Primeval (Werewolf Apocalypse Book 2)

by William D. Carl

  The corner was fairly tough. He had to raise his left foot while slouching into the bend with his shoulders. When he lowered his foot, it slid, and he would have toppled into the pool if his fingers hadn’t found a hold where a piece of brickwork had crumbled, creating a chink in the wall. He clung to the spot for a while, breathing heavily. Eventually, he moved his other foot, rounding the corner, and he started creeping along the shelf again.

  Stretch out one leg, close the gap. Over and over again, six inches at a time.

  “I hate to bother you, John,” Michael shouted. “But our friend looks like he’s rising up for a better look at you.”

  “Oh no.”

  John glanced down into the water, and a dark shadow was becoming clearer by the second as the animal rose from where it had been resting on the bottom. The reporter moved faster, covering another two feet before he could look down again. The shape was growing distinct as it ascended, becoming more and more alligator shaped.

  By the time John had reached the second corner, the creature was floating on top of the water, a thirteen-foot log with teeth and a white scar across its snout. It was facing the opposite direction, and it paddled its tiny legs, turning to face the tasty treat precariously balanced above it.

  John cried out, tried to get his second toehold around the bend, but he slipped on a patch of green algae, and his foot shot out from under him.

  The alligator opened its jaws as it continued its awkward turn in the water. When it snapped its mouth closed, the sound was like a bear trap slamming shut, loud, terrifying, and deadly.

  John held on to a crevice in the wall, his fingers digging deeper into the crumbling mortar for a decent grip as his right leg swung out over the water. Pieces of the brickwork yielded to his efforts, and he maintained his position, even though he was still a good nine feet from the tunnel entrance where Michael waited.

  “Oh shit. Oh shit. Oh shit,” John said, repeating it like a mantra as the huge alligator faced him.

  Its long body was perpendicular to the tunnel entrance, its tail smacking the surface of the water in agitation. Its thorny back was ridged, and its bulbous saurian eyes stared at John, who was hanging desperately onto the widening fissure in the wall.

  Until a brick came loose in his hand, sending him backwards, his arms windmilling as he tried to regain his balance.

  The alligator opened its jaws wide and waited for the human to drop conveniently into its teeth-lined mouth. It made a hissing sound, as if it were an enormous angry cat.

  Michael reached for the reptile’s tail, which fanned back and forth lazily.

  And John lost his balance completely, his leg headed directly for the alligator’s open maw.

  The primordial beast swam forward a bit, the better to grab hold of John’s moving leg.

  John pushed himself away from the wall, and he overshot the creature’s mouth, stepping on the top of its bumpy snout. His weight snapped the alligator’s mouth closed, and he pushed himself forward, keeping one hand on the wall for balance. He ran across the gator’s back as it thrashed to extricate this human passenger. John’s hand hit the wall, and he righted himself, taking another couple of steps across the reptile’s back. He felt as if he were walking a wide, lumpy tightrope. He reached the tail, which was now swishing in agitation. There was only about a foot to go until he joined Michael on the ledge of the tunnel, and he looked up to see the man holding out his hands and shouting at him.

  “Grab my hand, John! Grab it!”

  The alligator started sinking into the water, driven down by John’s weight. It paddled with its little feet, swiveling its neck to get at the escaping meal.

  With a lurch, John leapt from the sinking back of the alligator, reaching out. Michael leaned forward and caught his outstretched hand. John landed, chest against the tunnel’s edge, his legs still in the murky water.

  And the alligator was turned and swimming toward him.

  “Haul me up!” John shouted.

  Michael pulled, and John used his elbows to drag himself out of the water. Michael kept pulling, drawing the reporter several feet farther into the dark tunnel. Then he released him, and they both fell to the floor, breathing hard.

  “You should’ve just swum across,” Michael said, raising himself to his feet and leaning forward, hands on his knees.

  “Did you see that?” John asked, giggling, pumped full of adrenaline. “Did you see me run across that damned gator’s back? Like I was in a freaking circus.”

