All the Way Down

by Eric Beetner

  “Honestly, sir?”

  Schuster turned to Greely. “Yes, honestly.”

  “It’s been a while. They could be talking, working out terms. But it seems like a long time.”

  Schuster had been telling himself it was a good thing if Dale ended up dead. Saves him a trial and the embarrassment. His secrets could die with him. But the girl…

  “Do you think he’d kill the girl? Tat, I mean.”

  “There’s no way of knowing, sir.”

  “It’s not her fault.”

  “No, sir.”

  Lord, the shit that would rain down from the mayor’s office if his daughter died during the rescue attempt. Loading up three vans worth of tactical teams seemed like a sure bet for either a crossfire killing or just pissing off Tat enough so that he put a bullet in her brain only to make a point.

  Schuster had a gun in his back and a knife at his throat. No way to turn that it wouldn’t end poorly. He stared out over the trees. “Goddamn you, Dale. You owe me this. You better come through.”

  The machine hum of the truck’s nervous system bounced around the metal box. One of the men shifted in his seat, another cleared his throat.

  Schuster turned back to Greely. “Stand down. We’ll give him his time. My word means something around here.”

  7TH FLOOR

  Any way Dale rolled on the hard floor, his body protested in agony. A hundred tiny fists left their mark, tenderizing his flesh until there was nowhere left to find comfort.

  The girls all chattered in their own languages, several different ones floating overhead. Dale closed his eyes, knew he had to get up, but stayed down, needed a few minutes more.

  Lauren leaned on one knee. Her scalp hurt, her ribs were bruised from the kicks. “We need to keep moving.”

  “I know.” Dale stayed on the floor, his eyes remained shut. “I feel like I’ve been run through a clothes dryer.”

  “We didn’t see that coming, did we?”

  “I shouldn’t have lied.”

  “Hey, you got them out of the cages.”

  Dale tried to smile but his lip ached. His right ear was muffled, clotted blood blocking the sound. “Thanks for rounding them up again.”

  “I’m just glad it worked the first time.” Lauren pushed up to standing. “That was my last bullet.”

  Dale thought about giving up. Pressing the button again and letting the girls go wild. Not a bad way to go, death by thirty prostitutes. Alone, Lauren might stand a better chance of walking out the door unnoticed. Or she could go back with Tat, wait out the little stunt he was pulling, maybe make a deal with the mayor, and she’d be out of here without any of this abortion of a rescue attempt.

  He could send her out with a message for Dahlia. That he was sorry. That he died trying to do something good. She wouldn’t have to bother with a divorce. She’d get his life insurance and what she was entitled to from his pension. Not fully vested, but it would be something. He could send Lauren out with the numbers on the safe deposit boxes, but they were all under his name only. Dahlia wouldn’t be able to get at them. Maybe once she showed them a death certificate. Maybe.

  The thought of leaving all that money to wither away hurt as much as his bruised legs. And the idea that one of Tat’s men was out there right now looking for her. No, bringing her in. No way it would take one of Tat’s guys this long to find her. What the hell would she be walking in to now?

  Dale wondered if Tat had been found in the closet yet. He wondered who else in the building knew anything about what was going on.

  Too many unanswered questions to lay down and die. And a bunch of weak girl-fight slaps from a few dozen twigs in short skirts wasn’t going to kill him. He’d done worse to himself doing yard work.

  He rolled onto his front and got on all fours. He held in a groan. Had to make Lauren feel safe, not like her savior was an old man who can’t take a punch or fifty. Dale pushed up and stood. The girls’ chattering quieted as they all watched him stand.

  Dale looked at Lauren, wondering how bad he must look. Based on the expression on her face, pretty bad. “So what now?”

  Her hair was in a tangle on the crown of her head. She dabbed at her lip with a finger, checking for blood. “Elevator again, I guess.”

  A metal clank startled them. They both thought the cell doors would open again, but they didn’t move, and the sound came from down the row of cells. Over by the steps they used to come down from the torture rooms, a section of the floor lifted up. A trap door cut into the floor. Two men appeared from below.

