by Hopkin, Ben
Trying to call out, Ramirez felt his chest constrict, the air no longer entering in as he struggled to breathe. His screams had turned to whimpers, and within moments his chest locked in place and his lips sealed together, blocking any further efforts he might make at communication.
His ears took longer to freeze than any of his other extremities. Perhaps that’s why the last sensory input he received, before drifting into darkness, were the frantic screeches of Murray and Nguyen.
But soon even those noises faded away.
* * *
Jeremy Lerner’s luck sucked. Hard.
Getting assigned to the serial-killer case had seemed like such an awesome thing, you know? Get to go out and help bring down a monster and shit. Totally rad stuff.
Yeah, it had meant he wasn’t gonna be able to meet with his informant-slash-pot-dealer tonight, but whatevs. He still had some of his Acapulco Gold stash left. Enough to keep him mellow for a few more days if this case dragged on.
But now they were, like, running for their lives and shit. Jeremy hated running. There had been only one time when it had seemed like a good idea, and that was when a street punk he had busted a while back had seen him with a blunt. Can’t let that happen, you know? Had a rep to keep back at the precinct. Getting fired meant no more weed, and that was not copacetic.
The last thing Jeremy had seen over his shoulder was that one dude and his partner getting the worst kind of stiffy possible. They looked like icy pops or something. Totally sick.
And now him and his partner were in this, like, store. There were shelves on the walls, and even a couple of bags of something. Flour or sugar, maybe. Dude. When he made it out of this thing, Jeremy was totally gonna make some snicker doodle cookies tonight. Went great with the Gold. And maybe he could grab him some of those cheesy puffs. Or no…dude, it had to be the cheesy balls. Those things were awesome. Especially the ones down at the bottom of the bag that soaked up all the extra grease.
But right this sec, things were looking like a bad trip in here. It was so cold that his chattering teeth felt like they were gonna break off. His partner, Officer Lewis, was usually, like, a real stoic with a stick up his ass. But even Mr. Awesome over there was looking pretty Smurfy. Like, blue, you know?
And then, through the walls, they heard the screaming start. One voice that choked off after a while, then two more joining in. Jeremy looked at his partner. What the hell? That didn’t sound good.
They both backed into the store as far as they could go, tripping over cans on their way back. Lewis gave Jeremy a weird look, and then let out a long breath that looked like he had just taken a hit off the most massive bong ever.
“We’ve got to conserve our strength, Officer Lerner,” his partner stated, gesturing for Jeremy to…what? Give him a hug? Yeah, that wasn’t gonna happen anytime soon. He turned to spit on the ground, letting Lewis know what he thought of that idea.
The spit froze midair and cracked on the ground.
Okay, so maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all. Jeremy moved forward, trying to figure out what was going to be more awkward, face- or ass-first. Freaky as it was, he went with face. No way he was gonna spoon with his partner. He’d never live that one down.
As they huddled together, trying to stay warm, Jeremy felt a numbness creep up his legs. Looking down, he could see the ice crackling up both their legs. He couldn’t move. Facing his partner one more time, he looked the guy straight in the eye.
“Good idea, though, dude.”
He just wished he could move before they totally froze in place. When someone found them later on, this was not gonna look good.
* * *
Okay, so this was the opposite of courage. Trey was not putting one foot in front of the other. He was, quite deliberately, putting one foot behind the other. The only thing that made him feel a little bit better about it was that he was only a step or two behind Darc. Okay. Maybe three.
And still the ice advanced on them. The old partitions for the tellers were now a glittering wasteland. At least it was pretty.
Trey put his foot back one more time, only to have it come up against the back wall. So. No more going that way. But the frost was coming, and it didn’t seem to be slowing down at all.
“All right. How cold do you think that is?” Trey asked his partner.
“Negative forty—”
“You know what? Never mind!”
As he put his back up against the wall, something jabbed into Trey’s lower back. Ow. That hurt. He glanced behind him and saw that what had poked him was the huge steel handle of the bank’s enormous vault. Trey looked at the vault, then at Darc, then back at the vault.
“Oh yeah!”
But as he went to yank the door open, it wouldn’t budge. Darc added his strength, the two of them pulling until the veins stood out in their foreheads, but the ancient door was just too old and rusted.
“Come on!” Trey yelled at the vault, slamming his hand against the metal and then immediately sticking his hurt hand in his mouth.
And then Darc took a step back. He calmly—a little too calmly, as far as Trey was concerned—analyzed the opening, his head cocked at an angle. That meant either he was about to rush the door or he was trying to see things from a different perspective. Ah, who was Trey kidding? He had no idea what was going on in his partner’s head.
Darc reached out a hand and placed his index finger on the upper-left-hand corner, somehow pushing the door in just slightly. It then sprang back out, swinging wide. Trey just gaped at the blackness of the old bank vault in disbelief.
“Man, I love it when you do that!”
Rushing into the darkness, Trey spun on his heel and slammed the door shut behind them, shutting out the creeping chill. Or at least that was the idea. Within minutes, the air around them started to drop dramatically in temperature, forming billowing clouds of steam around their heads any time they exhaled. Trey tucked his hands under his armpits, dancing from one foot to the other to try to increase his blood flow. He also had to pee pretty badly, so there was that, too.
