Primeval (Werewolf Apocalypse Book 2) Page 6

  Kelly realized there were only two more seats left before the monsters reached her. Rafe seemed to be in shock, paralyzed with terror, so she grabbed his arm and started pulling him toward the aisle.

  As the first of the two-foot-long rats scrambled to the second level, the bus swerved hard to the right, and the vehicle hurtled onto the sidewalk. Kelly was thrown to the floor as the bus plowed into the glass front of the New York Times Building, lodging itself under the news ticker, the wave of headlines turning into a shower of sparks over her head. Rafe, who had been standing, was neatly cut in half, his bottom segment flopping down in front of where Kelly had landed in the aisle.

  The news ticker billboard groaned, then, amidst a shower of blue sparks, it tilted forward, falling on top of the double-decker bus. Kelly screamed as glass shards fell around her. The structure settled on top of the bus with a loud thud, and the vehicle came to a jolting stop.

  Raising her head, Kelly saw that the news ticker was resting where it had dropped, on top of the seats of the open-air part of the bus, like a new roof only a few feet from the floor where she had fallen next to Rafe’s dismembered legs. She gave a little sob when she saw her boyfriend’s lower half, bleeding and oozing.

  Streams of sunlight peeked through holes in the collapsed news ticker. Here and there, blue sparks still sizzled and popped, briefly illuminating the gloom like a mistimed strobe light. Kelly could see battered and torn bodies all around her in these quick flashes. Some of them were squirming, in the middle of their metamorphosis into Lycanthropes.

  Then, something moved in the darkness near the front of the bus. One of the beasts was crawling on all fours down the aisle, its back scraping against the fallen news ticker. It had spotted her, and Kelly decided then and there that she wasn’t going out like the others.

  Finding the daylight near the back of the bus, she crawled toward it, heedless of the glass embedding itself in her hands and knees. She left a trail of crimson as she headed for the light and the relative safety of the street. She could hear the beast growling behind her, its talons clicking against the aisle floor. She moved faster.

  As she reached the hole at the back of the bus, she stuck her head out. It was only about a twenty foot drop. She might break a few bones, but she’d be in the street. People were scattered all along Times Square, and as she watched, several of them were changing into Lycanthropes. They were everywhere, as were the rats streaming out of the sewer grates. Taxis and cars swerved, striking pedestrians and crashing into storefronts or each other.

  She realized there was no safe place. The disease was spreading. Monsters were everywhere.

  The creature behind her clasped her ankle in its furry hand and yanked her back into the darkness under the sign. She submitted to her fate, not screaming at all, not even when the beast bit off her left leg.

  All around the bus, chaos erupted.

  New York City had become a Petri dish overflowing with a new corruption.

  Chapter 10

  12:25 p.m.

  Sandy Martin studied the people who inhabited the subway car with her. There weren’t very many of them – a muscular African American man in his mid-twenties, an elderly lady with shopping bags, an athletic looking woman who could have doubled for Linda Carter as Wonder Woman, and a girl of about sixteen sitting near her. There was also a middle-aged man in a suit so tight, the buttons on his jacket threatened to burst across the train at any moment. Sandy had always thought the subway would be bustling with people in the middle of the day, but the other cars appeared to be nearly empty as well.

  After they had all boarded, some of the passengers in Sandy’s car started asking questions, discussing the weird spectacle of a horde of huge rats chasing a woman out of the subway. The vermin had seemed intent on catching her, as if their little rat minds were in perfect synchronicity. Even native New Yorkers, who seemed to shrug off everything as just another day in the Big Apple, were disturbed by the scene.

