Terminus

by Adam Baker

  ‘You got bit. Sorry, brother.’

  Wade leaned against the wall, listening to the conversation.

  ‘Yo, Wade,’ called Galloway. Give a guy a break.’

  Wade turned away.

  Lupe prodded Galloway with the barrel of the gun.

  ‘Make it easy on yourself.’

  He slowly got to his feet.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘No.’

  Lupe took a step back. She signalled with a wave of the shotgun. The plant room.

  Galloway slowly walked across the ticket hall, each step deliberate and heavy, his time left on earth measured in floor tiles.

  He reached the plant room door. He pushed it open. Heavy creak. He took a last, despairing look at his companions.

  Donahue hadn’t moved position. Still sitting with her back to the hall, still turned from the light.

  Sicknote was on his knees, scribbling with a pen. He glanced up. Mix of boredom and pity.

  Wade groped along the wall to the IRT office.

  ‘Hey,’ pleaded Galloway. ‘Wade. Please.’

  Wade closed the office door. Latch-click.

  Galloway’s shoulders slumped in defeat. He took a shuddering breath and walked into the plant room.

  He was swallowed by shadow.

  Lupe and Galloway faced each other. The bare bulb overhead threw harsh shadows, turned their faces to grotesque Kabuki masks.

  Lupe. Resolute. Deep frown, clenched teeth.

  Galloway. Sweat-sheen, panting with fear.

  He was mesmerised by the yawning, blacker-than-black cavern mouth of the barrel, inches from his face.

  ‘Want me to turn my back?’ asked Galloway. ‘Want me to kneel?’

  ‘Makes no difference to me.’

  He pushed his hands in his pockets.

  ‘Got a final message for the world?’ asked Lupe.

  ‘I’d like to pray.’

  Lupe shrugged.

  ‘Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come . . .’

  He palmed the scalpel.

  ‘. . . on Earth as it is in heaven . . .’

  The generator coughed. The light flickered. Lupe glanced upwards at the web-draped ceiling bulb.

  Galloway snatched his hand from his pocket. Silver blur. The scalpel blade embedded in Lupe’s cheek.

  Angry cry. She staggered.

  Galloway grabbed one of the generator cables hanging from the wall, and wrenched the clamp from high voltage switch gear.

  Sudden darkness.

  Lupe pulled the scalpel from her face and threw it aside. Clink and clatter. She raised the shotgun and fired. Blast-roar. Muzzle flare lit the room like a camera flash. Glimpse of Galloway ducking between battery racks, flinching from a high-velocity shower of brick chips as buckshot blew a crater in the wall.

  She fumbled for the generator cable. She reattached the clip. Spark and hum. The bare bulb flickered and glowed steady.

  She cranked the shotgun slide. She crept between racks, gun to her shoulder, poised to fire. The room was fogged by a blue haze of stone dust and gun smoke.

  ‘Hey. Galloway.’ She wiped trickling blood from her cheek with the back of her hand. ‘Step out, dude. No use skulking back there.’

  Distant rasp of metal.

  ‘I didn’t want it to end this way. It should have been quick and clean.’

  She peered into shadows, finger on the trigger.

  The air con grate high on the back wall was pulled back.

  ‘Galloway?’

  She peered into the narrow conduit. Brickwork receded to darkness. Distant scuffle and pant.

  ‘Is this really what you want?’ she bellowed into darkness. ‘You want to become a monster? You want to let it win?’

  38

  Lupe emerged from the plant room. She dabbed blood from her cheek.

  ‘Is it done?’ asked Wade.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I heard a shot.’

  ‘He ran. He hid in the pipes. Fuck him. If he wants to endure a living hell, if he wants to be transformed into a sickening mess, then let him. He’s not our problem.’

  She cleaned her face with antiseptic swabs then pasted a dressing over the wound.

  ‘Are you hurt?’ asked Wade, listening to the rustle and rip of sterile wrappers.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Any word from Cloke or Tombes?’

  ‘Nothing we can do but wait.’

  A muffled crash.

  ‘What the hell was that?’

  Sicknote stood at the foot of the street exit steps, transfixed, gazing upwards at the entrance gate.

  ‘What’s going on, Sick?’

  He smiled. He giggled.

  Lupe ran to the foot of the stairwell and pushed him aside.

