Now the light was getting even closer, illuminating the walls of the tunnel with a faint, almost ghostly grow, which grew steadily brighter. With the swelling light came the sounds of footsteps crunching on the gravel and voices. Mary listened intently, trying to determine how many people were approaching, and who they were.
From the sound of it, there seemed to be maybe three or four people, and at least two or three of them were men, judging by the sounds of their voices. The pulsing of fear deep within Mary’s core grew more intense when she heard the distant voices more clearly; they sounded brash and aggressive and were laughing in harsh tones. These were undoubtedly not anxious, confused commuters who had been stuck on a train, and the fact that they were all men rang further alarm bells in Mary’s mind.
Soon the light thrown off from their party was enough to illuminate the tunnel around the train and the station quite clearly, and from its orange, dancing nature and the whiff of burning gasoline Mary smelled, it seemed that the men had improvised some sort of crude torches for light. Her heart started to beat faster as she heard what they were saying.
“I saw it, man, I fuckin’ saw it. There was light this way,” one of them growled. “It was comin’ this way toward us.”
“You be fuckin’ trippin’, there ain’t no fuckin’ light around here,” another muttered, his voice deep and resonant.
“Shut the fuck up, Haze,” the third man snarled. “Fuckin’ bitch. I saw the fuckin’ light too. There’s some motherfucker down here.”
“It’s probably some subway contractor or some shit tryin’ a’ fix the power outage,” the second man said. “An’ they gon’ find that motherfucker we shanked on the train.”
“So?” the first man scoffed. “We’ll just fuckin’ shank ‘em too an’ take their shit. Subway repairmen ain’t packin’ no guns.”
The third man chuckled darkly. “Who knew a power outage could be so good for business, huh? How many grand we up after robbing these scared-ass motherfuckers? Haha!”
“Man, you right, we made some quick and easy money,” the second man said, “but everyone’s gone from the tracks now. They all bailed outta here. We ain’t gon’ find nobody else to take shit from. Let’s just get the hell outta here now. They gon’ eventually send some cops in here, an’ I don’t wanna do no more time. I already done enough years behind bars. An’ when the power comes back on? You wan’ be stuck underground on the fuckin’ subway tracks an’ get creamed by a fuckin’ train? Fuck that, man, I say we go now.”
Mary prayed that the other two would listen to this man, but her heart sank when the third man replied.
“Not until I find where that light was coming from,” he growled.
“Yo!” the first man yelled as the men got within a few yards of the abandoned train. “Who the fuck is here?”
His voice boomed in a series of ominous echoes through the tunnel. Mary and James were hidden in the intense black shadows under the train, but they could see the three men’s legs and shoes clearly enough. The men looked big—all of them—and were dressed like inner-city thugs. They’d already killed one person just to rob them, and she had no doubt that they would do something just as heinous if they discovered her and James hiding under the train. She reached over and took his trembling hand in hers and gave it a reassuring squeeze. Her pulse was booming so loudly in her ears that she thought the men had to be able to hear it.
“Come out, motherfucker, we just wan’ talk, okay?” the man yelled. “We know you here. We saw your light!”
Mary watched as one of them walked up to the train, and her pulse started to race even faster. Fortunately, he didn’t look under it. Instead, he climbed into the train, and she and James listened with bated breath to his footsteps thumping around right above them.
“See?” the man on the train said. “Nobody here. It’s as empty as when we left it. Let’s just get the hell outta here.”
A brief flame of hope flickered to life inside Mary. Maybe, just maybe, the men would give up and leave. As quickly as it had flared up, though, the fire was extinguished.
“He ain’t in there,” the first man growled. “But I’m pretty sure I know where the motherfucker is.”
Mary held her breath and slid her forefinger onto the trigger of her .45 as the man got down on his hands and knees. She saw where the orange light was coming from—it was a section of ripped up carpet rolled into a tube and doused with gasoline, a crude but efficient torch. The writhing torch flames instantly banished the shadows from under the train, and Mary’s heart almost stopped when the man’s eyes met hers. He was a big, brutish-looking man with a shaved, scarred head and a skew nose that looked as if it had been broken a few times. He smiled evilly at her, revealing a mouth full of crooked teeth.
