Darkbound (6 page)

Olik grinned
tightly.  He had the same shark-grin as Xavier, Jim saw.  He reached
into his coat.  "I have key to any door," he said, and withdrew
his gun.

"It will not
work, my Georgian friend," said Adolfa.

Olik looked at the
old woman in surprise, and even Jim was a bit startled.  Adolfa had been
so quiet that he had almost forgotten she was there.  But Olik's smile
quickly returned.  "Not many locks stand against this key," he
said.

"I don't doubt
it," she said.  "But this one already has."

"What you
mean?" said Olik.

"You shot
twice," she said.  "Two very good shots, nice and tight, through
the window."

"Yes?" 
Olik's face scarcely moved.  It remained a solid slab of white, with only
a few wrinkles around his eyes betraying his confusion.

Adolfa waved toward
the front of the train.  "The window is black, yes?"

"Yeah,"
said Xavier.

"So this is
not a question.  The window is black, and that is fact," said
Adolfa.  "But what
is
a question is this: where did the bullet
holes go?"

Karen swung her LED
over, and everyone looked where she pointed it.  None of them had noticed
– none but Adolfa – but Jim saw she was right.

Olik had squeezed
off two shots.  Tightly grouped, expertly placed.  Two slugs right
through the glass window separating the cars.

The window that had
been transparent but was now dark.

The window that had
held two circles where the bullets had passed through it…

… but was now, inexplicably
– impossibly – whole.

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

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

Olik laughed.
It was one of the least-jolly
sounds that Jim could ever remember hearing.  Almost as cold as –

(
the sound of the
first hit, the argument just beginning and already we were fighting, already
she was resorting to physical abuse
)

– the
whft
of the suppressor as Olik fired another pair of shots through the window. 
Again they appeared as by magic, twin circles with snow-crackled edges
illuminated by the swaying light Karen still held in the speeding subway car.

"There,"
said Olik.  Karen's light swung back to the older man, illuminating his
face as he kissed the handle of his gun.  As he did so, Olik's coat opened
enough that Jim could see a shoulder holster that held another gun, the twin of
the one the Georgian man held.

Geez, thought Jim,
who
is
this guy?

Then he felt
Adolfa's arm, which had once again curled into the crook of his own,
tighten.  She hissed.  It was a strange sound, one that he had never
heard a grown woman make before but which he nonetheless instantly understood.

Danger
, the noise said.

The others must
have heard the same warning in the sound.  Karen swung her light toward
the old lady, but Adolfa waved the spear-beam away, pointing a crooked finger
toward the front of the car.

Karen pointed her
light at the door.  The window.

"Your key did
not work," said Adolfa.

Olik said something
in Georgian, something short and sharp that sounded like it was nothing but
consonants and could only be a prayer or a curse.

The window was
whole again.

"Gotta be a
trick of the light," said Xavier.

"Is no
trick," said Olik.  His face was whiter than ever, almost glowing in
the dark car.  "No trick."

"Bull,"
said Xavier.  He walked forward.

Karen reached out
and grabbed his coated arm when he passed her.  "Don't," she
said.

Xavier smiled, now
looking more like a wolf than a shark.  Something more inclined to mate
before it fed.  "Didn't know you cared," he said.

"You don't
know what's there," Karen said.

"Never will if
we don't check it out," he said.  He shook free of her almost
contemptuously.

Karen shook her
head.  Not angry, just resigned, like she was watching a rookie make a bad
move in a ball game.  "Smart money says just wait until we reach the
next stop and figure it out then."

Xavier looked back
at her, and this time there was no mistaking the contempt in his gaze. 
"Bitch, ain't gonna
be
a next stop."  He pulled back his
coat sleeve and showed her a watch.  "Shoulda hit the 'next stop' ten
minutes ago."

He moved forward
again.  "Don't know where we're goin', but wherever it is, it ain't
on the transit maps."

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

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

Jim did
the same thing everyone else did:
he checked his cell phone.  No one – except Xavier – even had a watch
anymore.  Not even Adolfa, who seemed like the kind of person who might
wear an old-fashioned wind-up, was wearing a timepiece.  Just a variety of
smartphones and flip-phones that had replaced single-function watches.

It took less than a
second to verify what Xavier had said, then another second to glance up at the
plastic boards bolted to the subway car here and there that stated what route
this was.  It wasn't an express, which meant they
should
have
pulled in to their next stop by now.

Karen hummed a
quick ditty under her breath that Jim realized was the theme to the old
Twilight
Zone
show.  For a moment he thought she was right, then he realized it
was unlikely they had found themselves in anything as benign as Rod Serling's
classic of strangeness.  No, what was happening now was infinitely more
bizarre, infinitely more… threatening.

