Darkside

by P. T. Deutermann

  “Um.”

  “Yeah. So what was left to cave in down there?”

  “Maybe we should call the PWC?” He looked at his watch: 8:15. “They must still have crews down there, restoring power, drying those cabinets out.”

  She rolled down her window, looked again at how close the other car was, and shook her head. “Yeah, I think we should. Just in case. Otherwise, we’re assuming. I always get bit right in the ass when I make assumptions.”

  “Oh, is that what it takes?” Jim asked, provoking a pained look. My prospects aren’t looking so good, he thought. He said, “Okay,” then put a call in to the chief, who got him patched through to the PWC ops station. They, in turn, put him through to the on-scene coordinator down in the tunnels, a Lieutenant Commander Benson. Jim identified himself and briefly explained his problem. Benson, who said he was near the Fort Severn tunnel doors, told him to hold the line and he’d go take a look.

  “Where would he go, if he did get out of that mess down there?” Branner asked.

  “Either back into Bancroft Hall, where he could probably hide, for a little while anyway, or into town, where he could go to ground with his Goth crew.”

  “Yeah, but they’re just college kids. They’d only hide him until the heat began to build. You said he was ready to grandstand his way into the next world. If that was the case, what else might he do?”

  “My brain’s failing and my back hurts like hell. What are you getting at?”

  “Would he try again for Markham?”

  Jim had to think about that one. The cops had enough, based on what had been captured on tape, to put him away. Not to mention the fact that Booth had fired on the TAC squad officers. But this was Dyle Booth they were talking about.

  “He might,” he said. “Just to show us he could. But that hole under Lejeune Hall went to the right-hand magazine. Which we know was flooded. Both those tunnels should have collapsed. I can’t-Wait one. Yeah, Mr. Benson?”

  Benson said they’d checked both tunnels left and right. Left was collapsed right up into the anteroom.

  “And the right one?” Jim asked, a small tendril of apprehension coiling in his stomach.

  “The right one was open,” Benson reported. “All the way down to the right-hand magazine. Lots of muddy mortar, but the ceiling was holding, barely. The cross tunnel had collapsed, and part of the right-hand magazine had collapsed.”

  “Which side of the magazine collapsed, as you looked in from the door?” Jim asked, looking at Branner, who now appeared to be wide awake as she listened. Benson said he hadn’t gone down there personally. Place scared him to death. But the cleanup crew’s supervisor said there was apparently a ladder of some kind sticking down out of a hole in the ceiling, if that helped.

  Jim sighed, thanked him, and hung up. “Right tunnel held,” he announced.

  “Oh shit,” she said. “We’d better alert somebody. And we’d better call Professor Markham, warn him that Booth might be loose.”

  “That’s not a call I’d like to get right now,” he said. “Why don’t we go out there, tell him in person, maybe baby-sit the place for the night? Although Booth is probably long gone.”

  “You start driving,” she said, pulling out her own phone. “I’ll call my people. All that Washington help is still down here. They can notify the Feebs if they’re still in town. And I guess we need to tell someone in Mother B. that their favorite psycho might still be up and running.”

  “And he’s only had all fucking day to get his shit together,” Jim said as he eased the pickup out of its parking place without removing anyone’s mirrors. “Damn it!”

  Ev took a cup of coffee and a bottle of scotch out to the dock, where there was a small picnic table and two benches. He turned on the small spots at the water end of the boathouse to attract the bugs and settled down to absorb the darkness. Julie had gone up to her room after an awkward good night at the bottom of the stairs. The night was clear and almost warm, with only a few spring mosquitoes buzzing. In another month, it won’t be possible to come out here at night, he thought. The summer mosquitoes would first rip up the dock planks, take away the table and chairs, and then come back for the humans.

  There were other dock lights twinkling across the still black waters of the creek, and at least one unhappy outside dog was trying to wear his owners down with a steady, incessant barking. After the past couple of days he knew he ought to be sleepy, but he wasn’t, and sitting out here was preferable to staring at the ceiling in what had been his and Joanne’s room. He poured some scotch into the coffee and recapped the bottle. He noticed he was drinking more these days, and enjoying it more, too.

