Violet Darger | Book 8 | Countdown To Midnight

by Vargus, L. T.

  The heat was impossible now. It saturated her clothes. Felt like it was beading on her skin. The droplets congealing out of the air, plumping into jewels on her arms and along the rim of her top lip. Disgustingly warm.

  “Didn’t have ‘takin’ a schvitz’ on my to-do list when we were planning the raid this morning, but…” Fitch said. “A little sauna sesh. This whole operation went in a classier direction than any of us could have anticipated. Feels like I’m at the spa.”

  “Yeah, especially with all the rat turds sprinkled everywhere,” Darger said. “That’s like the New York Transit Authority’s version of caviar, right?”

  That got a chuckle out of a few of them.

  They got going again once everyone had made it past the broken pipe. Feet jangling against that steel grate again. Pounding on that steel drum that only played one note over and over.

  Condensation dripped down like rain now. Murky droplets the shade of merlot gathering on the pipes overhead. Drizzling in a steady downfall.

  Some of the thick drops splatted down on the back of Darger’s neck. Lukewarm and nasty. Probably streaking rust smears down into her shirt, like daubs of red-brown fingerpaint running the length of her spine. Other droplets pelted the rounded top of her helmet, made little flicking sounds when they hit the Kevlar shell and burst, hanging a mist in the air all around them.

  The swamp smell intensified again. Pungent and earthy. A pond scum stench with a hint of urine tang sprinkled on top for good measure.

  Scratching sounds scrabbled around them now. Rats, Darger thought, though she still couldn’t see any. Fleeing rats, not used to all of the commotion down here. Huxley running through had probably stirred them up, and now the additional foot traffic was flushing them more thoroughly. Some mass exodus. Little pink feet clambering over the steel grate, toenails rasping at the cement walls.

  She clenched her teeth and kept going. Tried not to think about the rodents. Tried not to think about the overwhelming humidity. Tried not to think about the concrete walls closing in, cinching tighter and tighter until she couldn’t breathe, until they crushed her limbs snugly to her torso, squeezed her ribcage until it quivered and splintered, compacted her into a tiny cube and spat her out in some landfill somewhere.

  She blinked hard. Bit the inside of her lip until the hurt exploded. Let the pain pull her back into the moment, out of the negative thought loop and into the here and now.

  She tasted blood. Just a little.

  But it worked. Sharpened her mind. Refocused her eyes on the concrete and steel edges of the narrow passageway in front of her.

  Breathe. Just breathe and run.

  She strained harder whenever she focused. Twitched the muscles in her legs a little bit faster. Feet bounding up from the steel grate with a renewed bounce.

  And she felt the surge of desire spread through her to the others. Heard it in the increased tempo of all the pounding footsteps. Like a song speeding up, hitting harder at the chorus.

  Passion was infectious. Fury. Intensity. Sometimes Darger thought it was all she had to give.

  It felt good to have the cavalry with her, though. Fitch and the others had her back. Nothing like last time — when she was on her own.

  All these officers, and all their guns against a single unarmed man. They had the upper hand. No question.

  Another sharp right took them to a straightaway. The steel grate floor ended underfoot. Transitioned to a concrete ramp that sloped downward at a sharper angle than before.

  They descended once more. A dank cement rectangle easing them deeper into the earth, into the strange world of tubes snaking around beneath the city.

  More of that green fungus textured the wall in patches here. Slimy and glossy. The emerald shapes sported rough edges where the green slime gave way to the black of the wet concrete, uneven borderlines, little isthmuses connecting larger blobs here and there. They looked like continents, she realized, the wall a sprawling atlas.

  She tongued the wound in her lip as she ran. Those faint flashes of pain kept her focused somehow, even if they were muted compared to the initial bite. The sting more annoying than anything.

  She kept her eyes wide open. Refusing to blink as she stared at the next section of tunnel, the cement surfaces where the flashlight swept around.

  Breath spilled through her lips. Sucking in and heaving out. Muggy air scraping over her teeth. Its heat cloying in her throat.

