Primeval (Werewolf Apocalypse Book 2) (13 page)

Sandy nodded at Craig. The engineer – or whoever it was at the intercom system – was an idiot. He should have remained silent, but instead he had given up his position, alerted the monsters that there was a tasty conductor snack in the center car.

His voice continued, “Please stay quiet and keep your movements inside the train to a minimum.”

Craig was shaking his head, looking down at his hands.

“Be advised that I have contacted the New York Transit System, and they have acknowledged our situation. When they get things under control, we will…”

In mid-sentence, the conductor screamed over the P.A., his dying shouts reverberating throughout the tunnel. Sandy heard the sound of his flesh being rendered, and the sound stopped suddenly after a short gurgling sound as the man choked on his own blood. The Lycanthropes must have torn his throat out.

Alice was crying openly now, tears streaming down her cheeks, and Sandy heard the girl gasping for breath beneath her coach’s hand. Beth glanced over at her as if asking for advice. Sandy shrugged and looked down at her Blackberry, at the comforting message from her girlfriend.

She entered her own text, a single word.

HURRY!

1:25 p.m.

“Did you hear that?” John Creed asked Michael as they headed through a tunnel that looked like every other tunnel they’d been traversing for the past twenty minutes. “What the hell was that?”

“That was the sound of someone dying over a train’s P.A. system,” Michael said.

“There’s a train ahead?”

“Sure sounds like it.”

“We can get out of this tunnel?”

Michael stopped moving, took a filthy handkerchief from the pocket of his stained jacket, and wiped his brow with it. He said, “Did you not hear that scream? Something just ripped the throat out of a man, and it happened just up ahead of us. Do you really want to go where we would surely come face-to-face with another one of those things, or maybe a whole bunch of them? Or would you rather head the other way?”

“I see your point,” John said with a nod. Then, unable to control himself, he added, “And don’t call me ‘surely.’”

“Good,” Michael said, ignoring the ancient joke. “We’re going around that tunnel.”

“Anything to avoid those monsters,” John said, following Michael as the man turned left through another passage. “You know, I’ve written stories about them for a year now. You’d think I’d know all about them, be familiar with them. Then, I see one face-to-face, and I totally turn into a scared little kid.”

“It’s good you’re scared. Those are some scary motherfucking monsters.”

“My mom always said there weren’t any monsters under the bed, in my closet. You know, when you’re young.”

“Well, your mother lied to you. There are plenty of monsters in the world. Careful here, there’s a step. Only, what she didn’t say – what no mother tells her offspring – is that the monsters are us. People are the real monsters. This damn disease just brings all that nastiness, that savagery to the surface. The monsters have a face that we can recognize as evil, instead of wearing a human mask. It’s like millions of years of evolution, of breeding and social norms, just gets wiped clean. We’re sent cowering back to the prehistoric caves.”

“You’re a philosopher, too?” John asked. “If we get out of here alive, I am writing the story of a lifetime. Everyone in New York, hell, the United States, will want to hire you.”

“Getting out of here alive – that’s a pretty tall order if there are enough of those things out there. Plus, how do we know it’s safe on the surface? I feel like whatever’s happening down here, it can’t be that isolated. What if people are changing up top, too, changing themselves, and then changing others?”

“It would be a slaughterhouse. Manhattan would be toast.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thanks,” John said. “For bringing me down. You’re a real pal.”

“Just getting your expectations in line, buddy. We have bigger issues than if you’re going to write some news story and I’m going to get a new job.”

“Well, crap.”

“So, if we go around the subway tracks, we should be able to avoid whatever mess is happening ahead. I didn’t like the sound of that scream,” Michael said. “Easiest way is to cut through the sewers.”

“I expect this is gonna get nasty.”

“Not necessarily. Sewers aren’t giant rivers of floating shit, at least not on this level.”

“Then let’s try and stay on this level, get up top, have a look around, and figure out where we stand.”

“Sounds good to me,” Michael said, turning a corner and coming to another set of rungs in the wall, acting as a ladder down to the next floor. “But we’re going to have to go down in order to go up.”

He stepped down the ladder, turning his head back and forth as he did so, scanning the area for any sign of the creatures. Michael heard water dripping, the sound reverberating through the tunnels. And underneath this sound was the gentle resonance of running water. Once he reached the platform, he climbed off and motioned for John to follow him. The journalist moved swiftly, almost jumping onto the ladder.

In the distance, they heard the sound of one of the creatures howling. Neither could discern how far away the monster was by the noise.

But the beasts had certainly inhabited the tunnels.

They’d practically made them their own.

1:35 p.m.

General Burns’ orders erupted like machine-gun fire, rat-a-tat, fast paced, and sprayed in all kinds of directions. Nicole listened intently, trying to keep her mind on her work, on gathering together what they needed, and not checking her cell phone every other minute. She had seen the text Sandy had sent her, “HURRY.” With no further information, she was assuming the worst – her lover was trapped in the car, surrounded by those things, and it was only a matter of time before they gained entrance and killed her. It made Nicole move faster, her agile mind tripping over itself to satisfy the next item on the general’s agenda.

Burns barked, “Get down to the hotel safe and get all the arms and ammunition you can retrieve from our supply. You know what they give us when we travel, just in case of this very thing happening. We’ll need all the firepower we can get if we’re infiltrating the city. Next, we’ll need food, something high energy and high carbohydrate. Buy whatever you can from the motel snack machines, even if it’s just granola bars and M & Ms. Our ride should be arriving within fifteen minutes on the roof. I had to tell Tom what’s going on, and I know we weren’t supposed to inform civilians, but we’re gonna need a way in and out. He’s using his best ’copter. Now, get to it. I need to let a few people above me know what’s happening.”