  The entrance gate was open. Metal-shriek as infected creatures pushed the Coke machine to one side and stumbled down the steps towards her.

  ‘Holy fuck,’ muttered Lupe.

  ‘They’re in?’ said Wade, panic in his voice. ‘Did they get in?’

  Lupe shouldered the shotgun and fired. A guy in a pus-streaked Starbucks shirt caught a blast to the chest. For a brief moment Lupe could see clean through his torso: a smouldering, cauterised hole bored through ribs, lungs, shirt fabric and skin.

  The guy reeled like he took a gut-punch, but kept coming.

  She ran up the steps to meet him. She racked the slide, adjusted her grip, adjusted her aim.

  Muzzle-roar. Point-blank skull burst. The headless body toppled backwards and sprawled across the steps. The tight stairwell filled with gun smoke and blood mist.

  A blue-haired skater kid, iPod beads fused to his ears.

  Lupe racked the slide, took aim and fired. Second head burst, body hurled in a near back flip. Blood and skull fragments dripped from the stairwell ceiling.

  Two guys in grey janitor shirts jostled through the entrance gate and stumbled down the steps towards her.

  She racked the slide, took aim and pulled the trigger. Click. Empty.

  Donahue stood next to her, paralysed with horror.

  ‘Shells,’ shouted Lupe. She cuffed Donahue round the head. ‘Give me the spare shells.’

  Donahue dug cartridges from her pocket.

  ‘Make them count.’

  Lupe snatched the shells from her hand and fed them into the breech.

  ‘Grab an axe, a hammer, anything.’

  Donahue ran to the equipment pile, pulled a strap and released a clutch of heavy tools.

  ‘Give me something,’ shouted Wade. ‘Give me something I can swing.’

  Donahue ignored him. She grabbed an axe and ran back to the stairs.

  Lupe shouldered the gun. She squinted down the barrel sight, waited for a clear and certain shot.

  ‘Come on, fuckers. Come get some.’

  Cloke and Tombes lowered the stretcher from the subway carriage and set it on the track. They inspected the oxygen and nitrogen cylinders lashed to the backboard. They checked straps, gas levels and helmet hose.

  Ekks lay impassive, face serene behind his visor.

  ‘Let’s get him in the hole.’

  Tombes squirmed beneath the subway car. He dragged Ekks behind him.

  He tied kernmantle rope to the head of the backboard. He looped the rope over a greased axle and slid Ekks into the shaft. It was a tight angle. The head of the backboard scraped against the underside of the coach.

  He fed rope hand-over-hand until there was no more slack. He shone a flashlight down the narrow pipe. Concrete ribbed with ladder rungs. Ekks hung far below, suspended by taut rope.

  ‘I’m heading down,’ said Tombes. He secured his helmet and equalised suit pressure. His wrist screen flashed brief amber, then green.

  He swung his legs into the shaft and began to descend the ladder rungs, flippers swinging from his weight belt.

  He paused and looked down. Ekks suspended by rope. Concrete walls shafting downwards into darkness.

  ‘Looks like this
thing drops to the centre of the earth.’

  Cloke stood beside the radio operator.

  One last look at the grotesquely transformed figure.

  ‘You’ve suffered enough, kid. You deserve a long sleep.’

  He crouched beside Ivanek. A last inspection of the ammonium nitrate charge strapped to the table leg.

  He unhooked the radio clipped to his belt.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘I’m in the water. The shaft is about fifty feet deep.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll set the detonators running. I’m coming down.’

  He pinched the pencil timer with pliers, crushing the internal acid vial.

  Cloke jumped from the car. He inspected the seals of his suit. He buckled a weight belt. He shouldered the tank harness and checked the gas gauge strapped to his wrist. Flippers hung from his belt, ready to be transferred to his feet when he hit the water.

  He took a last look around. Arched shadows. Mausoleum hush.

  Something moving in the gloom. He trained his flashlight. An infected soldier, part burned, cut in half at the waist. The creature feebly clawed the air.

  ‘Poor bastard. You been there this whole time? Watching us come and go?’

  Cloke lowered the dive helmet and span lock-bolts. Hiss of pressurisation.

  He clumsily ducked beneath the subway carriage, squirmed on hands and knees beneath rusted, oil-caked air brakes, leaned sideways as his tanks struck metal.

