Night-Train

by Thomas F Monteleone

  He listened as Provenza succinctly recounted the previous evening—how he had got wrapped up in Constance Starkey’s story and had gone to check things out. When he got to the part about Ralphie Loggins and his insistence on going down into the subway, Corvino’s skin started to get goose bumps. He listened to John’s descriptions of what he had seen and done, and suddenly all the morning’s good feelings had vanished.

  “Prometheus,” he said, interrupting his partner’s story. “It sounds like Prometheus …”

  John lifted his hand. “Wait. Save it till later; you’ve got to hear everything.” Provenza continued, telling how he killed the bird and hurried back to Houston Street. From there, he had instructed the token booth woman to call the transit police and he went back to his car and radioed for a meat wagon. The transit cops claimed they’d never heard of the abandoned station. John had led them and the paramedics from the meat wagon down the tracks to the empty platform. It was there, all right. No exit doors, no stairs; just the three blank walls. The only problem was that there wasn’t any fog, no glowing mist, and no way to get into the cavern that he had just left. The tiles on the far wall were cracked with age and covered with an undisturbed, half-century-old layer of grime.

  “Thank Christ I hadn’t told them why I had called them in, or they would’ve shipped me off to Bellevue last night,” said John. “You could have laid me out with a feather when I got back there and there was nothing!”

  “What did you do to cover?”

  “Real quick, I explained that I had gotten a call claiming that there was a body seen back on the platform, and I’d decided to call in some support before taking a look. I acted surprised and disgusted that it had turned out to be a phony, and that’s how I put it down in the report. But the captain can tell something’s wrong. He’s known me a long time. He knows I don’t pull a team without checking everything out first.” John looked at him sadly. “I don’t know, I just don’t know. What do you think, man?”

  “What would you say if I told you I’ve seen that fog you’re talking about?” Corvino looked him hard in the eye as he spoke.

  “What? What’re you talking about, man? Don’t play games with me, Michael. I’m serious!”

  “I’m serious, too. I’ve been meaning to tell you about it, but I was afraid you’d think I was out to lunch, just like you feel about what happened to you. Do you understand?”

  “Tell me! What the hell happened to you?”

  Corvino recounted the experience in the subway tunnel with Lya, Lane Carter, and Richard Frieter. He described the glowing mist as accurately as he could, told about the train and the scrabbling noises and the cave-in, and explained how the emergency crews couldn’t find a thing when they dug out the collapsed tunnel. He could tell that Provenza was accepting all of it, that he wasn’t about to question any of it. “Christ, Corvino, what the hell is going on? It isn’t real!”

  “Oh, yes, it is—that’s the worst part.”

  “But it’s crazy! How can this be happening? What the hell have we stumbled into?”

  “Lane Carter has some ideas. Listen …” As simply as he could manage it, Corvino went over some of the theories that Carter was toying with. He tried to include everything: the lines of forces, the intersecting points of concentrated power, the Celtic stone, the possibilities of other dimensions or alternate worlds occluding upon our own. He described how there might be gateways where things from our world might pass through to other ones, or things from the other places might enter into our world. He knew it sounded crazy, but it was a possibility, and he tried to impress that on his literal-minded, pragmatic friend.

  “But if any of that’s true, what the hell are we going to do about it? Christ, it all sounds so off-the-wall!”

  “Well, we certainly can’t write it up and put it on the captain’s desk right now. We’ve got to gather evidence, see if there are any patterns, any pieces of solid proof.”

  “If they bust through that wall down there, they’d have all the proof they’d ever need,” said Provenza. “What are our chances of getting a crew in there?”

  “We’d have to come up with an awfully good reason. What about Carter? That star-stone of his might allow him to pass through. It worked before. I’ll have to see what he thinks about it.”

  “What were you saying about Prometheus before?” asked Provenza after a moment.

  Corvino shrugged and smiled mockingly. “You ever heard of the myth of Prometheus?”

