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 greasy 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-F2 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 cheeseburger 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.