Darkbound (15 page)

================

================

This subway
car was a bit different than
the last two had been.

It took a few
minutes for Jim to realize what the difference was.  He was still reeling
from what he had just seen, from the strange unreality that he had somehow been
trapped within.  So at first he didn't notice the fact that the seats were
no longer hard gray plastic, the poles no longer burnished aluminum. 
Instead, the chairs were covered by a thin upholstery, a soft cloth that was
the same color as the seats in the back two cars had been but seemed much
older.  And the poles themselves were missing, replaced by simple leather
straps that hung every few feet along the length of the car. 

Like most New York
subway users, Jim knew what a "straphanger" was – it was a name for a
commuter, taken from the old days when all the subways had been outfitted with
straps just like the ones that hung in this car.  But as the more modern
cars had been phased into use, the straps had seemed to grow more and more
exotic.  Like an endangered species, one that now hid in plain sight so
that even on the rare occasion when you were traveling in a car that had the
old straps, you barely noticed them – and even when they were there, any New
Yorker worth his or her salt almost never used them.

So why did it seem
like this car had them so prominently?  So prevalently?  And what was
with the upholstery?

Jim took a step and
noticed that the floor seemed to be wrong, too.  Gone was the dark gray
metal of the car they had just exited.  This floor was a different
shade.  Hard to tell in the streaking light that shattered the darkness in
laser glints, but it seemed to be dark red, perhaps even the deep maroon of
newly-spilt blood.

All in all, it led
to a strange sense of age, as though this car had been lifted out of a bygone
era and pushed its way into the middle of a more modern train.  Only the
ads, plastered over each of the windows, seemed to be as modern as the cars
they had just come from.  But that just added to the strange sense of
disconnect, the anachronistic quality of seeing a banner hawking the newest
Broadway show on this too-old car making Jim feel almost dizzy.

A strange blanket
seemed to lay itself over Jim's thoughts.  He could hear screaming. 
He thought it must be Xavier, or the thing that had somehow both killed Xavier
and at the same time
become
Xavier.  Then he realized that wasn't
it.  No, the screams he heard weren't coming from beyond the closed door
at the back of the car.  They were coming from his own mind.  The
screams of a murdered mother, the screams of death come to one far too young.

Jim stumbled. 
His legs felt like the strength had run out of them.  Hands gripped
him.  Guided him to one of the nearby seats.  It turned out that the
upholstery wasn't much softer than the plastic seats had been.  Perhaps
worn thin from too many years of use, perhaps never that soft to begin with. 
Either way, the seats pinched at his legs as though angry to be used this way.

"You
okay?"  Eyes swam in the darkness before him.  It was Adolfa, he
realized, almost invisible in her dark clothing.  Her grandmotherly face
full of concern and a kind of saintly woe that seemed utterly out of place in
this train of otherworldly horrors.

"I don't
know," Jim mumbled.  The only honest answer.  He looked around,
almost ridiculously proud of himself for managing to complete the movement
without vomiting on himself.

Karen was moving up
and down the car.  There was something odd about her gait, and Jim thought
at first that she must have been injured in the flight from one car to the
next.  Then he realized that wasn't it.  It was her boots.  One of
them was taller than the other.

She left one
heel in Xavier's back.  Before he….

The thought trailed
off into a vague sense of malaise, as though his mind could not approach what
had just happened in a direct fashion.  Only obliquely, in quick
glances.  To look at some things too long would be to embrace madness.

But Xavier… he
became
himself.  A
smaller himself that became a smaller himself that was becoming….

Jim heard the
screams in his mind; the shrieks of the would-be rapist: "Get it outta
me!"  And then the sickening shredding of his face parting to allow
his smaller doppelganger to crawl forth.

Karen stopped her
restless motion.  Jim focused on her, focused on her and in so doing tried
to focus his thoughts
away
from memory.  He looked at her form –
still beautiful even in the star-streaked un-night of the subway tunnel –
looked at the leather satchel that she still carried.  He wondered what
was in it.

Karen reached out
and pushed against one of the windows that lined the length of the car. 
Her lips pursed with effort, but the window didn't give.  She reached a
bit higher and pulled on something.  Jim couldn't make out what it was at
first, then saw it was a cord of some kind.  It ran the entirety of the
car.  An emergency stop cord, he realized.  The kind that hadn't been
in use for decades.

Where
are
we?

Karen took a few
more lurching steps, then frowned and kicked out suddenly.  Her remaining
heel snapped off against the side of a seat with a crack that made Jim
jump.  And as much as the sound surprised him he was amazed at the offhand
precision of the kick.  Even if he hadn't just seen her take Xavier apart,
he would have known just from that movement that she was not a woman he'd want
to cross in a dark alley… or even a bright alley, for that matter.

Just beyond Karen,
Olik was sprawled on another one of the seats, clutching his mangled hand to
his chest, a cigarette between his teeth.  As Jim watched, Olik pulled out
a gold lighter and ignited the cigarette, then inhaled deeply and blew a cloud
of smoke into the air.  The smoke looked almost white in the darkness, a
swamp mist that could lead the gullible or otherwise unsophisticated to believe
in aliens.

Maybe that's
what's happening.  We've been abducted and this is all some kind of weird experiment. 
We're rats in a maze, being poked and prodded to see what makes us tick, and
tock, and – in the end – stop either ticking
or
tocking
.

That made a certain
kind of sense.  At the very least it allowed Jim to explain some of the
bizarre things that had happened.  But whether it was the truth or not the
explanation didn't get him any closer to freedom, any closer to Carolyn or
Maddie.

"What are you
thinking of,
mi hijo
?" said Adolfa.

