================
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Xavier's
expression
curled
in on itself like a snake eating its own tail. His chin moved
contemptuously in Jim's direction. "That's the same crack-smoking
junk he said."
Olik smiled and
shook his head. "No," he said. "The little man said
he saw all the other passengers dead.
I
say I see the dead
come
for us
. Is different."
The lights
flickered on for a moment. Just a moment, enough for everyone to breathe
a deep sigh of relief. Then they went out again, and all that was left
was the glaring light of the lawyer's keychain. Jim glanced at
Adolfa. The old woman was no longer kneading her legs. She had
leaned back on her plastic subway seat, pressed so far back that she looked like
she was trying to escape through the metal of the car siding. Her face,
even in the white glare of the lawyer's key-light, was pale.
"You
okay?" asked Jim.
She nodded, but he
could tell she was nodding for herself as much as for him: sometimes we lie to
others in the hope that what we say will become true to ourselves. Jim
saw that kind of thing all the time. Sometimes it worked.
Xavier stepped
forward. "I don't know what you fools are talking about," he
said. "Ain't no dead people on this train."
He pointed his
knife at Jim, who would have fallen back a step if he could have done so
without landing either in Adolfa's lap or Olik's arms. "What did you
see, 'zactly?"
Jim shook his
head. "I don't know." Xavier's ever-excitable knife
jumped forward. Jim's hands raised. "Easy, man. I really
don't know! It looked – just for a second – like the people in the car
were all dead."
"Dead
how?" said the lawyer. Again, her voice was calm. Like she had
found herself in this situation before and would undoubtedly do so again.
"Just
dead. Slumped over."
"Asleep?"
she said. Her voice was throaty. The kind of voice that a lot of
men thought of as sexy.
Admit it, Jim,
you
think it's a sexy voice,
too. It's not like you're cheating on Carolyn.
He forced his thoughts
away from that.
Would you rather
think about the fight? About the words that should never have been said?
That was worse, of
course. So he answered, as much to keep from thinking about the fight as
anything. "No, not like they were asleep. Their eyes were
open. Staring." He shuddered.
Adolfa reached out
and curled her hands around the crook of his elbow. He patted her bony
knuckles and tossed an appreciative grin at her.
Xavier
snorted. "So you saw a bunch of stiffs, and the Russki says he saw a
bunch of zombies?"
"I never say
zombies," said Olik. "I'm no peasant. And I'm
Georgian. Not Russki."
"Whatever,
Gramps." Xavier held out a hand to the lawyer.
She looked at his
hand like she expected it to slither away from his arm and bite her. "What?"
she said.
"The light,
bitch. I'm gonna look at the next car."
She held the light
away from him. Almost taunting. Jim wondered if the woman noticed
the knife Xavier was holding, or if she was perhaps one of those special class
of insane people who believe they are so important to the world that nothing
can hurt them. Jim had met plenty of those in his life as well, and they
all had one thing in common: they all bled as easily as anyone else.
"You're going
to check the car?" she said. "You don't actually
believe
that there are dead people, do you?" She twirled the LED light in
her hand, making shadows dance mad spirals in the car.
Jim could see that
Xavier was about to crack. He edged back until he felt a row of plastic
seats pressed against his legs. He noticed Olik's stance grow looser as
well, as though the older man were preparing for mayhem. Everyone seemed
to know the danger except the beautiful woman with the light.
"Listen, bitch
–" began Xavier.
"Don't call me
that," said the woman. Her voice slapped out, low but dangerous,
reminiscent of the sound Olik's gun had made when he discharged it in the
confines of the subway car. Then she smiled disarmingly. A genuine
smile, full of warmth and perhaps just a hint of flirtation. "My
name's Karen," she said, and then stepped past Xavier.
The move was so
quick and graceful that the thug didn't have a chance to respond or do more
than turn his head and track her with his eyes. She was ten feet from the
front of the car before she turned back to him. "Coming?" she
said, and actually batted her eyes coquettishly at him, as though this was all
some kind of an elaborate prank for some basic cable show and she was the only
person in on it.
Xavier's jaw
clenched. Jim knew that Karen had to have seen it, had to have seen the
deadly look in the gangster's eyes, but she just kept looking at him like she
was waiting for a new beau to accompany her on a jaunt to the market.
Finally, Xavier stepped forward. But he only took a few steps before he
turned back and stared at Olik.
"What'd
you
see?"
"The dead,
coming –"
"Yeah,
yeah," said Xavier. He slashed the air with his knife.
"That don't tell me shit, Grampa."
Olik crossed his
arms across his barrel-chest. "I'm not a grandfather,
boy
."
Xavier looked like
he was ready to start fighting at the word again, but Karen sighed.
"When you two are done measuring your penises…." She jerked her
head toward the front of the car. "This girl's getting like Alice in
Wonderland up here."
"What's that
mean?" Xavier demanded.
"Curiouser and
curiouser," said Jim.
Karen nodded
approvingly at him. "Someone's actually read a book."
Jim felt himself
flush. "It's one of Maddie's favorites. My little girl," he
said, aware that he was putting a wall between himself and the beautiful woman,
also aware that doing so in such a purposeful and obvious way spoke volumes of
how attracted he was to her. But it was the right thing to do.
Karen nodded again,
and Jim suddenly had the strange impression that she could hear every thought
in his head. He flushed; had to actively will himself not to look away
from her.
