Lucid Waking

Archive for October 13th, 2006

The Thirteenth Car

This is my attempt at horror, so I should warn everyone that this is not intended for all audiences. This is gory, but I don’t think it’s worse than some of my other stories. Just use your best judgment.

            “Everybody stand back!” Orders were yelled over the crowd as they pushed back the people farther into the center of the City. Yellow police tape was ripped from rolls and clumsily taped over the entrance of the fifteenth subway. Police radios crackled in the chaos and people yelled over them in protest. A few police officers were waving their guns to the particularly passionate people trying to break the line of people. Sirens rang on the street and buses pulled up to the curb in a steady pulse.
            “Damn it,” she said over the police network to the cops in the center. “Did you have to make such a seen?”
            “Sorry Miss Jane,” a young officer messaged back. “We had to do what we had to do.”
            She heard in the background a gruff apology from the lieutenant and a scolding to the officer as she pulled up to the curb.
            “Police detective coming through!” she yelled pushing her way through the crowd. “What happened?” she asked when she got to the center beyond the ring of cops. She smoothed down her skirt annoyed, but kept eye contact with the lieutenant of the police. He rubbed his neck nervously.
            “We don’t really know,” he said, “there’s a couple dead bodies down there and we think something has got to be down there eating people.”
            “How long have you had this quarantine up?”
            “A couple hours. We just got a call from the late night train conductor that he had a train full of dead bodies when he reached his last stop. The ones in the back were half eaten.”
            “All right,” she grabbed a gun from a nearby cop and checked that it was loaded. “Get me two officers to follow and make sure I’ve got backup at all the entrances around the city.” She clicked off the safety and ducked under the police tape into the dark subway.
            She listened down the railway and could just faintly hear a soft panting like a dog from somewhere down the tunnel. The train was pulled to the platform and all the doors were open on the receiving side of the station. She could see some blood smeared on the windows from something, but she didn’t give it much thought. The click of the safety being turned off brought her back to attention.
            “Officers Megan and John at your service,” a familiar voice said. John stepped up beside her and smiled showing her the extra guns he had made sure to carry. Megan stepped naturally on her other side, but showed no motion of recognition and strained her senses to get a clue on this new menace.
            “What did They tell you?” John asked nonchalantly as if he had no idea.
            “Murder,” Jane said calmly. She stepped forward to the train and stepped on the last car. It was dirty like every other public train car could be, but the people still sat in their seats, eyes facing forward or looking up, without any expression.
            Megan took a sharp intake of air and approached one of the figures. “All dead,” she said. “I don’t know about you,” she said strangely calm, “but They told us these people were mostly eaten and they were littered about the car.”
            “In fact,” John said, “they only showed us pictures of what looks like two cars down.”
            Jane put her gun in her belt and leaned down to feel a pulse on a woman holding a child’s hand. “These people look like they were never real.” She pulled a gun out and shot the woman’s left arm. There was a pause and all three of them peered into the bullet hole.
            “It’s just plastic,” Megan said disgusted. “You were right; these people were never real.”
            John frowned, but remained silent. “Let’s go to the other car,” he said and walked out of the train. Both women followed him, holding their guns out to the side towards the train, fingers on the triggers patiently.
            The thirteenth car was just as unusual as the last car, but all noted with disdain that it did not look like the report they had received earlier. The mannequins were all standing up and looking at one person laying on the floor drowning in her own pools of blood. She looked human and still clutched her throat where presumably the bullet was lodged. One man in the seat in front of her was sitting calmly looking down at her. Jane and John shrank back at this sight, but Megan held up her gun to the man in the chair’s forehead.
            “What the hell happened here?” she demanded, yelling at his stone face.
            There was silence where no one moved and finally the head moved just slightly to tilt his head and look at her out of the corners of his eyes. He didn’t speak.
            Jane pulled her gun on the people standing up, which she assumed were plastic, but was now cautious of everything. Her heart beat faster as she hallucinated the slightest twitch in every one of them. John and Megan kept their eyes fixed on the man in the chair.
            “I didn’t do anything,” the man said in a hollow mechanical voice. “It was the Animal.”
