Dark City (Repairman Jack - Early Years 02) (2 page)

The DDPer closest behind him didn’t make it. He jabbed his machete through the crack, barely missing Jack. It had black symbols carved into its chromed surface. He tried to use it to pry open the doors, but the train had started moving and that wasn’t going to happen. Ramon and the other DDPer came up behind their buddy and the trio made all sorts of gestures—shaking fists, pointing fingers—while shouting threats in Spanish. As they slid away, Jack refrained from any taunts, just stared and concentrated on catching his breath while the adrenaline buzz faded.

What would they have done with those machetes if they’d caught him? Decapitate him?

And why wasn’t Rico with them? Because he
couldn’t
be with them? Because Jack had screwed up his knee so bad he had to stay back in the truck?

Shit. Jack hadn’t meant to hurt him like that. Well, yeah, he must have wanted to hurt him in the moment—wanted to kill him, in fact—but to think that he’d caused permanent damage to a guy just for acting like a dumbass … he didn’t like that.

This rage percolating within … he was a little better at controlling it now. A little …

He pressed the side of his face against the window, expecting to see a receding cluster of
matóns
on the edge of the platform, and maybe hoping Rico would be with them. Instead he saw them running beside the train. They’d stuck their machetes in their belts and were climbing into the spaces between the cars behind his.

Crap! They weren’t giving up.

Jack started weaving forward through the three-quarter-full car. Fourteenth Street was the next stop but the train was moving so slowly, he’d run out of train before then. As he opened the sliding door to move to the next car, he looked up. Blackness above. A soot-darkened tunnel ceiling. How much clearance? Two feet? Six? Subway surfers were doing it—at least that was what the papers said. Why couldn’t he?

Well, he could climb up there, no problem. But could he survive? Stories abounded about some of those subway surfers having fatal encounters with low-hanging crossbeams.

He closed the door behind him and looked back through the car he’d just left. A DDPer was just opening the door at the rear end. Pretty clear nothing good was going to happen to Jack if he stayed at floor level. He had a feeling his only chance to come through this intact was up there.

He braced a foot on one of the side chains, then hauled himself up on the right handrail. He poked his head above the roof level and got a faceful of wind. Wan wash from caged bulbs set in the tunnel walls revealed the subway car’s beveled roof, its smooth surface broken along the center by a series of low vents. Jack would have much preferred a flat roof—that curved surface made it too easy to slide off. Maybe he should rethink—

The door to the car he’d just left slid open. A quick glance showed the top of a scarf-wrapped head.

With no other choice, Jack scrambled up and started crawling along the filthy car roof. He heard a clang, felt a vibration near his trailing foot, and knew the
matón
had slashed at him with his machete. Jack increased his crawl speed, dragging himself along through the caked layers of soot and pigeon droppings—the A train ran aboveground for much of its outer-borough route—and didn’t look back until he’d reached the first vent. The DDPer had just gained the roof and started crawling after him.

Shit.

Jack was half turned to face him when he felt a stinging impact just below his left shoulder. The guy had taken a wild, full-extension slash with his blade and connected. His dark eyes held a kind of crazy glee and he grinned through a wispy goatee as he raised his machete for another swing. But a passing crossbeam caught the blade and ripped it from his fingers, sending it flying with a ringing
clang
. That leveled the playing field.

“Now we’re even, asshole!”

Jack felt the darkness rising. He resisted a mad urge to slide toward him, stick his thumbs in his eyes, and pop them from their sockets.

The strobing lights showed the guy’s pained expression and Jack could tell by the way he tucked his left hand against his chest that the blow must have hurt—sprained his wrist no doubt.

“Hope you broke it!”

Furious, the DDPer raised his head and shouted something Jack didn’t catch just as another crossbeam flashed by close above, tearing the scarf from his head. The glee left his eyes as his expression turned terrified. He did a reverse belly-scramble and slid back down between the cars.

Yeah, you gotta be bugfuck nuts to come up here.

Jack checked his arm. The denim jacket was sliced over his deltoid and blood seeped through. He’d barely felt it when it happened, but it hurt now. Damn, that blade must have been sharp.

