Back in Black (Awake in the Dark Book 4)

by Tim McBain

  Maybe that means a stairway is nearby, though. I perk up, scanning the walls for signs, eyeballing the doorways with a little more care. I slow down. The gloom is darkest here, a thick gray gauze shrouding everything. I think I see a little light somewhere up ahead.

  The hallway widens into a bigger box at one spot. As I approach, I’m sure this doorway will lead to the staircase. It just looks like the entry to a stairwell.

  Nope. It’s a lab of some kind. It gets a fancy wide hallway spot for reasons unknown.

  I move on, eyes running up and down everything. I even lean into a few doors, popping them open to reveal piles of hospital debris heaped here and there.

  No staircase, though, or at least none that I can see. I move toward that glimmer of lightness in the distance. The clouds of black shadow around me progress to lighter shades, like a painter swirling a touch more white into the blob of gray on his palette. As I draw closer still, the darkness parts enough to reveal the end of the hall. A corner, more precisely, that rounds to the right where the source of illumination appears to reside.

  I move toward it, footsteps still bouncing off of tiled floors, the sounds awash in reverb, muffled by the echoes of themselves. Oddly enough, I feel calm on the approach. My heartbeat slows to something close to normal, and I feel a tingle in my neck and shoulders where the tension has let up. Maybe it’s some biological response to walking out of the dark and into the light, some quirk of humanity that dates back to caveman times, but whatever it is, I feel better.

  Of course, I remember feeling pretty calm as we marched to the altar where Glenn was sacrificed, so what the fuck do I know?

  Chapter 24

  The staircase finally appears around the corner, and windows up and down it make it the most well-lit space I’ve walked through since the front doors. Maybe better, even. Unfortunately, that doesn’t last. See, I’m going down, and there are no windows underground.

  I wind my way down two flights, each step jutting into a darker shade of black. At the bottom, I feel around for the door, walk through it.

  Total blackness occupies the other side as well. OK, this is going to suck. I’m navigating an unknown, empty building that looks like the set of a haunted asylum movie in total darkness.

  So a little of my calmness washes away in the darkness, or maybe a lot of my calmness, I guess, but it could be worse. I keep my hand along the wall, fingertips skimming along the surface, which feels like the cool cinder blocks I remember from before. Periodically, though, the wall cuts off, recessing for a doorway or something, and for a split second, I’m disconnected from my wall, untethered from any sense of place or reality. I reach out into blackness, grasping at nothing. Then my hand finds the wall again, and I keep moving.

  I try to push the thought down, but I can’t: This would be a weird way to die. I imagine the newspaper article: “Man starves to death, lost in pitch black hospital basement, unable to find exit.” It seems possible, though. Right now, I’m pretty sure I could find my way back, but I could get turned around pretty easily or veer the wrong way somewhere.

  The fear blossoms inside of me, in the hollow pounding of my heart, ever faster, in the nauseous quiver in my belly, in the trembling of my hands. That last one in particular worries me. I need to get that under control. I need my hands to obey me, just this once.

  I swallow, and the loudness of my epiglottis ushering spittle down my throat startles me, makes me realize how damn quiet it is down here. My footsteps don’t clatter and echo as loudly as they did upstairs, I guess.

  Maybe I should have called somebody. I could’ve gotten a ride over here from my captors. I doubt there’d be any red carpet, but they probably wouldn’t take me on a wild goose chase through the blackened bowels of the building. I’m guessing I would be back in the cell before long.

  But no, no. Just showing up has its benefit. There’s a certain amount of shock involved in a man showing up a day early for his execution. Farber will read it as a show of strength, as confidence at face value. He will tumble it around, wonder if it’s a bluff. He will want time to think it over.

  And I know who he is deep down. He’s a showman, first and foremost. He wants the crowd to believe.

  Another bolt of excited electricity courses through me, more adrenalin like liquid ice in my veins. And I giggle a little, laughing into the blackness. For this one second, at least, I believe.