  The elderly lady, who possessed a strong Queens accent and long unruly hair sat opposite Sandy, next to the handsome, slim African American man. She wore a long house dress with purple flowers all over it, and he was clad in baggy sweatpants and a sleeveless red T-shirt. His arms were muscular, and he carried a shoe bag over his shoulder. He listened to music on an iPod. The chubby businessman opened a briefcase and perused a sheaf of papers that looked vaguely official to Sandy. His left pinky finger was adorned with a gold ring, probably a souvenir of some high school athletic championship. He had the look of an ex-football player gone to seed. The two women on the other side of the car spoke in soft tones to each other, and Sandy thought the younger of the two appeared frightened. The older one was speaking to her – Sister? Daughter? – in low, comforting tones.

  “I never saw such a thing,” the old woman said, her wrinkled hands raised to her furrowed cheeks. “So many rats.”

  “Yeah, well, the city’s full of ’em,” the young man said. “Especially underneath where the subway goes. Only a matter of time till they make for the surface. All the good food up there?” He shook his head, clucking his tongue.

  The portly man in the bad suit pulled out his cell phone and started dialing. Swearing, he closed it. “No service. Thought the damn city was supposed to have Wi-Fi up and running by now.” He snapped his briefcase shut.

  The elderly woman shook her head, saying, “Feh, if you listen to the promises of the meshuggener politicians, you deserve the disappointment you get.”

  “It works in some places,” the tall Latino woman said in a clipped accent. “I’ve used mine down here before. They just aren’t done with all the installations.”

  “Rats probably chewed through the signal wires,” the young African American man said.

  Sandy pulled out her Blackberry and looked for available bars. For a second, she saw the ghost of one appear, then she put the device away, shaking her head.

  “I’ve got nothing,” she said.

  The young woman who was sitting with the Amazonian Latino moved closer to her older companion.

  “I’m scared, Coach,” the girl said. “Those rats … there was something seriously wrong with them. Did you see how big they were?”

  “Rats get big in the sewers, Alice,” the older woman replied.

  “But did you see their eyes? They were all yellow and nasty looking.”

  The businessman unbuttoned his suit jacket and said, “Yeah. There was something really fucked about their eyes. And the way they moved. My name is Craig Chew, by the way. Of Levy, Thieback, and Chew.”

  The black man snapped his fingers, “Yeah, man, I’ve seen you on TV. Late night commercials, but you were dressed like Paul Revere. ‘The litigation is coming.’”

  “Not my finest moment, I’ll admit,” said Craig Chew. “But lucrative, nonetheless.”

  The subway car went dark for a second, but then the lights flickered back on as the train shuddered, vibrating its way along the track.

  “Whoa,” the young man said, pulling himself to his feet using one of the shiny metal vertical poles. “What was that?”

  “Just the shaking of old bones. These trains are all ancient, you know. Like me,” the old lady in the purple flower dress said. “The transit’s been around almost as long as I have. There are bound to be a few arthritic spots on the tracks.”

  The lights flickered again, and the young girl squeezed in closer to the tall older woman. This time, the train suffered a tremor so severe it shook the black guy off his feet and onto the floor.

  “Shit! What the hell was that?”

  The lights came back on. Sandy saw the concern in the eyes of the New Yorkers. These were people familiar with the regular machinations of the New York Transit System, and whatever had happened was obviously out of the ordinary.

  She asked, “Do these trains ever get stuck down here? Like in a blackout?”

  Craig Chew answered, “Sometimes. But it’s really rare.”

  “I never felt nothing like
that, though,” the African American man said. “That was … I don’t know what that was, but it felt wrong. Like the car was gonna jump the tracks or something.”

  “No need to worry,” the old Jewish lady said. She gave Sandy a toothless grin and continued, “If the train stalls, it’ll start again in a couple of minutes. Trust an old native, sweetie. You must be a tourist.”

  Sandy nodded, said, “Yeah. From Ohio. My brother died at 9-11, and I … I wanted to see the site before it was all built over.”

  “Sorry to hear that, dear. My name is Sylvia Levy. I’ve been a resident for my whole life. Been riding these trains since the forties.”

  “It’s nice to meet you Sylvia.”

  “So don’t you worry about a thing. You’re safe in here from whatever might be out there.”