  His and Joanne’s room. Well, not anymore, and that was one good thing to come out of all this. He’d found a woman to fill that gaping hole in his life, tiny as she was. The fact that she could talk about Joanne and his prior life made it even better, because if she could accept it, then maybe so could he. Liz was in so many ways a sweet woman, but there was some steel in there, too. He wondered how many other lawyers had taken a look at her and made some legally fatal underestimations. He felt a vibration along the planks of the dock.

  “Is that scotch?” Julie asked, materializing out of the darkness in the penumbra of the boathouse spots. She was wearing a set of Navy sweats and white socks, and she had an empty glass in her hand.

  “Didn’t know you liked scotch,” he said, sliding the bottle toward her as she sat down.

  “Have to learn sometime,” she said, pouring a half inch into her glass. “Have to do better with booze than I’ve done so far if I’m going to be a naval aviator.” She sipped some and made a face. “Tastes like medicine,” she muttered.

  “In my day, a naval aviator’s breakfast was officially a cigarette, a cup of coffee, and a puke.”

  “Now it’s a Coke, a handful of Midol, and a puke, or so I’m told,” she said.

  “You don’t have to drink to fly, you know,” he said.

  “On the other hand, I may want to,” she replied, looking out over the black water. Something swirled out in the middle of the creek. “Man. It seems like it was just parents’ weekend.”

  “Sweating exams?”

  “Not really. This semester was a pretty light load. I could bust them all and still have the QPR I need to leave.”

  “Well, what’d you think of it? Your four years at the Academy?”

  “As in, ‘Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how’d you enjoy the play?’”

  Ev laughed and poured them both some more scotch.

  “Discounting my Dyle Booth experience,” Julie continued, “it wasn’t bad. In fact, it was pretty good. Solid. Long, maybe, but at least they get you out in four. Most of my high school classmates screwed off their freshman year and now they have another one to go.”

  “You think you have a good class?”

  “Yes,” she said, trying some more scotch. This time, she didn’t make a face. “Better than those weak-ass babies in O-three. That’s another thing my civilian friends will never have-real classmates.”

  He nodded. “Very true. And that’s for life, too, no matter if they stay in or get out. In fact, at my twenty-fifth reunion, the most rah-rah people were all the ones who got out after five years. Apparently, there’s something missing out there in civilian life, too.”

  There was another swirl, something fairly big, out in the creek. Tide must be in, he thought. Some big fish is here for some easy pickings.

  “In a way, the Academy’s so artificial,” she said, settling deeper into her chair. “We have all these rules, standards, universal athletics, mostly smart people, profs who all speak clear English, and reasonably ethical people. While my high school friends got summer jobs at Burger King or smoked dope at the beach, we were going all over the world on summer cruise. And we have the next five years wired.”

  “But no money, to speak of.”

  “Yeah, but most of them won’t have much either. The money difference doesn’t get big unti
l five years down the pike. Besides, none of them will get to strap on an F-eighteen Super Hornet and go blasting off a carrier. Money can’t buy that.”

  “Assuming you make it to jets,” he warned. “Not many do.”

  “Hell, Dad, that’s assuming the dant doesn’t change his mind in the next week.” She was quiet for a moment, then turned to look at him. Her face was barely visible in the darkness. “I’m sorry about the lies. Charlottesville. And especially Dyle Booth.”

  Ev nodded in the darkness. “Just don’t do that in the fleet,” he said. “You’ll be an officer. You can’t let go like that anymore. And if anybody puts the squeeze on you, go tell your boss. It’s not all Dark Side out there.”

  She did not reply, and he felt he’d said enough. He was suddenly glad it was dark. He wondered if it was a porpoise out there as something surfaced again, closer to the pier, just out of the dim cone of light from the spots. He could hear it blowing, but not squeaking. They came into the creek sometimes, hunting.

  “I hope so,” Julie said, hugging her knees to her chin. “One of the reasons I turned Tommy off was because of what happened down there at UVA. Plus, I had no one else to tell. What are you looking at?”

