Violet Darger | Book 8 | Countdown To Midnight

by Vargus, L. T.

  The crew of law enforcement split up again. Half the party veering left and half veering right. All of them weaving through the foot traffic, the various pedestrians forming wedges that splintered the group further and further.

  But that was OK, Darger thought. They could cover more ground that way. Get different vantage points from within the mob.

  Fitch started yelling at the crowd. Waving his assault rifle in front of himself, though he kept the barrel angled up. That seemed to part small sections of the mob, but not enough to matter. They’d need more than the handful of them to manage this many pedestrians. Hell, they’d need a dozen or two just to get everyone’s attention.

  When she finally parted the last line of the throng, Darger clambered up onto a blue USPS collection box, holding onto a lamppost next to it to balance on the rounded top. She turned back toward the crowd.

  Her eyes flitted over faces and torsos. She sought red above all else now. The bright red of his t-shirt would be the easiest way to spot him, she thought. Somewhere in this mess of people, it waved even now like a bull fighter’s cape.

  She saw scarlet hats, brick red shirts and shorts. But she didn’t see Huxley.

  She hopped down from the mailbox and kept going. Squeezing through gaps in the mob. Pressing her body against sweaty strangers when she had to. Using her arm to pry openings between torsos where none existed. Levering idiots apart. Creating space.

  Her heart punched in her chest. Beat so hard she could feel the vibration of it thrumming in her neck, in her jaw.

  But she willed herself to stay calm, to not let the frantic gnawing in her gut overtake her emotions and make her overlook something. Vigilance. Attention to detail. Focus. She needed these things now more than ever.

  Soon Darger heard the chuff-chuff-chuff again. That weird accelerated backbeat of the helicopter’s rotor pounding up above. She glanced skyward. Saw the drifting black thing, its blades slicing at the air over and over.

  Something metallic clanged behind her. She turned in time to see Fitch jump up on the mailbox as if it were a hickory stump. He cupped a hand next to his mouth and yelled.

  “News chopper has a possible sighting. He’s heading northwest from our position.”

  Fitch took a second to orient himself, glancing at the sky, pivoting his arm like the hand of a clock until it was pointed in the correct direction. He jumped down, and they all headed that way.

  They knifed through an increasingly tight cluster of pedestrians. The throng seemed to thicken as they drew up on the intersection, all those people waiting to cross the street. Darger felt like she was a salmon swimming upstream.

  In the distance she saw a big group of additional SWAT officers crossing one of the barriers, moving in from where the raid had taken place. Guns raised. Aggressive moves. The black clothing made them look like swarming wasps. They seemed to be having more luck getting some control of the crowd. The rabble backing up, dispersing, retracting into itself like reversed footage of a spreading puddle.

  She realized then that her hands were shaking. Fingers trembling. Palms clammy and tingling. The adrenaline spike of the chase had somehow intensified with all the people around. All those faces in the crowd. All the bumping and jostling for position.

  Fitch and the others tried to yell for the people to clear out of the way again, but it was no use. Too much noise. Too much confusion.

  And then she saw him. Just a flash of red at first, and then a glimpse of his face.

  She got lower, using her legs to push through another clump of torsos. Weaved around a baby stroller. Stepped around a black fire hydrant with a silver top.

  He seemed to sense that she was closing on him. Picking up speed himself.

  She watched him get hung up. Some hard-hatted construction worker with shoulders about a man and a half wide blocked his way. They did the awkward back and forth dance before Huxley finally got around him. That got her to within a few paces.

  And then the bomber spilled out into the street. Running. Not waiting for the light like everyone else.

  Tires screeched. A cab jerked to a stop just shy of the collision. Its nose brushed at Huxley’s legs, and the bomber’s palms slapped flat against the hood for a second before he ran onward.

  The cabbie shook his fist out the window. Yelled “Fuck-ah-you!” in a thick accent Darger couldn’t identify.

  Darger, too, broke out into the open of the crosswalk. Gaining on him. She could feel Fitch pull up alongside her.

