Creepers

by Robert Craig

  You’re one smart sonofabitch, Willie complimented himself as he flicked his cigarette lighter and touched its burning tip to the sides of the pile. The dry paper and wood went up like a gasoline-soaked rag. Within seconds roiling clouds of black smoke covered the platform. Willie cautiously pushed the wooden door, managing to open it six or so inches, and began fanning the smoke into the station. An inward draft, created by a fault in the room’s ceiling, greedily sucked the smoke inside. A second later the room was in suffocating darkness.

  Willie crouched at the door, holding the hunting knife tightly in his hand. The creepers scampered out, low to the ground, their high-pitched screeching sounding more like angry mice than cannibals. Their sound didn’t fool Willie; he knew what they were capable of. One of them saw him and leaped onto his chest, knocking Willie over, its hands wrapped around his throat Willie choked with disgust and swung his knife hand around, driving the entire blade into the thing’s spine; then he twisted and pulled the blade out. A fountain of blood cascaded across the floor, and the creeper released him with an unearthly shriek.

  The cry alerted the others. Through the smoke they saw Willie and immediately formed a semicircle across the platform in front of him. Willie was backed up against the wall, trapped, literally cornered. The knife now felt light and useless in his hands. But it was his only protection, so he gripped it tighter and waited. The four creepers started in unison to move toward him, their bodies rolling and undulating as if they’d been hobbled. Their eyes were wide with anger, and they held their hands out before them, flexing their fingers in such a way that Willie saw only the deadly nails. They bared their teeth, as a rabid dog does, and opened their mouths wide, stretching and loosening the jaw muscles to accommodate flesh. Thick, dark tongues darted over their teeth and flickered out into the air like snakes testing the outside temperature.

  As if some unheard signal had commanded them, the creepers all leaped at once without warning. The impact of the four bodies threw Willie against the wall, but he was prepared for the attack and immediately responded by lashing out with the knife. He caught one creeper in the abdomen. With a howl of pain the creature tumbled back and fell off the ledge onto the tracks.

  The others ignored their companion with an enraged animal determination to kill his killer. One of them slipped partway behind Willie and fastened its teeth deep into the muscle of his thigh. Willie tried to wrench the monster off, but it had locked itself onto him like a leech. But right now he had other problems-one of the other two creepers rocked back on its haunches, then jumped forward and landed on Willie’s chest, baring its teeth, then biting into the vulnerable muscles of his right shoulder.

  The pain so stunned Willie that he almost dropped his knife, but he knew that meant death. And through the torrent of agony he held the knife and swung it up and around the back of the creeper until he held it in an embrace, the knife tip touching his own throat. Then suddenly Willie drew the vicious blade back around the creeper’s neck and across the spine from the jugular vein to the carotid artery. The creeper immediately released him and fell back, grappling with his neck in a vain effort to stem the gushing tide of blood. It staggered a few feet, then fell facedown on the floor.

  In response the creeper that still gnawed at Willie’s leg drove its teeth deeper. Willie screamed and raised the gory blade over his head, and with every last bit of strength he had, drove the blade up to the hilt into the creeper’s head, crushing the skull and piercing its brain. He withdrew the knife and attacked-again and again and again, until the blade was slimy with blood and bits of brain. Dead, the creature fell away like the last leaf of autumn.

  Breathing heavily, nearly fainting from fear and pain, Willie staggered toward the last creeper, who backed away from him, its eyes now wide with terror. Willie Hoyte was too powerful an adversary to attack. The creeper’s three dead companions were proof that this man was too much for them. The creeper ran to the edge of the platform and leaped out onto the tracks. Willie lifted the knife by its tip, coiled his arm back over his shoulder, and threw. The blade landed squarely between the creeper’s shoulders, with only the stag-horn handle protruding. The monster yelped and fell forward onto the tracks, twisting and turning in a vain attempt to remove the knife. After a minute it stopped, then lay quietly on its stomach, the silence broken only by an intermittent cry of agony. Then there was total silence.

