Underground. They had come down here on the subway and gotten off at this station. I was certain of it. That’s what Aretha’s hastily scribbled message meant.
Now what? Where had they gone from here? A four-car train pulled in, roaring and squealing to a stop. The cars were decorated with bright graffiti paintings, cartoons and names of the “artists.” I found myself scanning the words on the sides of the cars, looking for a message. Foolish desperation. The doors hissed open and everyone got out. I started toward the first car, but a black man in a Transit Authority uniform called out to me:
“End of the line. This train’s goin’ t’ the lay-up. Next train uptown in five minutes. Next train over th’ bridge on the other level.”
The doors hissed shut and the train, empty of passengers, lumbered away from the platform and screeched around a bend in the track. I listened as carefully as I could, filtering out the other echoing noises in the station: the conversations, some kid’s radio blaring rock music, high-pitched laughter from a trio of teen-aged girls. The train went around that curve, out of sight, and then stopped. “The lay-up,” the Transit man had said. Trains taken out of service are kept there, down the track, until they are needed again.
I looked around. No one was paying attention to me. I walked to the end of the platform, vaulted easily over the padlocked, heavy wire gate that barred entry to the tracks, and went down the steps that led to the floor of the tunnel. The steps, the tunnel walls, the railing I touched were coated with years of filth, of grease and accumulated grime. The floor of the tunnel was like a sewer with tracks. In the dim lighting I saw that the electrified third rail, which carried enough current to drive the trains and kill anyone who touched it, was covered by wooden planking. I stepped up onto that; my shoes were already dank from the foul-smelling wetness of the tunnel floor.
In the distance I heard a train approaching. The walls were scalloped with niches for a man to stand in, and as the train’s headlamp glared at me and its whistle hooted, I pressed myself against the grimy wall and let the juggernaut whoosh past. Despite myself, it took my breath away to have the train roar past just a few inches from me.
I pulled myself together and headed along the track after the train had passed. Sure enough, around the bend there were a dozen or more trains standing quiet and idle, side by side. Each of them was decorated with graffiti from one end to another. The overhead lights were spaced far apart; they threw weak pools of dim light into the grimy darkness that enveloped the layup.
They’re here, I told myself. They’re in here somewhere. I stopped and held my breath, listening. Eyesight was of little use in this darkness.
A scampering, slithering sound. The scrape of something hard sliding across the metal tracks. Then a squeaking, cluttering noise. Something brushed against my ankle and I jerked my foot away involuntarily, almost losing my balance on the sagging planks above the electrified rail.
Rats. I peered into the darkness and saw baleful red eyes glaring back at me. Rats. Many of them.
But then I heard voices. I couldn’t make out the words at first, but I could hear that one voice was a woman’s and the other the harsh, ugly, menacing kind of voice that I instantly knew belonged to the dark man I had seen so briefly in the restaurant.
I followed the voices, moving as silently as a wraith, ignoring the evil red eyes of the rats that hovered in the darkness around me.
“What did you tell him?” the man’s voice insisted.
“Nothing.”
“I want to know how much you told him.”
“I didn’t tell him anything.” It was Aretha’s voice, no doubt of it. But then I heard her gasp and give out a painful, frightened sob.
“Tell me!”
I abandoned all attempts at stealth and ran along the warped, loose planks toward their voices. Aretha screamed, a strangled, agonized cry, as I dashed between two of the idle trains and finally saw them in a circle of light.
They were at the end of the tunnel. Aretha was sitting in the filth of the floor, her arms pinned behind her back, the bandage still on her forehead. The dark one stood off to one side, half in shadows, staring down at her. She was surrounded by dozens of rats. Her feet and legs were bare and bleeding. Her blouse was ripped open and a huge rat, malevolent as hell itself, was standing on its hind legs, reaching for her beautiful face.
I gave a wordless roar and charged straight for them. I saw the dark one turn toward me, his eyes as red and vicious as the rats’ own. He seemed to recognize me as I charged down the tunnel toward him, and he backed away into the shadows.
Weaponless, I kicked wildly at the swarm of rats around Aretha, bent down and grabbed one of them in each hand and threw them with all my might against the walls. Turning, wheeling, kicking, flailing, I scattered them in every direction. They fled, screeching, into the protective darkness.
Suddenly they were all gone, and the man with them. I looked down at Aretha. Her eyes stared up at me blindly. Her throat had been ripped out. Her bright red blood spattered my grimy shoes and trousers.
I dropped to my knees and lifted her from the filth. But I was too late. She was dead.
CHAPTER 4
I spent the next two days in a sort of rage induced state of shock, clamping down on my emotions so hard that I felt nothing. Police interrogations, lie detector tests, medical examinations, psychiatric tests — I went through them all like a robot, responding to questions and stimuli without an outward trace of emotion.
For some reason I told no one about the dark man who had killed Aretha. He had murdered her, somehow controlling the rats that had torn out her jugular vein, using them the way another man would use a gun. But I made no mention of him. I merely told the police and the doctors that I had followed Aretha from the hospital and found her as the rats attacked her in the subway lay-up. I was too late to save her. At least that last statement was the truth.
Something buried deep inside my consciousness warned me not to mention the darkly evil man. Far down within me, where the fires of fury lay banked and smoldering, I knew that it would cause me more trouble with the police and the psychiatrists if I mentioned his existence. But more than that, I wanted to track him down and find him myself. I wanted to deal with him with my own hands.
So I withheld the facts. The police detectives I spoke to were no fools. They knew that a woman does not wander into the subways to be attacked by rats and followed by a stranger who had met her only the day before — when they had both been victims of a terrorist bombing. They made it clear that they didn’t believe me and that they wanted to use the lie detector on me. I agreed, as coldly indifferent to their questions as if they had been asking me the time of day or the color of the sky. The lie detector told them what I wanted it to, of course; controlling my pulse rate and perspiration was no great feat for me.
After an overnight atBellevuefor psychiatric observation, the police reluctantly released me. I went home to my apartment and telephoned my employer that I would be in for work at the normal time the following morning. He sounded surprised, asked me how I was feeling after two ordeals in the same week.
“I’m all right,” I said.
It was the truth. I was physically unharmed and emotionally under tight control. Perhaps too tight.
“You sure you don’t want to take the rest of the week off?” my boss asked me. His normally gruff features looked quite solicitous in the telephone’s small picture screen.
“No. I’m fine. I’ll be in tomorrow morning. I hope my being away hasn’t fouled things up too badly around the office.”