CHAPTER VIII - "Within The Tube"

A modern day London. England based Horror Short Story.

                 WITHIN THE TUBE
 
     The day before the Black Death hit London was apparently no different to the hundreds that had gone before it. People had gone about their daily business with no idea as to the horror that was to befall them, had lived their lives with no clue as the atrocity nature was to visit upon them…

The day it struck, did people realise, I wonder? Did anyone have the slightest idea of the hell-spawned nightmare humanity was about to experience, did anyone have the merest inkling of what was to come?

*

The boy smiled at me through black lips from the other end of the Tube carriage, and I smiled back. I didn’t know him, but had a vague recollection of seeing him in the nightclub- seeing him dancing with one of my friends. He was quite cute, in a way- had I been a little braver I might have been the one dancing with him- but this was the Tube.

You didn’t talk to the person in the seat next to you, let alone strange boys at the other end of the carriage.

Especially not since the bombings.

Now you just sat there and stared out at the darkness and occasionally caught the eye of a stranger and wondered what if.

Stifling a yawn, I turned back to the window and thanked God that I had a day off.

I only had a couple of stops to go, so my thoughts were short-lived. Standing up from my seat I saw the boy stand, too. This was pure serendipity- it had to be. I could talk to him, maybe get to know him, maybe-

No, I couldn’t. I didn’t do that sort of thing. I’d just go home to my flat, dump my going-out clothes in a pile on the floor and sleep for a week- or at the very least until my flatmates got up. I’d then go about my day off as usual- go shopping, read, watch some TV, that sort of thing- and if I thought about the boy at all it wouldn’t bother me…

…Or at least, if it did, it wouldn’t bother me much.

Much.

The mechanical voice came out over the tannoy- “Camden Town, next stop, Camden Town”- and I readied for a quick getaway. Get off the Tube first, don’t get caught up in any crush outside the station, don’t look at him-

I couldn’t help it. As the doors opened I snuck a look down the carriage, and saw he was looking at me. Maybe I would talk to him, after all, yes, maybe I-

I stepped through the door and onto the platform.

So did the boy.

I smiled down the platform-

-and he doubled up, clutching his stomach.

I couldn’t understand why, at first. Then I thought he was going to be sick- God along knows the amount of times I’d felt rough after a night out- but then he looked up at me.

Looked up at me with eyes full of pain and horror.

I knew there and then that whatever was wrong with him was nothing you’d find in any medical textbook, let alone anything you could cure with two Alka-Seltzers and a morning snuggled under blankets watching daytime TV.

Oh God, I thought, oh God, he’s been shot, he’s been shot, he’s been-

Then reality took a left turn straight to Hell, and I could only stare dumb-struck as blood exploded from his mouth, bright crimson blood that spewed everywhere as people gasped with revulsion, bright crimson blood that splattered against the tiles like a hideous rain- and he crashed to his knees. A terrible mewling cry was emanating from him, and my first instinct was to run.

I couldn’t run, though.

The thought never entered my head.

I was transfixed.

Transfixed as a mass of horrible black things came ripping from his mouth, hideous, flailing tentacles – black, slimy, chitinous tentacles- no, that’s not right, they weren’t so much tentacles as gigantic, revolting centipedes- centipedes that chattered and chittered with hideous, fang-filled mouths as they writhed and thrashed in his mouth.

And then they erupted from him, carrying great bloodied strings of mucus with them and splattering to the tiled floor like some sick, insidious tide.

After that first outpouring, I was appalled, but still they came.

Still they came.

So many of them I couldn’t count- hundreds of those hideous, faceless things. I couldn’t scream, couldn’t run… couldn’t take my eyes off the boy as he vomited more and more of the things onto the platform. His once-quite-cute face was now a bloodied ruin, ravaged by the cruel plating of the creatures as they burst from him, but his eyes were still alive, alive and insane with the agony of the monstrous pain of the creatures’ birthing.

Now he fell onto his back, one final creature ripping out of him and plopping onto the now-empty platform, where it wriggled and writhed pathetically like a woodlouse on its back for a few seconds before righting itself and joining its fellows in the pit under the Tube, where they scurried and skittered to God-alone-knows-where.

Now I ran, now I ran to him, slipping in the blood and dropping to my knees in a pool of it, no longer caring about the gory stains, my mind broken by the horrors I had witnessed, caring only for his suffering. Dimly I heard screams, dimly I heard sirens, but they didn’t register.

His eyes were still alive, but I knew the boy wasn’t long for this world. I smiled- how absurd is that? I smiled- and cradled his head in my lap.

“You’ll be okay.”

Those were the only words I could think of, even though I knew them to be lies.

“You’ll be okay.”

Blood burbled and gargled in his ruined throat, and I knew he was trying to say something. To this day I don’t know what it was, but I nodded in agreement, smoothed his hair from his face, bewildered stupidity clutching me tightly.

“The ambulance will be here soon, I just know it.”

His eyes died at that moment, and I knew that however soon it was the ambulance was too late.

*

That was months ago now, and the whole country is gripped with fear.

Whatever those creatures- those things- were, they weren’t confined to one unfortunate boy on a Tube station.

They were everywhere- inside our friends, inside our relatives, inside us- and our country became a slaughterhouse.

We don’t know what they are, we don’t know where they come from, we don’t know how to stop them…

All we know is that they’re here, and that they like the way we taste.

Sometimes, in the dead of night when the dreams are red and savage and I can’t sleep, I find myself looking out of the window of my flat and thinking about the boy on the Tube platform, and about how the world was, and of things that never now can be, and I weep.

I weep.