Outcome

by Edward W. Robertson

  The bodies clogged the southbound tracks, too, stretching to within a few feet of the end of the platform. She did some quick math. Thousands, easily. The stink stung her eyes and lungs. Past the bodies, they dropped back down to the tracks and walked in silence.

  The next blockade of bodies waited just a few hundred feet up the tunnel. They climbed a ladder to a narrow ledge projecting from the wall. Ellie tried not to look down. Rats squirmed on top of the dead, cherry-picking noses, eyes, and lips. It was slower going above the tracks—the ledge was barely wide enough for one person—but Ellie stayed up top, advancing one careful step at a time. It paid off a minute later when another plug of corpses loomed ahead. The smell was relatively better, the faces of the dead less bruised and swollen.

  They reached 34th St., where yet another pile slumped limply across the tracks. There were hardly any flies. Ellie's footsteps rasped down the platform. As she reached the end of the mound of the dead, a woman sat up and coughed.

  "Shit!" Ellie shrieked. Chip moaned, cartoonish. Blood oozed from the woman's lips. Under the penlight, her face was as white as fried eggs.

  "Is this hell?" she slurred.

  "It's the New York subway," Chip said. "You're alive. You're gonna be okay."

  He reached for her. Ellie barged into his shoulder, knocking him to the platform. "What are you thinking?"

  "I'm trained. I can help."

  Ellie shook her head tightly. Slowly as a sunset, the woman sank back to rest atop the wall of corpses. She stared at the ceiling, unblinking. "I was a good person. I don't belong here."

  "We should get her out of here," Chip murmured.

  "And then what?" Ellie knelt down, keeping several feet between herself and the woman. "Where did you come from?"

  "New York," she said. "I grew up in Ohio and then I moved to the city..."

  "Someone brought you here to this tunnel. Who? Where were you?"

  The woman shut her eyes, shook her head. "I've been down here so long. Before that, I remember the trains."

  "Where did the trains come from?"

  She shook her head again, weakly. "They didn't come from anywhere. They brought us to them." She stretched her arm past her head and pointed up the tunnel. "That's where they kept us. Until we coughed, and bled, and died."

  The woman laughed, but that died quickly too, replaced by a flurry of coughing that left her face splattered with blood and phlegm. "The last stop on the tracks to hell."

  Ellie waited for Chip to look up from the woman. "We need to get moving. And it's only going to get worse."

  "Worse than this?" He gestured at the thousands and thousands of dead, their gawping faces, their fluids seeping into the floor of the tunnel beneath the earth. "She's right. This is hell."

  Ellie nodded. He was wrong, of course. Things could always get worse. There were always deeper hells. Knowing you could have done different. Not knowing where a person had gone. If his daughter wasn't on the trains, he'd soon find that out.

  10

  The tunnels were a nightmare, a living horror movie, like he'd wandered into the Earth's own intestines and found them filled with rats and flies instead of bacteria, and human bodies instead of shit. Dark and stinking and impossibly long. He walked behind Ellie and tried to forget the face of the sick woman, who so much reminded him of his older sister. She lived in Florida; with a jolt, he realized he hadn't spoken to her since the Panhandler, too wrapped up in Dee to spare a minute for anyone else.

  No doubt his sister was dead now. But none of them had known, had they? No one except Ellie. Ellie and whoever had arranged for the sick to be taken to the subways, their bodies heaved onto the rails. It had taken him several seconds to understand what he was seeing. At first he thought it was garbage, big black sacks of it hauled down to the tracks. Even now, a large part of him didn't believe it. He couldn't believe it. If he could, he'd have ran back to the streets and kept on running until he had no strength left in his legs.

  So he followed Ellie down the tunnel instead.

  Small paws clawed around in the muck. Droplets blooped from the ceiling. As long as he wasn't tiptoeing past a charnel pit, he didn't mind. He could walk for as long as it took. He was pretty good at ignoring this sort of thing. You had to be, to treat the city's sick and wounded, to keep a gutshot man breathing while you held his liver in with your own hands. You just did it. That's all.

