Primeval (Werewolf Apocalypse Book 2)

by William D. Carl

  The fireball wasn’t done with the train. It toyed with it further, angling it away from the other cars, snapping its couplings and sending it screeching across the tracks in a shower of bright sparks. The sparks set off smaller explosions, little pops, like bottle rockets.

  Nicole rolled several feet down the aisle, her legs entwined with the ribcage of the corpse, which was sizzling on the floor, cooking from the skillet-like heat of the bottom – now the side – of the car. She kicked at it, tried to stop herself by grasping at one of the metal poles that ran from ceiling to floor. With a cry of pain, she withdrew her hand from the searing metal, losing some of the skin on her palm. One of the seats was raked with claw marks, and she got her fingers into the edge of one. The orange plastic held. Her arm was nearly jerked out of its socket when she stopped herself.

  Howard, Michael, and John had clasped hands, each holding on like a chain as the car tumbled onto its side and screeched across the ground of the tunnel. There was a jerk when it broke apart from the other subway cars, and John fell backwards, against the broken window that was suddenly beneath him. A shard of glass six inches long sliced into the top of his shoulder, and he screamed, reaching out a hand to try to recapture the rest of the group.

  Sandy tumbled, her jacket getting caught around her face so that she couldn’t see anything. She rebounded between seats in the aisle, falling blindly across one when the car overturned. She found herself one seat over from John, Howard, and Michael, and she called out to them. She could hear the glass beneath her feet as she tried to right herself, but by the time she got the jacket off of her head, she was falling again, the car skidding on its side, pushed forward beside the tracks by the force of the fireball.

  Taylor Burns held onto the side of the seat he was crouched behind, his legs stretched out to the one in front of him. When the wall of fire hit the side of the car, he saw the flames leap in a furious ballet at the windows, then the whole world started to reel. He shoved his legs out farther, securing himself between the seats, and he held the position until the car decoupled from the others, lurching onto its side and skidding ahead along the path of the tunnel. He fell to his left, tumbled end over end down the length of the car, bumping into Nicole at the other side. Along the way, everything in his jacket was shaken loose, and weapons and ammunition clattered all over the cab.

  Including the two grenades, both of which bounced to the other end of the car.

  Fire enveloped the train, and the air became stifling hot. It was difficult to breathe, and the survivors all reached out for some sort of human contact. Nicole and Burns held on to each other, using their legs as leverage, the soles of their shoes melting against the hot metal of the seats.

  Burns shouted, “The grenades!”

  The noise of the fire and explosions was so loud Nicole couldn’t hear him, even from only a few feet away. She gave him a puzzled look.

  The subway car came to a stop, hitting the far wall of the tunnel, and all of the survivors tumbled into the aisle, extricated from their moorings. The fireball continued down the tunnel, away from them. Everything inside the car was hot to the touch, and the rubber floorings were melting into a sticky pond of goo.

  Burns was the first to cry out in the sudden silence. “Grenade!”

  He shoved at Nicole, pushing her toward the back exit, screaming for her to get out of the car.

  He knew that with the intense heat, the ammunition or the grenades could explode at any moment.

  He grabbed Sandy’s hand as the first round of ammunition fired within the cab, winging off the walls. It pinged twice, then shot out a somehow-still-intact window in a flowering of glass shards. Sandy ducked her head instinctively, but Burns pulled her around himself, shoving her toward the exit where Nicole waited to give her a hand.

  He moved farther down the aisle until he saw John against the wall. A second round got hot enough to blow, and another bullet ricocheted around the cab, pinging with each change in direction. Burns fell behind one of the seats where the bullet eventually lodged. He grasped John by the shoulders, and then pulled his hand back when it encountered something sharp. John cried out, and Burns saw the shard of glass buried in the meat of the man’s shoulder. He gave John a hearty push.

  “Get to the exit in the back!” he shouted, unsure if the man could hear him. At least he would see the urgency in his eyes. “The other end has two very hot grenades in it.”

