by Trevor Zaple
“Give me the baby,” he said after he was finished, and Amber gave Victoria over to him. Olivia unsnapped the sling from her shoulder and handed it over to him as well. He fumbled with the straps and Carlos helped him to buckle it on securely. After he adjusted Victoria into it she nestled into his chest and fell asleep nearly immediately, a hodgepodge of blankets around her to keep her warm.
Moments later they were walking along the subway tracks, their flashlights trained apprehensively forward. The tunnel seemed darker than anything that any of them had ever seen before. Their flashlights would only penetrate a scant few feet ahead; beyond that, the tunnel seemed to eat the light. There was air movement through the tunnel but the sound of the wind that battered at the city above them was only a faint rumor. Their path stretched ahead into sheer nothingness.
Jason followed them into the blackness of St. Patrick station but he had no light with which to guide himself. He felt his way along in inches at first, and then made himself take greater and greater risks as he began to fear that he would fall too far behind to ever catch up to them. His mind rebelled from this possibility and so he forced himself to rush blindly headlong into the dark, relying only upon their distant footsteps to gauge his direction and their distance.
As he walked through the primeval darkness he wept, silently, so as not to alert his presence to them. He wept for himself as he used to be, wept for all the opportunities that had been taken away from him. He was a special boy; his mother had told him this constantly and he had taken the lesson to heart. For a special person such as himself to have ended up tracking his only love through a lightless purgatory beneath the earth was nothing short of injustice of the most spectacular sort. He cursed every god he could think of, and added a few that he was fairly certain were fictional for good measure. He imagined himself catching up to the group ahead and tearing into them, a Grecian hero come to battle the gods themselves. He would kill that braying bastard of a donkey first; he would slit the stupid thing’s throat and bathe himself in the warm, salty blood that would pour out. His head would make an excellent wall decoration for the den in the mansion that he would build after he rescued his Lady Love. The badger would go after, and maybe he’d stuff the filthy thing’s head into the dirt of the subway tunnel in a fit of poetry. Next would come the hawk, and he would use her feathers to stuff the mattress that he would lay upon his Angel with and do unspeakable, sanctified things. Lastly would come the whore with her coarse hair. He would let her linger for a long time, so that he and his Beautiful One could tie her down and torture her in a thousand ways before granting her death. He thought angrily of her hair and decided that he would cut it off of her and use it to strangle her at the end. Then he would use the noose of hair to make a scarf, a wondrous, symbolic scarf that would keep his Seraphim warm from the coldest of winter’s icy breaths. He grinned and laughed and wept as he went, thinking of all of these things and adding tiny, bloody details as he went.
They came to another station and continued on without stopping. Jason followed them in an ecstatic plod, his legs unsure of how to act now that they did not have three feet of snow impeding their progress. His muscles ached but it was nothing that he concerned himself with. There would be time to rest his body when the kidnappers were ripped to pieces and scattered along the tunnel. It would be the most glorious rest of his life, alongside the woman that he considered to be half-god already. Their footsteps remained steadily ahead, and every once in a while their carefully controlled voices would slip out and float back to where he stalked them. He would hear his Angel’s voice from time to time; it was friendly towards her kidnappers, but Jason knew that such friendliness was just a front. She knows that I’m back here, he rejoiced silently, and so she’s letting me know that she’s okay. The thought put a definite bounce into his step, despite his exhaustion.
After an indeterminate time the tunnel seemed to widen ahead. …ink its Museum…floated to him from ahead. He grimaced and slowed down slightly. He had to hide while they passed through the stations; he had a suspicion that it might be easier to see him if he followed them too closely in there. It would hurt to catch up, afterward, but it was his only choice. If he was going to take down all of Her kidnappers, maintaining the element of surprise was a key factor. As the group ahead made their way through the mouth of the tunnel and on into Museum Station, he stopped near the last maintenance hatch and waited for the lights of their flashlights to fade into the distance. He held as still as possible while he did this; he did not trust any of Her captors and would not discount any evil, supernatural power that they might have. They could see like feral alley cats in the dark, for all he knew.
As he waited in the dark he began to hear something shuffling from far off down the tunnel, back the way they had come. He froze and strained his ears, closing his eyes out of habit. There was nothing for a time, and then he heard the shuffling again, still far off but imperceptibly closer. He felt a writhing rope of panic tie itself up in his stomach. There’s someone back there he thought, his heart beginning to pound so loudly that he winced, thinking that the group ahead would hear it. He checked the flashlights ahead and judged that it would be fine to start moving again. He slipped into the trackline of Museum Station and pawed his way along the rails. He was halfway down the platform line when he realized that he could still hear the shuffling, even closer now than it was before.
