Darkbound (9 page)

"Ung-ung-ung
."

Freddy reached
out.  And the flesh of his fingerless hand began to peel away, to shear
off in long strips like he was being flayed by some unseen knife.

Jim started to
scream.  Adolfa shrieked as well.  Xavier began muttering every curse
word Jim had ever heard of and a few he had never known existed.  Only
Olik and Karen were silent.

The flesh peeled
from Freddy's hands.  When it got to the hem of his trench coat, the coat itself
fell to pieces, revealing a man wearing a Green Lantern shirt and a pair of
Bermuda shorts that were far too bright for comfort.  Jim's stomach roiled
at that for some reason.  He was still screaming.  So loud that he
couldn't hear the noise Freddy – or anyone else – was making.

Freddy's shorts and
shirt fell to pieces as well.  He was wearing only ratty briefs
underneath, stained and dirty-looking.  Then those, too, were gone and he
was nude.

And still the flesh
pulled from his bones.  Skin first, leaving glistening red muscle. 
Then the muscle itself.  And not just hands anymore.  Arms, feet,
legs.  Freddy's genitals were ripped off him in a spray of blood –

(
how's he alive
how's he alive he's bleeding everywhere so how is he alive let him die someone
please just let him die let him die!
)

– and then the only
skin on his body was that on his face and head.

Jim couldn't keep
screaming.  He stopped, and a strange numbness crept over him.

This isn't
real.  It can't be.  Things like this don't happen to people.

Then there was a
deep shredding noise.  Freddy, still screaming his tongueless scream,
jerked.  The skin of his body, like everything else, had disappeared, and
now the muscles of his calves and forearms tore free of the bones.

Here
to
there
, and the
muscles and tendons and ligaments were gone.  Bare white-yellow bone and
cartilage was all that remained.

And still –
impossibly – Freddy screamed.

The muscle and
flesh of his upper legs and upper arms came next.  Freddy fell to the
floor, laying in a pool of blood and the soaked remains of his clothing. 
His head was still tilted up to look at his fellow passengers, his forever-open
eyes staring at them pleadingly.

The flesh pulled
off his trunk, baring ribs and organs.  The organs of his lower trunk spilled
out, intestines and kidneys and liver sliding across metal…

… and then no
longer
here
, but
there
, and gone.

Freddy was still
screaming.  Still screaming even when his heart was pulled from his
ribcage, still screaming even when his lungs were yanked free.

"How is
this?" said Karen.  She sounded strangely like a little girl, no
longer the high-powered lawyer but instead a young child who has found out that
the monsters are not in her closet but instead rule the world.

No one answered
her.

There was one final
crackling noise.  The entirety of Freddy's skeleton seemed to implode, as
though caught in an invisible trash compactor.  His head, too, started to
warp and distort.

But he still
screamed.  His eyes still stared.  Still pleaded for help.  For
mercy.  For anything.

For anything.

But there was no
help to be had, no mercy to be given.  Jim watched like everyone else as
Freddy the Perv's head was compressed to half its normal size.  The eyes
bulged, the brains started to press out of every orifice.

The head was a
quarter-size, then one-eighth.  Then gone.  Gone, but still Freddy
screamed.  Somehow he screamed.

And the subway
continued on.

================

================

The screaming
finally stopped.  At
least, Jim was fairly certain that it did… but he couldn't be
absolutely
sure.  Because he kept hearing it.  Kept hearing phantom echoes of
the sound in his mind.  Kept hearing Freddy shriek "They're touching
me" and then dissolve into a pool of blood and cloth and nothing.

He could tell the
others felt like that, too.  That they wanted someone to reassure them
that what they had just witnessed had never really happened; that it was in
their imagination, and that they could find comfort in the knowledge that they
were merely insane.

But no one could
offer that encouragement, Jim knew.  Because if one of them was mad, then
they
all
were.  They were all in this thing together, they were all
here experiencing this, and no one could say, "No, don't worry, I didn't
see a thing."

