Darkbound (21 page)

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They were
everywhere.

Never in his most
crowded travel day had Jim seen a subway car as full as this one was now. 
He was reminded of stories of the Holocaust: Jews and other
"undesirables" packed into railroad cattle cars like diseased
livestock and sent off to meet their ends at Dachau or Auschwitz.  Those
men and women had no choice but to stand, pushed so tightly together that
movement was all but impossible.

That was how Jim
felt now.  Like he had been packed in tighter than a puzzle piece.  A
jumble in a human game of Tetris.

But he had not been
packed into a car with other commuters.  Not even with people doomed to a
death in the gas chambers or work camps of an invading force.

No, at every turn,
within inches of him and Adolfa and Olik... the ghouls.  The things that
looked like the rotted shells of once-teens, mostly girls, who had perhaps
clawed their ways out of shallow graves and were now bent on avenging those who
had buried them.

Adolfa was
whispering something under her breath.  Jim assumed it was a prayer. 
"Shhh!" he hissed.  But she didn't stop.  Probably
couldn't
stop.

The lights went out
again.  Darkness fell once more, blanketing the car in its perfect
embrace.  But there was no sense of security in that hold.  Jim could
feel the sway of the things that stood and sat only inches away from him. 
Could feel the strange cool that emanated from their bodies, the chill of death
long overdue.  He shivered.

"They have
come for me," said Olik.  The big man sounded, for the first time,
genuinely terrified.

"We don't know
that."

"They
have!  They come for me!"  Olik's once-sturdy voice was starting
to fray, to come apart at the seams.  Jim couldn't figure why the Georgian
was so convinced the things were here for him.  Then he remembered their
snakelike tongues, flicking out and lapping up the big man's blood as it
splashed on the door of the subway car.

And Olik was still
bleeding.

"We have to
get moving," Jim said.

The lights flared
again.  The effect was strange, like an old-fashioned photo being
taken.  Only with every pop of the "flash" in this case, they were
either one step closer to death, or one step closer to escape.

You
can't
escape, Jim.  You
know that.

Shut up!

The outline of the
book in his pocket.  He could feel it against his thigh.  The
memories, driving him forward. 
His
memories.  His
girls.  He would survive for them.

Adolfa was right
behind him.  He could feel her close to him.  Still whispering a
prayer in Spanish, strident tones whose rhythm somehow managed to perfectly
match the
click-clack click-clack click-clack
of the subway's wheels on
its track.

And in the darkness
behind Adolfa, Jim thought he could hear Olik.  Then he knew he
could.  He heard the distinctive click of a gun being cocked.

The light flared.

The things were all
looking at them.  Like they had heard the gun.  Were centered on
it. 
Wanted
it.

"Put it away,
Olik," Jim snapped.

"No,"
said Olik.

The things turned
as one.  Not just looking at them, now
oriented
on them.  On
Olik.  On the gun.

"Put
it
away
."

Olik must have seen
what Jim did.  There was a clatter of metal on metal.  The gun
dropping to the floor.

Jim held himself
still.  Tense.  Expecting to feel teeth tear into him, small bodies
cover his and fingers dig into his skin and burrow into his bones.

Would he be
killed/reborn like Xavier?  He didn't think so.  Whatever had
happened to the rapist, he thought it was something that would only happen
once.

The light flared.

The things were
looking at the gun.

"Come
on."  Jim stepped forward as the light died.  He tried to keep
an image of the front door in his mind.  Tried to imagine a line of rope
that ran from him to the door, guiding him there unerringly, perfectly. 
But he knew it wouldn't happen.

He bumped into the
first body in only a step.  It was as cold as he had imagined it would
be.  Colder, in fact.  Not the cold of a winter day, not even the
cold of a freezer.  It was the cold of a morgue, the cold of a place that
is designed to pull away the life from something.  To leave it dead and
hanging like a fly from a spider's web.

He hissed.

"You all
right?"  Olik's voice.  Strained and awkward, though whether
because of ongoing blood loss or simple terror Jim couldn't tell.

"Fine." 
Jim kept pressing forward.  Trying to forget the feel of the corpse he had
bumped into.  Because that was what it was; of that he had no doubt. 
The things in the car with them were dead.  All of them.  They might
see, they might stand, they might even think on some level.  But there was
no life in them.  No life but what they perhaps hoped to steal back from
the living around them.

Jim's outstretched
hand touched another one.  A bit of cloth, crumbling and rotten under his
hand; a span of grisly flesh that reminded him of how the things had attacked
one another to get to the blood around them.

The ghoul jerked
away.  It snarled, but didn't attack.  Jim felt dizzy.  He
almost lost his bearings in the darkness.  How could he get through this?

He could get
through this the same way people had been doing the impossible for
centuries.  For his family.

Another step
forward.  The light flared. 
Pop
.  The things all around.

Jim could smell
them now, too.  The smell of rot, like the smell that escaped a rock when
you rolled it over and first saw bugs running for cover, afraid because you had
discovered them in their secret darkness.  Only this putrescence was much
stronger, much deeper.  A rot that pushed through every molecule of air in
the car, that brought with it an almost tangible sense of hopelessness.

The light
dimmed.  Another step forward.

Pop
.

Another step
forward.  Bumping another ghoul.  A girl who had died an hour or a
year before, the skin of her face sloughing off in sheets, her eyes clouded
with necrotic cataracts, blind yet somehow able to sense the presence of life
nearby.  The ghoul made a noise startlingly reminiscent of the sounds Freddy
the Perv and Karen of "acquisitions" had made in their final moments
–

(
Ung-ung-ung... ung-ung-ung....
)

– and then the
lights dimmed again.

