-Chapter 3 - Subway-

After searching out the empty station on the current street, Rod hopped into the subway train towards the next stop. As he stood there, clutching the reigns of the ceiling for balance, he contemplated if whether or not he should have come armed. Especially during this time of night, which was by now 11:45 p.m.. His tension was high and the faulty lights of the train car only made it worse. He just hoped that he could find Doug in time.

As he gazed around the empty car, he slowly began to develop a sinking feeling of sorts, as if something wasn't right about his surroundings. He wasn't seeing anything; not yet, anyway. It's like when a person strains too hard to see something out of nothing from beyond the reaches of their vision. The empty car gave him the chills, so he pushed forward into the next one.

And to his surprise, the scenery was almost exactly the same as it was the last time he had boarded the train. The smelly lunatic to his immediate right still remained; dressed completely the same as before, but now repeating a different set of numbers. Now it was, "…3...9...7...5..." The crying girl, on the other hand, was replaced at the end with multiple stains of blood and a pair of stained cotton panties.

Jesus Christ, thought Rod as he tried to determine if whether or not the stains were real.

The smelly man then lurched unto Rod's arm and began to blurt out, "Hey! Wanna guess what my new number is? 3,9,7,5! 3,9,7...5!"

Rod then flung off the man and kicked him away. "Get off me, man!"

The crazy man only broke into laughter in response.

Rod walked away from him and went further into the train; his eyes still glued to the bloodspot to his left. He then entered the next car, which was completely dark except for the lights on the sides of the tunnel. Rod stalked through the car, looking around for any surprises that might pop out on him. He made his way to the end and then went into the next car. Thankfully, the lights were on.

And it wasn't until halfway across it that he felt as if he was being watched from behind. If though he didn't desire to see what it was, he slowly turned around anyway. At first, there was nothing but the dark car behind. Rod turned his head back around, but still couldn't change the uneasy feeling of voyeurism. So he turned completely around this time. The darkness was now gone. The light revealed everything, including the black coated man from beyond; placing his left gloved hand on the now sweaty car door window.

Thankfully, the train came to a halt and the side door opened. Rod cursed and quickly ran outside to escape the mysterious figure, who never gave chase after him. The door afterwards only closed and the train pulled back out with the black figure's eyeless gaze staring into Rod as it and the train disappeared into the dark tunnel. Rod clutched his chest and panted as if he had run miles from the thing. What is that, thought Rod. Was it the guy that called me!?

Grrrrrrrrrrrrgh…

Rod spun around as he stared into the barely lit wait area to his left. He couldn't really tell what it was, but to Rod, it sounded like a very pissed dog. Rod wasted no time in running towards the first staircase behind him. He fled halfway up the steps to be greeted with a cage-like gate blocking the rest of the way out. He grabbed the handles, regardless of the chains, and shook them. It was locked.

"Shit!" he cursed.

Rod then glanced back behind him to see if anything had followed him. He didn't hear or see anything else. He was so concentrated at what wasn't at the bottom of the staircase, that he didn't hear the wet-pealing cracks from in front of him as a large hand out of nowhere smacked him in the face with brute strength and sent him crashing down the steps and onto the cold concrete below.

Rod knelt over the large slain man, whom laid face-up dying. Using his machete, he began to grind and slice through the meat and spine of his neck. Rod never knew people were so fragile as his machete went through so easy…

"Argh…" Rod shook away the sting of the hit as his tear-filled eyes strained to see what had hit him so hard.

At first, the light at the top revealed nothing from in the middle. Then Rod finally saw a oval-like shape poke out from the side in front of the cage. It didn't take long for Rod to realize that it was a… head. After it looked around, it sunk back into the dark, only for it's whole body from the torso up to reemerge from the wall with the same crackling sound. Rod locked his eyes on the silhouette in sheer terror; unable to move. The partially lit creature looked at him for a moment, and then quickly sunk back into the tiled wall.

