Darkside

by P. T. Deutermann

  “You have no idea how scared I am right now,” she said. “But I do know how to get to that ladder.”

  “And the answer is?”

  “Chimney climb,” she said. “Move to the side as much as you can, and I’ll use my legs and back to go up the wall.”

  He’d seen the technique and understood. “Okay; if you start to fall, let me know, so I can get out of the way.”

  She squeezed herself sideways across the square shaft and started the maneuver. “If I start to fall, you’ll know it, not that you’ll have anywhere to go.”

  “Just a thought,” he mumbled. “We’ll both go down.”

  “What’s this ‘we’ shit?” she said as she started up the wall, wedging her legs against the opposite wall as she slid her backside up the surface. She was already puffing in the hot, humid, compressed air.

  “I think that ladder is hanging on a hook,” he said, shining the light past her body. “I guess it’ll hold if you grab it.”

  She didn’t answer, putting all her remaining energy into the climb. He kept the light shining past her face and pointed at the bottom of the ladder. He noticed there was a series of hooks, with the lowest visible one right in front of his face. The shaft appeared to be thirty feet high. Booth probably climbed down the ladder, wedging himself like she was doing, and then repositioned the ladder to the next set of hooks.

  Jim kept himself afloat by wedging his own legs against the far side wall. The only sounds came from Branner’s exertions as she inched up the wall and the occasional thump and rumble from one of the flooded tunnels outside. He wondered if the cave-ins would show up on the surface. Not until daylight, if then. He looked up again. She was making progress, but it was slow going. The pressure in his ears was so great now that he had a headache, not to mention several points of road rash from being tumbled around in the tunnels. He wondered where Booth was. And how he’d gotten out once he released the flood. There were going to be some red faces when they got out of here. If they got out of here. He had no idea of what was up at the top of the shaft, but that ladder must lead to some kind of escape. You hope, he thought.

  He shifted position to see better and to keep the fading Maglite pointed up so Branner could see her objective. Sweat was running into his eyes and he had to blink repeatedly to clear them. He tried to focus on the hook in front of his face, then realized it wasn’t there.

  Huh? Where’d it go?

  He felt around in the water and found the hook, but it was no longer at face level. It was now at chest level. Which meant-what?

  That the water was rising. That he was rising with it. There was obviously enough pressure to force the water column in the shaft to rise all the way to the top. But if the tunnel had collapsed, where was the water coming from? He couldn’t think straight.

  Okay, keep it simple. Linear. If she doesn’t make it to the ladder, we’ll just float up to the ladder. And beyond, to the top. That’s the good news. But then we’d better be able to open whatever the access is, because all our air has to be leaking out of the shaft up there for the water to be able to rise behind it. Should he tell Branner? He looked up again, even as he felt the hook touch his stomach.

  “How’s it going?”

  “About five more feet,” she grunted. “This is harder than it looks.”

  “It looks plenty hard,” he said. “Can you see what’s up there?”

  “No,” she said. “Focusing on the ladder. How strong are these hooks?”

  “They’re pretty big,” he said. He saw that she had stopped to catch her breath. In the silence, her breathing sounded very labored. He hoped like hell she didn’t fall, because there was no way he’d be able to get out of the way, and she was ten feet above him at least. In the dimming light, he could see that she had locked her legs across the shaft and had her whole back pressed against the wall, her hands down at her sides. He couldn’t see her face.

  “I have good news and bad news,” he said, finally, when she didn’t move.

  “Bad news first,” she said.

  “The water is rising.”

  “My brain isn’t working in all this mug; what’s that mean?”

  “It means that we need to beat it to the top and the outside before it pushes all the air out of this shaft.”

  “Wonderful,” she said after a moment. “What’s the good news?”

  “I lied. There isn’t any good news.”

  “Hate it when you beat around the bush like that.”

  “I know.”

