Darkbound (10 page)

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Xavier and
Olik looked at each other, and
it didn't take a psychiatrist to know that they were having some kind of silent
pow-wow.

"Check it
out?" said Xavier.

"I think so,
yes," said Olik.  Xavier stepped toward the open door.  The Georgian
reached out one of his ham-sized hands and grabbed the gangster around the
bicep.  "Send one of the others first," he said.

Xavier nodded, then
turned to the group.  "I need a volunteer," he said.

Jim looked
away.  He thought he had seen something outside.  Not just a hand
this time, but a face.  A pale girl's face, mouth open in a silent
scream.  He got the impression of a teenager, a girl who had once been
beautiful but was now… something else.  Something ugly.  Terrifying
in a way that only lost beauty can be.

Of course, when he
looked, the girl – if that was what it had been – was gone.

"You. 
Thank you for volunteering."

A chill ran up
Jim's spine.  He was sure that Xavier was a murderous psychopath.  Just
as sure that the man had chosen him to go first into the next car while Jim had
been looking at the window.  He looked back.

But Xavier wasn't
pointing at Jim.  Wasn't even looking at him.  He had his strong hand
wrapped around Adolfa's wrist.  "Get up, Gramma," he said.

"Let me
go," said Adolfa.  She knocked at Xavier's hand with her small
fists.  She might as well have been punching a mountain.  "Let
me go!"

Xavier yanked the
old woman to her feet.  Pulled her toward the gaping maw of the open
door.  Olik followed.

Jim looked at
Karen.  "We should do something," he whispered.

Karen didn't
move.  "Be my guest," she said.

And again, Jim
didn't know what
could
be done.  He could rush the two guys, he
supposed, but didn't know what that would accomplish.  Both of them were
dangerous men, both of them were armed and proficient with their weapons.

"Dammit,"
he muttered.

Karen laughed, a
short bark of a laugh that held no humor in it.

"Please,"
Adolfa was pleading.  "
Por favor, mi hijo
."

"I ain't no
one's damn
hijo
," said Xavier.  He had his knife out, and he
poked her with it.  Not hard enough to do permanent damage, but obviously
hard enough to convince her to move faster.  Adolfa threw a terrified look
over her shoulder.  She locked eyes with Jim.

Jim felt himself
half-rising from his seat.  "Guys," he said.

"Sit,"
said Olik.  The huge man didn't even glance back at him.

"We're all
better off if we work together," said Jim.

"
Sit
,"
growled the Georgian.  And now he
was
looking at Jim.  And
pointing one of his guns at him.  The bore of the weapon looked big enough
for Jim to fall into.

Jim melted back
onto his seat.  He felt ashamed.  Looking at Adolfa, he wanted to ask
her forgiveness.  But a large part of him was also glad that it hadn't
been him chosen to go first.  He had to live.  He had to get back to
Carolyn and Maddie.

Xavier and Adolfa
were at the open door to the next car.

"What you
see?" said Olik.

"Nothin',"
said Xavier.  "Too dark."

"What you mean
too dark?" said Olik.  "What of lights outside?"

"I mean what I
said, bro.  It's black in here."  He pushed Adolfa with his
knife again, and again she yelped.  Even in the dim car, Jim could see the
back of her outfit stain with blood.  Not a huge amount, but it was clear
Xavier wouldn't mind stabbing the old woman if he thought the situation
demanded it, or if he thought doing so would aid him.

Sociopath.

The word flew into
Jim's mind.  Someone who didn't have any sense of empathy, who only valued
his own purposes and goals.  Someone who would do anything to get ahead
and who would refuse to see any faults in himself – any problems encountered
would be seen as the result of others' shortcomings.  Someone with no
conscience, no sense of right or wrong beyond what would bring him what he
wanted.  Jim knew about sociopaths.  And from what he was seeing,
Xavier certainly seemed to fit the bill.

Adolfa took a last,
quivering look over her shoulder, then stepped into the space between the two
cars.  She paused on the platform, and Jim felt his heart lurch to a stop
with her.  He almost expected something to reach down from above and grab
her, some tentacled beast from a place beyond Heaven and Hell, a thing that
existed only to kill and to feed.

He suddenly felt
that he was never going to see the old woman again.

