The Darkness

50

When the gunfire first erupted, Eve Ramos went into the stairwell to find out what was going on. I could see her and Rex Malloy talking. Malloy was animated, pointing somewhere I couldn’t see, gesturing like mad as

Ramos stood there impassively, processing it all. Behind them, still in the room with me, was Leonard Reeves.

And unlike his two comrades, Reeves’s eyes betrayed him. He looked nervous, the kind of man who might dish out violence but never expected it to come back to him.

Whatever Rex Malloy was saying, it was frightening

Leonard Reeves something bad.

While they were preoccupied, I picked up the pen and quietly walked over to where Reeves was standing. He was not an especially large man, about five foot ten, not fat but without much discernible muscle definition.

Sometimes you could take one look at a person, the way they carried themselves, and know how brave they were.

What kind of fight they would put up. In Leonard Reeves,

I got the sense of a man who talked a big game but once cornered, would piss his pants faster than an eight-yearold with a tiny bladder.

So with little time to decide my course of action, I took a chance that could lead either to my freedom, or my death.

Gripping the pen in my fist, the point sticking out two inches, I wrapped my left arm around the front of

Reeves’s neck and jammed the pen right under his jawline on his carotid artery, hard enough that I felt the tip threaten to pierce skin. Reeves was surprised and struggled, crying out, but I whispered into his ear, “Move once more and you’ll see your blood all over Malloy’s nice blond hair.”

Reeves relaxed. His hand was still on the arm that held his neck in place, but there was no strength in it.

I could feel the gun against my hip, and holding the pen I quickly grabbed it and swapped the writing utensil for the pistol. Not a bad choice. I flicked the safety off.

I’d only held a gun once before, and even then it was out of self-defense. I didn’t want to fire it.

Right now, though, I was certain that if need be I would use it. I wasn’t sure who was more frightened: me knowing I could be forced to end a man’s life, or Reeves knowing his life was in the hands of a man who had nothing to lose.

I led Reeves into the stairwell where Ramos and

Malloy were standing. Windows opened onto the front of the compound, but Ramos and Malloy were blocking my view. I couldn’t see who or what was out there. Whoever it was clearly had their attention.

Eve Ramos turned around. Rex Malloy did as well.

They both stared at me, Malloy seeming more pissed off while Ramos smiled at me like I’d just built a nice big house of cards.

“Take me to Sheffield,” I said. “As soon as we’re outside, I let Reeves go. If not, he’s a dead man.”

“Henry,” Ramos said, cocking her head to the side, that smile still spread on her face. “I give you credit for keeping your balls intact. But you have gravely overestimated Mr. Reeves’s worth to me. Especially in light of his less than stellar reflexes.”

With that, Eve Ramos pulled a gun from her waistband and put a bullet right in Leonard Reeves’s head.

He dropped to the floor, his body becoming dead weight in less than a second. I felt sticky blood on my hands. I looked at Ramos. She seemed oddly disappointed.

“Sometimes,” she said, “you don’t have time to paint a picture.”

I held Reeves’s gun out, pointed it at Ramos.

“Let us out of here,” I said.

“Or what? You shoot me and end up looking like something the butcher threw away? Put the gun down, Henry, before you get hurt.”

And just like that, the window behind Ramos shattered, gunfire riddling the stairwell. Sparks cascaded all around us at the bullets ricocheted off the metal bars.

Whoever was outside was now firing back.

We all ducked, covering our heads as glass came pouring down around us. Ramos knelt on the floor below the window, her back against the wall. She held a hand up to her cheek. It came away slick with blood where she’d been cut by an errant shard. Malloy was on his stomach, and crawled over to see if she was all right. And right there I saw my one chance to live.

While they were distracted, I rushed forward and shoved

Malloy as hard as I could. His body, already off balance, went toppling down the stairs. He landed with a thud two floors below, screaming in pain and clutching his leg.

Before Ramos had a chance to recover, I leaped back into the stairwell and began to climb. They’d taken Curt somewhere upstairs, and I could only hope to find him before the entire warehouse was shredded.

As I ascended, relief spread through me as I saw that

Ramos was still pinned down in the stairwell below me.

I tried the door one flight above but it was locked from the inside. There was no keypad I could see, no way inside. So I kept going up, hunched over, trying not to get shot or sliced.

One more flight up and I’d reached the top level of the warehouse. Peering over the railing, my breath caught in my throat when I saw that neither Ramos or

Malloy were still there. They weren’t on the stairwell though, so I had a small window to figure out what the hell to do.

The stairwell here had one door, and this had an electronic keypad. I tried several combinations, including

718, but none of them worked. But just as I was about to give up and turn to my nonexistent plan B, I heard the doorknob turn from the other side.

I stepped back to allow the door to open. The handle turned and into the hall walked another man. He was big, with a gleaming bald head, numerous tattoos running down his arms. And, oh yeah, he was also holding a big, black assault rifle.