  Lights appeared down the tunnel. Ellie clicked off her flashlight and drew close to the concrete wall. Someone coughed, echoing down the tube. Chip swallowed. His throat still hurt from when he'd puked. He thought he was past that sort of thing, but he supposed all bets were off when you stood in front of five thousand rotting bodies.

  "Lights off from here," Ellie whispered. "Don't talk unless you have to."

  "What's up?" he said.

  "I think that's the train."

  "Gonna be a lot easier to find her if I can call her name."

  She gave him a look. "Someone brought those bodies down the tunnel. I don't think I want to meet them."

  He nodded. She was smart, you had to give her that. That's what had caught his eye in the first place—well, if you wanted the truth, the first thing he'd seen had been her face, its careful lines and her sea green eyes, and after that he'd seen her body, thin and almost skinny, but not without curves—but what he'd seen next, the thing that had caught his eye for good, that had been her mind.

  They met in the hospital, of all places. He'd just come in from a shift on the bus and gone to the cafeteria to catch dinner before it closed. She was ahead of him in line, the only one, and she made a joke about how the side of canned corn looked like it had been swept from the floor of a boxing ring. He laughed. She turned and saw him in uniform and he smiled and asked if he could sit with her. She hesitated, then gave him the okay.

  Over dinner, which Chip couldn't remember, except that the corn had looked like a boxer's teeth, she asked him question after question about his job. A lot of the obvious ones, like how did they ever survive the traffic, and, after he let slip with some slang, why they called it a bus instead of an ambulance, but some really keen stuff, too, like whether he could tell when critical patients were going to make it (often, yes) and whether that ability was instinctive or built through experience (80% experience, 20% instinct). He only had one question that mattered: her phone number. She smiled, did some quick inner calculus, and told him.

  That had been it. Together for six years, one of those opposites attract things; he was attracted to the sharpness of her mind, she was attracted to the patience of his heart. After a few years, he proposed. If not for Dee—and the obscure circumstances that had led Chip to insist on adopting her—he was certain they would have been married.

  Which meant they would have stayed in the city. And joined the thousands lying in these tunnels. At once, Chip was deadly certain Dee was still alive.

  He followed Ellie along the wall. The smell of shit replaced the stink of death, an absurd relief. Down the way, a train clarified from the gloom, lit by its emergency lights. A second train rested at the platform opposite. Ellie slid her pistol from her pocket. He had never liked guns, but if the last week had taught him anything, it was that the universe didn't give a damn about what he liked.

  Ellie stopped, hunkered down, and trained a miniature pair of binoculars on the dark cars of the train. She rose and continued on. Within a stone's throw of the cars, Chip saw it wasn't the emergency lighting that was on, but lamps strung along the ceiling, bare white bulbs casting the train in hues of gray. A figure stirred behind the rear car's scratched windows. He froze. Ellie did, too, all but the barrel of her pistol, which twitched upward.

  Footsteps shuffled down the platform. A man in urban camo with a rifle slung over his neck paced along the cars, face concealed by a bulbous, insectoid mask. He tapped his knuckles against one of the windows and gestured down. Inside, a shadow lowered itself from sight. The man's radio crackled. He muttered into it, then walked back up
the platform.

  "What do they think they're guarding?" Chip whispered. "Who do they think would hurt these people?"

  "They're not here to protect them," Ellie said. "They're here to make sure they don't get out."

  She waited for the guard to exit the doorway at the end of the platform, then moved across the grimy floor to the train. Past the windows, a group of men, mostly old, lay on the seats and the floor, surrounded by discarded paper plates, wadded Kleenex splotched with blood, and blankets. Few moved. Those who did coughed into their shoulders or struggled for more comfortable spots on the plastic, bright orange seats. The plexiglass had been removed from the windows of the car doors to make way for heavy chains padlocked shut.

  The second and third cars held more of the same. Ellie turned and retreated the way they'd come in, gesturing him to follow. Past the train's nose, she lowered herself to the tracks and crouched in the darkness.

  "All men in here." She gestured across the tracks to the train at the other platform. "If Dee's here, she'll be in that one."

  "Right."

  "Chip..."