  Willie’s leg was bleeding pretty badly. He pulled off his shirt and knotted it above the wound in an effort to stem the flow of blood. Now he had to free Corelli and Louise. All he had to do was make it the last few feet to the creepers’ lair and they’d be home free. It shouldn’t be hard. The creepers were all dead. Willie’d killed them all. Except that one-and there wasn’t much chance he’d be coming back soon.

  Willie tied a piece of his shirt over his mouth for easier breathing and plunged into the station, which was still thick with black, acrid smoke. He blinked furiously, dislodging a fountain of tears, and nearly fell over Corelli. Louise had moved to a far corner, her knees drawn up to her chin; she looked dazed, stunned. Even through the haze Willie could see written on her face the damage that this experience had done.

  “So, here I am gettin’ you out of a tight squeeze once again, Detective Corelli,” Willie said softly to defuse his own panic. His wounded leg throbbed intensely, and in the past few minutes he’d begun to feel a little light-headed and dizzy.

  Corelli wriggled on the floor and frantically shook his head, unable to say anything because of the gag. Mistaking Frank’s frantic warning as playful anger at being at his mercy, Willie took his time ungagging him. “You know, Corelli, maybe I should leave you just like this. We might all be better off if you had less to say.”

  Corelli’s eyes widened farther, and Willie laughed again, enjoying the power he had over the cop. It wasn’t a comic scene, but laughing was far better than remembering the terror he’d just been through outside. “Okay, okay, have it your way,” he said finally, unplugging the gag.

  “Behind you!” Corelli screamed.

  Willie feinted to the left and spun around. The knife just grazed his skull as it hurtled against the far wall. Confronting him now, was the biggest creeper Willie had ever seen. The others were toadlike, crawling things; this one stood well over five feet tall and was distinctly human-looking. Still, there was that crazed hate in his eyes that translated as pure animal hunger.

  The creeper lunged, and once again Willie feinted, this time to the right. He’d worked out for a while at a local gym and had even been in a few amateur boxing events uptown. His agility came in handy. Seething with anger and frustration, the creeper crouched low for a moment, sucked in its breath, then sprang straight at Willie’s throat Willie responded by dropping to his knees while driving his fist into the creeper’s belly. The creature landed, crumpled into a ball, clutching its stomach.

  At that moment, as Willie watched the thing writhing in agony on the dirty subway floor, something inside him snapped. Willie lunged onto the creeper. It wrapped its legs around him and surrounded him with its arms, but Willie had the advantage.

  His hands closed around the creeper’s throat, and he squeezed, digging deep into the thing’s neck until he felt the wildly pounding pulse under the pads of his fingers. The creature’s head snapped forward, the thick tongue darting dangerously close, but to no avail. Willie counted the heartbeats until they slowed, then slowed some more. And when the pulse had dropped nearly to zero, Willie squeezed harder, snapping the cartilage. An immense sense of euphoria welled up inside him, and only when the creature’s head lolled off to one side, only when he saw its tongue bulging from its mouth as its heart stopped beating, did Willie realize he had an erection.

  “He’s dead, for Christ’s sake,” Corelli yelled through the sooty darkness. “Let go of him… come untie me.” He’d seen men react to death like this before, and it still rattled him.

  Corelli’s voice pulled Willie back to reality. He scrambled away from
the corpse and untied Frank. And when he was done, Willie fell back against the wall and began to cry. His sobs were a soft counterpoint to the death struggle that he’d acted out minutes before. But Willie’s anguish barely drowned out a new sound-the sounds of footsteps and murmuring voices outside in the subway tunnel.

  “Go find out what the hell that noise Is, Willie,” Frank commanded. He had to tend to Louise, who looked as if she were in shock.

  But Willie just sat there, his head buried deep in his hands. Corelli noticed the torn pants leg, then the makeshift tourniquet. Shit, Hoyte had been hurt! And he hadn’t said anything, or complained. Frank forgot Louise for the moment and scuttled out of the room to the edge of the platform, where he lay low, watching a sight that sent a shiver of terror up his spine: the tunnel was filled with creepers of all sizes running down the tracks, stumbling over each other, fighting to get away. From what?

