A Long Way Down

by Randall Silvis

  She gave him a mischievous grin. “I live for adventure. Race you to the top!” And she bolted forward, back into the hallway and through the lobby.

  He wanted to follow her but knew she would be angry if he did. She would accuse him of not respecting her abilities. Would feel diminished by his concern. So he stepped forward to make his way up the stairs, but in no hurry to get to the top. It would be better to let her win. Better for him to emerge on the second floor and find her standing there grinning in victory.

  Besides, the air was wet and heavy and moldy. He would take his time getting to the top, right hand gripping the flashlight, left hand tapping his chest.

  Eighty-Five

  By keeping most of her weight on the handrail, pulling herself up and over with a few careful steps, Jayme easily scaled the pile of desks and chairs in the middle of the stairway. Ten more stairs and she was at the double doors on the second floor. She used her shoulder to ease the left door open. Scanned what she could see of the hallway beyond, her flashlight beam illuminating more of the same, dangling cables and wires and fallen ceiling panels all the way down to the middle of the hallway. There, a long section of counter plus several metal desks and chairs lay capsized and piled atop one another across the center of the hall.

  Nurses’ station, she told herself. But why build a thick fence of metal furnishings from wall to wall? It didn’t make any sense. On the other hand, it seemed that all the stripping and prep for demolition completed so far had been done in random stages, furnishings dragged halfway down the stairs or to the center of the room, some copper tubing stripped from the walls and some left intact. ADHD, she told herself, and chuckled at the idea of an entire crew of demolition workers with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

  Before stepping through the doors, she leaned in a bit farther so as to look around the door she held open, but was startled when a hand poked around the door and punched into her stomach. Instantly her entire body went rigid, every muscle stretched taut to the point of snapping, and she felt herself falling to the side, rigid and completely paralyzed. She was fully alert but in a random, fragmented way, so that she felt the flashlight slip from her hand and heard it thud against the floor but recognized no connection between the two events, could not have said which happened first or for how long. She felt her other hand falling away from the door but which door, where, and why she could not have said. A part of her brain recognized the stun gun’s effect, and another part remembered the police academy training, but, for those moments, the two memories had no knowledge of each other.

  She imagined she was screaming Stop! Stop! while reaching for her weapon, but was incapable of speech or the slightest voluntary movement. Someone grabbed her arm as she was falling and yanked her into the hallway, and she was grateful to have her body twisted as she fell, her face saved from bashing into the floor, taking the impact with her left arm, shoulder and hip, separate punches of pain. She smelled the moldy, chalky debris against the side of her face. Smelled the dust rising around her face. The sweaty stink of a body pressing close to hers. She wanted to close her senses to it all but could not.

  The stun gun’s crackling stopped but her muscles kept twitching. When she saw the hand and knife coming down toward her chest, she recognized the danger and tried without success to roll away from it. The knife was moving not in slow motion but in stop-action jerks, a flip-book hand and knife inching closer. She struggled to raise her hand in defense, to grab the wrist and push it away, but her own actions were flip-booking too, so she pushed harder and felt the wrist slap into her palm, felt her fingers close around the wrist, and then the knife went into her just below the left breast, and she screamed from the pain and heard a woman’s scream coming from far away down the hall, and as the knife sliced through her flesh and out of her body she felt herself tumbling backward into a pool of darkness, and she heard breath slipping out of her mouth, and the darkness sucked her in.

  Eighty-Six

  DeMarco swept the flashlight beam back and forth as he ascended the stairs. For the most part the stairway was clear of debris, but enough shattered drywall lay atop the steps that he picked his way along carefully, reading the graffiti and looking carefully for symbols or phrases that suggested sinister happenings inside the building. All he saw were juvenile scrawlings, names and dates, vulgar epithets, hearts surroundings teenage lovers’ names.

  He was still five steps from the top when he heard the scream, Jayme’s scream, and then abandoned all precision of movement. He took the final steps two at a time, throwing himself forward to burst through the double doors with his pistol drawn. A second later he heard an electrical crackle near his ear and felt something bite into the back of his shoulder. But he was moving as fast as he could and the electrical contact was brief. It buckled his knees and kicked a leg out from under him but his momentum carried him forward, into the wide corridor, where he fell while twisting to see who was behind him, and landed hard against the floor, left hand smashing to the dusty tile as well, flashlight flying away in pieces.

  Connor McBride lunged at him, stun gun in his left hand, a long-bladed knife in his right. DeMarco, even as the pain was shooting up his spine and his body was still falling backward, fired three shots. The first went high and into the ceiling, the second creased Connor’s shoulder, and the third shattered his right clavicle and exited into the wall.

  The boy staggered back into the corner, then twisted sideways and went down on his knees, squealing in pain. DeMarco rolled onto a hip, thought he might have broken his tailbone, but pushed the pain aside, climbed to his feet and crossed to Connor. He had dropped the cell phone stun gun but still gripped the knife, and as DeMarco approached, the boy shrank away from him and screamed “Magus!” The word echoed down the hall, ricocheted through DeMarco’s ear canals.

  He switched the 9 mm to his left hand and sent Connor reeling to the side with a short jab to the jaw. Surprisingly, the boy, now semiconscious on his back, still clung to the knife. DeMarco took the nine into his gun hand again, then pressed a heel atop the boy’s hand until his fingers sprang open, and he kicked the knife across the hallway.

