D

by George Right

  At this instant, Logan felt the dead fingers on his wrist weakening their grasp. But against the backdrop of the night's nightmarish events, this movement did not frighten him. On the contrary, he thought with spiteful pleasure, he had been given an opportunity. He seized the wrist of the rigidly frozen hand and used it like a stone to strike the glass splinters blocking his way. Glass collapsed with a wallop on the sidewalk. Tony had the impression that it would be heard not only in the police car, but in the neighboring blocks as well. It was, however, too late to change plans. He slipped into the store display window to the right and stiffened behind the glass between the mannequins of a young girl and a little boy. But that damned hand marked him nearly as much as his torn and dirty clothes... Tony made a new attempt to unclench its fingers and realized that they had no will of their own. Obviously, they had simply begun to thaw, making the grasp weaker... Tony wanted only to unbend them, but they started to break with a crunch, though their skin did not tear anymore. He hardly had time to fling the maimed hand somewhere deep into the dark interior of the shop, because the police car appeared from behind the garbage truck, driving directly on the black bags. And Logan was struck dumb staring at it.

  It was not the car which Tony had already seen. Probably the eyeless cop really had called for reinforcements, or perhaps the arrival of this car was simply a coincidence. It had rolled off the production line, at the latest, in the early seventies, but it wasn't that which caused Tony to stare at it without trusting his eyes. The car's lights had been broken long ago and the fluctuating orange light did not come from them. The car was burning. The whole back half of it was conflagrant. Tony looked in horror at the tongues of flame licking the gas tank cover and waited for the explosion at any second. But there was no explosion. The car slowly moved forward, as if nothing was happening (even in spite of the fact that its back wheels had become shapeless charred rims, stinking of burned rubber). Its driver seemed unaffected by the events right behind his back. (This time, as far as Tony could make out through a dirty glass, it was a black man at the wheel, but Logan was not sure that it was the color of his skin from birth.) Even in the front seats the heat should be intolerable; what would happen to an arrested person in the back seat was terrible even to imagine. Tony stood not breathing, trying to resemble a mannequin more than the real mannequins.

  The car slowly passed by and moved farther without stopping. But Tony understood that the danger had not passed at all–now the police car would go to the wall and turn back. The light from the flames shone through a glass door onto a dusty poster lying on the floor. Once, probably, the poster had hung on this door or in a store window nearby. Before the shimmering light dimmed again, Logan managed to discern large letters:

  STORE CLOSING

  EVERYTHING MUST GO!

  DISCOUNTS up to 80 %!

  Till February, 29th

  The last February 29th was more than two years ago. However, Tony would not be surprised to learn that this shop had been closed more than four years earlier. Or eight. Or... This garbage truck alone has probably been standing here for years... If the concept of a year in general makes sense in this place, where it is always midnight.

  The approaching light of a fire came again through the muddy glass at the left. The car was returning. Tony grew numb again, staring straight ahead.

  Something rustled behind his back. Somewhere at floor level, not too loudly. A rat, Tony told himself. But his imagination drew another picture: the torn off hand, painfully moving its broken fingers, trying to creep towards him... And after all that he had already seen, such a thought no longer seemed delirious.

  Logan tried mentally to hurry the burning car, but it, on the contrary, went all the more slowly and finally stopped just opposite the storefront. There was no engine sound, but only the crackle of the flames. And Tony, struck with horror, noticed out of the corner of his eye what he had missed previously looking at the other side of the car: on its blazing back seat someone sat. Someone... or something..., it was only a skeleton charred black... but could a skeleton sit up straight? Would it not fall to pieces? However Tony was afraid to give himself away by moving even his pupils and forced himself not to look in that direction. Though, of course, if the cop could see his pupils, he also should see more appreciable signs distinguishing Tony from a mannequin... beginning with the condition of his clothes... however, if mannequins gather dust in the window of a shop abandoned for years...

  "Anything, anything but him noticing me!" Tony mentally begged. In the next moment, however, he thought that his plea was too precipitate.

