Prowlers - 1 (20 page)

He ran, and she ran with him.

"Jack?" she asked, her voice pleading as they fled down the escalator.

Up above, a pair of MBTA workers shouted after them, warning that they were going to call the cops. Jack prayed that it was not just an idle threat. He did not look back to see how close the Prowlers were. He did not want to know.

"Go, go, go!" he urged Molly on.

I’m going!" she snapped at him.

"Run faster if you want to live," he warned.

She said nothing after that. She vaulted the last five steps to the bottom of the escalator, and he followed suit. Then they were sprinting past the people who seemed to be sleepwalking through the labyrinthine station.

Jack glanced over his shoulder. The two men walked quickly after them, but did not run. They seemed to be slipping in between people as though everyone else were standing still. . . either that, or by some instinct, nobody would get near them.

Several T lines went through Park Street. Jack and Molly went through the Red Line station and ducked down the stairs to the Green Line. Molly did not ask again what was going on. Both of them were breathing hard. Jack felt his heart clench in his chest just as the rest of his body did, ready to defend himself and Molly if necessary.

Perhaps a dozen people stood waiting for the Green Line train to come through. Jack pulled Molly behind a square concrete pillar and put a finger to his lips. He

could hear the shrieking of brakes coming from the subway tunnel, could feel the hot blast of air pushed along through the tunnel in front of the train. It was coming.

So were the Prowlers. He could almost feel them coming, but did not dare peek out to see. From behind the pillar, he could see three people sitting on a bench waiting for a train. It took him a moment to realize one of them was a ghost.

The phantom appeared to have once been a homeless woman. When Jack spotted her, she glanced at him and her eyes widened in surprise. Apparently she had not expected to be seen. Then she held a finger up to shush him the way he had done to Molly, and pointed back the way Jack had come.

The Prowlers. She knew what they were, or at least knew Jack was running from them.

"They haven't found you yet' a low voice whispered behind him.

Jack grunted and turned quickly to see the ghost of Father Pinsky close behind him. He flinched, startled by the nearness of the spirit. Even Artie had not come that close to him. Jack could see that Father Pinsky's eyes, like Artie's, were windows to some other world, a place of dark fire and sparkling stars.

"All the scents down here have them confused," the preist said. "The train's coming. Wait for it. Just wait."

"Thanks," Jack whispered.

Then he glanced over to find Molly staring at him as though he'd lost his mind. Jack opened his mouth to

explain, then shook his head. "Long story," he murmured.

The train screeched and hissed its way into the station, and the doors opened. Molly moved, but Jack held her back.

"Hold on. Give it a minute. Hang on. Hang on," he urged her. People got off the train and others got on. In the final moment before the doors would have closed, Jack put a hand on Molly's shoulder and went for it. "Now!"

They sprinted the ten feet to the train door even as a bell jangled and the doors started to close. With inches to spare, they slipped through.

The doors opened again. The driver had apparently triggered them again to make sure Jack and Molly did not get hurt. People glared at them, but Jack ignored them. He poked his head out the door and quickly saw the man with ember eyes and his muscle-bound sidekick board the train three cars back.

"Did they get on?" Molly demanded.

Jack nodded grimly. "We're trapped here now. We've got to get off." He glanced around wildly, ignoring the increasingly strange stares from other passengers.

Then Molly reached up and grabbed his face. She pinched bis mouth and chin in her hand and turned his head so he would look at her. Her greenish eyes had darkened with anger or fear or exertion, and her hair was even more unruly than usual. With her other hand, she held on to a metal pole in the middle of the car. She let go of his face and beckoned with one finger so he would lean in toward her.

"No more," she whispered to him. "I'm scared, Jack, and I'm sad, and I'm worried about you. Who the hell are those guys?"

"You have to trust me," he whispered back.

"I do," she replied firmly. "But you have to trust me, too."

