Lacey shook her head. Wow. Powerful stuff.
She thought she saw something moving, a flaming man-shaped thing crawling out a window, but she couldn't be sure. Suddenly a third explosion rocked the mass. The other gas tank, she guessed.
Lacey tugged her shirt back over her head and climbed up into the passenger seat.
"That's it! The last time I strip down for these animals."
"Let's hope so," Carole said. "By the way, that was an amazing piece of indirection."
Was that a note of genuine admiration Lacey detected in her voice?
"Thank you. And my compliments to the chef on that napalm." Lacey pointed ahead at the splotch of brightness ahead in the dark of the tiled gullet. "Look. The light at the end of the tunnel."
"More Vichy there?"
Lacey grabbed the shotgun. Her stomach crawled. How long could their luck last?
But to their amazement, the Manhattan side of the tunnel was deserted. Gasping with relief, they swerved left and roared into the concrete box of an enclosed above-and-below-ground park-and-lock lot on 42nd Street.
BARRETT . . .
Neal kicked a piece of blackened metal from the wrecks and sent it spinning across the scorched pavement. He tugged on his beard.
"What the fuck?"
"What the fuck is right," Barrett said. "All seven guys gone. Just like that."
Franco was going to be pissed ... if he found out.
The relief crews had arrived on the Manhattan side at noon to find smoke billowing from the middle tube. They'd waited till it tapered off, then drove inside. This was what they'd found.
Lights from the headlights of a couple of cars illuminated the twisted mess of metal. The ceiling and walls were scorched black for hundreds of feet in both directions.
"You think it was a hit?" Neal said.
"You mean like what happened at the Lakewood Post Office. I don't know. See any bullet holes?"
Neal shook his head. "Not a one."
Neither had Barrett.
Two carloads of cowboys reduced to crispy critters. It looked like one car had plowed into the other, smashing it against the side of the tunnel. Barrett visualized a bent side panel, showers of sparks, a gas cap tearing off, then kablam!
What had they been doing—drag racing through the tubes? Assholes. One car was supposed to be stationed at each end of the tunnel, but this wouldn't be the first time they'd got bored and hung out together on the Jersey end. He'd caught them at it before and this was probably another instance. Most of these guys had the attention span of a gnat.
"Well, without bullet holes in the cars—or what's left of them—how could it be a hit? Must have been an accident. Caused by terminal stupidity."
Barrett ground his teeth. He had to get out of this job. He had to take the next step. Get turned. He'd go crazy if he had to spend another nine-plus years with these assholes.
- 13 -
CAROLE ...
"Look, Ma," Lacey said. "A double threat: no hands while walking on the third rail."
Carole knew Lacey had to be as uneasy as she, walking these subway tracks, but she was doing a better job of hiding it. She briefly angled her flashlight beam at Lacey, then back to the tracks again.
"Under different circumstances I might call that a shocking display of brashness, but after yesterday ..."
Lacey laughed.
They'd huddled in the car in the park-and-lock garage all day, venturing out only to relieve themselves. When the sun had fallen and Joseph was awake, he left alone to begin nighttime surveillance on the Empire State Building and the area around it. But he'd returned less than an hour later driving a huge Lincoln Navigator he'd appropriated from a nearby parking lot. He insisted that she and Lacey transfer to it, not because of the comfort its extra size afforded, but because of its hard top. They were already insulated by the garage's layers of reinforced concrete, but he wanted them further sealed in steel. He begged them to stay locked in during the dark hours, telling them their warm blood made them easy to pick out against the cold concrete and granite of the city. If a hybrid like him could sense them, what about the fully undead?
Carole had missed him, worried about him, but had taken his advice. She and Lacey had slept when they could, and talked when they couldn't—talked about anything they could think of. Except sex. Lacey's lesbianism made Carole uncomfortable. Or was it the fact that she felt a growing fondness for this young woman who happened to be a lesbian.
She'd been relieved to see Joseph return with the dawn. He was excited. He'd found a place where they could watch the comings and goings at the
Empire State Building in relative safety and comfort, and told them how to get there.
So now it was their turn. They'd left the garage at sunrise when the undead were no threat. Only the living.
They'd walked the deserted pedestrian tunnel from the Port Authority to Times Square, and were now down on the tracks of the 42nd Street Shuttle. This seemed like the safest way to move about the city. Certainly less risk down here of running into a pack of cruising Vichy than up on the street. At least she hoped so.
Flashlight in one hand, cocked-and-ready pistol in the other; backpacks filled with sharpened stakes, hammers, batteries, and cans of salmon they'd brought from the Shore.
What a way to travel. What a way to live.
Carole knew nothing about guns, had never liked them, had never so much as laid a finger on one until a few days ago. She'd always imagined she'd be afraid of them, but had to admit she found something comforting in the weight, the solidity, the pent-up lethality of the semi-automatic Lacey had given her. She'd shown her how to work the safety. All she had to do if the need arose was point and pull the trigger. She prayed that need would never arise. There was no place to practice so she hadn't fired it yet, and had no idea how it would feel when she did.
"You know," Lacey said, dancing along the third rail like a gymnast on a balance beam, "it's strange. From the instant we jumped off the platform onto the tracks, I had to touch this rail. I was scared to—I mean, what if by some freak chance it was live—but I had to. Didn't you feel any of that?"
"Not at all." But seeing Lacey on the third rail made her nervous. The chance of the power coming back on was about equal to that of a subway full of commuters coming by, but still it put her on edge. "We've been told all our lives that we could never touch the third rail because we'd be fried to a cinder. At first opportunity you're up on the rail, walking along it. That's pretty much you in a nutshell, isn't it."
Lacey snickered. "I guess so. What's the psychology there? It no longer has power over me, so now I'm dancing on its grave?"
"I never placed much stock in psychology."
"But look where you're walking, Carole. What does that say about you?"
"It says nothing's changed. I was quite happy staying off the third rail when it was live, and am just as happy to stay off it now."
"Ever watch Ren and Stimpy?"
"Can't say that I have, although years ago at a school picnic I remember some of my students wearing badly drawn T-shirts with those words on them."
"It's a cartoon show, and in one of the early episodes they're in outer space and they come across this button with all these warnings about 'Do not press or you will destroy the space-time continuum,' or something like that. Anyway, Stimpy just has to press it. And when I saw that I said, Yeah, I think I'd press it too."
"Good Lord, why?"