  “It sounds familiar, but if it was from high school, I’ve probably forced it out of my head. Go on, educate me.”

  “He was a god from Greek mythology. He stole the fire of Zeus and gave it to mankind—sort of a symbol for our rise to intelligence and technology. As the story goes, Zeus was so furious with Prometheus that he punished him by chaining him for all eternity to a rock where a bird would come by and pluck out his entrails. Every night his organs would grow back, and every day the bird would come again and pluck them out.”

  “Holy shit,” said Provenza.

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  “You mean that crap about the gods is true? It’s real?!”

  “Hey, partner, I don’t know what it all means. But it scares the crap out of me just to start thinking about it.”

  “You and me both. So what do we do now?”

  Corvino explained Carter’s plan. He suggested that John try to gather as many records as possible of bizarre occurrences that had anything to do with the underground of the city. Provenza was now willy-nilly a member of Carter’s team, and he would have all the benefits of full membership— a lot of bullshit work.

  “That still doesn’t get us clear of our regular routine,” said John finally. “Captain laid a new case on us this morning— warehouse down on Canal Street. The night watchman got offed last night, and somebody trucked out with half a million dollars’ worth of computer components.” John picked up a file and then dropped it back to the blotter.

  Corvino sighed. “Okay, let’s get down there and check it out. I know it’s going to be hard with everything else on our minds, but we’ve got to keep a lid on it till we have something, right?”

  “I guess so. I still might nose around the Transit Authority and see what kind of authorizations we need to tear through that wall.”

  “No, you better wait on that till I talk to Lane Carter. Believe me, he might have a better idea.”

  Provenza shrugged and picked up the file folder, adjusting his tie. “I think I better go upstairs and wash up, shave, okay?”

  Corvino nodded. “One more thing about this …”

  “What’s that?”

  “I’m not exactly sure of how to say this, but I’m very scared about all this stuff, you know? And I’m glad that you believe me, that you’re a part of it, I guess. I don’t think I could’ve kept you away from this anyway, but I was afraid of what you would’ve thought of me. It wasn’t you, John; it was me. I hope you understand that.”

  Provenza smiled for the first time that morning. “Hey, listen, we’re partners, right? So we’re still learning a little about each other. That’s okay in my book. If we’re crazy, we’re crazy together, right?”

  As he walked to the back stairs that led up toward the washroom, Corvino mulled over his last words. Yeah, if we’re crazy. But what if we’re okay, and it’s the rest of the world that’s going around the bend?

  CHAPTER 24

  THOMPSON

  It was another bright day up on the streets, but they all seemed the same to Whitey Thompson as he strolled under the Park Avenue piecrust. He carried his usual complement of lights, traps, and armaments as he headed down toward his lunch rendezvous on 50th Street. The only problem was that it was getting colder and the women were starting to put away the skirts and dresses. More and more every day were passing by in designer jeans and pantsuits. Screw it, he thought, there was always the hope that there would be a few brave girls left in all the thousands who would cross his grate.


  Just thinking about that one a week or so back was giving him a hard-on. Goddamn! Leather boots and a leather garter belt … and no drawers covering that beautiful little snatch. He’d have liked to have jumped on that one, lickety-split.

  As he walked through his private domain, flashing his beacon ahead of him like a shining lance, he checked for runways that might be fresh—still shiny from the rat-oil—to see if there had been many passing through this section of tunnel. He’d already found two traps this morning with new guys out of the race. It always made his morning a little better when he found proof of his effectiveness. Finding some of his baits all chewed up was also something to warm Whitey’s heart. Aw, ain’t that cute, them little cock-knockers found themselves somethin’ to eat … hope they lived long enough to bring some of that poison back to their little babies!

  He headed south back toward the old executive rail line where he’d laid the traps the week before, even though the rats never went there. On the way, he saw twin glimmers of light reflected back; two little beads of grapeshot staring into the light, frozen for a minute. One of the little bastards was out during Whitey’s rounds, huh? He stepped up his pace and the rat didn’t move, couldn’t move, as Whitey could see when he got close enough: it was stuck to one of his shingles, the glue holding all four paws just as neat as could be. Just like they always did, the rat started yelping and thrashing. Whitey came to a stop two paces in front of it and smiled, slowly pulling out his billy club.

