Primeval (Werewolf Apocalypse Book 2) (26 page)

John glanced at Michael and said, “People.”

“People with guns,” Michael said. “Which means they can protect themselves.”

“Protect us, too,” John said.

They were on their feet and running toward the sound in less than two seconds.

3:05 p.m.

The lion had its head shoved into the subway car, its mane full of broken glass. Its mouth was open, and it was bellowing, exposing the rows of teeth that seemed to overflow its overcrowded mouth. It leaned to the side, and it managed to squeeze its right front foot into the space around the window, swiping a dinner-plate-sized paw at the screaming people within the car. Its razor-sharp black claws were at least three inches long, and it snagged hold of Craig’s suit jacket.

“Help me!” the large man shouted at the others, who were scrambling over seats to get away from the invading monster. “Jesus, someone help me!”

The lion felt the tug on its claw, and it pulled back, hauling Craig across the floor toward its gaping maw.

Sandy rushed forward and seized his hand, pulled as hard as she could, but his suit was surprisingly well stitched, and she found herself being drawn toward the creature along with Craig. When it roared again, she smelled its fetid breath, blood and iron and rotten meat.

Suddenly, she felt someone’s hands around her waist, and she turned a bit to see Howard behind her, pulling as well. As she watched, Beth abandoned the now-hysterical Alice to help.

The lion shrugged down, trying to get in closer to its prey, but it was too large to fit any more of its mutated body into the window. It pulled harder on Craig, and the man’s foot came within inches of the lion’s mouth.

“Pull!” Sandy shouted at the two people behind her.

She felt their straining muscles, heard their grunts as they tried to drag Craig back into the safety of the subway car, away from the busted window. Sylvia stood at the other end of the car, her wrinkled face in a convulsion of terror. Alice had fallen to the floor in a fetal position. Her keening cries were loud, almost unbearable in their horror.

“Pull harder,” Sandy said, feeling the three of them drawn another few inches toward the lion.

The animal was growing furious, and it heaved again. Craig’s foot went into the beast’s mouth, and it bit down. The sound of his leg bones snapping in half was shockingly loud. With a rending sound, the muscles tore and the beast slumped out of the window, chewing on the lower half of Craig’s leg.

Sandy and the others pushed themselves back, away from the window, while Craig, in shock, propped himself into a sitting position directly underneath the hole in the glass. His stump stuck out in front of him, splashing blood across the seats and down the aisle. He looked at the others across from him, his glazed eyes beseeching them for help, but nobody moved. The car was filled instead with the sound of Alice’s wailing, which almost –
almost
– covered up the sound of the lion outside finishing off Craig’s leg.

Sandy was the first to move, pulling off the belt from around her waist. She explained with a single word, “Tourniquet,” and she approached the bleeding man, who was now holding out a hand toward her.

She had taken a single step forward, when the mutant lion shoved its way back through the hole in the window again. It leaned forward and clamped its jaws over Craig’s head. The man flailed, even as his torn carotid artery sprayed crimson trails across the train car. Seemingly without effort, the lion extracted Craig from the car like a stuffed toy, shaking the man until his neck snapped. Then it lay down to start eating.

“No,” Sandy whispered, the leather belt still in her hands. She found she couldn’t move, could only watch as the male creature hunched over Craig’s corpse and began to feast.

Beth hurried to Alice’s side, but the girl was now in a complete state of shock. Shivering, she made tiny mewling noises, and the coach wrapped her slender arms around her. Howard remained on the floor, sitting in a clean area, watching as Craig’s blood slowly crept toward him. Sylvia hadn’t moved from where she stood next to the window on the opposite side of the subway car, steadying herself with one of the remaining metal poles. Her mouth was still open, and Sandy suspected she was also in a state of shock.

The male lion’s eating grew louder, and she heard the horrific sound of meat tearing as the creature pulled the choice parts of Craig from the man’s insides. It raised its head, mane full of gore, and it licked its black lips.

Sandy wondered,
Where’s the female?

