AfterAge

by Yvonne Navarro

  Ever since what?

  Hugh frowned and looked at the other tables. The manager was apparently trying to save on electric bills and Hugh certainly understood that, but he could still easily examine the entire restaurant. He waited at the counter by the register—and that was another thing, the counter was dirty, and didn't these damned bastards know about soap and water? Tables and chairs, some upended, stretched into the empty western end of the cafe. Was he the only one here? Where was the waitress? He snorted; Tisbee would never stand for this. Why, she'd have—

  And where the hell was she? He peered at his watch anxiously and the little numbers stretched multi-fingered hands and waved, moving too fast for him to tell the time. He tried to look at them sternly, so they would behave and let him read the clock face, but they were just too cute and when they started singing a Supertramp song that his son—and where the hell was he, besides?—had often played on the stereo, Hugh first began giggling, then dancing, and finally singing in time to the music.

  "Don'tcho look at my girlfriend!" Whirling now, faster and faster, until his concert was abruptly cut when he crashed into one of the Plexiglas windows that separated the cafe from the lightless expanse of the pedestrian way, a tunnel that ran from Michigan Avenue until it connected with the subway and ultimately the Daley Center and City Hall. It branched other places, too, like the Brunswick Building to the south, or the State of Illinois Center, though he couldn't go there because you had to go through the Daley Center and for some reason the doors at that end wouldn't open. His poor little clock people shattered and fell to the floor in jagged pieces when he hit the window, their wonderful rock-and-roll voices exploding into brief shrieks before the silence settled around him again.

  "Hell," he said indignantly as he snapped his fingers—one! two! three! "I'll take my business elsewhere! I certainly don't have time to put up with this shit, you know!"

  Hugh felt his way out—sometimes it was hard to see where the windows started and stopped, even with his darktime vision—then began skipping toward Marshall Field's. Where the basement entrance to the store and the subway met, he chose the subway tunnels instead, since he was hungry and food could sometimes be found down there if he was quiet and real careful. He crept past the ticket window on all fours so that the dried-up and scary-looking thing inside couldn't see him, then descended the frozen escalator on silent feet, down to that part of the tunnels where daylight had never, ever reached. There were things down here, monsters that had once been like the shadow things above which he sometimes visited. But these monsters were driven by starvation and insanity, and although in rare, lucid moments Hugh knew that most of his own mind had disintegrated, he was still a world apart from them. Existence in the bottom levels of the subway was all they had left, a place that offered occasional food and solid protection from a sun they no longer had the strength to avoid on their own and the only place Hugh himself could successfully hunt. Desperation had heightened their malnourished senses beyond his, and only an elemental sense of self-preservation kept his constant litany of music silent on these visits and made his movements mostly undetectable. Sometimes the tables turned and he became the hunted instead of hunter, but his better-fed frame generally let him simply outdistance his pursuers. For that, he knew, he had the boy to thank. Every so often his mind would clear and Hugh would find him; then they would talk like they had in the old days and

  There was a vague, sibilant noise in the black void to his right, beneath a bench that dated back to the 1940s when the subway first opened. The sub-tunnels where the actual trains had run were so black that Hugh had difficulty seeing in them, though his mind obliged him with pictures of how they had once been at their worst: dirty water flowing in filthy fountains from broken overhead pipes, mildew bubbling in virulent colors and patterns down the cracked walls; the deafening swell of sound as two trains roared into the same station from opposite directions. The old man froze, wondering if the noisemaker was a rat and his next meal or one of the monsters. For a split second he saw himself as an old and very wrinkled rat, gigantic, white-haired, and funky-looking, and the image nearly made him snicker aloud; then he blinked and recalled where he was. A few more seconds and Hugh picked up a furtive scurrying and the skin of his face split into a grin; the rats were down here, oh yes. Not as many but still some, if you were stealthy and patient and fast. That was the problem the monsters had—they were too damned noisy, they didn't know when to keep a LID on it, but he did, old Hugh did, and he would by-damned eat tonight.