After the screaming
stopped bouncing off the plastic-and-metal walls of the subway car, no one
moved for a long time.  Even Xavier, who seemed compelled to express
himself at all times – either with profanity or with his knife – was utterly
silent.  Each person who remained standing sank to the closest seat, as
though taking comfort in the hard embrace of the poorly molded plastic.

Surprisingly,
Adolfa was the first one to move.  She squeezed Jim's arm and then got up,
moving around the car.  She tried the side doors, but only
half-heartedly.  Jim understood that: even if they
did
open, what
would she do, jump out?  The whine of the motor had continued to grow
higher and higher.  The lights outside were skipping by so fast they
looked like lasers, continuous neon blurs that Doppler-shifted from color to
color as they passed. 

After pulling on
the doors Adolfa wandered, apparently without goal or intent, before stopping
in front of one of one of the windows.  She looked at the various
advertisements and public service announcements and bits of graffiti that coated
most of the free surfaces on the car before finally settling before one of the
maps on the walls that showed the train route.  She stared at the bright
colors, the circles and squares and numbers and letters as though they might
hold some key to what was happening to them.

Olik moved
next.  He shifted to sit next to Xavier, and started murmuring into the
other man's ear.  Xavier didn't seem to hear him at first, but after a
moment he began to nod.  Then they moved to the front of the car and
continued to converse in whispered tones, looking back at the others from time
to time.  Jim worried about that.  He also knew there wasn't a damn
thing he could do about whatever they were planning: he was just a normal guy,
just a person hoping to get back to the two people who mattered most to
him.  Not a superhero or a Navy SEAL or someone with any hope of taking on
two well-armed and clearly dangerous men.

And Karen… Karen
stared straight ahead.  Her eyes followed the flashing lights that
streaked past the windows, but nothing else on her body moved.  She seemed
to be withdrawing into herself, and Jim thought it very likely she would be
completely catatonic before much longer.  And though it was tempting –
extremely tempting – to just leave her alone and let her take care of herself,
he finally slid across the subway car until he was sitting beside her.

"You
okay?" he said.

"Why do you
care?"  Her voice was still deep, still sexy, but under it he could
detect a jagged edge of madness, a cliff's edge that she was dancing far too
close to.  Or perhaps not dancing, but leaning over.  Contemplating a
leap that would end some unknown pain by casting her beyond reason's grasp,
beyond the clutches of sanity or rational understanding.  And he
understood that: where there is no sanity, there can be no pain.  It is
only the sane who can truly suffer.

"That's an
honest question," he said with a chuckle.  "Aside from the milk
of human kindness that runs thick through my veins?"  Karen looked at
him.  Her expression clearly showed where she thought people could put
their milk of human kindness, and how long they could leave it there.  Jim
tried to chuckle again, but it turned into a cough.  His throat was
dry.  He suddenly wondered what was going to happen if people started getting
hungry and thirsty.

If we survive
long enough to
get
hungry and thirsty
.

"Okay,"
he said, "how about I care because if you go nuts that's one more thing
I
have to worry about in here?"

She snorted. 
Then looked at him.  It was a frank, appraising look of the sort he was
unused to.  People in modern society were taught to hide themselves. 
Honesty is the best policy, except when actually communicating with
people.  Then be oblique.  Be opaque.  Lie a bit, because the
truth is far too frightening to share in polite company.

That was part of
what he loved about Carolyn.  She was a no-b.s. kind of gal.  And it
looked like Karen was cut from that cloth.  Again he realized how
beautiful she was.  Crimson still stained her hands, still dyed the
sleeves of her outfit, but she had wiped away most of the blood from her nose
where Olik had punched her.  And she was gorgeous.

"You're a good
man," Karen said abruptly.

Like her stare, the
directness of her statement caught Jim somewhat off guard.  "What
makes you so sure?" he said.  It was the only thing that came to
mind, but it was also a
good
thing, because he realized that it was the
kind of question that would get the woman talking, get her out of the funk she
had been in danger of slipping into.

Karen
shrugged.  Her stained fingers tightened again on her satchel. 
"Part of my job."

"Lawyer?"
he said.

"Acquisitions,"
she said with a tight smile.  "I have to know people." 
That frank look returned, like a jeweler looking at a gem for possible
purchase.  "And you're a good man."