Up front, Xavier
was closing in on the door between subway cars, with its once-more-unmarred window. 
Karen had aimed her light at him, but with the rock of the subway car it was
dancing around so much Xavier almost seemed like a ghost, flitting back and
forth far too much with every movement he made.  At first Jim thought the
train must be speeding up, then he realized that Karen was scared.  Her
hand was shaking.

He looked at his
cell phone.  Stared at it dumbly for a moment, then laughed.  The
sound was over-bright, an unwelcome intruder in the darkness.  He felt
everyone's eyes on him.  Even Xavier swiveled to face him, with an angry
"What the –?" harsh on his lips.

Jim waved his
phone.  "The phones," he laughed.

"What?"
Olik said.

"We can
call
someone," said Jim.  Olik, Karen, and Xavier just stared at him like
he had suddenly sprouted a second head – one that said exclusively stupid
things.  Only Adolfa seemed willing even to entertain the idea that
something as simple as a phone call could get them out of this.

"Go
ahead," she said.

But all of a
sudden, Jim didn't want to be the one who called anyone.  Didn't want to
be the one who bore that responsibility.  Plus –

(
plus who would
he call?
)

– he had to admit
to a suspicion, now that his thumb hovered over the dial numerals, that this
wouldn't
work.  After all, if someone could purloin an entire subway train en route
and then replace a bullet-riddled window not once but twice, who was he to
think that a mere phone call would get them out of… whatever this was?

"You
call," he said, and pushed his phone over to Adolfa.

The old lady looked
askance at him, clearly unsure why he didn't make the call himself, but she
took the phone.  She seemed to consider a moment, then simply dialed
"911" before pressing the "SEND" button.

Jim could feel the
others in the train car, holding their breaths as one, looking at Adolfa as
though she held their futures in her hand.  Perhaps she did.

She put the phone
to her ear.  Listened.  Frowned.

"Nothing,"
she said.  "No bars."

"Not
surprising," said Karen.  "We're under a couple of hundred feet
of steel and concrete, after all.  Hardly the best place for cell
reception."

"Not on this
line," said Freddy.

"Shut up,
man," said Xavier.  Jim could tell that the thug felt the same
instant revulsion at the mere sound of Freddy's voice that Jim did, and
suddenly felt a strange kinship with the man.

"Let him
talk," said Olik, and gestured Freddy forward.

The mousy man
looked unsure, as though he didn't know whether he'd prefer to piss off Olik or
Xavier, but finally he scampered toward the middle of the car.  "This
line has boosters," he said.  "It's supposed to get cell
reception."

"Bullshit,"
said Xavier.

Jim shook his
head.  "Boosters are for wifi, not for cell reception," he said.

Freddy's expression
fell, but only for a moment.  "So somebody got a tablet or a
laptop?" he said.

Jim looked
around.  Finally Karen said, "I do," in a tone of voice that
indicated she would almost rather be torn to bits by wild dogs than follow
along with a scheme proposed by Freddy.  Still she walked to where she had
been sitting earlier, to the spot where her leather satchel still rested.

She opened
it.  Jim was a bit surprised that she had left it alone in the middle of
the aisle in the first place, then realized she probably wasn't worried about
anyone stealing it: where would they go?  And there were only seven people
total in the car, so if her bag did disappear, figuring out who took it
wouldn't be too hard.

Plus, he noted, the
bag had a pair of subtle but sturdy-looking combination locks.

Karen unlocked her
bag and pulled out a small tablet computer.  She shut and locked the bag
again, then returned to the group.  She pressed the power button and the
tablet screen illuminated, showing a lock-screen.  The woman keyed in four
numbers.

The screen went
black, then turned to a blue screen with a pair of icons: one for a web browser
and one for a webmail program.

Not the most
personable homescreen, thought Jim.  The girl's definitely a midtown
lawyer.

"What
now?" said Karen.

"NYPD has an
online request form," said Freddy.  Jim had to repress a shudder,
because he suspected that the other man was a frequent reader of such request
forms – probably as the subject of requests that the cops do something to keep
him away from the neighborhood kids.

"So what do
you want me to request?" said Karen with a smirk.  But she touched
the web browser icon.

"How about you
request that they get us the hell off this train?" said Xavier.

"Good
start," said Olik.

The tablet
flickered.  The web browser came on, and for a single moment Jim saw the
familiar pattern of Google's search screen on the page.

"Nice. 
Home free," breathed Freddy.

Then the Google
search screen disappeared.  In its place, a face came into view.  The
face was bloated, swollen.  The tongue protruded grossly, the individual taste
buds visible even on the tablet's small screen.  The eyes were rolled
back, the scleras grey and bulging from the eye sockets.

Adolfa gasped
beside Jim.  She crossed herself.