Nicole, startled, said, “What? We’re letting the brass know we’re going AWOL?”

“Just a select few of my friends,” he said, pulling a cigar out of his shirt pocket. “They can cover for us for a few hours if any commanders get too antsy about our whereabouts.” When she nodded, Burns scowled at her. “Well, what’re you waiting for? Hop to it, soldier. I wanna get in and out before anyone notices we’re even gone.”

She grabbed her vest, jacket, and quickly emptied out her gym bag and Sandy’s before running to the elevator. As she descended to the lobby, she was treated to the 101 Strings version of “Sounds Like Teen Spirit.” The ride seemed to take an eternity. Finally, when the bell went off and the doors opened, she sprinted for the gift shop.

The place was loaded with junk food, mostly unhealthy and full of artificial crap, but she discovered several packets of nuts, granola, power bars, and threw in some potato chips and candy for good measure. Bottled water was always a good idea, even if they were going into a place that still had good plumbing, so she added two bottles for each of them. At the checkout, she saw a vending machine with beef jerky and Slim Jims in it, so she purchased a few of those as well. She placed all the food in a plastic bag inside Sandy’s gym tote.

As she approached the front desk, she started talking, her words fast and clipped. “I need to get into the hotel safe.”

“If you’ll wait just a minute, I’ll…” a brunette woman said as she finished writing a message on a Post-it note.

Nicole growled. “There isn’t time. Safe. Me. You. Now.”

Her tone must have been gruffer than she’d expected. The woman straightaway opened a drawer and withdrew two keys. She led Nicole to the safe after inspecting her ID and hotel key card. She was admitted to the locked room within two minutes, and Nicole was inventorying the cache of weapons the Army made them carry around “just in case.” Looks like the Army was right on the money, this time.

She grabbed an M-9 pistol and put it in her vest pocket, along with a couple of magazines of 9mm bullets. She also placed one M-9 in the gym bag designated for Burns and then sprinkled a handful of magazines on top. She grabbed a Swiss Army knife for each of them – always good for when the bullets ran out. Kevlar vests were next. She donned hers immediately under the light jacket she was wearing with all the pockets, and she tossed the other one in Burns’ bag. Next, she pulled all six of the grenades from the shelf, putting two in the pockets of her vest and the rest in the gym bag. A portable GPS device followed, in case they got turned around in the subway.

Then, she pulled out her baby, her weapon of choice – the M110 sniper rifle. Rethinking her decision, she realized she probably wouldn’t need anything with that kind of distance accuracy, but she’d need something that could mow down a row of the Lycanthropes if they rushed her. So she chose the M-4 carbine assault rifle. She gave it a kiss on its barrel before she strapped it over her right arm. She checked the sights, then grabbed one for Burns and put four STANAG magazines in her jacket, which was becoming heavy and awkward. Nicole tossed the other six STANAG mags of 5.56 mm bullets into a bag for Burns. Finally, she tossed in a couple of heavy-duty flashlights, since they were heading for the subway.

It was a lot of firepower for a quick in and out, but she wondered if it was enough. There were a lot of variables involved in the rescue mission – how many Lycanthropes would they face, how quickly could the helicopter get them inside the city, how close would they drop to the 42nd Street entrance to the subway? She was feeling the weight of all the ammo and weapons and food supplies in her vest, and she didn’t want to impair movement, so she decided it would have to be enough.

She waved at the desk clerk, who moved over and closed the safe, locking it carefully. When the hotel employee got a look at the artillery she was wearing, she did a double take.

“This something to do with what’s happening over the river?” she asked. “You some kind of special forces or something?”

“Or something,” Nicole replied, heading for the elevator.

She punched a few keys and was on her way to the roof. The whole trip downstairs to the lobby and the safe had only taken her five minutes. She got off on the top floor and saw the stairs leading to the rooftop of the hotel. She ascended, carting General Burns’ bag of goodies along with her.

When she stepped outside, she saw General Burns waving a helicopter down to a marked helipad painted on the concrete roof. The blades were stirring up a windstorm, and she sprinted to be by Burns’ side.

She looked over the railing that surrounded the rooftop, and she was graced with a fantastic, unobstructed view of Manhattan. Black smoke billowed from several of the buildings, and broken windows were everywhere. She saw flames licking at a few skyscrapers, including the top of the Empire State. The bridges were little more than blackened, twisted metal, and the planes still flew by every few minutes, circling the parameters of the island. She saw cars, cabs, and buses abandoned or wrecked in the streets. Debris and bodies floated in the river’s current.

The chorus of screams could be heard all the way across to Brooklyn, thin, carried by the wind, until the helicopter touched down and stirred up the air even more.

It looked like the end of the world.

1:45 p.m.

Inside the subway car, parked in the middle of the tunnel, and only illuminated by a demonic red emergency light, Sandy sneaked a glance out the window. The conductor of the train had stopped screaming several minutes ago, but no one in her little band of survivors had dared to peek outside the car and see what was happening. Now and again, a shadow passed across the windows as something moved in front of one of the fading red lights.

Most of their group appeared to have calmed down for the time being. Beth had shushed Alice, who seemed to have gone into a state of shock – thankfully, a quiet state. Howard and Sylvia sat next to each other, with Sandy a little farther down the wall. Craig remained across from her, his eyes wide with fear, but he seemed alert if barely maintaining his composure.

Sandy had attempted texting Nicole a few more times, but the messages were going to her inbox. Either her lover was going to get a whole bunch of desperate sounding messages at once or else she had her phone turned off. Sandy looked down at the Apple bag on the seat above her. The iPad had seemed like a great gift at the time, but if transmissions were being blocked, it would end up as a nifty paperweight.