Darkbound (19 page)

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The lights
didn't return.  Not the
ones outside the subway car, and certainly none inside the traveling
coffin.  Darkness ruled, and light was but a memory.

The three remaining
passengers stood frozen in the black for a long time.  Jim stared out the
windows of the closed doors for what could have been hours, as though if he waited
long enough he might have a chance at piercing not only the darkness outside
but the darkness that had fallen around his mind.  Hopelessness.

He finally turned
away, making his way to a seat by touch.  He couldn't see anything. 
Couldn't feel anything, either, beyond an acute sense of how unfair this all
was.  What had he ever done to deserve this?  Why was he here? 
Where the hell
was
here?

"What do you
think is going on?" whispered Adolfa.

Jim started. 
He hadn't heard her creeping closer.  Now, though, he heard the low rustle
of her clothing as she sat near to him.

"I don't
know," he said.  He whispered as well.  He didn't know why he
felt compelled to do so, but he couldn't deny that he felt like speaking too
loud right now would be some kind of a sin.  He wasn't much of a
church-goer – he was too much a man of science and rationality to spend much
time on things like that – but he couldn't deny he felt weirdly like he was
sitting in a sanctuary or a confessional right now.  "What do you think
is happening?"

"
Ay, mi
hijo
," she said.  "I don't know."

"That lady –
Karen."

"Yes?"

"She wanted to
kill you."

"She didn't,
though."

"No.  But
why did she want to in the first place?"

He could feel
Adolfa's shrug even in the darkness.  Or maybe it was just his
imagination, giving him something to hold onto so that he didn't go mad from
the lack of sensory input.  "I dunno," she said. 
"Crazy lady."

Jim was silent for
a moment.  There was no question that Karen had been crazy.  Sane
people didn't walk around New York subways with micro-Uzis in leather cases
waiting for opportune moments to gun down old ladies.  And yet....

"I
guess," he finally said.

"But I don't
think the crazy lady is our big problem," added Adolfa.

On that point there
was no doubt.

"What's going
on
?"
Jim said.  He knew he'd already said that, but he couldn't help asking
again.  As if by repetition he might force Adolfa to provide some hint of
information she had withheld until now.  Like a child who says,
"Please?  Please? 
Pleeeeeeease
?" knowing it's that
last, drawn-out word that will break a parent's defenses.

How much of life is
like that? he wondered briefly.  How often do we just do the same thing
over and over, hoping to get lucky and end up with the outcome we want? 
Some people said insanity was doing the same thing over and over and hoping for
a different result, but wasn't that what we did all the time as a
species?  Just swinging from the trees and collecting fruit and hoping
that one of us lucked out and mutated enough to climb down and start building
cities?  Where of course we obsessed about constructing the tallest
buildings so we could climb back up to the heights we had just abandoned by
jumping down from the trees.

I suppose we're
all
a bit insane, he thought.

"I don't
know," said Adolfa.  She didn't sound angry at having to answer the
same question twice.  Jim liked her even more for that.  She was
almost an archetypical grandmother-type.  The kind of woman who would
always have cookies waiting for you when you visited, who would always have a
hug when you needed one.

Unfortunately, he
didn't need cookies or a hug now.  He needed answers.  He needed to
get back to his girls.

More noises, heavy
and solid thumps on the flooring, announced the arrival of Olik.  "I
join you, yes?"

"Sure." 
Jim didn't like the guy.  Didn't like what he was, his profession – if you
could call it that – but he could hardly deny the man access to this part of
the car.  What was he going to do, say, "No this part's off limits,
go find your own subway car that denies the laws of the universe to sit
in"?

Olik sat down
somewhere in the darkness nearby.

"So we have
lost one more?"

Though phrased as
such, Jim could tell it wasn't really a question.  Neither he nor Adolfa
replied.  Silence stretched out between the three of them.  It grew
uncomfortable, but Jim didn't want to be the one to break it.  He just
wanted all this to be over.  He thought again about just sitting down and
waiting.  Waiting either for all this to end of its own accord – for
someone to come and rescue them – or for some
thing
to come and finish
him off.  It was an ever-more appealing concept.

Only the phantom
scent of Carolyn's hair in his nostrils, the soft touch of Maddie's skin on his
fingers, kept him from just sinking into a comatose oblivion.  His
girls.  They needed him.  He needed them, too.  That was what
made a family.

He forced himself
to sit up taller.  "We've got to get out of here," he said.

"Good,"
said Olik.  "I like to hear this.  The sound of fight.  You
have ideas, Mr. Doctor?"

Jim didn't. 
"Not a thing.  What about you, Adolfa?"

"
Nada, mi
hijo
."

Jim cursed. 
He felt himself grow angry, and fanned the ember of the emotion until it was a
fire.  Anger was better than despair.  He could use his rage, could
make it fuel his actions, push him forward like the flames in a steam
locomotive.

