The Blonde

by Duane Swierczynski

  She squeezed the button on the top of the canister.

  The liquid nailed him right in his eyes. But he couldn’t even feel that at first. It was the skin on his face. Like jungle fields suddenly introduced to the flash strike of napalm, Jack’s cheeks, nose, and forehead blazed with raw fury. He recoiled, but he couldn’t move anywhere. His back was already against the seat. So he slid to the side and collapsed to the floor, screaming, “You bitch! Son of a fucking ... you fucking maced me!”

  He was too busy yelling to truly hear, but Jack could have sworn she muttered, “Asshole.”

  The burning didn’t give up. The more he cried out, the more he moved, the more it seemed to hurt.

  Worst of all, he couldn’t see.

  Where was Angela? Was she still sitting there? Smirking at him as he writhed on the dirty floor of the elevated train?

  Stand up, Jack. Stand up and reach out. Get your bearings. For fuck’s sake, man, get up and figure out where the fuck you are and where other people are and move closer to them, or you’re going to die.

  “ANGELA!” he shouted.

  His eyes now ... oh, he could feel those burn in their sockets. His contacts lenses were probably acid-burned to a crisp, and the toxins were sinking into his eyeballs. The more tears he produced, the more the fiery poison of the Mace spread, and he could swear it was already in his nose and throat, and he was swallowing it....

  Move.

  Move now.

  Find people.

  Stay alive.

  Try to ignore the burning hell on your face.

  Jack didn’t exactly know it, but as he stumbled blindly down the length of the car, he brushed up against the old man seated toward the rear. The man, the last person in Philadelphia to still wear a fedora on a daily basis, looked up at Jack with a bemused expression on his face. Ah, kids these days. But what was the deal here? Why was this fella asking out a lady on a train at five o’clock in the morning? That wasn’t the way to do it. He deserved a face full of that stuff, the way he saw it.

  The girl with the schoolbag slid over in her seat, moving closer to the window.

  Meanwhile, Angela, who had pressed herself against the door at the opposite end of the train, had her cell phone out and was connecting to 911. She had fingered herself in front of enough members of the Fifteenth District to guarantee a quick and passionate response. Once this train reached the end of the line, this fucker was in for it.

  If he came back toward the end of this car, though, she was going to have to beat the shit out of him.

  She was prepared.

  She wasn’t above taking out an eye.

  Down the length of the car, Jack smacked up against the glass of the connecting door. He fumbled for the handle. He knew he was in the very first car. But maybe there were more people in the others cars. He could try to cope with the burning in his eyes and face. Sit down near a crowd. Ride this out. Ride this out to the end of the line. Hope his vision returned. Follow someone down. Follow someone near a cab.

  The handle opened. The door flung open. Jack rushed past it. Tripped. Threw his arms out, grabbed hold of the thick, greasy chains.

  He felt the screaming in his blood, the pounding in his head.

  The train was coming to a stop again. The whine of the brakes scraped the inside of his skull. Door handle. There. Turn it. Open it open it open it.

  Jack stumbled. There was nothing where a steel platform should have been. His foot plunged down, down down....

  5:20 a.m.

  Kowalski made it up to the platform as the train doors started to close. He got hung up at the token booth. Two fucking dollars for a subway ride? The clerk, an obese man who probably needed to be forklifted into the booth, pointed him in the direction of a token machine across the station. Yeah. He had time for that. Kowalski slid the guy a ten, told him to keep the change, buy a Slim-Fast. Hopped the turnstile to save time.

  The doors were closing.

  He made it in.

  Almost.

  His left forearm was caught outside the doors.

  The one holding the gym bag containing the head of Ed Hunter.

  “Oh fuck me,” Kowalski said.

  “Frankford train making all stops. Next stop Church Street.”

  The train sped forward. If he didn’t find a way to pull his hand, along with the bag, into the car, it would smack against the metal gate at the end of the platform. The one that would be upon him in, oh, a matter of seconds. Probably snap his forearm in half. Maybe not sever it completely. No matter what, it was going to hurt. But even worse, he’d lose Ed. He hadn’t carried him all night just to leave him on the platform of an elevated train.

