What Happens in the Darkness (7 page)

She thought about the tall man, how he had tried to grab her, how he had terrified her.

Janelle felt dizzy and was terrified of passing out. She kept moving, a sudden cold chill appearing in the stifling hot subway tunnel.

Smells—like the time her dad found the rotting mouse in the heating vent in her bedroom—oozed through the sealed subway car doors. But this smell was much worse than the dead mouse; there was a thickness to it, like she was swallowing it whole.

Then something was blocking her way, something she wasn’t sure she could climb over.

But it wasn’t rocks, as she’d thought. It—

It was a woman and a child, their bodies twisted together, the kid’s arms around the woman’s neck.

Janelle shuddered violently, wanted to shriek, and slammed her palm over her mouth. Terrified of crying out, that whatever was behind her in the darkness would hear. But unable to take the light off the horrible sight.

The only thing left on the kid’s head was below its nose. The top half was crushed and covered with something like thick red jelly. His baseball cap had been smashed into the pulp. Between his legs was a teddy bear.

“No,” she cried, unable to stop herself.

Then, from the darkness, a voice: “Janelle …” A whisper, the hint of a voice. Calling her name. Then laughter, a low chuckling, and she knew it was the bad man. Had to be.

“I’m coming …” he whispered again.

Janelle sucked in a deep breath and ran, jumping over the bodies. She tripped and scraped her leg on something sharp, falling on her knees, catching herself on her palms.

But she was away from them, and farther away from the thing in the darkness.

Steel girders crisscrossed her path, and chunks of rock and brick and concrete littered the tracks, seeming to worsen as she approached the Ninety-Sixth Street station. She managed to climb the platform and rushed toward the turnstile, her flashlight beam leading the way.

She reached the stairwell to one exit. Blocked.

She clambered across the platform to the other side, the northeast corner. Also blocked.

Poking out from beneath this pile of rocks was a pair of legs, mangled and bloody, the jeans shredded.

Janelle screamed and stumbled backward. She leaned against a wall. With a shaking hand she waved the light around. The exits were blocked. The bottom steps taunted her. She climbed back under the turnstile, back into the station.

People had apparently had the same idea to take shelter in the subway and were now crushed. Dead bodies lay scattered everywhere. More body parts, more crushed heads oozing blood and brains, and Janelle wasn’t sure how much more of that she could take.

Most bodies were piled on top of each other near the exit, as if they had been trying to escape. Janelle screamed again, covered her mouth with a filthy hand. Her stomach threatened to empty itself.

No one had survived.

She sobbed when she saw the kids. Lying side by side or on top of each other, as if they had huddled for protection. Some held hands, their small bodies broken, covered in rock. Covered in blood. She wondered where their moms and dads had gone, why they were all alone.

She became keenly aware she was sharing space with dead bodies, and her imagination kicked into overdrive. It was easy to picture them, now all bloody and mangled, so very pissed they were dead and she wasn’t, ambling toward her, arms outstretched like something out of a Mummy movie, coming after her with twisted, grabbing fingers, smelling rotten, reeking of putrid death and—

And she had to get out of there.

She turned toward the tracks but didn’t want to go. Dreaded the thought of facing those bodies by the train, of facing that darkness again. But she couldn’t stay here. Not with these dead bodies. There was no exit out of here either.

Something grabbed Janelle’s arm.

She screamed. That thing from the tunnel had caught her, that rotten tall man. He’d found her and now he had her, and now she would die too.

Whatever horrible, oozing, laughing mess that held her in its grip was planning to chew into her stomach, rip out her guts.

She yanked on her arm and tried to pull away. She aimed the light in its face.

One half of its head was crushed, the hair wet and matted with blood that looked black in the dim light. One of its eyes bulged like an overripe grape. This mess threw back her head and opened her mouth. Her teeth were shattered bits. The woman coughed and groaned.

Janelle shrieked and frantically pulled away, heard the injured woman fall to the ground as Janelle scuttled in the opposite direction, back on to the tracks. Guilt filled her when she realized she’d left the woman alone to suffer, but Janelle was too scared to turn back.

