================
================
Xavier was
fast. So fast his fist
was a dark blur in the blackness of the subway car. So fast that the
lights outside illuminated him only partially, like an old movie with frames
missing. One moment he was standing before Karen, holding the gun to her
head; and the next instant his fist was swinging toward her at something
approaching the speed of sound.
But as fast as
Xavier was, Karen was faster. As brutal and violent and devastating as
his attack was, hers was more so.
Moving so quickly
Jim could barely make out what she was doing, Karen leaned back and to the side
at the last second, allowing Xavier's fist to pass by her face so close that it
ruffled her hair. At the same time, her hands snapped up and slapped the
gun. Jim didn't see what she did, but there was a sharp crack and Xavier
screamed.
"You broke my
fingers!" shouted Xavier. The gun fell from his hand, and Karen
scooped it out of the air.
"That's not
all I'm going to do to you," she said. The quaver was gone from her
voice, the terror had absented itself from her eyes. In its place was…
nothing. No fear, not even anger. Just a terrible void that Jim
found even more terrifying than Xavier's homicidal rage.
Who
is
this
woman? he thought. Who are
all
these people?
Xavier pulled his
knife out with his good hand, and slashed at Karen. She was still on her
knees, and Jim would have guessed that would put her at a severe
disadvantage. But she didn't seem to mind her position. She brought
up the gun and used it to blunt Xavier's knife attack, then rolled back
effortlessly, a backwards somersault that put a few feet between them and ended
with Karen back on her feet again.
The instant she was
up, Karen fired two quick rounds. It didn't look to Jim like she even had
time to aim. But Xavier screamed and lurched forward as both his feet
more or less exploded. His knife fell from his hand and he lurched toward
Karen, arms pinwheeling as he tried to find his balance atop feet that suddenly
ended about two inches before where his toes had once been.
The knife slid
across the metal floor of the subway car and stopped at Jim's feet. He
swept it up and shoved it into his waistband, not thinking about using it as
much as about keeping it away from Xavier.
Xavier was still
stumbling toward Karen. She waited until the last second, then stepped
calmly out of his way. She kicked Xavier in the back as he went by.
He screamed, a guttural shriek that seemed like he had been wounded even worse
by the kick than he had by the gunshots. A moment later, Jim saw why: the
kick had buried the spike-heel of Karen's expensive boot a good two inches in
the muscle of Xavier's lower back. The heel had broken off there and now
jutted out of his back like a tent stake, just one more insult to his injuries.
Xavier went
careening by Jim, still unable to stop his headlong fall down the aisle to the
back of the car. Jim scuttled away from him, half jumping, half
crabwalking.
Jim didn't know
what was going on, didn't know how Karen had managed to avoid death or
worse. But he did know that wounded animals were often more dangerous
than they had been when healthy and whole, so he gave Xavier as wide a berth as
possible.
He didn't go all
the way to Karen, though. Because she still had that dead look in her
eyes, that terrible void where a soul should be. And that scared him even
worse than the possibility of being hurt by the wounded and angry gangbanger.
Xavier finally came
to a stop, sliding on the stubs of his now half-complete feet and slamming into
the back window of the subway car.
The ghouls, still
there, still watching, had their hands against the other side of the glass,
fingers wide as though reaching for him.
Xavier bounced off
the window face-first. He hit it so hard it cracked. Blood splashed
across the glass and he bounced off the door then fell hard beside it. He
moaned.
The ghouls on the
other side of the door started licking the glass, trying to get at Xavier's
blood that now dripped in thin lines only a few millimeters beyond their reach.
"Get up,"
said Karen.
Xavier's only
answer was another moan.
Karen pulled the
trigger on the gun. The suppressor whiffed and as if by magic a ding
appeared in the floor only a few centimeters from Xavier's crotch.
"Shit,
woman!" he half-shouted, half-cried. "You gonna blow my nuts
off."
"Eventually,"
she said. Her eyes looked like black holes in the darkness of the subway
car, like they had fallen away from her skull and left only pits behind.
"Get up."
"What…?"
someone mumbled. Jim realized Olik had regained consciousness at some
point. He was sitting halfway up, looking around with a dazed expression,
though Jim couldn't tell if that was because he was concussed or just confused
at the turn of events that had just taken place.
Karen glanced at
Olik, then focused her dead gaze back at Xavier. "Get up," she
repeated.
Jim felt like he
was watching a tennis match performed at light speed. His eyes whipped
back and forth, trying to look at both Karen and Xavier at once.
Xavier
groaned. Then screamed as Karen fired another shot and another inch of
his right foot disappeared. "Get up," she said. "Or
I'll kill you one tiny piece at a time."
Xavier was crying
now. Jim thought it was a strange sight, the tears running down the tough
man's cheeks, streaming over the four tattooed tears under his eye and then
mingling with snot and spit that dripped to the floor as he tried to push
himself up.
He wondered how
many men and women had faced Xavier like this. How many had wept, how
many had begged for mercy. Had pleaded with him for their own sakes, and
the sakes of their families.
And how many had
received the mercy they prayed for.
Not many
.
Then Jim
frowned. It was still dark in the car. Still black in the
shadows. But he thought he saw something move. Something…
there
!
At first he
couldn't figure out what they were. They looked like some kind of strange
grubs or sickeningly thick worms, their bodies bloated and distended by a
bellyful of blood. Then his stomach lurched as he realized. Realized
what they were.
He saw it in his
mind, the memory of Xavier's hand flashing out. Just a moment ago –
(
had it been a
moment, or forever? it seemed like forever, how long have we
been
here?
