“And?”
“Take too long.”
Great. Mystery man clutching secrets to his bosom. “It had to happen quick, right? I mean, the whole fucking town? If it took weeks, the authorities would have been involved. They would’ve stopped it or quarantined this place or something. Right?”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” He touched her arm, paused. “It depends what they’re up to. Who can say?”
She sighed. “You speak in riddles, white man. I’m just saying whatever this is it went fast. You were here… how fast did it happen?”
“I live outside town. In the woods. I wasn’t here.”
“You were close enough.”
“You wanna know how it happened? I’ll tell you that much. There was a storm. Not the bad one. Just a rainstorm a few days before. I was out of town, didn’t see it. Old guy who lived out by me said it was strange… a black rain. Ink-black.”
Lisa stared at him. “Black rain?”
“Yes.” Johnny shrugged. “That’s what he said. Lasted only for a couple minutes, he said, that blackness. Other than that, it was just a normal rain. Next day, people were getting sick. Flu symptoms. Closed the school, lots of businesses. Nobody thought it was odd, what with all the flu raging around the country. Then we got that bad storm, shut the town down. When it was over…”
“It was like this?”
“Yes.”
“You think there was something in the rain?” she asked.
“Could be,” he said, his tone lifeless. “Could very well be. Like I said, I never go into town much. But I can imagine how it went—everyone calling into work and what not, laying around in their beds, dizzy and weak, puking maybe, not liking the sunlight at all. Sleeping a lot. Maybe when they finally woke up, they weren’t the same anymore. They’d changed. And what happened then? They started seeking out the ones who hadn’t been infected so they could spread it, whatever got to them. A race purge, you know? Eliminate the normal ones, the different ones. Bring ’em into the fold or kill ’em.”
“This is creeping me out,” Lisa admitted. “Like they’re… they’re…”
“Vampires? Is that what you were thinking?”
“I guess.”
“Why not?” Johnny said, finding the comparison acceptable.
He wouldn’t say anything after that, but he really didn’t have to. Oh, Lisa knew he knew more than he was saying. But she honestly didn’t want to know more. Enough was enough.
Whatever happened was evil.
And maybe that was silly and superstitious, but it was the only word that seemed to apply: evil.
Of course, being down here in the sewers wasn’t helping a goddamn thing.
She didn’t feel any safer down here.
It was like wandering through the musty confines of a tomb. In her head, despite her attempts to steel herself, there was that voice telling her there was danger here. No, maybe it wasn’t exactly a voice as such, but, God, it was clear, it’s meaning crystal. She couldn’t do a thing to dissuade it.
Maybe it was instinct.
Logic and reasoning were impotent in its shadow.
It made her heart thud dully like a hammer into a bag of sand, made the breath positively wheeze from her lungs as if her throat had constricted down to a pinhole, her air sacs thick with dust. Her skin was cold, damp, and shivering and it didn’t have shit to do with this sodden, inundated pesthole. It came from within, bled through every swollen pore, every dilated blood vessel. It filled her guts with warm, rolling jelly, snapped her eyes wide and unblinking. The hairs along the back of her neck were straight and taut as wires.
She’d never known such complete and total terror before.
Maybe it had something to do with the monkey on her back, but she honestly didn’t think so. Her adrenaline was high, electric, surging in every cell and for once, the need seemed to be nonexistent.
Is that what it took to go clean?
Either days of agony in some dark room or mindless fear?
“Stop,” Johnny said to her.
“Why? What is it?”
There was an edge to his voice and she didn’t like it at all.
Her heart practically kicked out of her chest like a boot through wet cardboard.
Johnny cocked his head to the side, narrowed his eyes.
He kept playing the light ahead, but the beam made it only fifteen, twenty feet at best before being swallowed by the stygian murk. Fingers of mist curled from the gently sluicing water.
Lisa wiped a sheen of dampness from her face, became very aware of the beat of her heart, her breathing.
She kept watching.
A cigarette butt floated by.
A few leaves.
Water dripped and dripped.
“I thought I heard something,” he whispered. He turned around, flashing the beam behind them. “Maybe I was wrong.”
Yeah, and maybe I’m ready to piss my pants out of sheer imagination, she thought fearfully, but I seriously doubt it.
They moved on wordlessly, communicating their dread silently. It rode on their backs like some black amorphous shadow, one with weight, with awful texture. It slid frozen fingers around their throats, whispered horrid truths in their ears.
And ahead… that tunnel, the burrow of some huge and obscene worm twisting into utter blackness.
“Stop,” Johnny said, this time a frantic whisper.
He had clutched Lisa’s arm, holding it tight and sure, not letting go.
And there it was.
A brief moment after their splashing footfalls ended, so did others.
Johnny swung around, bringing up the shotgun and the flashlight. Yes, behind them. He stood motionless and Lisa stood at his side, formed concrete, the guitar case oddly weightless for a change.
A minute.
Two.
Three.
Splash, splash, splash.
No more cat and mouse, the hunt was on.
Prey had to be brought down with claws and teeth. And it wasn’t only the sounds of approaching feet—many of them, in fact—but worse things now, echoing through the black throat of the sewers. Muted screams, cries, chattering, shrill childlike laughter. And scraping sounds like sticks were being dragged along the bricks… or sharp, bony fingers.
“Get ahead of me,” Johnny told her, afraid, but very much in control. “There’s a manhole up ahead. Run for it!”
Lisa needed no further urging: she ran.
Running, running, running.
No easy matter in two feet of thick, turgid water.
Running with Johnny at her back, the flashlight casting wild, creeping shadows in every direction, knife-edged black phantoms washing over them.
And the echoes—thundering, reverberating. Their own and those of the things that gave chase.
Lisa’s legs were filled with sand as they pumped along, aching, tired, but refusing to give in until the hunters brought them down. Splashing, water spraying in her face, soaking her guitar case which she knew was waterproof but could’ve cared less if it wasn’t. Vintage, expensive guitar? Fuck it, there were others. She planned on beating off her attackers with it if it came to that.
And they were gaining.
She was sure of it.
Maybe she could not hear it with all that echoing noise, but she could feel it just fine. She almost went on her ass half a dozen times, but through luck or pluck she stayed upright and then before her, thank God, there it was.
The ladder.
“Gimme your guitar,” Johnny said, pulling it from her hands and replacing it with the short-barreled shotgun and the flashlight.
Lisa did not argue.
He went up the rungs like a monkey, pulling the guitar case with him. At the top she heard him grunting and exerting, heard a metallic groan, iron scratched over cement. Then light… feeble, but light… spilling in from above.