Darkbound (7 page)

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Jim didn't
know how long they remained in
darkness.  It could have been a second, it could have been an hour. 
Time suddenly seemed mutable.  Minutes interchangeable with years. 
Millennia could be mistaken for microseconds.

Is this what
madness feels like?

He suspected it
was.  He suspected that here, floating in absolute darkness on a train
that was careening towards God-only-knew where, madness was not an arm's length
away from him as it was for so many of the people who walked the surface of a
sometimes horrific world.  No, here it was a companion, a bosom friend, a
soul mate.

A soul mate.

Then something
flashed, so bright it momentarily made him forget what he had just seen on
Karen's tablet.  The light cast him back into memory: the glint of
lightning bugs in the forest.  Running through the trees, the forested
area that served as his backyard after finding his mother's body.  Her
murdered corpse, stabbed so many times the doctors later told him that they
couldn't count the wounds.

Lightning bugs.

He blinked. 
It would be so easy, he realized, so easy to lose himself in the madness that
reached out for him.  So easy to let himself go and thereby give himself
permission to just forget about figuring out what was happening right now.

Just give up
.

Then he saw
Carolyn's face.  Maddie's.  His girls.

The light came
again.  Not lightning bugs.  He wasn't in that faraway forest, that
long-ago place.  He was in the train.  The subway.  Adolfa was
holding onto him in the dark, he could hear her mumbling a prayer in Spanish,
hushed tones that somehow spoke warmth to him.

The light
flashed.  It was coming from outside the subway car.  And it was
something so unexpectedly normal that he almost didn't recognize it. 
Xavier had pointed out that the train had somehow left its course, had somehow
gone from a local train to an express route that went straight to some unknown
destination, no stops, no new passengers.  And with that change in service
had come a blank darkness outside the train.  Were it not for the
click-clack of the wheels on the rails and the steady electrical hum of the
motor, they could as well have been traveling through the vacuum of deep space
or the even blanker nothing of a black hole.

But now…
lights.  And they were the lights that typically flashed by whenever the
train passed through a subway tunnel.  Jim didn't know what they were
called, exactly, but he assumed they were there as some kind of safety or
maintenance lights.  Red, yellow, green, white.

And as soon as he
recognized them, the lights came on in the car as well.  The darkness
dissipated.  As though by finding a tiny piece of order, more order was
called forth.

Jim looked
around.  Adolfa was sitting with him, but other than that everyone else
had spread out in the darkness.  It looked as though they were a group of
sworn enemies, terrified that each would try some kind of mischief under cover
of the black that had just enveloped them.  Then he realized it wasn't
that his fellow-passengers were concerned about each other: they were afraid of
the tablet.  Still sitting in the center of the train, its face shattered
with the force of the shriek that had issued forth from its electronic
circuitry – and from a place impossibly deeper and darker than that.

The others were
looking around now.  Karen held her shaking hands in front of her
face.  The blood that had flowed out of the tablet had stained her
expensive coat and shirtsleeves almost black, and the wrinkles of her knuckles
and palms were caked with coagulating gore.  She shuddered and began
rubbing her hands against each other, but no matter how hard she rubbed, it
seemed like the red wouldn't come off.

She began to sob.

Xavier sat beyond
her, at the front of the car.  He had wedged himself halfway under one of
the seats, his knife out in front of him like he expected to be attacked at any
moment.

We
are
being attacked. 
But by what?

The large black man
shook himself.  He stood suddenly, as though by moving quickly he might
throw off whatever spell had cast itself around the group.  Then he strode
past Karen, to the tablet.  He fell on one knee beside it and began
stabbing it with the knife.

Xavier didn't go
crazy.  He didn't start stabbing it maniacally, like an axe-murderer from
some bad horror movie.  He was methodical, his arm rising and falling with
the perfect time of an expensive metronome. 
Clack.  Clack. 
Clack.
  And the pure emotionless quality of his actions was more
frightening than any crazed acting out would have been.  Jim could see
that he wasn't insane, he was just killing what he perceived as the only thing
to
be killed.  For now.

Adolfa
shifted.  The movement must have caught Xavier's eye, because the man
glanced at her.  The look, the dead, empty look in his eyes, was
terrifying.  Adolfa immediately stiffened.  Jim didn't move,
either.  He thought it likely that anyone Xavier perceived as a threat in
the next few moments would probably end up as thoroughly mangled as Karen's
tablet.