  The black nothing is interrupted not by light but by sound. I hear something thumping first, a deep bass punch beating at a steady rhythm. I stop walking to make sure it’s not my heartbeat or some echo to my footsteps. The pounding continues, and I think I can make out some accompanying treble noises with it, but I can’t tell.

  I move forward. Within about nine paces, the hi-hat comes into focus. It chirps. It sounds fake, like a drum machine hi-hat rather than acoustic drums, I mean.

  I remember reading that the human ear is inexplicably sensitive to sounds in that upper frequency range, the hi-hat range in particular. The sensitivity is quite pronounced, in fact. It’s considered biologically significant enough that scientists speculate that we had a predator that made a noise in that range at some point in our evolutionary history. I like to think that pterodactyls shrieked like a hi-hat playing a swing beat, and it scared cavemen shitless.

  I walk a few more paces, and the snare and bass fade in together. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy to hear a shitty rap song from the early 90’s. But it’s not the song that pleases me, of course. It’s the fact that people are closer and closer, real live human beings that wait for me at the end of my path. Sure, sure, they will probably lock me up at once, and their stated goal is ending my life, but the prospect of human connection remains a relief after this time in the dark.

  I shuffle forward, and the wall falls away beside me. I grope for it, wrist flopping like a fish, fingers squirming like squid legs. The music seems louder still, and my heart beats a little faster. I can’t find where the wall resumes. I just keep reaching into empty space.

  Hm... I take a couple of steps back, and my shoulder collides with the corner. Ah. That makes sense. I round the corner into a hallway that runs at a right angle from the direction I was going before, at least I think so. Confusing as hell down here.

  I stagger toward the music, my steps turning a little jerky now, I guess out of fear of falling or running into something. I imagine what I must look like doing this silly walk. I like to think it’s like a frightened dog, stepping on a mirror, or maybe a cat with something stuck to their feet. Definitely an animal. I can tell you that much.

  Light. A sliver of light stretches over the floor, a beam of hope and dreams and awesome. I realize that my mouth is open, and little puffs of silent laughter roll out of it in spurts. So yeah. Pretty happy about this ray of light.

  As I close in on the illumination, though, I see that it’s not a beam. It’s wider than that, a rectangle of glow peeking out from underneath a door and spreading wider until it hits the opposite wall. I guess that would mean it’s not a rectangle. What the hell shape would that be? A rhombus or a trapezoid or something. I don’t know. One of those dumb shapes nobody cares about.

  Anyway, I come up to the light, see it shine upon my shoes and ankles. The music blares just on the other side of this room. This huge wave of relief washes over me to be so close to people again. And yet, I’m not relaxed. I am shaking. The loud music and light seems so stimulating after my time in the black emptiness. I am also about to turn myself over to people that mean to kill me and have confirmed that notion out loud.

  I take a few deep breaths, willing the tremble afflicting my hands to die down. It’s hard to tell if it makes any difference. I step forward and push open the door.

  Chapter 25

  As the door flings open, and I set foot in the room, I get one second of clarity. Before the light attacks me and forces my eyes shut, I see her. She sits in the cell. The same one Glenn cracked open and walked out of what feels like a long
time ago. She sits on the bed with the sandpaper blanket draped around her legs. It is a little chilly in here, actually. She looks calm. Quiet. In the flash that I get a glimpse of her, she doesn’t look my way.

  So Ms. Babinaux is OK. I figured they’d keep their word, but it’s still good to confirm this fact.

  I stop, about a stride and a half into the room, eyes clamped shut, bent over at the waist with my hands shrouding my face like these things could help my pupils adjust to the florescent bulbs faster or something. And tears come to my eyes. Not a lot. Just a little touch of water. I think it’s more from the pain of the brightness than the feelings inside of me, but this is more emotional than I would have guessed. Exiting the darkness, seeing Babinaux.

  “Whoa,” a man’s voice says. It sounds like it’s off to my right. It’s deep. Rough. I don’t recognize it.