“What you lookin’ at, man?” the third man asked.
“It ain’t no subway repairman down here,” he replied his sadistic grin widening. “It’s a Lil’ milf an’ her kid.”
The other man chuckled darkly. “Come on out, honey. We ain’t gon’ hurt you,” he said, dropping down to his haunches and leering at Mary and James. He, too, was a large, powerfully built man with a bald head. He flashed them a mocking smile with a broad mouth full of gold teeth.
“Don’t fuck with me, assholes,” Mary hissed, doing her best to sound as confident and intimidating as possible, despite the almost debilitating fear that was surging through her. “Get back! Get back, or I’ll shoot all of you. I swear to God I’ll do it!”
“Ooh, we got a feisty one down here, huh?” the first man said, chortling. “Tell you what, baby. How ‘bout you come outta there and hand over that piece, an’ the three of us give you a real good time in the back a’ the train. Your boy can watch. Maybe he’ll learn a thing or two.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” Mary snarled. “You three clowns start running now, and maybe you’ll get away with your lives before I start shooting.”
“You ever shot a man before, baby?” the third man asked. The mocking smile on his face vanished, replaced by a vicious snarl and a devilish gleam of menace in his eyes. “Coz, I have. You think you got what it takes to pull that trigger an’ put a bullet into a man? You got the balls to do that?” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a large hunting knife. “I shot plenty a’ motherfuckers before, but I prefer using this. An’ if you don’t give us that fuckin’ piece, I’m gonna use this on you an’ your boy … nice an’ slow. I’ll do that, lil’ punk first. Take his fuckin’ face off while you watch. You wanna see that? Coz, you gonna see that if you don’t give us that gun in the next five seconds.”
“Come on, honey. Come outta there. Let me get a good look at that tight lil’ body a’ yours,” the first man sneered. He crawled closer and ducked his head under the train, and Mary and James scrambled back.
“Get back, dammit!” Mary yelled. “I said, get back!”
“Gimme the fuckin’ gun, bitch!” the man growled, his smile vanishing. He lunged for the pistol, but Mary yanked it out of his way and scrambled back farther under the train.
“This is your last warning!” she screamed. “Leave us alone, or you’ll die in this tunnel, all of you!”
The man laughed humorlessly, but then abruptly snarled, and threw the burning torch at them. Mary yelped and rolled out of the way of the flaming projectile, but the man used this distraction to lunge and grab her. Suddenly his big, powerful hand clamped tight around her wrist, and in a flash, he half-forced the pistol out of her hand. Mary screamed, tugging with all her might to try to get her arm out of his grasp and to get her hand back on the trigger so she could shoot, but the man was far too strong.
“I got the bitch. I got her. Fuckin’ shank her, man, shank her!” the man roared as he and Mary fought in a furious struggle in the cramped confines of the space under the train.
Over the grunting and growling of the man she was fighting, she heard the thumping of boots above her inside the train and the crunch of gravel as the other man—the one with the knife—ran arou
nd the back of the train to try to get to her and attack her from behind. She knew that she had mere seconds to act to save both her life and James’s, and she launched into a frenzied counterattack on her assailant, lunging forward and clawing at his face with her free hand.
To her surprise, James ripped himself out of his panic-induced paralysis and howled with animalistic fury as he scuttled toward the man on his back, kicking the thug’s head and shoulders and arms repeatedly with both feet, wailing on him with desperate fury.
Mary wasn’t sure how, but somehow her hand was free of the criminal’s death-grip, and the pistol was still in it. James continued screaming like a rabid animal and raining furious blows down on the man’s head and face, and he was fighting back, swinging vicious punches at James's legs and roaring like a cornered bear. Now, in the heat of the moment, Mary knew she could not hesitate. There was no time to aim; she simply pointed the pistol in the general direction of her attacker and squeezed the trigger.