  She started her climb again, causing a small cascade of droplets to fall around him. He tried to think of something clever to say, but he couldn’t. He felt for the hook. It was below his groin. Think positively, he thought. That air has to be getting out somewhere up there or the water couldn’t rise. Means that the shaft must come out near or on the surface. Has to. Or why would there be a ladder hanging up there?

  Unless it had been hanging there for one hundred fifty years.

  He banished that thought.

  “Got it,” Branner announced from above. “Now what?”

  “Climb the ladder,” he said. “Gently.”

  “Gently?”

  “Just climb it; see what the hell’s at the top. Call for room service.”

  “Can you give me more light?”

  “That’s it, I’m afraid.”

  He heard her change position in the shaft, and then the creak of wood as she very slowly transferred her weight to the ladder. He didn’t look up; doing so hurt the back of his neck. He could feel the hook down around his knees now, and the weight of his Glock in its holster felt like a small brick pressing against the small of his back.

  More creaking from above him, and, despite the cramp in his neck, he looked up. He could see Branner’s legs on the ladder as she climbed up into the gloom. The flashlight was really failing now, casting little more than a weak gray beam into the humid mist. But at least the hook appeared to be holding.

  “We have a door,” she said at last. He heard a rattle. “A locked door. A locked metal door, in fact.”

  He groaned. “Old or new door?” he called up to her.

  “I think it’s old. Can’t tell with no light. Feels solid, though. Maybe iron.”

  He gauged the distance to the ladder. He was still eight feet or so below the ladder’s lowest rungs. He was too tired and probably too big to do what she had done with that climbing maneuver.

  “Is there a handle? Any kind of latches, top or bottom?”

  He waited while she felt around the surface of the door. “Nothing,” she said. “Not even a keyhole, at least not that I can find. Nor any hinges.”

  “Frame?”

  Another moment. “Feels like wood. Ow! Yes, wood. I just got a splinter.”

  “What’s above it?”

  “Top of the shaft.”

  “Brickwork or cement?”

  “Feels like both. A veneer of cement over bricks, maybe? Hard to tell.”

  He felt for the hook to gauge his progress up the shaft. He couldn’t find it. “Can you tell how the air’s getting out?”

  “Wait,” she said. He kept as still as he could while treading water so she could listen. He felt around for the hook again, but it was gone. The bottom of the ladder wasn’t that far away anymore. Water was rising faster.

  “I can hear some air moving, but I’m not sure where it’s getting out. Feels like there are hinges at the top of this door, like it’s some kind of flap, not a door? I think the air’s getting out around one of these hinges.”

  “Can you stop it? Jam something in the crack?”

  “I can try, I guess,” she said, and he heard the rustle of clothing above him, then a ripping sound. He put a finger out in front of his chest and pressed it against the wall facing him, his arm floating as level as he could get it. Almost immediately, his body began to rise above the level of his arm.

  “There,” she said. “I ripped a sleeve off my shirt. Stuffed it in the crack. I can’t h
ear air moving anymore.”

  He concentrated on the position of his arm. Had it stopped moving? He thought it had.

  “Here’s what I think,” he said. His voice was getting hoarse in the hothouse atmosphere. “This shaft, and the other one, were pressure-release chambers in case there was a fire or explosion down in the magazine. That door probably is a flap, designed to let go under pressure and vent the chamber down below.”

  “How does that help us?”

  “That flap door isn’t going to open with a key. Can you feel around, down at the bottom of the flap? There has to be a latch plate of some kind, so Booth could get out.”

  She moved on the ladder. Booth had probably rigged a latch arrangement on the other side using either the original latch or a new one. He would have left it open whenever he came down here, and latched it when he wasn’t down here.

  “There’s something on the other side. I feel rivets or bolts. Can’t see which.”

  “Okay. Right now the water’s stopped rising, I think.”

  “And?”