  That got them moving, fumbling and crawling over each other, trying to avoid the melted rubber on the floor. Michael was rushing beside Burns when another round of ammunition heated up enough to fire, smashing a window. Then another shot went off from someplace in the car, and all three men ducked their heads in unison as they scurried to the back exit.

  Burns snarled orders at them. “Hurry up, faster, faster. Do you wanna die?” He didn’t know if they could hear him over the distant roar of the departing fireball and the whiz-bang of rounds of ammo heating up and shooting off.

  Howard shouted as he leapt from the back of the subway car, landing in a crouch beside the rails on the ground. He felt disoriented, as though his whole world had been capsized and shaken up.

  Nicole and Sandy had fled about fifty yards away from the subway and farther from the fire wall that was nearly out of sight down the tunnel. They shouted for Howard to hurry up, to get away from the train in case something else went off within it.

  John was getting ready to leap from the back of the car when another bullet reached its firing temperature and exploded. It ricocheted off the walls twice before slamming into John’s back. The reporter screamed in surprise and fell forward out of the car. His face hit the ground with the sound of crunching bone, and he knew his nose was broken. He saw stars for a moment, before he heard the slapping of Michael’s feet as he jumped to safety.

  Burns gave the subway car a final look, searching for the grenades. They had been lucky the things hadn’t gone off, but he wondered if they had melted into the rubber of the floor. He hopped to the ground, caught his breath, and scooped John up under one arm and Michael under the other. John’s face was a Rorschach of blood. Burns pulled the two of them away from the car at the same moment he heard the explosives go off.

  The three men were knocked forward by the double blast, one grenade going off directly after the other. The front end of the subway car burst into thousands of pieces, each flying in different directions. A seat went soaring over the three men’s heads as they lay prone, and Burns tried to cover the two civilians under his arms. One metal handrail zinged over them, landing near Nicole, Sandy, and Howard’s hiding place. Another slammed into John’s side, further injuring the reporter.

  “Oh no,” Burns said, feeling John gasp for breath.

  In moments, the debris had all landed, and dust clouded up the area so it was difficult to see. Burns turned toward John, who was lying on his face, his arms spread out next to him. His right shoulder was bleeding where a large piece of glass had impaled him.

  Gently, Burns turned him on his side. John coughed, and gore splattered down Burns’ front. The reporter’s face was crushed inwards, and several of his teeth were either broken or shattered.

  “Aw, shit, man,” Burns said. “Here, hold still, this is gonna hurt like a bitch.”

  “What?” John muttered through shattered teeth.

  Burns pinched the piece of glass emerging from the reporter’s back and gently pulled it out of his shoulder muscle. It bled a bit more, but it didn’t seem as though it had severed an artery or anything too vital. John rolled onto his back with a sigh and a grimace.

  “It would… have… made a… terrific… story,” John gasped, moving his bloody lips like a fish out of water, gasping for air.

  “It’s not over yet,” Burns said while the others gathered around the bleeding man. “You’re hurt, but you’re not dead. Leastwise not yet. Can you stand?”

  “Don’t… think so,” John said, but Burns was already lifting him to his feet. He cried out
in pain as a sharp stabbing sensation pierced his body.

  “Sure you can. Look at you,” Burns said.

  “Let me,” Michael said. “Let me help him.”

  “Sure you can handle him? He’s kind of heavy.”

  “I’ll try,” Michael answered, and he looped John’s arm around his shoulder. “Yeah, I can do it.”

  “Good.”

  “I’m… going to die,” John said, looking into Michael’s dark eyes. “You know that… right?”

  “No one else dies,” Burns said. “That’s an order.”

  “We’re making it out of here together,” Michael said, taking a few tentative steps while holding John up. He was pleasantly surprised that the reporter shuffled right along with him.

  “I want… you to make… a life for yourself out there. You… you’re a good man. You… deserve more than this… shit. I need to… hear it from… you… from your own… lips.”

  “What? What do you need to hear me say?”