  “Uh…”

  “That was amazing. I can’t believe I did that.”

  Deep in the room, from the darkness behind them, something roared. Something huge.

  Behind them, from the pool, came the sound of sloshing water. Then the click of long toenails on a hard brick surface.

  “Uh, John. You better stand up, man.”

  “Why?” he asked, turning a bit.

  The alligator heaved itself up from the water onto the floor, not ten feet from where John was resting. It strained to lift its bulk onto the concrete, and it scrabbled with its black-clawed feet to move its entire body onto the dusty pathway of the tunnel.

  “Aw shit,” John said, jumping to his feet and stepping backward. “He isn’t gonna give up, is he?”

  “Doesn’t look like it,” Michael said, backing into the tunnel.

  “How fast did you say these things could go on land?” John asked, now shoulder to shoulder with Michael.

  “I didn’t,” he answered, taking a few more steps. “You’re the one who watches PBS. I don’t even have a TV.”

  As the gator finally pulled its entire thirteen-foot-long body onto the floor of the corridor, it glared at them with its slitted yellow eyes. It opened its mouth and hissed, exposing its ragged teeth.

  Then it took a step toward the two men.

  Fumbling against each other, they spun on their heels and took off running down the tunnel.

  Ahead of them, they heard the sound of breaking glass, then more roaring as though some Japanese kaiju monster was royally pissed off.

  Behind them, the alligator started loping forward, moving swiftly for such a bulky animal. It continued to hiss at them as it chased them down the corridor.

  “This way,” Michael shouted, pointing, and the two men whipped around the corner.

  The alligator seemed to actually be gaining on them, comfortable in its environment. As it turned the corner behind them, the animal hit the wall with its muscular tail, sending bricks and mortar flying across the hallway.

  “Head for that ladder!” Michael shouted.

  John saw the metal rungs pounded into the wall up ahead. The rungs led to a portal on the floor above them.

  “Hell yeah,” John shouted, right behind the thinner, faster Michael.

  The alligator snapped its jaws open and shut, trying to catch one of the fleeing men.

  Michael grabbed one of the iron rungs, and it pulled out of the wall into his hands as though it had been planted in butter. He fell back into John, who pushed him forward again.

  The thirteen-foot reptile was only eight feet away and heading toward them like a locomotive.

  John wondered, How is something that damn big so damn fast?

  Michael grabbed the next rung daintily. Crumbs of mortar dripped from where it had been banged into the concrete, concrete that was now old and fragile. Michael pulled himself up, showering John with mortar dust.

  “Be careful,” he said. “These rungs could pop out at any time.”

  The alligator was two feet behind them, snapping angrily at the escaping prey.

  John reached and started pulling himself up as Michael disappeared into the level above him. The reptile reached the bottom of the rungs and latched onto the cuff of John’s pants. It began pulling backwards.

  John grabbed tighter to the rung he was holding, only eight steps to the hole where he would have been safe. He called out for Michael, and the other man popped his head back down, reaching for the reporter.<
br />
  The rung John was clutching started to slide out of the concrete and mortar. The alligator, sensing imminent success, tugged harder at John’s pant leg.

  “Here,” Michael shouted, reaching down for the man.

  John grabbed hold of Michael’s hand, and the homeless man started to pull.

  The alligator, divining his dinner’s escape, pulled as well, and John’s pant leg started to rip.

  “Pull harder!”

  Michael strained, placing his legs on either side of the portal. He heard the fabric of Michael’s pants tear over the alligator’s frustrated huffing. With a final rip, John was free and the reptile fell backward with a swatch of torn fabric in its mouth. Michael went flying in the opposite direction, without the alligator on the other side of the reporter tug of war, and John was yanked painfully against the rungs. His head hit the pieces of iron, splitting the skin on his forehead, then he was two-thirds of the way through the manhole and his ribs smacked against the side of the exit. He cried out, but it didn’t stop him from crawling on his elbows until he was entirely out of the tunnel below.

