Leon was back at the door. He spun and fired, aiming the Magnum at the creature’s face—
• except that the face was changing again, the j aw dropping, falling away as it screamed. Great j agged spikes of tooth or claw slid out from what was left of the mouth, from out of the top of its pulsating chest—and as another scream burst out of its mutating throat Leon saw two new arms unfurl from its sides. The limbs snapped into place, elbows locking, thick worms of taloned fingers growing from the tips. Bam-bam-bam!
The shots grouped tight, blowing into the thin-stretched skin over its slitted left eye. The monster roared, this time in pain, and Leon saw shards of bone and pus-purple fluid splatter out, a small stream of dark blood obscuring the yellow ball of its eye. It shook its head back and forth, flinging more liquid, squatting down on its haunches like a mutant frog—
• and leapt into the air, springing up and right, landing on one of the seven-foot-high shelves with an animal grunt.
Oh shit, how’d it do that—
He couldn’t see its eyes, couldn’t see anything but its back as it slumped down—but it was changing again, he could hear the wet snapping sounds and see the knobs of spine rising up through the purpled flesh of its back.
He didn’t want to see what it was becoming, but the elevator hadn’t landed yet, and he had two goddamn minutes.
Leon grabbed another clip and slapped it home, then fired at what he could see—a shape with six legs, a shape that no longer looked like anything human. The shot hit one of its muscular shoulders, and the creature jumped. Like some wild, spidering beast it leapt back to the floor, landing a few feet in front of
him. Its chest had become a wall of strange teeth, of spikes that opened and closed as it panted—and when it screamed again, the sound was a demon cry, like nothing he’d ever heard, like the dying screams of a thousand damned souls.
Leon got two shots off into the cluster of moving teeth and stumbled away, and beneath the constant blare of the sirens, he heard the bright and cheery ping of the elevator’s arrival.
Claire ran to the front of the train, looking at the series of levers and switches set into the tunnel wall, frowning, finding the red and white handle in less than ten seconds and slamming it down. She heard the grating of metal somewhere in front of the train and turned to run back to the door—
• when she heard metal again—the ripping, tear-ing sounds of steel being bent and hammered out of shape, coming from somewhere behind the subway, from somewhere in the back of the tunnel—
No, no way.
She stared toward the back of the train, past the metal bars of a closed gate that led back into shad-ows—and heard a sound like bone on concrete, a grinding heavy noise that repeated, and again. Footsteps.
Claire ran for the door, knowing that it couldn’t be X, absolutely could not—he was melted, gone, and they didn’t have the G-Virus anymore—
• and she caught a glimpse of movement past the bars of shadow some thirty feet away. A glimpse of something tall, wisps of smoke curling through the darkness—and the bitter, choking stench of some-thing burned. It stepped out of shadow, stepped toward the back of the train car, raising charred, massive fists—
BAM!
• and the car actually rocked, as Claire realized that it was Mr. X, or what was left of him—and that he was surely a demon straight from hell. She’d combined the clips on their elevator ride; eleven rounds left; there was no way it would be enough, but it was all they had.
Claire raised Irons’s gun, wondering if this was the end.
Leon ran, around the shelf to his right, heading back for the elevator, and there were galloping, thun-dering footsteps right behind, he couldn’t stop. Another turn, back through the middle of the room—
• and he was hit in the back, propelled forward and down as the beast rammed him, hot, rubbery flesh slamming him into the floor.
Leon rolled and it was on top of him, its dripping teeth poised to drive through his skull, its thick legs pinning him down. The tumor like an eye was still there, opening out of the shoulder, looking at him—
• and saw the beast shuddering, changing, scream-ing, and spitting chunks of bone and flesh and blood as it also turned and started for the elevator. It picked up speed with each staggering step, the door closing slowly, the terrible creature almost flying now—
• and Leon had the shotgun in his hands, pumped a shot and squeezed. The blast hit its barrel chest, knocking it back—
• and the door closed, Leon was going down, and there was only one minute left.
THIRJY BAM!
Sherry felt the train rock violently all around her.
Claire!
She ran to the door, remembering that Claire said not to leave and not caring; she didn’t know what it was or what she could do to help, but she couldn’t just stand there—
BAM!
• and the car shifted again, another loud, banging crash blasting through the stale air, the floor trem-bling beneath her feet. Sherry reached the door and hit the open switch, her heart hammering, sweat dribbling through the dirt on her face.
The door slid open—and there was Claire, pointing her gun at something Sherry couldn’t see, something at the back of the car.
Claire’s gaze flickered to her, and her shouted words quaked with fear and panic.
“Don’t come out! Shut the door!”
Sherry reached for the controls and hesitated, terri-fied for Claire, wanting to see what it was—
• quick look—
• and she darted her head out, just for a second, searching for the source of Claire’s fear, for whatever was slamming into the train car. A smell like chemi-cals and burnt meat had filled the dimly lit platform, coming from—
Sherry screamed when she saw it, when she saw the tattered, charred monster that was rocking the sub-way, just past a wall of metal bars. She saw its giant fist pound the steel wall of the train, but it was the monster’s face that she couldn’t look away from. Mr.X.
The skin was burnt away from his face, from his whole body. Smoke drifted up from the blackened, melted lump of his skull, but the eyes were still alive—red and black and steaming with acrid smoke, but still very much alive.
“Sherry! Do it, now!” Claire screamed, not taking her gaze from the smoking monster, from its terrible, giant body coated with red, metallic muscle, as red and burnt as its awful eyes.
Sherry hit the controls, the door closing as Claire started to fire.
The elevator did go down, though not as Leon had expected, and not nearly as fast as he needed it to go. The wide platform slipped down an angled tunnel, like a slide, neon gridwork on black walls humming past. Slowly.
“. .. now forty seconds to reach minimum safe distance.”
“Go go go—“ Leon breathed, every ache and pain in his body forgotten in the rising dread that beat at his brain. The voice had stopped telling him to report to the bottom platform, now only making announce-ments in ten-second increments. As much as he loathed the repeated instructions, it was much worse not hearing them; the silences between the statements were telling him not to bother trying.
To make it this far and then die because of a slow elevator. ... He couldn’t accept that. He’d been through too much. The car crash, Claire, the running and the monsters and Ada and Birkin—he had to make it, or it was all for nothing.
There didn’t seem to be a real floor beneath the descending platform, or he would’ve tried it on foot—but the lift seemed to be lowering by grooves cut into either side of the darkness, by some mecha-nism that he couldn’t begin to guess at.
“. .. twenty seconds to reach .. ”
Leon started to shake, the tension running through his muscles, tightening them, making it hard to breathe. What was safe distance? When that cool, inhuman voice reached zero, how long before the explosion?