  They rounded a wide corner. Came out on another straightaway.

  Darger’s gaze pierced the empty space before her. Angled deeper and deeper down the concrete shaft.

  Shadows writhed in the distance. Looked like black smoke roiling and bucking. Elongating to touch both sides of the tunnel at once. Dancing everywhere.

  Darger lifted her arm. Pointed.

  Her footsteps grew choppy underneath her. All of her consciousness zooming in on that inky movement ahead.

  The flashlight lurched and reached further down the tunnel. The beam growing as it crawled over the slimy floor. Drifting upward from there. Spearing the empty space.

  The beam stretched after the shadow. Grasping for it. Finally reaching it.

  The shadows shrank back finally. The image coalesced there. Becoming solid when the light laid it bare.

  It was Huxley.

  CHAPTER 73

  Something flexed in Darger’s chest. Muscles squeezing like a fist. Cinching tight around her ribcage. Constricting her breath.

  Her heart hammered away inside that rigid torso. A frenzied muscle. Felt like a wild thing in a cage, trying to beat its way free.

  She kept her stride. Didn’t slow.

  Kept her eyes locked on the dark figure ahead. Unblinking.

  The flashlight bounced up and down on Huxley’s back. A jostling strobe effect. Made it look like the bomber was shaking around somehow, like a purposely frantic shot in an action movie. The kind that sometimes gave Darger motion sickness in the theater.

  She forced herself to breathe. Fought her rigid muscles for control. Sucked in air. Humid, swampy air. Better than nothing.

  Huxley loped ahead of them like an injured gazelle. Favoring that left leg. He was still moving pretty good, though, considering. His arms pumped at his sides, two hands slicing the air around him like blades.

  He rounded a corner. Drifted to the right. Disappeared.

  Darger set her jaw. Molars quivering against each other.

  She listened. Like she might be able to hear the bomber’s footsteps over her own, over the heavy boot treads slamming down right behind her.

  Her chest started to compress again. She could only take shallow breaths as she approached the corner where Huxley had moved out of view. Shaking with the effort.

  She hit the corner and watched the next stretch of tunnel slide into view in slow motion as she made the turn. Unveiled left to right as though a curtain were pulling out of the way, as though the concrete shaft were opening before her.

  She saw the light first.

  A glowing square lay at the end of the tunnel, a little higher than the floor they ran on now. Maybe a hundred yards down the tube. Probably less.

  And then she saw the staircase congeal in front of it. Details filling in as she drew closer.

  Galvanized steel stairs with mesh inlays. The stairs led up about eight steps to the glowing opening. Harsh fluorescent light gleaming in from the next section of tunnel, whatever it might hold.

  It was a doorway. The way out of this tunnel and back into the main subway system probably. If there were people out there, Huxley might be able to get lost in the crowd again.

  Her eyes drifted lower. Found the bomber’s jerking figure. A dark shape moving toward the light.

  He was closer now. They’d gained on him. Narrowed the gap.

  Some ferocious feeling pushed Darger harder still. Maybe some killer instinct kicking in. Knowing how close they were now. Ready to finish this.

  Something like bloodlust.

  She b
olted after the scrawny man. Felt the officers just behind her, keeping up. Maybe they felt it, too. Contagious like so many things were in battle.

  She bounded. Muscle fibers twitching out long strides. Chewing up the ground between her and the target.

  Huxley’s back got bigger as though she were zooming in on it. She drew to within twenty feet. And then ten.

  Huxley glanced back. Wide eyes. Gaping mouth. Tongue lolling like a slice of ham.

  Darger felt her own mouth moving. A grin forming there that felt wolfish. She licked her lips.

  They had him. He wouldn’t make it to that glowing light in time. They’d finish it here. In the dinge of the tunnel.

  By now they’d probably gotten the task force reorganized in any case, hopefully swarming into every subway station around for miles. Pouring in like flood water.

  Wherever this tunnel came out, they’d be there. They had to be.

  The bomber’s hands moved then. Broke out of the pumping motion. The right paw reaching in front of him. Clawing at the waistband of his pants.