  The train accelerated.

  “Fuck me,” Kowalski said again.

  And he wasn’t the kind of guy to say “Fuck me” lightly.

  Kowalski threw the bag up in the air, aiming for the top of the train, toward the back. His other wrist cried out in agony. This might have been spur-of-the-moment rationalization, but Kowalski thought he recognized these cars. He’d ridden them in Korea once, years ago. For all he knew, Philadelphia might have bought them used from Korea, then refurbished them—or not.

  Point was, the cooling and heating system at the top had a generous space right in the middle of the housing. Enough to catch a decapitated head in a gym bag like a softball in a leather glove.

  Kowalski knew this because he had once been forced to ride on top of a Korean subway car. Years ago. Ah, the glory days.

  Then again, he might have been rationalizing. He was no subway car expert. Maybe this was a completely different model.

  At the last possible second, Kowalski pulled his left hand through the doors, feeling the rubber guards burn his skin. The gate whizzed by. Then he steadied himself and scanned the windows, looking for a bag tumbling down the side of the car and hitting the steel tracks. Awaiting an El train racing in the opposite direction to burst it open like a balloon full of gray cottage cheese.

  5:21 a.m.

  Jack grabbed a stretch of greasy chain with both hands and steadied himself before he could slip down onto the tracks. He didn’t know what was worse: the roaring of the car on the tracks or the roaring in his head. Get inside. Get near someone. Now.

  He found the handle, yanked down. The door opened and Jack threw himself inside.

  Still blind, he felt his shoulder bump into something. Something soft.

  “Hey!”

  He threw out his hands, looking for one of the metal poles attached to the seats and roof of the car. Instead, he found something else soft. Two things, to be precise. Draped in cotton. Warm.

  A shriek.

  And then a punch, right to Jack’s ribs.

  The pain made him want to fold in half, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. He was near people again. The Mary Kates were retreating from his brain. That was all that mattered. Let them punch and kick and spit at him. Let everyone abuse him. Let his eyes burn out of their sockets. It didn’t matter. He was alive.

  For the moment.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you?” someone said.

  But Jack couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from. Right next to him, or farther down the length of the car?

  “I need to sit down,” Jack whispered, and flung out his hands again. Feeling out for someone, anyone, to sit next to.

  But all he felt was empty air.

  He tried opening his eyes, but it hurt too much. He felt vibrations on the floor beneath his feet. Was that the usual rumbling of the train car, or were people moving away from him? Running away from him?

  “Someone help me, please,” Jack said.

  As the train decelerated, the throbbing in his head returned.

  5:22 a.m.

  Church Street. Frankford train making all stops.” Okay, so the bag didn’t fall down. Least he didn’t see it fall. That meant it was up on the roof of the car. Hang on, Ed, comin’ to get ya. Kowalski opened the connecting door, put a foot on the greas
y cables between the cars. A simple heave-ho would get him up there. Easier than Korea. That was a real bitch, come to think of it.

  But something inside the next car caught his eye.

  His man. Jack Eisley.

  Eyes closed, and waving his arms around like an orchestra conductor on crack. About a dozen other passengers in the car were moving away like he had a force field of nuts surrounding him. Nobody liked sharing personal space with the insane.

  What the hell was Jack doing?

  Maybe the virus Kelly White had infected him with had driven him over the edge. Made him nuts. Forced him to attack random people on the Market-Frankford Line. Maybe soon he’d sprout fur and fangs and growl like a dog. Wouldn’t surprise Kowalski in the least.

  The side doors were closing again.

  Okay, think about Jack later. Get the bag first. Jack isn’t going anywhere.

  Heave-ho ...

  The train started moving forward as Kowalski planted both feet on the top of the car. He crouched down, making himself less wind-resistant. Ah, there was Ed. Unfortunately, he hadn’t landed in the little basket in the cooling/heating housing. He was smack in the middle of the top of the car, like a flattened plum on a hot silver skillet. And the bag was sliding, sliding, sliding to the back and left.

