Chapter 9 - Goblins Howled

  We pushed ahead through the rail tunnel and must have hit a bit of luck, because no more monsters popped up trying to kill us. I had a little hope that whatever we’d run into down there was maybe limited to just that spot, but some of that was dashed when we ran into another train.

  Just like ours, this train was dead on the tracks. There were no lights, not even the emergency ones. No signs of life at all. I opened my mouth to call out but closed it again before I did. If there were monsters hiding there, I didn’t want to invite them over for dinner, right?

  I turned back to the kids. “I want you all to wait here while I go check it out, make sure it’s safe.”

  “Really?” Manuel asked. “You think it’s going to be safer for us out here, by ourselves, without you?”

  I blinked, then blinked again. You know, the kid had a point. Shit, what was I going to do with them, then?

  “Fair enough,” I told him. “If some of you are coming, though, all of you are. You all up for that?”

  Twelve strong, assertive nods met my gaze. “All right, then! I guess we’re all going in. Stay close to me, stay as quiet as you can, unless you see anything dangerous. If you do, let me know right away.”

  We entered through the front car, which was where the driver had been. It was completely empty. No people, and better still, no bodies or bloodstains, too. I peeked into the driver’s compartment and checked the space where I’d found the flares and glow sticks in our train. Sure enough, there were another half dozen glow sticks waiting for me there. No flares, though, which was a shame. The one I used against the rat creatures had been super effective. I snagged the glow sticks anyway. Never knew when they’d come in handy.

  I stayed ahead of the kids as we moved through the train cars, one after another. Like on our train, the doors connecting the cars were all unlocked. I figured the conductor must have done the same thing ours did, going through the cars one at a time. Unlike our train, this one didn’t have bodies or blood-stains, though.

  When we left our train I’d just taken the kids along the tracks instead of inside the train itself. I didn’t know for sure what we’d find in the rear cars but I’d been confident it wouldn’t be good, and the children had already been traumatized enough without adding more things they couldn’t unsee. This time, though, we went right down the middle of the train…and there was nothing. No blood. No bodies. No sign of damage, even.

  “Looks like they all got out safe,” I said.

  “Lucky them,” Tory replied.

  The kid wasn’t wrong. We could have used some more luck ourselves, but maybe things were turning around, because when we hit the end of the last car, the back door was open, and for the first time in a while I saw light that wasn’t from a glow stick.

  Somewhere up ahead was daylight. The bright shine was impossible to confuse with anything else. The kids let out a quiet cheer, and we jumped down from the train.

  We made better time as we trekked toward the light. Being able to see where we were going made travel a lot easier. It wasn’t until we were almost to where the tracks exited the tunnel that I paused.

  The noises I was hearing didn’t sound right.

  From where I was at, there ought to be the typical sounds of the city coming at me. Car engines, horns honking, stuff like that should have been audible from where we stood. But I wasn’t hearing any of that.

  Instead, there was just silence from ahead of us.

  “What’s wrong, Cameron?” Manuel asked. I guess he took me at my word when I said to use my first name. That was cool; I figure the kid had more than earned it.

  “I don’t know. Let’s keep moving, but slowly.” I took the lead again, spear in front of me. The tunnel was still dark enough that things could be hiding a few feet away in a pool of shadow and we’d never even see them until they pounced. I wanted to be ready for whatever came our way.

  But we escaped the tunnel into full daylight without any issues. We were still on the Cambridge side of the river, emerging from the darkness out of an old stone tunnel. The tracks stretched on straight ahead, rising slightly toward the bridge that would take us back to the MGH stop. From there, getting the kids home would be easy enough—it was only a few blocks. But that trip was going to be far more difficult than on a typical day.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The city was in chaos.

  I looked at the streets running on either side of the tracks. Each lane was full of cars, all stopped cold. None of them were running; a few had smashed into each other, probably colliding from leftover momentum when their engines died. Whatever had shut down the trains and phones clearly did the same to every car in the area as well.

  You’d think the city would be still as a grave, without any cars zipping around, but that wasn’t the case. The familiar sounds were gone all right, but they’d been replaced with a variety of new noises, none of them good. I heard angry shouts in the distance, the pounding of feet on pavement as someone sprinted along a sidewalk, and periodically the brief burst of a shrill scream penetrated the rest of the sounds.

  Whatever had happened down there in the tunnels was also happening up here.

  I looked to the right, toward a small waterside park, and had to blink three times to be sure I wasn’t seeing things. There were a group of creatures there—about a meter tall, green skinned, with pointy ears and noses. I could only call them goblins, because they looked just like every movie goblin I’d ever seen. These were real, though. Somehow, the impossible had come to life.