Rod the sprang drunkenly to his feet and was about flee in the opposite direction when he heard groans from before. Only this time, a pair of skinless, glistening jaws with sharp teeth emerged from the dark and snapped at him. Then Rod took off back in the other direction. He ran until he reached the opposite end of the stairs and quickly flew up them. To his fortune, this staircase was not blocked off. He ran up and around the steps until he made it to the top. Thankfully by then, he heard three gun shots ring out from down below in another section of the station.

Doug, he thought as he ran down the other end to hopefully meet him.

Once he reached the bottom, he wrapped around the steps and further into the stop area. A train had already pulled in, which was odd because he hadn't seen or heard another one do so. Almost halfway into one of the side car doors as an arm that belong to a man. As Rod came closer, he saw a chubby bald man in a business suit laying face down in his own blood with bullet wounds in his back. It was their lawyer, Geary. It was as if he had tried to escape into the train, but was killed before he could. And standing above him, was the long haired Doug, dressed in a black wool trench coat; a wooden cane in one hand and a pistol in the other. The gun was still aimed at Geary, who was already dead.

"Doug…"

"That pig…" muttered Doug, his eyes still fixated on the corpse below him. "That fat son-of-a-bitch! It's all his fault that Frank and the others are dead! If he had only helped us, none of this would have happened! Why did it have to come to this?"

"Relax, man." Rod attempted to calm. "Take it easy…"

"You stay back." Doug then aimed the gun at Rod. "Stay BACK!!"

"Doug… this is Weasel, man. This is me your pointing the gun at."

Doug then began to tremble in confusion. "How do I know it's you?"

"Because they're coming after me, too."

"What? So you see 'em, too now?" Doug lowered his gun. "Now you believe us?"

"Yeah," Rod answered. "Those things are crawling all over this subway, man. We need to get out of here, right now!"

It was then that one of the side car doors opened. Both Rod and Doug looked that way as the veiled man in the black coat stepped outside, and he was armed with what looked like a pipe. Doug let out a scream as he fired a shot at the figure, who then blinked back out of existence before Doug had even squeezed the trigger. The bullet hit the side of the train with sparks.

Just then, another wall creature popped out of a tiled podium structure and wrapped it's long arms around the shrieking Doug as if to pull him back into the concrete. Rod sprinted over by his side and held onto his arm; trying to pull him from the wall man's grip. "Let go of him, you bastard!"

The wall man only growled as it tightened it's grip around Doug's neck.

Still screaming, Doug spastically whacked the side of it's head repeatedly with his walking cane until it finally loosened it's grip on him enough for Rod to jerk him away. AS Doug fell around backwards, he shot the wall man twice in the face. "Die, mother-fucker!"

The wall man's body then went limp and hung loosely from the wall. The two noticed how the head had only one eye, yet no other facial features and even how it was textured perfectly with what it was trapped in, it glistened with what looked like moist-like skin. It then slowly slipped back into the wall. Rod ran to Doug and checked to see if he were all right. He then looked back at were the monster once was.

"Holy shit!" Rod yelled. "These things are real! You guys told me they were just hallucinations!"

"That was what we all thought!" Doug replied as Rod helped him back on his feet. "But I'm not gonna stick around to see if it comes back!"

And just when things couldn't have possibly gotten worse, a thick bubbling noise came from the train. The side of it was leaking a kind of fiery-gooey black tar. Only instead of another wall creature, came Paul. Rod for a moment stopped breathing as he looked at the fat ghastly figure moaning and crawling out from the black ooze. He was dressed in a singed forest-green bomber jacket with a torn red flannel underneath with khakis and no shoes. His skin looked severely burnt in some areas as he finally fell out of the side of the train. The dead body of Paul then groaned again as he floated off of the floor.

"…Paul?" Rod then felt as if a migraine was about to come on.

Once Doug reloaded his weapon, he fired two shots at the floating Paul; striking him in the side of the head and in the shoulder. Doug then grabbed the stunned Rod and pulled at him. "C'mon, Rod! Let's get out of here."

