Year One (Chronicles of The One #1)(43)

“There is no why. It’s just—” Arlys let out a stifled scream, stumbled back.

“It’s just a rat,” Fred told her as it scuttled away from the light. “There are lots of them down here. Don’t worry. You don’t have to be afraid of rats.”

“Just a personal phobia.” One that turned her skin to ice, churned her stomach. The boy on the tracks. The rats would find him. “We can’t stop.”

But they did when, in a few more yards, they came to a subway car on the tracks. Graffiti covered the outside, like an obscene mural. The skull symbol, snarling exclamations to KILL! to RAPE THE CUNTS! A drawing of a man with a hugely exaggerated penis dragging a naked woman by the hair.

But worse, far worse, was the stench. Arlys saw the cause through an open door of the car, and the scatter of decomposing bodies.

And the rats.

She dragged Fred away. “It’s too late to pray for their souls.”

This time Fred let out a scream as a figure—Arlys could barely identify it as a man—leaped into the open doorway. Blood stained his face, the thick and filthy beard that stubbled over his chin. He wore smeared glasses over wild eyes, a long coat, painted with gore, that hung on his bony body.

He held a knife, stained like the coat. And grinned.

“This is my place. You can’t have it. These are my dead. You can’t have them. I’ll burn you!”

Arlys raised the gun in a hand that shook, gripped Fred’s arm with the other.

“We don’t want your place. We’re going away.”

“There’s no away! There’s only the end of the world! First the petulance. Then the fire. See?”

He held up a dirty hand with nails that curled like claws. A golf ball of fire burned in it.

“I’m the end of the world!” His laugh, as wild as his eyes, burst out as he flung the ball.

Arlys felt the shocking heat fly past her face, heard the sizzle as it struck the wall behind them.

“There’s no away!” he screamed when Arlys, her hand clamped on Fred’s arm, ran. “There’s only hell.”

Another ball smacked and sizzled on the ground beside her. She kept running. And tripped over something on the tracks.

She went mad for a moment, lost her mind at the stench, at the horrible give of the rotten corpse under her. At the scrabbling rats that ran over her back, over her hands.

“Get them off! Get them off me!”

She rolled, plunged her hand down into what had once been another human being, then shoved herself back on the ground using the heels of her hands and feet.

“They’re all over me!” She flailed, slapping at her own arms, torso, legs, struggling when Fred’s arms came around her.

“You’re okay. They’re not on you. You’re okay.”

Her head spun, and rolling again, she vomited while Fred held back her hair, tried to soothe.

“Oh God, God, God, this can’t be real. How can any of this be real?” Arlys managed to push up to her knees, started to wipe at her face. And, realizing what was coating her hands, gagged as she stripped off her gloves.

She crawled until she felt the wall, sat with her back propped against it. Her heart hammered in her chest, terrible pressure.

“You’re breathing too fast. I think you’re hyperventilating, okay? You have to slow down, Arlys. You really have to.”

She gulped in air—too hard, too fast—felt her head loll, forced herself to expel it. Sucked in more, but slower.

“I can’t lose it. Can’t lose it. Not here. Not now.”

“I should’ve had the light on the ground. It’s my fault.”

“No.” Though her head still spun, the horrible pressure in her chest eased a little. “Nobody’s fault. We have to go, but I dropped the gun. We have to find it. We need it. We have to—”

“I’m going to find it. Stay here. Keep breathing, and I’ll find it.”

Arlys nodded. She’d be useless until she stopped shaking, until her ears stopped ringing. So she closed her eyes, ordered herself to stop thinking, to just breathe in and out.

She heard Fred’s sound of distress, started to push her rocky legs to standing.

“It’s okay. I found it. Just stay there. I can see you. I can see pretty well in the dark, remember? I’ve got the flashlight, too, now. I’d dropped it, but it’s okay.”

She patted Arlys’s cheek as she said the last.

“We can take a break.”

“No.” Arlys shook her head, clenched her teeth, and stood up. She had to brace against the wall a moment with her head and stomach spinning. “We have to keep going. We have to get out of here. I need the gun.”

Carefully, Fred put it into Arlys’s hand.

“I’m covered with…”

“Maybe I can fix it. I can try.”

“We need to get farther away from the crazy man with the fireballs first. I can stand it if you can.”

She put one foot in front of the other. She thought about just ditching her coat—maybe the coat had taken the worst—but she wanted distance first.

“Something’s coming.” Fred barely breathed it in Arlys’s ear. “Something bad.”

She switched off the light and, in the darkness, pulled Arlys along the wall, into one of the narrow depressions.