Unsurprisingly, this explanation didn’t alter Lace’s perplexed expression. She just stood there staring back at me. A few passersby bumped into her, but the contact didn’t register. Finally, after ten long seconds, she spoke slowly and clearly. “Are you saying that your fat-ass cat has turned me into a vampire?”
“Um, maybe?” I coughed. “But I can test you, and we’ll know for sure.”
“Dude, you are so dead.”
“Fine, but wait until we find someplace to test you.”
“Someplace like where?”
“Someplace dark.”
Finding pitch blackness in Manhattan isn’t easy at noon. In fact, finding pitch blackness in Manhattan isn’t easy anytime.
I considered going to Lace’s apartment, but if the Watch was looking for us, they were as likely to start there as anywhere. I also thought about renting a hotel room and yanking the curtains closed, but if Lace was infected, there was no point throwing away money. We might be on the run for a while.
The pills were still clutched in my hand; even if Lace was infected, we could control the parasite. I could analyze the garlic-and-mandrake compound and keep her human. We could escape whatever the old carriers had planned for the end of civilization.
“What about a movie theater?” Lace asked.
“Not dark enough.” The light from exit signs always drives me crazy during movies. “We need cave darkness, Lace.”
“Cave darkness? Not a lot of caves in Manhattan, Cal.”
“You’d be surprised.” My nerves twitched as a trembling came through the soles of my boots. We were standing on the sidewalk grates over Union Square station. I pulled her toward an entrance.
I swiped us through a turnstile and tugged Lace down the stairs and to the very end of the platform, pointing into the darkness ahead. “That way.”
“On the tracks? Are you kidding?”
“There’s an old abandoned station at Eighteenth. I’ve been there before. Plenty dark.”
She leaned over the tracks; a small and scampering thing darted among discarded coffee cups.
“The rats won’t bite you,” I said. “Promise.”
“Forget it.”
“Lace, we subway-hacked all the time in Peep Hunting 101.”
She pulled away, glanced at the couple on the platform watching us, and hissed, “Yeah, well, I didn’t sign up for that class.”
“No, you didn’t. You didn’t sign up for any of this. But we have to know if you’re infected.”
Lace stared at me, her eyes gleaming darkly, like wet ink. “What happens if I am a vampire? Do you, like, vanquish me or something?”
“You’re not a vampire, Lace, just sick, maybe. And this strain is easy to control. Look.” I pulled the pills from my pocket and rattled them. “We’ll get out of the city. Otherwise, they’ll put you into treatment. In Montana.”
“Montana?”
I nodded, pointing down the dark tunnel. “The choice is yours.”
The 6 train rattled into view, and we waited as the platform cleared. I tugged Lace into the security camera blind spot, just next to the access ladder down to the tracks.
She looked down the tunnel. “And you can cure me?”
“Not cure. Control the parasite. Make you like me.”
“What, all superstrong and stuff?”
“Yeah. It’ll be great!” After the cannibal stage was over.
“But the disease will kill me eventually, right?”
I shrugged. “Yeah. After a few hundred years.”
Lace blinked. “Dude. Major consolation prize.”
We ran down the middle of the tracks.
“Don’t touch that,” I said, pointing down at the wood-covered rail running between our track and the next one over. “Unless you want to get fried.”
“The famous third rail?” Lace said. “No problem. I’m a lot more worried about trains.”
“The local just passed. We’ve got a few minutes.”
“A few!”
“The abandoned station’s only four blocks away, Lace. I’ll know if the rails start rumbling. Supersenses and everything.” I pointed between the columns that held up the streets over our heads, the safe spots. “And if a train does come, just stand there.”
“Oh, yeah, that looks totally safe.”
We charged down the tunnel, and I tried not to notice that Lace wasn’t stumbling over the tracks and rubbish, as if the darkness didn’t bother her. But it wasn’t cave dark yet. Work lights dangled around us, casting our manic and fractured shadows against the tracks.
The express train swerved into view ahead, taking the slow curve with one long screaming complaint. The cold white eyes of its headlights flickered through the steel columns like the light of an old movie projector. In the strobing light, I saw that Lace had come to a halt. The train was on the express track; it wouldn’t hit us, but the approaching shriek of metal wheels had paralyzed her.
The wall of metal flew past, whipping Lace’s hair around her face and throwing sparks at our feet. Light from the passing windows flickered madly around us, and a few passengers’ faces shot by, looking down with astonished expressions. I put my arm around Lace, the rhythm of the train’s passage shuddering through our bodies. Its roar battered the air, loud enough to force my eyelids shut.
When the sound had faded into the distance, I asked, “Are you okay?”
She blinked. “Dude, that was loud!”
Lace’s voice sounded thin in my ringing ears. “No kidding. Come on, before another train comes.”
She nodded dumbly, and I pulled her the rest of the way to the abandoned station.
The Eighteenth Street station opened up in 1904, the same time as the rest of the 6; part of that turn-of-the-century dig-fest, I suppose.
Back then, all subway trains were five cars long. In the 1940s, with the city’s population booming, they were doubled up to ten, which left the old subway platforms a couple hundred feet too short. During the station-stretching project, a few in-between stations like Eighteenth were deemed not worth the trouble and shut down.
The Transit Authority may have forgotten these underground vaults, but they are remembered by a host of urban adventurers, graffiti artists, and other assorted spelunkers. For the next sixty years, the abandoned stations were spray-painted, vandalized, and made the subject of drunken dares, urban myths, and fannish Web sites. They are tourist stops for amateur subterraneans, training grounds for the Night Watch—the twilight zone between the human habitat and the Underworld.
I pulled Lace up onto the dark and empty platform. Six decades of graffiti swirled around us, the once-bright spray paint darkened by accumulated grime. Crumbling mosaic signs spelled out the street number and pointed toward exits that had been sealed for decades. As Lace steadied herself at the platform’s edge, she looked around with wide eyes, and my heart sank. It was awfully close to cave darkness here; a normal person should have been waving a hand in front of her face.
“So what now?” she said.
“This way.” Deciding to give her a real test, I led her to the door of the men’s bathroom, a relic of sixty years ago. The broken remains of a sink clung to one wall, and the broken wooden doors of the stalls leaned at haphazard angles. The last smells of disinfectant had faded; all that remained was warmish subway air filled with the scent of rats and mold and decay. Distant work lights reflected dimly from the grimy tiles. Even with my fully formed peep vision, I could hardly see.
I pointed into the last stall. “Can you read that?”
She peered unerringly at the one legible line among the tangled layers of graffiti. For a moment, she was silent, then said softly, “This is how it all started. Reading something written on a wall.”
“Can you see it?”
“It says, Take a shit, Linus.’ ”