"My
girls," said Jim.  The train was still bouncing lightly in that way
that is particular to trains, passing over the tiny seams between pieces of
track,
click-clack click-clack click-clack
.  But he suddenly
doubted that the track was real.  This had to be in his mind.  There
was no track, there was no train.  It was just lunacy, a long dark trip
through insanity that ended only in more of the same, a Mobius strip cut from a
single infinite length of madness.

Adolfa's eyes
looked worried.  Like she thought he might fly off the handle and start
trying to kill people at any moment.

Maybe he
would.  If that could end this, maybe he would.

"Tell
me."

"What?"

"About your
girls.  Tell me about them."

Jim knew what she
was doing.  Psych 101 stuff: deflect attention from things too difficult
to bear, get the subject to look at things that provide feelings of comfort,
stability, safety.  Something to live for.

But knowing what
was being done didn't keep it from being effective.  Sometimes placebos
worked even when you knew they were just sugar cubes.

He pulled his
journal out of his pocket, then took the picture of Carolyn and Maddie from its
pages.  His fingers shook, minute tremors that he suspected would never
dissipate, as though terror had been genetically introduced into his DNA.

"That's
Carolyn," he said, pointing.  "And Maddie.  My girls."

"They're
beautiful," said Adolfa.  Her wrinkled face crinkled still further in
a smile.  "Especially your daughter.  She has your eyes."

Jim chuckled. 
"She's not my daughter."

Adolfa looked
surprised.  "But you said –"

Jim shook his head. 
"The father left when Carolyn was still pregnant with Maddie.  I just
came into their lives last year.  But Maddie…."  His thumb moved
across the photo, touching the little girl's smile.  So different from the
last look he'd seen on her face.

Will I ever have
a chance to make those things right?  To get back to them and make sure
they know I forgive them, and that we're all still fine?

"She's like
your own," said Adolfa.  It wasn't a question.  Jim
nodded.  "Sometimes we get to choose our family," she said. 
"I have three sons.  Two of them…."  She made a dismissive
motion, like she was throwing out minute bits of garbage.  "But the
third is
de oro
.  Pure gold.  Carrying on in the family
business, hard worker.  And he married a gorgeous girl,
pura bella
. 
Kim Hill was her maiden name.  And Kim has a friend who also came into the
business, a boy named Scott Robbins.  I know, I know," she said, and
smiled as she waved again, overcoming objections that Jim hadn't voiced or even
thought of.  "Neither of them are
latinos
, but it doesn't
matter.  They are good people.  Hard-working. 
Trustworthy.  Loyal.  Loyal above all.  To the family."

Adolfa reached out
a thin finger and touched the picture in Jim's hand.  "It matters not
who provided the building materials, it matters only who made something of
them,
sí
?"

Jim nodded. 
"You could be a helluva shrink, you know?" he said.

Adolfa cackled and
clapped her hands together.  "I'm an
abuela
, a
grandmother.  Sometimes this is the same thing as being a shrink."

Jim smiled back at
her.  He didn't feel good – the only thing that would make him feel
good
right now would be a guaranteed way off this subway train – but he felt
better.  And that was a start.

"So
touching," said a gravelly voice.

 Jim and
Adolfa looked over.  Olik stood before them, his face white and damp with
perspiration.  One hand hung to a leather strap, his body swaying with the
subway's movement –

(
click-clack
click-clack click-clack on tracks that probably weren't even there not really
not in the really
real
reality and not whatever fake reality held sway
here in the dark
)

– and marble-sized
beads of sweat rolling down his forehead and cheeks.  His other hand, the
one that he himself had basically shot off, was tucked partially into his
coat.  Jim could see the blood-soaked dressing that Adolfa had tied on the
shredded meat of the man's hand, and a rough circle of darkness was staining
Olik's coat where his bad hand was tucked.

Of his gun there
was no sign, but Jim had no doubt that the other man still had it.  And
that he could draw and use it quickly and without remorse.

Olik must have
recognized the fear that clenched Jim's guts, that pulled and pushed his bowels
at the same time.  The huge man shook his head.  "Don't
worry.  No need to be," he grinned, a smile that Jim supposed was
meant to reassure but somehow only managed to put him more on edge, "
uncivilized
about this, yes?"

Olik turned
around.  He caught Karen's eye.  "You.  Come join us,
yes?"

Karen looked at
him.  Her eyes didn't have quite the same dead appearance they had when
she was efficiently destroying Xavier, but Jim noted they still looked veiled,
almost sleepy.  Like she was experiencing everything through some kind of
filter.

After what seemed
like an eternity, Karen spun and shoved at one more window.  It rattled in
its frame but didn't give, so she turned and walked slowly toward the
group.  Her boots,
sans
heels, gave her a peculiar gait.  It
reminded Jim of the way the zombies – or ghouls or whatever they were – had
walked.  Like they were no longer completely in control of themselves.

Not that any of
us
is
in
control of much anymore
.

Finally Karen stood
before them.  She held her leather satchel in one hand, but angled her
body so it was half-obscured behind her.  Jim wondered if she thought she
was hiding it.  Then realized that was impossible: unless she had suddenly
turned into an imbecile, the woman had to know they were all aware of her
package.  So why…?  Then he realized: she wasn't hiding it, just keeping
it as distant as possible from the rest of the group.

He wondered what
was inside the bag.  What would be so important that it would be worth
going back toward Xavier, toward the ghouls, to grab it up before running like
hell with the rest of the group?

Jim glanced at
Adolfa, then at Olik, and could see instantly that the same thoughts were going
through both their minds as well.  Karen must have noticed, too, for she
fell back into what looked like a half-crouch.  Jim didn't know if she
intended to run or to attack.  Either way, Olik raised his hand once
more.  "No, lady, no.  No fighting.  Let's work
together."  He smiled his unsettling smile again.