Void

by D Haltinner

  Darren climbed to his feet on the mildew stained tiles and bent down to offer his hand to Audrey to help her out of the shaft. She stepped clear of the hatch and Darren shut it while trying not to make a single noise.

  “I’m surprised no one’s noticed that hatch here,” Audrey said.

  Darren pointed to an engraved sign riveted to the surface of the hatch: WARNING-Extreme temperatures below. Stay out for risk of death.

  “I guess that’d scare most people off,” Audrey said.

  “I don’t think most people go exploring around locker rooms anyways,” Darren said.

  “I know I don’t.”

  “Me either.”

  Audrey looked down passed the aisles of lockers. “I’m surprised it’s empty.”

  “It’s the weekend. All the doors are probably locked.”

  “They leave the pool, weight room, and all the aerobic equipment available on the weekends.”

  “I never knew that.”

  “Maybe you should work out more.”

  “After the last few days, that’s the last thing on my mind.”

  “Mine too.”

  Darren glanced back at the hatch. “We should get out of here before the men decide to follow us up here.”

  “You think they will?”

  “If our footprints ended below the hatch, I’m positive they will.”

  “They might not.”

  “I don’t want to stand here and wait to find out.”

  “No, I suppose that wouldn’t be the best idea.”

  “Come on, we’ll find somewhere to hide out of sight.”

  Darren led the way past the aisles of lockers, glancing down each line of benches to be sure that no one saw them. It wasn’t until they passed the line of sinks and moved toward the door that a girl walked out of the showers toweling off her hair.

  She screamed when she saw Darren. Her scream was high pitched, but Darren hoped it wasn’t loud enough to penetrate the steel door of the tunnel for the men pursuing them to hear.

  The girl slapped a hand between her thighs and lowered her towel over her breasts reddened by the heat of the showers. She turned and ran back to the showers, her blonde hair slapping her bare back, the butterfly tattooed just above her butt cheeks flapping its wings as the muscles flexed.

  “You really know how to get a girl’s clothes off, don’t you,” Audrey said.

  Darren realized he was still staring after the girl, and snapped his eyes back to Audrey as his cheeks began to grow redder as the heat in them increased.

  Audrey laughed. “Don't worry about it,” she said. “Now get moving before the men come.”

  “I’m sure she’d love to see the men after our little confrontation,” Darren said.

  “Probably.”

  Darren reached the door, held it open for Audrey, and followed her out into the hallway of the athletic center, in search of somewhere to hide from their pursuers.

  Chapter 52

  Darren and Audrey stood in a darkened classroom halfway down the hall from the locker room they crawled out of. Empty desks and posters surrounded them, depicting the names of muscles Darren never knew he had, watching out the glass of the window in the door. They waited in the dark, hoping that if the men did venture out of the hatch and into the hallway, they would not see Darren’s face hidden behind the veil of dark while Audrey stood behind the door and out of the way.

  “See anything?” Audrey asked.

  “Not yet,” Darren said, his nose hovering just before the glass, leaving streaks of fog from his breathing that vanished a second later as the moisture was sucked into the dry air around them.

  “I wonder why they’re taking so long.”

  “Probably trying to see if we decided to hide inside of a locker or behind a toilet.”

  A familiar scream came from down the hall.

  “Guess they found our friend,” Audrey said.

  A second later the door flew open and the girl with the butterfly tattoo ran out of the locker room, her hair still drenched, dressed in pants and a lace bra with a sweatshirt and towel clutched in her hands. She disappeared out of sight in the opposite direction.

  “She just ran out, and she didn’t look too happy,” Darren said.

  “Would you be happy if girls kept bursting in on you as you tried to change?”

  “Well-”

  “Never mind.”

  The locker room door opened, and two men walked out. One was the balding man with his comb over knocked askew. The other was the architecture professor, Lasser, with his eyes narrowed into a look so serious that no James Bond actor would ever be able to pull it off.

  The pair of men said something to each other, then the balding man headed down the hallway the same way the girl ran, a flashlight in his hand. Lasser headed toward the classroom that Audrey and Darren were hiding in.

  Darren pulled his head back into the darkness further before the professor would be able to see it.

  “What?” Audrey asked in a hoarse whisper.

  “They split up, one’s coming this way.”

  “Then get down!”

  Darren ducked below the glass inserted into the door. He turned his head to watch the square of light on the floor that passed through the windows from the hallway, waiting for the shape of a man’s head to break the stillness.

  Audrey reached out and laid her hand on Darren’s shoulder. Her touch had the ability to shut out most of Darren’s nervousness the moment she reached his body, but his armpits were floodgates impossible to control. The shirt below his jacket was stuck to his skin all the way down to where his elbows reached, but at least it didn’t smell-yet.

  The room grew dark. Darren was too distracted by Audrey’s hand that he had taken his eyes off of the square of light, but when he turned to look at it now, all that was left was a few slivers outlining the top three sides, the rest blocked by Lasser’s head as he peered into the room.

