Creepers (31 page)

How many of them, Corelli wondered, have come down into the subway looking for a little warmth, only to become fodder for the creepers? No one ever missed the poor and homeless. They had no one to care for them, unlike Louise Hill and her daughter. A pang of loss stabbed him deep in the gut, and he faltered a moment. Twenty minutes earlier, when he discovered Louise was gone, an angry rush of adrenaline had poured into his system, spurring him on to find Louise, to rescue her from a fate no one else had managed to escape. But he'd believed then that this time it would be different; this time Frank Corelli was involved, and Death would turn its head and let him save the woman he loved.

Now he wasn't so sure. The absolute self-confidence that he could save Louise had eroded. Who the hell was Frank Corelli anyway? Superman? Who was he kidding? Looking for one woman in the maze of tracks and tunnels and the thousands of hiding places in the midst of the New York subway system was pure folly. What were his real chances of finding her? What were his real chances of walking out of here arm in arm with Louise? Pretty close to zero, he figured now. Still, he had to be sure. For his sake. For Louise's.

As he reached the far end of the station, a magnified voice oozed into the air over the antiquated loudspeaker system. Forced through wires as old as the system itself, the voice crackled like a talking hen, but the message was loud and clear: "Your attention, please. Your attention. The subway will be closed tonight from midnight to six A.M. for extensive repairs. Please take the next available train. If you are on the platform later than twelve-fifteen you will be forced to leave by the nearest exit. We regret this inconvenience, but it is being done for your safety. I repeat: take the next available train as far as you can. The subway will be closed in ten minutes. Thank you."

The announcement sent a bolt of fear through Corelli. What the hell was going on? The subway was never closed down completely. Sections of it were closed when major track repairs were necessary, but the whole system? Never. Frank's gut reaction said Russ Matthews was behind this; Dolchik, too. They knew about the creepers and they had to keep it quiet. He'd forced their hands with last night's phone call. Now it seemed his threat was about to pay off. What better way to rid the system of the creepers than to close off the subway and... What?

Matthews could do anything he wanted, and the mere mortals who lived in New York were powerless to stop him. If the mayor said the recent disaster at Chambers Street was a good reason for closing the entire subway one night to systematically check it for safety, who would know that his real reason had to do with something far more terrifying and dangerous than any malfunctioning signal? Only Corelli. And they hadn't caught him...yet.

He waited until the next--and last--train came and left; then he jumped down onto the roadbed and ran into the shadows inside the tunnel. And, as if to give credence to the danger of his situation, two uniformed policemen appeared on both the uptown and downtown platforms. They scanned the station for any stray passengers, then retreated to stand guard at the token booth. And that put an end to any help from Willie and Dogs of Hell.

Corelli scrambled deeper into the tunnel, unable to shake off the fear that squeezed his chest. Time was running out. With this new twist, he'd have to move faster than ever. And he was now alone; no Willie Hoyte, no Dogs of Hell. He'd hoped to capture a creeper tonight, but the mayor had beat him to the punch. And then Louise had been kidnapped. Nothing was going right. With the subway closed, he was a single figure in the darkness, running scared, not sure exactly what he was doing.

But one thing was for sure: either he found Louise-- alive or dead--or he'd die trying.

September 8

Saturday

Chapter 15

Dolchik was exhausted, although he'd never let on that he was anything but supercharged. As team leader of the newly agreed-on sweep operation through the subway system, he had to look fit, had to look "in charge." The several hundred men under his command had to believe he wouldn't crumble under pressure. And right now there was enough pressure to satisfy Dolchik for life.

He was stationed back in the TA office at Columbus Circle. He chewed on a dead cigar and scanned the subway map before him; the city was secured, the operation was about to get under way, and nothing would stop it once it began. For a moment Dolchik glanced out over the controlled pandemonium in the outer office. His eyes finally settled on Frank Corelli's desk. Dolchik wondered where the hell Corelli was tonight. In a way, he admired the stubborn cop for not backing down, for not compromising his principles in light of the mayor's threats.

