EYEHEARTZOMBIES

They hadn’t been sitting long when the two teenagers decided they were bored and wanted something to liven up their days. Bill hadn’t paid them much attention when he had first come down, but now looked at them more closely since there wasn’t much else to look at. They were probably older than he had thought, they were at least eighteen, maybe in their early twenties. The guy was tall once he stood up, probably reaching six feet. His hair was dark and seemed pasted down to his skull and forehead, a long point of hair hanging down between his eyes. He wore a leather coat and dirty green pants that hung down over his black leather combat boots.

The girl that was with him, girlfriend maybe, was quite a bit shorter. She was probably only five-foot-three or four. Her hair was short and spiky, dyed a flourescent pink that looked almost orange in the emergency lights. She would have been cute if she didn’t have giant holes in both ears and a stud through each eyebrow. Bill just didn’t understand people wanting to put these holes in their bodies. He had a tattoo from when he was in the Navy, but that was different. He had earned that, by God. And it didn’t make him look like a deformed freak.

They both stood up and started walking around the platform. The guy went and studied the map that Bill had been looking at earlier. He had a large eagle stitched out on the back of his jacket in bright thread, reds and yellows and greens. The colors weren’t realistic at all, but the overall eagle was pretty good, Bill had to admit. He had always liked eagles himself; that was what his tattoo was of, even. It spread across his chest, or had. Gravity and old age had taken their toll and, although it was still visibly an eagle, it didn’t seem to have the same power and impact it had had when he got it some thirty years ago.

Eagle did about the same as Bill. He stood and looked at it all, taking it in, appreciating what it could have done. Then decided it was pointless to keep looking at a broken map and turned to find something better to do. He turned and walked over to the slashed yellow line and peered down the tunnel. Blackness filled both ends of the tube, so he jumped down onto the floor of the tunnel, kicking gravel and trash around.

The girl, Bill already thought of her as Eagle’s girlfriend, wandered over towards the businesswomen. “Hey, I like your purse,” she said to one of them. They smiled politely at her, then took their stuff and moved away, closer to the middle of the platform. Closer to other people and the emergency lights. The girl shrugged and sat down on the edge of the platform, kicking her feet. Billy could hear her tennis shoes, which had laces the color of her hair, bouncing off the concrete. The sound echoed in the strangely quiet, strangely empty place.

Eagle wandered further up the train tube, soon disappearing into the darkness. Bill could hear him walking through the gravel and trash, the sounds doubling and re-doubling as they echoed back to the platform. Soon he called “Hey, Sarah!” from the darkness.

The pink-haired girl, Sarah apparently, looked up and yelled back, “Yeah?” She had stopped kicking her feet and was playing with the small pins on her jacket now. She dropped down to the tunnel floor and called “Yeah?” again.

“C’mere, babe,” he called, quieter now. “C’mon over here.” Bill couldn’t see any of Eagle, but Sarah’s head showed above the tunnel. She smiled and walked over to where Eagle was waiting. She reached out a hand when she reached the beginning of the darkness and he pulled her in quickly. Her giggles echoed out of the darkness. Soon smacking sounds and soft moans began to filter out of the echoes and everyone still on the platform seemed nervous and embarrassed.

The business man moved back toward the stairs, peering up at the small amount of sky you could see from the bottom. “Still overcast. Looks like the sun might come out before too long. The rain’s stopped. Guess we could all walk to wherever we need to be.” He turned back to the group to see how his suggestion would be taken.

The two women looked at him and shrugged. They walked over to where he was standing and looked out for themselves. The three of them talked a bit in low, quiet tones. “I think we’re going to walk to another station,” the businesswoman who had come down first said to no one in particular. “If you three want to come with us — you know, to feel safer or whatever — we don’t mind. Gotta be better than staying down here with…” she pointed at the dark hole in the wall where Eagle and Sarah had disappeared to make out.

“Actually, I’d rather you all stay down here for a minute, at least until I can talk to you,” a strange voice said, making the three business people at the stairs jump and turn around. A police office in the ever-recognizable blue uniform had come down the stairs while they were turned around talking to Bill, Maureen and George. “It won’t take long, I promise.”