  Maybe he’d think it was locked and empty and continue on his way down the hall.

  Or he might try the door and look inside himself.

  Darren’s eyes searched for the door handle in the dark. The room hadn’t been locked, that’s how he and Audrey had gotten inside, but that meant that the professor would have no problem opening the door either.

  Darren fumbled in the dark with one hand for the handle as his heart raced. If the professor found the handle first, he and Audrey would either have to overpower the man or sneak past him in order to make a run for it. Darren’s body was so exhausted from the lack of sleep he’s been getting and from the day’s adventures already that he wasn’t sure he would he able to outrun the professor. Darren wasn’t in the best physical shape of his life after all-he wasn’t fat, his muscles were just designed for nothing more strenuous than a walk across campus once an hour.

  Darren’s flailing hand found the handle. He brought the other to it, just as it began to turn, and he held the level as still as he could with both hands.

  The handle wiggled in his hands without much strength, then stopped. The square of light burst back onto the floor a moment later.

  Darren stood up as slow as he could bare and peered out the glass. The professor was walking away again, moving toward the men’s locker room at the corner before it opened up into the indoor gymnasium.

  “Is he still out there?” Audrey asked.

  “He’s walking away.”

  “Are we going to make a run for it?”

  “Where would we run to? They’re blocking both ways down the hall.”

  “I though we would be going back into the hatch.”

  “Back in? But what if there’s another one of them waiting below?” Darren said. “Or both?”

  “I don’t think there is,” Audrey said.

  “Your gut?”

  “No, I only saw one flashlight behind us, and I doubt that more than two could have traveled very well with only that one light.”

  “I suppose you’re right," Darren said. T
he other guy was still holding the light when he went off the other way down the hall. “I doubt they’d leave someone down in the dark.”

  “Probably not.”

  Darren peered back around the window, trying to see as far as he could down the hallway. “Looks like he’s out of sight.”

  “Let’s go before we change our minds.”

  Darren opened the door a crack, stuck his head out to be sure neither man was in sight, then opened the door the rest of the way and led her back down to the locker room.

  After the door to the locker room closed behind them, Audrey said: “That was easier than I though it would be.”

  “Well, let’s get out of here quick, because I don’t want it to get any more difficult than it already is.”

  “Fine by me.”

  Darren and Audrey walked back to the hatch and Darren hesitated a second, looking down at the hatch but seeing a manhole cover stamped with the badge of Neenah Foundry. He shook his head and lifted it open for Audrey as she slid herself into the darkness. Darren dropped himself in and climbed back up to close the steel door behind them, trapping them into darkness.

  Audrey turned her light on, casting a circle of light across the wall of the tunnel. She swung it down the tunnel they had come from, and seeing nothing unusual, dropped the beam to the floor, illuminating the mass of tracks made in the thick dust that had covered every square inch until it was disturbed.

  Darren fished his own flashlight out and clicked it on. “Let’s get moving before they come back.”

  “Think they will?”

  “Eventually they’ll have to.”

  Audrey nodded then led the way back down the tunnel.

  A minute later and they reached the base of the cement steps and stepped into the massive tunnel below the road. Darren followed the four sets of footprints with his flashlight beam south it as Audrey made her way to the trench in the center of the tunnel.

  “I think I see the other tunnel that must head back east.” Audrey said.

  Darren came back around to join her. “There’s a ledge over there if you don’t want to jump over the trench again.”

  “I think that’s a good idea.”

  Audrey moved to the wall at the north end of the tunnel and walked across to the other side before Darren made his own way across. The pair ventured over to the stairs climbing up to the next stretch of tunnel and began to climb upwards.

  Audrey’s head lolled from side to side as she climbed, her perma-smile eradicated from her face. Her aura of joy had diminished earlier in the day, leaving her in a more solemn mood that was more unnatural than the void itself.

  These tunnels were getting to both of them. The danger was increasing by the minute, and no amount of sleep could repair the mental and physical wear and tear they had been putting themselves through.

  But if they didn’t stop what would happen before Tuesday, who would? No one else even knew about it, and with the group of men trying to stop Darren and Audrey now, Darren wasn’t even sure how they could hope to succeed anymore. He just wanted to give up and get out of Redfern with Audrey at his side, but she refused to leave. She refused to give up, no matter how much it drained from her.

  They reached the top of the stairs and continued down another stretch of tunnel in silence, hearing nothing but their own breathing and the occasional scuff of a shoe on the cement.

  “There,” Audrey said after a minute’s walk.

  Darren raised his flashlight off the floor and matched his aim to Audrey’s. Up ahead was what looked like an intersection and according to the map, the path to the right heading back in the direction of the library, while the left led into a small room they were in search of.

  Audrey led the charge ahead and into the small room.

  Small was right, it was no bigger than ten by ten feet, more like a closet than anything else. Glass jars of water lined along one wall, some of them broken as time thinned out the top of the containers. Stacks of blankets sat beside a large box filled with simple white candles like those found in the first room. Beside that were more boxes containing cans of food and bags made of burlap. On a small wooden table sat three revolvers and a spilled box of ammunition.