She ran the length of the platform. The entrance to the next uptown station was completely blocked by concrete.

She raised her shaking arm and shined the flashlight into the downtown tunnel. It swallowed the beam whole. But she had no choice. She would have to go back to the Eighty-Sixth Street station. Back where she came from. Back through that miserable black hole.

The hurt woman hadn’t come from the dark tunnel, Janelle thought. She’d probably been a victim of the bomb. But Janelle couldn’t go back and face her. Just couldn’t.

So whatever had been in the dark before—breathing down her back in the inky shadows, unseen but
felt
—was probably still there.

Chapter 5 

Janelle knew she needed to be more careful—a
lot
more careful—because getting injured down here would mean the end of everything. No one was coming to rescue her. No one would answer her screams for help. Even if Harry heard her, he couldn’t walk. So she would die alone in a pitch-black tomb, attacked by rats and whatever else was crawling or slithering around in the darkness.

That first step back into the tunnel had been the worst. Noises surrounded her, low growling and high-pitched squeaks and squeals, the rhythm of metallic clangs and crumbling debris. Echoing sounds, like rocks being kicked, and something smashing against metal posts.

By what, she didn’t want to imagine.

No weapons anywhere, and Janelle had been keeping an eye out for one. A metal pole, a chunk of wood, a brick. Anything solid. Anything at all. Concrete lay everywhere, but most of it was in enormous slabs, or small hand-sized chunks that crumbled when she picked them up.

She aimed the light, spotlighting her path, and she took her first few steps alongside the train, jumping over the dead mother and child. She craned her neck, straining to hear anything lurking ahead in the darkness and heard nothing.

The smell from the subway cars—stench of decaying trash, of sweat and body odor and something even more awful—had grown worse. It oozed through the closed car doors, wafted through cracks in the seams and in the reinforced Plexiglas windows.

She stopped.

The door to the next car was open.

Her breath caught in her throat. She was sure that door had been closed before. How had it gotten open?

She froze. To go back now meant death, meant being trapped for sure, meant facing that badly mangled woman, facing those dead bodies. She had to go forward. But to go forward … could she even get her legs to work?

Pressing herself against the tunnel wall, she aimed the light down the tracks and beneath the train with a hand shaking so badly she could barely control the flashlight.

Nothing there. Nothing hiding.

She took a tiny step toward the open door and sidled along the tunnel wall, bits of plaster crumbling and dusting her hair and shoulders. She touched a trembling foot to the track beneath the entrance to the car, bringing her body slowly up to meet it. Listening—for what? sounds of life, breathing, gasping, moaning … ? A snort, a laugh, a wheeze, anything at all that would cause her to leave her senses completely, something so horrible she would run blindly through pitchy tunnels, yelling and screaming for her dead mommy.

She inched past the open car door, her back to the wall.

She had to face the train—refused to turn her back to it—but no way would she shine the light inside.

She passed the open door and made it to the next car. Her breath came out in ragged, painful puffs, and dots danced in front of her eyes.

Her body refused to move any farther. Knees locked, legs quivering like jelly.

A slithering, rubbing sound beside her.

Near the open car door.

Nothing on earth could have convinced her to point a light back in that direction. She finally moved again, much more quickly than before, not caring about anything as she escaped from the horrible train and found the tracks again.

Up ahead was a figure, too far to clearly make out. But not tall enough to be the bad man.

“Hello?” she called out.

The figure wasn’t moving.

She stopped. “Hello?”

Should she run back? But to what—the subway car, the dead woman and her son?

But moving forward felt impossible.

If he was a good man, why was he just standing there? He should have said something by now.

Janelle swallowed, decided to keep moving forward. She couldn’t let him stop her.

When she was a few feet away she shined the light in his face.

Her dead father stared back. 

*** 

Walking around the compound, they passed mounds of rubble that had once been barracks and offices and official buildings.