            “What are you talking about?” Megan said, walking closer to the man to close down her gun range. John snapped his gun out of its holster and clicked off the safety keeping it poised at the open door.
            The man stood up, but then sat down again as Megan’s gun followed his actions. “I did not kill her, He killed her. With the Animal.”
            Megan shook her head. “You’re not-“
            “Shhh!” the man quieted her loudly and sat in his original position perfectly still. All eyes followed the creaking to the door.
            “Well, well, well, what have we here?” a second man asked. His head just barely cleared the top of the train and shocks of his blond hair fell just above his eyes. He looked like a classical statue completely, from handsome appearance to stiff movements. He had a large rapier attached to his back, the hilt barely showing over his shoulder and a gun conspicuously placed on his hip. A dog pulled up next to him, snarling and he patted it on the head without even bending his knees.
            Jane motioned for John to defend her back and moved forward boldly to confront the new stranger. The dog started forward, but the man kept it back by his side.
            “You must he Him,” she said.
            The man smiled perfectly, but didn’t make another move of recognition.
            “Why did you do this?”
            The man frowned. “Do what?”
            Jane pointed at the girl on the floor beyond Megan, but didn’t say a word.
            “Oh,” the man said laughing, “that.”
            They waited for him to continue, but he just stood in the doorway smiling. The dog at his side calmed down a bit, but growled any time one of them would move.
            “What did she do to you?” Megan asked calmly.
            The man turned to her. “She was human. There are no humans on the fifteenth train to the fifteenth station. It’s a robot train. They think it’s to separate the filth of robots from precious humans, but it’s because there needs to be a separation between the filth humans from precious robots.”
            “She must have been with PETR,” John said quietly. “Only people pushing for the equality between humans and robots would have gotten on a clearly marked robot train.”
            The man cocked his head and stared at John, who ignored him nervously.
            “Who are you?” Jane said, trying hard to move the conversation from his stare.
            “I’m part of the extermination crew. We keep this train sacred.”
            “With mannequins?” Megan said scornfully. The man’s eyes flashed red.
            “Those are dysfunctional robots! They are not mannequins!”
            The dog barked and lunged towards Megan.
            “We’re sorry,” Jane yelled over the dog. “We’re sorry. We’ll leave. We didn’t know. We’ll go and tell them never to get on this train again and we’ll leave you alone.”
            “Oh, but then I wouldn’t have a job,” the man said taking a step towards them. “This train was full of dysfunctional robots and that’s how it will stay. It will go to the fixing station and fix you, you, you, and her right back up to the way you’re supposed to be.”
            He moved his gun to focus in the middle of Jane’s neck, but decided against it and dropped his gun. As he backed out of the train, he patted the dog above the tail. “Go get them.”
            The doors closed as the dog lunged forward. Three different guns shot out at it, but only revealed the complex wires underneath. Jane grabbed Megan’s arm and ran behind the row of mannequins staring at the human woman, letting them fall like dominoes to create a fort. John pulled back to join them by the door of the car.
            “Now what?” Jane asked out of breath, taking another shot for the dog, just to calm down her nerves. The dog was climbing the robots, though as it put weight on one it would fall uneasily, so it was mostly leveling out the mountain of plastic bodies. All three humans in the car still felt uneasy shock and fear as another mannequin would fall from the stack. The man in the chair stood up slowly and snuck up behind the dog. Megan took a shot.
            “We have to distract it,” she whispered, “because if I’m right then that robot will help us. And you know I’m always right.”
            “If cynical and egotistical,” John said.
            Both dismissed his comment as a case of nerves as his hands were starting to shake as they stood watching the mountain diminish. Finally the second robot reached the dog and grabbing a nearby arm from a broken robot, bashed the dog on the head. A few seconds of bloody combat followed, guns firing expertly into crucial mechanical parts in the dog. Finally the dog stopped working and the second man got back on the train.
            “I thought you were dead,” he said, though to whom it was unclear. Jane breathed a sigh of relief and shot him in the head. He fell backwards from the impact onto the pavement and smashed the memory box in the nape of his neck with a sickening shatter.
            She climbed out of the train and annoyed, smoothed out her hair and skirt. “Thank you,” she said turning to John and Megan, “for a job well done.”
            John smiled and Megan rolled her eyes laughing half-heartedly. Stepping gently out of the subway station, she tossed the gun to the lieutenant and walked back into the crowd to her car.