  “The fuck are you? What’s all the racket up here?”

  Dale drew his gun, making his ribs ache anew. The two men threw their hands up. Dale noticed air filtration masks hanging loose around their necks, white smocks over their clothing as they poked halfway out of the trap door.

  Lauren drew her gun as well, knowing it was empty but also knowing an empty gun is an effective motivator when the person you’re pointing it at doesn’t know.

  Dale marched forward. “Hands up.” The two men looked at each other, recognizing they were already holding their hands up. Dale tried to clear his head as he walked, to stay straight and steady so the two men wouldn’t see the pain he was in. As he walked by the cages, the girls all chattered like birds.

  Dale spoke over his shoulder at Lauren. “What’s down there?”

  “Let’s see…we’re on eight…” She remembered. “The lab.”

  They reached the open trap door. “Down.” The two men turned and walked down the steps. They came down into a sprawling laboratory. The seventh floor finally looked like something the architects of this complex imagined it would be used for. Though Dale doubted this was a lab for any sort of medical research or high-tech computer components.

  A half dozen workers hunched over tables in air filtration masks and white paper booties on their shoes.

  Lauren stared in wonder at another floor she’d only read about.

  The taller of the two men with their hands up looked at Dale. “You’re the guy.”

  Dale pushed his gun in the man’s face. “What do you mean?”

  “We heard there was shooting up on the top floor. Some trouble, and they were looking for someone.”

  Shit. Word was out.

  The lab worker was nervous. He was paunchy around the middle, not the military-grade muscle men in Tat’s army. “We’re just lab workers.” He spun around to acknowledge the rest of the team. The others, still with their masks on, looked if they were wondering whether to put their hands up or to keep working. “I’m Elton. We’re not gonna…I mean we wouldn’t—”

  “Shut up.” Dale scanned the room.

  Elton woke up that morning thinking this was the day he should quit. And now this. Of course, he thought that every morning. He wasn’t using his chemistry degree exactly the way he expected when he secured his first scholarship. Running a lab for Tat had been lucrative, but he felt like a fool wearing his breathing mask every day when the real threat was anywhere but on this floor of the complex.

  Dale looked at the tables and bubbling chemical works, a question playing across his face like he was wondering if they should ask for masks of their own. “Meth?”

  Lauren squinted at the vials and vessels on the long tables. “I don’t think so. It’s set up for meth, for cutting coke and heroin. This looks different.” A light inhale of recognition made Lauren give off a gasping sigh. “It is, isn’t it?”

  Dale crinkled his brow. “Is what?”

  Her reporter instincts were overriding her fear. And the experiences of the last sixty minutes were threatening to kill her fear altogether. “You’re branching out, aren’t you?”

  Elton looked down at his bootie-covered shoes.

  “Krokodil. Am I right?”

  Elton avoided her eye, looking around the lab at the listening workers, wary of saying anything out loud that could get him in trouble around so many witnesses. />
  Lauren grinned, adding another mental note to her story, or perhaps the follow-up story all about the drug problem in town. “I am right. Jesus Christ. You’re going to let that loose on the streets?”

  “It’s an experiment.” Elton blushed as soon as he said it.

  Dale watched the man’s reaction and asked Lauren, “What’s Krokodil?”

  “A new drug. It came from Eastern Europe. More addictive than crack, more dangerous than heroin. Eats you alive from the inside, for anyone stupid enough to take it.”

  Elton let a shameful half smile worm across his face. “There’s always someone stupid enough.”

  Dale saw the resigned sadness in his face. “You can put your hands down.”

  Elton and his shorter partner did. The room seemed to relax a little.

  “So this is where Tat makes all his product?”

  “Some of it. Some still comes from South America, Mexico, Canada.”

  Dale shook his head and whispered to himself. “Right under our noses.” Manufacturing hadn’t been on Tat’s list of offenses, as far as the police knew. Dale was paid to look the other way on a lot of things regarding Tat and his operation; this one blindsided even him.

