The Cynical Private Eye

The ceiling fan wobbled. It clicked every time it spun past the cracked plaster. Click. Whoosh. Click. Whoosh. Jack Inez stared at it. His back stuck to the cheap leather chair. July in Brooklyn was not a season. It was a punishment. The air coming through the open window smelled like hot garbage and melting asphalt. He rubbed his eyes. They burned. He had not slept in two days.

He looked at his desk. A half-eaten turkey sandwich sat on a paper napkin. The bread was hard. A single fly landed on the meat. Jack did not swat it away. He just watched it. His stomach made a loud, hollow noise. He ignored it. He opened the top drawer of his desk. It stuck on the wooden rails. He pulled harder. Inside sat a stack of unpaid bills and a broken pencil. He slammed the drawer shut. The noise was loud in the quiet room.

Life was just paying for things you did not want. You pay for the rent. You pay for the electricity. You pay for the turkey sandwich that tastes like cardboard. And nobody ever pays you. Jack closed his eyes. The heat pressed down on his chest. It made it hard to breathe.

Heavy footsteps banged on the wooden stairs outside his door. The stairs groaned. Someone was walking fast. Too fast for July. Jack opened one eye. The frosted glass on his door lit up with a shadow. The doorknob turned. The door swung open and hit the wall with a loud bang.

"Hey," a voice said.

Jack sat up. The cheap leather of his chair made a loud peeling noise against his wet shirt. A kid stood in the doorway. He looked twelve, maybe thirteen. He wore a bright yellow t-shirt that was too big for him. He held a phone in his right hand. The screen was cracked in three places. The kid was breathing hard. He looked around the messy office. He wrinkled his nose.

"You the guy?" the kid asked.

"I am closed," Jack said. His voice sounded like rocks grinding together.

"The sign downstairs says open," the kid said. He walked into the room. His sneakers squeaked on the dirty floorboards. He stopped in front of the desk. He crossed his arms. "You are Detective Inez. The internet said you find people. I need you to find someone."

"The internet lies," Jack said. He reached for his coffee mug. It was empty. The bottom had a ring of dried brown crust. He put it back down. "Go home, kid. It is too hot for games. Go sit in front of an air conditioner."

"My name is Tarek," the kid said. He did not move. He tapped his fingers against his phone case. Tap. Tap. Tap. "And I do not have time to sit around. My sister is gone. Her name is Aisha. She did not come home last night."

Jack sighed. Missing teenagers. It was always missing teenagers in the summer. They get mad at their parents, they go to a friend's house, they come back in three days when they get hungry. It was a transaction. Attention for panic.

"Call the police, Tarek," Jack said. He leaned back. The chair squeaked. "That is what they are for."

"I did call them," Tarek said. His voice got louder. He slapped his hand on the desk. The dead fly flew away from the sandwich. "They said she is just a runaway. They said she took off because she was mad about her grades. But that is cap."

"Cap?" Jack asked. He hated new words. He hated learning them.

"It means they are lying," Tarek said. He rolled his eyes. He looked at Jack like Jack was very stupid. "It is fake. She would not run away. She left her charging cable plugged into the wall. Nobody leaves their cable. She loved that cable. It was the good braided kind."

Jack stopped. He looked at the kid. Tarek was deadly serious. The logic was weird, but it made sense. A kid running away takes their phone charger. It was the most important thing they owned.

"Where did she go?" Jack asked.

"She works at the pretzel stand down in the 4th Street Station," Tarek said. He swiped his thumb across his cracked screen. He held the phone out. A picture of a girl with bright blue braids showed on the screen. She was smiling. She wore a yellow uniform shirt. "She had the closing shift. She never came up the stairs."

Jack stood up. His knees popped. The sound was loud. He grabbed his keys from the desk. They jingled. "Show me the money," Jack said.