  The speakers pop once, and the music cuts off.

  “Fuck you doing here?” he says.

  I can’t tell if he’s getting closer. He might be.

  I try to force my eyes open a crack, but they won’t budge. I step back, my back touching the place where the door and the wall meet.

  “Oh, shit,” he says. “You’re him... aren’t you?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I’m him.”

  “Damn, dude,” he says. “You’re early, right? You weren’t supposed to get here until tomorrow morning.”

  “Don’t say anything,” Babinaux says, an edge in her voice.

  I don’t really get what she means. If anything, isn’t that a suspicious thing to say? Maybe she thinks the room is being monitored or recorded or something. I don’t know.

  I feel his hand on my arm, and then he yanks it behind me, twisting my wrist up against my back. I stand up straight to prevent him from breaking bones.

  I force my eyes open, but they snap shut after a fraction of a second. All I see is Babinaux standing, her hands wrapped around the bars. She looks afraid now, her eyes wide, her mouth open.

  He grabs my other arm, jerks it toward the first, and I hear a familiar sound, feel something cinched tight around my wrists, pulling them closer together. Ah, yes. Zip-tie handcuffs.

  “This way,” he says.

  There’s a click, and he yanks me by the elbow. We push through the door, out in the hallway, heading back the way I came. I peel my eyelids apart, and see that it’s light out here, but dim. This is good. The florescent bulbs come on slowly, the brightness creeping up in slow motion. I open my eyes as wide as possible to try to help my pupils adjust, but they keep retreating into a squint. It’s a little weird to see all of this after traversing it in blackness. The cinder block walls I recall, though they’re sort of a light yellow now. When I last saw them the world was black and white down here.

  I’m less focused on the color scheme, though, and more concerned with the large man dragging me to an unknown destination. He looks like a big biker dude, a black bandanna draped over his forehead. He’s one of those guys that isn’t all toned and tanned and bulky looking but still stands about a man-and-a-half wide in the shoulders, really fills up a door frame, all lean and wiry with a scowl on his face and sunken eyes and cheekbones. Huge hands, too. In my experience, the guys who look like this solve their problems with their hands. They also tend to knock out the body-builder types quick as hell.

  So I don’t know where we’re headed. This wasn’t part of the plan, but I knew I’d need to improvise. I think about what Glenn would do. He’d be indignant about something.

  “Where are you taking me?” I say. “This wasn’t part of the deal. I was told the woman would be let go once I turned myself in.”

  “Relax,” he says. “We’re not going anywhere... final. I just need to make a phone call.”

  I spot the cell phone in his left hand. He must not get reception down here. Interesting.

  “Well, this wasn’t part of the arrangement,” I say. “I don’t like it.”

  “I will file your complaint with the appropriate superiors,” he says, rolling his eyes. “In the meantime, shut up.”

  He glares at me, and I realize how incongruent his face is, one eye drooped in an unsettling way that makes him even scarier. The mild deformity gives him a well-preserved zombie feel.

  So I take his advice and shut up. Who wants to piss off a huge zombie, right?

  We take a left into a wider hallway. He keeps checking the phone every few seconds, hoping to see bars I’m guessing he knows won’t be there until we’re upstairs. I feel the wheels and gears spinning in my head, looking for a way to squeeze this piece into my puzzle. Nothing springs to mind, but hopefully I’ll have time to mull it.

  We hit the stairway and climb up two flights, me struggling to keep up with this mutant villain from a comic book movie. We stop on the landing, and he looks at the phone and grunts, perhaps satisfied.

  He thumbs a couple of buttons and brings the phone to his ear.

  “He’s here,” he says. “Yeah. It’s him.”

  There’s a pause.

  “Yeah, I don’t know. Guess he’s early,” he says.

  He looks at me, almost like he wants encouragement, wants me to back him up that I’m early, and it’s not his fault. I flick my eyes away to look out the window. I give him no support on this matter.

