All of the other officers were watching it silently. They kept their electric torches off as though the thing were asleep and they feared its waking. A low rumble filled the tunnel end, the faraway passing of other trolleys and trains. Garvey felt blood pumping in his ears as they walked toward it. He could see shapes and forms slumped up against the glass of the trolley, but he could not make them out. As he neared he smelled an electric copper scent that stuck to the back of his throat like a film. Blood, he figured, very fresh.
One of the uniforms shook his head as Garvey and Collins walked by. “Just came out of nowhere,” he said. “Sailing out of the dark, like a ghost ship.”
“What is it?” said Garvey. “Who’s on it?”
“No one,” said Collins. “Or at least, no one anymore.” Collins flicked on his torch and kept the beam on the dusty platform floor as he braced himself. Then he lifted it and let it glance over the trolley door. It did not show everything, but it showed enough. Garvey saw human forms slouched on the seats, red tongues sprouting from their backs or heads and running down in tendrils to spread across the seats or floor, other corpses curled around the trolley bars. Some were slumped against the glass, their skin as pale as sea foam. His eyes traced over where the crimson and rust-colored pools melted with the shadows, where the fingers and arms became motley tangles. It felt impossible to tell them apart, to distinguish where one ended and the others began. Trapped in that little trolley car, their ruined faces and figures seemed to blend into one another until they were one red-and-white mass laid out on the creaking seats. Then Collins switched the light out and they were shrouded once more.
Garvey could not imagine their numbers. To his eye they had seemed limitless. Still no one spoke. Then Garvey turned around and walked over to a bench and sat.
When the message came to Samantha and Hayes they were on their last interview of the day, awaiting a McCarthy, Franklin. The man from the front desk walked in and handed a telegram to Samantha, who read it and handed it off to Hayes and began quickly putting on her coat.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Bridgedale, apparently,” she said.
“Oh? Why?”
“To meet a Mr. Shroff. Any idea who that is?”
“One of Brightly’s men. Newspaperman, usually tips us off about things going on in the city.” He scooped his scarf off the floor and added, “Which probably doesn’t bode well at all.”
They hurried out to the street, where Hayes tried to pay a cabbie an enormous amount of money to take them across town. With some persuasion Samantha managed to convince him to try a trolley for a fifth of the cost, yet when they began to enter the trolley lines the ticket vendors and conductors turned them away.
“No rides today,” one said. “No trolley today.”
“Why on Earth not?” said Samantha.
“All lines are down. No platforms taking any passengers.”
“Yes, but why?”
He shrugged. “Can’t say. Official broadcast came through about an hour or so ago. We’re all shut down. You’ll have to take a motorcab, or walk if you can.”
“This is the first time in my memory, short as it is, that the trolleys have been wholly shut down,” said Samantha as they walked back to the street. “What could have happened?”
Hayes simply shrugged, irritated to have been made to walk so far.
They took a cab to Bridgedale and the address specified in the message, yet they found it surrounded by a thick, babbling crowd that shielded everything from view. The police had made a large clearing at the front, cutting off the street at either end and shutting down one intersection. Horses and purring cars bucked back and forth as they tried to negotiate their way out, swears and shouts ringing over the buzz of the crowd. People huddled close to one another in the chilly air, bobbing where they stood to glimpse through brief cracks in the groups in front of them. Steaming breath unscrolled up from the crowd in a hundred places, giving it the strange impression of a ticker tape parade.
“What in hell is this nonsense?” said Hayes as they climbed out.
Bystanders couldn’t tell him, shrugging and shaking their heads. Soon he was flagged down by Shroff, who was so short he had to jump to make his hand seen over the crowd. Hayes worked over and pulled him close and said, “What the hell is going on?”
“Trouble,” Shroff said. “Big trouble, down in the underground. Someone’s dead.”
“Dead? Who’s dead?”
“Don’t know, really. Cops have the entire area cordoned. They beat the hell out of one ass who tried to push through. Pardon my language, ma’am,” he said to Samantha, and tipped his hat. “I bet there’s a lot of them, though.”
“A lot of who?” asked Hayes as he slipped through the crowd. Shroff and Samantha struggled to keep up.
“The dead,” said Shroff. “But no one knows how many or who.”
When they finally got through they found they faced the trolley station entrance, the big rusty tin T hanging over the steps. They could see nothing down below except for the faint lights of the station.
“Looky there,” said Shroff, and pointed. “There’s your detective friend, eh?”
Garvey was standing at the top of the steps, speaking to another officer who was leaning against the railings. He looked paler and grimmer than usual. He kept his face at a sharp angle to the underground station, like he did not want to look inside or perhaps smell its curious breeze.
“Yeah,” Hayes said. “There he is.” Then he tugged off a glove, stuck his fingers in his mouth, and whistled piercingly.
The police and some of the crowd looked up. Garvey blinked and did the same and saw Hayes standing in the front. His grimace deepened and he strode over and said, “What are you doing here?”
“Same as you, I think,” said Hayes. “Only there’s truncheons in the way.” By now he was flush and grinning with excitement.
Garvey thought for a moment, then said, “I guess it’d be worth you seeing.” He nodded to the patrolman, who let Hayes pass but kept Samantha behind.
“Who’s that?” asked Garvey, gesturing to her.
“My assistant,” said Hayes.
“Your assistant? You have an assistant?”
“Sure. She’s new. Secretarial duties and such.”
“God. I got to pity you, lady. Come on then,” he said, and helped her through.
“Thank you,” she said to him. She stood up and readjusted her hat and blouse.
“Don’t mention it,” he said. He stopped halfway down a step and turned to extend a hand. “Don Garvey.”
Samantha awkwardly shook and introduced herself breathlessly, still fighting past the dour stares of the patrolmen.
“So what’s going on, Garv?” asked Hayes.
Garvey began to lead them down the steps of the station. “I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t.”
“Rumor has it people are dead.”
“Rumor has it right.”
“Was it an accident?” asked Samantha.
Garvey stopped and looked at her. “A what?”
She faltered under his sharp eye, then rallied. “An accident. A trolley accident. Like a derailing.”
“Oh,” he said. “No. Not an accident. That’d be the reasonable conclusion, wouldn’t it? But no.”
“Then what?” said Hayes.
Garvey said nothing. He just motioned them farther down into the tunnels. Hayes glanced to the side and saw bile and chunks of half-digested beef drying and curling on the station floor.
“Bad one?” he asked.
Garvey said, “The worst I’ve seen.”
They walked down the platform, ignoring the curious glances of the other officers. Then a shout rang out: “No. Not him. No.”
They turned. Collins was striding toward them, a half-dozen officers in tow like furious ducklings. Collins pointed at Hayes and said, “Will someone please explain to me what in God’s name this little shit is doing back here? It had better be plenty impressive, too. I mean it.”