by Hines
And he did; he’d scouted this construction site previously, and it offered a good back door to the nearby Metro tunnels.
He made his way to the giant hole in the street and climbed down the rungs on one of the ladders; at the bottom, he nodded a greeting to a man hefting a jackhammer as he disappeared into the darkness at the back of the underground compartment.
Five minutes later, he was inside the security walkway for the tunnel, knowing overhead cams were picking up his images but betting his construction hard hat would hide his face and identify him as someone at work.
He made his way down the catwalk, opened the AUTHORIZED ENTRY ONLY door, and went directly to the restroom inside the station to lose the hard hat.
After that, he stood on the platform with about a dozen other people, waiting. He looked at the schedule; he’d have to take the Green Line down south several stops, and the next train was still about five minutes away.
He pulled out the TracFone again, dialed Sarea’s number. He hung up once the message started to play, then waited patiently, keeping his head down and looking at the ground directly at his feet.
Yes, he’d been by Sarea’s apartment. Never inside it, of course, but he’d dreamed of it, hadn’t he? He’d imagined the interior of her place, pictured himself under her bed, just a few feet away from where she slept, listening to the sound of her breathing as if it were a metronome.
Even now, that thought excited him as much as it shamed him. He wasn’t one of the Creep Club, not in name. But was he any different?
It’s a drug, he heard Donavan’s voice say. Once it’s in your veins, you need more.
At last the train pulled to the platform, pushing away his dark thoughts in its wake. He waited for the doors to open and walked on with several other passengers after a few people exited.
The doors closed behind him; the train began to move away from the station. Ten stops to Anacostia, the stop nearest Sarea’s apartment complex in southeast DC. How long would that take? Fortyfive minutes? Maybe longer?
Too long. Far too long.
He needed to take a cab. He should have tried that first, but his brain still felt thick and gelatinous, in shock after seeing Sarea’s photo on the Blackboard. The Metro was home to him, and the place his feet automatically carried him when he wasn’t thinking.
At the next stop, he slid out the doors and sprinted for the stairs. At street level, he went directly to the curb and hailed a cab.
The driver looked at him without interest, but nodded when he gave an address.
“How fast can you get there?” Lucas asked.
“How fast you wanna get there?” the cabbie asked.
“Fast as Benjamin Franklin can go,” he said, pulling out the last hundred-dollar bill he had on him. He’d probably die later today anyway, and he couldn’t take the money with him.
The driver smiled and put the pedal to the metal.
In the backseat, Lucas tried to make himself relax, but it felt as if more than his mind was betraying him. His muscles were shaky and overworked, and his eyes felt as if they’d been dipped in alcohol. What was wrong?
He closed his eyes, concentrated, began forcing his body to go into its deep relaxation state. He needed to be as alert as possible now. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Block out all outside stimuli, concentrate on nothing but the Dark Vibration inside.
After a few minutes, when his heart rate matched the thrumming of the Dark Vibration, he let the outside world begin to filter back in. But now, his senses were heightened. First, touch. He felt the seat beneath him, fabric flaking off, worn padding deep inside. He felt the cold plastic of the armrest on the door, the minute crack in the handle. Next, smells filtered into his consciousness: old leather, oil from the overworked cab engine, spicy food lingering in the car’s interior.
He turned up the sound, listening as cars and traffic whirled around them, as the cab’s radio squawked something about a stop by police officers, as the brakes of the cab squeaked, as the cabbie said, “This’ll just be a minute.”
Finally, Lucas opened his eyes, knowing even before he opened them that the cab had slowed and was pulling to the side of the road. Colors were richer now, details brighter. His body was completely relaxed, his heart rate only thirty beats per minute, as he casually turned his head and saw the police cruiser, siren flashing, just off their back bumper.
He knew, without having to think about it, what was happening. Someone had seen him. Perhaps on the train, perhaps getting into the cab. Perhaps the cabbie himself had made a call to authorities.