  Huxley entered another mess of people on the other side of the street, but her eyes were locked onto that red shirt now. They had him. She could feel it, little motes of excitement bubbling in her head like a gin fizz.

  Her confidence shook when she saw the tunnel mouth taking shape ahead.

  The entrance to the subway was like a gaping mouth in the sidewalk. Human bodies seemed to froth at the delta of the thing, some bubbling out onto the street, some being sucked underground.

  Huxley hit the stairs at a dead sprint and dipped out of view.

  CHAPTER 67

  Darger clenched her teeth. Felt her molars gritting. Jaw flexing in staccato bursts.

  She drew up on the stairs without slowing. Hoping to catch a glimpse of him as she peered down the staircase. No luck.

  She flew down the stairs. Fitch and the rest picking out paths on either side of her. All of them bumping into angry New Yorkers as they descended. Feet clapping against the cement.

  “Watch it, moron!” a middle-aged office worker yelled after getting shouldered out of the way, shaking his briefcase around for dramatic effect. Then he turned. Eyes going wide when he saw that it was a SWAT officer rushing past. Going wider still as they drifted lower and locked onto the rifle in the officer’s hands. Instinctively he covered his crotch with the briefcase, no longer using it as a prop to express rage. His voice got tight and quiet, and he muttered, “Oh, shit. Uh… sorry.”

  “FBI,” Fitch yelled periodically. “Get out the fuckin’ way!”

  The light changed as they got down to the concrete floor underground. Yellow. Artificial. Darger realized that it was somehow always night down here. Always.

  They jumped the turnstile. Elbowed through more weirdos.

  The ground opened up before them at last. Not so packed in the space beyond the gate. Crisp clicks and slaps sounded from their footfalls, echoing about the larger concrete chamber like bats.

  They kept moving. Swiveling their heads for any sign of Huxley.

  He couldn’t slip away now, after they’d been so close. Could he?

  A spindly homeless man leaped up from a slab of cardboard he’d been sitting on. A knit cap shrugged down low on his brow. Fingerless gloves jutted out of a long plaid coat that looked not of this century. Something black and cloudy like soot rimmed his wild eyes. Gibberish spewed at top volume from his lips.

  “Hurry, hurry about. Coppers gonna cop, way I figure it. Strike like copperheads, you know? Snake in the grass. Gas, Grass, or Ass. Nobody rides free. Not in this life, bub.”

  He chuckled as he lurched into their path. Bumping Darger. Sending her ricocheting into one of the SWAT officers. All of them banging into each other like bowling pins.

  The bum’s voice went louder still. More shrill. He threw his hands up over his head.

  “I am not resisting arrest! I am not resisting arrest!”

  Still he jumped into them, thrashing and bouncing like he was trying to start a circle pit at a rock concert.

  Fitch gave him a shove, and the guy flew back like he was on roller skates, barely managing to keep his feet. Darger and all the SWAT people rushed past, and Fitch dusted his hands off theatrically as he rejoined them.

  “Little crowd control trick I learned at the academy.”

  “Huh. They didn’t teach that one when I was there,” Darger said.

  With the homeless guardian dispatched, Darger’s focus returned to the growing crowd near the tracks. Eyes once again scanning bodies. Seeking out shade
s of red among the shirts.

  And then she saw it — a glimmer of crimson visible through a gap in the crowd.

  Her steps grew choppy as she thrust herself that way. Bulldozed through a family of tourists in matching I HEART NY t-shirts. Slithered her hands past the last few bodies standing in her way to grab the blood-red garment.

  Fingers scrabbling over soft knit fabric. Grasping. Balling into fists as she gripped as hard as she could.

  He jerked. Tried to pull free. But she had him now. She had him.

  She spun him around. Pulled him close. The red shade of the shirt was just right.

  But it wasn’t him.

  The scowling face of a teenage girl glared at her instead. Mouth puckered. Eyebrows knitted together in anger.

  “Sorry,” Darger said, letting go and turning back the way she’d come. Breathing heavy now. Eyes swiveling everywhere. Taking in the panorama as she whirled all the way around.