  Corelli edged farther out onto the platform and peered into the darkness. At first he saw only flickering lights and heard the dull pings of what sounded like automatic rifles. Then, in a burst of burning liquid death from a flamethrower that lit up the tunnel, Frank saw the men, the grim-faced National Guardsmen as they fanned out across the tunnel, sweeping south-right toward this station!

  Corelli momentarily considered calling for help, but he knew that to signal the Guard was to invite death. They didn’t have time to distinguish him, or Willie, or Louise from the creepers they were slaughtering. Frank had been in the service; he knew what it meant to be on a perilous mission. You didn’t think, you just acted. You protected yourself and shot everything in your path. You asked questions, sure-after you killed.

  “We’ve got to get the hell out of here,” Frank yelled as he stumbled back into the station. Louise now sat next to Willie, holding Lisa in her arms. “The National Guard’s on its way, they’ve got flamethrowers… that’s why the subway is closed.”

  “But we-” Louise began.

  “They’re going to burn this place to ashes in the next couple of minutes.”

  “We goin’ back into the tunnel?” Willie asked, wide-eyed. He pulled himself painfully to a standing position. Man, he felt bad. Something weird was going on in his head.

  “We can’t go back into the tunnel; it’s full of creepers, and the Guard’s heading them south.”

  Lisa stirred, and Louise kissed her forehead. “Frank, we’ve got to get Lisa to a hospital.”

  “Dammit, Louise, we’ve got to get all of us out of here first.” He scanned the station looking for a way out. There were the two stairwells, nothing else. It was possible one of them might be an exit. The creepers might have planned an alternative escape route. It was a long shot, but it was their only shot. “Give me Lisa.” Corelli pulled her from her mother’s arms. “We’re going up the stairway.”

  “Which one?” Willie asked.

  “That one first.” Corelli pointed to the right side. “If it doesn’t work out, the other one.”

  “Sounds good to me. Let’s get goin’, man.” Willie slipped his arm through Louise’s for support He was beginning to see double.

  Corelli flicked on his flashlight and started up the stairs. Two steps up, he wished there’d been another way out-if this were a way out at all-for the bones were like a silent testament to the creepers’ appetite. Corelli stumbled on a pile of bones; they dislodged from their resting place and clattered down the steps behind him.

  Far out in the subway, the sounds of the advancing troops was growing louder. Corelli stopped and listened; he was able now to distinguish voices and shouted commands. Any moment the Guard would discover the station and-if he remembered anything about the military mind-burn and blast the living shit out of it With that in mind Frank quickened his pace up the stairs, scattering bones as if they were dominoes. The image of his little group of survivors roasted a golden brown by the flamethrowers pushed him on. No, Frank Corelli wasn’t going to die today. Nor were his friends. Not in the subway. Not because he’d been caught in a dead end.

  But the stairway ended abruptly at a wall constructed at the time the station was closed. Corelli put Lisa down and examined the last few feet of wall, hoping to find traces of an opening through which they might escape. There was a fault down here somewhere; the smoke from Willie’s fire had proved that. But where the fuck was it? He was faced with a solid wall. Jesus! He sat on the top step momentarily, wondering how to tell the others he’d failed. How to tell them they were about to be burned to death. Goddammit! There wasn’t even time to explore the other stairway. He pounded his fist on the wall in anger and frustration.

  There was a cracking sound; then his fist was covered with a fine white powder. Frank flashed his light where he’d hit the wall; there, about the size of a big man’s torso, was a patch of plaster lighter in color than that surrounding it. Using his fist, Corelli put a hole in the wall with one swift punch, and a river of chalky silt poured down into his lap. He pounded the wall like a madman, until, a minute later, a shaft of dull gray light filtered onto the stairway.

  “I don’t know if this is a way out, friends, but we’ve got nothing to lose,” Corelli said triumphantly. “You wait here.” He climbed into the gaping hole. The room he found himself in was actually the landing of the original stairway where it turned ninety degrees up toward the street He flashed the light up and ascertained at once that the exit to the street was sealed forever.

