The tannoy crackled. The voice of the driver: "We're here man. Better take your place eh?"
Take your place? What did that mean?
The train had slowed to a snail's pace. Outside the windows, everything was as dark as ever. The lights flickered, then went out. This time they didn't come back on.
Kaufman was left in total darkness.
"We'll be out in half-an-hour," the tannoy announced, so like any station report.
The train had come to a stop. The sound of its wheels on the tracks, the rush of its passage, which Kaufman had grown so used to, were suddenly absent. All he could hear was the hum of the tannoy. He could still see nothing at all.
Then, a hiss. The doors were opening. A smell entered the car, a smell so caustic that Kaufman clapped his hand over his face to shut it out.
He stood in silence, hand to mouth, for what seemed a lifetime. See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil.
Then, there was a flicker of light outside the window. It threw the door frame into silhouette, and it grew stronger by degrees. Soon there was sufficient light in the car for Kaufman to see the crumpled body of the Butcher at his feet, and the sallow sides of meat hanging on every side of him.
There was a whisper too, from the dark outside the train, a gathering of tiny noises like the voices of beetles. In the tunnel, shuffling towards the train, were human beings. Kaufman could see their outlines now. Some of them carried torches, which burned with a dead brown light. The noise was perhaps their feet on the damp earth, or perhaps their tongues clicking, or both.
Kaufman wasn't as naive as he'd been an hour before. Could there be any doubt as to the intention these things had, coming out of the blackness towards the train? The Butcher had slaughtered the men and women as meat for these cannibals, they were coming, like diners at the dinner-gong, to eat in this restaurant car.
Kaufman bent down and picked up the cleaver the Butcher had dropped. The noise of the creatures' approach was louder every moment. He backed down the car away from the open doors, only to find that the doors behind him were also open, and there was the whisper of approach there too.
He shrank back against one of the seats, and was about to take refuge under them when a hand, thin and frail to the point of transparency appeared around the door.
He could not look away. Not that terror froze him as it had at the window. He simply wanted to watch.
The creature stepped into the car. The torches behind it threw its face into shadow, but its outline could be clearly seen.
There was nothing very remarkable about it.
It had two arms and two legs as he did; its head was not abnormally shaped. The body was small, and the effort of climbing into the train made its breath coarse. It seemed more geriatric than psychotic; generations of fictional man-eaters had not prepared him for its distressing vulnerability.
Behind it, similar creatures were appearing out of the darkness, shuffling into the train. In fact they were coming in at every door.
Kaufman was trapped. He weighed the cleaver in his hands, getting the balance of it, ready for the battle with these antique monsters. A torch had been brought into the car, and it illuminated the faces of the leaders. .
They were completely bald. The tired flesh of their faces was pulled tight over their skulls, so that it shone with tension. There were stains of decay and disease on their skin, and in places the muscle had withered to a black pus, through which the bone of cheek or temple was showing. Some of them were naked as babies, their pulpy, syphilitic bodies scarcely sexed. What had been breasts were leathery bags hanging off the torso, the genitalia shrunken away.
Worse sights than the naked amongst them were those who wore a veil of clothes. It soon dawned on Kaufman that the rotting fabric slung around their shoulders, or knotted fabric slung around their shoulders, or knotted about their mid-riffs was made of human skins. Not one, but a dozen or more, heaped haphazardly on top of each other, like pathetic trophies.
The leaders of this grotesque meal-line had reached the bodies now, and the gracile hands were laid upon the shanks of meat, and were running up and down the shaved flesh in a manner that suggested sensual pleasure. Tongues were dancing out of mouths, flecks of spittle landing on the meat. The eyes of the monsters were flickering back and forth with hunger and excitement.
Eventually one of them saw Kaufman.
Its eyes stopped flickering for a moment, and fixed on him. A look of enquiry came over the face, making a parody of puzzlement.
"You," it said. The voice was as wasted as the lips it came from.
Kaufman raised the cleaver a little, calculating his chances. There were perhaps thirty of them in the car and many more outside. But they looked so weak, and they had no weapons, but their skin and bones.
The monster spoke again, its voice quite wellmodulated, when it found itself, the piping of a once-cultured, once-charming man.
"You came after the other, yes?"
It glanced down at the body of Mahogany. It had clearly taken in the situation very quickly.
"Old anyway," it said, its watery eyes back on Kaufman, studying him with care.
"Fuck you," said Kaufman.
The creature attempted a wry smile, but it had almost forgotten the technique and the result was a grimace which exposed a mouthful of teeth that had been systematically filed into points.
"You must now do this for us," it said through the bestial grin. "We cannot survive without food."
The hand patted the rump of human flesh. Kaufman had no reply to the idea. He just stared in disgust as the fingernails slid between the cleft in the buttocks, feeling the swell of tender muscle.
"It disgusts us no less than you," said the creature. "But we're bound to eat this meat, or we die. God knows, I have no appetite for it."
The thing was drooling nevertheless.
Kaufman found his voice. It was small, more with a confusion of feelings than with fear.
"What are you?" He remembered the bearded man in the Deli. "Are you accidents of some kind?"
"We are the City fathers," the thing said. "And mothers, and daughters and sons. 'The builders, the lawmakers. We made this city."
"New York?" said Kaufman. The Palace of Delights?"
"Before you were born, before anyone living was born."
As it spoke the creature's fingernails were running up under the skin of the split body, and were peeling the thin elastic layer off the luscious brawn. Behind Kaufman, the other creatures had begun to unhook the bodies from the straps, their hands laid in that same delighting manner on the smooth breasts and flanks of flesh. These too had begun skinning the meat.
"You will bring us more," the father said. "More meat for us. The other one was weak."
Kaufman stared in disbelief.
"Me?" he said, "Feed you? What do you think I am?"
"You must do it for us, and for those older than us. For those born before the city was thought of, when America was a timberland and desert."
monsters were flickering back and forth with hunger and excitement.
Eventually one of them saw Kaufman.
Its eyes stopped flickering for a moment, and fixed on him. A look of enquiry came over the face, making a parody of puzzlement.
"You," it said. The voice was as wasted as the lips it came from.