Xavier jabbed
Adolfa's back once more.  She cried out.  Hobbled forward.  Bent
and almost broken-seeming.  To Jim she suddenly looked much older than she
had, even though it was dark and he could see her only from behind.  As though
her will, her sense of self, had been shattered by this moment.

Adolfa stepped into
the next car.  The darkness that lay beyond the threshold of the open door
to the car swallowed her up as completely and utterly as if she had been dipped
in an inkwell.  One moment she was there, the next she was gone from
sight.

Xavier looked back
at Olik, whom he had clearly accepted as some sort of
de facto
leader.  Olik nodded.

Xavier stretched
forth his knife.  He prodded at the darkness with the tip.

Nothing happened.

He moved into the
darkness, bit by bit.  His hand followed the knife.  He hissed.

"You okay,
Xavier?" said Olik.  He sounded genuinely concerned.

"I'm fine,
man," the thug said.  He sounded angry, pissed that the others had
heard him in a moment of verbal weakness.  "Don't worry about me,
worry about you."

Olik gestured at
the darkness beyond the car.  "What you feel?"

"I dunno, it's
like –"

Then Xavier's words
cut off as he was bodily yanked into the darkness.  And like Adolfa, he,
too, was gone.

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Jim looked
at Karen.  The lawyer was
just staring at the darkness, her face impassive.  He didn't know how she
could appear so calm.  Freddy had literally disintegrated right in front of
them, and now two more of their company had been pulled into some kind of black
hole in the next car – a car that held God-only-knew what horror within it.

"Xavier?"
called Olik.  "Xavier, my friend?"  The big man was bent
over, calling into the darkness of the next car as though he was leaning over a
bottomless pit.

Maybe that's
what it is.  Maybe the whole train is some kind of pit
.
  Or shaft.

But where does
it lead?

Jim thought about
Freddy's eyes.  Staring to the last.  But not sightless, not dead as
they should have been.  Surely they should have been looking at nothing
there at the end with all the blood he had lost, to say nothing of the trauma
of having his body completely skinned and the meat ripped from his bones. 
But he
wasn't
dead.  He had been alive.  Alive, and painfully
aware, even when his head was squeezed to a fraction of its correct size. 
Even when his brains had spurted from his mouth and nose and ears.

Even then, Freddy
had been awake, and alert.  And in agony.

Dear Lord, what's
happening?

Something
interrupted Jim's musing.  Just as well, since he felt himself spiraling
into a depression.  And he couldn't afford that.  He had too much to
live for.  He had his girls, and when he saw them again he was going to
hold them tight and it wouldn't matter that they'd fought, the important thing
was that they would be together again.

It was a
hand.  Coming from the depths of darkness of the next car, pushing forward
as though with great effort, forcing itself through the black wall that
separated the car Jim was in from one that had apparently swallowed Adolfa and
Xavier. 

After a moment, Jim
recognized the hand.  Mostly because of the wickedly-sharp knife it
held.  It was Xavier's.  The hand pushed through the darkness,
followed by the gangbanger's arm up to the middle of his bicep.  Then it
stopped.  The hand started waving frantically, so fast it was almost
jerking.

"What's going
on?" said Karen.

Jim shrugged. 
"Looks like he's saying 'come on' or 'hurry up.'"

She looked at him,
then back at Olik.  The Georgian gestured them forward. 
"Go."

Jim stepped forward
in tandem with Karen.  "Why doesn't he call for us if he wants us to
come?" he said.

"I don't
know.  But then," she gritted her teeth in a macabre imitation of a
grin, "I haven't understood anything that's happened since the lights went
out on this damn train."

Xavier's arm looked
dismembered, ending as it did in sudden darkness.  Like it had been hacked
off mid-bicep and was now being waved around by a ghost with a sick sense of
humor.  But regardless of what was doing it, the arm now started shaking
even quicker:
Come on, move it, get over here, get moving, move faster
faster faster FASTER!

Karen and Jim
shared a look.

"I don't think
we –" began Jim.

"Shut
up," said Olik.  The nearly imperturbable man sounded on the edge of
losing it for the first time.  His deep voice cracked. 
"Move."  He stepped close to Jim, poking him with the gun he
still held.  "
Move!
"

The gun ground into
Jim's ribs.  And even though he knew it was only in his mind, Jim felt
like the weapon was hot, like it was burning him.  He wouldn't be
surprised to find a circular scar where the gun touched his body.