Who said publicity didn’t work?
He watched the faces of the officers as the cab slowed to a stop, and in his heightened state, Lucas knew he must act immediately, before the cab and the police cruiser stopped. Once they were parked, the police would be out of the car, guns drawn, holding back nothing in their effort to apprehend a suspect wanted for the murders of several people. No matter which side of the cab he chose to make his escape at that point, he would be trapped.
He slid across the seat to his right, pulled the knob to disengage the door lock, and yanked the lever to open the door. As he did this, he folded his body into a ball, rolling as he hit the pavement.
Coming out of the roll, he rose and ran on the balls of his feet, moving quickly across the sidewalk as shocked faces stopped to look at the man who had just jumped from a cab and was now running full speed.
But that world was in slow motion, and Lucas, in his heightened state, was moving at double time. Even before he’d leaned out of the cab door, even before he’d tucked into his roll, he’d picked his first target: an alley half a block away. He moved quickly, changing direction as he bobbed through the crowd of pedestrians.
Behind him, he heard one of the police officers command him to stop, but he was ahead, so far ahead of them, darting down the alley.
He could slip into one of the Dumpsters here in the alley, yes, but that would be expected, wouldn’t it? Instead, he found a back door to some kind of restaurant—an Italian restaurant working on today’s lunch specials, his heightened sense of smell told him before he’d even reached the door—and he slipped through it.
The officers would have backup on the way now, perhaps even on the scene, and they would expect him to go through the restaurant, find his way to the street at the front.
And so he did.
He ran through the restaurant, screamed a hasty “Where’s the front door?” at one of the surprised workers, kept going without waiting for an answer. He found his way to the front door, stopped, turned down the small hallway on his right, and ducked into the men’s restroom.
Because it was still morning, and the restaurant was a few hours away from opening, he had the restroom to himself. He scanned the area, looking for the room’s weaknesses. An exposed industrial ceiling, with a giant pipe for the air return running the whole length of the room. No tile to hide above.
He looked at the sink. A small vanity, but probably too small even for him. There were two stalls, of course, but those would be the first things inspected.
He looked at the giant overhead pipe again. Maybe it could work. He probably had two minutes or so before the cops figured out he hadn’t slipped out the front of the building, and then another couple until they searched the bathroom.
Lucas went into one of the stalls, checked the distances. After a few moments of calculating, he stepped onto the toilet and launched himself at the wall behind it, at the same time bending to catch the top of the stall’s iron divider. Now his body formed a crude triangle, with his feet wedged on the back wall and his hands grasping the divider. Slowly, he walked his feet up the wall until he’d reached the height of the divider, then he brought his bottom leg to the top of the divider while his top leg still held his weight. Quickly, he took his foot off the wall and transferred his weight; he tottered dangerously for a few seconds, but then he had the foot on the stall under him, and he was able to regain his bala
nce and stand on the divider like a tightrope walker. He edged to the front of the stall.
He couldn’t quite reach the pipe, but he was able to grasp one of its ceiling brackets with both hands. Stepping off the door of the bathroom stall, he swung his body up and onto the pipe like a high jumper going over a bar belly first. When he landed on the pipe, he felt the ceiling brackets shift a bit, but they held. Dust from the top of the air return filtered down to the floor, but after a few seconds, the air was clear again.
Lucas hugged the top of the pipe, waiting. Finally, he heard someone come in the front door of the restaurant, yelling something at the workers. The voice moved closer until he was able to make out the last few words: “. . . sure he went out that way?”
One of the officers, he knew, coming to check the bathroom. Lucas turned himself to his side, putting his hand against the ceiling above and wedging himself on top of the pipe. The pipe’s width would hide his form, unless the police officer moved far to either side of the pipe and examined the ceiling. He hoped that wouldn’t happen.
