by CT Grey
It was consuming me; making me to want to turn around and go back to the others. And even though it had a hold on me, I couldn’t let it take it over. I had made it this far so I wasn’t going to go back, but head towards the darkness inside the station.
How dark was it going to get?
I didn’t know because, before I’d gone far, I crashed through the floor. I went through the rotten floorboards as if they’d not been there, and found myself stuck in a hole, a few meters away from my precious plasma bags, which had fallen from my arms.
No matter how much I struggled, the floor didn’t let me go. It was almost as if the station had tried to warn me from wandering any further, and stubborn me, had refused to take the hint. I couldn’t blame my body. It wasn’t exactly in a normal operating condition. And neither could I blame my mind, as it was struggling to cope with the load that the two competing super-organism were causing it.
So I had no other choice but to accept what had happened and try to move forward.
But that was the thing. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t get up and out. I couldn’t push down and go under. And I certainly couldn’t turn around, let alone try to reach some of those precious blood supplies. The only thing I could do was to stay there and listen how the wind carried noises from deeper in the tunnels. Noises that sounded like whispers, carrying messages from other times, from other places, from other people.
It was almost as if the Underworld wanted me to listen to them; drive me mental with the images they brought to my mind. And sooner than I realised, I lost consciousness, while my mind travelled back in time to see the message bearers.
*** Henrik ***
I couldn’t believe my audio receptors. “Message bearers?”
“Yes.” Jane extended her hand holding a cup towards Sergeant Red and asked, “Could you get me a top-up, please?”
Red took immediately a step forward, but then stopped when I turned to look at him. I pondered for a moment whether I should give him permission to serve our guest or not, and then said, “When you answer, you’ll get your top-up, not a moment before. Is that clear?”
“Right,” Jane said. She placed the cup back on the table and then lit up yet another cigarette to feed her chain-smoking habits. “If that’s how you want to behave, then by all means get on with it, man. I’d like to have a drink.”
I moved the pen over the notes, which were automatically filling with text from the automated transcribe machines that lay behind the one-way mirror, and when I found what had been bugging me I shifted my gaze back to her. “Are you really implying that this place… this Victorian station,” I gestured. “…was doing these things to you?”
“I am,” she said. “There has never been any question about what the Underworld can and cannot do to you, when and if it wants. In fact, I’d dare you to go there and experience it yourself, but I doubt you would want get off your lazy fat ass and—”
“Lazy fat ass?”
Jane smiled wickedly. “Yes, darling. You heard me correctly.”
“How do you know how fat I am, and what I do when I—”
<< Easy, tiger >>
“Darling,” she said softly. “Please don’t get so upset. What I mean is that one cannot dress in words, or paint pictures of what the Underworld is, and how it connects to the spirit world. And what I am trying to do is make you understand that even though we are on this topic, it’s not really a subject I want to go too deeply into, as that information is… um, how do you put it? Classified?”
I could feel my blood boiling. That woman. That bloody bitch was playing with us. How dare she use that word? This whole thing was preposterous. Of course she could say she was a unique creature, but then again, so was every single individual in this God-forsaken blue marble, that was lying in the sea of black velvet…
Maybe she sensed my fury and wanted to do something, when she laid her hand on top of mine and said, “I’m sorry if it pisses you off, but that subject is off limits for these talks for now. So please, can we continue?”
<< Yes please >>
I dropped the pen, leaned back and crossed my fingers over my stomach. “Message bearers?”
She sighed. “You are not letting this go, are you?”
“No?”
“Very well then,” she said.
*** Jane ***
What “they” were saying – showing – I cannot remember. I wasn’t in any condition to recall anything. In fact, when I regained my consciousness, I could feel how stiff my arms, legs, my whole body had become. And how the sense of hunger had grown even more powerful. It was almost dominating my thoughts.
I needed to feed.
But I couldn’t. There was nothing other than my own flesh, and I wasn’t prepared to let go and start consuming bits that I might need in the future. Then again, there was nothing else to stuff in my mouth. Not even roaches.
It was almost as if those who lived in this place had made a mutual decision to avoid the strange creature that was sticking out from the floor in the middle of their kingdom. But it didn’t mean that they couldn’t go around my reach, because that was exactly what they were doing. And that, if nothing else, was driving the zombie in me completely bonkers.
It made me thrash, bash and try to tear up the wooden planks. And no matter what I did, I couldn’t get out. And no matter how rotten and old the place looked, I just couldn’t tear it apart. Not damage it in any way or shape.
The Underworld embraced me, and if there was one thing I understood, it was that it wouldn’t let me go until it’d reached a satisfactory conclusion and found out which one I was: a monster or a beast? And that frustrated the hell out of me. What could I do, but let the beast ravage until it was so exhausted that it stopped moving completely?
