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But still, overcoming disgust–since there was nobody else to ask–he repeated the question:

"Do you hear me? What is this place? Seems I got lost."

The figure hollowly murmured something under the scarf, but Tony could not distinguish the words. Was it English at all? In New York more than two hundred nationalities live...

"Sorry?" Logan asked again.

More unintelligible muttering, as if the creature's mouth was filled by some viscous stuff. But this time, apparently, the words were different. It came to Tony's mind that, probably, this being was not talking to him, but simply talked to himself, and, moreover, had done it for a long time already and would do it fur
ther... Not just a stinky tramp, but also a madman? Why not... especially taking into account that since Tony got on that ill-fated train, everything around him looked pretty crazy.

But while Logan was sure that he would be ignored again, the creature suddenly jerkily pulled his hand from under his arm and stretched it towards Tony.

Logan recoiled in horror, looking at what had come up from a dirty sleeve. It was not a hand in the usual sense. It was a swollen, shapeless, ulcerated stump, on which five wet hillocks stuck out like ugly flattened slugs–all that remained of fingers. Logan's gaze jumped again to the wrapped face, and he understood that what he had accepted in the darkness as a scarf were actually bandages, sodden with pus and God knows what other discharges. He was not sure whether under these bandages (when were they last changed?) remained any skin, or if they had long ago grown into the sick meat.

The thought that
it
could touch him made Tony move back quickly, without looking behind him; he saw a dreadful stump directed towards him and heard a hollow illegible mutter from under the rotten bandages. A second later he stumbled against a curb and, helplessly waving his hands, crashed down, hitting his head against the sidewalk. A flash sparkled in his eyes and all sank in blackness.

Tony came to his senses, looking around in panic. Dis
gusting images appeared to him: sticky touches of the leprous creature–or what this disease was?–and his stinking breath right in Logan's face, in his mouth... probably, even a kiss through dirty bandages (what if it nevertheless was a woman?) Was it simply a delusion of his scared imagination–or an echo of what really happened during his unconsciousness?

Anyway, the street was empty again. And there remained the same darkness–unless the fog had become thicker. But, pos
sibly, Tony had been unconscious not too long. Strange, but he did not feel a pain in his head. However, having carefully touched it, he felt something wet and sticky.

"I'm going to see a doctor," he promised himself. "As soon as I get out of here. And not only about a head injury. I'll get tested for infections..."

But first, he needed to get out of here.

He stood up and turned right, walking along the street. However, the longer he walked, the more he doubted in his chosen direction. Underfoot was old crumbled asphalt. On the road, there were more dead birds, and not only pigeons. Here was a black raven, regarded by romanticists as a symbol of death, ly
ing with its feet drawn into itself, there a worm-eaten albatross, and there... Logan smelled the largest of them earlier than he saw it: it was either a heron or a stork–in such a state of decay, it was impossible to know anymore. Tony knew that such birds live in New York parks, but never saw them flying in the city...

Meanwhile, from the fog, dark silhouettes of houses ap
peared, continuing to change. Here, they were of different height and architecture and were not arranged in monolithic rows along the sides of the street, but stuck out separately. Here, this one jutted forward to the very edge of the street, there, that one receded deep into the dark. Their locations resembled the curve of decayed teeth of a mutant from a horror movie. The blank walls with no windows occurred more and more often, and buildings with windows looked even worse. Tony doubted that such shabby ruins could exist even in the poorest and the most remote parts of New York, let alone the business area of Manhattan. Municipal services were simply obliged to demolish all this very long time ago before it crashed on somebody's head... It seemed the majority of these buildings, though obviously multifamily, were not stone; in the cold air, the heavy, damp and musty smell of decaying wood was clearly present. Moreover, outlines of either some dilapidated villas or farm houses loomed ahead; but while such buildings usually stand in rural open space, here they were literally piled up, leaning against each other in terrible narrowness, interlocking by lopsided walls and fallen-in roofs and, probably, only for that reason had not yet collapsed completely.

Looking around, Logan almost stumbled against some ob
ject lying directly in the middle of the street and merging with the blackness of the asphalt. For a terrible instant it seemed to him that it was a swollen corpse–more precisely, a trunk without legs, arms or head. But it was only a very full black plastic garbage bag. All the same, looking at it was unpleasant. It seemed that it was just about to burst and spew out its fetid contents. How long had it been lying right in the middle of the road?

At this moment a quickly approaching noise–some rhyth
mical scratch and gnashing rustle–came from behind Tony. He turned back–and saw just few feet from himself the rapidly approaching blunt muzzle of a radiator, a heavy rectangular bumper, the blind cataracts of extinguished headlights, the dark glass of a windshield... He hardly had time to jump aside. The long vehicle rushed past without reducing speed, with a filthy sound–skwashhh!–squelching the garbage bag. Tony opened his mouth to shout out his opinion of the driver (certainly, Logan was guilty himself of walking in the street, but...)–but the abuse stuck in his throat. It was not the fact that the driver didn't honk or even try to brake that amazed Tony most of all, but what kind of vehicle it was. A school bus. An ordinary yellow school bus that can be found on plenty of New York streets, as well as in any other American city... But not in the deadest hours of night.

Although, of course, anything could make a school bus driver go out at night. Perhaps, the bus urgently needed repair... or the driver simply used municipal transport for personal purposes... Yes, all these hypotheses were possible if there were no passengers in the bus. Those passengers for whom it was in
tended–children.