  The car moved again. It slowly went around the garbage truck and disappeared from sight. Still, for some time behind the rusty truck gleams of flame could be seen, but then the street sank again into gloom. Perhaps it was a trap, and the police would still return? Logan waited a few minutes more to be sure. Nothing happened.

  "Wheeew," Tony, at last, dared to relax, feeling, how his whole body ached because of a wooden immovability. And how very cold he was still–however, he shivered not only from coldness. Now he would like to move, talk, even to joke. "Thanks for covering, guys," he said to the mannequins. "Why," he wondered, "were they left here after the shop closed and even their clothes had not been taken off? By the way, a good idea!" Women's and children's clothes wouldn't fit him, but there were male mannequins too. At least he could bundle up and replace his trousers... if only the sizes matched... what a pity that mannequins had no shoes...

  He resolutely stepped to the nearest male figure, tried to remove its jacket... and understood that it was not a mannequin at all.

  Logan'shands were lying on the shoulders of a corpse. The dead face was stiffened in a grimace of last pain; streams of dried up blood stretched downwards from the corners of a wide-open mouth; rolled up eyes blindly stared with two whitish cataracts. "Why doesn't it fall?" Tony thought perplexedly, jerking his hands back. However, his recent experience reminded him that dead persons can not only stand, but can also drive cars... But intuitively he felt that that this body was really dead. Rigor mortis? The body was rigid indeed, but it would probably fall down even from a little push...

  Tony moved his eyes downwards. And saw something gleaming between the legs of trousers which he had been going to put on. This unfortunate person had been impaled on a smooth metal stake. Brown stains–possibly, not only of blood–had befouled the trousers and dried on the bare feet of the corpse. The base of the stake had been thrust into the round support for a clothes rack. And, looking again in horror at the face of the dead man, Logan more guessed than saw the sharp end of the stake resting against the palate in the black hole of a mouth.

  Tony rushed from one standing figure to another, already knowing that everywhere he would find the same. A half-dozen corpses were in this store window and no fewer than that were on the other side of the door... Men. Women. Children. Everyone was impaled on a stake which had been carefully adjusted for height and had passed precisely through a throat, instead of emerging somewhere between ribs or from under a collar bone, as quite often happened during such executions. Whoever had done it, the executioners, obviously, had approached their business with great diligence and attention to details.

  When did it happen? The shop had been abandoned years ago, but the bodies looked fresh, even rigor mortis had not passed yet... however, how well could Tony know what happened to dead bodies here?

  Something rustled again behind him. But this time he stood with his back to the street.

  Tony turned back sharply. And saw that one of the black bags–which, it seemed had avoided the wheels of the police car–was bending in half and sitting up in the middle of the street. The rotten ropes tying its legs and torso stretched and snapped; only a disheveled noose remained on its neck. If, of course, that thing inside the bag had a torso, legs, and a neck–but Logan did not doubt it anymore. Then one more bag began to move, and one more...

  Everything must go, oh yes.

  Tony
looked around in panic. He did not know whether they could get out of the bags and whether they had any interest in his person, but the notion of waiting and checking seemed absolutely mad. However, the idea of breaking through them filled Logan with insuperable horror. He wanted to run–but where? The garbage truck and these bags blocked the way back. In the other direction there was a dead end... Unless he headed deeper into a shop, but who knew they wouldn't follow him there? If only he had some kind of weapon... he has already ascertained that local...inhabitants...can be harmed. The stakes! Could he use one of them as a weapon? They weren't aspen, but those impaled on them seemed to remain dead. However, those things in the bags had stayed motionless for a long time, too...

  But there was no more time to think. The first figure in a bag had already risen to its feet and in small, but frequent short steps–as much as the bag allowed–was moving towards Logan. The others moved, too... even those pinned by the burning car–they could not stand up, but squirmed on asphalt, and then began to creep, like huge black caterpillars.