Jack glanced at the door at the other end of their car. No one was supposed to move between cars while the train was in motion, but somehow he doubted the Prowlers were going to obey the rules.

Nearly overwhelmed with the urgency of the moment, knowing what would happen if the creatures caught up to them, Jack almost snapped at her. But then he peered into Molly's eyes

and saw how much she needed to know. He also saw the strength there, and the courage.

He had to trust her.

'Artie and Kate and a whole lot of other people were hunted and killed, but not by people," he whispered, staring deep into Molly's eyes. "They're monsters, Molly. Called Prowlers."

She shook her head, her rejection of his words so fundamental it did not even make it to her lips. The expression in her eyes said it all.

Jack took her hand and squeezed it gently. "You don't have to believe it, but believe me. Those two guys are after us. If we don't do something—"

"Like what?" she demanded.

The people nearest them had started to edge away as they overheard Jack's insane ramblings. That was good,

he thought. It gave them space to move. Others stared openly at them as well, but Jack ignored them. He glanced around the train again and was suddenly struck by how many more people were on board than he had thought when they jumped on.

Ghosts. He knew it almost before the word formed in his mind. Quickly, he looked around again and realized there were seven or eight ghosts on board the train, just in that car alone. All of them were looking at him. More than that, though, they were really seeing him, as if he had become one of them. For just a moment it seemed as though a mist had formed inside the subway car, as though he were seeing everything around him through a rolling fog.

The spirits took on flesh and weight and color.

With a start, Jack saw that Molly had suddenly become transparent, as insubstantial as Artie. He was terrified that if he tried to touch her, Molly would be insubstantial as well.

This is it, he thought. I'm seeing the Ghostlands. I'm... part of it.

'Am I dead?" he wondered out loud.

A hand gripped his shoulder. Jack turned, ready to fight, but it was Artie.

In the flesh. He appeared just as healthy as he had on the night he died.

"You're not dead, bro. Maybe something in between life and death if we can see you like this, if I can lay hands on you. But if you don't move your ass, you're going to be dead for real. You can't run away, Jack. I

don't want you to kill anyone but if you let these things live they'll find you again. They could track your scent to friggin' Albuquerque and back. You gotta take 'em out."

"Artie . . ."Jack said, and even his voice sounded different to him. Hollow. Haunted.

His head rocked back as if he'd been slapped and he blinked to find that the world had inverted itself again. The ghosts were still there, but they were transparent, true phantoms.

Molly was flesh and blood again and in his face. "What's happening to you?" she demanded, her voice tight, as though she might snap at any moment.

"Later," he said quickly.

His eyes darted around. The ghosts down at the far end of the car started shouting at him, and he saw that one of them was Corinne Berdinka. He focused on her face, on her eyes, and saw terror there. The Prowlers were moving fast. They were coming through. Time had run out.

"This way," Jack said, and he darted past a couple of other passengers who swore loudly at him.

Molly seemed about to argue, but she looked at him again, searched his eyes for something and must have found it, because she went along with him.

"Go through to the next car, but not far in," he told her. "Stand inside the glass and let them see you."

"We're not supposed to—"

"Go!"

He shoved Molly ahead of him, and she hauled open

the heavy metal door, then pushed through and shoved open the door to the next car. Jack followed her, but he stopped between the cars. The screech of metal and brakes filled his ears, and he was buffeted by the wind produced by the speed of the train. Chains rattled below where the two cars were coupled together, and Jack stood with a foot on either side of the narrow breach beneath him. As the train turned, he fought to keep his balance, hands pressed against the outside of the train on either side.

From inside the train, he would not be visible.

All of that had transpired in less than a minute. The train was moving between stations at top speed now. Fourteen seconds ticked by before the door to his right was hauled open again. The bald, muscle-bound guy stepped into the breach. His eyes were focused straight ahead, and Jack knew what he was staring at: Molly. If she had done as Jack asked, she would be standing right there—bait. And this guy, this creature, wanted to do to her what he'd done to Artie.