  Kowalski dived for it.

  The train accelerated, bucked to the right. A huge gray stone church loomed on the left side, as if the elevated tracks ran up to it, then suddenly lost their nerve and swerved away.

  The bag slid away faster.

  Kowalski’s ribs smashed against metal. Mother of fuck. He draped his left arm—the good one, thank Christ—over the side, fingers outstretched. Fabric brushed against his fingertips. There. He stretched farther, which was a small bit of agony in itself. Nothing. FUCK. Kowalski stood up. Balanced himself. His palms were burned. The metal of the roof was already hot.

  There.

  Ready to slide over the edge.

  Kowalski heaved himself out of the metal housing, braced both feet on the metal surface, like he was surfing, and bent himself in half.

  His hand grabbed the handles.

  Gotcha, Ed.

  He stood up.

  And on the approach to the next station, the train bucked violently, as it did every time on this stretch of track. Ever since the city had rebuilt the tracks in the 1990s, and purchased the surplus cars from Korea in 2000, the Frankford El trains never glided along as smoothly as they had when the El was built in 1922. Too many engineering errors. Not enough to cause a crash, but enough to cause a jolt at predictable points along the route.

  And Mike Kowalski was thrown off the top of the car, hurling through the air, two stories above the hot pavement, and smashing through a large plate-glass window on the third story of an old shop long closed to the public.

  He went through the glass upside down, still grasping the gym bag in his left hand.

  Kowalski’s body skidded across the ancient wooden floor like a puppet thrown to the ground by an angry toddler.

  5:23 a.m.

  The train bucked and Jack was thrown into a seat, on top of someone. Someone who smelled like wet cats. His hand grasped fabric, but two meaty hands pushed him back into the aisle. “What the hell was that?” someone shouted, and Jack thought he heard glass shatter, which confused him. Had the train crashed? Had he tripped an emergency brake or something?

  No. It was slowing down for another station. The last station? Jack had no idea.

  But no matter. Hands found him. By the collar of his suit coat, by his arm. Dozens of hands. Guiding him along. Helping him. At long last.

  Helping him right out of the car, onto the platform.

  “Get the fuck out,” someone yelled.

  Jack stumbled forward into the humid air, his knees scraped against the cement, and he screamed.

  This was no way to die.

  “Watch the closing doors, ” an automated voice said.

  5.25 a.m.

  The plastic robot face was the first thing he saw. A blue robot, solid jaw, face bolted together with plastic bumps meant to look like rivets. To his right, a fleshy strongman was torn open at the torso by a spear of glass. Pink slime oozed out of the wound. Yet the expression on his molded-plastic face remained the same. Now that was stoicism at its finest. Inspirational, even.

  Kowalski lay broken in a sea of dusty toys, stuff he remembered from his own childhood.

  That must have been when this shop closed down, the 1970s. Kowalski squinted and saw a painted wooden sign stacked vertically in the corner. SNYDER’S TOYS.

  Cute.

  All around him, toys. Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. Stretch Armstrong. Role models, dating back to the era of The Six Million Dollar Man. His main man, Steve Austin. The man Kowalski had wanted to be when he grew up. Even if it took a grisly M2-F 2 rocket crash, and parts of his mangled body needed to be replaced with bionic ones. We can rebuild you. We have the technology.

  Well, here was his crash. Thrown from a moving train. His skin cut to ribbons, his right leg broken in at least two places, his wrist snapped. And a gash in his scalp so bad, he could feel the blood oozing past his hair and down into the dusty wooden floor, soaking it. Come to think of it, the wetness on his face might not even be sweat.

  Where were the bionic parts now?

  Where was Oscar Goldman?

  Oh, that’s right. He’d dumped his Oscar last year for the sister of a bank robber.

  Katie.

