Primeval (Werewolf Apocalypse Book 2)

by William D. Carl

  She smiled. “If we get out of here, Howard, I am buying you the biggest damn steak dinner you’ve ever eaten. Thanks.”

  “For what?”

  “For helping me see some things a little clearer.”

  “Have you gotten any word from her yet?” he asked. “Your girl?”

  “No. But I know in my heart she’s on her way to us right now.”

  He nodded sagely, then stood and moved over to Sylvia, who was resting horizontally on an orange plastic seat. He removed his jacket and draped it over the old woman. She looked up at him with appreciation and smiled warmly.

  This is what it’s all about, Sandy thought. Caring, helping others. We can’t lose that bit of human compassion to some virus. We can’t lose it to anything. That would make us just as savage and bestial as those monsters.

  Her gaze fell upon Craig Chew. He was concentrating attentively on Alice’s sleeping body, his eyes never moving from the girl. He was sweating, beads of liquid covering his forehead, and his eyes were halfway closed. His mouth was open, and he wiped it on the back of his hand.

  Sensing he was being observed, he turned toward Sandy and bowed his head to her. She didn’t know how to read this signal. Was he acknowledging her presence or trying to tell her his intentions if the girl awoke?

  We can’t lose that bit of human compassion to some virus, Sandy thought again. We can’t lose it to anything.

  As she settled back in her seat, she saw the male lion’s ears twitch. It raised its head and blinked at the darkness around it. She waited for it to lay its head back down on its front legs, but instead it turned to the tunnel, sensing something. In a moment, it was on its feet. The female stood beside it.

  They roared in outrage, creating a hellish harmony while something hidden by the shadows stirred in the darkness of the tunnel.

  Chapter 33

  2:54 p.m.

  Nicole was sprinting past the fountain where the dead horse lay disemboweled. She jumped on top of the spilled carriage behind it, noting the top-hatted, tuxedoed driver fallen beside the cart, his head and hat a good four feet away from his body. From her lookout site, she scouted the area as Burns flanked the carriage, using it as a shield.

  There were six of the creatures heading toward them from the south end of Bryant Park, four more sprinting across the construction site, leaping over the bodies strewn haphazardly around the taped-off mud pit, and four more coming from the area of the library. They were all human Lycans, and they were hurtling toward the couple at a heart-stopping speed. Nicole was shouting out the creatures’ positions to Burns, who turned on them with his assault rifle, spewing bullets from the barrel of the M-4.

  The four from the library area were the first to fall, a whole clip emptied into their bodies. They dropped into a heap of fur and claws at the edge of a café and statue. One fell forward onto a table, its long legs hanging over the end.

  “South, six more,” Nicole yelled, pointing at the monsters that had dropped to all fours and were gaining speed.

  Taylor Burns changed the clip on the rifle and began firing again, aiming for the head, usually hitting his targets. Two fell immediately. One tripped over a fallen comrade and tumbled across the grass. Burns continued shooting the things, which didn’t seem to understand the concept of guns or bullets. They were primitives, savages, all tooth and claw and instinct and hunger. They saw meat, and they wanted to tear into that meat.

  Nicole fired at the cluster running at a diagonal across the southern side of the park. She took her time, discharging single shots, sighting them up perfectly, and nailing four of the six before Burns had finished eliminating his own targets. He spun and started firing at the new group, taking one down while Nicole finished off her last.

  “I like it up here,” she said. “Kind of nice to be able to see on every side.”

  “You’ll run out of bullets eventually,” Burns said.

  She took aim at a stray medium-sized creature that rushed from the tree line. It looked like it had once been a German Shepherd, but its angles and teeth were all wrong. She fired, and the beast yelped in pain as it crumpled to the ground.

  “Come on,” Burns said. “Let’s get out of the open.”

  “Okay,” she said, hopping off the carriage.

  “I got an idea!” Burns shouted, and he rushed to the bulldozer at the edge of the construction site. The driver’s seat was surrounded by a wire mesh, and the key was still in the ignition. “Come on,” he cried, opening the door.