  On a table near the back wall, beside a tall window that had been blacked out, a beaker of acrid-smelling liquid bubbled over because the worker at the station had been eavesdropping on the conversation.

  A cloud of white mist rose from where the liquid boiled over and he scrambled to lift the glass off the flame and quickly mop up the mess.

  Elton looked worried. “Hey, watch it. Pay attention, all right?”

  Lauren knew why. Any of these bottles or beakers could turn deadly, either by releasing gasses or heating too high and bursting into flames. Most of what they were cooking with was combustible and the rest was the type of ingredients that needed the heavy filter masks everyone wore.

  Everyone except Lauren and Dale.

  Her eyes studied the lab, the workers with their blanked out faces. “We should keep moving.”

  “Yeah.” Dale kept his gun gripped tight as he pointed to the far side of the room. “Elevators this way?”

  Elton nodded. “You’re leaving?”

  “We’ve been trying to leave. Maybe this time it’ll take.”

  “Can I go with you?”

  Dale stared at him, saw the fear in his eyes. He looked at Lauren, who shrugged.

  “Why do you want to do that?”

  “Look at us.” Elton waved a hand around the room. “We’re making vile drugs for unsuspecting people. I’m supposed to be working on cancer research.”

  The shorter man spoke with an accent. “I was working on bioengineering in Brazil.”

  “You want to come too?”

  The shorter man nodded. Dale looked around him. “All of you?”

  Heads nodded behind masks. He turned to Lauren again. She didn’t seem to have any answers. “It’s not that different from the girls, is it?” Didn’t make quite as good a story for her article, but it would do.

  “I guess not.” Dale chewed his lip. The smell grew throughout the room. Ammonia mixed with an auto body shop with a little bit of low tide thrown in. “Goddammit.”

  Elton turned to his coworkers and gave commands to get out of their white suits. They started removing masks and peeling off the white coveralls. All but one, Dale noticed. A worker in back at some sort of packaging station. There were no beakers or burners at his table, only piles of small glycine bags filled with tiny amounts of powders and crystals like rock candy.

  As the group began to gather around to be led out, Dale focused on the unmoving man. Above the rim of his mask, Dale could see terrified eyes. He noticed he could not see the man’s hands, hidden under the table. Dale took a step forward.

  It was like he set off a trip wire. The man stood up, a .45 in his hand. He shouted something in Spanish and moved the gun side to side, targeting, then changing his mind and getting his sights on someone else. The crowd buzzed and cowered together.

  Elton called out to the man. “Mario, what the hell are you doing?”

  Dale put out a hand to calm the nervous crowd behind him. It had been a long while since he’d been in a standoff with a perp, but he’d been here before. He was still at least thirty feet from the man who had moved away from his table and backed against one of the blacked-out windows. Too far to be sure about taking a shot, and this Mario was aiming at a much larger mass. Anywhere he put a bullet, someone was going to catch it.

  Dale called over his shoulder to Elton. “I thought you were only lab workers. You weren’t going to cause me any trouble.”

  “They make sure we are armed.”

  Lauren, standing next to Elton, looked at him incredulously. “All of you?” Elton and his shorter assistant nodded.

  Dale shook his head twice. “Anything else I should know?”

  Elton and the assistant traded a look. Lauren nudged him with her gun. “Tell him.”

  “Every station has a panic button.”

  Dale tensed. “Like a self-destruct?”

  “No, not like that. It warns them if we get breeched.”

  Dale turned away from Mario. “Warns who?”

  A shot rang out in the open space. Mario had fired once, a wild bullet that punched the wall only a foot down from the ceiling. They may have had guns, but it didn’t mean they could shoot. The crowd of workers screamed and tried to get closer to each other, a mass of tangled bodies trying to make themselves small.

  Dale turned back to Mario. “Put it down.” He could hear the heavy breathing going on under the mask. The .45 twitched and shook. “Put it down and come with us.”