Tarek reached into his pocket. He pulled out a crumpled wad of bills. It looked like babysitting money. Ones, fives, a single twenty. He dropped it on the desk next to the sandwich.

"Fine," Jack said. "Let us go to the subway."

The walk to the station was miserable. The sun beat down on the concrete. The heat bounced back up and hit Jack in the face. Cars honked. Sirens wailed blocks away. Tarek walked fast. He stared at his phone the whole time. His thumbs moved in a blur.

"Watch where you are walking," Jack said.

"I am multi-tasking," Tarek said. "I am checking her social media. No updates. No read receipts."

They reached the stairs to the 4th Street Station. The hole in the ground looked like a dark mouth. Heat poured out of it. It smelled awful. Usually, the subway smelled like old metal and sweat. Today, it smelled different. It smelled like rotten eggs. Sulfur. It made Jack's stomach turn over.

"Smells bad," Tarek said. He pinched his nose.

"Stay behind me," Jack said.

They walked down the concrete steps. The light faded. The fluorescent tubes on the ceiling flickered. Buzz. Buzz. Half of them were dead. The station was huge, but it felt small because the darkness pushed in from the edges. People walked by, looking down. Nobody looked at each other.

Jack noticed the homeless people along the wall. Usually, they asked for change. Today, they were completely still. They sat against the dirty white tiles. Their eyes were wide open. They stared straight ahead. They did not blink. Jack walked past a man wrapped in a heavy winter coat. The man's eyes were completely blank. Like a doll's eyes. It gave Jack a cold feeling in his chest.

"There," Tarek pointed.

The pretzel stand was closed. A metal grate was pulled down over the front. A heavy padlock held it shut. Next to the stand was a small row of gray metal lockers for the workers.

"Which one is hers?" Jack asked.

"Number four," Tarek said. "Her lucky number."

Jack walked to locker number four. He pulled a small metal tool from his pocket. He jammed it into the lock. He wiggled it. Click. The door popped open. It smelled like old dough and cheap perfume. Inside hung a yellow uniform shirt. A pair of sneakers sat on the bottom.

"See?" Tarek said. He pointed. "Her shoes. She would not leave barefoot."

Jack reached into the locker. He felt around the top shelf. His fingers brushed against something hard. He grabbed it. He pulled it out into the dim light.

It was a coin. But it was huge. It was the size of a drink coaster. It was made of dull brass. It felt incredibly heavy. Unnaturally heavy. Jack held it in his palm. It felt freezing cold. It made the skin on his hand ache. There were weird scratches on the metal. They looked like teeth marks.

"What is that?" Tarek asked. He leaned in closer.

"I do not know," Jack said.

Then, the flickering lights above them popped. A shower of sparks rained down. The lights went out completely. The entire station plunged into absolute, crushing blackness.

The Black Dust

The darkness was instant. It was heavy. It felt like a blanket thrown over Jack's head. The hum of the station stopped. The silence was louder than the noise. Jack stood perfectly still. The heavy brass token burned cold in his hand. He shoved it into his pocket.

"Hey," Tarek's voice whispered. It sounded very small in the big dark space. "Why did the lights go out?"

"Power failure," Jack said. He kept his voice low. He did not know why, but his instincts told him to be quiet. His stomach felt tight. He reached out and grabbed Tarek's shoulder. The kid was shaking slightly.

"Turn on your phone flashlight," Jack whispered.

"I am trying," Tarek said. His phone screen lit up. It cast a weak, blue glow on their faces. The screen showed an error message. "It is glitching. The battery is dying super fast. It was at eighty percent. Now it is at four."

The phone screen flickered and went black.

They were blind again.

Then, the sound started. It was coming from the platform edge, near the tracks. It sounded like wet meat dropping onto concrete. Slap. Slap. Slap.

Someone was walking.

Jack turned his head toward the sound. "Who is there?" he called out. His voice echoed down the tunnel.

The slapping footsteps stopped.