And indeed, a few
seconds later there was almost nothing left of the electronic equipment. 
Just a few bits of plastic and glass on the metal floor of the car.  Olik,
who like everyone else had been watching Xavier without moving or speaking,
finally stepped forward.  He smiled a grim, almost angry smile. 
"You feel better?" he asked, and placed a thick hand on the
gangbanger's shoulder.

Xavier nodded. 
Jewels of sweat had appeared on his neck and forehead, and more had dampened
his knit cap.  "Just wanted whoever's doing this to know what I'm
gonna do to them when I find 'em."

Xavier clapped the
man on the shoulder.  "Good.  Good fight in you," he said
in his heavy, deep voice.  "I heard that of you, too."

"We're going
to die here," said Karen.

Everyone spun to
look at her.  She was still rubbing her hands on her clothes, the seat
beside her, the metal poles nearby – anything she could use to create friction
to burn off some of the blood that coated her skin.  Jim thought it looked
like she was sitting in the middle of a strangely-shaped butcher's block:
everything crimson and stained, a place of death and killing.

Karen held her
hands up.  They were as red as ever.  "It won't come off,"
she whispered.  Then she shook her head and repeated, "We're going to
die here."

Olik snorted. 
Xavier was more direct.  "Speak for yourself, bitch."

Karen erupted
forward, running at Xavier and plowing into him.  "
DON'T CALL ME
THAT!"
she shrieked.  Jim didn't think the woman could have
weighed more than one hundred twenty pounds – probably only about half of what
the gangbanger clocked in at.  So he would have expected her to just
bounce off the thug.  But instead the two of them went down in a
pile.  Xavier
oof
'd as the air rushed out of him, and Karen cocked
a very un-lawyerly fist, clearly intent on doing her best to pound some manners
into the guy.

Xavier was still
holding his knife.  Jim saw the man's hand tighten on the grip, knew that
Karen was about to come to a very messy end.  Maybe she'd be able to get a
single punch in, but that was going to be it.

Olik moved. 
One huge foot stepped on Xavier's arm, pinning his knife hand to the floor of
the train.  At the same time, he plucked Karen up by the collar with no
visible effort.  She looked like an errant puppy in his huge hands.

"Stop, both of
you," he growled.

"Let me up,
motherf –" began Xavier.  The vituperation became a choked-off scream
as Olik ground his boot down.  Then, turning to Karen, he punched her
viciously in the face.  There was a distinctive crack as her nose crumpled
beneath his fist.  Blood spurted.  Karen flew back under the power of
the blow.  She hit one of the upright aluminum support bars, slingshotting
around it and landing in a heap on the floor just beyond.

Jim was
agape.  He had a moment to wonder again who Olik was.  Then the
Georgian spoke.  "Don't do this," he growled.  "Don't
attack each other.  Problem isn't here," he said, gesturing at the
passengers.  "Problem is whoever is doing this."  He glared
at Xavier.  "Don't make trouble in here."

"She hit
me!" said Xavier.  Jim was surprised how much the thug sounded like a
peeved toddler in that moment.

Olik nodded. 
"And I punished her for this," he said.  He shook a huge fist at
Xavier.  "Don't make me do same to you."  Xavier glared,
but finally nodded.  "Besides…."  Olik leaned in and
whispered something in Xavier's ear.  Xavier started, then looked at
Karen, who was getting slowly to her feet, holding her blood-crusted hands to
her spurting nose.

"What?"
said Xavier.  He sounded shocked.  He looked at Olik with a strange
light in his eyes.  Admiration?  Jim couldn't be sure, but he thought
so.

Olik just nodded,
then turned to everyone.  "We need to put our heads together,
yes?  To think.  Not to be enemies now."

"What's doing
this?" asked Karen.  She gave up holding her hands under her nose and
just let the blood flow.  Jim noted that even with a severely broken nose
she still put most women's looks to shame.  Some very good genetics at
work there.

"That's what
we figure out first," said Olik with an approving nod.  "But we
don't do it fighting, yes?  We do it talking.  We look
around."  He tapped his temple with a huge finger.  "We use
this."

