Angela turned around to look at him. Her eyes were squinted, and her mouth opened slightly, like she was mentally asking herself, What?
“Which means, to make a long story short, that I can’t be alone, or I’ll die.”
Her lips tightened and her eyes narrowed even more. Then she lifted her right arm.
“I know this sounds nuts, but …”
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 … y on 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.