting for her pounding heart to slow. "I think they're strays, and obviously they're starving."

  "Have they been living on rats? Is that possible?"

  "I don't know. Joseph said Franco told him Manhattan was empty and they were hunting in the other boroughs. I do know that we got careless."

  "Yeah," Lacey said. "Sorry for losing it in there. I didn't expect... wasn't ready for being grabbed like that. I hope no one topside heard the shots."

  So did Carole. "Let's keep moving."

  JOE . . .

  Joe suffers again through his daymare. Every day, the same dream, clinging by his fingertips to the lip of the same rocky precipice, his feet swinging and kicking over the same dark swirling infinity. The living darkness calling to him, beckoning, and still that same traitorous part of him longing to answer, to let go and fall...

  No. Not fall. Go home.

  Then a sudden shift. He's now standing on the ledge. And below him, clinging by their fingertips, hang Carole andLacey. He laughs as he grinds a heel into their fingers and sends them screaming, tumbling into the abyss.

  LACEY . . .

  "This is creepy, Carole," Lacey said as she scanned the street from the subway stairwell. Cars lined the curbs as always, but the streets lay still and silent. "Nothing is moving. Nothing."