  He raised his brows. "Yeah?"

  She rested the gun on her knee. "If we find her, and she's alive, that's all that matters."

  "Think I don't know that?"

  "If a soldier tries to stop us, I'm going to shoot him. If anyone tries to come with us, I'm going to stop them."

  Cold rippled down his back. "All I care about is Dee."

  "You're a better person than me," she said. "I want to be certain you understand."

  "I'm not better than you."

  The scant light caught the white of her rolling eyes. "Come on."

  "You're here, aren't you?"

  He wasn't certain he believed the words until he had said them. She was here. And he wasn't as perfect as she thought. Years ago, he had made a choice: the love of his life, or a young girl with no one to look out for her. He had chosen the girl. But it wasn't a choice he'd been forced to make. Someone else might have come for Dee. He'd wanted to, believing Ellie would cave in the end, that she'd come around to the girl just as he had—and he had been wrong. It had remained a choice until the very end. Stubbornly, he'd stuck with Dee, and Ellie had gone.

  "All that proves is I'm dumb as hell," Ellie grinned.

  She crouch-walked to the barrier between north- and southbound tracks, throwing her leg over it and then offering him her hand. He smiled and took it. At the platform, he boosted her up and she peered over the ledge. Cleared, she hauled herself up and reached down to him.

  The train looked just like the other, with one small exception: everyone on it was female. They stretched across the seats and the floor, white-haired women next to college girls, breathing shallowly, coughing irregularly. Most didn't move at all. They were all too old to be Dee, but Chip scanned their faces anyway, the trained part of his brain cataloguing symptoms, sorting them triage-style into who needed attention and who was beyond it.

  A door clunked open on the other platform. Ellie dropped down below the windows, gun in hand. Feet scuffed through the damp air. Step by step, the figure headed to the far end of the platform, paused, then headed back the way it had come from. The door clicked. Ellie rose, staring through the scratched glass of the subway cars, then beckoned Chip up.

  "Need to move fast," she whispered.

  "I'm not leaving until I find her."

  "Then find."

  He continued down the train, checking every face. As he passed, an older woman with greasy black hair lifted her head and stared back, head quivering from the effort. He continued past. In most cars, the captives were laid out head to toe, a hundred or more crammed into the tight space. Some of the women lay with their heads turned, or concealed by blankets, but they were all too old.

  The layout changed three cars from the end. Girls as young as five or six rested in cars compartmentalized into three areas by heavy tarps hung from floor to ceiling. The slim line of uppermost windows had been propped open. The smell of urine, feces, and fetid sickness sifted from the train. Chip pressed his face to the window, pausing on each girl before moving on.

  He didn't get far. In the middle compartment of the third car, Dee lay on a blanket on the floor, unmoving, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

  Chip reached for the window. His heart felt squeezed, weak, as if sight of Dee's body had aged him eighty years. His thighs shook. He moaned, hand sliding down the glass.

  Dee blinked, turned her head toward the movement and noise. Her mouth fell open. She thrashed to her feet.

  "Dad!" she shouted through the plexiglass.

  Ellie tapped on the window, put a finger to her lips. Chip mimicked her. Ellie knelt on the platform and set down her bag. She handed the pistol to Chip.

  "Should I cover you?" he said.

  She squinted at him. "Something like that."

  She dug out her tools and got to work on the lock. Blanket wrapped around her shoulders, Dee tottered to the door and thrust her hand through the empty pane above the padlock chain. Chip grabbed her hand in his and leaned over Ellie.

  "I'm here," he said. "I'm here, Dee."

  "Dad," Dee choked.

  "How do you feel? Do you feel okay?"

  "I'm hungry. I've been in here so long."

  "Do you have a cough?"

  Dee shook her head, eyes dark-rimmed and burning. "What's happening? Who's she?"

  "That's Ellie." Chip ducked his face to his shoulder and wiped away the tears. "It's going to be okay, Dee. We're gonna get you out. We're gonna get you safe."

  Ellie's picks clinked. The lock fell open.

  Feet pounded on stairs. "Hands up! Away from the doors!"