Martin touched everything they passed. Pebbles lay strewn at his feet, and he bent to retrieve a small handful, caressing them in his palm as if they were delicate silk. “It’s worse than I imagined,” he said, gesturing at the leveled buildings. “This is horrible.”

“You were safe underground.”

“Safe.” He smiled, but his eyes were distant, humorless. “Believe me, I didn’t feel—”

“I’m sorry. Stupid thing to say.”

Martin squatted beside a Toyota-sized chunk of concrete that had formerly been the roof of the library. A daisy, the only other sign of life, jutted from between rocks, and he plucked it.

“Some things survive,” he said. “No matter what.”

“And yet you kill it.” Jeff rested against the chunk of concrete.

The moon provided the only light, full but blurred by dust and debris. Jeff doubted he’d ever see a clear night again.

“I’ll need more help,” Martin said, leaning back against the rock and lifting his face into the breeze, looking as if he were in the throes of orgasm. “We can’t do this alone.”

“Who do you plan to recruit?”

Martin grinned, the meager moonlight reflecting off his bone-white teeth. “Recruit? Ah, you military men.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Doesn’t matter. Whoever I choose will be loyal. I’ll have my army.”

“Loyal? Huh.”

Martin held the daisy up to his nose and inhaled. “Are you interested?”

“Interested in what?” But he knew.

“In joining me.”

“Not at all, Martin.”

“You’d make a wonderful second in command.”

“Not interested.”

“I could force you. I don’t have to ask.”

“Yeah, you could,” Jeff said. “But you won’t. I’ve never had to worry about this before. I never felt unsafe around you.”

“Not when there were bars separating us.”

This conversation unsettled Jeff. He changed the subject back. “So who are you planning to recruit?”

Martin stood, wiping chalky dust from the seat of his pants. “The people in this country will be in sorry shape. But that won’t matter, after. I believe siring them will be safer than trying to … recruit … enemy soldiers. I don’t know where their loyalties would lie. I suppose we could try.” He looked pensive, as if trying to decide.

Jeff glanced around the compound, looking for signs of human life. There were perhaps a couple dozen people left. He maintained the hope that a resourceful number of survivors were still scattered throughout the country, lying in wait, ready for the victory he hoped was inevitable.

This was what Jeff was doing: waiting for the right moment, creating a plan of attack.

But he wasn’t planning on doing it as a vampire.

“There are what, seven of you? How are
seven
supposed to … I mean, mathematically, is it even possible to increase your numbers enough?”

“I have the military to thank for some rather useful abilities. All their delightful experiments. If your people weren’t already dead, I’d kill them myself.”

“That doesn’t answer my question. How many?”

Martin didn’t answer.

“You said it would be easy to defeat them. You think the enemy is just going to roll over and die for you? Once they catch on and see what they’re up against, they’ll find a way to stop you.”

“Whose side are you on, Jeff?”

“Just playing devil’s advocate. I want you prepared for all possibilities.”

“Okay,” he said quietly, turning away. “Fair enough. Of course, there’s always the problem of
now
. We haven’t eaten in weeks.”

“I’m sorry about that. But there wasn’t a food source available.”

“We’re weak, need to build our strength. I’ll try to contain our meals to enemy soldiers, but I can’t guarantee anything.”

“I understand.”

“And Jeff—” Martin turned sharply to face him. “What about when this is over? Have you thought about that? You know we can’t go back to the way things were.”

Jeff wished he had an answer. He turned away, refusing to look at Martin. There was shame in what he was thinking.

He’d briefly wondered the same thing: Could they coexist? No, he’d decided. They couldn’t.

When this war was finally over, there would be no way Jeff could allow them to survive. 

*** 

This was impossible.

Janelle’s father was dead. She’d seen him lying in his bed, covered in blood, her mother shaking him, trying to wake him. Trying to bring him back from the dead.

“No,” she cried. “No!”

She lowered the flashlight to her side and squeezed her eyes shut. Sobbing now, her breath hitching.

“Dah-daddy?” she stammered, terrified to look. More terrified he would answer.