  Darger zipped up on him. Just about getting to within arm’s reach.

  Huxley looked back again. Eyes still as big as moons. Mouth still yawning.

  Darger’s eyes moved to the right hand as it came into view again. Saw the dark object clutched in his fingers about the size of a big pack of gum.

  Huxley lifted the item. Slowly raised it over his head.

  His face showed no expression. Dead eyes. Drooping jaw.

  Darger got closer still. Finally she could see what he held.

  It was a standard garage door opener. Charcoal gray body. Steel gray buttons. Little chrome clip on the back.

  Now Darger’s eyes expanded.

  A detonator.

  She needed to tell the others. Needed to—

  Huxley fingered the button.

  CHAPTER 74

  It happened in the space of three heartbeats.

  The air shuddered first. Overpressurized. The shock wave unleashed. All that energy released in a microsecond. Forcing outward in a sphere of destruction.

  The concrete cracked somewhere behind Darger. Even in that fraction of a second before the sound wave of the explosion could catch up, she could hear the walls bursting. Shattering. Thick crunching and rumbling like thunder.

  Then came the flash. A fiery light flared over the dark of the tunnel. Pushed outward from the detonation point. Lit the space in blinding orange for a single second. Less. Reflected strangely off the wet concrete of the floor, of the walls, of the ceiling.

  Darger turned back. Felt like she was moving in slow motion.

  The walls of the tunnel crumbled some seventy feet back. Falling. Piling.

  Giant concrete shards toppled over each other. Looked like chunks of jagged ice shifting in an arctic sea.

  Powdery bits of pulverized cement flung everywhere. Puffing and roiling in cloudy spirals. Hanging over everything. Growing thicker and darker.

  All of them had turned to look now. Black-clad bodies twisting that way. Helmeted heads pivoting. Everyone staring back as the tunnel closed behind them. Darkened. Choked with debris.

  The second blast hit four heartbeats later. Twenty feet closer.

  This time the concussive wave rolled off the detonation point and knocked Darger back a step. The wall fractured with a sound like a giant spine being snapped.

  She faced the flash fully. Saw it light up those cement shards as they ground against each other like shifting continents. Tectonic plates.

  The tunnel was collapsing in on itself.

  On Darger and the rest.

  Slabs of concrete rained down from both sides. Huge chunks falling on the men in the rear of the group. Closing them off in rubble, in that ever-undulating cloud of debris.

  The men tried to scramble. Too late.

  Darger gasped. Watched a concrete chunk the size of a coffin come down at an angle. Take out a black clad agent at the shoulder.

  Gone.

  They both seemed to vanish into the pile. Buried. Swallowed up in heaving dust clouds.

  The blast wind blew a hot gust into Darger’s face. The exhale seeming to come just after the first thrust of the explosion, tailing after that orange blaze of the flash.

  Fitch lifted a gloved hand as though to shield his face from the heat. Darger squinted. Squinched her lips tight. To her, it felt like sticking her face into a wood-fired pizza oven. It was mercifully brief, at least.

  And then all was dark the way they’d come. The cement shaft caved in to the point of being sealed off from the yellow light. It plunged that way into darkness.

  One of Fitch’s men lay face down in front of the pile of jagged rubble. A vaguely visible dark bulk. But the dust cloud roiled there like smoke. Drifting downward. Quickly settling lower until it cloaked the fallen figure. It shrouded him and everything else that way. Left only vague contours of cement visible through the billowing gloom.

  Closer, the light from the doorway glittered on some of the dust motes fluttering around, giving a sense of the particles still drizzling down.

  Darger kept backpedaling away as she took in all of this. Fitch and a couple of the others did the same just a few paces beyond her. Only four of them left.

  She wheeled her head to look for Huxley. Found him halfway up the steel staircase.

  And then the third blast flung her like a rag doll.

  CHAPTER 75

  Footsteps echoed everywhere in the parking structure. Loshak and Burke ran down the shiny concrete slope toward the cruiser, their shadows looking long and jerky under the yellow lights.

