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Olik didn't
do anything magical: he just
gave each of them a portion of the car to look at. But at the same time,
it was an important change and it gave Jim – and, he sensed, the others – a
sense of purpose and hope that had been lacking since the lights had gone out.
He wondered how
long they had been on the train. Time had seemed to stretch out
strangely. He couldn't be sure if it had been minutes or hours.
Surely not more than that – he didn't have to go to the bathroom, so that was a
pretty fair indicator that the time period was still short.
But good Lord, it
felt like it had been forever.
He moved down his
quarter of the car. He pulled at the upholstered seats, wondering if any
of them might lift up to reveal a hidden compartment or anything else that
might prove useful. They were all securely attached to their bases.
The only thing he got when he did that was a handful of dust, as though the car
hadn't been cleaned or used for months or years. That fit in with the
overall feel of the car, which still looked like it had somehow come through
some kind of time tunnel from the 1950s.
Jim thought about
that. He wasn't a science fiction nerd. He had never been to a Star
Trek convention, had never dressed up like a Storm Trooper or tried to impress
a friend with a realistic lightsaber purchased via some geek website on the
internet. But he knew
some
things. He knew about worm holes
and parallel universes and string theory. Things you couldn't help but
know in today's entertainment-saturated world.
Could they have
fallen through a worm hole? Could they be in some alternate
dimension? Some version of the world where the subway tunnel – and the
train itself – just went on forever in a continuous loop?
He rejected the
thought as soon as it came. For one thing, it didn't feel right.
More important, he had no idea how they would get out of such a situation if
that was the case. So he was going to abandon it as a dead end and
consider other possibilities.
But what else was
there? Alien abduction? Unlikely. Mass hysteria?
Unheard of on this kind of level.
Drugs?
That merited some
thought. Jim seemed to remember reading of some government experiments
with hallucinogens that –
"How am I
going to collect for any of this?"
Jim jerked
around. He was almost at the center of the car, the spot where the side
doors created a gap in the seats that lined the walls. Karen was on the
opposite side of the gap, also looking for anything helpful in her part of the
car. She looked frustrated, her tan face whiter than usual, her eyes
seeming almost to glow in the lights that streaked by outside.
"What did you
say?"
Karen didn't stop
moving. She patted down seats, pulled on windows. All
one-handed. The other hand was still gripping her satchel. That damn
satchel, which was starting to annoy Jim beyond reason. He thought that,
given half a chance, he would just conk the woman over the head and take it
from her.
"I didn't say
anything."
"You
did. You said –"
Now Karen stopped
moving. She stood and stared at Jim. "No. I
didn't. And they lied!"
Her eyes bored into
his, and he fell back a pace.
She's losing it.
If they didn't get
out of this place quickly, he thought it likely that they wouldn't have to wait
for some external horror to come for them. They'd fall apart and rip each
other to pieces.
Karen clicked the
combination lock at the top of her satchel. It popped open. And as
much as Jim had wanted to see what was in there only a few seconds ago, he now
wanted just as badly to keep the bag shut. The way she held it, he felt
like the opening of the bag was a barely veiled threat. He was in danger.
"Look at
this!"
Jim swung
around. Grateful for anything that might offer a chance to shift Karen's
attention away from him. He saw Adolfa near the back of the car.
Looking up at something.
"What is it,
abuelita
?"
Olik hurried to her, still playing the part of the father figure, or the
protective older son watching out for his beloved relative. He put a hand
around her shoulder. "You find something, yes?"
Jim cast a last
glance at Karen, then moved away as well. "What, Adolfa?"
Adolfa gestured to
them all to hurry. Jim heard Karen's distinctive heel-less tread behind
him. As soon as he reached Adolfa, she pointed at the small bit of wall above
the windows, the space usually reserved for ads and for the subway maps.
"Look here," she said.
Jim looked.
It was barely visible, but he saw pretty much what he expected.
"It's just a route map," he said. Though upon further
inspection he saw that the map was one he didn't recognize. The colors of
the routes were unfamiliar, and instead of the usual letters and numbers,
strange symbols decorated the map. Nor did it end, really. It
seemed to get fuzzy at the edges of the pane, like it was disintegrating,
falling out of existence without actually ending. But whenever Jim tried
to look closer at it, his eyes sort of slid away from it. Like there
might be something there, but his brain was unwilling to let him look at it,
loathe to let him comprehend it.
Adolfa shook her
head. Hope animated her face. "Look closer."
Jim, Olik, and
Karen leaned toward the map. Jim still didn't see anything. But
Olik did. The big man chuffed like a surprised dog. "What are
we missing?" asked Jim.
Olik's big finger
reached up and tapped a spot on the map. "Ha!" he bellowed.
When the big man
pulled his hand away, Jim saw what Adolfa had seen. Though most of the
map was written in unfamiliar, almost runic, symbols, there was one spot that
said clearly "
FIRST STOP
." And even better, it seemed
like every single color line, every single route, ran through that spot at some
point.
Olik grinned.
"So there is first stop. We just have to make it there,
yes?" He punched Jim on the shoulder, then squeezed Adolfa's arm.
"
Bien, abuelita. Muy bien
."
"No, no,"
Adolfa waved off his praise, though she was grinning. "You only saw
part." She pointed at an area of the map just to the left of where
everyone had been looking. "Look."