  “Whatsa matter, boy? Decided to stick around? Haw, haw!”

  He stepped closer so that his boots were almost touching the shingle, and the rat freaked out. It tried to snap at the edge of the boot, and it hissed and spat. Fearless little shits, he had to give them that. “Well, it’s out-go-the-lights time for you, pal,” said Whitey as he brought the club down in one swift arc. It was a long-practiced delivery and he landed the butt squarely on the tiny pointed head. There was the usual muffled squish and then nothing but silence. In a day or so the rat’s carcass would be gone—carried off by his buddies for a sumptuous afternoon snack.

  Every time Whitey offed one of them, he felt good, like he was doing his job and he was damned good at it. He knew that some of the other exterminators spent a lot of their time just screwing around. Some of them would meet at the edges of their territories and play poker in the afternoons, but Whitey never joined them.

  He reached the cutoff to the turnaround loop, and cut left down a narrow, low-ceilinged passageway. For the first time, as he moved along, he noticed how small and cramped it was. A bad place to get stuck or have something happen to you, that was for sure. They might not find you for days. It was funny, but there were little blips of paranoia shooting through him, little flashes of claustrophobia, and he had never had any trouble with that sort of thing. Not in all the years he’d been underground.

  So what was this bullshit he was thinking right now?

  It didn’t make sense, and he tried to push the unsettling thoughts from his mind. The passageway ended at a small door, which he unlatched and swung open to reveal the sparse forest of support girders, all covered with soot and dirt that would never be wiped clean. The tracks swept past him and curved around to the left in concentric ovals, interspersed with platforms that led to a series of entrances to the Waldorf and the old Commodore. Been a long time since anybody used this place, he thought.

  He started walking alongside the tracks, trying to remember where he’d placed his baits. Down by that girder with the number “3” painted on it, wasn’t that one of them? He moved closer to the support stanchion. Yep, there it was, just as plain as anything, and untouched. No rats coming through here, as usual.

  He continued checking the placements, gradually moving away from the loop toward the place where the area narrowed and funneled down to a two-track tunnel exiting the place. The tunnel connected with the Grand Central Terminal and he could hear the occasional vibrations and subterranean rumblings of trains entering and leaving the old station. Right by the entrance to the tunnel he had left another bait, but when he flashed his light on it, he was surprised. The baits were made of pressed animal fat wrapped in little string-mesh bags like the kind they put around smoked hams sometimes. The rats could easily get their snouts through the mesh and get enough bites to kill them. It worked out real nice.

  But this bait looked like it had been tom apart by something a lot bigger than a rat. The mesh had been shredded and the bait was almost gone. Bending down, Whitey examined the remains, and could clearly see the marks of claws or very big teeth that had raked through the animal fat. He knew that there were some big cats that lived under the streets and in the subway tunnels. He had found a dead one once that the rats had been working on, but these marks looked bigger than even a cat could make. And cats were kind of dainty when they worked at a piece of meat. This bait looked like it had been savaged by something.

  Now, ain’t that weird? he thought uneasily.

  Standing up, Whitey looked around, following the splash of his torch beam. That messed-up bait bothered him. Anything that was big enough to tear it up like that, to eat that much of that poisonous shit, couldn’t have gotten very far. There was enough strychnine in those baits to drop an elephant, and he figured that if he poked around a little he might find whatever it was.

  He spent a few minutes scanning the rest of the open area in the loop, and he found another one of the baits tom up pretty bad, though not as much as the first one. What the hell was going on here?

  He knew that he wasn’t the smartest guy in the world, but he had seen enough shows on TV to know that when the hero found something out of the ordinary, he always checked it out. It was the guy who always saw something important in things that didn’t at first seem like anything who won out. Maybe some big animal had escaped from the zoo or fallen off a truck or something, and was roaming around down here?