It was a strange sensation to go down to my most basic state. Not one muscle moved in my body, which had probably started to look more like a walker than a beautiful vampire. I didn’t sense the sun rising or setting. Instead, the beast in me waited calmly, patiently, for anything living to come into its range. And then after God knows how long time, I sensed a movement.
A living creature or four.
They were rats. Black, white, brown, spotty sewer rats that were coming from burrow holes in the wall. They scurried over the floor, sniffing, sensing their environment for anything to consume. I knew they’d spotted me standing out from the floor like some kind of weird mushroom, and maybe it was that sight, which made them move around the edges until one of them made a slight mistake.
When the first one took a step at the very edge of my reach, I forced my willpower to keep the beast in bay and waited. Seconds turned to minutes, and moments felt like hours, but finally, when it made a deeper incursion in my territory, I slashed.
The rat squealed, twitched and then bit my wrist, sending all its mates scurrying hastily away. I brought the rat’s fat body to my mouth, and sank my fangs in. Its sweet, warm blood filled my mouth for a moment that felt like an eternity. When it ended I sensed the undead abomination inside me waiting impatiently for its turn.
I couldn’t let it win. So no matter how much I wanted to close my jaws around its head, I didn’t. It took all of my willpower to toss it away. The rat’s small, dead, cold body smacked against the deep red tiles and slid down to the floor. I had regained something of my former self. However, even though I might have given a winning edge to the vampiric virus, I knew that I needed more.
Much, much more.
So over the next few days, or however long it took, I used those quiet moments to mediate, to grow my spirit, to listen the Underworld filling my mind with its whispers, before it sent down another victim to strengthen my fight. Slowly but surely, the piles of corpses grew near the wall, and slowly but surely I started to sense again the cycle of night and day.
Then, in one evening, I heard a crack. Then another. A third. A fourth.
I looked around and saw fresh, light brownish fissures in the floor boards. I placed my palms flat ag
ainst the surface, gritted my teeth and pushed. The floor creaked loudly and then gave away, letting me climb out from the hole and wrap my fingers around a plasma-bag.
With a one swift movement, I ripped it open and brought the bag on my lips. I took a deep gulp and immediately spat it out. It had gone rancid. All the bags I had brought with me were the same. The environment had turned them to foul-tasting things - items that weren’t doing me any good. Instead they’d left me no other choice but to go out and hunt.
For what was it worth, I knew that I couldn’t go back the way I had come in, but neither could I go down the tracks into the belly of the Underworld. It didn’t want me there. The only way out from there was to go through the station, and find out if it would connect to something better, maybe even to salvation.
For the first time in many days, I let my feet bear my weight as I hobbled across the floorboards and headed straight into the heart of the darkness. The little light that seeped into this world was barely enough for me to see where I was going. The stairs that at some point had served as an access point were under several feet of concrete. I had no choice but to go through the station and find a rusted door at the back of its abandoned office that led me through a narrow access into a sewer tunnel.
I didn’t grimace when the smells flushed my face.
Actually, I welcomed all those smells as they told me my senses were returning in so many ways. I raised my eyes and crossed my fingers to thank the Lord. To give thanks that I was back in my normal form, even thought I might have felt some beastly sensations at the back of my mind. Then I lowered my feet into the stream and crossed over to the other side, where I saw a narrow ledge leading upstream, towards a rushing sound.
A few moments later, I came across a small bridge, a waterfall and another door.
It felt like all my birthdays and Christmases had come together. I stepped back in the stream and sloshed my way happily under the waterfall to wash away all the grime and blood that I had gathered since they’d placed me in the morgue slab.
With my pale white skin shining like a beacon, I sloshed back to the ledge, and crossed the bridge to the door. A yellow sticker on it said, “TfL – Underground Maintenance Access.” I wrapped my finger around the handle and pulled. The door didn’t budge. It didn’t creak, but stubbornly stayed shut.
“Damn it,” I shouted. “What does it take?”
To my horror, what came out weren’t words, but unintelligible growls. The beast had not gone, but it’d left me to find out that I needed to do more. I need something more potent than creepy crawlies or rats to get back to full strength. I bashed my fists against the door and then turned around, and slid down its painted frame to the ground, where I buried my head between my knees and wept.
Why, Lord, why, I asked. Why have you abandoned me?
The only answer I got back was a sensation that said to me, “Get over it, girl. The truth is: faith manages.”
Faith manages, how? I asked as I got back on my feet and started to follow the ledge down, with my head hanging low. My eyes caught something.
It was junk; useful junk made from metal, wires, plastic and whatnots.
I picked it up, tucked it under my arm and hurried back to the door to study its lock. With a couple of separated copper wires tucked into the mechanism, I heard a soft click as the door opened and allowed me through. What a sight it was: the walls were lined with blue lockers, wooden benches and cloth hooks. There was not a single sign of the walkers, other than a newspaper someone had dropped on the floor.