He resumed his forward belly crawl along the roof, not sure if he should stop in the middle or try to make it to the next car. He paused midway, then kept moving, despite the pain in his left shoulder. If he could hop the gap to the next car …

Light ahead. The 14th Street station. The train started to brake, sliding Jack forward toward the gap. As it pulled into the station, he looked ahead and saw no crossbeams overhead. He took that as a signal to rise to a crouch and move. The deceleration pushed him to a higher speed than he intended, scaring him a little, but that turned into a good thing when he reached the gap just as a familiar face popped up for a look.

Ramon must have worked his way to the forward end of the car to cut Jack off should he try just what he was doing. His eyes went wide when he saw Jack charging him. He raised his machete but too late. Jack leaped the gap just as the train ground to a halt. Ramon lost his perch with the stop and, arms flailing, dropped to the inter-car platform.

But he wasn’t down long. As the doors hissed open below, Ramon was crawling up to the roof behind Jack and giving chase.

Mind racing in search of a plan, Jack kept loping forward. Jump off to the platform? He glanced down and saw the debarking passengers weaving out among the new ones shuffling in. The car roof wasn’t that far above the platform but a jump ran the risk of landing wrong—just a little off and his knee could twist or his ankle could go under, leaving him a sitting duck. Then he saw a DDPer, the one who’d lost his scarf and machete, watching him from the platform as he wrung his injured wrist.

That put a jump out of the question, so he hopped the gap to the next car.

Again, no sign of Rico. Because he wasn’t able to get around?

Couldn’t think about that now. Had to do
something
—and quick, because he was running out of train. Only two and a half more cars to go. He heard the doors below slide shut so he dropped to his knees and braced himself for the lurching start. Looking back he saw Ramon still on his feet and closing fast. He was trotting atop the car behind, grinning and brandishing his garden-variety black-steel machete. He hopped the gap between his car and Jack’s—

—just as the train bucked forward. The sudden move made his leap fall short. His sneaker made toe contact with the car roof’s rear edge, then slipped off. His expression turned from fierce grin to shock and fear as he dropped out of sight.

But not for long. Seconds later, as the train entered the tunnel, he was up again and coming Jack’s way, though this time in a crawl instead of a run. The train picked up speed and the wind carried Ramon’s trucker’s cap away, but he didn’t seem to mind. Jack continued his own crawl to the forwardmost vent duct on the roof and clung to it. He was counting on Ramon to keep coming. And he did.

Ramon and Rico and the rest of Giovanni’s DR crew had been living in Brooklyn. Probably never rode the Eighth Avenue line down here. Didn’t know that it made a sharp left turn to the east toward Sixth Avenue. Jack remembered many times needing a near-death grip on one of the poles inside to keep from bouncing off other passengers as it made that turn … just … about …

Now.

The train lurched left and Ramon began to slide right. Jack had his arms tight around the vent and stayed put. He could see Ramon’s wide, terrified eyes as he dropped his machete—two down, one to go—and scratched at the filthy, sloping surface in a frantic search for purchase.

Fat chance, pal.

Jack watched his kicking legs go over the side, heard his terrified wail as his body followed, saw his clawed hands rake the roof all the way to the edge where they caught the lip, leaving Ramon clinging to the side of the train by his fingertips.

Jack fought the wild urge to slide over and kick at those fingertips, dumping Ramon off the train. He’d bang off the side wall, bounce against the train, get spun around and around until he either fell to the tracks where he’d end up ground meat, or get caught on the outside and be dragged into West 4th. Either way, he’d be eliminated as a threat.

But he held back, remembering how he’d let his rage take over with Rico. Look where that had put him.

Instead he imagined the view from inside the car: Ramon’s panicked face pressed against the outside of a window, his prolonged scream drowned in the train noise. Would anyone look up and see? Maybe, maybe not. Would anyone pull the emergency stop cord? Again, maybe, maybe not, but leaning toward not. New Yorkers resented anyone or anything that slowed their subway ride. They might write him off as just another jerk working a variation on subway surfing. Might even
want
him to fall off.