I was hidden between the door and the wall, my gun held out in defense, but the man didn’t see me as he raced down the stairs. When he’d gone down several steps, I spun around the closing door, stuck the gun muzzle into the crack, threw it open and pulled the door shut behind me just as I heard a startled “Hey!” from below.

Turning around, I found myself in a narrow hallway.

It was painted stark white. There were two doors at the other end, and I could see an LED light blinking red on the farthest one.

Curt.

I ran as fast as I could to the other end and banged on the door.

“Curt!” I shouted. “You in there?”

It took a moment, but then I heard someone say,

“Henry?”

“Yeah! How do I open this thing?”

“Four eight two one nine,” he said. “I saw the guy enter it when he put me in here.”

I pressed the numbers on the keypad, and the light turned green.

I yanked the handle and pulled the door open, just as the door as the other end flew open, revealing the guy with the rifle. He yelled some sort of curse, but I dove inside Curt’s room and pulled the door closed just as a spatter of bullets hit the metal. I held my foot against the door, keeping it open just slightly to make sure we didn’t get locked inside.

“Holy shit,” Curt said, “you okay?”

“Yeah, fine,” I said, noticing a trickle of blood on my arm where glass had cut me. “No big deal.”

“How the hell did you get away?”

“No time. Here,” I said, handing Curt the gun. “You’re probably better with this than I am.”

Another round of gunfire hit the door, and we parted on either side. Dimples punched out on our side of the door every time a round hit it.

“That’s an M16,” Curt said. “A4, I believe. Thirty round magazine. And he’s fired twenty-three of them.”

Another burst of gunfire shelled the door. Curt looked at the dimples, said, “Seven. Get your shit together, Curt turned the handle and kicked the door open, training the gun on the rifleman just as he was popping out the old magazine.

“You move and I take your head off,” Curt said. The man stood there, unsure of what to do, the magazine clattering to the ground. “Take your hand out of your pocket.”

He did so, holding a fresh mag.

“Drop it,” Curt said. The bald man looked at him, trying to size Curt up. Then, instead of putting down the magazine, he snapped it into place and raised it to fire.

Three loud reports exploded in the hallway, and the rifleman was driven backward, three fresh holes in his chest. As he fell he looked at Curt, surprised that he’d actually pulled the trigger.

Without a moment of hesitation, Curt went over to the fallen gunman and picked up the rifle. He checked the new magazine, then came back over to me and held out the gun, butt first.

“You’ve used one of these before, right?”

“Um, not on purpose.”

“It’s easy. Safety’s already off. Aim with two hands and squeeze. None of this holding the gun sideways or upside down or any of that stupid gangster, Angelina

Jolie crap in the movies. You hold it straight, two hands, squeeze hard for each round and take kickback into account. Aim for the chest. Think you can handle that?”

“If I say no will it matter?”

“Not really, but we don’t have a choice. Come on,

Parker.”

Curt led the way, rifle snug against his shoulder, as we crouched outside the door to the opposite stairwell from where I’d come from. This was where they’d brought him from, and somewhere below was the way out. And we had to get out fast, because the gunfire from both sides was turning this place into Swiss cheese.

We stood on either side of the door, both of our guns at the ready. Curt reached over and pulled it open, and as he did I swung the gun into the opening, ready for anything.

It was empty.

Curt joined me, using the rifle as a sight to confirm that we were the only people there. I could hear Curt breathing hard, but his eyes were focused. He nodded down.

I’d lead, he’d cover me.

He mouthed age before beauty. I gave him the finger, and slowly crept into the stairwell.

If I remembered correctly, the entrance was three flights below us. But looking down, I saw that the stairwell continued below that one to a basement. Four levels in total.

The noise in the stairwell was deafening, the gunfire echoing all around us. I made my way down the stairs, sensing Curt’s muzzle right above me.

The landing below us was empty. Curt stood one step above me, then flicked the muzzle once. Two more flights.

My heart pounding, the gun shaking ever so slightly in my hands, I moved down to the next level, the third floor. Nobody there. One more to go.

Between the blood roaring in my veins and the deafening noise surrounding us, even if there was someone below us hiding, we wouldn’t know. Only one way to find out.

No time for creeping around. I leaped down the next flight, to the second floor, recognizing the same door they’d brought us through, the same cameras recording everything. Curt stepped onto the landing as well, the rifle still aimed forward. He nodded at the door. I reached for it, turned the knob. Felt it go. One step from freedom.

But then I looked below me, saw the landing of the next floor below us, and knew there was one more thing to do. To know.

Below us, on the basement landing, was a small pile of black rocks. It was Darkness, the drug, the cherry bomb Ramos was using to tear down the city. And I knew what that basement was used for, and that I couldn’t leave without knowing for sure.

I nodded to Curt. He rolled his eyes, said, “Come on.”

And he was on board to see what lay below us. To see what kind of evil Eve Ramos had been waiting to unleash upon this city.