In which the folks in the subway find themselves some unwelcome visitors...
29
“Do NOT panic! There is no reason to believe that this is anything more than just a power outage.”
“But-- BUT-- how can it be the whole state?” One wide-eyed young woman, one of the aforementioned punk rockers actually raised her hand.
“Yeah, it’s gotta be Al Qaeda, who the hell else could it be?!!” Another idiot bellowed.
Others followed, there words quickly jumbling together into a tidal wave of paranoia. It only took one idiot to get the ball rolling.
“It’s gotta be the terrorists, who the hell else could it be?”
“Oh my god, I gotta get to my kids… My kids are still at the day care!!!”
“Did an airplane hit a power plant??!! OH GOD!! DID AN AIRPLANE HIT ONE OF THE NUCLEAR PLANTS??!!”
She heard it all and it was nothing more than a buzzing, though an irritating one nonetheless. Her instincts, those things cops called their gut instincts told her Mister Blue-eyes was the key, the only thing really important right now. Mister Blue-eyes and whatever the hell it was he was watching outside their little tin prison.
“NOW LISTEN DAMMIT!!!” She hollered, trying to make herself louder than the loudest of them, a difficult task with New Yorkers. “I told you, there’s no goddamn reason to think it’s terrorism! This has happened before in our lifetimes and it’s gonna happen again. As far as I’m concerned it ain’t nothing more than a power outage. Going FUCKING crazy ain’t gonna help us any, dammit!!”
They kept going, some of them, but most paid her mind and listened, their faces drawn and tired. They’d suffered enough the last few years, New Yorkers. There wasn’t a one of them, including herself, who hadn’t had their world turned literally upside down two years before. The terror they’d lived was fresh on their minds, fresh and ready to burst again and overwhelm them. It was a hard thing, it truly, truly was.
“Now I just got off the phone with my partner and he says he’s gonna get people down here to get us out as soon as possible. There are trains stalled all over the city. Rescue workers are leading those people out from underground and up to their homes. He told me there would be a group of them here soon. He was gonna get them here.”
“Is that them?” Came the deep voice of Jeffrey Thornton. He’d been quiet while the others yelled, silent and listening to what she had to say. The moment she’d spoken of rescue his eyes had gone outside the train and he saw what Mister Blue-eyes had apparently been watching.
“Where?” She asked him, stumbling over and peering outside, right next to the stranger in the baseball cap.
She saw nothing at first, her eyes trying to focus past the reflections in the glass and out into the pitch black.
“Those--,” Mister Blue-eyes said, at last speaking, his voice accented in a manner she’d never heard before. Something about it was as wrong and as otherworldly as his eyes were. “---are not rescuers of any sort.”
Out of the corner of her eye she saw him rise and back away from the window and once again her instincts spoke to her. They told her to back away as well, and to not stop there. They said to her, no, they screamed at her to run, to run as far from here as possible.
But she didn’t, she had to see what they were, had to see for herself.
When the figures finally did materialize from the darkness, they weren’t human at all.
End Part 29
If you find yourself interested in the whole damnedable thing and wanna throw me a few bucks, here's a link to it on Amazon.