  People in all directions. Big and small. Young and old. Everyone moving and talking and jostling.

  Too many people.

  She backtracked a few paces. Found Fitch and some of the others.

  “Got anything?” Fitch said.

  Darger just shook her head.

  The big man heaved out a sigh.

  “Goddamn it. We know he’s here somewhere.”

  They stood and watched the rabble for a second. Powerless. Hopeless.

  A train pulled up. Another complication.

  All those milling people clustered tighter near the tracks as the subway cars slowly eased to a halt before them.

  Darger started in among them, not wanting to get blocked out. Her arms wrenching forward, reaching out before her almost like they were swimming through the humanity.

  The doors popped open, and waves of people vented from the train, runnels of them flowing through the mob. Some members of the SWAT team bulled their way into the crowd. Tried to shout at people to make room, let them through.

  The people in front of Darger started filing on board. The crowd pouring into the metal tube. Disappearing.

  Darger felt her pulse banging in her neck again. Unsure of what to do next.

  “Do we think he’s getting on the train?” Fitch said.

  Shallow breaths rushed in and out of her. Chest shuddering. That heat still flushing her face, even in the cool of this underground chamber.

  “I don’t know,” Darger said. “Maybe.”

  “Damn it,” Fitch hissed. “I don’t want to split up, but we might have to.”

  The last of the commuters had gotten on board, though plenty of people still lingered around the tracks. Darger’s eyes looked everywhere, looked everywhere.

  Nothing.

  “We’ve got to get some of our people on the train,” Fitch said.

  The two sides of the subway door in front of them started sliding closed. Fitch shoved his arm in the gap before it could fasten shut. He gripped the black rubber on each side and pried it open. Waved two of his men through even as the car jolted into motion.

  “You two search the train, yeah?” he called after them. “We’ll keep an eye on things here at the station.”

  Darger nodded. Watched the pair of SWAT officers jump on the train just as it slid away. It rattled down the tracks, building speed, and then it was gone. Sucked into the tunnel.

  As soon as the sound of the train had faded away to nothing, Darger saw him.

  The red shirt came clear as he detached himself from the crowd and walked toward the front of the platform. Something determined in his stride.

  Darger lunged that way, Fitch and a handful of the others right with her. All those feet pattering at the cement, skittering to get around commuters.

  Huxley moved right up to the ledge, the place where the gray cement gave way to bright yellow warning paint, everything pocked with those bumpy treads to avoid anyone slipping this close to the rails.

  Darger bumped into an old man. The collision turned her some, but she didn’t break her line of sight. She steadied the man, putting both hands on his shoulders until he was rooted to the ground again, and kept going.

  She broke into the open. Closing on him.

  Huxley jumped off the platform. Disappeared behind the concrete edge as he landed on the tracks. Plunged out of view.

  CHAPTER 68

  Darger froze there, fifteen feet shy of the edge. Some strange pulse fluttering in her head like a strobe light.

  Everything felt slowed down. The fluorescent bulbs buzzed overhead, their insectile hum seeming to grow louder in this prolonged hush. It echoed funny in this concrete box. Rebounding off the walls. Shuddering in the hollow. Made the chamber feel empty. Tomb-like.

  She blinked. Thoughts finally awakening in her head.

  I can’t let him get away. Can’t.

  She charged up to the edge of the platform. Gazed down into the shaded spot below. It took a second for the contours there to sharpen into focus.

  And there he was.

  Huxley bolted down the center of the track. Stepping from plank to plank, the wooden railroad ties thudding out hollow sounds. There was a hitch in his step — maybe he’d busted his ankle when he jumped down — but he was moving pretty good. Advancing toward the deeper shadows where the tunnel swallowed all of the light.

  Darger leaped down. Falling. Plummeting. Arms drifting up on each side of her like she meant to spread her wings. Swoop out of trouble.

  She stared down between her feet. Locked her eyes on the crisscrossed lines of the tracks and ties. Made damn sure she gave the third rail a wide berth.