The train straightened out, but Jack knew it wouldn’t be long before it angled right to enter the West 4th Street station, a big nexus point at Sixth Avenue where a half dozen or more subway lines crossed.

The train pulled into the low-ceilinged station and Jack had to stay down if he wanted to keep his head. As it stopped and the doors opened, he peeked over the right edge of the roof and saw the two DDPers rush out and peel a shaken, weak-kneed Ramon off the side of the car.

Okay, no getting out that way.

To the left, over the wall, he heard a train approaching. The uptown tracks were over there.

He rose to standing between a pair of crossbeams and looked over. Another A train was pulling into the station. The beams ran above the wall. If he could get over there …

Ignoring the oily grime and rat turds, Jack took hold of the beam before him. His left hand, slick with blood dripping down his arm from his shoulder, slipped. He wiped it dry on his jacket, then hopped up onto the beam and began to crawl along on his hands and knees. He couldn’t help but think of gymnasts he’d seen doing cartwheels and flips on something just about this wide. How the hell did they manage?

When he reached the wall he came to a vertical support that ran up into the dark. He had to rise to his feet and swing around it. A hairy maneuver, especially here. Falling off the far side would be a disaster—at best he’d lie crippled on the tracks; at worst he’d land on the third rail and get fried by six zillion volts.

He heard a shout behind him and a machine-gun rattle of Spanish. A look back showed one of the
matóns
on the car roof he’d just left. This guy still had his head scarf and machete. He hopped up on the same crossbeam and started crawling Jack’s way.

Okay, no time for caution. That uptown A would be pulling out in seconds. Jack did a Wallenda along the next beam, arms out, one foot in front of the other. The train’s brakes hissed as they released. It started rolling.

“No, dammit!”

Another vertical beam. Almost there. Jack swung recklessly around it and stepped on the horizontal on the far side. His sneaker landed on something squishy—a fresh rat turd?—and his foot slipped out from under him.

Oh, shit, he was falling.

At the last second he kicked out against the upright with his other foot, allowing him to belly-flop onto the slowly moving roof of the uptown A. The air whooshed out of him on impact.

He gasped, struggling for a breath. Christ, that hurt.

Still fighting for air, he managed to turn onto his side and watch the DDPer go into a half crouch, ready to jump, then change his mind. As the train picked up speed, Jack waved, then rolled onto his back, temporarily wiped out.

2

After a brief rest to catch his breath and settle his nerves, Jack slid down between the cars before the train reached 14th. He’d planned to go inside and sit but, after looking down at himself—filthy, bloody, bedraggled, like a homeless guy who’d just ended a weeklong bender with a knife fight—he decided to ride the space between. He entered the car only after it pulled out of the 72nd Street station and avoided eye contact with anyone for the rest of his trip.

During the week the A train ran as an express most of the time, skipping from 59th Street all the way to 125th. But on weekends it ran as a local, allowing him to get off at 81st Street.

Back up on street level, he found a phone and called Abe.

“Isher Sports.”

“Hey, Abe, it’s Jack.”

“You don’t sound like Jack.
Blechedich,
you sound.”

Jack didn’t know what
blechedich
meant, but if it started with “blech,” it probably meant something close to how he felt—which was pretty blech.

“Got a bit of a cut.”

“Oy vey. Stab cut or slice cut?”

“A slice cut—upper arm.”

“A stitches-needing cut?”

“You better believe it.”

“Okay, I know someone who can help. But cash only he takes.”

Jack smiled. He’d figured he wouldn’t have to tell Abe that he couldn’t go to a hospital because of the identity issues and because the hospital might feel a need to report it.

“Yeah, well, I forgot to renew my Blue Cross anyway. He’s a doctor?”

“Sort of.”

“What kind of ‘sort of’? You’re not sending me to a vet, are you?”

“No-no-no. A regular MD he’s got. It’s a license he lacks.”

“Swell.”

“I’ll give you the address and call ahead to let him know you’re coming.”

“What’s his name?”

“Hargus.”

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