  “Booth had that other shaft blocked off with a piece of sheet metal, remember? So I’m proposing to swim back down this shaft, out into the magazine, and open those big doors. That will let a wave of water in and put pressure on that flap. Then it’ll-”

  “Jim?”

  “Wait. Then it’ll push that flap out; and we can-”

  “Jim!”

  “What?” Why was she interrupting him? He was trying to get them out of this trap.

  “That won’t work,” she said patiently. “There couldn’t be any water up in this shaft if the magazine wasn’t already flooded. There won’t be any wave of water.”

  He looked up. She was a dim figure up in the haze at the top of the shaft. His mind was whirling. Of course she was right. What the hell had he been thinking? Shit. He was losing it.

  “How close are you to the ladder?” she called.

  “A couple of feet, but I’m not rising anymore.”

  “I’m going to pull this rag and let some more air out. As soon as the water lifts you to the ladder, climb up to where I am. I’ll get off it and wedge in up here so we don’t lose it. Maybe we can dislodge this brickwork above the top of the door. It’s all crumbly, like in the rest of the tunnels.”

  “And then?”

  “There’s four feet of brickwork above the flap door. If we can make a hole, we’re out. But I’ll need you for that. We need brute force to get it done.”

  “So I’m a brute now?”

  “You were a Marine, weren’t you?”

  He laughed, making a surreal sound in the shaft. “I’m gonna report you to the commander of political correctness down in Quantico,” he said.

  “Yeah, right, and she’ll probably gum me to death. Can you reach the ladder yet?”

  He was closer, but not quite close enough. But then he realized he could probably do what she had done, for that short a distance. He positioned himself and began to back-walk up the shaft. His clothes felt heavy as his body came out of the water. He had put the Maglite into his shirt pocket to free his hands, and it was bobbing its feeble beam everywhere.

  “Got it,” he said, grabbing the bottom rung of the ladder. The bottom, which had been hanging vertically, pulled out at an angle as he grabbed it, reminding him of the tower jump ladder back in the Nat.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let me get off it; then you climb up.”

  He waited while she maneuvered above him, and then she told him to come on up. He climbed the ladder, first with his arms and then with both feet and arms, showering water back down into the shaft. When he reached the top, he stopped, puffing with the exertion of breathing the warm, wet air. From this position, he was able to shine the fading beam down onto the bottom of the flap door. There were eight rivet heads out in the middle of the bottom part of the door. He kicked out at the flap. Predictably, it hurt his foot. Whatever it was, it was solid. He could hear the sound of air whistling past some obstacle above the door.

  “Look above it,” she said, and he raised the light. He saw the familiar sight of ancient brickwork, the mortar between the joints eroded a half inch into the joints, the bricks uneven in shape and alignment. He climbed a little higher on the ladder and felt the bricks, placing himself face-to-hip with Branner’s hunched body. He pushed on the bricks. They didn’t move.

  “I don’t know,” he said wearily. “There are probably several courses there. Feels pretty solid to me.”

  “Pull, don’t push,” she said, adjusting her position. Her legs were wedged across the shaft and her head was right up at the top of it.

  Jim took a deep breath and got very little out of it. The air seemed denser, more moisture than oxygen. He pulled at the most exposed brick. He couldn’t be positive, but he thought it did move this time.

  “We sure could use a pry bar,” he said. Although not exactly an echo, his voice came right back at him. “I’ve got a knife, but it’s much too small.”

  He eased himself back down the ladder two rungs to look at that latch area again and then noticed that his feet were wet. No, not wet-submerged. He pointed the light down, looked, and swore. The water had risen all the way up the ladder. As he stared, the black water rose above his ankles and onto his shins. Branner saw it, too.

  “What do we do!” she wailed.

  “Plug the airhole again, quick!”

