Copyright (c) 1996

                              ORANGE LINE
                                   by
                              Michael Hahn


     The newspapers were calling them the "Metro Murders", but Dave
Grandy knew they were a lot more specific than that.  Washington's
subway system was coded by color, and the bodies were all found on the
Orange line.
     No one paid much attention to the first murder.  Washington, D.C.
had one of the highest murder rates in the world, so one more dead body
didn't make all that much difference.  It was only unusual in its
discovery on a Metro train.  Violence on the Metro system wasn't unheard
of, but it wasn't common.
     There was a commotion raised after the murder, and police
presence in the system increased for a while, but nothing else happened
for almost three months, and the patrols dropped to the normal,
pre-murder levels.  Then the second body appeared.
     Both victims were slashed multiple times.  The D.C. coroner
described the wounds as "savage butchery" and "animalistic", but there
seemed to be no other similarities.  The first victim had been an
eighty-three-year-old grandmother, while the second was a
twenty-five-year-old Hispanic janitor.
     The investigation was brief and inconclusive; all the police
departments in the affected jurisdictions had were two mutilated bodies
on Metro trains.  The first was discovered by a Virginia passenger
boarding at the East Falls Church station, westbound for Vienna, while
the second was found on an eastbound train at the Farragut West station
in the District.  Police presence increased again, but no further bodies
appeared for seven weeks.
     The third victim was followed by a fourth on the following night,
and that's when Dave became interested.

                               *   *   *

     Victim Number Three was a thirty-eight-year-old computer consultant
heading home to Virginia.  His body was discovered at the Ballston
station, and it too was brutally slashed.  Number Four was a police
officer, found in a pool of blood with his gun still holstered as the
eastbound train pulled into the Foggy Bottom station in Washington.
     Dave studied the Metro system.  All the murders were probably
occurring somewhere in the same stretch of the Orange line; he doubted
someone was using the train as a dumping ground for bodies slashed
elsewhere.  The eastmost discovery was made at Farragut West, the
westmost at East Falls Church; between the two stations were six more.
Dave went for a train ride.
     He walked down to the Farragut West station, slid a five into the
FareCard machine, and slipped the card into the gate.  Down on the
platform, he studied the surroundings, waited for a westbound train.
Farragut West was an underground station like all the others but the
East Falls Church stop.
     An outdoor station seemed too unlikely a spot for the actual
crime scenes, but Dave checked them all.  From Farragut West to Foggy
Bottom in the District, then across the Potomac River to Rosslyn, Dave
rode the smooth, quiet subway train.  He watched passengers board and
leave the trains at each stop, timed the runs from station to station.
Rosslyn was followed by Court House, then Clarendon, Virginia Square,
and Ballston.  All were underground stations.  Shortly after leaving
the Ballston station, the train rose into the cool Virginia night, and a
few minutes more brought it into the East Falls Church station.  Dave
disembarked and looked around, then crossed the platform to wait for an
eastbound train.
     He circled three more times, travelling eastward along the line to
Farragut West, returning westward to East Falls Church.  He watched the
people who road the train, changing cars at every stop along the route.
Returning to his apartment in Georgetown, he thought about the latest
murders.
     The newspaper reports were insufficiently detailed, so the
following evening, during his circling rides, he chatted with the Metro
personnel he encountered.  The bodies, it seemed, had been found in the
last car on each of the trains.  Dave rode in circles a third night,
choosing a seat in the last car of each train he boarded.

                               *   *   *

     On the fourth night of his private investigation, he found himself
part of the crowd gathered on the platform at Virginia Square.  Another
mangled body was found in the last car of the westbound train; Dave had
been eastbound.  He watched the police and the crowd for almost an hour,
then headed east.  He made another circle that night before returning
home.
     His vigil on the fifth night was a lonely one.  Fear kept
passengers off the Metro trains, and even the extra police officers
seemed nervous.  Dave began to suspect a particular stretch of the
orange line run; he narrowed his circles to the Rosslyn-to-Court House
section of the Orange line.  The trains moved quickly, not pausing long
in each of the stations.  The crowds were fairly sparse this time of
year, and a train car might pass several stations unoccupied.  Dave
circled, watching the men and women who rode the final car from Rosslyn
to Court House, and Court House to Rosslyn.
     He was making his final run of the sixth night when he boarded the
eastbound train at the Court House station.  Only he and a youngish man
in a leather coat rode the train.  The young man slid into a seat a few
feet from Dave as he clutched the vertical bar near the door.
     The young man was unremarkable, but as the train left the station
and entered the tunnel to Rosslyn, he pulled a remarkable weapon from
beneath his coat.  It resembled a brass lion's paw, razor-sharp claws
extended.  The young man rose from his seat, smiled a twisted, evil
smile, and lunged at Dave.
     Dave changed as he turned, catching the young man's arm and the
upraised weapon with his left hand, tearing the arm from its socket and
simultaneously tearing out the murderer's throat with the razor-sharp
claws that now extended from the end of his right forepaw.
     The young man fell in a heap, no chance to scream, little chance to
realize his own death.  Dave dropped the arm, still clutching its
pathetic echo of Dave's own natural weapons, and shifted back from
wolf-like to fully human.
     He frowned, stepping back to avoid the rapidly growing pool of
blood, and prepared to leave the train.
     It upset him when others hunted in his territory.

                                 -end-