Any fool could have heard in Matthew's tone that to give up was to go to jail without collecting two hundred dollars, but Stan suspected that Corelli wasn't just interested in saving his own skin. He suspected--no, knew-- that the bastard actually was altruistic, that he felt it his sworn duty as a TA detective, and as a human being, to protect the New Yorkers put in his care. And that meant stopping the creepers.

Dolchik also suspected that at that very moment Corelli was in the subway somewhere, despite the warnings, ignoring the danger signs, once again mounting his own crusade. Only, this time he'd taken one risk too many. This time there was no way Frank Corelli could escape.

The massive operation of sweeping clean the Manhattan section of the New York subway system was about to become operative. In the twenty-four hours since the Chambers Street incident, Dolchik and Matthews had not only gotten permission from the state government and the federal government to smoke out the creepers but also implemented the plan, in all its complexity.

The city had been divided into quadrants: northeast and northwest, southeast and southwest (the two northern sections, because of their relatively uncomplicated track system, would be easiest to deal with and required the fewest number of men). Troops had been deployed to all of the farthermost subway stations of the island. They were to be aided by TA and NYPD cops whose job it was to see that during the sweep nothing got in or out of the island by way of the tunnels and bridges that linked Manhattan with the other boroughs.

The southeast and southwest quadrants presented a real problem. The congestion of tracks, systems, and routes from Fifty-seventh Street south to South Ferry and the accesses to Brooklyn was almost impossible to deal with methodically. Extra men were deployed to the farthermost stations; these squads of men readied themselves to begin the sweep from the waterfront inland toward the center of the island. The plan was to force the creepers toward central killing grounds: Washington Square station in the Village, the Fourteenth Street stations which ran a straight line across the island from Eighth Avenue to Union Square, and the Thirty-fourth Street stations, which occupied a fairly deserted part of town. At these crucial points, soldiers waited to eradicate the creepers as they fled north in front of the sweep.

It was calculated that the sweep south would force the creatures into position no sooner than the Thirty-fourth Street stations, which, like those on Fourteenth Street, spread across town in an almost even line. These sections of the city, busy during the day, saw relatively little traffic at night. Thus, it was essential that the north-south sweep begin before its south-north counterpart, to avoid the creepers massing beyond Thirty-fourth Street--in areas where there was a high civilian population. That, of course, was to avoid spillage.

"Spillage? What the hell is spillage?" Matthews had questioned Dolchik earlier.

The captain shrugged. "Russ, we have no idea how many of these creepers there are. There may be a hundred...or ten hundred. If we start forcing them toward a central point with our sweeps, they're going to start massing...and some of them might just get by our men and up onto the street. That's spillage."

"Jesus Christ. If any of them escapes..."

"We're taking every precaution to see that they don't. Still, we have to consider all possibilities. We'd like eventually to herd as many of them into the Washington Square station as possible', it's on two levels and handles several different subway lines. A systematic sweep along the eastern side of the island should send 'em running right into our open arms."

"Just keep them off the street, Dolchik," Matthews warned. "I want people to know what a great job we've done with this after it's over; not while it's going on." He shook his head. "My God, can you imagine the carnage if these things got out and made a break for it?"

"I don't want to think about it," Stan admitted as he wiped away a gloss of sweat that had broken out across the back of his neck. "We're doing everything humanly possible to contain these things, Russ. Just say a prayer that there aren't too many of them." Dolchik had his own suspicions about the creeper population, and it scared the shit out of him.

All that had taken place hours ago, when Dolchik was beginning to feel tired. Now, five minutes before the sweep was about to begin, none of it mattered. The subway was empty and the success or failure of the mission was out of his hands.

"Captain, we're all ready," Lieutenant Tom Larabee, a tough-looking National Guardsman, interrupted Dolchik's thoughts.

