Primeval (Werewolf Apocalypse Book 2) (35 page)

Michael saw something in the distance, and he squinted to get a better view. While they passed a metal staircase leading upwards and one huge pipe dripping dirty water, he rushed ahead of Nicole, who shouted for him to get back behind her. He ignored her demands, and he swiftly moved out of the view of their lights. His own headlamp became a bobbing gleam in the darkness, brushing across something.

“Oh, no, no, no,” Sandy heard him cry.

The rest of the group rushed forward until they were standing behind him, swiveling their flashlights across a huge barrier. The roof had collapsed into the subway tunnel, probably because of the gas explosions, and the entire passageway was blocked by a mass of concrete, dirt, wood, and iron beams. Several burnt corpses were splayed around the obstruction, their arms spread wide, their skin turned to black ash.

“They were trying to claw their way through,” Nicole said of the corpses. “That’s what they were doing when the fireball hit them.”

“What’s this mean?” Burns asked Michael. “There’s a way around this, right? We can still get through to the East River?”

The homeless man shook his head. “No,” he said, dropping to his knees in front of the obstacle. “I don’t know any other way across. This connected with the sewer farther on, and that would have taken us straight into Brooklyn.”

“So, what do we do now?” Howard asked. “We still need to get out of here.”

Above them, something rumbled – another explosion or a towering building giving in to the pull of gravity.

“We go up,” Michael said.

“To the surface?” Howard shouted. “That’s suicide.”

“There’s no other way around,” Michael explained. “Not that I know of.”

The rumbling above them ceased, but the dust still fell from the ceiling of the tunnel, shaken loose by the shockwaves on the surface of the city. Almost as one, the survivors raised their eyes upwards, as if they could see through the layers of earth and concrete to get a view of what was happening.

“We have to head up,” Michael reiterated.

“I saw stairs back there a little ways,” Burns said, motioning with his thumb. “Can we use those?”

Michael nodded. “Yeah. They’ll take you to the next tunnel above us, which heads the opposite direction, but then we’ll either have to use a manhole to get to the surface or find some other way, and I have no clue what that might be.”

“Looks like we don’t have a choice,” Burns said. “Let’s go back, take those stairs, and look for a way to the surface.”

Howard said, “Man, I do not want to go up there. I haven’t seen it, like you guys have, but I can hear it, and it sounds like Hell on Earth.”

“It is,” Burns grunted. “I’m not gonna mince words. It’s dangerous as shit up there, but what else can we do? We can’t stay down here. If the Army decides to nuke Manhattan, and that’s a serious possibility now, then we’re fucked down here. Maybe they’ll just use napalm, burn the city to the ground. In that case, we’ll all slowly die of smoke inhalation. Or those creatures will all seek refuge down here, tear us to pieces. These are the choices, folks, and I’d rather take my chance fighting up top than dying like a damn coward down here.”

“I am a coward,” Michael said, and Sandy noticed how hard he was shaking. “I freely admit it. I only got a glimpse a bunch of hours ago at what was going on in the city. I can’t fight my way through there. I really can’t.”

She sat next to him, took his hand in hers and stroked the back of it.

“Michael, you’ve come so far, led us almost the whole way. You’re giving up now that we’re so close?”

“Close doesn’t count when there are hundreds of thousands of those things out there. It’s better down here. Safer. The tunnels have been my home for so long, and I know them. We haven’t seen any of those creatures for a while now. Maybe they’re all scared to come down here after the fire.”

“It’s only for a little while. They’ll be back. You can bet on it,” Sandy said. “In the meantime, let’s take advantage of the fact that they aren’t down here to make a run for somewhere safe.”

“No such place,” he said, shaking his head.

“Well, then let’s make it to someplace safer, where there are more people.”

“What about me?” John asked, his voice quiet. Everyone turned to the reporter. He looked terrible, face and mouth covered in drying blood, the wound on his shoulder seeping crimson, his clothes torn in many places. He continued, “I don’t know if I can run. You’ll have to leave me.”