They shone flashlights around what they could see of Museum Station, marveling at the sculptures that had been commissioned to take the place of the station’s old columns. Despite months of existing without maintenance, the station was in good shape and still seemed magical to Mark, who had been a loud proponent of the overhaul during the construction phase. The longer he looked at them, though, the more he wondered if he found them magical after all. Now they seemed like forgotten idols, shut away from the light of the sun and left to fester for eons. Their blank eyes seemed to know too much, and Mark wondered what was behind their smiles. He shivered and checked on Victoria. She had stirred slightly but she seemed to be sleeping again. It worried him. Too much sleeping was a bad sign; he hoped fervently that there would be an abundance of food wherever they exited. He would scour anything for Olivia, so that she could in turn provide a balanced nourishment to Victoria. He kissed her lightly on the head and focused his flashlight on the tracks ahead. They lead back out into darkness and so they continued on.
They were most of the way to St. George Station when Amber fell in beside him. She matched his pace easily and leaned in close. He smelled old deodorant and older sweat, mixed together in a mostly unlovely brew.
“Emily wanted me to let you know that there’s someone behind us,” she said quietly. Mark clenched his pistol but forced himself to remain as quiet as she was.
“Who?” he demanded in a whisper. “How long have they been behind us?”
“I don’t know,” Amber admitted. “Emily told me as we were walking back there, through Museum. She says it’s just one person, but that we should be careful”.
“I’ll say”.
“She says to keep calm, it’s nothing to worry about right now, but she also says to keep alert”.
“Oh, no worries about that now”
“Are you going to be alright, or should we just sedate you now?”
Mark grinned in spite of himself.
“Any Valium you have would be appreciated,” he replied. He heard Amber chuckle lightly and then watched her fade back into the blackness from the corner of his eye. He rubbed the stock of his .357 and swept his light slower. He exercised greater care in checking the areas around them, and tried to isolate the noises that he could hear. He thought he heard faint footfalls from somewhere far back, but he couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t just a suggestive audio hallucination. He gritted his teeth and felt a dull, nagging headache begin to billow together above his eyes.
They passed through St. George without stopping to look at anything; the walls had been a dirty, dingy
green before the disappearance and months of neglect had not been kind to it. As they passed through they had heard a loud knocking drifting up from the downstairs half of the station. They had looked at each other with worry but nothing had come up the stairs to assail them. The knocking continued, steady and unabated, but the source of it was never revealed. They turned a corner and found themselves back into that peculiar light-eating darkness. Twenty minutes later they found themselves in Spadina Station, and once again they did not stop for anything. The notion of there being another person tracking them through the black tunnels was unsettling for Mark, and he could not think of anything he would want to do down here that would involve stopping. He found himself wishing for the kind of light that had once existed in these stations; he wanted a wide, general light that would allow him to simply see their stalker, aim, and execute. He could not remember ever really wishing to kill another human being before, at least not to the point of fantasizing about it. His skin crawled and he wondered how much further they would have to go before they could exit the system. Even a few hours down in the utter blackness was too much for him. It seemed to be settling into his bones, filtering in through his skin and changing the makeup of his brain.
Colin Li shuffled his way along the edge of the railway that led between Museum and St. George, limping and listless. He kept the side of his foot glued to the rail, knowing as he did that if he were to lose his way in the blackness he might never find his way back again. He heard the shuffling of the others behind him, their ragged breathing pinpointing their positions like the ping of sonar. They were moving slowly, much slower than they were used to. They could not use the lights, though, because if they used the lights their prey would see them and all would be lost. Colin licked his dry, cracked lips and fought back drool. They could not afford to lose a group of prey such as this.
He had been sitting against the wall of St. Patrick Station, breathing in short bursts and focusing on the endless twisting of his empty stomach. It had felt like a living, writhing being, turning over and over inside of him, feeding on its own cellular structure and dissolving itself in bile. There had been others, nearby, the last threadbare remnants of the people that he had come down to live with as summer wound its way to an end in the lost city above them. They had been parked in positions very similar to his own, leaning against the walls for support, their starving frames incapable of long bursts of energy. They hadn’t eaten in eleven days, since they had caught a pair of unfortunates who had been forced to try to loot the subways, driven underground by hunger and fear of war. They had torn through the feast in a very quick manner, devouring flesh from bones like they had been piranhas; they had been close to starving then as well. The canned food that they’d scavenged had run out long ago. They had bottled water, and plenty of it, but it didn’t mean a thing without a food supply.
Now there was a food supply in front of them, and Colin had never before felt so light on his feet. His hands shook when he considered it: five adults and a baby, and not far from them at all. It was the baby that he’d heard first, the tasty, juicy, sweet baby that he’d heard crying as the group they were chasing had tumbled their way down into the station. That cry had been lusty, hungry in its own right, and saliva had flooded Colin’s greedy, rotting mouth from the get-go. He had never desired anything more in his life than his desire to sink his blackened, broken teeth into the infant’s tender, soft skin and suck its juices to the last drop. He would claw the others off; let them have the others, the baby would be his. He thought of how it would have tiny, perfect fingers, and how those tiny, perfect fingers would taste like the finest pork knuckles on his thick, sore-riddled tongue. He licked his lips again and drool fell out of the corners of his mouth. There wasn’t a thing he could do to stop it. He was helpless. Helpless like a baby. A sweet, tasty, juicy baby.