  Nicole hopped inside, noting that another pack of Lycans had appeared from beyond the library. Burns climbed in after her and took a seat, shutting the door behind them. Nicole sucked in a deep breath, feeling safer with the metal grates between the monsters and herself.

  “Can you drive this thing?” she asked.

  “Hell, girl, I can drive anything.”

  He cranked the ignition, and it caught. As he put the bulldozer in first gear, it shuddered, and two of the beasts jumped onto the hood of the machine. Diesel fumes filled the air as the creatures tore at the crisscrossed grating that separated them from their targets. The metal held, and the beasts tore into it with their teeth, snapping off several fangs before the bulldozer lurched forward. One fell off and was crushed beneath the tread of the construction vehicle while the other continued to yank and bite at the metal grate. Nicole aimed through the wires and shot it in the forehead. She removed her spent clip and punched in another one from her vest pocket.

  “We’ll go this way,” Burns replied. “We should be able to get farther in this baby than on foot. At least until the stalled traffic gets too bad. That’s 42nd Street, so we follow that for a block and we end up at Times Square. Once we get down into the subway station, well, that’s when things are gonna get ugly.”

  He drove north across the mud hole of a construction site, passing by a row of park benches. Some of them had dead bodies on or under them. One corpse was even propped up, her head at an unnatural angle, almost as if she had merely gone to sleep – if you didn’t notice the bone sticking out of her collar.

  The bulldozer creaked and moaned as it traversed the park, gears grinding, and Burns steered it toward a coffee kiosk on 42nd Street. Along the way, several Lycans attacked the machine, but the general maneuvered it so most of the beasts were crushed beneath the wheels. Once, he raised and lowered the blade of the dozer, slicing one squirming monster in half. When they reached the edge of the muddy construction area, near the Ping-Pong tables, they stared down the steps to the street below them.

  “We chancing this?” Burns asked.

  Nicole gave a shrug. “If we can get to street level, we could drive this clunker all the way to the subway, knock all those cars out of the way as we go.”

  “Good idea.”

  He grinded the bulldozer into low gear and the machine staggered forward. When the front of its treads smacked into the stairs, its nose dipped, and the dozer rattled as it skidded down the steps. Hitting a bump, it lurched to the right, threatening to tip over onto the passenger side. Nicole shouted and grabbed hold of a safety strap. The machine righted itself, but it soon sank its treads into a second hole in the steps. The tractor groaned, tilted sideways, and crashed onto its driver’s side. Nicole fell into Burns’ lap, and his head hit the wire mesh. The bulldozer continued sliding down the steps on its side, sparks shooting into the air as it scraped against the stone. With a death-rattle chug, it suddenly stopped near the bottom of the steps. Burns immediately began fumbling for the passenger door above his head.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “I think so. Nothing broken, at least.”

  “Well, it was a good idea,” he said, climbing up to the top of the dozer’s blade. “Even if it didn’t get us all the way.”

  “Hey, it still saved us ammo,” Nicole said, following him out of the machine.

  He patted the side of the sputtering mechanical monster and grinned. “Let’s move before more of them spot us. As loud as
that crash was, this place’ll probably be swarming with the hairy little bastards.”

  At the edge of the park, the tall buildings of downtown rose upwards, obscuring the sunlight from the alleyways. Nicole and Taylor were suddenly hyper-aware of their surroundings. As they quick-stepped forward, they shot anything that rushed at them from the shadows. Nicole noticed several dozen rats taking refuge in the alleys, their beady yellow eyes glaring out at the pair of human interlopers. The rodents kept their distance, however, maintaining their positions in the dark.

  Nicole had to scoot over the hood of a Sedan that had leapt the curb and crashed into the cornerstone of a building. On the other side, she looked around, noticing for the first time how many cars were on the sidewalk or crashed into shops or windows or hotels or streetlights. It seemed as though a real panic had occurred in the streets and all the drivers had suddenly lost control of their vehicles. Either that or they had been aiming at Lycanthropes, hoping to smash a few before there were too many to take care of.

