Judgment Day: Part 5

Daryl felt a strange inner peace with his next shuddering, polluted breath.  He began to run through several possible scenarios from horror movies.  Maybe that was the only part of his mind that was working.

The burnt woman grinned horribly, “Predictable.” He didn’t understand what the creature meant.

“Take the girl,” the second burn victim muttered.  He was still staring at the group of five crouched on the ruined floor.

That broke Daryl’s concentration.  He blinked and backed away, pushing Molly with him.

The burnt woman leaned forward, hands on the edge of the window where Plexiglas had melted into charred clumps, “We have evolved, Daryl.”

How did this creature know him?  He couldn’t shake the dawning feeling that his life had entered an out of control spin the moment the train screamed to a stop.  All this made sense, in a way.  The world had ended, right?  That’s what he would find if he ever got out of this airless tunnel.  The cards were on the table now, and these freaks were part of the game.  They knew him because he had stepped into an alien fantasy, whether in his mind or not.  Darkly, he hoped it was in his mind.  That would be so much easier.

A brunette in the huddled group of five began sobbing hysterically, begging in broken hysterics for their captors to let them go.  That’s exactly what the burnt people were, Daryl realized.  Captors.  He stepped forward, and the burnt woman seemed surprised by the confidence in his movement.  She moved back from the window, self consciously corrected her posture, then turned towards the other burn victim who had spoken.

“Interesting,” she said.

Daryl continued forward, side-stepping across the threshold of the shattered doors into the car.

“What are you doing?” Molly muttered from behind him, pressing herself against the wall of the tunnel and deeper into the flickering shadows of flame and sparks.

The burnt woman was looking at him oddly, perhaps asking the same question in her mind.

All five of the huddled survivors turned frightened eyes towards Daryl, but he remained focused on the burn victims. They were no longer human.  Not with their wounds, the solid madness of glittering eyes in such charred faces.

“Okay, then.”  He smiled, though his heart wasn’t in it.  Had he lost his mind?  Hell, no point worrying about it.   He looked at the woman who had first spoken to him and tried to clear his thoughts.  Easy enough, he felt as if his brain was filled with the same plastic-electric smoke in the tunnel.  His vision certainly was.  “We’ll be heading out, then.” He extended an arm towards the five huddled survivors.  They hesitated, looking at the burn victims, then at Daryl, then back again.  It seemed to take a long time, but it was only a matter of seconds before they rose and started to move towards Daryl and out through the door, shuffling together.  One of them was wounded and they were trying to help him move quickly, but only managed to trip over each other.

The burnt woman cocked her head, “You think you’ve gone mad, yes?”

The second  burn victim watched Daryl closely, then his gaze shifted towards his silent comrades.  With an unnatural speed, one of them leapt forward, hands stretched out, and emitted a dry, breathless moan.

“Oh, great.” Daryl muttered  “You really are monsters.”

The burnt woman shook her head, white teeth spread in a grimace.  Another burnt creature hit the group of five survivors, scattering them.  The one charging towards Daryl wasn’t ready for a quick side-step, though.  Daryl danced away and the thing hurtled through the window and smashed into the wall of the tunnel, just near Molly.  Molly’s scream was more of a rattling cough in the consuming, black smoke.  Daryl took three quick steps back through the door and onto the catwalk.  The burnt woman watched him like a cat does its prey.  Another creature bounced through the broken window and landed on his haunches behind him, animal-like, burnt skin and clothes seeming to take on the essence of the flickering shadows around them all.  There was little room to move between train and wall, and the group of survivors were pressed against Daryl’s back.  He hesitated for a moment, then faked a run back into the train.  As the creature rose, Daryl spun and threw himself clumsily into it.  They both tumbled to the ground.  Another landed on top of him and, for a moment, the world was just a blackened face beneath him and two pairs of hands clawing into his flesh.  The snarling of the one on his back echoed in that tiny world surrounding him, the black flesh beneath his own hands peeling down to scorched bone as he frantically tried to harm the creature.  A vicious, greenish dust rose around him in the lights, and he gagged helplessly.   The one beneath him never blinked or flinched, it just slowly pressed its thumbs into Daryl’s throat.  Then he felt the other creature on top of him stiffen.  It fell over and bounced off the side of the subway car.  Daryl rolled away from the creature beneath him and when he blinked again, it lay still, its skull destroyed.  Choking, Daryl looked up at Molly. She held a twisted pipe in both her hands, her frightened eyes watching the monster she had just killed.

He lay there for a moment, star shells in his eyes, then Molly helped him up.  Climbing to his feet, he lurched back into the subway car, swung at the burnt woman and hit her in the jaw.  She went down screaming and clawing at her face.  Crystallized fat and flaking flesh covered Daryl’s hand and he stepped back, pressing against the ruined walls of the subway car.  The woman rose, scorched bone of her skull showing through, and she tried to speak.  Instead, her jaw locked open, broken and she bent forward onto her knee.

The last of the creatures remained standing, its wide, lidless eyes against the charred face looked shocked, perhaps even terrified.  “I knew it.”  It said, then it lunged forward with a guttural scream.  Molly stepped in, pushed Daryl aside and hit the creature with the pipe.  Its head snapped back and its body spun to one side.  Daryl stared down at it numbly.  From the ruined face, a strange, grey-green powder leaked out where there should have been blood.