Then, in the heartbeat before the Prowler would have seen him, Jack saw its nose and mouth push out slightly, the skin stretching as if something else lurked beneath it, something with a snout and long, glistening fangs, and all he could think about was the story of Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf disguised as her grandmother.

Why couldn't Red see the truth?

Because it looked like her grandmother, Jack thought.

His stomach convulsed. The Prowler noticed him in

its peripheral vision. Fingers gripping a tiny lip of metal, his only way to brace himself, Jack crouched slightly and shot his right leg out in a straight, hard kick that knocked the creature back out of the breach. It scrabbled for a handhold and found none, then roared in defiance before it tumbled into the two-foot space between the train and the hard concrete wall. Bones snapped as the train dragged the beast a moment. Then it fell to the tracks, hit the third rail, and sparks of electricity burst off it.

Jack reached for the door leading into the next car. He was too late. The man with the ember eyes came into the space between cars behind him. His grin was filled with razor-sharp teeth, and his hands no longer looked human.

"Well done," he snarled. "For all the good it did you."

Molly saw it all.

For just an instant, she was horrified at what Jack had done. Her mind raced with the terrible possibilities, recoiled from the one that disturbed her the most: that he had just murdered a man at random. But why, then, had the man come through between the cars?

Even as these things occurred to her, the other man stepped into the breach between trains. He grabbed Jack by the collar and grinned, and in that one simple moment, Molly really saw him—

his teeth and his hands and his eyes—and knew that she had to act. Jack had said they were monsters. Maybe she wouldn't go so far

as to believe that. But they were killers. That much she now understood.

Her red hair tumbled in front of her face as she jammed her hand into her purse and rooted around for the touch of metal, for the stun gun her mother had given her the previous year on her birthday. The only intelligent gift her mother had bought her since the dance lessons she'd had when she turned nine.

"What the hell are those two doing?"

"Somebody's gettin' his ass kicked, looks like."

Molly ignored the voices around her. Beyond the door, the guy with the sideburns slammed Jack's head against the glass, and it splintered into a spiderweb pattern of cracks. She shoved past a guy in torn denim with piercings all over his face, and grabbed the door handle.

"You're not supposed to—"

She hauled the door open.

The monster snarled and she saw the teeth, and for just a second, she really did believe.

"Jack, get down!" she shouted.

He ducked.

Molly rammed the Taser into the guy's chest, silently thanked her mom, and fired. Electricity surged through him, and the guy was shocked backward, slammed into the door of the other subway car, and fell.

And changed.

He should have been completely incapacitated for at least half a minute, possibly even knocked unconscious.

His body bucked with the electrical charge but he managed to climb to his knees above the gap between the two trains.

And he changed.

As if his skin were being sucked inside him through every pore, even as another body burst from underneath, his body transformed completely in a matter of seconds. The shock of the Taser stun had flicked a switch inside him, knocked out whatever focus he must have had to use to maintain the illusion of humanity.

Teeth extended from a long, curved jaw; his body seemed to grow larger, and sinewy muscles rippled beneath thick fur; fingers had become claws with razor-sharp talons.

Monster, Molly thought. It was the only word in her mind.

Then the thing focused on her with its blazing eyes like burning cinders, and it began to growl.

"Jack, get in here!" she shouted.

He was gingerly touching the back of his head, and she saw that there was blood on his fingers

from his injuries. The train started to slow as it came into Government Center—she could not believe how fast her world had changed, turned upside-down between one T stop and the next—

and she grabbed Jack and pushed him through the door behind her.

She stunned the thing again.

It howled.

"Run!" she yelled.

Jack was surrounded by other people who had seen

what happened, had seen the thing attack and then seen it change. Some of them were moving as fast as they could, getting off the train. Others were crowding around Jack and Molly, trying to get a better look, not even realizing the danger they were in.