The Romero Strain (10 page)

I pulled on the handle, hoping it would simply slide open, but it wouldn’t budge. I braced my feet against the tunnel floor and pulled as hard as I could. I could feel all the muscles in my body contract. My footing slipped and my body began to cramp. I could pull at the door no longer. I released it, bent over, put my hands above my knees, and tried to catch my breath.

“Son of a bitch,” I exclaimed, gasping for air. “Marisol, do you remember if David or Julie packed that big pry bar or that hammer?”

“I think David has it in his bag.”

“Can you interrupt his conversation and tell him we found the way out? And that we need his tools to open the door.”

“Sí.”

Marisol left me, taking Max with her. I was going to try pulling on the door one more time, but I became lightheaded and beads of perspiration rolled down my forehead. I wasn’t sure if it was the sickness causing my weakness or the large amount of Jack Daniel’s I had consumed, but I needed to sit down. I propped myself up against the tunnel wall to the right of the door.

“J.D., you all right?” a concerned David asked.

“So much time and so little to do. Wait. Strike it. Reverse that.”

“Dude, I know you’re losing it if you misquote Wonka,” he told me.

“
What!?
” I asked, confused. “No… what’s the time?”

David shined his flashlight on his watch. “Like, ten after three.”

“
Three?
”

“Yeah. Three.”

“Holy shit! How did it get so late? We gotta get going. Help me up.”

“J.D., maybe you should rest a few more minutes.”

“Rest? I’ll rest when I’m dead, ah, undead. Whatever. We need to get through this door.”

David was a few inches taller than me and could easily reach the roller assembly. As he pounded the mechanisms, rust and debris showered down. Marisol and I used the pry bar to loosen the door from its frame. Julie held the torchlight up to help us see, and Joe… well, Joe stood around and did nothing except haphazardly shine his failing flashlight in our faces, useless piece of shit.

Freeing the door was like excavating the entrance to an Egyptian tomb: a lot of work while knowing the darkened passage may lead to disappointment. I hoped the trip upward would be more gratifying and a lot easier. But those immortal words came to my mind as we crossed under the archway,
The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
I’m sure if I had said it aloud, David would have corrected me.

I heard the voice of Slartibartfast from the
Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
, telling me men didn’t have much to do with it. Slarti had been right. Or maybe I had said it out loud and it was David, not Slartibartfast, who had made the comment. I wasn’t sure.

The narrow stairwell was dark, peeling, damp, dank and spiral. The smell of mold and mildew permeated the stale air. I placed my hand on the handrail. It was cold, wet and slimy.

“Shit!” I wasn’t happy. “Watch the handrail,” I warned as I shook the slime from my hand and wiped the remainder on a pant leg.

The trip up was a bit treacherous. Julie slipped, almost falling into Joe, but Joe moved out of the way and David caught her before she tumbled down several flights of steps. He held her momentarily and it appeared as if they were having a love connection.

“Hey, McLovin,” I called. “Everything okay?”

The embarrassed couple broke apart. But I was about to be more embarrassed than they had been. I hadn’t climbed three steps when I lost
my
footing. I managed to grab the handrail, but it was to no avail. My palm slid in the slimy goo, and as I stumbled backwards David caught me, too.

David asked, “You okay? Or do you need another moment?”

“Ah, if you’re looking for a kiss of gratitude, I’m sure Max will oblige.”

He stood me back up. “No, just
thanks
will do.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

Up the stairs we went. The warmer it became the less mold and mildew there was, though the air was still stale.

“¡Hijo de puta!”
I was even less happy than I was ten minutes ago. There was a brick wall where once a large doorway had been.

“The end of the line,” Joe said.

“Shut up,
pajúo,”
Marisol ordered. “You have no right to say shit.”

“Damn right.
No le hagas caso al malparido. El culo… can… ¡Chupa mi leche del pene!
I hope I said that right.”

“Almost perfect,” Marisol replied.

“Hey, if you’ve got something to say, say it to my face!” Joe said.

I told him, “Bend over
pinga
and I’ll repeat it.”

“Pinga.
That’s dick!”

“And that’s what you are. A useless—” I stopped my sentence short. I turned my head toward the stairway and listened. I heard it again. It was a groan, a groan of something that didn’t sound human or animal.

Marisol asked, “What’s the matter?”

They didn’t hear it, but I didn’t imagine it. It was distinct and guttural and it had come from the Amtrak tunnel.

I must have had a panicked or fearful expression, because they all gave me looks of concern, with the exception of Joe.

“Oh, shit. You don’t think––?” It hit me. In my haste and in carelessness, I had forgotten to close the access door behind us. “We forgot the door!”

I ran, heading the way we came. I had been so focused on getting to the doorway that I didn’t realize David had followed right behind me, until the beam of his flashlight darted across my face.

The noise came again, and this time David heard it. I drew my pistol and cautiously approached the open archway. I guardedly peeked my head into the dim lit tunnel. There was at least a dozen undead wandering the tracks from the west.

The ones closest to the doorway stopped, sniffed the air, and looked right at me.

“Shit, shit, shit! Close the door, close the door!” I shouted.

We struggled to push the heavy-roller door closed. Only a foot remained but we couldn’t get it to move any further. Several pairs of hands jutted through the opening, grabbing the lip of the steel door. They tried to pull it back.

David and I kept pushing, but the door refused to budge. An undead person peered menacingly through the gap with a flesh-hungry look. It had nearly the same intensity Jack Nicholson had in the film
The Shining
, when his character peered through the hole in the door delivering his unforgettable line of dialog. This undead, however, had no speech, but the groan it gave delivered the same chilling effect.