With a crash of breaking glass, the female lion bashed her head into the window behind Sylvia, spraying shards across the old woman’s body and into the aisle. The entire subway car rocked with the assault. The lioness broke a hole in the center and started trying to squeeze into the small space of the car. It was too large, but smaller than the male, so it got its head and both of its front feet through the window, bashing itself against the sides, oblivious to the gashes it was cutting into its tough hide with the remaining sharp edges of the broken window.

Sylvia screamed, and she moved to run away, but fell in a puddle of glass shards, which cut deeply into her hands. She looked up at Sandy as the lioness shredded the back of her coat with her long talons. The beast roared her frustration, squirming to get herself farther into the space of the train.

Sandy hurried forward, but the monster’s next attempt at getting through the window rocked the entire subway car, and she lost her footing. Everyone started screaming, including the lioness, as the car slowly tipped onto its side. It bounced off the barrier separating the two sets of tracks and snapped part of the black columns in half. The top of the train slid down across the broken obstacles, scraping off years of soot. The people within the subway car tumbled over seats and over each other as the train continued to turn sideways. Sandy thought,
So this is what a sock feels like in the dryer.
Then she hit her head on a pole and saw brilliant flashes of fireworks.

The car teetered for a moment, before flopping onto its side, breaking several of the columns between the tracks. The lioness rode it like a roller coaster, her back half sticking out of the top window, front feet flailing about in the inside of the car. Its claws scratched through the plastic seats, leaving jagged furrows. Metal grinded against metal, screeching in protest, but the car tore loose from the other segments of the train, and continued to fall until it crashed onto its side with a loud thud.

Sylvia spilled forward, tumbling into Sandy, who was knocked back against the far wall, which was now the floor. She attempted to hold the old woman in place, but she was all bony legs and elbows and hips, and Sandy caught a fist to the side of her face. Beneath her fingers, she felt blood, the result of the cuts the creature had made when it first flailed through the window.

The female lion swiped out at Sandy and Sylvia, and its huge paws got so close, Sandy felt the breeze as they passed by her face. It could not have been more than six inches away from her eyes. The lion growled, wriggled to escape from the settling car, but its back was stuck in the window. Its claws went flying in every direction, and Sandy pulled Sylvia farther back, away from the three-inch talons.

She couldn’t tell where anyone else was or if they were even still conscious. She shouted out, “Howard? Where are you?”

She heard a groan from the back side of the car, barely audible over the roaring of the female monster.

“Howard?”

“Yeah.”

“You all right?”

“I think so.” There was a pause, and he said, “Looks like I didn’t break anything.”

“Get over here,” she called to him as the lion lashed out again. She saw its claws extend, the pads of its feet separate as it strained to reach the meat just beneath it.

“Are you crazy, woman?” Howard shouted back. “Do you see where you are?”

“I know, but I have Sylvia, and she’s unconscious. I need you to pull her someplace safe then try and locate your weapon.”

Slash! Slash!
The female attempted to grab hold of Sandy again, stretching toward her, its muscles rippling under the overgrown fur.

Sandy heard scraping sounds to her left and she turned to see Howard crawling along the windows, over the seats, keeping his head low.

“She’s right here, beneath me,” Sandy said.

Howard made it to them just as the car gave a little lurch and settled a bit more. The momentum dropped the lioness about two inches farther through the window, so that it was holding her tightly by the hips. The black claws were now only about an inch from Sandy’s eye, and she clenched her eyelids shut so she wouldn’t see her end coming. The tip of one of the lion’s claws missed the end of her nose, raking through her hair as she turned her head.

She cried out, and the female lion seemed infuriated by the sound. It started squirming and wiggling to get out of the confines of the window. Sandy let loose with a loud scream.

Howard grasped Sylvia’s hands and pulled her from behind Sandy’s back. She was dead weight, unconscious, and he couldn’t get any traction because he couldn’t raise himself up. The lion was writhing frantically, claws and teeth and fur and instinct in a deadly bundle.