  Burke yelled into a walkie talkie the whole time, the chatter streaming out too fast for Loshak to make out most of the words, especially with the little man zipping away from him. Burke’s legs jittered beneath him. He had incredible speed for his stature, Loshak thought, and the agent couldn't help but feel old again as he lagged behind.

  When he got to the car, Loshak had to put out his hands to stop himself. Palms pressed flat against the glass of the passenger side window. A bolt of pain shot through his bad wrist, but it faded quickly.

  He pried open the door. Plopped down in the seat. The pint-sized officer was already snugged in place behind the wheel.

  “Got two more officers headed our way," Burke said. “Figure we might need the backup.”

  “That’s smart,” Loshak said.

  “Hopefully they’ll be quick about it. They’re upstairs, but I told ‘em it was urgent. As urgent as it gets.”

  The small mustached man checked his watch. Then he pumped his knee and sort of chewed on his mustache, his bottom lip coming up over the bottom tip of the prickly hair and shifting about in fast motion. Something about the convulsive mannerism reminded Loshak of a ferret.

  The agent wheeled his head around to stare out the back windshield. Eyes dancing over the steel door where the officers would soon emerge.

  He blinked. Swallowed. Heard his pulse as a hollow thrum inside his head.

  Nothing in the scene behind them moved.

  “Two minutes tops,” Burke said, eyeballing his watch again.

  They waited.

  CHAPTER 76

  Time slowed down.

  The blast struck Darger most solidly between the shoulder blades. A stiff punch that knocked her off her feet. Tipped her top half forward. Laid her out flat in the air.

  She flew like that. Horizontal to the ground. Like a baserunner diving to slide into home, except her arms were swimming a little, clawing at the air like she might be able to regain her balance by way of a doggy paddle.

  Weightless. Floating.

  She looked down. Watched the wet cement floor zooming past underneath her. Blurry gray. Shiny with moisture.

  The emotions hit then. Defeat ripped and scratched inside her gut as she soared in empty space.

  Pain. Loss.

  She’d failed.

  He’d been a step ahead of her the whole time. Ahead of all of them. Maybe se
veral steps.

  Tyler Huxley always had a plan. Always.

  And then the orange flash gleamed everywhere. Impossibly bright light shooting down the length of the tunnel, touching every surface. It made scads of the wet concrete twinkle and glisten, patches glowing and then relenting to darkness in weird flickering patterns.

  The light speared Darger’s pupils. Searing pain blazing into her skull. It blinded her for a split second.

  She blinked away the afterimage. Drifting blotches and whorls slowly clearing.

  And then she was coming back to the earth. Slamming down onto her belly with a jolt. Ribcage smacking flat and taking the brunt of it.

  Something cracked there on the right side. Shot bolts of pain all through her torso. Electric tendrils of misery surging through meat and bone.

  She bounced once. Touched down again.

  The pain in her chest flared harder on the second impact. Froze her breath in her lungs. Teeth biting down so hard it made her eyes water.

  Reality blinked to black and came back a few times in rapid succession. All the sound guttering out to silence and returning as well. Rolling blackouts of unconsciousness.

  Light and dark. Anesthesia and agony. Her reality winked on and off like a strand of Christmas bulbs until the lights inside her skull came back on and stayed that way.

  And still momentum shoved her forward. Skidded her over the wet concrete like a slip ’n slide. Belly down. Arms splayed out in front of her like useless sticks.

  The blast roared behind her now. The low-pitched boom made the floor shudder beneath her. Cement rippling and buckling like flimsy plastic. Vibrating in convulsions.

  The sound was more ferocious up close. An angry bellow. Violent and meaningless. Impossibly loud.

  The walls cracked and perforated around her then. Crevices opening and snaking everywhere. Splitting like torn seams. The tunnel’s structure fragmenting into jagged chunks of concrete with pointy bits of rebar jutting out.

  Collapsing in on her. Caving in.

  Everything went to pieces. Splintered. Disintegrated. The world itself no longer solid, no longer whole.