Creepers (26 page)

These creatures had taken a quantum leap from rumor to fact, making the headlines--albeit disguised--without an intermediary step. The acceleration from Dolchik's reports of a few attacks on isolated passengers to the wholesale slaughter in Chambers Street was frightening, and Matthews was beginning to suspect that he--none of them--had heard the worst news yet. "If these things are the carriers of this rabies-like virus, why is it they aren't affected themselves?"

"Pure chance, I'd say. Some form of natural immunity has been protecting them until now."

Matthews had sensed it all along; Geary had something to tell him. Goddammit, the smug prick was holding something back until the last minute. Now the shit was going to hit the fan. "Why did you say 'until now'?"

"From the autopsy on the specimen found on the tracks, I'd say it has been in something like the terminal state of rabid infection for several weeks. The deterioration is evident, but the process seems to have been prolonged. I'd say that thing has been nearly out of its mind since the end of August."

"And just what does that mean?" Dolchik knew what it meant, but he just wanted it confirmed by the doctor.

"It means that as their immunity weakens--which seems to be happening--and the virus gets a stronger foothold on their systems and brains, these things will become more aggressive and dangerous with each passing day. They've escaped detection before by being animal-clever; now they don't care. All they want is food . . . any way they can get it!"

Matthews had to get this straight before panicking. "So the insanity and violence are prolonged in the creatures themselves and accelerated in their victims?" Geary nodded wearily. "Was this thing's brain normal otherwise? I mean, are these things capable of intelligent thought?"

"There's nothing in my tests to show they aren't."

"Is it possible they may know what's happening to them? I mean, could they sense that they're dying from this disease, that it's getting worse?" Dolchik knew that if this were true, they might try anything to save themselves.

Geary only shrugged at the question. "I couldn't answer that. We know nothing of the societal system they have erected--if they have leaders, if they know their history. If they do know these things and they have managed to retain some humanity, then it is possible they know that constant inbreeding with their own kind is not only perpetuating this disease, but that it is the very thing that is killing them."

Matthews wiped the sweat from his forehead. To be talking about such creatures so rationally, as if they were human, went against every value he'd grown up with. While he recognized the extremes the human temperament could tolerate, he was not quite willing to believe that a tribe of men and women could choose such a way of life. To him it was preposterous. Still, he had to know as much about them as he could in order to defeat them. "If, and I emphasize the word 'if,' they could see their own self-destruction coming, how might they prevent it?"

Geary considered the question a moment, then replied calmly: "They'd have to start breeding with people who were not diseased."

"For example?"

"Any woman in good health who happened to fall into their greedy little hands."

Louise had made the decision. She wasn't sure when it had happened, exactly. Maybe it was while Corelli talked so dispassionately about the creepers and the image of Lisa in their hands blotted out everything else. Maybe it was during the night as she lay awake in Willie Hoyte's mother's bed listening to the soft murmur of the city outside the windows. Or maybe it was during breakfast in the sunny Hoyte kitchen as she pushed her scrambled eggs around the plate, unable to think of eating.

When she had made the decision hardly mattered. That she had made it, did.

Now, under the icy needles of a cold shower, Louise slowly and absentmindedly caressed her soapy body. The feel of her nipples slowly hardening under her palms reminded her of yesterday evening when she'd gone to bed with Frank. Funny, but it hadn't surprised her at all. From that first day he'd held her, comforted her in the kitchen over the spilled coffee, Louise suspected that someone special had walked into her life. Now she was sure of it. And she was also sure that she couldn't tell Frank of her decision. He had too much invested personally to let her go off on her own. What she intended to do might be dangerous...or fatal.

She lathered her body with more soap, trying to forget the past four days. With all her mental strength she pulled herself right into the moment, felt her hands against her skin, concentrated on the tumult of water immersing her, and deeply inhaled the flowery smell of the soap, so obviously Willie's mother's. As she accomplished this, Louise felt the days-old burden of her missing daughter lift for a moment. If only she were able to leave Lisa's fate to the powers that be, trusting that whatever happened was for the good. If only.

She turned off the water and stood for a moment in the glistening tub, brushing the water beads from her body. It broke the spell, and her thoughts drifted once again to Lisa. Tears welled up in her eyes. What were the chances her baby was still alive? Corelli tried so hard to be kind, but his words secretly illuminated his own fears that Lisa was already dead.

What if she weren't? What if she were still alive, being held captive by those . . . things? How would her child's mind react, deal with that reality? Lisa was only seven years old, a baby. How could she face living with those things in the dark, wet subway amid the grisly carnage? Maybe her mind wouldn't be harmed by the experience. Maybe the trauma would wash off like the grime from the subway once she was home. Maybe...

Louise shook all thoughts of Lisa from her mind and dried off. She now had only one goal in life: to fulfill it was her destiny. Making the decision had been the easiest decision of her life; carrying it out would be the hardest. After all, what did she know of the New York subway sys^ tern? Other than the colorful maps that covered the station walls like an arterial diagram in a pathology class, the system's complexity was a mystery. Louise paid her money, pushed through the turnstile, got on, then off the train. What did she know of tunnels and crawl spaces, workmen's troughs and abandoned stations? Nothing. But she'd learn tonight when she went back to Seventy-second Street and began searching for Lisa.

Just before breakfast, Corelli went out and bought all the morning newspapers. The style of the three major dailies ran the gamut from the liberalism of the Times through the conservative position of the Daily News to the bloodthirsty gossip of the Post. Despite the three different perspectives on this morning's subway disaster, they all meant one thing to Frank: the creepers were at work again; this time en masse.