He heard the door squeak open. “Give it up now, son.” Lucas waited, remaining quiet. He heard the officer’s shoes squeak on the fake tile of the bathroom floor, but couldn’t see what was happening: the pipe blocked his view of what happened below as much as it blocked the floor-level view of his own body.
A couple more steps, and then the shoes squeaking more. Metal—handcuffs, maybe—jangled on the officer as he turned.
A few seconds later, one of the stall doors below slammed open. Then the next. More footsteps, going toward the sink, checking the vanity cupboard.
Lucas heard a deep sigh, a muttered curse under the breath. Finally the officer spoke. “This is Fisher. All clear in the men’s restroom.”
A crackling voice answered Fisher, indicating the women’s restroom was clear. Another reported the kitchen search was in progress.
Lucas heard the door to the bathroom swing open again, then begin to whisk shut.
Unfortunately, that’s when the TracFone in his pocket started to ring.
THIRTY
03:42:41 REMAINING
The bathroom door swung open again, and the officer’s voice bellowed, “Show yourself.”
The phone rang once more. He was sure it was Sarea—he had to move to silence it—which would give up his location. And doing nothing would let the phone continue ringing, which would also give up his location.
He said, lowly and clearly, “I’m going to answer the phone.”
“No, you’re not. You’re going to show yourself.”
Lucas slid his pack around, found the phone, and fished it out. At the same time, he grabbed one of the ceiling brackets with one hand and slid himself down to a hanging position before dropping to the floor.
The police officer, a large, beefy man who was breathing heavily behind red cheeks, looked at him with his mouth agape.
The caller ID showed Sarea’s number calling back, so he pressed the Answer button. “Sarea, listen. This is Lucas.”
On the other end of the line, a voice that wasn’t Sarea’s interrupted. “Lucas. What a wonderful name. Much better than Humpty.” He recognized the terrifying voice immediately. Hondo. “Sarea can’t come to the phone right now. She’s a bit tied up.”
Lucas glanced at the police officer, who was pointing something at him, something that wasn’t a gun, and screaming for him to get facedown on the ground now.
In his ear, Hondo’s voice came again. “Sarea needs you, Lucas,” he said, emphasizing his name carefully. “You know where she lives, don’t you?”
“Listen, if you—” But that was all Lucas got out, because he saw something coming from the thing the police officer was holding, something that looked like a tiny dart on a wire, and then the tiny dart-thing was on his chest, and then a huge wave of white static overwhelmed him and he was falling, falling, falling, and as he was falling he was smelling something like an electrical short, yes, an electrical short filled with white static.
And the white static turned into black pain.
03:22:03 REMAINING
When he awoke, he thought he was still dreaming, remixing his moments in the back of Snake’s car. His hands were bound behind him, and he was traveling in the backseat of a car to . . . somewhere he didn’t know.
So yes, he had to be dreaming, because all of this had happened to him before, he knew. Soon Clarice would pull over and let him out of the back of the car, and they would be at the giant church with the Blackboard.
He opened his eyes, saw the wire cage separating him from the officers sitting in the front seat of the police cruiser.
No dream. And he definitely wasn’t going to a church.
He would be taken into police custody, thrown into a small room for a couple hours, questioned for several more, then booked and thrown into a jail cell until he could post bond.
Unfortunately, by that time, Sarea would be attacked by Hondo and the remaining members of the Creep Club would want revenge because they thought he had killed Snake, Clarice, and Kennedy. After all, the papers had said as much.
Even his own eyes said so—he’d seen the shooter.
On top of that, he would be dead because his leg would explode some time in the next few hours. Maybe while he sat in the interrogation room.
His mouth tasted like he’d been chewing on ashes from a fireplace, and his ears rang with a slow, steady roar.
“What . . .” he creaked, but his voice barely came in a whisper. He cleared his throat, swallowed a few times, tried again as the police officer riding shotgun—the beefy one who had shot him—turned to look.
“What did you do to me?” he asked.