  He swung his legs into the shaft and began his descent.

  Last shot. The stairwell fogged with gun smoke and stone dust.

  ‘That’s it. I’m out.’

  More monstrous creatures headed down the steps. They stumbled over bodies. They slipped on tiles slick with blood and brain tissue. They crawled on hands and knees, eyes fixed on Lupe and Donahue.

  ‘Okay,’ murmured Lupe. ‘Let’s do this shit the hard way.’

  She flipped the shotgun and gripped the hot barrel, ready to swing the weapon like a club.

  Donahue gripped her fire axe.

  A kid in a rot-streaked football shirt. His skin was slashed and peppered with broken glass, like he had been standing near a plate window when the shockwave hit. Lupe felled him with a side-blow to the head. She stood over the kid and pounded his face with the butt of the shotgun until his skull broke, spilling brain.

  A girl in a Wendy’s uniform. Her name tag said LANA. Metallic growths hung from her mouth like she was vomiting chrome. Donahue swung the axe, punched the blade through the crown of her head in a single, emphatic hammer blow. Sickening bone crunch. Face split in two.

  ‘We have to reach the entrance. We have to close that gate.’

  ‘Too many of them,’ said Donahue, backing away. ‘Rip us to shreds.’

  ‘We got nowhere to run. We’ve got to make a stand. Drive them out. We can’t let them take the station.’

  ‘Too damn many.’ Donahue turned and ran.

  Lupe hesitated. She raised the shotgun, adjusted grip, strings of blood dripping from the stock like drool.

  Wade groped along the ticket hall wall until he found the stairwell entrance. He held a knife in his hand.

  ‘Get out of here, Lupe,’ he shouted. ‘Block yourself in one of the rooms. Hide until the chopper arrives.’

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  ‘Get out of here. Go on. Get going.’

  Wade began to climb the steps. He slipped in blood. He stumbled over sprawled bodies.

  ‘Come on, you fucks,’ he screamed, yelling upwards at the street entrance. His voice echoed around the tight space. ‘Come on, motherfuckers.’

  Four infected creatures headed down the stairs to meet him. They jostled and hissed.

  Wade heard them coming. He braced his legs and gripped the knife, ready to strike.

  ‘Okay, fellas. Let’s see what you got.’

  They seized his arms and shoulders, sank teeth and tore flesh. He roared. He shook his right arm free. He slashed and stabbed.

  A bus driver pinned him to the wall. Wade groped, found the creature’s face, and drove the knife into its mouth. It gagged and shook itself free, knife still wedged between its jaws.

  Wade punched and kicked, battled his way upwards towards the street entrance.

  ‘Come on, you cunts.’

  Lupe took a last look as she backed away. Wade at the top of the steps, overwhelmed but still fighting, bloody but exultant.

  The water tunnel.

  A ferro-concrete channel so vast Cloke couldn’t see the full circumference. His twin helmet halogens lit the wall beside him. The rest was cavernous shadow.

  A fierce current. Street run-off, burst water mains, and liquid leeched from porous Midtown bedrock. Thousands of tons of water funnelled towards the East River.

  A safety wire cinch-anchored to the tunnel wall. A steel cable looped through pitons. A guide-line to enable maintenance crews to snap a carabiner and traverse the passage. Cloke and Tombes gripped the wire, hauled like they were battling a hurricane wind, fought the tide that pressed at their backs, threatened to lift and hurl them into the darkness ahead.

  A streaming blizzard of refuse. Leaves, wrappers, newspaper.

  A corpse washed by, tumbling in sub-aquatic shadow. A woman in a wedding dress drifting head over heels, satin gown dilating in the current like the skirts of a jellyfish. The spectral cadaver trailed lace like ghost-vapour. It rushed past, and was swallowed by shadow.

  ‘We are truly down the rabbit hole,’ murmured Tombes.

  Cloke dragged the stretcher along the tunnel floor. No sound but the harsh helmet-rasp of his own exertion.

  His wrist gauge flashed an amber RMV warning. Heavy oxygen consumption. Raised CO2.

  ‘How much further?’ asked Tombes.

  ‘Look for another inspection shaft. A way up and out.’

  ‘We should have found this route earlier. The Captain would still be alive.’