In the past the attacks had occurred late at night, and only while one person waited for a train. The attacks, as though carefully planned, were conservative in their modus operandi. But last night's attack had broken that mold. The creepers seemed to have forsaken care and caution in favor of visible attack, bloodthirsty slaughter. For generations these creatures had lived lives so geared to hiding their very existence that they eluded even the most scrupulous examination of the system. But because they did exist, and at one time or another were seen by passing motormen or conductors, the myth of their existence, the myth of the creepers had risen to explain the unexplainable. And the pattern was set. And had never varied once. Until now.

And it scared Corelli, for he intuited that this shift in their feeding habits was the signal that the creepers were about to make the transition from myth to hard, cold fact. And that meant that many people would die during the change.

"More coffee, Frank?" Willie called out from the kitchen.

"No, thanks, Willie, but keep it warm. I suspect I'll be needing it later."

"You got it," he called, then went back to cleaning up the breakfast dishes.

Corelli was fostering a deep appreciation of Willie Hoyte. He'd suspected all along that under the facade of smart-ass dude Willie had a heart and soul. The formation of Dogs of Hell proved it. The quest for publicity only proved that he was as human and fallible as anyone else. He'd asked Willie about the photograph of his father, and Willie told him exactly how he felt about the man--without shame, without embarrassment. And Corelli's admiration had grown.

"What you gonna do, Corelli?" Willie asked as he came into the dining room drying his hands. "You gonna tip off the newspapers about these creepers?" He nodded toward the stack of dailies on the floor.

"And have all hell break loose? Not on your life. Have you ever thought what would happen if I convinced people about the creepers? Can you imagine the panic?"

"I guess you're right." Willie dropped the dish towel over his shoulder. "Besides, that news would break the TA for sure. No one in his right mind would ride the subway then. Tokens would go up to ten bucks."

"And only the rich could afford to ride," Corelli finished the thought. "Let me tell you something, Willie. If the rich were using the subway, it would run on time, it would be safe and so clean you could eat off the floor."

Willie shook his head. "It ain't money, man. It's pride, self-respect. It's jes' too bad poor folks ain't got none no more," he said wistfully.

"Can you get your men together today?" Frank asked, changing the subject. Time was running out. He wanted to do something to prove the creepers' existence, show the right people, let them take care of the problem without causing a public panic. And as far as he could see, there was only one way to do that--catch a creeper!

"My men comes when I call," Hoyte responded proudly. "What you got in mind?"

"A sweep operation down the Seventh Avenue IRT line from Ninety-sixth Street."

"You want my men to go into the subway, down on the tracks?"

Corelli shook his head. "No way. Someone would surely get hurt. I want your men stationed at Ninety-sixth Street, Eighty-sixth Street, Seventy-ninth Street, and Seventy-second Street on both the uptown and downtown sides. I'm going into the tunnel alone."

"Alone with me," Willie corrected.

"No way. This is my neck, not yours."

Willie leaned up against the door frame and folded his arms across his chest. "There's no way I be left out of this action." Helping to smoke out these creepers would validate Dogs of Hell once and for all. "Corelli, I already been in the stretch of tunnel once, if you remembers. I was the one who found Slade's body. I spent the night in jail for my troubles, too. And if you think you're going to get all the glory, you're one fucking crazy cop."

"You've sure got a way with words, Willie." Corelli laughed. "Okay, you can come, but no one else. Your friend Slade saw a creeper near the abandoned station up near Ninety-sixth Street, and that's where his body was, too. So that's where we'll start."

Willie pulled himself up straight and threw the dish towel into the kitchen, where it landed in a heap on the floor. "I'll get on the phone to my men right now."

"Not so fast. If we go running into those stations in broad daylight, we'll all disappear before you can count to ten."

"How's that?"

"The someone who wants me and Louise out of the way knows about the creepers. They'll be watching the subways. They want my mouth shut at any cost."

"Jes' like old El Bee," Willie said mournfully.

"Let's not complicate the issue. We don't know how Lester died. It's easy to imagine that whoever was holding him killed him, but personally I don't believe it."

But Willie wasn't buying that idea. "Man, I was jes' talking to him a few hours before he croaked. He was jes' fine, a little whooped up on drugs, but that weren't nothing unusual. I say he was offed by the man."

"Forget it, Willie. Let's concentrate on us. I've still got to make a few phone calls before going off the deep end. Maybe, if we're lucky, this whole operation can be shelved. If not, well..."

"I usually likes action, Corelli," Willie admitted, "but if you can swing it so I don't have to come face to face with one of the creeper characters, you gets my vote."

"Vote for what?" Louise asked as she came out of the bedroom.

Corelli smirked as she strolled into the room, aware of the vague stirring in the pit of his stomach that appeared each time they were together. Louise had been through hell the past four days--but she looked great. He'd worried about her at breakfast; she was withdrawn and sullen and obviously hadn't slept well, but a morning shower seemed to have done wonders for her.

"We got a plan to get them creepers," Willie boasted.

"Oh? That's nice." Her voice was expressionless.

"Never mind, Willie," Corelli interrupted. "I'll handle this."

"Too late." Louise smiled as she sank down on the couch. "The cat's already out of the bag. So what's this plan, and where do I fit in?"

"You stay right here, that's where you fit in. Willie and I and his men are going out tonight for a while. You'll be safe right here."

"I'm beginning to wonder if I'll be safe anywhere. I can't go home, I can't go to my 'hideout,' I can't go out on the street. Guess I'm just a real fugitive from justice," she said offhandedly.

Louise's lackadaisical manner was partially feigned; she'd counted on Corelli's being busy tonight. For four days she'd done nothing, but tonight she would remedy the situation. She was obsessed with Lisa, but that was natural, just as it was natural for any child's mother to want to take some action. Going into the subway was the answer. Louise had to do it for her own sanity. If she didn't, she'd never have a moment's peace for the rest of her life.