Adolfa
laughed.  Jim looked at her with a mixture of dismay and admiration. 
The laugh hadn't been a mirthful one, but one of dismissal.  "Strange
words from a man who shoots so quickly," she said.

Olik looked as
though he was trying to decide whether to be angry with her.  Then he
smiled ruefully and shrugged.  "Everyone entitled to shoot when he
sees the dead coming, yes?" he said.  "Besides.  Gun is
away."  He looked around the train car.  It was rocking,
click-clack-click-clack-click-clack
. 
Lights still flashing outside the windows.  Still moving, still going
somewhere.

But where? Jim
wondered.  And how long would it take to get there?

"I think we
have time," said Olik.  "Time to think."

"Why you say
that, man?" said Xavier.  He got up as well, sitting on one of the
plastic seats across from Jim.  His knife was gone again, disappeared to
whatever alternate universe location the gangbanger hid his weapons.  Jim
wondered what other armaments the guy might have on his person.  Olik,
too: just the two guns, or did he have more?  A few knives, perhaps, or a
grenade or two?  Maybe an ankle-holster with a portable nuke?

"I say we have
time because we are still safe," said Olik.  He gestured around the
car.  "We are stuck here, but whatever is happening, it is to scare,
not to kill, yes?"

Jim nodded.

Karen held up her
hands.  "What about this?"

"Not
killing," said Olik.  "You are still alive.  Still alive,
so still we can survive.  Still we can escape this, whatever it is. 
Where there is life, there is hope, yes?"

Olik smiled. 
Karen smiled back, which was a surprise, Jim thought, considering that the
Georgian had just cracked her nose like a walnut less than a minute ago. 
But at the same time, Jim felt like smiling, too.  Because Olik was making
some sense.  They
weren't
dead, they weren't even hurt.  Not
really.  Just trapped and scared.

So they could make
it through whatever was happening.

They
would
make it.

Adolfa patted Jim, and
he understood that she wasn't just trying to buoy him up, she was also saying
that she felt better, too.  That Olik's words had given her hope. 
Given them all hope.  Even Xavier was smiling.  It was a real smile,
too.  Not the smile of a predator contemplating which piece of its
still-living prey to bite, but the smile of someone who believes he will
survive to see another day.

Jim felt a smile
cross his own face, as well.

And then the
screaming started.

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Freddy the
Perv was the one making the
noise.  Jim had completely – blessedly – forgotten the man was even on the
subway, hunched as he was in the back of the car like a dog that feared a
beating.  And from the looks Jim glimpsed on the others' faces, he could
tell they had done the same.

But they weren't
going to forget him again.  Not if they lived to be a million years old.

Freddy was
shouting, screaming,
shrieking
.  A sound almost as loud and
insistently horrifying as the one that had come out of the montage of corpses
on Karen's tablet.  Even worse, in a way, because the noise that had come
from the electronic device had been one of rage and hate.  And it hadn't
been one of
them
.  One of the six passengers in the car.

This noise, though,
the sound that was coming out of Freddy's mouth in a sustained, high-pitched
whistle, was one of pure, unfiltered pain.  And it was definitely pain
that had come to scratch out a home, a dark den, among
their
number.

"What? 
What's happening?" shouted Xavier.  Freddy didn't answer, and the
thug took a step toward him.  "You better shut your face, man, or
I'll shut it for –"

Then Xavier stopped
moving.  Stopped like he'd been paralyzed, like he'd been trapped in some
sort of force field.  If it weren't for the subtle rock of his body on the
train, Jim could almost have believed he was looking at a wax statue of
incredibly lifelike craftsmanship.

Jim looked back at
Freddy, and he saw why the man was screaming so loudly.  Saw also why
Xavier had stopped moving toward the trench-coated man.

Freddy had his
hands up in front of his face.  Normal skin tones, though they looked
somewhat sickly in the flickering fluorescent light of the subway car. 
His fingers were moving.  Not bending at the knuckles, not knotting into
fists.  They weren't moving in any way that Jim had ever seen fingers
move, in fact.  They were almost
writhing
, he finally realized with
a start.  The thumbs, too.  Like the digits were ten snakes that had
awakened to find themselves attached at the base to some horrid tumor, and were
now trying to escape from it.

