There's darkness, and then there's Darkness.
Vail used to be fearless- and ruthless- before he started seeing things. Now, pursued by government agents and talking dogs, he's afraid he's going crazy. But he's even more afraid he's NOT crazy. Unseen...
Torie's panicked scream echoed down the alley like the shrill blast of an alarm. Matt leapt forward, but before he had taken two steps, a blade flashed from Vail's hand. Torie's attacker raised bottomless black eyes toward them, letting go of her shoulders and lifting a beefy hand to the geyser of blood suddenly spurting from his neck. Those eyes stared at them with utter hatred till he crumpled at Torie's feet. His hand flopped to the ground and a syringe rolled free, tinkling on the pavement. Vail walked over and crushed the instrument under his boot, releasing black fluid to disappear into cracks in the road.
"He was already gone," Vail said without turning as Matt came up behind him.
It wasn't that Matt didn't believe him, but revulsion toward the whole situation twisted his guts. He glanced at Torie. She looked stricken, frozen, and unable even to scream now. Because of her own near escape, or because she imagined the loss of the man's soul, as hers had nearly been? He draped an arm over her shoulder—meager comfort, but she didn't shrug him off. Her slight frame seemed to shrink. Even Vail looked uneasy as he glanced at her, like he didn't know what to say for once.
"We need to get off the streets," Matt said quietly.
Torie straightened her slim shoulders, shaking loose of whatever horror gripped her, and stepped around the body to continue down the street. Matt and Vail cast each other a look as they followed.
She led them to a heavily damaged area of the city. A place that had been closed off, back when anybody cared, due to unstable structures and numerous sinkholes that kept opening up into the damaged subway tunnels below. Her hideout itself turned out to be down in one of those sinkholes. They picked their way through the rubble, and then into a crawlspace behind a slab of concrete that led them the rest of the way down to the level of the tunnels, and finally into open space.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Matt squeezed out of the crawlspace behind the others, trying to keep a handle on his jitters as he felt the constricted space pressing in on him. He finally rolled out onto the floor just as Torie turned on her miner's headlamp and cast its light around the room. He whistled. Bombs had collapsed the tunnel in two places, leaving this open pocket between them. And there in the center of the room sat a train car, completely untouched by the destruction. Torie motioned them to follow her on board, where she'd removed some of the plush red bench seats to create an open place in the middle. A rusty heater sat forlornly against the wall, and nearby, a stack of empty crates draped in a ragged pink bedsheet served as a table.
Matt reached out with a finger and touched a stuffed teddy bear perched against one of the windows. It stared back at him with fathomless glass eyes.
"So...this is home," Torie said, dropping onto one of the seats. "No one has found it yet."
"This is perfect," Vail replied, his voice husky in the confined space.
Matt set his guitar case and pack down, and stretched out in another seat. He was hungry, but they weren't with Miranda any more, and his supply of rations would be gone for good now, so he resisted digging through the pack for food. Perhaps he hadn't gone as hungry as the others, but he still knew how to replace food with sleep when he had to. After the day's travel it wasn't difficult, even though it was only mid-afternoon.