A low, rattling breath filled the air. It sounded like someone trying to breathe through a straw filled with mud.

Suddenly, the emergency lights kicked on. They were a sick, angry red color. They bathed the platform in a bloody glow. Shadows stretched long and sharp across the floor.

Standing ten feet away was a man in a gray business suit. He was facing away from them. He held a briefcase in his left hand. His head was tilted down.

"Mister?" Tarek asked. He stepped out from behind Jack.

"Stay back," Jack said. He pushed Tarek behind him again. He reached under his jacket. His hand wrapped around the cold metal handle of his gun. He pulled it out. The weight of it made him feel slightly better.

"Hey buddy," Jack yelled. "The station is closed. You need to move along."

The man in the suit slowly turned around. The red emergency light hit his face. Tarek let out a sharp squeak of terror.

The man's eyes were gone. There were just deep, black holes where his eyes should be. His skin was gray and pulled tight over his bones. But his mouth was the worst part. His mouth hung open. It kept opening. The jaw dropped down, past his chin, past his neck, all the way down to his collarbone. It looked like a snake unhinging its jaw to swallow a rat. Huge, sharp, yellow teeth lined his gums.

The man dropped his briefcase. It hit the floor with a loud crack. He raised his arms. His fingers ended in dirty, broken nails. He let out a shrieking noise that vibrated in Jack's teeth.

He charged.

He moved impossibly fast. His shoes slapped the concrete. Slap. Slap. Slap.

Jack raised his gun. He did not think. He just squeezed the trigger.

BANG.

The noise was deafening in the enclosed space. It hurt Jack's ears. The flash from the barrel lit up the man's terrifying face for a split second.

The bullet hit the man right in the chest. The impact threw him backward. He crashed onto the tile floor. He slid two feet.

Jack kept his gun pointed at the body. His hands were shaking. His ears were ringing. A high-pitched whine filled his head. He smelled the sharp, bitter scent of gunpowder mixed with the awful sulfur smell.

"Is he dead?" Tarek whispered. His hands covered his ears.

Jack did not answer. He watched the body.

The man's chest heaved. A low, wet giggling sound came from his open, massive mouth. He was laughing.

The man sat up.

He turned his head toward Jack. He coughed violently. A huge cloud of thick, black dust exploded from his mouth. It floated in the air like a swarm of angry bugs. The man stood up. The bullet hole in his suit jacket was visible. No blood came out. Just more black dust, leaking down his shirt.

He shrieked again and leaped forward.

"Run!" Jack yelled.

He grabbed Tarek by the back of his shirt. He pulled the kid toward the edge of the platform. They jumped down onto the train tracks. The rocks crunched under their shoes.

"The third rail!" Tarek screamed. "We will get electrocuted!"

"The power is out!" Jack yelled back. "Keep moving!"

They ran into the dark tunnel. The red emergency lights faded behind them. It was pitch black again. Jack kept his hand on the cold, damp wall to guide them. The wall was covered in slimy grime. It disgusted him, but he did not let go.

Behind them, the slapping footsteps echoed off the tunnel walls. The monster was following them. It was fast. It was hungry. And it did not stop for bullets.

Jack forced his legs to move faster. His lungs burned. The air down here was thick and hot. It felt like trying to breathe underwater.

"Look!" Tarek shouted. He pointed ahead.

Far down the tunnel, a pale green light glowed. It was faint, but it was there. It looked like the glow-in-the-dark stickers kids put on their ceilings.

"Head for the light," Jack grunted.

They ran faster. The rocks tripped them. Jack stumbled and fell to his knees. The sharp stones cut through his pants. He felt a warm line of blood trickle down his shin. He cursed. He pushed himself back up. Tarek grabbed his arm and hauled him forward.

The slapping footsteps were getting louder. The wet breathing was right behind them.

They reached the source of the green light. The main tunnel branched off to the right. An old, rusted iron gate hung open on broken hinges. The green light spilled out from past the gate.