  Her feet stabbed at the gravel, and she folded up on impact. Hips and knees bending her into a squat. Hands touching down to steady her. The rocks were cold against her palms. Jagged like teeth.

  The others came down around her. Multiple SWAT officers hurling themselves off the edge. All those boots punching the rocks, grinding out gritty sounds.

  Darger rocked forward and launched herself into a sprint. Found her steps choppy. Lurching until she, too, fell into a stride that placed her feet only on the wooden ties. Smoother that way.

  She kept her eyes on Huxley as she found her footing, though she wasn’t really seeing him for now. Just following that flitting shape ahead — the solid thing churning toward the darkness.

  She grew more confident in the mechanics of her running with each step. Feet finding the wooden beams like step stones on a footpath. Accelerating. Feeling her way toward a sprint. Faster, faster.

  It felt good to be in motion again, to be proactive again. Coursed a prickle of energy through her limbs. An airiness shooting through her, bubbling upward like carbonation.

  A couple of the SWAT officers whooped beside her, sounded like frat boys howling at a kegger, apparently sharing that jubilation Darger felt. This wasn’t over, but they were all getting some kind of second wind. Hungry again. Riding a wave of mounting determination.

  They ran. Rocketed forward. Elbows pumping. Legs pistoning.

  The tunnel mouth was a black hole before them. A vacancy. A circular cutout in the tile and concrete with a gaping nothingness at its center. They ran into that yawning maw, left the station behind.

  Almost instantly the tunnel felt too small, too tight. A cinching sphincter around them. The tight quarters triggered Darger’s claustrophobia, made her think about a train ramming its way down this chute like a cleaning rod shoved down the barrel of a gun.

  Squeezing. Crushing.

  But she pushed the fear down. Took a deep breath in. Let it out slowly. Her chest quivered on the exhale, but she felt better.

  She’d been in tighter spots than this.

  Her eyes danced over the tiled ceiling and then shifted lower. Sharpened on the bomber at last.

  Huxley looked ghostly up ahead. Translucent like he was made out of darkling gauze. The black hole where the light from the station ended was encroaching, spreading. Engulfing more and more of the bomber’s details in charcoal tones. Shrouding him in p
hases.

  Better to get him before the tunnel went fully dark, she thought. She bit her lip. Pushed herself harder.

  The sound of crunching gravel poured out in a strange beat beneath all of them. Throaty and percussive. And the noises cast strange echoes down here. The tighter quarters intensifying the reverb. Made everything sound wet, like they moved in some damp cave.

  The dark thickened further as they pulled away from the platform of the station. Leaving all the light behind. The rounded ceiling above grew indistinct. Murky and featureless.

  The shadows grew above and below. Opened. Deepened.

  Darger could see the line where the light ended, that stark divide where the dark took over entirely. It made her chest tight, made her stomach clamp shut. She hurled herself toward it even if it terrified her.

  She breathed. Pushed herself. She was mindful of the third rail and the 600 volts of direct current running through it even now. A line of death waiting about eighteen inches to her right. Oblivion just one touch away.

  Huxley crossed that borderline at the light’s edge first. Absorbed by the gloom.

  She could just barely see him. A blackness running. A silhouette with arms and legs moving like liquid in the dark. Made her think of a spider skittering over the wall at night.

  And then she crossed the line as well, and the dark became total. Complete. It devoured her.

  One of the SWAT officers beside her whipped out a flashlight. The beam pierced the murk. Shined off the subway tile lining the arch overhead. Swung down onto Huxley’s back.

  He seemed smaller when the light glared on him. The glowing circle exposed him. Split the shadow to show who he really was, what he really was.

  Just a man.

  They were gaining on him. That little hitch in his step seemed more pronounced now. And that might be the difference here, Darger knew. That small weakness giving them the opening they needed.

  The wounded prey gets taken down.

  She ran up on him quickly. Closing the gap faster and faster. Almost within arm’s reach.

  He veered left hard without warning. Ducked into the wall.