Jason stumbled ahead blindly, finally being driven to panic. As he’d exited Spadina Station and followed the trackline north he’d heard the shuffling sound behind him again, this time unmistakable. There were several someones in the darkness behind him, scraping along at a speed that would eventually bring them into eclipse with him. He pushed himself hard but soon he realized that it would not be enough. Whatever was stalking along behind him would overtake him, and from there he envisioned himself being torn limb from limb. Probably devour me right then and there, too he told himself sourly, unaware of exactly how right he was.
His need to outrun the shuffling, shambling horrors behind him was putting him in danger of overtaking the group ahead of him that he’d been stalking. Within minutes they’d been entering another station; he’d hung about at the entrance, hoping that the group ahead would speed through it, but they were lollygagging along the rails. One of them, the hawk he thought, was telling some asinine story about the station. He silently seethed at her, swearing that he would strew her guts across the rails like late Christmas decorations. Finally he’d darted forward, unable to stay at the mouth of the tunnel any longer. The shuffling behind him had grown loud in the unreliable acoustics of the subway system, and he couldn’t gauge with any accuracy how far away they were, but in his mind’s eye they were very close. In his own private mental horror reel, they were on his heels, breathing fetid, swamp-stink breath on his neck and clutching at him with broken, ragged fingers.
He dropped to a crawl, the dirt of the tracks feeling like grave soil on his flinching fingertips. He could feel himself approaching a hysterical state, and the gibbering that was dribbling quietly off of his tongue sounded like unadulterated terror when it reached his ears. He screamed at himself to stop, but there was no help to be had. His mind was growing thin and stretched in the darkness.
They passed into Dupont Station and Carlos sounded surprised that it hadn’t taken another half-hour to get there from Spadina.
“It never takes very long to get here,” Amber replied, her voice quizzical. “I think it’s the only station in the entire system where you can stand on the platform and see another station”.
“It is,” Olivia confirmed. “When the lights are on you can see Spadina if you stand at the end over there”.
Mark shone his flashlight around and then trained it back on the tracks. The walls were tiled in small orange pieces, and he’d seen a bench that was clad in the same stuff. It had been interesting for about half a minute and then he’d grown concerned about the path ahead once again. He left Olivia reluctantly for a moment and picked up his stride to fall in with Emily. He walked beside her in silence for a moment before speaking.
“Is our little stalker still behind us?” he asked in a whisper.
“You know very well he is,” Emily replied, her voice amused. “If he’s trying to hide, he’s not very good at it”.
Mark chuckled, although it felt forced.
“I wonder what he’s after?” he wondered aloud, trying to inject some joviality into his voice. Emily shook her head.
“I have no idea,” she replied lightly. “To be honest, I’m more concerned with the intentions of the people who are stalking our stalker. Don’t look now, Mark, but we might be in very serious trouble here”.
Mark stared at her for a long minute as they walked, unable to connect her tone to her words. Then he latched onto the most important part of what she had said.
“There’s more of them back there?” he hissed. Emily’s free hand darted out and grabbed his wrist painfully. Wincing, he found that she had an iron grip.
“Keep your voice down,” she whispered at a level that meant that it was for him alone. “If the others find out they might panic, and if any of us panic then we are all going to die down here. Do you want to end up as scraps of chewed meat in some dim corner of the subway tunnels?”
“I, uh…no. No, not really”.
“Good, neither do I. My advice is to keep it light. If the time comes that we have to run, I will alert the others at the right time. Otherwise, keep your mouth shut”.
“Sure,” he agreed quickly. The
n a sudden thought occurred to him. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘chewed meat’? You think they’re going to eat us? Why would they eat us?”
Emily flashed her light into the recesses of the tunnel.
“Have you seen or heard any rats down here since we’ve been walking?”
Mark thought about it, running the last few hours through his mind with fine concentration.
“No, I haven’t,” he concluded finally.
“No, and neither have I. That’s how I know”.
Mark swallowed hard and nodded.
They passed into the tunnel and after a moment Emily shone her flashlight around. The tunnel was very drab, all dull colored metal and cement work that seemed to be fading from old to ancient.
“And on your left, ladies and gentlemen,” Amber exclaimed, “you can see the sight of the infamous ‘Russell Hill Incident’, where one train rear-ended another. Three people died, right here”.
“That’s very morbid,” Olivia commented. Amber put her light to the side of the tracks and revealed an industrial doorway cut into the wall.
“That’s the emergency exit they used to get people out, right over there. It opens out into a ravine. We could get out there, if we needed to”.
Mark looked at Emily but she shook her head.
“The ravine will be buried under snow, and we’ll never make it out of there before we freeze to death. We may be in the dark down here, but at least it’s dry”.
“You’re probably right,” Amber conceded. “How far up are we going to go, though?”
Carlos chuckled in the blackness. “What’s wrong, you aren’t scared of the dark, are you?”