They ran through the opening. Jack slammed the heavy iron gate shut behind them. It screeched in protest. He found a rusted metal pipe on the ground and jammed it through the bars, locking it in place.

A second later, the suit monster slammed into the gate. The metal rattled violently. The monster pushed its horrible, unhinged face through the bars. Its teeth snapped at the air. Clack. Clack. Clack.

Jack backed away. He bumped into Tarek.

They turned around to look at the new space they had entered.

Jack's breath caught in his throat. He lowered his gun. The gun was useless here.

The Bone Church

They were standing in an abandoned subway station. But it did not look like any station Jack had ever seen.

There were no white tiles. There were no metal benches. There were no advertisement posters.

The walls were made of bones.

Human skulls were stacked on top of each other, forming giant pillars. Femur bones were arranged in criss-cross patterns along the ceiling. Rib cages hung from rusty chains, looking like terrible chandeliers. The pale green light was coming from thick, glowing moss that grew over the bones. It smelled like ancient dust and copper.

"Oh my gosh," Tarek whispered. He backed up until he bumped into the iron gate. The monster outside snapped its teeth at him. Tarek jumped forward again. "Is this real?"

"Stay quiet," Jack said.

He looked around the massive room. At the far end of the platform, an altar stood in the center of the tracks. The altar was built from broken slabs of concrete and more bones. Standing behind the altar was a man.

He wore a long, black robe. The fabric looked expensive, but it was stained with dark spots. The man was old. His hair was pure white and slicked back. He wore a heavy gold chain around his neck. At the end of the chain hung a massive brass token, identical to the one in Jack's pocket.

Surrounding the altar were twenty other people. They wore normal clothes. A delivery guy in a red polo. A nurse in blue scrubs. A teenager in a hoodie. But they all stood perfectly still, their arms hanging at their sides. They had the same blank, dead eyes as the homeless people upstairs.

"That is Father Billingsley," Jack muttered. He recognized the man from an old newspaper clipping he had seen years ago. Billingsley was a preacher who got kicked out of his church for screaming at the congregation about the end of the world.

"He is mad sus," Tarek said.

Jack turned around. Tarek was holding his phone up. The screen was bright again. He was pointing the camera at the altar.

"What are you doing?" Jack hissed.

"My phone turned back on as soon as we came in here," Tarek whispered excitedly. "I am livestreaming. I have four hundred people watching right now. This is crazy content. The chat is going wild."

"Put that away!" Jack grabbed for the phone.

Tarek dodged him. "No way! If we die, the internet needs to know what happened to Aisha!"

Jack stopped. The kid was right. If they vanished down here, nobody would ever find them. The livestream was an insurance policy. A very annoying insurance policy.

"Keep it steady," Jack ordered. "And do not make a sound."

They crept closer, hiding behind a thick pillar made of skulls.

Father Billingsley raised his hands. The wide sleeves of his robe fell back. His arms were covered in dark, twisted tattoos. He began to speak. His voice was deep and smooth. It echoed off the bone walls.

"The city above is sick," Billingsley said. He looked at the silent crowd in front of him. "They walk. They consume. They ignore. They are asleep. They do not care about each other. They do not care about the earth. They are parasites."

He picked up a large glass bowl from the altar. It was filled with a thick, dark liquid. It looked like dirty motor oil, but it glowed with a faint red pulse.

"We will wake them up," Billingsley yelled. His voice bounced around the room. "We will give them purpose. The brass tokens have been planted. The sleepy commuters will touch the brass. The brass will open the door. And we will feed the earth!"

Billingsley walked around the altar. He stood at the edge of the train tracks. Right in the middle of the rusted metal rails was a deep crack in the stone floor. It looked like a tiny canyon.

Billingsley tipped the glass bowl. The thick, red-glowing liquid poured out. It splashed down into the dark crack.

