Rabid Transit: A Tim Reaper Story

Scott Richter, then and now ...

My host's heart stopped.

Everything went black as my true form flew out of Scott Richter's body and straight into a thick amalgam comprised from an equal measure of malice and suffering. It clung to me like the damp. I felt heavy and my essence labored.

But only for a short moment.

A flash of reason flooded my mind.

Charlotte, from the very beginning, had our backs. She had been protecting Sparks and me the entire time up to just moments ago. I still existed but the life had been shot out of my host. The one that shot me had protection because its host should have been dead.

The kid had chosen that moment. That one moment.

The reaper gazed at my essence and then at Sparks. Its eyebrows arched and it pissed itself as the gun slipped out of its hand and onto the floor.

"You both shine with Her light!" the other reaper cried out. It dropped to its knees and shielded its eyes.

Yup. Completely ass backward.

God Herself was on The Train.

The kid was working through us. We shone with Her light. Her presence meant something inside the gloom of the subway car and she had chosen that moment to reveal herself. This was evidenced by the fact that every single damned soul on that train started screaming in unison. An endless tormented shriek louder and more terrible than anything I'd ever heard. The floor shook and the atmosphere suddenly became electric. The shriek intensified and with a final wail of despair the subway car's windows exploded, blowing tiny cubes of glass out into the tunnel.

It did occur to me that subway full of damned souls might just follow us back to the platform because The Train was out of commission for the time being. Or maybe they'd just remain in their seats, lost forever on a derailed subway car in the tunnel to Hell.

And the other reaper?

Its host dropped dead because Charlotte willed it to be so.

The vaporous form of my adversary emerged from the fresh corpse and collected into its cloud-like true essence. It blasted me yet again with a flood of abuse and then disappeared into the darkness.

Sparks got back to her feet and ran her hand along her shoulder. She plucked the slug from her vest stopped and stuffed it in her pocket. "I took one for the home team, there'd better be a free pizza or something."

She was about to continue talking when she spotted him.

The vaporous form of a boy sat alone on a subway seat about seven rows away from Sparks and me.

Seriously alone.

His was the only soul on the entire car and the sight of him enraged me.

He appeared sickly. Prominent cheekbones and sunken eyes. A bald head. Somewhere out there were a pair of grieving parents who'd lost their child to some hellish disease that targets children.

That evil prick reaper put the soul of a little kid on the subway to Hell. He was going to send that kid to eternal torment, the sick bastard, and Charlotte let it go instead of killing it along with its host.

Eventually, I understood why.

Sparks slowly knelt before the spirit of the child. She drew a shaky breath and asked in the softest of voices, "Hi, sweetheart. I know you're scared but we're here to help. Can you talk? Do you understand me?"

The soul nodded.

"We're the good guys," she said gently. "I'm a police officer and we're here to get you off this train and back to the good place. Ready to go?"