What was happening?

He was alone. Somewhere a light sputtered on and off, one of the few dingy neons that hadn’t yet been smashed out. Grey concrete above and below, and somewhere it was raining…

Forrest regained consciousness with an image of himself in his mind’s eye, just lying there, the blood that must have spattered around him when he was attacked, the contents of his pockets trampled into garbage around him, and knew that this was his own death.

Death under the neon...

He opened his eyes- and saw the sputtering light spattered with blood. His blood, not his attacker’s.

Consciousness faded with the return of the anger. This was bad. He tried not to be angry with them, told himself, hey, it wasn’t their fault, not considering how much worse his own generation had done, and without even trying. He tried so hard not to be angry at the ritualistic bloodletting, the cannibalism, the senseless waste of life… but it was no use.

His anger, Old Faithful, burned away his very life, what little was left of it. He knew he needed to conserve his strength, knew how it converted to time, and thus time convert to a chance, the slimmest of chances that some stranger, maybe even a patrol might come across him and call an ambulance, take him off, save him so he might be patched up and live a little longer, until the next time anyway.

Simultaneously he knew it was no good. This was it, the time had arrived, his own personal Armageddon, just like when he was a teenager and he’d watched the emergency broadcasts, had stared, along with everyone else, at the mushroom clouds forming over the Meggido Base on TV. Even then he’d had the first inkling of what was to come, before the squaddies came back bringing with them the Symptoms: cannibalism, violence, erotomania…

His lips parted to let out his death rattle, which came in the form of hoarse laughter, a dessicated chuckle as if he was laughing at the dirtiest joke in the world, and the joke was himself.

When he came round again he was surrounded by whiteness, even the windows were white, the bumping of the ambulance over myriad potholes giving his limpid, paralysed body a semblance of pseudo-life, as if he hadn’t been shot full of paralysing medication, painkillers, and antibiotics.

An ambulance attendant with a strange yet familiar face turned to him, bent over and examined his eyes before turning out the lights with an IV drip.

The next scene faded up on him. The hospital room swam up out of darkness, complete with a concerned, professional face. Again he was struck by it’s familiarity, yet couldn’t place it. The face smiled.

"You’re OK." It sounded like an order. "There’s some people want to see you, son."

"Wha- What’s wrong?"

The doctor smiled, showing incisors. "Nothing’s wrong. It’s just that not many people get to live through an attack like that and, well, some colleagues of mine from the neighbouring Hospital Trust expressed an interest." The doctor’s eyes narrowed. "The kind of interest that comes with zeroes after it. Get my drift?"

He nodded yes.

"That’s great then, in return for your co-operation we’ll be glad to waive all fees of course."

The doctor turned and opened the door.

A gaggle of people walked in, all wearing blue hospital scrubs and facemasks.

Suddenly he recognised everyone, recognised all these people, at the same time realised what was wrong with this situation, what was wrong with the doctor and the ambulance attendants and this well scrubbed clique that crowded him, not letting him breathe, their identical stares boring into his soul. He’d seen them all right- on the slab at the city morgue.

They were all people he knew who were dead.

Back in the subway, yellow eyes flickered open. He felt the ground beneath him- and it’s power moved into him.

Forrest sat bolt upright, eyes wide open, and stared at the wall as if newborn. The world crowded into him, his expanded senses taking in every photon of grimy light, every fleck of spraypaint, every splash of every drop of rain outside the tunnel.

Unsteadily he got to his feet. He’d never suspected not being dead could feel so good.

He was still staggering when the figure rounded the corner and stepped into the subway. At the sound of the steps he whirled and leapt, grabbed the bastards throat and ripped and tore and rended and didn’t stop until he had a mouthful of the victims blood and the guy was lying on the floor and-

He looked down at the prone form, kicked it and stalked off.

Blood drips down the walls, a prone figure lies sprawled under the subway’s flickering neons, not dead yet, and somewhere it is raining.

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