At first Jim
thought Freddy's fingers looked almost boneless.  Then he realized how
wrong that was.  They didn't look boneless at all.  Indeed, that was
why Freddy was screaming so loud: underneath the sound of the scream, Jim could
hear pin-crackles, a series of crunches so tiny and dampened they were almost
delicate.

Freddy's fingers
weren't simply moving, they were being
twisted
.  Wrung like rags
between strong hands, and the bones inside them had to be turning to splinters,
then honeycombs, then jelly.

There was a moment
of blessed, terrible silence as Freddy stopped screaming.  He panted,
breaths coming in staccato bursts that made Jim think of the needle on a sewing
machine, dancing up and down.  But instead of making pillows or quilts or
comfy bits of homey goodness, this would have to be a sewing machine of the
variety that Ed Gein would have used, a needle for stitching lengths of skin
into macabre creations intended only for the enjoyment of the damned.

Freddy inhaled
deeply, a clear precursor to another scream.

Xavier cursed.

Adolfa crossed
herself.

Karen did not
speak, but Jim saw her eyes alight with horror.

Only Olik seemed
impassive.

Then there was
another crunch, this one louder than the others had been.  Freddy's
impending scream was stolen from his lungs, streaming out in an exhalation of
pain so intense it could be seen in every clenched muscle of his body.

His fingers – all
of them – suddenly bent back on themselves.  Bent double, like an unseen
muscle-man had folded them backwards, folded them in half as easily as Jim
might fold a soda can.  The tortured skin of Freddy's fingers finally gave
way, breaking at the unnatural corners that had just appeared.  Freddy's
flesh ruptured, bursting like the stomachs of so many over-gorged mosquitos,
and a fine spray of blood flew into the air.  It aerosolized almost
immediately, a cloud of red that first dispersed and then disappeared.

Adolfa started to
chant under her breath.  Jim didn't speak more than a few words of Spanish
– the tenacious holdovers from his school days – but he could tell it was a
prayer.

"
Padre nuestro, que estás en el cielo
," she said.

Popping sounds came
from Freddy's fingers.  It couldn't be bones, a strangely detached part of
Jim's mind reasoned.  They had to be Jell-O by now.  The pops had to
be the tendons giving way.

Karen retched.

Freddy inhaled
again.  Another attempt to scream.  Again, he failed to finish the
action.

"
Santificado sea tu nombre
.
  Venga tu reino
."

The perv's fingers
snapped straight again, like they had been yanked forward.  He exhaled, a
shuddering breath that would have sounded almost orgasmic in other
circumstances.  But the expression on his face allowed only one
interpretation: Freddy was in the grips of utmost agony.

"
Hágase tu voluntad en la tierra como en el cielo.
"

A horrible odor
suddenly pervaded the subway car.  Metallic and acrid, Jim had never
smelled anything like it.  His mind coughed up an image of car batteries cooking
in an industrial oven, though he had no idea why he would think of that.

"
Danos hoy nustro pan de cada día.
"

A hissing sound
joined the terrible stench that had suffused the car.  Everyone looked
around.  Jim did, too, though he already knew where the sound was coming
from.  He suspected the others probably did, too.  Perhaps they, like
him, just didn't want to see, to
know
, any more.

But they did
look.  They had to.  He knew that.  They all knew that. 
They had to look.  To see what was happening.  Because it might
happen to any of them next.  So they had to see, in order to survive.

If that was even
possible.

"
Perdona nuestras ofensas…
"

Freddy's fingers. 
No
longer bent.  But no longer straight, either.  They sagged like
putty, and then began to hiss and spit.  They grew black and charred, and
the skin sloughed off in flakes and then in sheets that left raw red meat
beneath.  This was the source of the smell, the smell of batteries cooking
in an oven, of flesh melting in the heat of the sun.

"
... como también nosotros perdonamos a los que nos ofenden
."

Then the meat
bubbled and blackened as well.  It frothed like an oily surf washing up to
a polluted shore.  And when the froth fizzed away, Freddy's fingers were…

"
No nos
dejes caer en tentación…
"

…
gone
.

"
… y líbranos del mal
."

 
Freddy
looked at his hands, at the ten cauterized nubs where fingers had once
been.  And finally, finally, he managed to do what he had been attempting
through the last moments.

Freddy the Perv
screamed.  And screamed and screamed and did not stop.

Adolfa crossed
herself.  She kissed her own still-present fingers.

"
Amen
."