"C'mon,
cutie," Karen said to Xavier. The gangster smiled, a predatory
expression reminiscent of the permanent grin of a great white shark. That
was what the man was, too, Jim could tell. He was one of those hunters
that endlessly circled the fringes of the city, one of those killers who
understood that for them to rest was to die. Xavier's teeth were startlingly
white against his dark skin, bright even in the darkness of the poorly-lit
subway car. Not a warm smile, but the death-grin of a monster about to
feed.
"Coming,"
he said, his voice suddenly and shockingly mellifluous.
That's what the
spider sounds like in the instant it invites the fly to come on in, thought
Jim. And he knew that Xavier had put his sights on Karen. Knew that
the beautiful woman was as good as dead if the thug got half a chance.
But not now.
Not when the two were in full view of the other people in the car. Xavier
and Karen proceeded side by side like a force recon team, he holding his blade
before him, she holding her light. They moved slowly, as though expecting
something to explode out from below one of the plastic seats that lined the
sides of the subway car.
Jim realized he was
getting dizzy. He was holding his breath. He let it out, doing his
best not to exhale too explosively. He breathed in again, and let himself
sink down next to Adolfa. She curled her arm around his. He was
glad for the contact, the comfort.
He looked at
Olik. The man had his arms crossed, his face set like that of a
statue. But he didn't look calm and composed the way he had when he first
got onto the subway car. His expression before had been a
lack
of
expression, a complete nothing. Now he looked like he was expending
considerable energy
making
himself show nothing. And Jim knew that
in itself showed much. Olik was frightened.
Jim moved his gaze
beyond the Georgian. To Freddy the Perv, who hadn't moved from his crouch
at the back of the subway. He was no longer trembling, no longer
shaking. But he still looked terrified. He had finished his
lollipop and was just working the stick around in his mouth until it had become
a white, flattened mess. He licked his lips around the stick, and the
gesture made Jim feel ill.
"Dammit."
Jim looked back to
the front of the car. Xavier and Karen were at the door that separated
this car from the next one, shining Karen's light at the glass. From
where Jim sat, it looked like the glass has been painted black. That was
impossible, of course: it
seemed
like much longer, but in reality only a
few short moments had passed between his glimpsing what looked like a cabin
full of dead people in the next car and this moment. Certainly it had
been too short a time for someone to steal into the subway car and paint the
glass between the cars black, even if such could have been done without them
noticing it.
Still, he couldn't
deny that
was
what it looked like. He could even see an
almost-perfect reflection of Karen's flashlight in the glass, bouncing toward
the back of the car as she angled it now this way, now that in an attempt to
see what lay beyond the window. Both she and Xavier were moving around as
well, the way a person does when trying to see through a screen door into a
dimly-lit room in the middle of a bright summer day.
"Well?"
called out Olik. His voice was flat. As though he didn't really
expect them to see anything.
Xavier glared back
at them. The way Karen's light bounced off the glass behind his face
backlit him eerily, creating a strange skull of his features. The tattoos
that curled up around his neck took on the appearance of mystical runes,
curling snakes of dark magic. The tear-tattoos made him seem like a
voodoo priest, weeping blood sacrifices for a dark god of death.
Then Xavier turned
back to the door. There was a handle on the door, a handle that every New
Yorker knew was for opening the door and moving car to car – just as every New
Yorker knew it was illegal to do so. Indeed, there were several signs
posted on and around the door warning of the illegality of moving between the
subway cars while the train was in motion.
Xavier pushed at
it, then pulled at it. He yanked and scuffled with it. Then he
abandoned the handle and simply settled for slamming his shoulder into the door
itself. The entire car swayed with the force of the blows, but no matter
how hard the man hit it, the steel door itself didn't move.
"What do you
see?" said Olik.
"Nothing,"
said Karen. She let her light point down at the same time, as though
admitting defeat both vocally and physically. She eyed Xavier.
"Easy, slugger."
Xavier slammed into
the door one more time, then stopped. He punched the door beside the
glass. "Won't open," he said. "The doors are
always
supposed to open." He hit the door again. "That's against
the law."
"It's against
the law to open it while the train's moving, too," said Karen, pointing at
the signs.
Xavier rolled his
eyes. He gave the handle a last jiggle. Jim noted that the
gangster's knife had somehow disappeared into his coat. Like Olik, the
gangster apparently belonged to a group of magicians who could make weapons
disappear at will.
His thoughts were
cut off when Karen came back toward them. Xavier followed her. Jim
knew the thug would have denied it, but he strongly suspected that he didn't
want to be too far away from the light.
"There was
nothing," said Karen.
"What you
mean, nothing?" said Olik.
"I mean
nothing nothing," said Karen. "Just black. Like we were
in a hole."
"That's
impossible." Freddy the Perv spoke up for the first time, his voice
high and jittering, putting Jim on edge faster than the sound of a dentist's
drill on enamel. He stepped toward the group. "There's gotta
be
something
."
"You callin'
her a liar?" said Xavier.
Freddy shrank back
into the shadows in the rear of the car. "Nah," he said.
His voice fell off to a whisper. "If you say there's nothing, then that's
what there is."
"It's like
someone covered the window," said Karen. "Nothing but
black."
Olik looked at
Xavier for confirmation. Xavier nodded. "True. Can't see
shit."
"Nobody
covered over window," said Olik.
"Not saying
someone
did
," said Xavier. "Just saying that's what it
looks
like." He rubbed at his shoulder. "And I couldn't get
through the door, either."