  “I wonder if that’s a porpoise out there,” he said, leaning forward to listen. He got up to go investigate. Julie got up, too, following him down to the very end of the dock, where the steps were. Ev tilted one of the boathouse spots down as he reached the end of the dock, aiming it down into the water, where he saw a shimmering white face with a huge mouthful of teeth just below the surface. Julie saw it at the same time and screamed just as Dyle Booth surfaced, ten feet off the dock.

  For a moment, Ev was frozen in place. He distantly heard a screen door slam next door, and then his neighbor, Jack Johnson, called out to them, asking if everything was all right. At that moment, Dyle raised an ugly black government. 45 auto and pointed it at them, drooping the muzzle just enough to drain the water out of it. He was treading water effortlessly, staying just off the dock. He tilted his head in the direction of Johnson’s voice. Ev understood.

  “Yeah, Jack, we’re okay,” Ev called.

  “Thought I heard a scream,” Johnson said. “Is that Julie with you?” His voice carried with perfect clarity across the water. Dyle was grinning again, but that. 45 never wavered. Julie seemed to be still frozen in shock.

  “She got a splinter, Jack. We’re okay.”

  “All right, Just checking. Night, Ev.” The old man went back into his house. Dyle moved a little closer to the dock. He called Julie’s name, and she slowly, very slowly, looked down at him.

  “Thought it was over, didn’t you, TC? Thought you’d dodged a bullet? You forget something, TC? You forget our little deal?”

  Julie swallowed and moved closer to her father, but she didn’t say anything. Ev could feel her trembling. “What the hell do you want, Mr. Booth?”

  “Fuck you, Professor, ” Booth spat back at him, ducking almost all the way back under but keeping the. 45 aimed right between them. “You never gave a shit about me. Thought I was some dumb ass kid. I could see it every time I came in. And your precious little girl there. Too good for the likes of me, right, Julie? Except for that once, huh? You thought it was pretty good that night, didn’t you, baby?” He slapped the water hard. “Look at me when I’m talking to you, bitch!”

  “She wasn’t thinking at all if you gave her Rohypnol, Booth. That how you get your girls? A little better living through chemistry? Couldn’t get any on your own?”

  “Dad, don’t,” Julie murmured, but it was too late, as Dyle stopped his movements in the water and settled back down until only his face and the muzzle of the gun were above water.

  “Tough talk from an old has-been who’s ten feet from the business end of this,” he said, waggling the. 45 and once again drooping the nose to make sure the barrel was dry. “You were Navy once. You do understand I can drop you both in under a second, right?”

  “What the fuck do you want here, Booth?” Ev demanded again, getting angrier by the second. “They know what you did. They know what you are.”

  “What I am? What I am? And just what’s that mean, Professor? You have no idea of what I am.”

  Ev had been trying to think of what to do, but now he just let his brain ride, his old pilot instincts kicking in. He moved ever so slightly to get closer to Julie. “What you are is a piece of shit, Booth,” he said. “A highly polished turd that got by the treatment plant and into the drinking water. You’re a technogeek, right, Booth? A whiz with the computers?” He moved again, not picking up his feet but just willing his body to ooze its way closer to Julie. He didn’t really know what he was going to do, but he was going to do something. Almost there, arm’s length. He felt his leg come up against his scull, which was lying upside down on the dock. “You know what Gee-Go means in computer talk, right, asshole?”

  Booth’s face tightened into a furious rictus. Those huge teeth dominated his entire face. Teeth and burning, clearly insane eyes. Ev was almost to the point of being able to touch Julie, inside of arm’s length now, except the damned boat was in the way. “Gee-go, Booth. You’re the personification of gee-go. G-I-G-O. Garbage in, garbage out. The academy let the barriers down and you slipped over the rim of the bowl like the stinking piece of shit you are, Booth.”

  “Dad, stop it,” Julie wailed. “He means it.”