  “It almost looks like someone was planning a stand off,” Audrey said.

  “What the hell was going on?” Darren asked. “Was this all for the void?”

  “I would assume so.”

  “What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?”

  “Something bigger then either of us realize.”

  “I’d say. Guns?”

  Audrey walked over to the revolvers laying out and picked one up, shaking most of the dust off and onto the floor. “Jeez it’s heavy.”

  Darren didn’t know a thing about guns. He could tell the difference between a .22bullet and a .44, but these bullets were longer than any he’d seen before, and somewhere in between the two sizes he knew.

  “Just be careful,” Darren said.

  Audrey fidgeted with the gun, unsure of what she was doing, and the cartridge fell open. “It looks loaded.”

  “That’s why you should be careful.”

  Audrey flicked her wrist and the gun flipped closed with a metallic clink.

  “Have you ever fired a gun before?” Darren asked.

  “No, have you?”

  Audrey looked at the piece of steel in her hand. It was almost twice as big as her hand, and the handle stuck out more than an inch below her fist. “It’s bigger than I thought it would be.”

  “They come in all sizes,” Darren said. “Now set it down.”

  “What if we need it?”

  “For what? I don’t want to shoot anyone.”

  “We might need it for that thing in the void.”

  Darren hadn’t even considered that possibility, but after what happened to Jack, it seemed like it could be a very real option that they might need them after all.

  “You do have a point.”

  “Here,” Audrey said, handing the one in her hand to Darren. “Put two in your backpack with the rest of the bullets.”

  “What about the third one?”

  “I’ll hold onto it. Just in case.”

  Darren took the gun Audrey held out for him. The handle was cold, sending a shiver up his arm when he gripped it. It was as heavy as a human head, the exterior dull from dust and time. It felt wrong to be holding something so deadly, but Audrey may be right about needing it in the void, so Darren shrugged the back pack off his shoulders and slid the gun inside and began to shovel in the bullets spread across the table.

  Just to be safe, Darren fished each gun back out, opened it, and dumped the bullets out that were already loaded in it. He didn’t want to get shot in the back if he fell or bumped the backpack against something too hard.

  Audrey checked out another revolver, blew the dust off of it, and tucked it into the waist band of her pants as Darren emptied and stored the other gun into the bag.

  “Please be careful with that,” Darren said.

  “I will, don’t worry so much,” Audrey said.

  “Easier said than done.”

  Audrey walked past the cans of food, wiping her fingers across the label. “Beans, wonderful.”

  “I hope you don’t plan on eating those.”

  “God no,”

  “Good. Those cans look old enough that they’d probably give you some nasty gas.”

  “Real funny.”

  “I try.”

  Audrey bent down to the burlap sack and looked for an opening. “I wonder what they had in here.”

  “Probably rice.”

  Audrey poked at the side of the bag. “It’s some sort of powder.”

  “Just open it up then.”

  Audrey found a weak spot on top and tore the bag wide enough for her hand to fit into it. She lifted out a black powder that ran through her fingers and spilled down the bag and mixed into the dust covering the floor. “Gun powder.”

  “Why would there be a bag of
gunpowder just sitting here?” Darren said. “That seems rather dangerous, doesn’t it?”

  “There’s nothing around here to ignite it,” Audrey said, dumping the rest of the powder back into the bag. “Nothing to spark, no fire, nothing to even create static.”

  “I suppose not, but why have it here anyways?”

  “Got me with that one.”

  Darren’s mind flipped back to the last place he saw gun powder. “We never did figure out why there was gun powder circling those two chairs either,” Darren said. “Think there’s any relation?”

  “Maybe,” Audrey said, standing back up. “But I don’t have any idea what it would he.”

  “Why have gunpowder at all? It seems rather worthless to have down here, doesn’t it?”

  Audrey shrugged and continued walking across the room, stopping to look through the blankets stacked up.

  “I mean, you lay out a circle of gun powder, light it, and what do you get?”

  “Fire.”

  “Yeah, fire. And sparks, and smoke. Why would you want that? In fireworks they pack the powder in to cause an explosion, but just tossing it around does nothing that I can see.”

  “Whoever brought it down there must have known something that we don’t.”

  “It does seem that way.”

  “And they planned a lot further in advance than we did,” Audrey said, bending down to pick up a shred of broken glass.

  “It looks like they planned on being down here for the long haul.”

  “It does.”

  “I wonder-”

  “Hey, look at this” Audrey said. She reached into a gap between two of the glass jugs of water.

  “What is it?”

  Audrey’s arm cam back holding a liquor bottle, a clear liquid splashing against the sides. The neck of the bottle looked thin from age, but it appeared intact, the seal unbroken. Audrey wiped off the label held against her light up to it. “Bacardi,” she said. “Jeez the bottle looks old.”

  “They say aged liquor is best,” Darren said.

  “Aged in casks, not glass,” Audrey said. “I don’t like to drink, but right now this looks rather tempting.”