I didn’t hear the others come down the stairway, and I don’t think David did either. There was no hesitation from any of them. They pushed and the door slammed shut, snapping off a few undead hands.

Max had been barking madly when he arrived with the others, but stopped when the door closed. He stood near the doorway, teeth bared, and growled with a vicious intensity ready to defend me if the door suddenly reopened. I didn’t correct him or reprimanded him for his furious behavior, but I did praise him and rough his fur with affection for his loyalty and willingness to protect me.

There was urgency in our need to get through the wall that blocked our path.

Joe was waiting on the top landing, acting as if we had abandoned him. I wanted to punch him in the face, but I no longer had the strength.

David, seeing my diminished capacity, knew it was up to him to break down the barrier.

We only had one ten-pound short handled sledgehammer, and a thirty-six inch carbon steel wrecking bar. Without hesitation, David picked up the hammer and began pounding away at the brick, while Marisol and I guarded the staircase. Joe reluctantly joined in the razing, without protest or comments, using the slotted claw end of the wrecking bar. It was easier than I thought it would have been. The old red brick crumbled easy, and David and Joe punched a sizable hole into it within a matter of moments.

David shined his flashlight through the break, looking to see what was behind the darkness. “It looks like a large room. But there’s a lot of… of large garbage bags lying around, and it really smells disgusting.”

“Disgusting, how?” I asked.

“Like a
Kill Van Kull
garbage scow.”

I peered inside the room. It smelled like rotting garbage. “I gotta feeling I know where we are,” I said.

Marisol asked, “Where?”

“The refuse holding room,” I announced.

David cleared more of the wall. A pungent odor wafted out.

“Goddamn,” Joe said. “We gotta go through
that!?”

I quoted Jim Carey from
How The Grinch Stole Christmas
. It was the line about how one man’s compost could be another man’s potpourri.

David shook his head. He knew that one, too. I couldn’t stand that he was one up on me.

* * *

We had come to the garbage holding room. Large black bags of festering, rotting debris collected from the waste cans on the platform were stored in the room until the maintenance train came to haul it off, usually once a week.

We cleared the garbage, and stood silently at the door. I placed my ear against the metal to hear if there were any external noises. No trains, no talking, no screaming, no nothing; just a chilling silence.

We turned our flashlights off. I drew the pistol from my navy EMT pants and held it firmly in my hands in a police stance, ready to shoot anything that tried to come through the doorway. David carefully turned the handle and opened it, looking through the crack. He opened it two inches. I could hear Max sniffing the welcome freshness that wisped into the room. Max made no noise.

“David,” I whispered. “I think you can open it a little more.”

The door opened. I stood with pistol in hand and David with wrecking bar ready to repel the hordes, but nothing. We peered out. We had emerged at the southern end of the platform, just feet from the 32
nd
Street turnstile exit. We looked north up the low-lit platform. There were what appeared to be bodies lying on the ground sixty feet from our location. There was no movement.

We approached carefully, watching the tunnels both south and north, and the southbound platform across the tracks. There was blood, a lot of blood.

Bodies of the infected lay sprawled about riddled with bullet holes. There amongst the half dozen or so lay the disfigured corpse of an NYPD Hercules officer. His helmet was still strapped to his head, but most of the rest of his tactical gear was ripped from him. His Colt M4 machine gun, with a grenade launcher, lay feet from him, soaking in a stream of blood that had run from his mutilated body. He had not been able to repel the onslaught.

I saw Joe eyeballing the weapon.

“Don’t even think about it. That blood is most likely infected. Everyone, keep away from the blood.”

He wasn’t going to listen to me, so I snatched it up and held it gingerly, trying to keep the blood from soiling me more than I already was.

David had walked up the platform a few more yards. He had found a survivor. The man’s torso had been ravaged. He lay in a large crimson pool of blood in the middle of the platform. Most of his clothing had been torn from him, exposing his body and revealing that pieces of his flesh had been gnawed away from his upper and lower torso. His right arm had been ripped away at the glenoid-humeral joint, whereas his left had been severed at the trochlea, exposing the humerus bone and the underlining tissue, tendons and muscles to the deltoid tuberosity. His legs—

His legs had nearly been chewed down to the bones. I couldn’t believe he was still alive.

He looked up at us in a glassy stare. “Help me, please,” he stammered to get the words out. “Don’t let me die on the floor.”

For him to still be alive was a miracle, signifying the attack happened minutes before.

I set the rifle down as I knelt down next to him. “I’ll take care of you. I’m a paramedic.”

“You’re too late. Look at me. Not on the floor,” he pleaded.

I didn’t allow the others to help. I didn’t want them touching infected blood. They stood watching me as I dragged him back into a niche of the platform and propped him up against the wall under an art deco eagle plaque.

Julie ran to the edge of the platform. The blood and mutilation was finally too much for her. As she began to vomit she screamed and fell backwards on the platform. She kicked and tried desperately to back away from the edge.

“I can’t save you, but I can take the pain away. I looked at his ID tag. “Your name is Hastings? What’s—” I stopped speaking and looked toward Julie.

A head popped up from the tracks below the platform level. It was one of them. David pulled Julie away. It struggled to try and climb up onto the platform.

I grabbed the machine gun, and when David and Julie were clear I rattled off a few rounds. The undead’s head exploded, and it fell back dead. I turned to my patient.