Rod and Doug then took off, away from the ghost as it floated after them with a hungry groan. Rod didn't run too fast, so as Doug would be able to keep up with him. In Vietnam, a frag shell went off right next to him and completely mutilated his right leg from the knee down. It was because of that, he had to have it amputated and fitted with a steal one, instead. But givin the current situation, Doug did a good job keeping up. Rod helped him up the stairs and out into the main station as Paul just wrapped around into it. Rod leapt over the turnstiles and help Doug over them and continued their escape up the next set of stairs to their right.

They then ran into a frighteningly dark hallway. Rod and Doug uncaringly pushed forward anyway; with a stream of urine now running down both of Doug's legs. With each fluorescent ceiling bulb they passed, another flickered on. And just when they were halfway out of the hall and to the steps that would lead back into the city, a large iron cage swung down from the ceiling and completely sealed off their path out.

Once all the lights were on, they saw that what was attached (or more really fastened) into it was what looked to be a homeless man in a long black coat, ragged fingerless gloves, and with a dark gray scarf wrapped completely around his head; concealing his face completely. Also, a series of meaty-looking ropes of flesh criss-crossed through the bars and around the bum's ankles, waist, neck, and wrists. The bum was shifting his body against his confines with his head constantly jerking or twitching every now and again. Then, two penis-shaped tentacles slithered out by the man's shoes and as if it were snakes ready to strike.

"Un-fuckin-believable!" Rod said. "Is that thing human!?"

Grooaann…

Both spun around to find Paul floating around the corner, down the hallway.

"For God's sake, kill it!!" Doug screamed at Rod as he shot again and again at Paul's floating ghost.

Rod frantically looked around for anything to beat the cage man with. As he searched, Paul got closer and closer to Doug. And just as Doug was reloading, he was accompanied by another long lost friend: George. The same black mess appeared on the wall directly beside him as George's dripping-wet dead body reached out and clawed at Doug's shirt. Doug turned and fired two shots at George as Paul quickly flew at Doug and pierced through Doug's chest and began to squeeze his still pumping heart.

"Argh! Die, die, DIE!!"

Doug fired twice at Paul's face as blood began to seep out of his mouth. Yet no mater how much he struggled, Doug was eventually pulled into the black, murky mass in the wall. Rod mistakenly grabbed Doug's fake steel leg in an attempt to pull him out, but it only came off. Doug had disappeared into the void, for good. Rod felt as if he were about to go insane as he searched for Doug's gun.

Then something wet wrapped around Rod's ankle. Just the feel of one of those tentacles burned against his skin as it pulled him towards the cage. Rod clawed at the floor in a final attempt to escape it's clutches, but could not wiggle free. Rod then spotted the gun no for from him. Rod dug and clawed and reached out to the point that he thought the muscles in his arm would burst. And with the grace of God, Rod managed to grab it and clip the thing in half with two bullets.

Rod yanked off the remaining tentacle as the rest of it slithered back into the cage to only be replaced with another one. Rod then came to the conclusion that the man in the cage was in control of all of them. Seeing more bullets on the ground, Rod snatched them off the floor and placed the remaining four into the chamber of the pistol. Once loaded, he then aimed at the man in the center.

It was then that the two tentacles lashed out at Rod; one wrapping around his waist, the other around his neck. Rod then found himself yanked off the ground, into the air, and crashing against the cage with a force that nearly knocked the wind out of him. Rod then began to panic as not only the tentacles around him tightened their grip, but new ones sprouted out from around him and began worm their way into his clothes and around the rest of his body to lock him in permanently.

Oh, God! Oh, sweet Jesus! I don't want to die like this! I don't want to die like this!! Please, I don't want to die!!

Summoning all the adrenaline in his sore body, he slowly pushed himself away from the cage. Away enough to shoot the cage bum in the chest, in the neck, and twice in the head. All the limps flailed about in the air as Rod fell freely back to the ground. Rod ran back out of its way and then turned around; throwing the empty gun into it's face. Rod then grabbed Doug's steel leg around the knee and then charged back at him with a raging scream.