)
– cutting at the
ghouls that tried to get through the door, slashing at their hands, slicing at
their fingers, hacking them off.
Hacking them off
.
Jim looked at the
grotesque crawling things he thought he had seen in the minute flashes of
illumination provided by the lights outside the subway. There!
There they were again! And no, they weren't worms, weren't grubs.
They were fingers.
The dismembered
digits moved along the floor like sickly slugs, searching for sustenance in the
evernight of the subway. And they had found it. Had found their way
to the blood that trailed from Xavier's ruined feet.
"Please,"
whimpered the gangbanger, unaware of the things wriggling toward his prostrate
form.
"I'll count to
five," said Karen.
"You'll kill
me no matter what," said Xavier.
"Yes,"
she said. "But there's dead, and then there's
slow
dead." She took a step toward him. "One."
Jim opened his
mouth to say something, but he didn't have a chance. He thought the
ghouls' fingers would take a few seconds to work their way forward, but they
were fast. So fast it shocked him. It was impossible – not that any
of this
was
possible – but the things suddenly lurched forward.
They seemed to clamp onto the hashed edges of Xavier's mangled feet. Jim
had an instant in which he glimpsed something, an impression of something
strange and toothy, and then Xavier started screaming.
"Shut
up!" shouted Karen. Her eyes remained empty.
Xavier didn't shut
up. He kept screaming. Jim saw the things, the finger-teeth-worm
things, disappear into the raw meat-wounds of the rapist's feet. Xavier's
scream took on a new, more strident, jagged tone.
"Get it outta
me!" he shrieked. "Get it outta me!"
Karen
frowned. "Stop it!"
"Get it outta
me!"
Jim moved away from
Xavier. He didn't want to be next to Karen, but he wanted to be near
whatever was happening to the rapist even less.
"Get it outta
me!"
Karen fired the gun
again. Another bullet wound appeared, this one tearing off a portion of
Xavier's right hand. He didn't even seem to notice.
But Jim noticed the
things that seemed to swim out of pools of darkness under the seats, fingers
and thumbs that oozed out of shadow and then lurched to the unfinished stump of
Xavier's hand.
"What… what
are those?" said a dazed voice. Olik.
"What…?"
said Karen, clearly about to echo the sentiment.
Just as had the
ones Jim saw earlier, the bits of flesh launched themselves at Xavier's bloody
tissue. Again there was the momentary impression of teeth, of grinding,
burrowing maws. Then the ghouls' invasive fingers slid inside Xavier's
hand, burrowing their way into his wounds.
Xavier's screams
reached a range and decibel level so high that Jim expected the windows of the
subway to shatter. Expected to feel blood spurting from his eyes, his
brains sliding through his ears.
Then, under the
scream, he heard another sound. He couldn't figure out where it was
coming from at first, then realized it was coming from beyond the closed door
to the back car. The ghouls.
He looked through
the windows. The ghouls were panting. Their dead eyes closed, their
mouths open. Their wounds, still wet and dark and oozing, seemed to pulse
in the lights that flashed by outside the subway train.
They moaned.
Not like they were in pain, but rather like they had found themselves captured
by deepest pleasure. As with their screams before, the moan seemed to be
singular, an individual sound somehow issuing simultaneously from dozens of
throats.
The sound was low,
keening. Orgasmic.
"Get it outta
me! I don't want it in me!" Xavier's panicked cries grew more
strident, and as they did the ghouls' panting grew more pronounced, more heated
and deeper. As though they found sexual release through whatever was
happening to the man.
Then Xavier threw
his head back and screamed louder than before. His back arched.
Jim felt something
and almost jumped out of his skin before he realized it was Adolfa. She
had again crept forward. Once more taking comfort in the group.
Jim looked behind
them. The front door to the car was closed, the window dark. He
suspected – knew, somehow – that they couldn't get out there. They were
stuck here with whatever was happening to Xavier.
Xavier's screams
changed. They started rattling, wheezing. Jim looked back at the
man and gaped. He blinked rapidly, unsure what he was seeing. Then
sure what he was seeing, but unable to believe it.
"My God,"
said Olik.
"No,"
said Karen. "I don't think so."
Adolfa crossed
herself.
Xavier's mutilated
feet began kicking a speedy tattoo against the floor of the subway car, a
rat-ta-tat-tat
tapping that bounced through the frame of the entire car, through the seats and
support poles and through Jim's own bones.
"Don't let it
in me," gasped Xavier. But Jim could see that it was already too
late for that.
Xavier was on his
back now. His stomach grew bloated, distended like that of one of those
kids you saw on late-night infomercials about third-world countries, the ones
that offered to let you adopt someone for only a buck a day. The skin of
the man's belly must have been pressing painfully against the inside of his
coat, for he unzipped it with his good hand, gasping as he did so.
Underneath the
coat, Xavier was wearing only a T-shirt emblazoned with the logo of some energy
drink. It, too, was stretched tight against the huge mound of the man's
belly. But at least it was cotton, so it couldn't hurt as much as the
constricting coat must have.
"Help,"
panted Xavier. No one moved. Well, not true. Olik moved: he
got slowly to his feet. But neither Jim nor any of the others approached
Xavier. They just watched. Jim didn't know about the others, but he
couldn't have looked away if he had been offered a million dollars and a way
off the train.
Xavier's stomach
continued swelling. The size of a basketball, then a beach ball. So
big it seemed like it was going to have to burst, blowing Xavier to pieces
right in front of them.