  Chip craned around. At the far end of the platform, a soldier in white and black camo pounded down the stairs, rifle raised. The padlock clunked to the concrete. A gunshot clapped down the tunnel. Ellie grunted and thumped against the train.

  11

  Ellie banged against the door and rebounded, falling to the platform. Her gut throbbed and hollered. The soldier shouted, advancing down the stairs to the platform. Chip raised the pistol and pulled the trigger. Chips of tile burst behind the soldier. He swung the gun on Chip, who fired again, staggering the man; blood sprayed the concrete. The man yelled and fired, shredding the subway car. Dee screamed. Chip strode forward, gun extended, pulling the trigger as fast as he could. The soldier fell flat, jolting with each bullet.

  She'd been hit in the gut. Somewhere around her belly button. The pain peaked into a blinding whiteness. She lost track of her senses, swept under by the burning foam of hurt.

  The wave broke and receded. The soldier lay dead on the platform. Chip ran toward her, stepping past to the subway door.

  "Dee!" he called. "Dee?"

  Ellie crawled toward the dead man. The pain was incredible. Otherworldly. Comically strong—why did her body need her to feel this much? Already it was shutting down her receptors, dampening the fire of her wound with a cocktail of brain-dousing chemicals. She yanked the rifle away from the dead man and braced it against her shoulder.

  A woman in camo raced down the steps. Ellie shot her in the chest; the soldier bounced down the staircase and hit bottom, arms slapping against the platform.

  Chip appeared beside her, kit in hand. Dee stood behind him, mouth hanging slackly.

  "Get her out of here," Ellie said. "I've got your back."

  "What are you talking about?" Chip said.

  "In a few minutes, I'm going to die of blood loss."

  "Ellie! I'm a fucking medic!"

  "Are you a surgeon?" She waved at the tunnel. "Go!"

  He didn't say a word, just grabbed her under the arm and hauled her to her feet. The motion tore at the hole in her gut. She screamed. Dee flinched. Another soldier leapt down the stairs. Ellie pushed away from Chip and aimed. Her first shot flew past the man's chest. He cried out, fired a wild round over her head. Her next shot took him down.

  A young girl crawled from the train car. Ellie swung th
e gun at her. The girl froze, blinking. Ellie staggered, grasping Chip's shoulder. He hauled her to the platform.

  "Dee," he said. "I'm gonna jump down to the tracks. You help Ellie down, then you jump in my arms, okay?"

  "Where are we going?" Dee said.

  Ellie laughed. "Chip. We're three, four miles from where we came in. I won't even make it to 34th."

  "Shut up." He passed her to Dee, sat on the edge of the platform, and dropped out of sight. He raised his hands above the platform. "Come on. Just a little further."

  With a bemused detachment that was probably shock, Ellie lowered herself to the ground, aided by Dee, and passed Chip the rifle. She half-climbed, half-fell into his arms. He grunted, stepped back, nearly tripped on the rail. He lowered her to the ground. Dee swore and jumped into Chip's upraised arms.

  Chip shouldered his kit. She took up the rifle. He held her up on one side and started down the dark tunnel. Dee clung close to his other side, glancing over her shoulder every few steps.

  "I'm bleeding," Ellie said. "A lot of bleeding."

  "I know," Chip said.

  "My feet are having a hard time finding the ground."

  "I know." Panting, he coughed and cleared his throat. "Don't talk. I'm gonna get you to the next platform and patch you up. You'll be fine."

  "Well," she said. "We found her. And all we had to do was search every hospital in the city, outlast a plague, and march through miles of corpse-choked tunnels."

  "Ellie."

  She stumbled over a tie, knees banging the ground. "Most likely she's immune. Not much chance she made it all this time breathing the same air as the sick."

  "You got to be quiet. Save your strength."

  "Even so—you have to get her out of the city. She might not have immunity. There are always exceptions. Outliers. Maybe she just got lucky." Ellie felt drunk. Holy cow, the tunnel was long. At least when she dropped, Chip could just pitch her with the others lumped atop the tracks. She laughed. "I mean, we found her, didn't we? How much luckier can you get?"