  “You tell him, TC,” Booth said softly, dipping again into the black water while his other arm oared his body back into position to keep facing them directly. The boat, Ev thought. Use the boat. Booth dipped down into the water again for just an instant, and Ev backhanded Julie with all his might, a sudden blast of adrenaline pumping him so hard that he knocked her off her feet even as he bent down, grabbed the boat, and in one surprisingly smooth thrust slid it directly at the evil face in the water. Booth fired once, a huge, booming shot that slashed the air where Julie’s head had been an instant before, and then, a split second before the prow of the boat hit him in the face, he fired again, and this one caught Ev in the left side of his chest, spinning him around like a dog under a bus. Ev was conscious of being down on his side, down on the edge of the dock, as Julie scrabbled on hands and knees back up the dock, screaming something at Dyle and then for someone to help them. The gun went off again, this round tearing through the decking, splitting one board into pointed fragments that lashed Ev’s face and hands. Ev lifted his head to look back down into the water, but his neck muscles betrayed him and his face sank back down onto the shards of wood.

  Have to get up, he told himself, must get up. He heaved again, trying hard for more air. Something wrong with my lungs. But he managed to get up on his hands and knees, turning deliberately to face the water and ladder, but then Dyle’s glaring face was rising over the edge of the dock. He heard dogs barking somewhere in the background, the sounds of voices, Julie still yelling. He thought he saw lights coming on, but his eyes were focused on Dyle as he came up the ladder. One of Dyle’s eyes was swollen shut and he was bleeding from his nose, where the boat’s sharp prow had hit him squarely, but he was grinning that terrible grin, his open eye focused right on Ev’s face. He stepped up onto the dock, out of the cone of light from the spots, his huge body gleaming, and suddenly he was bending over Ev, grabbing him by the hair and jerking him upward so he could look into Ev’s eyes. Ev grunted as a huge wave of pain washed through his chest, and he heard himself making a gargling noise in his throat.

  “She warned you, old man,” Dyle said softly, struggling to hold Ev up so he could push the nose of the. 45 under Ev’s rib cage. Ev couldn’t do anything except try to breathe. He was having trouble focusing his eyes, and he couldn’t even look up into Dyle’s grinning face because Dyle’s forearm was in the way. He felt Dyle glance sideways up the pier, where Julie was still yelling for help.

  “Goddamn you. We had a deal, bitch, ” he hissed, but Ev didn’t think she could hear him. He felt Dyle pull the hammer back. “Not here to do Jul
ie, you stupid fuck, but you? You don’t count, see?”

  Ev felt his body sagging, and Dyle had to pull harder on his hair to keep his face up.

  “Look at me,” Dyle growled, and Ev tried again to focus. All he could see was a mouthful of teeth, and then he felt his fingers close around a big piece of the shattered dock planking.

  “That’s the Look, Pops. Hold still now, don’t move-don’t want to get anything on me, do we?-and then everything’s gonna be all right.”

  Ev suddenly felt footsteps running back down the pier, and he heard Julie screaming, “No, no. What are you doing?” as Dyle looked over at her and grinned again. Summoning every ounce of strength he had left, Ev stabbed upward with that stiletto-sized splinter, catching Dyle in the belly and, because of the angle, driving all eighteen inches of it right up into Dyle’s heart. For a terrible instant, nothing happened, and he realized he could feel Dyle’s beating heart pulsing through the piece of wood. Then he felt the stub end of the. 45 barrel that had been pressed to his own side fall away, and then Dyle, cross-eyed now, let out a long, wet sigh and collapsed like a huge sack of potatoes, a fountain of blood welling up out of his mouth, past all those devil teeth, until his entire weight was pressing down on top of Ev.

  Goddamn, he thought. I was having enough trouble breathing without this shit. Then there were people, hands, lights, and lots of noise. He heard other voices, familiar voices, more feet pounding down the dock. He thought he heard Julie sobbing. Tried to lift his head, tried to tell her it was okay, that Booth was all done, but from the sounds of it, Julie had clearly lost it. He couldn’t get himself upright because the dock was slippery with all the blood. He even thought he heard Agent Branner yelling something.

  So do something, Ev, a voice in his head was saying. Take charge here. Talk to her. Call her name. Hell, call any name.

  But which name? he wondered dreamily. Julie. Liz. Joanne. Branner? Branner didn’t have a name, now that he thought of it. All these women around him. His own voice was echoing maddeningly in his head. You ought to call one of them, Ev. You really should. This is not time to lose control, not after everything that’s happened. Just say a name. Pick one, Ev. Because if you don’t, you may have to go with Booth.