  Tony darted to the corpse of a ten year-old girl. Stakes on which the adults were impaled were too bulky, but this one was just the right size... Clutching the girl's stiffened corpse, Logan dragged it upwards, hoping to free the stake, but instead the stake was pulled out of its base, remaining in the body. Either it was stuck inside there or was held by spasmodically clasped muscles of the corpse... Tony threw the dead girl on the floor, then, having grasped the brown-stained bottom end of the stake, turned her upside down and put his shod foot on her chin. The black figures were approaching and he did not think any more about fastidiousness or, still less, about pity, but feverishly pulled on the stuck stake. It, at last, came unstuck with a disgusting sucking sound and, rasping metal against a bone, moved a little. But the first of figures in bags was already near the storefront window. Logan, dragging behind himself the girl's corpse which was gradually slipping from the stake, ran a few steps deeper into the shop. A couple of jerks more, and Tony managed to liberate the dirty metal stick completely–just in time to swing it and drive the sharp end into the breast of an oncoming figure.

  The stake went in with notable resistance, but nevertheless easier, than Logan had expected, and pierced the figure through. Probably that thing inside a bag was already fairly rotten. But pulling the weapon out appeared to be more difficult. Tony hardly had time to do it in order to jam the stake into the throat of another figure which had already approached him sideways. It tumbled down backwards, but the first one, though pierced already, still stood. Logan smashed its head in, swinging the stake straight from the shoulder like a bat, and then jabbed in a stomach the third "bag" which had stolen up to him from the right. A loathsome crunch sounded–apparently the spike went into the backbone–and the figure jackknifed and then slipped from the stake down to the floor. A heavy sickening stench spread from the pierced bags. Ahead, new figures were already approaching, and Tony, having again snatched the stake as a cudgel, began to thrash them on their heads–as it turned out to be faster than piercing them. He heard a wet crash as skulls broke, but some of them fell only after the second or third blow. Tony turned on the place like a madman, dispensing blows to the left and to the right. Soon his arms and shoulders, unused to such work, were aching with a leaden pain. He understood that could not last long; however, the majority of figures in bags already lay motionlessly on the floor of the shop and in the street in front of it. Some more blows–and Tony could take a breath. It seemed the first wave had been beaten off. However, those that could not stand up had already crept up close to the shop, but to finish them off, perhaps, would be easier...

  Something seized Logan's right ankle.

  Tony looked sharply downwards, automatically bringing up the stake for a blow. His ankle was clenched by fingers of the girl whom he had removed from the stake. She had crept up to him sideways, leaving a bloody-mucous trace from lumps of her spilled bowels. The dead face, on which the motionless grimace of the last agony remained, was raised upwards. Logan jammed the stake directly in this face, striking the right eye (the metal punched an eye socket and scratched against the skull from within). Then he pulled out the stake and struck again–this time splitting the wrist of the hand clenching his ankle. Cold fingers weakened their grasp; to be on the safe side, Tony stamped them twice with the heel of his only remaining shoe and jumped aside, hastily looking around.

  Other "mannequins" remained motionless–apparently, the stakes really did not allow them to revive. But the things that lay on the floor in bags began to move again.

  Tony understood that any injury inflicted on them gave him only a temporary respite. It is impossible to kill what is already dead. So, the only remedy was to flee. Perhaps, somewhere within the shop, there was an exit to the next street. Or at least office premises with windows overlooking the street. He ran into the shop's gloom, expecting every moment that in this total darkness he would run across something... or somebody. He slammed into an empty clothing rack which fell with a clang to the floor–but nothing more obstructed his path, except a little debris on the floor. At last, the stake he was holding before him struck a wall. Tony quickly moved along the wall, feeling with his left hand for a door–but instead of a door handle he came across a little switch. He flipped the switch in full confidence that it was useless; however a electric crackle sounded, and over Logan's head a light switched on. No, not the full illumination of a retail store, but only a single dim ceiling bulb, flickering unsteadily and accreted with a thick fur coat of dust and dirt. But this light still was enough to make out a door farther in a wall... and the dead man blocking the way to it.