“Knew I should have brought a coat,” Trey muttered to his partner.
“It wouldn’t help.”
Trey gave Darc a look that he really hoped said something along the lines of no shit, Sherlock. Just because Trey was a little slow on the uptake didn’t mean he was completely clueless.
And now, all that remained was to wait for their imminent death. For as fast as it had been coming at them a few minutes ago, it sure was taking its sweet time now. Trey squirmed, trying to take his mind off his overfilled bladder.
“Hey, Darc. Have I ever told you about that time with the blue-haired girl that—?”
“Yes.”
“What about the donkey and the—?”
“Yes.”
Yeah. That was it. He was out of stories. Trey was going to die here, in the dimly lit belly of an ancient underground bank, of extreme frostbite. Having to go to the bathroom so badly that his eyeballs were practically floating.
Right about now, death by snake was sounding like a fantastic idea.
* * *
Darc understood that Trey was doing everything he could to keep his mind off of his rapidly approaching death. Darc even perceived that part of what his partner was trying to accomplish was to distract Darc himself from the specter of his failure.
It was no use.
Death approached with its feathery, cold fingers, reaching out for their heat. And once they were frozen, Darc was relatively confident, he would have no further twinges of conscience regarding this case.
Peering into the swirling ice crystals that were forming from the moisture of Darc’s and Trey’s own breath, lines of light began to trace around them, dancing alongside the crystalline structures. Spaces formed in Darc’s mind, their outlines limned in colored light. The frozen droplets adhered to his eyelashes, the weight of the ice causing them to droop into Darc’s eyes.
Trey shifted once more, opening t
hen closing his mouth. He hopped from one foot to the other. This was behavior that Darc had seen before. Thinking back, he recognized the pattern. There had been the moment when Trey had broken Darc’s laptop during an investigation. Before telling him, Trey had resembled a goldfish.
And the time when Trey had accidentally dropped crime scene photos into the toilet. He had almost looked like he was dancing as he bobbed back and forth from one foot to the other.
Trey had something he wanted to tell him, and it was not good news. Something that more than likely had to do with some kind of confession due to their approaching death. Another shape clicked into place for Darc just as Trey managed to get words out.
“Dude. I should tell—”
“Don’t,” Darc said.
But apparently, Trey wasn’t about to let it go that quickly. “No, really. It’s been a—”
“No. You misunderstand. You don’t need to. We are safe.”
“What?”
Trey reached up to wipe his now-wet eyelashes where the ice had melted. Shining his flashlight along the floor and the walls, it was clear that the frost was moving away from them, not toward.
Letting loose a huge whoop, Trey pumped his fist in the air. “That is what I call skin of the teeth, baby!” He rushed over to the vault door, pushing at it to open, but…
“It’s locked. Again.”
Moving past his partner, Darc once more placed his index finger on the door, this time on the lower-left-hand corner. The door sighed open.
“You are going to have to show me how you do that sometime,” Trey muttered as he brushed past Darc on his way out. He moved ahead in the near darkness, headed toward the entrance of the bank. Darc did nothing to try to catch up to him. Unlike his partner, he understood exactly what would await them in the other buildings.
Trey ran past the two frozen police statues, cringing away from them as he neared their now-permanent abode. He glanced into the general store, muttered something foul under his breath, then moved on to the saloon. After peering through the window, Trey’s shoulders slumped.
“The same.” He ran his hand through his hair. “Dammit! What other tricks does this mother—this sick bastard—have up his sleeve?”
The sound of Darc’s partner faded into the background as Darc’s gaze lanced into the space around them. The liquid nitrogen had been precisely placed and dispersed. The patterns of ice on the buildings around them appeared almost etched. Even as the patterns began to melt, symbols and lines leapt from the walls, locking into place almost instantly. Darc turned his head to his partner.
“He has at least one more.”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean,” Darc said, “is that he’s just invited us into his lair.”
Trey stepped back, his face frozen almost as hard as the policemen behind him. “Are we really going to walk into a trap like that?”
In response, Darc moved forward, leaving his partner behind him. He could hear Trey’s footsteps quicken as his partner struggled to keep up with him.
“You aren’t thinking, dude. It’s not going to avenge Mala or save Janey if you get killed.”
Darc stopped. He heard the stutter step Trey made to keep from running into his back. Darc could feel something inside him break, leaving him momentarily unable to continue forward.
“I’m tired.”
Trey’s face twisted in on itself. Confusion. Or heartburn. He spoke slowly. “Of course you are. You don’t get much sleep, and—”
“No.” Darc cut him off. “I’m tired of it being my fault.”
Trey waved his hands all around them. “This isn’t—”
This time, it was Darc’s glare that stopped him. “I dragged her into this. Both of them into this.”
“But—”
“You into this.”
“Hey!” Trey made a chopping motion with his hand. “I wasn’t dragged anywhere.”