  “Like those big assed rats,” the young man said.

  “Right,” Sylvia continued. “They can’t get in here. And if the train stops, the Transit Authorities will have it started again in a flash and you’ll be zooming back to Brooklyn with the rest of us.”

  “Thanks,” Sandy said, checking her Blackberry again. Still no signal. She sighed and looked back at the elderly woman in the purple dress. “I feel a lot better.”

  Then, the lights blinked out and stayed out.

  And the subway train juddered to a screeching halt.

  “Oh shit,” the African American man whispered. “This ain’t good.”

  Sandy’s phone rang once. As she fumbled to get it out of her pocket, it fell silent.

  Chapter 11

  12:30 p.m.

  Michael Keene led John Creed down the tracks, away from the 42nd Street Subway Station. The white tiled hallway echoed with their voices and footsteps, but the usual buzz of numerous conversations was absent. It gave Michael the jitters, and he wanted to head underground as fast as he could and hide away.

  “We’ll have to be careful,” Michael said, and the beam of his headlamp bobbed as he walked. “The Transit Authority’s always watching for people trying to go underground. Luckily, it looks like the rats scared away most of the normal crowds for this time of day. Follow me and stay close. And watch your feet. If trains switch tracks, you could get your foot crushed.”

  “Thanks.”

  “No problem. Now, follow me this way.”

  Michael headed down the dark tunnel, lit every fifty feet or so with dim lights, which were either blue or red. He moved with the calm assuredness of someone who’d traversed this pathway many, many times, confidence on full display. John, busy watching his tread and the dreaded third rail, moved as quickly as he could, following him.

  They scurried farther into the tunnel, and it grew darker and narrower as they went. The walls were dirty brick, and every once in a while they passed cubby holes where people probably ducked when the subway trains went roaring past. The various tracks were separated by grime-covered metal walls, with large gaps in between pillars.

  “Almost there,” Michael said.

  John nodded, but he felt a trembling beneath his feet and heard a rattling noise in the tunnel ahead. As he watched, the tunnel grew brighter, and it started to fill with light.

  “Uh … Michael. Train.”

  “Better hurry then,” the mole man said. “Just in here.”

  He showed John a large hole in the wall where the brickwork had collapsed. It was extremely dark inside the hole, and Michael hopped through it, disappearing into the murky blackness. His headlamp glowed dimly, offering little illumination.

  The train was growing closer, the sound of its screeching becoming louder as if the machine were protesting against its speed. It sent vibrations along the tracks, which grew stronger with its approach. The light was also getting brighter. As John looked up, he saw it form a perfect circle when it turned the corner and started directly toward him.

  He jumped, flinging himself into the hole and banging his shoulder against the bricks. A few of them broke loose and fell, crumbling into dust at the bottom of the hole. The train passed with an insanely loud noise. It created a breeze, which blew more dust into the air, making John cough. Michael, however, seemed immune. The lights of the train flickered past the hole, briefly illuminating the passageway into which they had climbed.

  Michael turned on a small flashlight and said, “This way.”

  They stepped down a long corridor, filled with dark-red bricks. There were as many on the floor as there were lining the Art-Deco archways. Everything was damp to the touch. John could hear water trickling somewhere, but he didn’t see any streams. His foot went into a small pool of extremely cold water, and he hissed.

  “We’re about a quarter of the way there,” Michael said in what appeared to be a disembodied voice. All John could see was the tiny beam of his flashlight. “I just wanna check on someone before we get any lower.”

  “Lower?”

  “Oh yeah, we have a few more levels to go down. We’ve been going farther and farther under the surface, but we’ll have to take a ladder soon to the next level down.”

  “How many people live down here?” John asked, jogging to keep up with the bouncing parallel headlamp and penlight.

  “Oh, I dunno,” Michael answered, not slowing for a second. “Couple thousand maybe. I know of several hundred, myself.”

  “That many? I thought most of them were rounded up when Giuliani swept through and Disney-fied the streets. He said he cleaned out the homeless people.”