  It stood directly ahead of Tony, at arm's length. Its appearance was awful. The face was almost gone: cankered by sores, it had turned into one bloody mess, noseless and lipless. Separate shreds of skin and hair hung down from the head–and here and there bones showed through meat. The clothes dangled in a dirty tatter, the bared teeth grinned spitefully, and gnawed fingers clenched some blood-stained weapon... Without thinking an instant, Tony swung his steel stake into this dreadful face.

  It scattered in pieces with a tinkle of glass. Logan stood dumbfounded looking at a bare wall in front of him and at splinters of the broken mirror on the floor.

  Only now he understood why he could not be warmed in any way.

  Two workers in bright yellow jackets and orange helmets stood on a platform covered with a longstanding layer of dirt and garbage.

  "F-faugh, what a mess," the younger of them said, moving the beam of his flashlight away from what lay ahead of them."I don't know when I'll be able to eat meat again."

  "Yeah, the rats did a real job on him," the older worker imperturbably confirmed. "If he had no ID on him, he'll be hard to identify. Well, it's not our problem any more. Let the cops sort it out. I never understood people who go there of their own will."

  "I think they're just nut jobs," declared the younger man and, at the same time, could not help casting one more look there, where his colleague continued to shine his flashlight. "What do you think he died from?"

  "Took a wrong train."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Never mind, just kidding. Heart, probably... or something like that. It doesn't look like a crime. But like I've already said–let the police do their job."

  "What I can't understand, is how he got here at all. I heard the lower level of the 42nd Street station was closed before I was born."

  "Yeah, in 1981."

  "There you go. Even the stairways here are almost entirely gone and the entrances are sealed. Unless through the tunnel... but who'd let him in it?"

  "He got in somehow," the older man shrugged his shoulders."There always are morons who think it's fun and games to get into an abandoned station. Looking for adventure, you know. Though what's exciting about this place? Only dirt."

  "So, it's true..." murmured the younger man.

  "What's true?"

  "That corpses are sometimes found in
abandoned subway stations. I heard it, but thought it was an urban legend."

  "People, you know, in general, are liable to die," the older man noted philosophically. "Some do it in the subway. Nothing unusual. All right, let's go. We aren't paid for talking."

  Notes

  "City never sleeps"–the informal motto of New York

  In September, taking into account summertime, astronomical midnight in New York comes at 12:56 a.m.

  Entire stations or separate levels and platforms through which the train goes are closed many years ago. In particular, "City Hall"–the station on which in 1904 the opening of New York subway has taken place–was closed in 1945. Not all of these stations are on one line. In most cases the operating stations with the same names also exist.

  Edward Luciano–a motorman, the causer of the largest accident in the history of New York subway (occurred at November 1st, 1918; 93 casualties).

  Courtesy - Professionalism - Respect–the motto on vehicles of New York Police Department.

  THE BOY WHO DID NOT BELIEVE IN SANTA CLAUS

  There was a blizzard that morning, but by afternoon it had calmed down and only big white snowflakes slowly and solemnly descended in the motionless air. In the center of the city, the pre-holiday fuss still continued: cars, stalling and skidding in fresh-fallen snow, approached the brightly shining shops; impatient horns honked; music played; sparkling and multi-colored garlands twinkled, and glass doors let out more and more happy shoppers with beautifully wrapped boxes containing gifts... But here, on the outskirts, it was very quiet and absolutely lonely. Angie, sinking almost knee-deep in snow, slogged along a long lane which consisted mainly of closed gates of warehouses and blind eroded walls of old brick buildings. It was gradually getting dark– early, as it always happens in the end of December–but the girl didn't think about turning back. She knew that nobody missed her in her home. Mother, as always, lies on a sofa and watches soap operas on TV. Near her, a huge package of chips stands, into which she periodically dives her thick fingers gleaming with oil, and then she chews noisily, dropping crumbs on the floor, the sofa, and her greasy shapeless T-shirt which she always wears at home. She stops eating only to smoke a stinky cigarette during the commercial break; then she coughs long and deep-chested, heaving with all her bloated body, then says "holy shit!" and returns to her chips. On her mounded belly the TV remote control rests. When a soap opera ends on one channel, she switches to another one.