Dead Harvest

  The air in the tunnel was cold and dank, the tracks uneven beneath our feet. Above us, sickly yellow lights pushed back the darkness at regular intervals, and cast long shadows of the tangle of pipes across the filthy concrete walls. The space between the rails was narrow, forcing us to run single file – Kate in front, with me scant inches behind, my thigh twingeing with every step despite the doctor's numbing agent. The lights of the next station were lost in the gentle curve of the tunnel. It could be fifty yards from where we stood; it could be five hundred. I told myself it didn't matter where it was – we just had to keep running. But of course it mattered. That train wasn't going to block their way forever. They'd find their way around it, or through it if need be. And when they did, they'd be coming for us. If we didn't reach the next platform before they broke through, we'd be trapped in this concrete tube with a horde of pissedoff demons. If that happened, I didn't like our odds.

  Kate let out a yelp, and tumbled to the ground. Something squeaked angrily in the darkness. A pair of beady rodent eyes looked up from where she'd just stood, and then disappeared into the gloom. I dropped to a knee, panting, beside her.

  "You all right?" I asked. Though I spoke at just above a whisper, my voice echoed through the tunnel, advertising our position to anyone – or anything – that cared to listen. I could only hope the constant clatter of distant trains was enough to drown out my words before they reached the ears of our pursuers.

  "I stepped on something," Kate replied. "Something alive." She twisted one arm out away from her, examining her elbow. A scrape the size of a silver dollar glistened black under the dim overhead lights.

  "Rat," I said. "He's gone now, though." I nodded to her right, where, beneath a thin protective canopy, the third rail stretched the length of the track, just inches from where she lay. It looked so harmless, so unremarkable, that you couldn't help but doubt the countless admonitions you hear growing up in the city not to touch it. But still, there it sat – a challenge, a dare, a trap for the unwary. As Kate spotted it, she recoiled.

  "That thing's got enough juice in it to animate a train," I said. "I suspect it's got the opposite effect on a person. Be careful getting up."

  I extended a hand, and she took it. With a little more trouble than I'd expected, I hauled her to her feet, doubling over afterward and sucking air as waves of nausea radiated outward from the stab wound in my leg and turned my insides into knots.

  "Jesus, Sam, are you OK?"

  "Yeah," I said, straightening. "Just popped a stitch is all. C'mon, we gotta get moving."

  She looked doubtful. I couldn't blame her – I didn't much believe me myself. But staying here wasn't really an option. So instead she slung an arm around my waist, and we set out down the tunnel, straddling the dead left-hand rail of the track, staying as far away from the third rail as we could manage.

  We'd only gone ten paces when we heard it: a shriek of rending metal, a crash of shattered glass. A horrid slavering filled the tunnel, and one by one behind us, the overhead lights flickered and died. The darkness marched forward, step by step, as light after light gave up the ghost, and what remained was more than a mere absence of light: the darkness was pulsing, malevolent, alive. There was no mistaking what that darkness contained; it was the black fire of pure torment, of a being forever occluded from the nourishing light of grace, and in the face of it, all hope of escape withered and died.

  They were here.

  Without a word, Kate and I released each other from our awkward embrace, and took off down the tunnel at a dead sprint. Blind panic coursed through my borrowed frame. It made me strong. It made me fast. It didn't make me fast enough.