"Well, first off, part of me would be going, Yeah, right, like this button's gonna end the space-time continuum. Uh-huh. And another part would be thinking, Really? What would that be like? Let's find out..."
"How about a part of you saying, Let's lock the door to this place and throw away the key?"
"I think when they were giving out parts I missed that one." She flashed her light at Carole and held out a hand. "Come on. I'll help you up."
"No, thank you. If one of us slips off and sprains an ankle, the other has to remain well enough to carry on."
Lacey loosed a dramatic sigh, then stepped off the rail and fell in beside her. "Spoil sport." She flashed her beam ahead. "Damn, it's dark."
Carole nodded. The light-colored tiles—she supposed they'd once been white—in the pedestrian tunnel and in the Times Square station had reflected the glow from their flashes, letting them see more than just what was in the beam. But down here on the tracks, surrounded by grimy steel girders and soot-blackened concrete walls, with no reflective surface except the polished upper surface of the tracks and an occasional puddle, the darkness seemed a living thing, pressing against them. And all those recesses and access tunnels and crawl spaces . . .
Something splashed behind them.
Carole heard Lacey gasp. Both whirled and flashed their beams madly about but found nothing moving. Carole could feel her heart pounding.
"Think it was a rat?" Lacey said.
"Could have been."
"I hate rats."
"They're just animals."
"Yeah, but I really skeeve them."
"Skeeve?"
"Yeah. Heard it from some Italian girl I knew. Means to make your skin crawl. If we see a rat, that'll be a good time for you to get used to firing your pistol. I think we can risk a few shots down here."
"I'm not shooting a rat. And neither are you. They're no threat to us, it's a waste of ammunition, and besides, they were here first. It isn't rodentia you should be worried about down here. Genus Homo offers the main threat right now."
They started walking through the dark again, but every so often one of them—they took turns—would turn and flash her light behind them.
Lacey whispered, "I remember hearing about homeless people who used to live in the subway tunnels. I wonder if any of them are left."
"If I were a betting woman—and I'm not—I'd say no. Underground is where the undead go to hide from the light. Once down here they'd sniff out the living in no time."
Lacey grabbed her arm. "Speaking of sniffing, what is that?"
Carole felt her nose wrinkling. She knew the odor: carrion. "Something died nearby."
"Which means there's a good chance one of them is nearby."
They followed the stench to a recess in the right wall that led to an alcove beyond it. Carol flashed her beam down the narrow passage. The floor was littered with the bodies, of beheaded rats, some of them acrawl with maggots.
"What's with the dead rats?" Lacey whispered behind her.
"I don't know."
"We don't want to go in there."
"Right," Carole said. "But we must."
"Like hell."
"We can't leave any undead along our route. What if we're delayed coming back and we're caught down here after sundown? We can't see in the dark; they can."
Lacey was silent a moment, then grumbled, "All right, but let's go in with all bases covered." Carole felt a tug on her backpack. "I'll handle the gun and flashlight—in case whatever's in there is human—while you take the hammer-and-stake detail."
A moment later Carole had her crucifix and a stake in her left hand, thrust out ahead of her, the hammer clutched in her right. Lacey was squeezed beside her, manning the flashlight. Carole wished she had a third hand to hold a cloth over her mouth and nose. The stench was unbearable.
They edged down the passage, shuffling to avoid stepping on the dead rats, and entered a small square alcove, maybe ten feet on a side. The first thing Carole saw was a naked corpse crumpled in the far corner, face to the wall; the position made it impossible to determine its sex. The floor was littered with more dead rats, most of them clustered around the naked emaciated male figure that lay in the center of the space. When Lacey shone the light on its face, the gummy lids parted slowly. It let out a feeble hiss and bared its fangs. Although this one didn't quite qualify as a feral, its appearance was a long way from human.
Carole wasted no time. "Keep the light on it," she told Lacey as she knelt beside the thing.
She touched the crucifix to its sunken belly, eliciting a flash and a puff of smoke. That proved beyond doubt it was undead. The creature writhed as she raised the stake—she'd have no trouble finding a space between the jutting ribs of this washboard chest. But just as Carole pressed the point of the wooden shaft against its skin, Lacey let out a cry of terror and the flash beam darted around the room.
Carole turned and saw Lacey struggling as if her foot was caught.
"It's got me!" Lacey cried. "Damn it to hell, I thought it was dead!"
In the wildly wavering light Carole saw that what she too had assumed to be a human cadaver had locked its fingers around Lacey's ankle. Lacey was trying to kick herself free but the creature clung to her like a weighted manacle. Panic bloomed in the hollow of her gut. Were there more?
Something hit Carole's hand, knocking the stake from her grasp. She turned back to her vampire and felt it reaching for her. She patted the floor around her but found only dead rats.
"Lacey! The light!"
But her words didn't penetrate Lacey's stream of shouted curses as she frantically tried to free her ankle. Carole could feel things spinning out of control as events accelerated, becoming increasingly surreal, chaotic, epileptic. The creature before Carole clutched her wrist as Lacey began shooting at the one grasping her. The shots were deafening in the small space. Lacey's wildly gyrating flashlight beam raked across Carole, revealing the lost stake. Ears ringing, she swung the hammer at the forearm of the hand holding her wrist, heard a bone snap, felt the grip break. She grabbed the stake and in the dark, placed it on the creature's chest over where she hoped its heart would be, then hammered it into the flesh. Its limbs flailed, back arched, chest heaved, but Carole kept her grip on the stake, taking a second swing, the hammer head glancing off the end of the stake and grazing her hand. She clenched her teeth against the pain as Lacey fired again, the strobe of the muzzle flash giving Carole just enough light to see where to strike a third blow. This one landed solidly, driving the stake through the heart beneath it. The creature spasmed and lay still.
Carole looked around for Lacey, saw her limping away down the narrow corridor, dragging the still-attached vampire after her through the maggoty rats. Carole reached around and pulled another stake from her backpack, then followed.
"Lacey, stop."
"Carole, get this damn thing off of me!"
"I will. Just hold the light steady."
Lacey stopped moving. Carole knelt on the back of the thing, placed the point of the stake to the left of the spine, and drove it through with three swift blows. The thing shuddered and finally released its grip on Lacey's ankle.
Lacey lurched away and leaned against a steel support beam, gasping.
"I think I'm going to be sick. The undead always disgusted me, but these things . .. what the hell?"
Carole rose and leaned against the wall, waiting for her pounding heart to slow. "I think they're strays, and obviously they're starving."
"Have they been living on rats? Is that possible?"
"I don't know. Joseph said Franco told him Manhattan was empty and they were hunting in the other boroughs. I do know that we got careless."