  “Nah, I’m not that stupid. He’s here with me. I cuffed him and drug his ass all the way up the stairs,” he says. “They didn’t get a chance to talk or anything like that.”

  Another pause. He nods.

  “Yeah, I understand,” he says. “I got it.”

  He hangs up the phone.

  Chapter 26

  “What’s with the early entrance, dude?” he says. “Look, I get wanting to save the lady, but I’d be out eating a last meal, a few drinks, a few ladies. Know what I mean?”

  I scrunch my eyebrows together.

  “You know what? You’re right,” I say. “Mind if I take off?”

  He laughs one of those laughs that stutters out like a cough at first, like the person is trying to hold it in and can’t. Sort of sounds like a car starting, I think.

  So yeah. I may not slay this beast with violence, but he’s no match for my wit. If only irony could be used to settle conflicts or inflict injury.

  Sigh.

  We near the door.

  “So here’s how this is going to work,” he says. “I’m going to take you in there and lock you in your cell. And then I’m going to free the lady. You’re not going to say a word. You’re not going to so much as look at her. When she is gone, you will be free to speak, and you and I will take care of some other matters. Understand?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  I’m a little surprised there wasn’t any kind of threat, maybe even disappointed. I was kind of hoping for something graphic.

  “Good,” he says. “If you mess up, you’ll spend the last hours of your life shitting shards of your broken teeth into a bucket. Not how I’d want to spend my final hours, but it’s up to you.”

  There we go. Not bad at all. It also seems to imply that I’ll have time. However long it takes for teeth shards to work their way through my digestive tract, that is. I try not to get my hopes up. I can’t help but smile, though, and he looks over at me before I can conceal it.

  “Jesus, kid,” he says. “I heard stories about you, but I mean, damn. You have the sickest sense of humor. You know that?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” I say.

  “Laughing on the way to the gallows,” he says, though his voice is quiet and trails off in a way that suggests he is saying it more to himself than me.

  For a second I wonder if he means that literally about the gallows. I suppose I might find out soon enough.

  He pushes through the door, dragging me behind him. I fight the urge to look at Babinaux, though I see her rise out of the corner of my eye.

  “Shut it, lady,” he says, pointing a finger in her direction. “You’re getting out thanks to your friend here, but you won’t be conversing with him or
any such nonsense unless you want to see his teeth get knocked down his throat.”

  I’m telling you, this League has one of the strictest fraternizing policies I’ve encountered to date. I want to say this out loud, but I want to not shit my teeth even more. I kind of like that he cleaned that remark up for her, though. A gentleman.

  He tosses me into the cell and clanks it shut behind me. Then he pulls up the key chain that’s attached to his belt on a retractable cable. It makes a zipping noise as he brings it to the lock on Babinaux’s cell door. He turns it. The bolt jangles and clangs, and the door swings free.

  “Let’s go,” he says, holding the door.

  She passes through the opening, coming out from behind the bars and into the open. He grips her left forearm and leads the way out of the room. She doesn’t look back, but her right hand jerks into motion. Her index finger points down at the floor three times with what I would call great emphasis.

  So...

  What the hell is that supposed to mean?

  I take a step back, planning to turn to sit on the cot. Instead, my foot lands on something solid, something that scrapes against the floor audibly. The sound makes me imagine bird talons clawing at concrete.

  I move my foot. A flathead screwdriver rests there. So there’s no way I could screwdriver stab my way out of this, but that could be useful. Did Babinaux slide it into my cell? That could be why she pointed down. How did she know which cell would be mine, though? I look around. I suppose the other doors were locked. This one was open. Made it the most likely option. Interesting.

  Either way, it’s another puzzle piece to mull. I’ve got to pop all of these pieces into place at some point.

  The mutant biker comes back in, all smiles. He reaches into his jeans, pulls out a pocket knife and unfolds it. With the opposite hand, he wags his finger in a circle like he’s stirring an invisible drink.