“No one gets left behind,” Burns said automatically. “Not the way we roll.”

“I’ll help you,” Michael said, his concern switching from himself to John. “You just need to balance a bit.”

“And I can get your other side,” Howard volunteered. “We’ll move you fast enough. Don’t worry.”

“You’d be better off without me,” the reporter said.

“But we wouldn’t be the same,” Sandy said. “All for one, huh?”

“But you have to promise me something,” John said. “If I get too heavy or I get in the way, you have to cut me loose. I don’t want anyone else getting killed because I can’t keep up.”

“If it comes to that, we’ll find you a place you can hold them off,” Burns said. “Or we’ll do whatever’s best for the group.”

“You promise?”

Sandy said, “We promise. But it won’t happen. We’re all getting out of this alive.”

Burns tested his cell phone again, trying to call on Tommy, the helicopter pilot. There was still no signal. He cursed, then said, “Okay, if we can get to the surface, I might get through to the helicopter on this. Then, we just need to survive until Tommy shows up and lifts us out of the city. It ain’t much of a plan, but it’s better than sitting here and waiting to die. Okay?”

He looked around at the group, their eyes wide with apprehension, terrified to move and terrified not to move. He grinned at them, wishing desperately for a cigar. He put everything into that grin, exuding a feigned confidence that belied his inner trepidation. It was a brilliant performance. Even though everyone in the group knew he was playing the part of a confident leader, they all reacted as he had hoped.

“Hell yeah,” Howard said. “We’re this close. Let’s keep going.”

Nicole added, “I’m here with you.”

“And you’re not losing me, sweetie,” Sandy said, kissing her girlfriend on the cheek. “I’ll follow you into Hell.”

“That’s pretty much what we’re doing,” she replied. “Michael? John? You with us? We could really use you to get us through these last tunnels and up to the streets.”

Michael paused, seemingly weighing his options, and then he nodded. “All right. I’ll trust you.”

“And since these guys are dragging my useless carcass with them, I don’t have much choice, do I?” John asked, trying to lighten the mood a bit, even though he was feeling weaker by the moment.

“Well, all right then,” Burns said, drawling like John Wayne even more than usual. “Let’s mosey on back and start climbing.”

As they headed back toward the metal staircase behind them, the earth shook a bit from the force of something blowing up in the streets above their heads. The dust rained down on them for a moment, but Burns nudged them all forward.

Please,
he thought.
Let this be the right thing to do. I don’t wanna be leading all these people to their deaths.

The aftershocks rumbled through the tunnels, reverberating off the walls.

And the group ascended the staircase, heading up to the surface.

9:35 p.m.

They were all getting tired as they climbed the shaky staircase, moving past the huge corrugated pipe which was still belching thick, black water. The stairs shook a bit, loosened from the moorings in the brick walls by the various blasts and fires that had rocked the subway. Still it held, and the group found itself in a much smaller tunnel, where they had to walk single file. This was a part of the sewer system, but the concrete was dry, although cracked in places because of the pressure placed upon it by the disaster.

John found it difficult without someone to support him, but he managed fairly well. Encouraged by his momentary success, he started to think he would be all right, that he could actually keep up with the others.

“Go this way,” Michael said, pointing. “There should be a second set of stairs in a bit, and we take that to get to the manholes.”

Nicole pushed past him, once again taking the lead. She had recently counted her ammunition, and she was down to four bullets in the Colt’s magazine. It wasn’t a very comforting thought. She’d witnessed the hordes of creatures in the streets, and she knew this was woefully inadequate to fight them off. She said a little prayer that maybe they would discover an isolated spot, someplace that wasn’t overrun with the beasts. She knew she was just whistling in the dark, but she prayed just the same. The rest of the crowd fell in behind her, with Burns procuring the hind position.