The tentacles tried to wrap back around him as Rod swung the shoe-clad steel foot against the sides of the bum's head, over and over. Eventually, the foot finally broke off, leaving an almost spear-like tip in it's stead. Rod used this and jammed it directly into the center of the bum's twitching head. Blood traveled down the shaking pole as Rod screamingly struggled to hold it in place.

Eventually, all the tentacles slithered back around the bars and the cage finally raised backwards into the ceiling and clamped back into it's holds. The bum still twitched in agony as the steel pole remained in his head. Rod quickly flew down the hall and at last, up the stairs. He was finally free. And the first thing he did when he remerged back into the streets was bawl out in a frightened and frustrated scream.

Once Rod had severed it completely off, he jumped back on his feet and held his machete and the head of his enemy high into the air and screamed as if he were the very fury of Hell screaming at the heavens. As the birds were frightened from their nests and took off, so did Rod into the jungles; the head still gripped firmly in his fingers…

The bartender didn't know how much more of the noise he could take. This man had stumbled out of the streets and into his tavern with a look on his face as pale as if he had seen a ghost. Once the man sat down at the bar, he began to tremble from head to toe. The bartender had asked if he needed anything, and the man only replied with, "…What ever you got." Of course, never to be the one to turn down a customer's request, he gave him a shot of whiskey. But this guy hadn't even taken a sip of it, yet. The shot glass rattled loudly against the bar table from the man shaking so bad, that it was slowly beginning to pester him. The bartender would have said something, but was distracted by the phone ringing.

Rod felt as if he had hit the bottom, this time. Never in his entire life, did he ever have a trip that even came close to the horror he had narrowly escaped in the subway. Demon dogs and wall creatures were one thing to see, but your dead friends crawling out of the walls and flying after you were definitely another fucking deal. What the hell could've the army had done to do this to us? Were those things really real or not!?

"Hey!"

Rod was so startled by the bartender that his shot glass flew out of his hand and onto a ladies dress.

"Ahh, watch it, limp-wrist!"

Rod gulped. "Y-yes?"

"Your name, Rod?" asked the bartender with a stern look.

Rod shook his head.

"You got a phone call in the back."

Rod quickly jumped off the bar stool and walked around into the back room behind the bar. The bartender then stopped him. "Hey!"

Rod spun around, not knowing what to expect next. "…Yeah?"

"…Don't take long."

Rod shook his head and the large bartender walked away. Rod then saw a red phone off the hook on a nearby desk. He picked it up and placed the receiver to his ears. "H-hello…?"

"Thank God!" came the voice on the other end. "Listen, is Doug still alive?"

Rod shook his head. "…They got him. Please tell me what's going on!"

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. "…I see. That's too bad."

"No, that's real fuckin' bad! Everybody's dead and comin' after me…"

Rod turned back around to see that the bartender was still watching him like a hawk. Rod then turned back to what he was doing and nearly broke back into tears. "I'm real fuckin' scared, man! You've got to help me! It's only a matter of time before they get me, next!"

"Alright Rod, listen. If you want my help, you have to do exactly everything I tell you to. First off, get out of the bar and onto the first bus out of New York. Next, I want you to meet me in a resort town called Silent Hill. I'll be waiting for you at Rosewater Park on Nathan Avenue. Can you remember that?"

"Yeah."

"Good. Tell no one where your going. Rent a car and meet me here as soon as you can. And whatever you do, do not go there unarmed. Crap! I don't have much time. Meet me at Rosewater Park in Silent Hill and I promise all tell you everything! Goodbye."

Once the man on the other end hung up, Rod wondered if he would ever live long enough to know the truth about what had been going on. But if he could survive the Nam, he could survive this. Rod hung up the phone and ran out the tavern.

"Wha.? Hey! You didn't even fuckin' pay for your drink!"