He shrugged. 
"I try."

"I like good
people.  They're predictable."

Again her statement
caught him off-guard.  "So are bad people."

She nodded. 
"I like them, too."

"Just not
people in the middle?"

Another nod. 
"Something like that."

"You going to
be all right?"

She looked toward
the back of the car.  The violet smears and crimson-soaked bits of cloth
that were all that was left of Freddy.  "I don't think that's an
option for any of us."

Jim forced a smile
onto his face.  "Think positive," he said.

"You one of
those New Age nuts who believes happy thoughts can cure cancer?" she said.

"No, but I
think positive attitudes keep us sharper than despair."

She nodded at this,
as though conceding a point in a debate.  "You a shrink or
something?" she said.

"What makes
you say that?"

"You talk like
a shrink."  She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.  She looked
like she was consciously trying to assert control of herself.  "And I
told you – I know people."

Jim smiled. 
"I do come into contact with a lot of... troubled people."

"A
shrink."  Not a question this time.  Karen almost smiled.

The lights went out
again.  Xavier cursed.  Adolfa hurried back toward Jim and sat beside
him.  He held her hand.  Human contact in the face of the
unknown.  Maybe it wouldn't stop whatever was happening, but then again,
maybe it might.  Who could tell?

At least it wasn't
pitch black this time.  The maintenance lights could still be seen outside
the cars, streaking past so quickly that each looked like a continuous strip of
illumination rather than an isolated patch of brightness in an otherwise dark
tunnel.

Then the lights
outside
did
dim.  Not like they were losing power, or like the
windows were growing opaque, but in much the same way that the sun dims when a
cloud passes in front of it.  Like a shadow was moving around the car.

Jim thought he
caught sight of something.  He flicked his gaze to the side, but whatever
it was, it was too fast for him to spot.

"What is
this?" Olik muttered.  He sounded worried.  So even the
imperturbable Georgian had been rattled by the way Freddy had – well,
died
seemed like too tame a term for what had happened to him.  Even
murdered
didn't seem to capture the violence, the mayhem.

"Don't know,
bro," said Xavier.  Jim noted the term of familiarity.  He
wondered what the two men had been talking about while he was chatting with
Karen.  He suspected it wasn't anything that would bode well for the other
passengers.

There!
  He turned quickly in the
other direction.  Almost caught a glimpse of it this time.  Was that
a hand?  A palm pressed against the glass of one of the windows?  Jim
didn't think that could be possible – after all, what kind of person would be
able to hold onto the outside of the rocketing subway car? – but that was the
impression left in his mind after his eyes saw only darkness and the continuing
sizzle of the outside lights in whatever tunnel to nowhere they had found
themselves.

The others were
turning this way and that as well, and there were muffled gasps and
gulps.  Jim suspected they were all seeing – or
not
seeing – the
same thing he was.  Bits and pieces of nothing.  Impressions of hands
slapping at the glass.  Palms pressed on the outside of windows on a train
going far too fast for anyone to be holding on outside it.

"We gonna do
this, bro?" said Xavier.

Olik looked at the
gangster.  Then at the others.  Something creaked, a dry but familiar
sound, and Jim realized it was the sound of Karen's fingers tightening on her
leather satchel.  She was scared.  Not only of what was now happening
outside the subway car, but of what the two men within might be talking about.

Where are the
real monsters? Are they outside the car, or in here among us?

Jim couldn't answer
that question.  He hoped the only thing he had to worry about was whatever
was causing this strange nightmare.  But looking at Olik and Xavier, he
couldn't be sure.

The movement
outside continued.  Just out of view.  Hands, pale in the flashing
lights, gone as fast as they had come.  And now a flash of hair, long but
thin and unkempt.  Again, gone before Jim could gather more than an
impression of what he was seeing.

Olik nodded at
Xavier.  The thug reached into his coat, then stopped when a sound
shattered the silence of the car.  Jim looked toward it.  Everyone
did.  And he knew what he'd see.  Before he looked, he knew.

The door at the
front of the car, the door that had been locked, the door whose glass had
turned dark as the deepest pit.

It was open.