  Well, too late for that, Nicole thought. Things are multiplying like wildfire. Whole city will be turned before long, if it isn’t already.

  Burns dropped his clip from the M-4, shoving in another while Nicole blasted away at a pack of twenty or so Lycanthropes loping towards them over the cars in the street. They bounded over the spaces in between the wrecks and abandoned vehicles. One of them got too close to a burning Volvo and its fur caught on fire. It wailed as it hopped around until one of Nicole’s bullets found its skull. Burns let loose with a burst of automatic fire that sent 30 rounds of 5.56 mm carbines into the crowd at a rate of over 10 rounds a second. He dropped another empty magazine and reloaded while the pack stumbled around their wounded and another group emerged from an alley. These were smaller, probably were originally stray dogs that had banded together to form a pack.

  Nicole looked up at the rows of signs trailing up the tall buildings. Many had been electronic, and they were blank and impassive, devoid of their usual bright lights and advertisements. The flat-iron building stood tall against the sky, surrounded with wrecked vehicles, mostly yellow cabs. Theaters with dark marquees had opened doors, as if someone had just walked out of their auditoriums. Hot dog vender carts had been overturned, the contents spilled across the sidewalks. There were no people in sight, but a few once-human Lycanthropes still milled in between the cars, searching for something to kill or destroy.

  “Times Square,” Nicole announced. “Or it once was.”

  Taylor Burns started using three-bullet bursts on his rifle, exploding the heads of the trailing monsters. The two packs had seen each other, and several of the beasts were intent on fighting with members of the opposite gang. Burns dropped three more, and Nicole slammed a magazine into her rifle.

  “I’ve only got two more mags,” she shouted, scanning the chaos for the entrance to the subway.

  “That’s one more than I’ve got,” he said, taking out another creature.

  “Over there,” Nicole said, pointing. “Subway stairs.”

  “Run,” he said as his last magazine ran out of bullets.

  She covered Burns while he tossed the M-4 aside and withdrew one of the grenades from his vest. Her bullets sprayed into the crowd of creatures, which had grown to nearly fifty Lycanthropes. They were appearing from alleys, from inside cars, from beneath the cars, and above the cars. Sometimes they fought one another, but most of them seemed to have a single goal in mind – killing the two humans before they got away.

  Burns hurried to the stairs, and he practically flew to the landing. His feet didn’t seem to touch the concrete. Moving backwards while firing the last bullets from her final magazines, Nicole watched the sidewalk seem to grow, enveloping the world, covering up the dozens of creatures she had just killed or maimed. By the time she took the last step backwards, the city was gone. It even seemed quieter than it had on the surface. She could still see a piece of blue sky and just the fuzzy tail of a stream of clouds overhead before one of the jets screamed above them.

  “Come on,” Burns urged her, pulling on a sleeve. “Hurry.”

  He led her down the last of the steps just as the dozens of creatures arrived at the top of the stairs. Their howls and grunts were loud, suddenly overwhelming. Several of the monsters leapt into the subway opening, landing roughly so that they snapped their necks or broke the bones of their forelegs. It didn’t stop them, and they stumbled forward on broken limbs, intently searching for their prey. Their fanged, saliva-dripping muzzles came into focus just as Burns tossed his grenade, pulling the pin with his left hand.

  Nicole ducked instinctively as she saw the pineapple-shaped explosive fly over her head. When it went off, it blew bits and pieces of numerous creatures all over the entrance. Slivers and chunks of cement shot into the air, slamming into many of the monsters in the front of the line, acting as effective projectiles. As Nicole rolled away from the destruction, she saw a single hairy foot somersault past her, the bone sticking out of the meaty end of the knee.