As Howard hauled the old woman from behind her back, Sandy felt herself lean into the suddenly unoccupied space. Now the beast was at least six inches away – not much, but a hell of a lot better than before. An improvement.

Sandy scooted sideways, staying just behind Howard. The creature shifted, turned a bit so it could get a better angle on its prey. When it opened its ragged tooth-filled maw, she could smell the disease on it, a fetid odor that wrapped itself around everything good and squeezed until it removed anything that was beautiful and replaced it with everything that was sharp and lethal. It smelled like death. Her death. The world’s death.

She was far enough away that she could stand. Howard was already on his feet, and they each grabbed one of Sylvia’s arms and dragged her to the back of the toppled car. They set her next to Beth, who was trying to calm down Alice. The girl was still screaming, the sound annoying and loud in the confined space. Beth had ceased her sympathetic coddling and was actually grabbing the girl by her arms and shaking her. Alice’s teeth clacked together, but she didn’t stop her incessant wailing.

After setting Sylvia gently down on her stomach, Sandy turned the old woman’s head, in case she vomited. The gashes on her back were wide and seeping. She would definitely require stitches if they survived. She moaned softly, and Sandy noticed that she had lost two of her three teeth somewhere during the fracas. Her mouth sunk in on itself, her bottom lip puffing up with each exhalation.

Howard stood and he grabbed hold of the long pole that he had formed into a weapon. When Sandy got to her feet, shooting the crying Alice a dirty look –
why wouldn’t the damn kid shut up? –
Howard took her hand and pressed Craig’s pole into it. He closed her fingers around it, tightened them.

The lioness was still squirming to free herself from the window’s trap. Her paws lashed out in every direction, her huge mouth opening and closing in protest. Her howls were growing louder, fighting for dominance against the teenage girl’s screams. The result was a cacophony that made Sandy want to run out of the subway car’s door and flee from the incessant noise.

Instead, she clutched the pole Howard had given her. Glancing over at him, she nodded. They both turned their gaze to the lioness, dangling from her hips, her front paws scraping against the sideways seats.

“It’s piñata time, baby,” Sandy said.

“Amen,” Howard answered, as they took positions on either side of the dangling creature.

Howard swung first, bashing the monster in the chops. Teeth flew across the car, clinking as they landed in the pools of broken glass. Blood flew from the thing’s mouth. The lioness, enraged, struck out at him. She missed, but her body swung a bit the other way, and Sandy, grasping her pole like Babe Ruth, hit the beast in the head as hard as she could. More teeth dropped to the floor, and the monster started howling, screeching with a primeval ferocity. Howard swung, struck the creature’s back. It swayed a bit, and Sandy smashed it in the head again. This time, she felt something, bone, crack under her blow. The monster’s left eye popped from its cracked skull, dangled by a nerve. It was slavering drool and gore from its pulverized and torn mouth.

The two of them continued beating the creature, first one, then the other. The beast, trapped and unable to escape, continued to growl until Howard landed a wallop that dislodged the top of the thing’s skull, and its head opened like an egg. Bits of bone and feline brain tissue splattered the walls.

Sandy hit it a few more times, just to be certain it wasn’t going to leap up after they thought it was dead, coming after them when they least expected it. She’d watched too many horror and action movies with Nicole to know what happens if you don’t make certain the bad guy is definitely, positively dead. They
always
got back up.

She noticed Howard gave the dead monster a few more smacks with his sharpened pole as well. It left long, glistening slashes in the lioness’s hide.

At the far side of the subway car, Beth managed to calm Alice down so that the girl was whimpering a bit, but at least she had stopped that ungodly screaming. Sandy had been on the verge of pulling a “Craig” and knocking the chick out herself. She wasn’t pleased that her thoughts had gone to this dark side, but she had to admit that the nonstop yelling was not only irritating, but dangerous as well. She was like a dinner bell going off, announcing to every mutated creature in the vicinity that the human buffet was served. Luckily, Beth seemed to have gotten Alice’s hysterics under control. At least for now.