  Looking down through the hole, he screamed, “Fuck you!” at the huge animal, which was walking back and forth in a thwarted mania. It hissed up at the two men.

  “Same to you,” Michael said.

  And the huge thing in the tunnels that they had heard earlier roared again, a sound of triumph and bravado. It sounded closer this time, as if only a few turns in the tunnel away.

  Then, the sound of gunfire erupted through the warren of passageways.

  John glanced at Michael and said, “People.”

  “People with guns,” Michael said. “Which means they can protect themselves.”

  “Protect us, too,” John said.

  They were on their feet and running toward the sound in less than two seconds.

  Chapter 38

  3:05 p.m.

  The lion had its head shoved into the subway car, its mane full of broken glass. Its mouth was open, and it was bellowing, exposing the rows of teeth that seemed to overflow its overcrowded mouth. It leaned to the side, and it managed to squeeze its right front foot into the space around the window, swiping a dinner-plate-sized paw at the screaming people within the car. Its razor-sharp black claws were at least three inches long, and it snagged hold of Craig’s suit jacket.

  “Help me!” the large man shouted at the others, who were scrambling over seats to get away from the invading monster. “Jesus, someone help me!”

  The lion felt the tug on its claw, and it pulled back, hauling Craig across the floor toward its gaping maw.

  Sandy rushed forward and seized his hand, pulled as hard as she could, but his suit was surprisingly well stitched, and she found herself being drawn toward the creature along with Craig. When it roared again, she smelled its fetid breath, blood and iron and rotten meat.

  Suddenly, she felt someone’s hands around her waist, and she turned a bit to see Howard behind her, pulling as well. As she watched, Beth abandoned the now-hysterical Alice to help.

  The lion shrugged down, trying to get in closer to its prey, but it was too large to fit any more of its mutated body into the window. It pulled harder on Craig, and the man’s foot came within inches of the lion’s mouth.

  “Pull!” Sandy shouted at the two people behind her.

  She felt their straining muscles, heard their grunts as they tried to drag Craig back into the safety of the subway car, away from the busted window. Sylvia stood at the other end of the car, her wrinkled face in a convulsion of terror. Alice had fallen to the floor in a fetal position. Her keening cries were loud, almost unbearable in their horror.

  “Pull harder,” Sandy said, feeling the three of them drawn another few inches toward the lion.

  The animal was growing furious, and it heaved again. Craig’s foot went into the beast’s mouth, and it bit down. The sound of his leg bones snapping in half was shockingly loud. With a rending sound, the muscles tore and the beast slumped out of the window, chewing on the lower half of Craig’s leg.

  Sandy and the others pushed themselves back, away from the window, while Craig, in shock, propped himself into a sitting position directly underneath the hole in the glass. His stump stuck out in front of him, splashing blood across the seats and down the aisle. He looked at the others across from him, his glazed eyes beseeching them for help, but nobody moved. The car was filled instead with the sound of Alice’s wailing, which almost – almost – covered up the sound of the lion outside finishing off Craig’s leg.

  Sandy was the first to move, pulling off the belt from around her waist. She explained with a single word, “Tourniquet,” and she approached the bleeding man, who was now holding out a hand toward her.

  She had taken a single step forward, when the mutant lion shoved its way back through the hole in the window again. It leaned forward and clamped its jaws over Craig’s head. The man flailed, even as his torn carotid artery sprayed crimson trails across the train car. Seemingly without effort, the lion extracted Craig from the car like a stuffed toy, shaking the man until his neck snapped. Then it lay down to start eating.

  “No,” Sandy whispered, the leather belt still in her hands. She found she couldn’t move, could only watch as the male creature hunched over Craig’s corpse and began to feast.

  Beth hurried to Alice’s side, but the girl was now in a complete state of shock. Shivering, she made tiny mewling noises, and the coach wrapped her slender arms around her. Howard remained on the floor, sitting in a clean area, watching as Craig’s blood slowly crept toward him. Sylvia hadn’t moved from where she stood next to the window on the opposite side of the subway car, steadying herself with one of the remaining metal poles. Her mouth was still open, and Sandy suspected she was also in a state of shock.