Darc sighed. “Tell me there’s nowhere else you’d rather be. No one else you’d rather be with?”
Trey laughed, a short, bitter bark. “Duh. Dude, we’re in some kind of subterranean hell village with a psycho who’d like nothing better than to freeze our balls off. And yeah, I’d rather get laid—no surprise there.” He paused, looking deep into Darc’s face, searching for something there. “But tell me there’s nowhere else you’d rather be.”
Darc felt his shoulders sag with the weight of the pressure bearing down on him. “There isn’t.” He watched as realization seemed to dawn on his partner’s face. “That’s the problem.” It was clear what was needed now. Darc could see it as clearly as if it were one of the inner rays of light. “Go back to her. Tell her in person.”
He turned and walked away from his partner. This was the way. The only way that made logical sense. Trey’s voice drifted up to him.
“Son of a bitch.”
What Darc could not tell was whether his partner was simply swearing, or if the invective was directed specifically at him.
He knew he deserved the latter.
* * *
Trey wasn’t sure how long he stood there. Did he want to go back to Maggie? Sure. Didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure that one out. But did he want to be there for his partner?
Well…no, actually. Not now, not in this place. Maybe this was another one of those courage moments. Putting one foot in front of the other. Problem was, he wasn’t completely sure which direction was the most courageous.
Usually, it was pretty simple. Just figure out what he really, really, really didn’t want to do, and going ahead and doing it was courage. No problem. Except for the occasional screaming-like-a-little-girl thing.
But this felt different. Whether or not they caught up to the killer and found Janey, the chances of their getting out alive were slim. And Trey’s following along to help probably wasn’t going to make much difference one way or the other. This was not one of the situations where Darc’s fly’s being up was going to do a whole lot of good. Trey was essentially additional baggage. Just one more person Darc had to worry about getting killed.
And there was Maggie. Maybe he was overestimating his importance in her life, but he was pretty sure that his death would do more than just inconvenience her. And she still cared about Darc. Someone had to be there for her when the Dark Knight fell. And if not Trey, who? Captain Merle?
So…there really wasn’t any reason to go running after Darc this time. He could just go home. Should go home. Was totally going to go home.
Which was strange, because that was definitely not the direction his feet were taking him. He was walking into the lion’s den, and moving faster with each and every step. Yeah, logic told him to get out of here before he got in the way. But he really wasn’t the logic guy. That was Darc’s domain. Trey’s domain? Doing something completely stupid. And there was just no way he was going to let his partner walk into what was as close to literal hell as their killer could come up with.
Come to think of it, he was pretty sure he had already made that decision as soon as Darc had started walking away from him. So all he had been doing here was making sure that he would have to run his butt off to catch up to his partner.
Now all that was left was to make sure he didn’t break his neck trying to catch up. Trey shone his flashlight to either side of him, making sure he wasn’t about to step into something nasty. Couldn’t be too careful when the resident savant was somewhere up ahead in the blackness.
As he ran forward into the eternal night of the Seattle Underground, Trey’s light first hit the back of his partner’s head. Okay, so at least he knew where Darc was. Luckily, Darc hadn’t been doing his normal impersonation of a speed walker. But as the flashlight lanced over to the side, it bounced back off of something metallic. A tank. A bunch of tanks. Getting closer, he could see that they were spent tanks with LIQUID NITROGEN written all over them. Along with warning signs. Yeah, no duh. He called up to Darc.
“Well, that explains the freeze breeze. O
ur guy sure went to a lot of trouble setting out our welcome mat, didn’t he?”
Darc paused in his forward motion but didn’t turn around. Trey jogged over the rest of the distance separating them and landed at Darc’s side. His place, for better or worse. He glanced over at his companion’s profile.
“You know, sometimes you’re a real prick…”
He started walking forward again, hearing Darc matching him step for step. There was an extended moment of silence between them. Then Darc finally spoke.
“But?”
“No buts. Just, sometimes you’re a real prick.”
Maybe he was imagining it, but was that a flash of a smile on Darc’s lips? No. Couldn’t possibly be. Not in a million years.
The two of them walked side by side into the depths of hell. Together.
CHAPTER 17
The journey toward their destination was interminable. Darc continued to look for signs that they were still going in the right direction, but found nothing except for scurrying rodents and broken-down remnants of an older part of the city.
This part of the Underground was deeper than where they had been before, the distance up to the surface stretching at least two and up to three full stories. As Trey and he reached an intersection, a distant light shone down the passageway to their right. There were no symbols to guide them here, but the illumination worked as a beacon, guiding them to their hellish destination.
“Aw. Look, dude. Our little psychopath left the porch light on for us. Nice of him,” Trey muttered, the cynical tone not completely masking the undercurrent of fear in his partner’s voice.
They continued their approach, the glow intensifying but unsteady, a flicker rather than a consistent source. As they moved closer and closer, a noise began intruding on Darc’s senses. It started as an almost subliminal sound, a possible product of the imagination, setting Darc’s teeth on edge but not fully brought into the conscious mind. But as they neared the source of the light, the intrusion grew, turning into a low moan or howl.