The headline on it screamed: “The End Is Near!” while the contents quickly revealed that in the days I had spent trapped in the Underworld things in the rest of the world had turned ugly. Some scientists were arguing that the zombies weren’t human, while other simply stated that the cure was around the corner. They argued that humanity had always faced the worst of the worst, and somehow come up with a solution.
Is that so? I asked myself as I started rummaging systematically through the lockers. I wasn’t going to go up there completely naked, but after a couple of empty lockers it started to look that way. The only bit of clothing I’d found were a pair of number ten steel-capped work boots and an oversized belt. And to be honest, I wasn’t planning going among them looking like a Tank Girl.
That was Jaq’s thing.
But when I hit the last locker, it looked as if I had no choice. Like it or not, I was going to wear boots without socks and a belt hanging loosely around my waist. I progressed to next room, which was full of tools and materials to do repairs to the central metro line. There was nothing useful I could find. At least at not first sight, but as I was moving out, I saw something tucked under a workbench.
I bent down and pulled out a greasy, smudgy and torn overall from a bin.
Better than nothing at all, I thought as I pulled the oversized garment over my frame, and secured it around my waist. I stepped through the door to a completely quiet station. There were no lights, no air conditioning and no announcements. Just dust hanging in the air. How much time I had left pressed on me as I climbed a few flights of stairs, and then stopped abruptly at the bottom of the escalators.
Morning was already here, and with it, the sun was already climbing way too high for any Damned to go out to play on the face of the earth. No, I said myself, I must turn around and go back to embrace the darkness of the underground.
However, as I walked back at the other end of the platform, I started to feel a terrible hunger starting to twist my guts and I knew I was in trouble. Go all the way back and the chances were I’d never leave. I couldn’t let that happen. But neither could I let the other side take over. It was better to jump down on the tracks and hunt for the rats.
There were none. No matter how far I went I couldn’t find any. Nevertheless what I found were tracks from a large number of walkers as they had gone down the tunnels, cleaning the place out of anything that lived down there. With the hunger growing to ravenous proportions, I stopped in the middle of the tunnels and locked myself inside a cage that the workers had been using to store their equipment, and let the warmth of the place carry me into sleep.
*** Henrik ***
It sounded strange that no one had seen her in the early morning hours at the tube-station. Then again, maybe it was because the zombies had started breaking out all over the capital city and the station personnel had started coming in pairs or small groups to wait for the armed guards to clear the platforms for the passengers. But even then there was a detail that made no sense to me. “Why did you lock yourself in?”
Jane tapped her cigarette forcibly, sending dust flying towards the floor before she took a deep breath and said angrily, “Because I really couldn’t trust I had cured the beast side of me. The days I spent in the Underworld had taught me not to trust my own body.” She paused and swiped a corner of her eye, before she continued with much calmer tone. “I could wake up to something and see that it had tried to scratch its way to get something I’d tossed to one side. So the thought of what would had happened if it’d got loose and stepped in front of a speeding train was something I couldn’t hang on faith alone. It was just safer for me to assume that it couldn’t figure a way out from that place.”
“And all this time, you didn’t know what really had happened to the city above?”
“No.” She shook her head. “But I could guess they were doing their best to cull the emergency hotspots that were appearing all over the place.”
“And how do you know that?”
Jane took a deep drag and stubbed the dog end. “From the propaganda posters they’d plastered all over the place, and…”
*** Jane ***
It wasn’t long after I woke up and climbed to the surface station to see that the world wasn’t exactly the same I’d left on the Saturday night. Because in what should have been a reasonably busy street scene, the roads were almost empty. Why, I couldn’t understand until I picked up a newspaper from the floor.
Martial Law. And even though the mandatory curfew might have emptied the streets and the public gathering places, it had done nothing to people’s homes. They were nothing like I’d seen during the last Great War. And the lights filtering out from the windows were warm and welcoming rather than sending a message to a watcher to go away. Humanity had not abandoned their urban dwellings. And, like so many of them, I didn’t think for a second that the end of the times had arrived, but actually I believed that that the so-called experts were full of hot air, as they often had been.
Nevertheless, the constantly growing hunger was still there. It was still trying to transform me back to the mindless beast that had wandered through the hospital corridors.
Not really knowing how much time I had left, I limped away as fast I could. Even though the empty streets were working for me, they were also working against me. And as soon as I reached the nearest street corner I saw a police car speeding down the road. Before I managed to hide, its headlights painted me against the wall, and then I heard a loudspeaker shouting, “Stop there. Raise your hands and lock your fingers behind your neck. Do it now or else we are compelled to follow order twenty-one.”
I did as they ordered and faced the wall, while the car door clonked open behind my back. I listened patiently to a pair of heavy steps coming closer and then felt metal rings wrapping around my wrists as the officer locked my hands. Then he turned me around, and I heard a gasp and saw the officer stepping back to reach for his radio. His partner pointed at me and said, “She’s… she’s one of them.”
“No she isn’t.”
“Yes she is. Look at her face, it's pale as a sheet and—”