Jim did. And
this time he saw it. It was subtle, especially in the dark. But he
saw it.
One of the colored
route lines was dark red, perhaps purple. Hard to tell in the dim subway
car. But it seemed to pulse in the streaking outside lights, like a
living artery with dark blood still pumping through it.
And there, less
than an inch away from the location marked
FIRST STOP
, was something
else. A small dot, like a clot pushing against the walls of the artery.
And it was moving.
"What does
that mean?" Karen's words had more emotion in them than they usually
did. Interest, curiosity… and something else. Jim heard her
proclaiming "
And they lied!
" and wondered how close to the
edge of madness Karen might be dancing. Perhaps she had already fallen
into that chasm, and was just reaching for the rest of them, hoping to drag
them in with her.
"I
think…." Adolfa gulped. She couldn't finish.
"It means
we're going to get off!" Olik practically screamed it. He
started to laugh. A moment later, so did Adolfa. Jim felt himself begin
chuckling as well, and a moment later was clutching at his sides, full-bodied
laughter gripping him and rocking him back and forth in waves that were almost
debilitating in their strength.
We are
mad. Gone crazy, insane over the possibility that a dot on the wall is
us, that we might be coming to the end of this horrible trip.
But he couldn't
stop. None of them could. And it was totally understandable.
Horror and humor were two sides of the same coin. There was a reason why
so many horror movies had funny scenes, and why so many comedies were really
about quite horrific events. At their base, they were the same.
Humor was just terror separated by distance or time; sometimes laughter was
what you did when it wasn't socially acceptable to scream.
Only Karen didn't
laugh. And that sent a chill down Jim's back.
(
"And they
lied!"
)
What was her deal?
The train
lurched. Not hard enough to send anyone stumbling forward, but enough
that it registered.
"What was
that?" asked Karen.
The answer was
obvious an instant later.
"We're slowing
down," Adolfa managed to say. Her laughter subsided, replaced by
glee. "We're stopping."
"First
Stop," said Jim, a grin as wide as the old lady's stretching his own
face. It felt like he hadn't smiled in an eternity.
(
and another
thought – but if this is
FIRST STOP
then where is the next one and who
gets off there? – broke through his laughter for an instant but he pushed it
away with thoughts of Carolyn and Maddie and the smell of their skin and their
arms in his
)
Olik laughed so
hard he started to cough. He had to pound at his own chest, bending
double before he could stop. "Is all fine," he said.
"All fine, yes?"
"So it would
seem," said Jim.
Because it
was
fine. The lights were going by outside the windows, but they were the
normal maintenance lights that Jim had seen on his daily commute for
years. They weren't going by so fast they were nothing but laser-like
streamers, either. They were just passing at normal, manageable
speeds. And instead of hanging in what seemed like total blackness, Jim
could see they were on the concrete walls and metal pipes that were typical of
New York subway tunnels.
Adolfa leaned
forward, bracing herself on the seats so she could look out the window, craning
her head to see what lay ahead on the tracks.
Only Karen didn't
seem happy. She clutched her satchel, which was still open a crack.
Darkness inside the bag, blacker than anything in the train.
The darkness seemed
to shake the mirth free of Jim's soul. Adolfa and Olik were still
giggling, still laughing to themselves as they looked out the windows.
But Jim didn't feel like laughing anymore. He felt…
wrong
.
All this was wrong.
"This doesn't
make any sense." A strange cloud seemed to have fallen over his
mind. He felt muddled. Drugged. Hadn't he been thinking about
drugs a little while ago? Hadn't he been wondering if maybe this was some
government experiment on them? Maybe it was. Maybe. Maybe,
maybe maybe maybemaybemaybemaybe
maybe….
He shook his
head.
Focus
.
"How did everything
back there happen?" he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder at the door
between this car and the last one, the one where Xavier had died. If he
had
died.
Then his motion
froze. Because when he looked behind him he saw the door. But
beyond it was only the darkness of the tunnel. No car. No trace of
the car where Xavier had been mangled from within, no hint of the car beyond
that
one where Freddy the Perv had been flayed to a bloodstain.
As far as Jim could
tell, they were once again in the last car on the tracks.
"Guys,"
he said.
Neither Olik nor
Karen took any notice of him. Olik was pumping his good arm
manically. His eyes were glassy, like he was only half-aware of what was
going on around him. As for Karen, she was looking back and forth between
Olik and Jim. Her gaze was the opposite of the big man's: hyper-aware and
calculating, as though she was performing a complex mental feat. She
didn't look at Adolfa.
"Everyone!"
shouted Adolfa, gesturing for the others to come to her window.
"This doesn't
make any sense," Jim said to himself.
No one
listened. Olik moved to the window the old lady stood at.
"Never thought
I would say such a thing," chortled Olik, "but thank God for the New
York pigs."
Jim was still shaking
his head in confusion, but he felt himself moving as if on autopilot, joining
Adolfa and Olik at the window. He peered out and could just see that they
were coming up on a subway platform. And that there were flashing lights
and groups of men that could only be cops there.
Karen finally
joined them. Still clutching the leather case in her red-stained
hands. Hands that had been dyed by the blood that flowed from her tablet
computer, from the whispering faces of the dead that had appeared there when
all this started, when this nightmare ride began.
Olik was still
looking out the window. "God bless America and the NYPD, yes?"
"Yes,
mi
hijo
, yes," said Adolfa.