  He directed his beam down the dark, abandoned tunnel, letting the light play on the rusting rails. Whatever it was had apparently come in here from down there, so that’s where he had to look. Jesus, it’s dark down there, ain’t it? Whitey thought.

  He shrugged, drew a deep breath, and started down the tunnel. In all the years he’d known about this place, he had never bothered to go down there, and in an instant he knew why he had avoided it, why even the rats stayed away. He couldn’t describe it, but there was something wrong with the tunnel. It felt colder than the rest of the underground, and the air seemed thicker, harder to breathe. Old things were like that, he knew. They got musty and damp from not being used anymore, but this seemed even stranger than the basement of an old house or a closed-up attic.

  It was like there was something down there, that’s what it was.

  The thought came to him from left field, and he stopped walking, finding himself standing still listening and watching the darkness that played around the edges of his torchlight.

  No, that’s a lot of bullshit, he told himself. But he was not totally convinced. He moved ahead to where the tunnel started to curve gently to the east, not allowing him a clear view of what was ahead, and that bothered him. There was a slight vibration in the tunnel as a train approached Grand Central, although he could not really hear it so much as feel it in the roadbed. He pushed on.

  Around the bend in the distance he saw the fog, and he stopped.

  At first he thought it was reflecting the light of his torch and diffusing it, spreading it out. That’s why it looked so bright. But then he thought his eyes might be playing tricks on him, and he switched off the lamp for a second or two. That’s when he realized that the fog, or whatever it was—smoke, maybe— was glowing. Like there was a light inside it somewhere.

  Get the fuck outta here, his mind trumpeted. Screw this hero business, I ain’t on TV.

  His mind made up, Whitey turned to head back out of the tunnel. Lifting his lamp, he directed the beam toward the opening to the turnaround loop.

  And that’s when he saw the fog.
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  Wait a minute! What the fuck?! Had he turned himself completely around, still facing the other end of the tunnel? He couldn’t have done that, but he must have …

  Slowly he turned 180 degrees, and his breath stuck in his throat when he saw the fog at the far end of the curving wall. Only this time it seemed closer, and he could detect movement in the mist. Like clouds rolling around in a storm wind.

  Whitey took a step back up the other way, the way out, and saw that the glowing fog was moving there, too, moving closer by rolling and folding over itself. At both ends he was trapped, cut off from the world that he knew. There was a ratcheting sound in his ears and he realized it was his own pulse slamming through the arteries in his neck.

  Very slowly, trying not to make a sound, he unsnapped the holster of his sawed-off shotgun and eased it out of the leather casing. It felt heavy and solid in his hands and he immediately felt safer. He didn’t care what might be down there with him, but it wouldn’t stand up to a close-range blast of shot.

  He stood still for a moment, holding the shotgun at the ready, as his thoughts caromed around in his head. Stay cool, buddy … take it easy. He drew a breath, and he understood why he had been thinking those paranoid things. He could feel it now. It was a presence, a feeling that he wasn’t alone down there. It was like an overpowering odor in the air, it was that strong. At first only his subconscious had felt it, and that part of his mind had been sending up the danger signals, turning them into thoughts that flashed through his mind, and he really hadn’t understood.

  But now he knew. He knew that there was something in the tunnel that wanted to get him.

  Well, come on and try, you cocksucker. You just come on and—

  It was on him before he could finish the thought. All he could see was a tall, dark shape springing from the bank of the glowing mist and the instant’s flash of the torch’s beam upon a large, saucerlike eye. He pulled the trigger of the shotgun and the contained sound of the explosion in the tunnel almost blew his ears in. Whatever it was that was lunging for him was caught in the swarm of high-velocity pellets and slammed backward. In the flash of the shot, Thompson caught a stroboscopic image of a large-eyed, scaly head, lots of teeth, all getting chewed up by the blast.