They had some trouble with the weapons they had created out of the long poles on the subway. They were large and unwieldy, clanging against the sides of the narrow sewer tunnel, scraping along the concrete. The passage grew tighter, and they had to hold the poles out in front of themselves at an angle. Michael, always ready to help John, really had issues holding his pole. Finally, he just dragged it behind him as he offered a shoulder to his friend.

“I hope we don’t get attacked now,” Howard told Sandy. “Can’t swing a cat in here, let alone this thing.”

They had traveled fifty yards when the wall to their right opened up into a gaping hole. Bricks and mortar were scattered all around the gap. It looked as though a gas explosion had created an entrance to the next tunnel over.

“Where’s that lead?” he asked.

Michael shrugged. “It wasn’t there yesterday. Let me check it out.”

Before anyone could argue with him or try to change his mind, he darted into the hole, ducking his head so he wouldn’t hit it against the bricks at the top. As he turned a corner, his headlamp disappeared from view. The group waited, listening for any sound beyond the incessant dripping of water.

“I don’t know if I like this,” Nicole finally commented. “He’s alone in there, doesn’t know where it leads.”

“If anyone is okay down here, it’s Michael,” Sandy said. “He’s been on the money all along the way. I doubt he’s lost for long.”

“He’ll be fine,” John said. “He’d better be.”

Howard shouted into the hole, “Hey, Michael! Dude, you all right?”

Immediately, he was shushed by the rest of the group. Burns actually moved toward him, his arms held out to cover his mouth.

“You’ll alert every goddamned monster in the vicinity,” Nicole said. “We’ve been lucky so far. Don’t press it.”

Michael’s headlamp beam came back into view as he returned, moving around a corner of his tunnel. Nicole stuck her head into the opening.

“You see anything?” she asked. “Will it get us back to the tracks?”

“Yeah, I think so,” he answered. “But there’s a hairy piece a bit farther down. I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

“But it should get us back on the subway line,” Nicole pressed. “We won’t have to go aboveground for any long period of time?”

“Not the way I see it. Still, you better take a look; decide if you want to risk it. It actually might be better to run on the streets. I don’t know. I think I’d be more willing to chance it down here.”

“I say we have a peep at it,” Burns said. “If it can help us out, I’m all for it. God knows I don’t wanna take my chances up top unless I have to.”

The rest of the group agreed.

“Okay then,” Michael said. “Follow me. But stay as quiet as you can. I don’t want to disturb them.”

Sandy looked at Howard and whispered, “Disturb them? Who?”

He shrugged and stepped through the gap in the wall, sliding down a pile of shattered bricks and mortar on the other side. It earned him another hard look from Nicole.

“Sorry.”

They walked quietly, slipping around a corner to the right, then another turn to the left. Suddenly, they were stepping through an ankle-deep stream of water. They tried not to splash, but the sound of the running liquid covered up their footsteps. The passageway got tighter, until they were single file again. Burns’ shoulders brushed against the walls as he moved, making it harder to turn and watch their rear. Soon, the passageway ended at an opened door leading into a wide room. The water spilled over the lip of the room, tumbling in a small brown waterfall into a ten foot pit, a quarter full of filthy water. A walkway about a foot wide and made of metal ladder-like steps traversed the twenty-foot-wide room above the little pit, leading to a dark door on the other side. It looked fairly sturdy, but it wobbled a bit when Nicole tested it with her foot.

When they looked down into the room, they saw what Michael had been afraid to mention.

The room had about two feet of water in it, but only around the edges. In the center there was a pile of junk – old rubber tires, a desk, several busted wooden chairs, twigs, branches, all kinds of detritus. There were even a few skeletons crumbled into heaps of brown bones along the sides. Covering the mound of trash were two-foot mutant rats. Dozens of them, hundreds of them, maybe even more than a thousand of them. They squirmed over each other, fighting amongst themselves, and lifting their pointed heads to sniff the air. Their yellow, glowing eyes peered up at the group as they fought their way over and around each other to get a better leap at the humans on the ledge above them.