  As she reached across to stuff the sleeve back into the crack, the ladder shifted and she lost her perch against the wall. She fell clumsily past the ladder and down into the water, nearly knocking Jim right off the ladder. The rag patch disappeared. Jim swung sideways to avoid being hit and then went upside down on the ladder before he could regain his balance. While Branner thrashed around in the water below him, he scrambled back to the right side of the ladder and climbed back to face the flap door. The flashlight was barely putting out a yellow glow.

  He looked down. The water seemed to be coming up faster now, and the whistling noise was louder. Branner was rising with it, hanging on to the ladder but not getting on it. In a few moments, the water would rise all the way to the top of the shaft and would snuff them out. Desperate now, he reached out from the side of the ladder and kicked the flap door with all his strength. It clanged in the darkness, but the latch, or whatever it was, held. The water was up to his hips now, and he could see Branner’s face only as a gray blob just beneath his hip.

  “Get underwater!” he shouted. “Take a deep breath and go deep. Do it! Now! ”

  He heard her take a huge breath and then the blob disappeared from sight. He pulled the Glock out of his waistband holster, shook it to clear any water out of the barrel, then swung aside and opened fire on the back of the latch. The noise was punishing as he emptied the gun at the back plate of the latch, which was almost submerged. Squinting his eyes and leaning as far out to one side as he could, he fired again and again, shutting his eyes each time a bullet blasted back at him or went spanging around the brickwork. Twice, he felt a lash of burning pain on his upper back, but he kept firing. The last two rounds blew water everywhere as the level came up past the back plate, and then he was squeezing on empty. He dropped the Glock and lunged again with his right leg, smashing it against the flap once, twice, three times. Branner surfaced alongside him, gasping for air. She realized what he was doing and joined in, kicking with all her might at the flap door as the water rose completely over its top. And then it let go.

  In one small tidal wave, they both were swept into the hole where the flap had been, but then their hips got jammed in the ladder rungs and neither of them could get through.

  “Wait, wait!” Jim shouted. “Let the water get out!” Even as he said it, he had to summon all his strength not to keep scrambling to get out. He grabbed the side wall to keep the flap from coming back down and cutting off their hands, and then they waited for another minute as the water subsided to a steady waterfall over the coaming of the flap. Then Jim disentangled his legs from the ladder and
dropped out onto a tiled floor. He turned around and helped a trembling, white-faced Branner out. Her eyes were huge with fright and she held on to him with a desperate grip as they sank down onto the floor. There was light in the room, light that was coming from under a door. He could see a maze of pipes and valves along one wall. There was a wall of old lockers on the opposite wall.

  Branner gulped down fresh air and then removed her hands, looking at them. They were darkened with something. “You’re bleeding,” she said. “Let me see.”

  “Ricochets,” he said. “Doesn’t feel like anything went in.” He bent his head while she surveyed his upper back and arms.

  “You’ve got three tears in your shirt; I need more light to see how deep they are.” She wiped her hands off on his shirt. “Another fucking door! Where the hell are we now?”

  “Out of that goddamned shaft, and that’s all I care about. This is modern construction. Try the door.”

  The water kept coming up and over the lower sill of the flap door, which was hanging back down in position. It puddled on the floor and then ran under the room’s door. He could see the flap’s latch assembly in the half-light, the metal torn to pieces by the gunfire. Thank God that thing was old metal, designed to give way, he thought. Branner crawled on her hands and knees to the doorway and reached for the handle.

  “If this thing’s locked, I’m going to do some serious screaming,” she said.

  But it wasn’t. She pulled it open and the room was fully illuminated by a battery-operated fire-safety light. They could see a basement corridor outside, filled with more pipes and pumping machinery. The smell of chlorine wafted through the door, and Jim began to laugh.

  “What?” she said, eyeing him suspiciously, obviously suspecting hysteria. She was still down on her hands and knees, her hair hanging over her forehead.

  “I know where we are,” he said. “We’re in the basement of Lejeune Hall. That far wall with all the pipes? That’s the foundation of the swimming pool. We’re down beneath the fucking swimming pool!”