<\/p>\n
Daryl felt a strange inner peace with his next shuddering, polluted breath.\u00a0 He began to run through several possible scenarios from horror movies.\u00a0 Maybe that was the only part of his mind that was working.<\/p>\n
The burnt woman grinned horribly, \u201cPredictable.\u201d He didn\u2019t understand what the creature meant.<\/p>\n
\u201cTake the girl,\u201d the second burn victim muttered.\u00a0 He was still staring at the group of five crouched on the ruined floor.<\/p>\n
That broke Daryl\u2019s concentration.\u00a0 He blinked and backed away, pushing Molly with him.<\/p>\n
The burnt woman leaned forward, hands on the edge of the window where Plexiglas had melted into charred clumps, \u201cWe have evolved, Daryl.\u201d<\/p>\n
How did this creature know him?\u00a0 He couldn\u2019t shake the dawning feeling that his life had entered an out of control spin the moment the train screamed to a stop.\u00a0 All this made sense, in a way.\u00a0 The world had ended, right?\u00a0 That\u2019s what he would find if he ever got out of this airless tunnel.\u00a0 The cards were on the table now, and these freaks were part of the game.\u00a0 They knew him because he had stepped into an alien fantasy, whether in his mind or not.\u00a0 Darkly, he hoped it was in his mind.\u00a0 That would be so much easier.<\/p>\n
A brunette in the huddled group of five began sobbing hysterically, begging in broken hysterics for their captors to let them go.\u00a0 That\u2019s exactly what the burnt people were, Daryl realized.\u00a0 Captors.\u00a0 He stepped forward, and the burnt woman seemed surprised by the confidence in his movement.\u00a0 She moved back from the window, self consciously corrected her posture, then turned towards the other burn victim who had spoken.<\/p>\n
\u201cInteresting,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Daryl continued forward, side-stepping across the threshold of the shattered doors into the car.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d Molly muttered from behind him, pressing herself against the wall of the tunnel and deeper into the flickering shadows of flame and sparks.<\/p>\n
The burnt woman was looking at him oddly, perhaps asking the same question in her mind.<\/p>\n
All five of the huddled survivors turned frightened eyes towards Daryl, but he remained focused on the burn victims. They were no longer human.\u00a0 Not with their wounds, the solid madness of glittering eyes in such charred faces.<\/p>\n
\u201cOkay, then.\u201d\u00a0 He smiled, though his heart wasn\u2019t in it.\u00a0 Had he lost his mind?\u00a0 Hell, no point worrying about it.\u00a0\u00a0 He looked at the woman who had first spoken to him and tried to clear his thoughts.\u00a0 Easy enough, he felt as if his brain was filled with the same plastic-electric smoke in the tunnel.\u00a0 His vision certainly was.\u00a0 \u201cWe\u2019ll be heading out, then.\u201d He extended an arm towards the five huddled survivors.\u00a0 They hesitated, looking at the burn victims, then at Daryl, then back again.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 One of them was wounded and they were trying to help him move quickly, but only managed to trip over each other.<\/p>\n
The burnt woman cocked her head, \u201cYou think you\u2019ve gone mad, yes?\u201d<\/p>\n
The second\u00a0 burn victim watched Daryl closely, then his gaze shifted towards his silent comrades.\u00a0 With an unnatural speed, one of them leapt forward, hands stretched out, and emitted a dry, breathless moan.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh, great.\u201d Daryl muttered\u00a0 \u201cYou really are monsters.\u201d<\/p>\n
The burnt woman shook her head, white teeth spread in a grimace.\u00a0 Another burnt creature hit the group of five survivors, scattering them.\u00a0 The one charging towards Daryl wasn\u2019t ready for a quick side-step, though.\u00a0 Daryl danced away and the thing hurtled through the window and smashed into the wall of the tunnel, just near Molly.\u00a0 Molly\u2019s scream was more of a rattling cough in the consuming, black smoke.\u00a0 Daryl took three quick steps back through the door and onto the catwalk.\u00a0 The burnt woman watched him like a cat does its prey.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 There was little room to move between train and wall, and the group of survivors were pressed against Daryl\u2019s back.\u00a0 He hesitated for a moment, then faked a run back into the train.\u00a0 As the creature rose, Daryl spun and threw himself clumsily into it.\u00a0 They both tumbled to the ground.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 A vicious, greenish dust rose around him in the lights, and he gagged helplessly.\u00a0\u00a0 The one beneath him never blinked or flinched, it just slowly pressed its thumbs into Daryl\u2019s throat.\u00a0 Then he felt the other creature on top of him stiffen.\u00a0 It fell over and bounced off the side of the subway car.\u00a0 Daryl rolled away from the creature beneath him and when he blinked again, it lay still, its skull destroyed.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
He lay there for a moment, star shells in his eyes, then Molly helped him up.\u00a0 Climbing to his feet, he lurched back into the subway car, swung at the burnt woman and hit her in the jaw.\u00a0 She went down screaming and clawing at her face.\u00a0 Crystallized fat and flaking flesh covered Daryl\u2019s hand and he stepped back, pressing against the ruined walls of the subway car.\u00a0 The woman rose, scorched bone of her skull showing through, and she tried to speak.\u00a0 Instead, her jaw locked open, broken and she bent forward onto her knee.<\/p>\n
The last of the creatures remained standing, its wide, lidless eyes against the charred face looked shocked, perhaps even terrified.\u00a0 \u201cI knew it.\u201d\u00a0 It said, then it lunged forward with a guttural scream.\u00a0 Molly stepped in, pushed Daryl aside and hit the creature with the pipe.\u00a0 Its head snapped back and its body spun to one side.\u00a0 Daryl stared down at it numbly.\u00a0 From the ruined face, a strange, grey-green powder leaked out where there should have been blood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[404],"class_list":["post-374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nachos-lousy-novel","tag-nachos-lousy-novel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":862,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374\/revisions\/862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/greatsociety.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}