He snapped his
fingers.  "That's it."

"What is
it?"

"We've got to
stop the train."

Olik
guffawed.  "This is excellent plan, Mr. Doctor.  We just put down
feet and stop, yes?"

"No, I mean we
have to get outside it.  Stop it from the outside."  Jim sighed,
his frustration becoming palpable.  "The subway's powered by
electricity.  A third rail runs alongside the two track rails, and that
rail's the one that provides the electricity to the motor under the
train."

"Yes,
yes," said Olik.  Strange to hear the big man's voice coming from the
dark.  It was like having a conversation with a ghost. 
"Electricity in rail, rail touches contact which leads to train. 
So?"

"So we've got
to find the contact point and see if we can break it.  That would stop the
train, right?"

"Is correct,
but…."  Olik sighed.  "Problems are these: first, how do we
do this; and second, what is to say there are not worse things waiting for us
outside of stopped train?"

Jim's hands
tightened into fists.  "I don't know.  I don't know the answer
to either of those questions.  But we have to try
something
,
dammit."

"He's
right," Adolfa said.  "We do have to try something.  We
can't just wait here to die."

"No, I suppose
not."

Something
creaked.  Then a moment later, Olik's voice sounded from the darkness,
closer to the front of the car.  "Well?  Come then."

Jim got up. 
It was dark.  They were all in the dark.

But they had to get
out of this place.

I'm coming,
girls.

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Walking forward
in a completely dark subway
car while it rocketed along at speeds beyond belief turned out to be harder
than it sounded.  And it sounded pretty hard to begin with.  Jim kept
rocking to the side, teetering to the ball of one foot, then sliding to the
ball of the other foot like a first-time drunk after a world-class
bender.  He listened for Olik, sure that the big man would have trouble,
too, but the Georgian's
tramp tramp tramp
was steady and sure.  He
might as well have been walking through a well-lit room in his own house.

Behind him, Adolfa
was breathing heavily but other than that he couldn't tell if she was having
trouble or not.  He reached for her but couldn't seem to find her in the
darkness.

He bumped into
something.  Something large and firm and unyielding.  It grunted.

"Easy, Mr.
Doctor," said Olik.

"Sorry,"
said Jim.  A second later Adolfa bumped into
him
from behind, and
that led him to bump into Olik again.  This time the grunt the big man
coughed out sounded decidedly irritated.

"What
now?" said Jim.

"Check
door.  Feel if will open."

Jim moved up close
to Olik.  His fingers reached out until they scraped cold metal, then he felt
until the seam between door and bulkhead rose up under his fingers.  He
began feeling along the seam, touching the door and the wall of the subway car
on either side, feeling for levers, for knobs.  Anything that would let
them move to the next car, or at least get out of this one.  Adolfa didn't
move from behind them.  She seemed to know that there was no room for her,
that Jim and Olik would take care of this part of things.

"I am thinking
what happened to us," said Olik.

"Yeah?"

"I am thinking
of
Ourang Medan
."

"Who's
that?  A," Jim coughed delicately, "
business
partner of
yours?"

"No, no. 
Is not partner.  Is boat."

"A
boat?"  Jim was moving slowly.  Only halfway up the seam. 
He didn't want to miss anything.  He had heard that when you lost your sight
your other senses became sharper, but if that was the case it must be a gradual
thing because he felt like he was losing his sense of touch as well.  He
moved his fingers even slower.

"A ship. 
A haunted ship."

Jim couldn't
restrain the quick laugh that belted out.  "You don't strike me as
the type that believes in ghosts, Olik."

"Nor am I type
who believes in men who go
poof
into pile of blood and coat, or man who
has baby crawl from mouth, or woman who…."  He trailed off.  No
need to finish.  They had all seen it.

"You think
this subway is haunted?"  Adolfa's voice was tremulous.  That
she believed in ghosts was not a surprise.  She was probably crossing
herself again, Jim thought.  Saying a quick prayer to some saint, asking
for protection from whatever angelic person was in charge of underground
tunnels and insane subways.

"Perhaps."

"What we've
seen didn't look like ghosts," said Jim.  He felt something on the
bulkhead and his heart skipped.  Then he realized it was just another seam
in the metal.  Rivets under his fingers where two sheets of steel came
together.  He continued tracing the wall and door.

"On
Ourang
Medan
, the sailors perhaps never see ghosts either.  But when they
were found by American ships, it looked for certain they had gone mad."

"We're not
going mad."

"Aren't
we?"  Olik grunted.  Sounded like he was pulling on
something.  "How else you explain this all?"  Another
grunt.  The door rattled but didn't move.  "We are neck-
deep
in madness, Mr. Doctor."

"What happened
to them?" said Adolfa.  "To the sailors on the boat?"

Olik didn't answer
for a moment.  There was a click, and the door started to slide
back.  But any hope that might have been found in the door's movement was
quashed by his next words.

"They
died.  All of them."