  A distant rumble. A tremor ran through the water.

  ‘There she blows,’ murmured Cloke.

  He pictured the tunnel forty feet above their heads.

  Chain detonations. Rock-roar: the tunnel and MTA locomotive obliterated by an avalanche of soil, bricks and fractured cement.

  He pictured Nariko’s sub-aquatic tomb sealed by a cascade of rubble. Her body enclosed in eternal darkness.

  They continued to fight the current as they headed south.

  ‘How you doing?’ asked Cloke.

  ‘Fine,’ panted Tombes.

  Something massive up ahead. Vast bulk moving among shadows.

  They drew closer.

  Three huge turbine blades swept the circumference of the tunnel. Slow, stately revolutions. A manganese-bronze cloverleaf, like a ship’s screw. Under power, they would have spun at a blur, churning water towards the harbour outfall. The turbine motor was dormant, but the eight-ton blades still gently turned, propelled by relentless water pressure.

  A body tumbled past them on the current. A guy in a suit. He hit the edge of a slow-moving blade. His head split in a cloud-burst of blood. He was snatched onwards down the tunnel.

  ‘How are we going to get past that thing?’ asked Tombes. ‘Can we jam it to a standstill?’

  ‘With what?’ asked Cloke. ‘Gas tanks? We need everything we’ve got.’

  ‘Jesus. We’ll get diced.’

  They could feel it. A throb in the water. A subtle, sub-sonic pulse each time the great blades swept past.

  ‘Just got to time it right,’ said Cloke. ‘It’s moving slow. A three second interval between strokes. We can duck through, one at a time. I’ll go first.’

  He edged closer to the blades. Inches away from blurred metal. He tensed his muscles and settled his breathing. Each sweep felt like a body-blow.

  A blade swung past. He closed his eyes and pushed forwards, tensed for a bone-splintering impact.

  He opened his eyes. He was through.

  ‘Go,’ shouted Tombes. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’
ll deal with Ekks. Just go. Find us a route up and out of here.’

  A roof vent fifty yards south. Cloke’s helmet lamps lit a concrete inspection shaft lined with iron rungs.

  ‘Tombes. You all right?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m through. I’m cool.’

  ‘Looks like we got a way out.’

  Cloke gripped rungs and hauled himself up the shaft hand-over-hand.

  Lupe’s voice:

  ‘Where are you guys?’

  ‘Almost with you,’ said Cloke. ‘Had to circumvent a little obstruction.’

  ‘They’re here. They got inside the station. They’re on us.’

  ‘We’re seconds away. Couple of hundred yards and we’ll be at Fenwick.’

  ‘I’m heading down to the platform to meet you. We’ll have to fight our way to the plant room. Be ready.’

  ‘Ten-four.’

  ‘Move your asses. We’ve got a serious fight on our hands.’

  39

  Incinerated vehicles. Incessant rain.

  Shotgun fire. Reverberations like thunder. Muffled concussions penetrated the skull-socket darkness of vacant windows and storefronts.

  HONEYBEE.

  A bombed-out boutique. Toppled clothes rails, scattered shoes, denim dusted with broken glass. Half-melted mannequins lay dismembered on the floor. Bald. Blank eyed. Arms and heads angled in a coquettish tease.

  Clothing and hangers slowly pushed aside. A Hare Krishna, bald like a mannequin, come to life.

  He climbed unsteadily to his feet. Coins fell from the folds of his robes and skittered across the floor.

  He stood for a moment, swaying like a drunk.

  He headed for the front of the store. His sandaled foot stamped through a dummy’s impassive face, shattering it like eggshell.

  The Hare Krishna toppled through the storefront window and fell into the street. He lay on the rain-lashed sidewalk and looked around. Transformed vision cut through darkness like infrared. Rubble, buckled automobiles, toppled light poles.

  Another distant gunshot.

  The Krishna got to his feet and stumbled east.

  Liberty Street.

  The Krishna shuffled between buses, limos and yellow cabs, livery seared down to base metal.

  He shambled past a meat truck. Faint lettering: CROWN MEATS sprayed out and DEPT OF HEALTH – DISPOSAL scrawled underneath. The rear doors leaned open. Infected bodies wrapped in sheets and hung from hooks. Still alive. They squirmed like larvae.