  “That this isn’t… all there is for you. That you’ll… get out of here alive… and you’ll help other people. The way… you helped me. You won’t… fall backwards. Not back… to that life. Not… to that.”

  “I promise you I won’t. Only, we’ll both get out of here, John. I’ll survive, and so will you and I’ll be someone again. I won’t go back to the underground. I swear it.”

  The reporter smiled through broken teeth, then coughed up a wad of blood and spit it across the tracks. When he finished choking, he said, “Good. That’s… good.”

  “Now we need to get this party started again,” Burns said. “You guys think you can keep up with the rest of us?”

  John said, “No.”

  “We’ll keep up fine,” Michael said. “Just keep the sprinting down to a minimum. Think we can rest a bit? Get our bearings?”

  “We need to keep moving,” Nicole suggested. “I’m sorry for being so blunt, but there it is. We have to get somewhere safe or we’ll all end up like Alice and Beth.”

  Burns turned toward Michael. “You ready to lead us out?”

  “I don’t feel like much of a leader right now,” Michael said, shrugging his shoulder to get a better grip on John.

  “Maybe not, but our reporter friend isn’t doing so well. Let’s get him to someplace better, where he can get some medical attention. What do you say?” Burns asked, extending his hand.

  Michael peered at it, then nodded. He took the general’s big hand in his and shook it.

  “We’ll have to follow the fire now,” Michael said, pointing down the blackened walls of the subway tunnel. “Brooklyn’s that way. If we’re going to get to the East River, then that’s the direction we need to go.”

  Burns sniffed the air, said, “I don’t smell the gas anymore. Or at least, not so much.”

  Howard said, “The fire probably burned it all out. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

  Burns nodded. “Probably. Don’t see how it can be that bad.”

  “Let’s go,” Michael said. He wanted to move, to get rid of some of this adrenaline.

  John groaned as they took a few steps, but his legs seemed to be working fine.

  Michael squinted, wanted to get these people someplace where they’d finally be safe.

  If there was such a place anymore.

  “This way,” he said, and he walked away from the crippled train and into the darkened tunnel. “Come on.”

  No one said a word. They listened to him, and they followed.

  Chapter 46

  8:40 p.m.

  The group had been walking for ten minutes, following the trail of the fireball that had left the brick walls tarnished with soot and everything else in its path scorched or burned to smoldering crisps. They stumbled across several bodies along the tracks, although it was difficult to tell if they were human or bestial. They were burned beyond recognition, their limbs twisted, their bones black as coal. Sometimes, the skulls were all that was left, and these gave clues as to the original state of the corpses. The extra-long snouts and all the teeth lining the jaws exposed many as Lycanthropes caught in the flare of the gas explosions, but others retained the rounded skulls of humans trapped by the flash fire.

  They still heard rumblings overhead, explosions muffled by the earth separating the tunnel from the streets of the city. They were less frequent now, as though the fires had fizzled out, the gas in the pipes depleted. Still, every once in a while, a fair-sized tremor would rock the little group, and they would stop in their tracks.

  They were quiet as they moved. Sandy and Nicole walked in the lead, followed by Howard, then Michael, still supporting John, while Burns kept watch on their backs, rotating his upper torso to the rear, then back. Once, Sandy reached for Nicole’s hand, and the soldier shook it off. Her Colt was the last of their weapons, other than poles and sharpened, twisted pieces of metal. The shotgun was bent at the barrel during the explosion on the train, left to burn in the subway car, and all of Burns’ weaponry had been destroyed during their escape from the fireball. He’d been reduced to carrying John’s long pole and feeling pretty silly. Also, more than a little vulnerable to attack.

  But the gas explosion and fire seemed to have cleared the tunnels of Lycanthropic creatures. They hadn’t made an appearance in more than ten minutes. Burns figured they were probably wary of the tunnel after the blast, but he also knew they’d get bolder and more intrepid as the night went on, sniffing out fresh prey. At some point, they would return to their furious search. At the rate they were sweating, Burns figured the beasts could smell the group at the surface.