  “He’s a politician. He was saying what people want to hear. There will always be homeless people, and these people will always seek out the warmest place to stay.”

  “Doesn’t feel very warm to me,” John said as they reached a series of rungs built into the wall. “Feels downright damp, actually.”

  “It’ll get warmer as we go. You’ll see. All those steampipes and sewer grates. We go down here,” he said, descending the rungs in a spritely manner. John followed in a much more careful and vigilant manner.

  “During Reagan’s reign,” Michael continued, “a lot of the mentally ill were released into New York City when the state could no longer fund their welfare. They immediately took to the streets, but the smartest ones went below the streets. There were whole communities down here, people with places almost as nice as any apartment building. Since Giuliani’s time, however, there’ve been a bunch of sweeps through the tunnels. Policemen were sent to remove everyone, putting them back out on the streets again. Some lucky ones were put in shelters or halfway houses. The smart ones just dug in deeper.”

  They prowled down another corridor; this one had dark brick walls that sweated profusely. The air was warmer, however, and long pipes ran overhead, covered in spray-on asbestos. Long streams of what looked like mucus-covered flypaper hung from the pipes, and John had to duck his head to avoid bumping into the nasty things.

  “I call these things snot-cicles,” Michael said, shining his light upwards so John could see the thousands of dangling grotesque oddities. “I don’t know what’s in them, but they’re sticky as hell, so don’t touch any of them.”

  “I’ll try not to,” John replied, ducking his head even farther.

  They descended another set of rungs pounded into a wall. This time, the iron treads were loose, and brick dust clouded into John’s eyes as he followed Michael. The tunnel he found himself in was even wetter, with a small stream running down the middle. Plastic bags full of what looked like wet rags lined the sides of the hall. There were no lights spread out along the sides of the wall, or, if there were, they were permanently extinguished.

  “Hope you don’t mind getting your feet wet,” Michael said cheerfully. “The guy I’m looking for stays over here in one of these empty rooms.”

  He led John another hundred feet or so before stepping into a small cubbyhole that the reporter couldn’t graciously call a closet. There was a filthy single mattress along the far side of the wall, wet and stained with God knows what. A shopping cart was parked on the left side, overflowing with bla
ck trash bags and a broken tennis racket. A small bowl full of what looked like dog food lay at the far end of the cart. A huge rat was devouring the chunks of kibble, and it looked up at them, hissing. Its yellow eyes glowed under a protruding brow in the near-dark. It started for them, its two-foot-long body sliding along the wall.

  Without a word, Michael pulled the tennis racket out of the shopping cart and started whaling on the beast. It screeched, snapping its jaws, but the homeless man made a perfect swing into its skull, and it fell to the damp floor, its body shuddering for a moment before it died.

  “That bastard’s huge,” John said, pulling his camera from his pocket and snapping pictures of the deceased rat.

  “There are bigger ones down here,” Michael said nonchalantly.

  “Bigger than this monster? Jesus, how do you people live down here?”

  “Never said it was easy. You do what you have to do.”

  John was thinking, Monster rats. I don’t know how much longer I want to stay underground. I need a weapon, and I need it now.

  He said, “Doesn’t look like your friend is here. He has a dog?”

  Michael nodded. “Old man by the name of Jones. He has a little brown and white mongrel. They keep each other out of trouble.”

  He stepped across the room, peering down at the stained mattress. When he flashed his light across it, the stains went from an indistinct dark color to a bright red. Michael put his hand to it, drew it back, and showed his wet, stained fingers to John.

  “Blood. Still wet. Whatever happened didn’t happen very long ago. I just saw the man this morning.” He wiped the blood from his fingers onto his dirty jeans.

  “I’m thinking this tour’s about over,” John said, ashamed when his voice cracked. “What do you say? Time to head back to the surface?”

  “I should look for him,” Michael said. “He’s really old. Fairly sick, too.”