  Enough of that already. Get the fuck up. Kowalski rolled over, threw out a hand. Grabbed the edge of a splintery floorboard. Pulled himself forward about six inches. Then he had to stop. Getting dizzy. The pain in his leg was unbelievable. Must have been how he’d landed on it. He pushed toys aside. Chrissy dolls. White marbles. Shattered, yet still hungry, plastic hippos. Kenner mini sewing machines. Wacky Packs. Micronauts. Milton Bradley board games, whose cardboard boxes had blown out. Remco Mc-Donaldland characters. The stuff was everywhere. He must have knocked over a set of steel shelves when he came through the window. It felt like his body was pressed against shag carpeting, the kind his parents used to have in the living room. He crawled a bit farther and found himself eye-to-eye with Mayor McCheese. He used to have a Mayor McCheese doll. Normal body, big cheese-burger for a head. Never knew what happened to it. Maybe it had ended up here. Maybe he’d ended up wherever it had gone. Maybe he was dead. Maybe he had been hurled through the air and had landed in his childhood version of heaven: his parents living room, Christmas Day, 1977.

  Stop it.

  It took him ten minutes to reach the other side of the room, where the gym bag containing the head of Ed Hunter had landed.

  Behind it was a shimmering play mirror, about as reflective as a sheet of aluminum foil. But Kowalski was able to see his face.

  He saw it.

  And he screamed.

  His body shook, raging against itself.

  He pounded the floor with his right fist, clawed at the wood with the damaged fingers of his left hand.

  He had been so good about keeping everything together. Because he was a trained professional. Guy who didn’t let anything in. But the truth was, he was the same kid who’d played with a Mayor McCheese doll, the kid who would grow up to meet a woman and fall in love and make a baby with her, and both of them were dead now because he hadn’t been there to save them, and now look at him, covered in blood, flesh of his cheeks torn and mangled, pieces of his ear missing, but those eyes, oh yeah, those eyes were the same he’d had since Christmas morning, 1977, and they looked back at him and they knew.

  They knew what it was like to be trapped inside a monster.

  5:30 a.m.

  Vanessa could move. Finally. The room came into focus. She wriggled her fingers, felt them scrape against fabric. Moved her elbows. Then her neck. Just a little. Her head felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. But she could move. A little.

  The Operator was standing over her. “You are there, aren’t you?”
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  Fuck you, Vanessa wanted to say, but she couldn’t make her mouth move the way it should. She felt drool run down the corner of her mouth. The thought made her gag. She coughed, and coughed again, and the sudden movement racked her with pain.

  “Calm down, you’re doing too much. You need your rest.” The Operator looked over at the open door. “Hang on a second.” He disappeared from view. Were her wrists tied to the bed? She couldn’t feel any restraints, but she also couldn’t lift her arms. She heard the snick of a door closing shut. Then he reappeared. “We need a little privacy.”

  “F-f-f-f-f- ...” Vanessa spat. Clawed at the mattress.

  “Shh, blondie. You know, you’re not much to look at right now, but I can’t help but be seriously impressed with you lately. This whole scorched-earth campaign of yours. Very, very bold. And clever. I didn’t realize the brilliance of your airport visits until a few days into the game. You’ve got everything you need. Always a restaurant open. Plenty of places to buy T-shirts. Crowded bathrooms. Sleep on the planes, find a willing stud, get a free hotel room for a night. I may have this wrong, but there are at least five men you did the horizontal mambo with in the past week or so. I have a list on my PDA. Hang on.”

  The more she flexed her fingers, the more movement she had. Focus on that, she told herself. The left one. Get it going. Get your hand and wrist working first. Then the forearm. Then find something sharp.

  “Yeah, here we go. Donn Moore. Investment banker, looks like. Always insisted on that extra n in his first name. What, Donny not good enough for you? Douche bag. Okay, who else? Jimmy Calcagno, lawyer. Allan Ward, another lawyer, although not as sleazy as Jimmy, who apparently had some real scumball clients. Did you know that? A simple Nexis search turned that up. Meanwhile, Allan seemed more like the tweedy type. Corporate law. I bet he was real sick. It’s always the quiet ones. Anyway, who else, who else? ... Rob Ormsby. Oh, a screenwriter. Nice. And finally, Simon Smith, who owned a boutique Web-design company. How delightful.”