Instantly, the ground shook.

Jack almost lost his balance. The skulls in the pillars rattled against each other. Clatter. Clatter. Clatter. The green moss flared brightly.

A terrible hissing sound rose from the crack in the floor. A massive cloud of the same black dust Jack had seen upstairs erupted from the fissure. It shot up into the air and rained down on the silent crowd of people standing by the altar.

The dust landed on their skin. It sank into their pores.

The delivery guy in the red polo suddenly arched his back. His bones cracked loudly. He dropped to his knees. He grabbed his own face. He pulled downward.

His jaw unhinged. It dropped to his chest. Huge, yellow teeth pushed out of his gums. His eyes rolled back until only the whites showed, and then the whites turned completely black.

He stood up. He was no longer a delivery guy. He was a monster.

All around the altar, the others were changing too. The nurse. The teenager. Their jaws dropped. Their eyes turned black. They hissed and clacked their giant teeth together.

"No way," Tarek breathed. He was holding the phone perfectly still. "They are making zombies. Commuter zombies."

"We have to stop him," Jack said. He checked his gun. He had five bullets left. Five bullets against twenty monsters and a crazy priest. The math was terrible.

"Look," Tarek pointed at the altar.

Behind Billingsley, sitting on the ground with her hands tied behind her back, was a girl with bright blue braids. She wore a yellow uniform shirt.

"Aisha!" Tarek yelled.

He did not mean to yell. It just slipped out of his mouth.

The sound echoed like a gunshot in the silent room.

Father Billingsley stopped. He turned slowly toward their hiding spot behind the skull pillar.

The twenty monsters turned their heads at the exact same time. They stared into the shadows. Their massive mouths hung open. Black dust drifted from their lips.

"We have visitors," Billingsley said. He smiled. His teeth were perfectly white. "Children of the brass. Fetch them."

The monsters shrieked. It was a horrible, deafening sound. They dropped to all fours like dogs and scrambled across the platform, rushing straight toward Jack and Tarek.

The Drone Buzzes

"Run!" Jack screamed.

He stepped out from behind the pillar and fired his gun. Bang! Bang!

Two bullets hit the leading monster, the delivery guy. He stumbled, but he did not fall. He just coughed up a cloud of black dust and kept running. The bullets were useless.

Jack grabbed Tarek's arm and pulled him backward. They ran toward the stairs at the far end of the platform, away from the iron gate they had entered through.

The monsters were fast. Their slapping footsteps echoed rapidly. Slap-slap-slap-slap. They were closing the distance.

"They are too fast!" Tarek yelled. He shoved his phone into his pocket. He unzipped a small black pouch attached to his belt. "Keep running!"

Tarek pulled a tiny, folded piece of plastic from the pouch. He flicked his wrists. Four small arms snapped out. It was a drone. He dropped it, pulled out a small controller, and pushed a joystick.

The drone’s motors whined. Bzzzzzz. It shot up into the air, its tiny green and red lights blinking furiously.

"Go for the eyes!" Tarek yelled at the controller.

He steered the drone right into the pack of charging monsters. The small machine zipped past the delivery guy and hovered right in front of the nurse monster's face. The plastic propellers were spinning at incredible speeds.

The nurse monster snapped its massive jaws at the drone.

Tarek pushed the joystick forward. The drone slammed into the monster's face. The spinning propellers slashed across its nose and black eyes.

The monster shrieked in pain and slapped at the drone. It hit the drone, sending it spinning away, but the monster lost its balance and crashed into the teenager monster behind it. They both tumbled to the ground in a tangle of limbs.

"Nice shot!" Jack yelled.

They reached the bottom of the stairs. Jack pushed Tarek up first.

"Go get your sister!" Jack ordered. "I will handle the priest."

Jack turned around. He planted his feet on the bottom step. He aimed his gun not at the monsters, but past them. He aimed straight at Father Billingsley, who was walking slowly behind his pack of ghouls.