  “And then there were six,” Howard said, finally breaking the silence as they walked.

  Sandy turned and tried to give him a reassuring smile, but it came out as a grimace. She said, “Try not to focus on it.”

  “Hard to think about anything else. I keep seeing their faces – Beth and Sylvia, Alice, even that jerk Craig.”

  “Hey,” John croaked. “I’m… still here.”

  “Barely,” Michael said. He was noticing John was walking a little straighter, regaining some of his strength.

  “Push on,” Burns said. “It’s all we can do. Survive this night, and we can tell all the stories we want to tell about them.”

  “I do wish they all were still with us,” Michael said. “But what can you do?”

  They passed another subway train that had been hit and scoured by the fireball. Three of the cars lay on their sides, and there were still small blue flames sputtering on the melted orange plastic seats, goo dripping from them like candle wax.

  “Where are the bodies?” Sandy asked, looking around the demolished cars. “Shouldn’t there be bodies?”

  “Maybe they were all changed when the rats swept through,” Nicole suggested. “Try to think of something else.” Her eyes darted around the corridor.

  “Like what?”

  “Think about us,” Nicole suggested, and she looked at her girlfriend. The strength of her devotion shined through her eyes as she allowed herself a brief respite from her lookout duties. She stroked Sandy’s chin. “Maybe think about the baby you wanted.”

  “Yeah, that I wanted. Seems to me you weren’t having any part of that – what did you call it? – oh, yeah, maternal bullshit.”

  “Sweetheart, if we get out of this alive, I am totally willing to work with you. We’ll have that kid, and I’ll be the best mom I can be. I don’t know how far that can go, but I’ll try.”

  Sandy gave her a quick squeeze, but she was serious when she released her. “But who’d want to bring a child into a world like this? I mean, whatever the world’s like now. I don’t know if I can do it in good conscience.”

  “I’m just saying I’m willing,” Nicole said, and she snapped her attention back to watching out for lurking monsters. The gun in her hand was starting to feel heavy after carrying a weapon for so long. As a sniper, she was accustomed to having a tripod, someplace to rest her gun. Even when she was on a mission routi
ng out a nest, it would only last a half hour or so. Plus, she could feel her adrenaline levels lowering, and she was getting tired and cranky and hungry. She suggested they split whatever junk food remained in the backpacks and everyone agreed, tearing into the beef jerky and Hostess cupcakes like the primeval monsters that chased them. John had some problems with anything hard; his broken teeth prevented him from devouring the beef jerky, but he went through four mini-cakes. The sugar in them revived him somewhat. Soon, the food was gone, and they resumed their trek toward Brooklyn.

  Sandy didn’t stop talking, all through the so-called meal, as though her words were keeping her mind off the problems at hand. Maybe they were. But they also reminded everyone else about what they might be facing when they reached the surface again. Family, friends, neighbors – all of them were probably dead or altered by the new strain of virus.

  “What are we going to see up there once we get aboveground?” Sandy jabbered away. “How much of the city will actually be left standing? I know the military is on the job, trying to keep it contained, but if we’re able to escape from the city, then what else is getting out right now as well?”

  “I’m pretty scared of that, too,” Howard said. “I mean, if we make it out – and that’s a pretty big ‘if’ right now – what’re we going to do afterwards? We can’t just go back to our lives the way we were living them. I mean, there’s no dance company left now, no shows at all, so I am out of a job, out of my only real way of being happy. That’s really my only skill. I don’t have a lot more I can do to help.”

  “You were pretty good in a scrap,” Burns said gruffly. He was getting tired of the whining and worrying. Certainly, he was scared, too, but he refused to show it. He noticed Nicole had adopted the same indifferent, half blank and half bravado Army expression he wore, and he wanted to slap her on the back and say, “That’s my girl!” Instead, he kept watching their tails and said, “Let’s focus on what’s important right now, can we? No more brooding or moping. We need to get to the river and get on that helicopter. We need to carry on. Once we’re out of here and in a safe place, we can worry about the fall of society. Okay?”