Beefy Cop smiled. “I tased ya.”
Tased, tased, tased. Suddenly, an image came to his mind, a young man being held by police officers and pleading, “Don’t tase me, Bro.”
A taser. Yes, Lucas was familiar with the contraption, something of a stun gun that pumped several thousand volts of electricity through the intended victim, incapacitating said victim for several minutes.
“Count yourself lucky,” Beefy Cop said. “We had orders. Been up to me, I woulda shot you with the .38.”
“Well,” Lucas said, working his jaw a bit more. “Lucky me.”
They drove in silence for a few more minutes, and as they did, Lucas’s despair grew. His eyes scanned the cruiser’s interior, and his mind turned over every possibility he could think of. Force the car to crash? No; the mesh cage and handcuffs prevented that from happening. Unlock the car door and slip out, the way he’d been able to do in the cab? No chance; he knew the doors of these police cruisers couldn’t be unlocked from the back. A careful look at the windows of the cruiser showed the glass was reinforced, which ruled out spinning to his back and kicking the glass—something he doubted could easily be done even with regular auto glass.
With no viable options available, he would have to wait until they got to the station. Maybe, during the transfer from the car to the cell, he’d be able to break free and make his escape. His hands would still be bound, but he didn’t have many choices.
Barring a miracle of some sort, it was his best option.
They drove on in silence for a few more blocks, the officers not seeming to be in any particular hurry. And with each passing second, the futility of it all weighed heavier on Lucas—so much so that he finally had to scream in rage and frustration.
Both Beefy Cop and the more athletic one in the driver’s seat jumped, startled by the guttural cry that escaped from his lips. Beefy Cop turned to say something to him, and in doing so, missed Lucas’s miracle, coming to meet them from the passenger side of the vehicle.
A giant black SUV, doing at least fifty, and hurtling at the police cruiser without slowing.
03:05:49 REMAINING
To Lucas, the impact sounded like an explosion: a giant whump that knocked the wind out of him as the mesh cage in front of him crumpled.
For a few seconds, he heard
the painful sound of metal shuddering against metal, something like fingernails on a chalkboard amplified a million times, but then there was an odd moment of silence as he felt the cruiser tipping and rolling to its side.
He tumbled in the backseat as the car flipped a few times and finally came to a stop. Now the only sounds were a low, menacing hiss of escaping steam and the squawk of static from the car’s shortwave radio.
He wasn’t sure whether the car was resting on its roof or on its tires, but it didn’t matter: he saw that the fortified glass window beside him had indeed webbed in a million tiny lines. He swung his legs around and kicked at the glass; it fell away like a heavy curtain.
He started to slide out of the window when he heard a croaking voice: “Stop.”
He looked back over his shoulder, and Beefy Cop had his trusty .38 drawn, pointed at him through the mesh. Beefy Cop was still strapped in, and a large flap of flesh from his forehead was hanging down over his right eye, pouring blood down his face, but one clear eye stared straight at him behind the barrel of the pistol.
Beefy Cop smiled a crooked smile, his teeth painted pink by the blood in his mouth. “Looks like I’ll get to use my .38 after all,” he said.
Lucas watched as the finger on the trigger started to tighten, and he couldn’t help it; he had to close his eyes. He didn’t want to see the gun go off in his face. He heard the giant wallop of the gun inside the cramped space, hammering once and then twice, and he squeezed his eyes even tighter, surprised at how painless, how almost effortless, it was to be shot at point-blank range.
THIRTY-ONE
03:04:19 REMAINING
Lucas opened his eyes once more. Yes, he could see. Maybe he’d been shot in the head, but both of his eyes were intact, and no blood was running into them.
A few seconds later, he felt someone tugging at his feet, pulling him out the car window.
When he was totally outside, his first thought was, Ah, so the car landed on its roof. Crazy. And his second thought was pure terror, because the person who had pulled him from the car was the one person he was most afraid of seeing.