  He slipped off the platform and onto the tracks, laying a gnarled hand against the high third rail, once a shining strip of silver along the ground, now grime-encrusted and loose. There it was, the tiniest vibration, reminiscent of the way the rail had hummed in anticipation of an arriving train. The sound came again, closer, a timid scratching that was cut off by Hugh's swift grip before the rat could escalate its startled whimper to a screech. Despite his speed, the old vampire knew immediately by the plaintive wail and sliding sounds a half block down the platform that something else had picked up on the minute scrabbling of the rodent's claws. Already that same something was dragging itself toward him, and for a moment he lost his concentration—such an elusive thing to begin with—and his hold on the rat, a large gray with jagged yellowed teeth, loosened enough to let it squeal and dig incisors into its captor's hand. So much for stealth.

  "Stupid dinner! You're supposed to be quiet!" Hugh raged as he leapt up the catwalk, then fled in the direction of the escalators. The animal issued another thin cry and he gave it a hard shake and felt the neckbone crack; no matter, alive or dead, a meal was a meal.

  Another three seconds and he was back on the pedway level and had already forgotten the monster pursuing him. As he wandered along, sucking on the dead rat like an ice cream bar, Hugh wondered again where that damned kid was and shook his head in disappointment. Tisbee was always asking and he was getting hard-pressed to answer her; besides, he had a few of his own questions, the same ones he asked her over and over but which she never answered. He passed a telephone, stopped, and carefully replaced its dangling handset; he thought about calling Tisbee, then realized he didn’t have any change.

  When he'd gone as far as he could, Hugh tossed the drained rat aside and peered through the glass doors at the insides of the basement below the Daley Center, then pushed angrily at the heavy double glass doors. At his left was the stairway leading to the plaza, which tonight was filled with deep shadows cast by the wan moonlight dribbling through the roiling cloud cover. Instead of climbing, he pressed his wizened face against the door and tried to see into the blackness beyond. Tisbee was in there, he decided. He could remember the two of them making a special trip to this same building for some kind of license decades ago, and not long after that they had dressed up in pretty clothes and stood in that place, and taken vows, made promises to each other that were supposed to have been eternal.

  "You come out of there, woman!" he bellowed abruptly. Hugh pounded on the thick glass, but he'd done this countless times and the see-through barrier remained unbreakable and impassive to his assault; along its edges gleamed a thick, welded seam of dull metal. Enraged, the old man picked up the rat carcass and hurled it at the door, where it exploded and left an art deco star of gray fur and pink intestines that slowly smeared its way to the ground. It infuriated him that this place, like the place that held the beautiful paintings from the old country, was closed to him, and maddened him even more to think that Tisbee—and that damned boy besides—might be inside.

  A snarling sound made Hugh whirl and jerk aside as an emaciated vampire, wild with hunger, swung at him. It was impossible to tell if the pathetic thing had been a man or a woman, and that it had made it up the escalator at all was a noteworthy feat. Astonishment at confronting one of those damned monsters slowed Hugh down just enough to let the wasted vampire seize his jacket and cling there like some pitiful bat as the old man smacked at it hysterically.

 
"Let go, you bad thing!" he screamed. "Bad bad bad!" His balled fist connected with the creature's head and the puny beast fell away with a soft thunk, then spied the door's savage decoration of rat entrails and crawled toward it. Once more the old man fled, leaving the skeletal night dweller searching for a trace of blood among the cooling remains of the splintered rat.

  Hugh climbed the stairs with jackrabbit speed, up and out of the subway, away from the twisting, submerged corridors and across the plaza, then back to the hulking Picasso statue, around and around, until the cotton-wadded sky above began to spin treacherously. Vertigo hit, but Hugh's trusty musical friends were there to help him stand upright and point him in the direction of the Mart. It was good to have friends, and Hugh smiled at their company and began to sing from an old rock-and-roll opera as he traveled through downtown in a pattern only he could understand.