A bright flash briefly lit up the underside of the train, and the bang of the gunshot resounded down the tunnel, leaving both Mary’s and James’s ears ringing with a shrill whine.
Her assailant flopped forward limply, and she felt the warm wetness of his blood sprayed across her face. She didn’t even think about whether he was dead, or perhaps just wounded; she spun around on her back just as the third man, with his knife ready to gut her like a pig, scrambled under the train behind her. He lunged with the blade, and she squeezed off two shots in quick succession, and the knife stabbed into the gravel to her right, and his huge form flopped onto her legs—dead.
This third man was standing frozen in place on the tracks, after hearing the gunshots, but James was still screaming and kicking the first man’s head, too caught up in the fury of the fight to stop.
“James, James, stop, stop, he’s dead, he’s dead,” Mary gasped, reaching over to James. “He’s dead, honey. He’s dead—stop.”
Outside, on the tracks, the other man was utterly silent. Mary knew she had to deal with him immediately. She scrambled out from under the train with her .45 gripped in both hands. Now that the man’s torch was burning under the train, everything in the tunnel was dark and gloomy, and she could only see the remaining shadowy outline against the blackness.
“Your friends are dead,” she said coldly. “And you will be too if you don’t leave right now. There’s the platform—climb up onto it, walk up the escalator stairs, and keep going until you get to the surface. I’ll be watching you, asshole, and if you even try to look over your shoulder, you’ll end up like your friends under the train. Go! Move it! Get the hell out of here, now!”
The man said nothing. He quietly turned and headed over to the platform, climbed up onto it, and walked away without turning to look back. Mary kept the pistol trained on his back until he melted into the darkness beyond the light, and even then, she waited until she could no longer hear his footsteps before she lowered the gun. After that, she hurried over to check on James.
He had already crawled out from under the train and was dusting off his knees and elbows. He was breathing hard, his chest was heaving, and his face looked both frightened and haggard. There was a faraway look in his eyes, and his mouth was hanging half-open.
Mary didn’t know what to do or say. She still couldn’t believe that she’d just killed two men, and she was reeling with shock. She holstered her pistol, walked up to James, slowly wrapped her arms around him, and hugged him. For a few moments, his limbs hung limp at his sides, but then he wrapped them around her and returned the embrace. When they disengaged from the hug, both Mary’s and James’s eyes were wet with tears.
“Let’s go,” she said softly.
James simply nodded in response. Without another word, and without another glance at the dead men, Mary lit up her gas lamp and set off, and James followed quietly behind her.
9
“How far are we from school?” Sandy asked. Her usually pretty face was a twisted mess of pain, fear, and anxiety.
Ann peeked around the corner of the dry-cleaning store, scoping out the street beyond. Thus far, they had managed to navigate two city blocks without being seen or running into any more of the sinister men in black. The deserted streets, littered with abandoned cars, were eerily quiet, although sporadic explosions and scattered bursts of gunfire, as well as shouts and screams, would frequently shatter the fragile silence. Also, while Ann and Sandy had not seen or encountered any other people in the streets, they had felt eyes quietly watching them and had seen frightening faces peeping out from behind the drapes of apartment windows. All in all, it was a very frightening situation, and Ann couldn’t wait to be reunited with her mother, who she was sure would have a plan to get her out of this mess.
“Um, three blocks,” she said to Sandy. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s three blocks from here.”
“Could you take me home first instead?” Sandy asked. “My dad’s not at the hospital today. It’s his day off. I just—I need to get home, Ann. I really need to get home.”
“You don’t wanna come with my mom and me? She’ll know exactly what to do, I promise.”
Sandy, on the verge of tears, shook her head. “I just … I just wanna go home, please Ann, I just wanna go home.”
Ann nodded; she could understand this. If her mom hadn’t had a backup plan in place, she too would have wanted nothing more than to just run straight home and lock herself in. Also, while Mary would certainly have some sort of plan in place, Ann wasn’t sure how much first aid knowledge her mother possessed and wasn’t entirely sure that she would be able to help Sandy, with her severely injured ankle that looked even worse now. At least Sandy’s father would know what to do.