  When the dust and spiraling body parts cleared, Nicole saw the entire stairwell was sealed shut from the surface. The subway entrance had collapsed, effectively blocking the way for the monsters to follow the soldiers from Times Square to the underworld of the tunnels. A few of the beasts, trapped under cinder blocks and cement pieces writhed for a bit, ineffectively trying to escape from their partial burial. One was speared by long steel bars that emerged from the end of a chunk of concrete, stuck to the wall like a butterfly in a lepidopterist’s collection.

  “That’s what I’m talking about!” General Burns whooped.

  “Which way is the train?” Nicole asked, joining Burns on the platform.

  The area was eerily silent and very dark. Emergency lighting dispelled a bit of the gloom, but it couldn’t hold back the long shadows emerging from deeper within the tunnel. A partially devoured corpse lay across the tracks, as if thrown there by one of the creatures. Enormous dead rats littered the floor of the tunnel, killed by something, perhaps the third rail. Nicole wondered whether the rail was still electrified despite the power outage.

  Burns nodded his head into the darkness to his right. He said, “Well, Brooklyn would be that a way.”

  “Then that’s where Sandy is.” Nicole checked her ammunition supply, then gloomily raised her eyes to Burns. “All I’ve got left is the M-9,” she said.

  “I know. I’m low, too.”

  “Let’s hope we don’t run into another huge group of Lycans,” she muttered, almost growling the words. “Another pack as big as that last one, and we’re toast.”

  “Speaking of toast, you’d better eat something.” He pulled out a Power Bar and bit into it. “Don’t know when we’ll get the chance again.”

  Burns finished the bar in three bites and jumped off the platform onto the tracks. The sound echoed off the tunnel walls, amplified many times over. He turned to help Nicole to the ground, but she was already beside him. He shook his head. He should have known she wouldn’t need any assistance from an old geezer like him. She marched past him.

  “I guess chivalry is officially dead, huh?” he said with a chuckle.

  “Fuck that noise,” Nicole said, not turning around to look at him, squinting into the nearly dark passage. “I’m more of a man than you’ll ever be, Burns.”

  “Yeah,” he said, finishing their old personal joke. “And more woman than I’ll ever get. Let’s go save the damsel that’s actually in distress. Maybe she’ll be grateful to me.”

  Nicole gave a bark of a laugh, pulling out her mini-flashlight. Within a few steps, they were swallowed by the darkness.

  Chapter 34

  2:59 p.m.

  John Creed watched Michael as the man stopped in front of a swath of gang graffiti that looked like balloon letters spelling out an obscene epithet. The homeless man looked at the word, ran a hand through his shaggy blond hair, and lowered his gaze to the ground. He observed the trickle of water streaming down the center of the sewe
r passage.

  “We’re lost,” he said, finally, forming the words John had been certain he would hear. The only words he truly didn’t want the man to say. He had figured Michael didn’t know where they were going, but he didn’t dare ask him. Once the thought was admitted, it became something real, something true.

  “Jesus, I didn’t want you to say that,” John said.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m all turned around. After that last chase with the rats, I think I should’ve taken you up a level, not down to this one.”

  John couldn’t criticize the guy. The rats had spilled out of a drainage pipe, and they had run away, taking several fast turns and climbing down a ladder as fast as they could, then taking several more corners until they came face-to-face with this dead-end brick wall and the strange vaginal reference. John wondered if the graffiti referred to a specific woman or to a mere section of her that was a bit more salacious. For all he knew, it could mean a physical crack in the wall, although he didn’t spy any.

  “We could retrace our steps, find our bearings.”

  “You’d trust yourself to find your way again?” Michael asked, leaning against a damp wall. Beads of moisture soaked into his shirt, but he didn’t notice.

  “You weren’t keeping track, huh?”

  “Hell no, not with those mutant things running right behind us. Is it me, or do they look even bigger than the first ones we saw?”

  “Probably because they got so much closer this time. So, you don’t know where we are. What comes next?”

  Michael shrugged his thin shoulders. “I guess we go forward. The sewers will lead us somewhere. They all come out of the ground someplace.”