  "See me, fee-eel me . . .

  "Touch me, hee-eeal me . . ."

  10

  REVELATION 4:7

  And the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.

  ~ * ~

  Something was scrabbling at the window.

  Deb moaned in her sleep, a soft noise slightly louder than the coo of a dove. To Alex's straining ears it sounded like a bullhorn, and combined with the monstrosity on the other side of a pane of glass that now seemed hardly stronger than a sheet of plastic wrap, it sent his heart jackhammering within his rib cage. Their sleeping bag was pushed against the south wall of windows, the warmest side and Alex's favorite. The room, once a magistrate's private chamber, was a well-lit study in shades of gray, thanks to a short-lived break in the heavy cloud cover. Alex's eyes flicked to the pale square of light thrown by the sliver of moon, and his breath hitched as he saw the blurred silhouette of a darker, more sinister shape suspended in the center of the moonglow's rectangle.

  Beside him Deb moaned again, then mumbled sleepily, as though an uninvited nightmare had joined her in sleep. Alex wanted to touch her, yet he dared not move. They were in the protective shadow cast by the waist-high sill, so far unseen by the creature that was stuck to the outside of the window like a nasty wet slug. What if it could sense, or even see, the heat of their bodies through the glass? Or what if Deb threw a hand into the square of light outlined on the carpet? Alex felt a sick certainty that the steel and concrete surrounding them offered nowhere near the armament upon which he’d always counted; how foolish of them not to have moved into a closed inner office earlier—yet the window had seemed so romantic. . . .

  As if sensing his fear, Deb's eyes opened abruptly and she started to sit up. She managed only a muffled "What?" before Alex clapped a hand over her mouth and pushed her back down.

  "Shhh," he hissed. "Be quiet!" She blinked in agreement and he relaxed his grip; her frightened gaze followed his pointing finger toward the window, then narrowed at the curious scratching sound above their heads when it came again. In one smooth movement she had the H&K pistol in her hand and Alex was momentarily shocked at her deadly speed as his fingers slid beneath the sleeping bag and drew out the machete; how strange to have made love a few hours before, their bodies joined stomach to stomach while only a few layers of soft fabric separated them from steel.

  More sound, insistent now, almost banging. Alex could feel Deb's warmth, her silky thigh still pressed along his, before he regretfully pulled away. Fear pushed them apart, segregating them into individual machines of survival. Alex's heart pounded heavily beneath the hard shell of his chest, but Deb's gun hand had been so steady it was easy for him to assume she was still calm. Was her mouth as dry as his? In spite of the survival skills honed over the past eighteen months, his palms were greasy with fear-induced sweat. Was she even frightened? There was a flash memory of the murder she'd committed, and while he acknowledged that it had been unavoidable, Alex nearly shuddered. She seemed so in control . . . had he become entangled with a woman reduced by her environment to an automated assassin?

  He rolled his eyes up to the window again. The thing was still hanging there, though it had slid to where the metal and glass met. It looked thin and cruelly elongated beyond the distortion of the glass as it stopped and began picking at the sill more quietly, as if it had become bored and could think of nothing better to do than stay and idly terrorize the prey it thought might be inside. If it possessed the strength to climb this high, why couldn't it just break in? Maybe its energy had simply run out. The beast gave a screech that sounded more like an annoyed cry through the thick glass, then it was gone. The window vibrated for a moment, as though heavy suction cups had been yanked away, then muted moonlight again flowed unimpeded through the huge window.

  Alex felt the tension drain from Deb as quickly as it did from him. Then she trembled and began to cry, her sobs coming in tiny, whimpering hitches that she struggled uselessly to conceal. All Alex could do was hold her and bask in the shameful relief of knowing she was actually capable of tears.