  After everything I’d seen in the tunnels, I knew better than to second guess my eyes for too long. The goblins were building something; it looked like they were taking down all the trees in the park and using them to build some sort of fortification. That was probably a smart call on their part, and something we ought to be doing, too.

  First, I had to get the kids home. Then it was time to figure out how to survive the rest of this mess. I eased my way back down the tracks slowly, working hard to not attract attention.

  Back with the kids, I crouched down and spoke softly. “We’re not out of the woods yet. You all remember the monsters from the tunnels, right?”

  They all nodded. It was a stupid question. I doubted any of these kids would forget a single moment of this mess. They’d carry it with them for as long as they lived.

  Provided they lived, I’d still take that as a win.

  “Well, there are more monsters outside,” I told them. There wasn’t much point in pulling the punches here. They were going to see in a minute, anyway. “We need to get out there and slip across the bridge to get you home, but that’s going to mean sneaking past a bunch of ugly green goblins, first.”

  One of the kids whimpered, but Troy was quick to ask: “Goblins?”

  I nodded. “Green skinned guys a little shorter than most of you. But there’s a big iron fence between us and them, with spikes on top. I think we can make it, if we’re quiet.”

  “We can fight them,” Manuel said. “Isn’t that what heroes do in a movie?”

  “Sometimes it’s good to fight,” I agreed. “But we have a lot of very young people here, and protecting you all—getting you home!—is my top priority. There will be time to fight later.”

  Probably a lot of time to fight later, from what I was seeing. Just how widespread was all of this? Monsters appearing, electricity and cars dead, crystals that give you powers… All of this felt like the plot of a bad B movie, the sort of thing you’d watch on TV when you were up way past regular programming hours. Was it just the Boston area affected? Or more?

  I shoved the thoughts away with the same hard push I was still keeping all thoughts of Amanda at bay. I could be a complete fall-apart rabbit later, when the kids were safe. Until then, they needed me.

  We set out into the light, creeping forward. Thankfully, the goblins were a good distance away, in the green space across the street, and they were pretty busy putting together whatever it was they were building off to our right.

  On the left side, a row of cars filled the street, blocking most of my view but also shielding us from being seen. Most of the ground-floor windows were shattered in each building I could see, like someone had run around with a baseball bat just breaking all the glass they could reach. Here and there where there was a break in the cars, I saw smears of blood on the ground, and even a few bodies. It looked to me like the same sort of thing happened up here as we’d seen in the train below.

  We were just starting onto the bridge when Mike tripped, fell, and gave a sharp cry as his knee smacked into one of the big wooden beams stretching across the rail line. He clapped a hand over his mouth instantly, and I turned, wildly motioning the kids to all get down, get lower, so they’d be harder to see.

  Sure enough, the cry attracted the goblins’ attention. Three of them wandered over this way. One had a makeshift spear not that different from mine, while the other two carried big clubs. They crossed the street, eyes open and scanning for motion.

  They spotted us a few seconds later. It wasn’t like a dozen kids crouched low on a railroad track in broad daylight was hard to miss. The goblins gave out a yell and started toward us.

  “Run, kids! Go fast! Make for the bridge and keep going!” I told them.

  They were on their feet in a flash, dashing down the tracks as fast as they could go. It wasn’t fast enough. The goblins were coming straight at us.

  Thankfully, the fence slowed the monsters down. It was a heavy iron fence made of spiked bars—no cheap chain-link here! The goblins hit it, tried to go over, and failed. They kept trying, though. One stopped, bent down, and gave its buddy a boost.

  But I was there before the goblin could scale up and over. The gaps between the bars were narrow, but so was my spear. I thrust toward the goblin giving the boost and the tip of my spear went into his leg. The goblin gave a yowl of pain and fell backward, the one he’d been trying to boost falling on top of the one I’d wounded.

  The third goblin opened his mouth and let out a horrifying scream at me, then banged his club against the bars, but the gaps were far too narrow for his weapon to be a threat. I jabbed at him with my spear and he backed away, grinning.

  I saw why. His shout alerted all the other goblins. The whole pack of them was heading my way, now. Shit, that wasn’t good; there were over a dozen of the creatures, and they were all armed!

  A quick glance over my shoulder told me the kids were already on the bridge and making good time. With one last ineffective jab at the goblins, I withdrew my spear and took off at a sprint, racing down the tracks to catch up with my charges.

  Behind me, goblins howled as they took up the pursuit.