"Repeat your instructions once again, Lieutenant," Dolchik demanded. There was no margin for error. This sweep was a one-time thing.

"My men have been notified to proceed inland, following their assigned courses and leaders toward the various central meeting points. They are to have their automatic weapons ready . . . and they are to shoot anything not in uniform."

"That last part is most important, Lieutenant We can't take any chances with these things." And if Russ Matthews' luck held, Corelli would go down in flames, too. "Are the men with the flamethrowers in place?"

"They are deployed in advance of each squad of men and will destroy any refuges of the creatures as well as the creatures themselves, Captain." He smiled now and rested easily. "I don't know what we're after, sir, but I'll tell you, my men will burn the shit out of them. The only thing that's going to get out of the subway alive is me and my men. And you've got my word for that."

"Very good, Lieutenant," Dolchik said, barely disguising the distaste he felt for this gung-ho attitude. "Now, you'd better get into position."

"Yessir." Larabee saluted and left the office.

Dolchik folded up the subway map and slipped it back into his desk. He took out a fresh cigar, bit off the end, and spit it into the wastebasket. Too bad about Corelli. In his own way he was a likable guy. Dolchik lit the cigar. Now Corelli was just a dead man.

Corelli raced through the tunnel toward the area just south of the Ninety-sixth Street station. In the past five minutes nothing had passed through the tunnels--no expresses hurtling mindlessly through the dark, no locals rocking along like subterranean rowboats on a darkened sea. It was an eerie feeling. It was as if the subway had died. And only Frank Corelli had come to the funeral.

The ominous emptiness around him convinced Frank that he was on the tightest time schedule of his life. It was as if with each step he took, the second hand of a cosmic stopwatch ticked off another second. He fought a growing sense of panic that constantly whipped up inside his gut, then subsided; it was like the wind devils he'd seen dancing over the flat Texas landscape when he was in the Army. He had to remember: panic made people irresponsible...and irresponsibility led to death.

He found the abandoned station sooner than he'd expected. He stood opposite it for a minute, visually scouting out its parameters. Even from the uptown-express track Corelli saw that the station's platform was littered with rubble and that its walls were crumbling from years of neglect. The station looked totally deserted, forgotten years before in favor of the larger station at Ninety-sixth Street. It was the perfect place for the creepers to call home.

He sucked in a deep breath and made his way carefully across the tracks, keeping an eye on the third rail, which, he assumed, was still operative despite the lack of train traffic. He crouched low under the overhanging lip of the station's platform and keened his ears for sounds of movement, speech, anything. But there was nothing. He then edged to the far end of the platform and listened again. Still nothing. In fact, the entire subway system lay soundless under the city. Frank knew he was wasting his time in contemplation; the only course of action was to move.

But he was afraid. Afraid that when he burst into the station he would find nothing. And he knew if Louise weren't there, if the creepers weren't hiding her there, then she was lost to him forever.

Corelli shelved his fear and bolted up over the platform's edge. He huddled low, then scampered toward the door that had been cut through the cheap plywood of an old makeshift wall the TA had set up in front of the station. For a moment his decisiveness wavered; Jesus, what was he doing here? Was he still chasing shadows? Still running after monsters in the subway that no one had seen for real? Was he really staking his life and his sanity on linking a series of ancient newspaper reports to modern-day crimes? It wasn't rational. It wasn't sane. Yet, here he crouched, trembling with fear and anticipation.

Without another second's thought, Corelli kicked open the wooden door and leaped inside, swinging the beam of his flashlight ahead of him. The room was empty. He felt the rush of adrenaline run dry. He was suddenly limp and drained. He'd been wrong about Louise. He'd gambled on finding her, and he'd lost. Jesus! The same feelings that had swamped him the night he'd identified Jean's body returned. Twice in five years he'd loved, and twice he'd lost. Well, this time he was in charge, and he'd find the bastards who'd taken Louise and kill them one by one...if it were the last thing he'd ever do.