"Stop right there, Billingsley!" Jack roared.

Billingsley laughed. "You cannot stop the purge, detective. The apathetic will be consumed. The city will be eaten from the bottom up!"

Jack did not argue. He just pulled the trigger.

Bang!

The bullet flew straight and true. It hit Billingsley in the shoulder. The priest spun around and fell hard onto the bone altar. He screamed, clutching his bleeding arm.

The moment Billingsley fell, the monsters stopped. They froze in place, confused. Their leader was hurt.

Jack took advantage of the pause. He sprinted up the stairs after Tarek.

Tarek had already reached the altar from the back side. He was sawing at the ropes around Aisha's wrists with his house keys. Aisha was crying, but she was quiet.

"Got it!" Tarek shouted. The ropes fell away. Aisha hugged him tightly.

"Let's move!" Jack yelled, running up to them.

He grabbed Aisha's hand and pushed Tarek toward a dark tunnel behind the altar. "Up! There has to be a way to the surface!"

They scrambled into the tunnel. It slanted sharply upward. The air grew slightly cooler. They could hear the faint rumble of traffic far above them.

Behind them, Billingsley struggled to his feet. He leaned over the glowing red crack in the floor. He pressed his bleeding shoulder over the fissure. His blood dripped down into the dark opening.

"Feed!" he screamed. "Wake up and feed!"

The ground violently shook. The red light flared blindingly bright.

Jack looked back down the tunnel. The crack in the floor was widening. A massive, deafening roar echoed up from the depths. It sounded like a thousand voices screaming at once.

Hundreds of hands reached up from the crack.

More monsters. Dozens of them. Hundreds of them. They were pouring out of the fissure like ants from a kicked hill. They spilled over the tracks, crawling over each other, snapping their terrible jaws.

"Do not look back!" Jack yelled at the kids. "Climb!"

They ran until their lungs felt like they were bleeding. The tunnel grew tighter. Finally, they saw a rusted metal ladder bolted to a concrete shaft. Moonlight spilled down from a heavy metal grate at the top.

Jack shoved Tarek and Aisha up the ladder. He climbed up right behind them. The slapping footsteps were echoing loudly at the bottom of the shaft.

Tarek reached the grate. He pushed. It did not move.

"It is stuck!" Tarek panicked.

"Move!" Jack climbed up next to him. He put his back against the concrete wall and pushed both of his feet against the heavy iron grate. He gritted his teeth. He pushed with all the strength he had left in his tired, shaking legs.

The metal groaned. Then, with a loud screech, it flipped open.

They scrambled out onto the sidewalk. Jack slammed the grate shut behind them. He grabbed a heavy trash can and dragged it over the metal grid to hold it down.

They collapsed on the concrete. They were breathing heavily, covered in sweat, dirt, and black dust.

It was night time. The city was loud. A siren wailed in the distance. A hot dog vendor pushed his cart down the street. It was totally normal.

"We made it," Tarek gasped. He hugged his sister again. Aisha was shaking, but she was safe.

Jack sat against a brick wall. He pulled the heavy brass token out of his pocket. He looked at it under the glow of a streetlamp. It still felt unnaturally cold.

He looked across the street.

There was an entrance to the massive Times Square transit hub. It was the busiest subway station in the entire city. Millions of people went through it every single day.

Jack watched as a tired businessman in a suit walked down the stairs. The man reached into his pocket. He pulled something out to swipe at the turnstile.

Even from across the street, Jack could see the dull, heavy gleam of the metal.

It was not a normal subway card. It was a giant brass token.

Jack's stomach turned to ice. He looked at the token in his own hand, and then back at the station. He saw three more people walking down the stairs. All of them were holding brass tokens.

The cult had not just targeted the small pretzel stand. They had replaced the coins in the main system.

Below their feet, the trains kept moving, carrying a million cursed coins into the heart of the city.