City of Endless Night

55

Running across the frozen ground, Pendergast saw he’d made his first mistake, which had almost cost him his life. Waiting in the tree, when the front door did not open after the ten-minute head start had passed, he immediately realized he had judged wrong and, knowing he was a sitting duck, had stepped off the branch and dropped in free fall — at the very moment two shots from the weedy knoll ripped into the trunk precisely where he had been crouching.

He caught the lower limb just as he fell past it, swung hard with his feet, and landed on the ground at a run. Glancing back, he saw Ozmian burst from the weeds and sprint after him, gun in hand, in hot pursuit. Not only had he made an error, but he had wasted a precious ten-minute head start that would have allowed him to choose his entrance into Building 93. Clearly, Ozmian had anticipated his chain of reasoning and done him one better.

Pendergast sprinted on, heading for the eastern side of Building 93, where there appeared to be a gap in the ragged chain-link fence. The western wing, he could see, had partially burned; streaks of soot from the conflagration rose from black window frames and a massive crack ran up the façade, like a gigantic House of Usher, traversing all ten stories. As he ran, his mind was working, reevaluating the branching possibilities, dismayed and humiliated by the fact that he had underestimated his opponent. The only positive outcome of the skirmish was that his opponent had wasted two rounds: Ozmian now had fifteen to his seventeen.

In the endgame — if it ever got to that — a two-round advantage could be decisive.

The chain-link fence loomed up and Pendergast raced along it to the gap and dove through; rising again, he bulled through a dense stand of brush, clambered over a heap of fallen bricks, and — after a lightning reconnaissance — leapt through an open window frame into the building. He rolled, regained his feet, and went on running, angling into the darkest shadows. Flicking on his light for but an instant, he took one turn, then another, then another; at the third bend of the hallway he halted and crouched, with a clear field of fire back down the hall he had just come. A moment later he heard faint running steps, saw the approaching glow of a flashlight from around the corner; as soon as it appeared Pendergast fired. It was a long shot and he missed, but it had the desired effect: Ozmian ducked back around the corner, taking cover. It had halted the man’s headlong pursuit and bought him a minute or two.

Pendergast pulled off his shoes and, tossing them aside, sprinted down the corridor in his socks, turned through a dogleg, and suddenly found himself in a large, open room, dimly illuminated by moonlight.

Moving swiftly to the center, he flattened himself behind a cracked cement pillar where he had a clear field of fire in all directions. There he paused, breathing in the moldy, sour air of the interior. He took a moment to reconnoiter. If Ozmian entered the room through the same archway he had, he would have a clear shot and this time would not miss; but Ozmian was not likely to take that risk. The man was no longer in hot pursuit; he was now in tracking mode.

There was enough moonlight coming in through the shattered window frames for Pendergast to see the general outlines of the room. It was a cafeteria, with tables arrayed among a disorder of chairs, the linoleum coming up in curls. Some of the tables were still set, as if awaiting a seating of the dead. The floor was strewn with cheap flatware, plastic cups and dishes. A row of shattered windows allowed in not only bars of pallid light, but also vines that had crept within and grown up the walls. The air smelled of rat urine, damp concrete, and decaying fungus.

As he continued to take in the dim surroundings, he saw that the many layers of paint that once covered the ceilings and walls had cracked and peeled off, flaking away and raining down like confetti all over the floors. The chips and curls of paint mingled with dust, debris, and trash to form a thick layer, creating an ideal tracking environment. It was like snow: one could not walk through it without leaving footprints, and there wasn’t a way to brush out or hide one’s tracks, either. On the other hand, as he scanned the floor he noted there were already tracks everywhere, crisscrossing this way and that, laid down by urban archaeologists and those people called “creepers” who made a hobby of exploring dangerous, abandoned buildings.

Pendergast made a snap decision: to gain the commanding heights by heading upstairs. Ozmian would no doubt anticipate this; he had already been outguessed once. But the key nevertheless was gaining a physical advantage — and that meant up. He had to move fast, put additional distance between him and his pursuer. At some point he could then double back, circle around, and with luck come up behind his pursuer, becoming the pursuer himself.

All these thoughts flashed through his mind in the space of no more than ten seconds.

A building like this would have multiple staircases, in the center and at the wings. Pendergast slid away from the pillar, crossed the dining hall, and, making sure it was clear, headed down a corridor deeper into the eastern section of the hospital. As he ran down the darkened hall, he could hear the paint chips crunching underfoot. At the end of the hall, a set of double doors, one detached and leaning, revealed the staircase he’d hoped to find. Pendergast ducked into the space beyond — the stairwell had no windows and was as black as a cave — and paused again to listen. He half expected to hear the footfalls of his pursuer, but even his keen ears could hear nothing. Feeling sure nevertheless that he was being tracked, and by a master, he grasped the iron rail of the staircase and ascended, two steps at a time, into the foul, cold, pitch dark.