  A high-pitched bell sounded and the floating sounds of Al Jarreau led the way as the elevator opened and five men poured out onto the lab floor. Tat’s militia, armed to the teeth. The panic button had been pressed.

  AR-15s, Glock 9s, bulletproof vests. Dale was watching the reason Chief Schuster and the mayor didn’t want to storm the castle in the first place. And they were all coming for him.

  Bullets flew. In an instant the air was alive with buzzing hornets of metal, the sound bouncing off the walls and ceiling in the big, open space. Dale dove for cover, rolling and turning to see blossoms of red open up across the chests of several workers.

  Lauren hit the floor and barrel rolled under a table. All around her hissing liquids began to fall in an avalanche of broken glass. The automatic weapons unleashed a brutal wave of destruction as the men marched forward into the room.

  After the first few seconds, stage two of the fight began, much to Dale’s surprise. The sound of a dozen handguns firing filled the silence after the initial burst of machine gun fire. Every lab worker had drawn their guns and was shooting back.

  The five militia men split ranks and dove for cover. A bullet clipped one in the head. He fell and the pistol in his hand slid across the floor and ended up a few inches from Dale. He reached out and took it, knowing he was almost out of bullets.

  Tables of lab equipment disintegrated, liquids mixed together into a toxic stew. Flames erupted.

  Lauren stayed under her table, pinned against the wall with a growing puddle of vile liquid building on the floor in front of her, making a chemical lake of any escape route. She watched a lab worker get shot and fall, making a barrier between her and the shooting. She saw the pistol on his belt, undrawn and unused. She reached around and took it, unlocked the clip, and saw it was fully loaded.

  Three militia men remained. Another frantic burst of gunfire from an AR-15 tore through the room. A lab worker had made a dash for the elevator, which still hung open and still leaked smooth jazz, though it was covered up by the cacophony of the gunfire. The worker ran low in a crouch and the gunman raked his line of fire across the wall too high at first, then lowered his aim in a line Dale could track by the bursts of bullet hits on the concrete wall. The bullets tore into the elevator’s call button. Spa
rks flew and the elevator dropped suddenly.

  The worker sprawled out face first, shot through the chest a half dozen times. The open elevator doors hung there, but the elevator car dipped out of sight.

  From low on the ground, Dale saw the white clad feet of Mario, still in his coveralls, running forward. Dale rolled on his back, aimed over his head, the world upside down for a moment, and fired two shots up at Mario as he came closer. Bursts of red sprang from his chest and he fell. Dale clicked his trigger again, but his gun was empty. He dropped it and took up the spare.

  The gunfire slowed. Lauren peered over the body blocking her from view, and saw ten more bodies strewn across the lab floor, as well as the orange glow of flame. She turned behind her and saw Elton leaning over his shorter counterpart and shaking him by the shoulders, but the man had gone limp.

  Acrid smoke filled the room. Dale knew he shouldn’t be breathing it by the way it burned his nostrils. He looked out and saw no movement. He turned to the far wall and saw Elton letting a man go and crawling away. Dale moved toward him.

  Lauren pushed her human shield forward and slid him around to make an opening for her to get out from under the table. She followed Elton as he moved forward.

  The three of them met near the cracked leg of a table dripping a blue liquid down the side. Elton looked at them, rather desperate. “We have to get out of here. Find a mask if you can.”

  Each person scrambled to a find a fallen air filtration mask. The first one Dale picked up was soaked through with the very chemicals he was trying to avoid. Lauren found one back near her hiding table and Elton got one from around his partner’s neck.

  A loud pop sounded and a new burst of flames erupted on the far side of the room. The last remaining militia man stood and launched a volley of automatic weapon fire at the sound, but he hit only a growing inferno. The small explosion had spit flaming liquid ten feet in all directions.

  Elton spoke muffled through his mask. “We gotta go.”

  Dale wondered if he was the only one who saw there was still a man with a machine gun in there with them. But it was either death by fire, death by inhalation of God knows what, or death by firing squad. And the whole damn point was to get the hell out of here. Dale stood first.