Jim became aware of
panting.  He thought at first that it was his own, then realized it was
someone else's.  Adolfa's?  No, she was still praying, still
half-chanting in a language he didn't speak but that still was easily
understandable as something that boiled down to "Deliver us from
Evil."

The panting was
coming from Olik.

"Olik, stay
calm," he whispered.  Then hissed as his outstretched fingers touched
something wet and sticky.  He didn't know what it was.  Didn't want
to know.  He shuffled to one side.  Tried to move around. 
Concentrated on the imaginary rope that tied him to the door at the front of
the subway car.

"Can't." 
Olik started wheezing.  "I need my gun."

Flash.  Lights
on.  And Jim saw Olik turning around.  Turning back to where his gun
sat on the floor of the car.

"Olik,
don't," said Adolfa.

"Don't
go," said Jim at the same time.  Both spoke under their breath.

The zombie things
seemed to take no notice of them.  No care.  Jim wondered what would
set them off, if anything.  They had seemed to fixate on the gun.  He
thought about darting after Olik, grabbing the big man before he could get to
his gun.  But what was he going to do?  It wasn't like he could
overpower the huge man.

The lights dimmed.

Flash.  Back
on.  The lights were popping on and off faster now, faster than was
possible for a kerosene lamp.  It seemed almost like a series of strobe
lights hung along the edges of the car.

On, off, on,
off, on off on off onoff onoffonoffonoff....

Olik was back with
them.  Jim sighed in relief.  The big man had come to his
senses.  Had realized that his gun wasn't worth dying for.  Or worse.

They were
two-thirds of the way down the car.

Jim touched another
zombie.  This one was wearing a pink skirt.  A matching pink tube
top.  It looked like she was getting ready to go clubbing, or had been
before death had claimed her, before rot had set in and eaten out her eyes and
lips and ears and nose.

Jim was half-used
to the clammy touch of the zombies at this point.  Just stay cool, he told
himself.  Just don't react and you'll be fine.

But this time it
was different.

He touched the
thing's bare skin, a length of clammy gray-white flesh between the tube top and
the skirt.  And the thing reacted instantly, throwing herself at
him.  Her teeth – jagged and far too visible between the lips that had
been shredded by death and time – snapped at him.  Jim fell back with a
cry, colliding with Adolfa.  She went down as well, both falling at Olik's
feet.

The thing snapped
and snarled, her lipless jaws reaching for Jim's face, his flesh, his
throat.  He pushed at her shoulders with his hands, trying to keep her away
from him.  She was strong – far stronger than she should have been. 
And at the same time, her bones seemed able to collapse in on themselves, like
they had rotted within her, so there was nothing solid enough for him to grab
and get purchase on to push her away.

The lights were
still flashing, almost pulsing now.  The strobe was giving him a
headache.  He didn't know if he was going to be able to hold off this
girl, this thing.

Then a hand, large
and strong, wrapped itself around the girl's throat.  It hauled her off
Jim, yanking her into the air by the neck like a naughty puppy.  It was
Olik, his one good hand tearing the ghoul away from Jim and then tossing her
behind them into the mass of undead in the car behind.

The ghouls that she
collided with fell upon each other in a rage.  Teeth and nails, fingers
and feet.  Howls of pain as thick, dark blood spattered.  A contained
maelstrom in the center of the car.

"Get up,"
said Olik.  "We go."

Jim pushed to his
feet.  He took the lead again.  Careful now not to touch the
ghouls.  They were changing, growing more alert, more ready to
attack.  He hadn't sensed it before, but now he could.  There was an
electricity in the air, a charge that seemed to make the small hairs on his
arms and the back of his neck stand up straight as soldiers at parade rest.

Something's
going to happen
.

He knew not to
touch the ghouls.  The lights popped and dimmed, popped and dimmed, and he
led the others between the monsters.  Holding Adolfa's hand, and she held
onto Olik's.  A train of the living among all these dead.

The going was
slow.  So slow, because every time Jim came within inches of the things
around them, they snuffled and snorted as though they had caught the scent of
something delicious.  He moved sideways, around.  Up and over, around
and down.  Sidestepping when necessary, climbing on seats when he had to.

Then he got to a
spot where there was nothing.  No way forward.  He was blocked by a
solid wall of the things, an unbroken mass of the undead.

Flash,
dark.  Flash, dark.

He looked back at
Adolfa.  She shrugged, her eyes wide.  She looked terrified.

Olik was making a
motion.  Putting his good hand flat, then dipping it down.  Jim
didn't understand what he was trying to convey, and wanted to tell him to just
say whatever it was.  But he didn't, because he didn't know if the things
around them would be attracted to sound the same as they now seemed to be
attracted to touch.

Finally, though, he
realized what Olik was trying to tell him.  He shook his head. 
Impossible.

Olik made the same
motion.  More stridently this time, as though to say, "Do it,
dammit."

Flash,
dark.  Flash, dark
.

Jim was getting
disconcerted.  Losing control of his sense of up and down as well as his
emotional control.

He shook his head
again.  Adolfa's hand moved toward him.  For a moment he thought she
was going to attack him.  He almost punched her, almost hit her in her
gently smiling face.

Then her hand fell
on his shoulder.  Pushed him gently down.  She nodded and smiled.

Flash,
dark.  Flash, dark.

"It's the only
way," the old lady seemed to be saying.  "Just do what you have
to do."