  But this had to be the creepers’ emergency escape hatch, and as such, there had to be a way out…back to the tunnel…behind the advancing National Guard. A carefully arranged stack of boards leaning against the wall provided the solution: behind them a hole had been cut through the wall. It led into a narrow tunnel and then to… What? It didn’t matter; it was a way out!

  Corelli jumped back through the hole and swept Louise into his arms. “I’ve found a way out Come on.”

  But his excitement was overshadowed by the harsh voice of a Guardsman who’d found the outside entrance to the station. “Burn the fuckers out,” his strident voice yelled. Then it was drowned out by the nauseating sound and smell of the flamethrowers’ fiery tongues.

  Corelli pushed Louise and Willie through the hole before handing Lisa in to her mother. Then he jumped in himself as the room began to fill with deadly fumes and inhuman heat from the burning napalm. He guided them through the anteroom, through the narrow opening into the tunnel. They walked, practically running, until Willie finally stopped them.

  “I can’t go on, man. I’m too sick.” He was nearly blind from the pain, and his head hurt so bad. He kept thinking strange things now, like he wanted to run away, run deep into the subway, into its loving dark arms. Shit, what was happening to him?

  “You can’t stop now, Willie,” Corelli said. “We’re too close to getting out.” He swung the flashlight around toward him.

  “Put that fucker out!” Willie shouted. The light hurt his eyes profoundly. “You go ahead, you and Louise. I’m safe here. You come back for me.”

  “No way, Willie,” Frank said.

  “Frank, maybe we should. It’s what Willie wants… and don’t forget Lisa.” Louise pulled the blanket up closer around her daughter’s head.

  “Listen to your girlfriend, Corelli. Don’t worry “bout me. Just get the hell out; leave me be.”

  Corelli thought a moment, then patted Willie lovingly on the arm and turned away. Louise kissed him on the forehead, and a moment later they began to walk deeper into the tunnel.

  Willie closed his eyes. Man, he felt like he was going to die. Every nerve in his body hurt. The wound in his leg felt like someone was poking around in it with a red-hot pair of scissors. Despite the pain, he still felt like running away, getting back into the subway, where it was dark and warm. And strangest of all, he was hungry.

  Five minutes later Frank, Louise, and Lisa were in a small workman’s utility room adjacent to the Ninety-sixth Street station. The tunnel had ended abruptly behind another false wall, and it was only a matte
r of minutes before Corelli had kicked his way through. They both wanted to stop and rest, but they would never be safe until they got out of the subway entirely. Cautiously they left the room and followed a narrow catwalk a few feet above the tracks.

  They appeared just as a group of Guardsmen entered the station. Tom Larabee stopped, aimed his rifle, and was about to fire when he took a close second look at this motley group. Something was wrong here. He ran over to them, rifle drawn. “What the fuck are you people doing here?” he screamed as he realized these were normal folks, not those creepy things they’d been cleaning up.

  “You know Captain Stan Dolchik?” Corelli demanded.

  “Sure I know him-he’s in charge,” Larabee said carefully. “Why?”

  “I want to talk to him. I’m Frank Corelli of the TA,” he said arrogantly enough to impress the lieutenant. “But first, you’d better get this little girl to a hospital.” Larabee began to protest, but Corelli cut him off. “We just fought off an army of those things, then narrowly avoided your men with their flamethrowers. I’m in no mood to argue with you, Lieutenant.”

  Larabee called one of his men to escort Louise and Lisa out. Corelli promised he’d see her later. After they’d gone, Frank turned his attention once more to Larabee. “You have any special procedures for bites from these things?”

  “New York Mercy Hospital is handling that.”

  Of course, Corelli thought. But he said, “A friend of mine’s back in the tunnel, and he’s been hurt. Send in some men and see to it he gets to Mercy right away.”

  “Yessir.” The lieutenant snapped to, responding instantly to the sound of authority in another’s voice.

  Fifteen minutes and four cigarettes later, Corelli watched as Larabee’s two men returned from the tunnel-alone. “Where the hell is Willie Hoyte?” he demanded, jumping to his feet.

  “We don’t know, sir. We followed the tunnel all the way back to the burned-out station. Your friend was gone.” The young Guardsman looked distinctly bored.