It felt
horrible.  It also felt familiar, as though he were experiencing a
premonition of his inevitable end.

He stumbled
forward.  Toward the darkness.  Toward the waving arm.

Jim stepped out of
the last car.  For a split-second he thought about just hurling himself
off the train.  Throwing himself into the tunnel and hoping for the
best.  But of course even that was impossible: the platform between cars
was completely enclosed, like an airlock between two different hostile
environments.  No way to escape.  The only options were backward,
into the death of the car behind... and forward, embracing the darkness of the
car ahead.

As soon as he was
within a foot of the black wall that rose like a perfect line of vertical
night, the thing that was like a dark force field between this car and the next
– between this
world
and the next – Xavier's arm suddenly snapped
forward.  Jim screamed reflexively as the man's hand clamped down around
his wrist, yanking him toward the darkness.

Jim felt his own
hand fling back.  He didn't think about it.  Just grabbed for
something,
anything
.  Like a man falling off a mountain, grabbing
for his fellow-climbers, not worrying that the act of reaching for them might
lead to their deaths as well.  In the instant of falling the human animal
does not think about the other, it thinks about itself.  It thinks about
stopping its plummeting descent.  So Jim reached out.  Felt
something.  Grabbed it.

Xavier's arm was
strong.  Jim couldn't have resisted him even if he had been ready and
waiting.  As it was, he just stumbled forward.  Touched the darkness.

And felt like the
world was ending as he passed through it, and went from one terror into another
far worse.

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"GET
UP!"

Someone was
screaming, screaming.  But it took a moment for Jim to realize who it was,
who was doing the screaming, who the person was screaming
at
.

It's me, he
realized.  He's yelling at
me
.

A moment later he
felt a hand practically ripping him to his feet.  Xavier.  It was
Xavier.  "Get
up
, man!" shouted the gangbanger. 
Then he let go of Jim and grabbed at something else.  Jim looked behind
him and saw Karen on the floor of the subway car.  He realized he must
have grabbed her when he was pulled through into…

… what?

No time to take in
the details right now.  Because there was a very seriously pissed off Olik
on the floor as well, rolling around like a cross between a rabid bear and a
turtle who can't quite get back to its feet.  Karen must have pulled him
through, Jim realized, just like he did to her.

So we're all
together again, he thought.  Still one big happy family.

"Get outta the
way!" Xavier was screaming.  He grabbed Olik unceremoniously by the
waist of his pants and hauled him forward.  Jim saw that the Georgian's
legs were still hanging out into the no-man's-land between cars.  But not
for long: with one yank, Xavier had Olik tumbling ass over elbows the rest of
the way into the car.

Olik grunted as he
hit a bank of seats with bruising force.  He sprang to his feet almost
instantly, both guns in his hands, his face a mask of rage.

"What you
think you're doing?" he bellowed, training the guns on Xavier.

Xavier didn't even
seem to notice the twin cannons pointed at him.  He had his hands on the
small lip of the subway door that was protruding from the steel bulkhead. 
Pulling on it with all his might.  "Help me," he said. 
"Help me, dammit!"

Jim felt his brain
spinning like a drunken top.  "Where's Adolfa?" he said. 
His words sounded slurred.  His brain fuzzed.  He didn't know if that
was an effect of passing through the dark wall, or just sensory overload. 
Either way, he was having trouble processing things.

"I'm
here," said a familiar voice.

Jim looked toward
the sound.  It was the old woman, huddled at the other end of the
car.  Looking terrified.

Thuds. 
Movement.  Jim looked back at the doorway he had just stumbled
through.  Saw that Olik was now helping Xavier pull the door shut. 
And then Karen joined them, as though heedless of the fact that only a moment
ago she had been forced through that very door at gunpoint by these men. 
She knelt below Xavier and dropped her satchel in order to pull on the door as
well.

Jim looked
up.  Shook his head.  What's going on? he wondered.

Then he realized
that he could see through the door; that whatever power had kept them from
seeing into the car, it did not keep them from seeing out.  It was like a
one-way mirror.  Only in this case it wasn't a reflective surface on one
side, it was a fathomless plane cut from deepest space.

But from this side…
from this side they could see into the car they had just come from. 

They could see what
was coming
for
them.