  The male lion’s eating grew louder, and she heard the horrific sound of meat tearing as the creature pulled the choice parts of Craig from the man’s insides. It raised its head, mane full of gore, and it licked its black lips.

  Sandy wondered, Where’s the female?

  With a crash of breaking glass, the female lion bashed her head into the window behind Sylvia, spraying shards across the old woman’s body and into the aisle. The entire subway car rocked with the assault. The lioness broke a hole in the center and started trying to squeeze into the small space of the car. It was too large, but smaller than the male, so it got its head and both of its front feet through the window, bashing itself against the sides, oblivious to the gashes it was cutting into its tough hide with the remaining sharp edges of the broken window.

  Sylvia screamed, and she moved to run away, but fell in a puddle of glass shards, which cut deeply into her hands. She looked up at Sandy as the lioness shredded the back of her coat with her long talons. The beast roared her frustration, squirming to get herself farther into the space of the train.

  Sandy hurried forward, but the monster’s next attempt at getting through the window rocked the entire subway car, and she lost her footing. Everyone started screaming, including the lioness, as the car slowly tipped onto its side. It bounced off the barrier separating the two sets of tracks and snapped part of the black columns in half. The top of the train slid down across the broken obstacles, scraping off years of soot. The people within the subway car tumbled over seats and over each other as the train continued to turn sideways. Sandy thought, So this is what a sock feels like in the dryer. Then she hit her head on a pole and saw brilliant flashes of fireworks.

  The car teetered for a moment, before flopping onto its side, breaking several of the columns between the tracks. The lioness rode it like a roller coaster, her back half sticking out of the top window, front feet flailing about in the inside of the car. Its claws scratched through the plastic seats, leaving jagged furrows. Metal grinded against metal, screeching in protest, but the car tore loose from the other segments of the train, and continued to fall until it crashed onto its side with a loud thud.

  Sylvia spilled forward,
tumbling into Sandy, who was knocked back against the far wall, which was now the floor. She attempted to hold the old woman in place, but she was all bony legs and elbows and hips, and Sandy caught a fist to the side of her face. Beneath her fingers, she felt blood, the result of the cuts the creature had made when it first flailed through the window.

  The female lion swiped out at Sandy and Sylvia, and its huge paws got so close, Sandy felt the breeze as they passed by her face. It could not have been more than six inches away from her eyes. The lion growled, wriggled to escape from the settling car, but its back was stuck in the window. Its claws went flying in every direction, and Sandy pulled Sylvia farther back, away from the three-inch talons.

  She couldn’t tell where anyone else was or if they were even still conscious. She shouted out, “Howard? Where are you?”

  She heard a groan from the back side of the car, barely audible over the roaring of the female monster.

  “Howard?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You all right?”

  “I think so.” There was a pause, and he said, “Looks like I didn’t break anything.”

  “Get over here,” she called to him as the lion lashed out again. She saw its claws extend, the pads of its feet separate as it strained to reach the meat just beneath it.

  “Are you crazy, woman?” Howard shouted back. “Do you see where you are?”

  “I know, but I have Sylvia, and she’s unconscious. I need you to pull her someplace safe then try and locate your weapon.”

  Slash! Slash! The female attempted to grab hold of Sandy again, stretching toward her, its muscles rippling under the overgrown fur.

  Sandy heard scraping sounds to her left and she turned to see Howard crawling along the windows, over the seats, keeping his head low.

  “She’s right here, beneath me,” Sandy said.

  Howard made it to them just as the car gave a little lurch and settled a bit more. The momentum dropped the lioness about two inches farther through the window, so that it was holding her tightly by the hips. The black claws were now only about an inch from Sandy’s eye, and she clenched her eyelids shut so she wouldn’t see her end coming. The tip of one of the lion’s claws missed the end of her nose, raking through her hair as she turned her head.