The face
disappeared.  Another one flashed into view.  This one was of a woman,
her eyes looking up and in, rendering her slightly cross-eyed as though she
were seeking to look at the ragged bullet-wound that had perforated her
forehead.

Then that face,
too, was gone.  Another came.  And another, and another, and
another.  All of them were the faces of the dead, clearly victims of foul
play.  Gunshot wounds, knife wounds, loops and lassoes tied around necks,
noses cut off and tongues cut out.  Faster and faster they came, each
image more gruesome than the last until they started to melt into each
other.  They became a single waxy entity, a thing that had fused into a
nightmare essence of every kind of violence imaginable.

The many-faced
thing's mouth moved.  The tongue had been hacked out at the roots, it had
been cut in two, it had been yanked out with pliers, it had been grated off
with a belt-sander.  Jim knew all this just by looking at it, and knew
that the others knew it as well – though he couldn't say how he knew either of
these things.

In spite of the
fact that the thing – the
things
, the
legion
– was possessed
either of no tongue or of a tongue that had been rent and torn a thousand times
over, the face on Karen's tablet spoke.  It spoke, and as it did its dead
eyes opened.  They roved over the assembled travelers, and Jim knew that
they were looking at each person in turn.

"Murderer,"
the voice whispered.  The voice of the dead, bloody and torn and abused
until its last breath was yanked from its lungs, until its will to live was
crushed and destroyed and drowned in a tidal wave of blood.

And now blood
spilled from the thing's mouth.  "Murderer," it said
again.  The words burbled and drowned in the fluid.

Karen screamed, and
Jim realized with a start that the blood wasn't just coming from the mouth of the
death-thing on the screen; it was coming from the screen
itself
. 
Dark red fluid cascaded down the tablet screen like a bloody waterfall.

The blood touched
Karen's hands, covering them in an instant.  It ran over her fingers, and
her hands and arms ran red with blood.  She screamed again, and this time
she dropped the tablet.

The small computer
fell with a clatter to the steel floor of the subway car.  It fell
face-down, the images disappearing for a merciful moment.  Then, though
Jim was sure the tablet had come completely and utterly to rest – there was no
remaining kinetic energy in the small computer – the tablet flipped itself over
as though some unknown hand had turned it face up.

The death-thing
still looked at them.  Its face still waxed and shifted from one maimed
visage to another.

A man, eyes put out
by metal spikes….

A woman, throat cut
ear to ear….

Another man, face
all but obliterated by what Jim guessed must be a shotgun blast at point-blank
range….

And then a
child
.  
Young.  Too young to contemplate, too young to believe.  But there he
was.  Or perhaps she.  The face was so young that it could as easily
be a boy as it was a girl.  And it was clearly dead as the others. 
Dead, eyes yellowed and lips blue and cheeks pale and waxy.

Beside Jim, Adolfa
sobbed.  Xavier cursed nearby.

"You killed
me," said the child in a voice that was almost surprised.  Its face
began to melt.  Not into another face, another horrid caricature of death,
but like a candle losing its shape.  Before all structure was gone,
though, the child/creature/thing opened its sagging mouth and let loose a
shriek.  The sound was terrible, too loud to come from the tiny speakers
built into the tablet.  So loud that Jim felt like his ears might explode.

He clapped his
hands over his ears.  Beside him, Adolfa did the same.  So did
Karen.  Xavier.  Freddy.  Finally Olik did, too.

There was a popping
sound.  Darkness reached heavy fingers farther into the subway car. 
Jim couldn't figure out what had happened for a moment, then realized that
Karen's LED lamp had burst.  The scream from the child on the tablet had
destroyed her light.

How is that
possible?  How is that possible?  What's going on, what's happening
and how is it
possible
?

Jim suddenly
realized he was screaming, but he couldn't hear the sound of his own
voice.  He was shrieking deaf pleas to no one and nothing.  Mute
before the banshee wail of anger and betrayal coming from the floor of the
subway car.

More popping
sounds.  Olik cursed.  A moment later Jim felt something bite his
leg.  He realized what it was even in his pain: his phone, the screen
shattering and sending shards through his pants leg.  Nothing major, but
his phone was shot.  Probably Olik's, too.  Probably everyone's
phones were shot.  Gone.  They were on their own.

With a final rising
peal, the child's shriek rose to a level beyond any that Jim thought he could
stand.

I'm going to
pass out.

But he didn't pass
out.  Not quite.  Sparkling blobs of tinsel and globes like Christmas
ornaments began jumping in front of his eyes, but before he blacked out
completely something that sounded like a small explosion cracked through the
subway car.

It was the
tablet.  The face of the undead child-thing screaming.  The glass
face of the tablet shattered and there was a single, searing flash of white
light.

Then all was
silent.

All was dark.