“All right,” Ann said to Sandy. “We’ll go to your place first. Then I’ll head over to the tree at school to wait for my mom.”
“You don’t wanna, like, stay with us?” Sandy asked. “We’ve got the two guest rooms, and my parents won’t mind. You could, like, even bring your mom too. We could all stay in the apartment.”
Sandy’s parents stayed in a swanky downtown apartment, and as tempting, as her offer was, Ann knew that Mary would want to get out of the city as soon as possible. It wouldn’t be wise to stay here, no matter how luxurious and comfortable the accommodation was.
“I don’t know about that,” Ann said. “I guess I’ll have to ask my mom and see what she says. But for now, let’s just focus on getting you home. Come on. The coast’s clear; let’s go.”
She slipped her arm around Sandy, and they ran-hopped down the deserted road. As they moved down the street, Ann found herself wishing she had a gun. Unlike most of the other girls in her class, Ann knew how to handle firearms and was a good shot with both a pistol and rifle. Learning how to shoot and going for regular sessions on the range had been one thing Mary had always insisted Ann do.
She’d also made Ann train in regular martial arts classes ever since she was five years old; Ann was thus now a black belt in both Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and karate. Mary had never explained exactly why she’d been so forcefully insistent about the firearms and martial arts training, and Ann had always thought it had had something to do with her mother’s stressful and traumatic years as a teenage runaway on the streets. Her mother had never spoken much about those days, but from the look that came across her face whenever that period of her life came up, she had been able to tell that it had been rough. However, now Ann had come to an altogether different realization. Her mother hadn’t been prepping her for possible dangerous encounters with men—although this had certainly been part of the motivation, surely—but rather, she had been making sure that Ann would be able to handle herself in a disaster scenario just like this one.
Thankfully, Ann thought, she hadn’t actually had to fight or shoot anyone thus far; it was one thing shooting at targets on a range and fighting opponents in the controlled confines of a martial arts dojo, but, as she’d discovered when being shot at earlier, real-life fighting was
a lot more chaotic and vicious, and nobody played by the rules when there were lives at stake. She wondered if she had it in her to actually point a gun at another human being and pull the trigger, even if that person were threatening her life. And she wondered if Mary, for all her training and preparation, was capable of this too. Her mother had always been tough and independent, but she was a kind, soft-hearted, and gentle person too. Would she really be able to kill, even in a life or death situation?
While getting lost in these thoughts, about halfway down the street, Ann’s sixth sense began tingling. She wasn’t sure why, but she sensed that danger was nearby. She stopped and listened intently to the gentle breeze and was sure she heard the sound of a great many footsteps, approaching rapidly. She couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from, or if she even heard it or if her weary and stressed-out mind was simply conjuring it up, but a mounting sense of fear was growing within her.
She frantically scanned the area for both cover and an escape route—the first priorities her mother had taught her to seek out in a dangerous area—and decided that a large abandoned SUV straddling the sidewalk nearby would have to do in terms of a hiding place. There were no alleys or side streets close by, and no unlocked buildings they could slip into.
“Get under that Subaru!” Ann whispered urgently, yanking Sandy to the side.
“What? Why?” Sandy asked.
“Just do it! People are coming, a lot of ‘em!”
Ann didn’t give Sandy time to argue or ask any more questions; she simply dragged Sandy along behind her as she made a beeline for the SUV, with the injured girl hopping and stumbling along behind her, yelping in pain. Ann pulled her friend to the ground so hard that it was almost as if she had tackled her or given her a judo throw onto the sidewalk.
“Ow, dammit!” Sandy yelped, but Ann was already dragging her under the Subaru, and before she could say another word, Ann’s hand clamped down over her mouth.
Ann’s urgency was warranted; a mere second or two after they had crawled under the SUV, a group of black-clad men, all armed with AK-47 rifles, came striding around the corner that Ann and Sandy had just come from five minutes prior.
EMP Survival In A Powerless World | Book 21 | The Darkest Day Page 6