  Sometime later—fifteen minutes, a half hour—he kissed her forehead. "Let's move the sleeping bag in case it comes back." She nodded, and he could see her white face in the sparse light, her cheeks still wet with transparent tears in the soft, chilly dimness. They did it quickly and silently, as though they'd performed this basic chore together a hundred times, settling in an office sheltered from the windows that lined the outer walls. It was totally dark here, and the last glimpse Alex had of Deb's face was as she led the way through the doorway, her features pale, like an eerie specter floating on the air currents running past his chilled flesh. At last Deb was beside him within the sleeping bag, her body strumming with unvoiced tension. She reached for him, her hands so cold that he twitched at the shock of her touch; still, her icy fingers traced streaks of flame across his skin. The nighttime temperature had dropped drastically, but Alex hardly felt the difference.

  When dawn spilled over the tops of the buildings and daylight began to seep beneath the crack of the closed door, Alex woke her so they could make love again, confident this time that no unwanted audience could use the sounds as the means by which to hunt.

  He also wanted to look into Deb's eyes when he told her he loved her.

  11

  REVELATION 7:14

  . . . and have washed their robes, and made them white

  in the blood of the Lamb.

  ~ * ~

  Louise was in a red world. Everything was thick and slow-moving, and filled with pain. She could feel it, radiating from everything around her in vicious pulses, each spear of agony searching for HER, as if she had become a magnet to which all the suffering of this new existence must attach. She tried to move quickly through this place, wanting to flee from something that was chasing her (and she KNEW, oh yes she did, just what that WAS), but her body dragged stubbornly against the messages from her brain, as though the muscles were determined to do only the opposite, like obstinate children thwarting their mother out of spite.

  She fought on, because anything else was unthinkable. To stay in one spot was to invite death, and she wasn't ready for that, she wanted to live forever, get married, have a hardheaded child or two of her own. But those dreams were tantalizing wisps floating just out of reach, then dissolving.

  She pushed on, past the empty buildings in which light and dark things slept in unknown proximity. Both species found it imperative to kill the other for survival, one living—if such could be said—to kill, the other killing to live. The streets were lined with the shells of cars, parked years before and never reclaimed. Every vehicle was red, the ones with smaller windows darker than the others. More of the dark things rested in these metal crypts and she dared not wake them lest they join in the pursuit.

  More pain, stronger now, this time coming from a companion, someone who had joined her in flight and whose every movement and exhalation filled her with additional misery. Jo? Louise didn't think so; she couldn't imagine that Jo would ever run, or even be afraid.

  Red buildings, red cars, even the sidewalks were red, deep and shadowed exc
ept where vibrant shades of scarlet spilled from the cracked cement, streaming through like hot rays from an alien sun. Louise felt as if she fought a gale-strength wind with every foot, and each step brought a new stab of agony, blossoming cell by cell until it all centered in her hands. At last she looked down, her running mate forgotten or killed, and her hands were the only things in this dreadful place that weren't red. Instead they were yellow and green, an ugly, diseased rainbow that seeped from beneath her fingernails in disgusting, viscous droplets. Her face twisted in terror as the skin began to slough away, revealing more of the clotted matter beneath a cracking surface that had once been the tissues of her body. The pain flared threefold, a hundredfold, but all Louise could think was that she would never be able to survive without them, she would never be able to CLIMB, and God help her if they fell off—

  "Louise," someone said. "Wake up. It's only a nightmare."

  "What!" Louise came up fighting and gasping for air; for an instant she'd had the insane thought that she'd been sleeping underwater. "Dream!"

  "Yes," Jo said soothingly. "Just a dream." Jo's face, lit by the glow of a fresh candle, swam into focus. She felt Jo's touch on her forehead, cool and calming, and the tripping movements of her heart and lungs regulated; at last she could breathe almost normally. But Jesus, she was hot! "How do you feel?" Jo's voice echoed strangely in Louise's ears. Beau's little body was too warm and Louise pushed him away and decided tiredly that it must be the vastness of the church causing the voice distortion, all those empty pews. . . .