But, though there was no interior light, Tony had clearly discerned the white spots of faces pressed to windows from with
in. Yes, exactly–not simply half-turned somewhere inside, but pressed, flattened out against the glass faces and palms, as if children desperately and hopelessly tried to escape outside from a glass captivity of the bus, from the dark and narrow closed space in which they have been confined long, oh, very long already... so long that they had no more strength to struggle or even simply to move, and could only press their faces in mute despair against cold windows... The bus had already passed, but Tony still saw in his mind their flattened noses turned on one side, black holes of open mouths, dark stains shading their sunken eye sockets...

"Nonsense," he told himself. "Just something I glimpsed in the dark. I saw it for no more than a second! It is simply some late excursion. Or the bus got delayed somewhere by a traffic jam... or a power failure..."

But why at night, moreover in a fog, had the headlights been switched off? And why, by the way, had he heard only a metal scratch and a garbage rustle from under the wheels–but not the sound of a working engine?

He looked after the departing bus. The tail lights did not burn, either. And in the back window a stiffened, warped face shone whitely. There was something
especially
wrong with it, and, an instant later, Tony understood, what exactly.

In this face there were no eyes at all.

A disgusting musty smell which had spread in the air distracted Logan's attention. He looked askance at the squashed bag–something whitish and lumpy had been squeezed out of it, and Tony had not the slightest desire to examine, what exactly. When he raised his eyes again, the bus was not visible anymore. Either it had turned somewhere–meaning that there finally was a crossroads ahead–or it had completely sunk into darkness and fog.

After returning to the sidewalk–no more adventures in the street, however deserted it looked–Tony hastily walked in his former direction. Though he felt less and less desire to go farther, at the same time, having gone so far already in this direction, he did not want to turn back. When you do not know where to go, the silliest idea is to beat about. And besides, in the depth of his heart, he was not sure at all that the place
where this bus came from
was any better than
where it was heading
.

Soon his decisions were rewarded: ahead in the fog a crosswise sign loomed–a crossroads at last... Tony, hurried already by cold and fear, still quickened his pace; probably, he would even have run, but he did not like at all the idea of his noise echoing all through the empty street.

And then he understood that he did not have much desire to approach the sign.

Something hung from it. Just from that part which desig
nated the cross street. For an instant, Logan had a wild thought that it was a monkey which had seized the sign with its tail. But, after stepping closer, he realized that it was a cat. A cat which had been hung by its own tail... Dead cats and dogs always caused insuperable disgust in Tony, but he still needed to read the sign, and so he came even closer.

Now he saw that the situation was even worse. It was not a tail. The unfortunate animal hung by its own gut, stretched from the ripped up belly and, apparently, nailed to the sign. And, judging by the look and smell of the corpse, it had hung here for many days already...

How had anyone gotten the cat up there on the sign–by a fire ladder? Tony had heard about firemen
rescuing
cats, but not...

He painfully swallowed a lump which had risen in his throat and forced himself, straining his eyes in the dark, to read the sign. Amazingly, the street along which he had come, ap
peared to be Broadway. However... despite all Tony's efforts, he could not discern the first letter. It was either erased or splotched by dirt, resulting in "ROADWAY". A senseless tautology, if taken literally... On the sign for the cross street, there was no name at all. Only a black arrow with the inscription "ONE WAY." The usual road sign designating one way traffic. But Tony could not stop thinking about the literal meaning of the words. "The only way"... Logan completely disliked persistence of this instruction and turned in the opposite direction as a matter of principle.

Especially since the cat hung closer to the sharp end of the arrow.

Shortly afterwards, he praised himself for making the correct choice: though the new street was just the same–deserted and dirtied (perhaps, there was even more litter on it) without a single working street lamp or a lit window–but, seemingly, from a kingdom of wooden ruins, Logan was returning to a stone civilization. Houses on both sides of the street were becoming higher and more modern, and ahead a bus stop with a billboard appeared. Tony had seen this poster many times: at the left, the face of a little girl, and on the right, the face of an old woman–both, of course, smiling. Apparently, it was something about medical insurance, along the lines "we care for your health at any age..." The billboard, naturally, did not interest Logan at all–he wanted to see a listing of the numbers of routes stopping here. He, now, with great pleasure would take any route if only it would take him away from this terrible place.

M13, the sign said. M13? Tony could not remember such a bus. In Brooklyn, yes, there is a thirteenth route; it passes through the cemetery area of Cypress Hills–but in Manhattan? Alas, where there should be a route diagram, Tony found only an empty frame.

And then he almost physically felt someone's glare. A glare full of hatred and rage.

Tony involuntarily held his breath, afraid to turn back. There was no sound behind him. Tony stood dead still for several seconds, and then, having realized that to stand with his back to danger was even worse, turned sharply back.

Behind him there was nobody. Only this stupid poster.

Nerves, Tony told to himself. Some hell on wheels had plagued him this whole damned night... And then he looked at the advertising more closely.

The faces were the same he had seen many times before, but their expressions were absolutely different. The girl stared into nowhere with the vacant look of a mentally retarded child; her face was wreathed in a senseless smile, her tongue hung out, and saliva flowed down her dropped chin. The face of the old woman was completely mad, too–and much more terrible. It was deformed by a grimace of fierce hatred; the muddy running eyes glared with a fury as stunning as a blow to the solar plexus, and the smile was actually a spasmodic grin which had bared rare teeth and naked gums where teeth were missing.

"It's impossible to feel a picture's gaze," Tony told him
self. Oh yes, and the gaze of a living person–is it really possible? Science, anyway, does not know about beams or anything else that eyes could emit and influence another person...

But anyway–who could order and place such a poster? Even if the mentally retarded girl could be explained as a par
oxysm of political correctness, that mad old woman...