  A gunshot popped behind him, the tinny sound of a .380; the bullet sent a puff of dust out of the drywall behind DeMarco. He knew the sound of Jayme’s weapon, and then knew that she had been disarmed, and ran forward, zigzagging a little and keeping low, gasping from the pain of each step, using the barricade of desks across the center of the lobby for concealment. Before he reached the barricade, another shot followed, also wide and high. He hunkered down low behind the desks. Whoever was firing at him wasn’t a very good shot, probably had little experience with a handgun. DeMarco peered between the pieces of metal, then spotted the figure kneeling behind a supine Jayme, and couldn’t believe what he saw.

  “I will slice her throat!” Daksh called to him.

  DeMarco stood, exposing his chest and shoulders and head.

  A shot pinged off the metal. DeMarco flinched but stood his ground. Took aim on Daksh’s moving head. Pulled the trigger.

  The shot went high, but not by much. Dust puffed out of the drywall.

  Now Daksh went down on his stomach behind Jayme, steadying his hands atop her belly. He fired once. The round pinged and ricocheted close to DeMarco’s knee.

  DeMarco started pulling at the desks in an attempt to dislodge the barricade. But they were jammed together too solidly. Using knees and elbows and left hand and belly, everything but his gun hand, he crawled over the barricade. “I’m going to rip off your head and kick it down the stairs, Daksh!”

  The next shot came so close to DeMarco’s middle finger, which was hooked over the edge of a desk, that he thought he had been hit, felt the heat and shock race up his finger and into the palm of his hand. But he didn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop. Not then or for the next two shots, both of which pinged close to him.

  DeMarco returned fire twice, but deli
berately high so as to force Daksh to cower even lower. He was too close to Jayme for DeMarco to risk a kill shot. Instead, he threw a leg over the last impediment and had only to bring his other leg forward to be clear of the desks. “Seven shots!” he called out. “You’re empty, Daksh!” And you have two, DeMarco told himself.

  In answer, Daksh pulled the trigger twice more, and heard nothing but clicks. “You will watch her die!” he screamed.

  Clear of the desks, DeMarco stood motionless and took aim as close to the top of Daksh’s head as he dared. Pulled the trigger. Watched Daksh flatten himself atop Jayme for a moment and knew he had felt the hot breeze crease his hair.

  “I have four shots left,” DeMarco lied, and walked toward him steadily, keeping his arm and hand steady, gunsight fixed on Daksh’s hairline. “Back away from her now or I will blow your brains out. Harm her in any way and I will rip you into a thousand pieces.”

  Daksh did not move. DeMarco fired again, his final bullet. Daksh slapped a hand to the top of his head, pulled the hand away, and looked for blood. Saw none.

  DeMarco calculated the remaining distance at thirty feet. He wanted to look at Jayme’s face, wanted to see if her chest was rising and falling. But he dared not. He took long, even strides, was moving as briskly as he dared though a sharp pain shot up his back with every step. “Back away from her!” he called again. “Or the last three go right between your eyes!”

  For five long seconds Daksh did not move. Then suddenly he threw himself backward and into the swinging doors, rolled, and scrambled into the stairwell. A second after Daksh moved, DeMarco started running. And as he ran he yanked his cell phone from his pocket, then went sliding to his knees beside Jayme even as Daksh’s footsteps were pounding down the stairs.

  Eighty-Seven

  He had her in his arms, was walking quickly but stiffly out to the street when the first patrol car screeched to a stop in front of the old hospital. On both sides of the street, people were standing on their porches, in their yards, leaning out their windows. An ambulance siren screamed in the distance, and the local dogs had set up a chorus of howls in reply.

  On the second floor of the hospital, the first thing he had done was to press his left palm atop the knife wound under Jayme’s breast and, with his other hand holding the cell phone, dialed 911 with his thumb. He put the phone on speaker and laid it on the floor and while shouting at the dispatcher he gently ran his right hand over her body, felt for a second wound or blood or anything broken. Within thirty seconds he had pushed the dispatcher’s voice into the background, knew he wasn’t going to sit there waiting for the EMTs to arrive, wasn’t going to waste those precious minutes. There was also blood between her legs, seeping through her jeans along both thighs, but he could detect no external wound, no entry or exit holes. He ripped off his shirt and pressed it to the knife wound as firmly as possible, and then as he slipped both hands under her and lifted her up he felt for the first time the pain in his back, the whoosh of pain like a flare being lit, searing the whole way up his spine and into the base of his skull. His legs nearly buckled but he would not let it happen, damn it, and shouted to the phone on the floor for the dispatcher to alert the emergency room, alert the trauma team and the operating room and the blood bank that she was coming in. He pushed through the double doors and staggered down the stairs thinking the golden hour, the golden hour, and felt every ponderous step send another blast of pain up his back.

  As quickly as he could he lumbered across the yard and under the catalpa tree, heard a siren screaming up the street and watched a patrol car come screeching to the curb. She groaned in his arms and pulled her knees up tight and he said “I’m sorry, baby, I’m sorry” and pushed himself to move faster. The fingernails of her left hand bit into the back of his neck and the fingernails of her right hand dug into his ribs. His field of vision had tightened to a small tunnel of brightness and color, so bright that he had to squint and keep blinking, the periphery clouded in charcoal gray. The patrolman on the passenger side of the patrol car jumped out and came toward him saying, “Put her down, sir! Lay her on the ground!”

  “The hospital,” DeMarco told him, “the golden hour, the golden hour,” and kept trying to walk to the street, but now the driver of the patrol car was there too and trying to lift Jayme out of his arms.

  Both men kept yelling at him to drop his weapon, put her down, but they did not understand, and he could not remember which way was the hospital. But then the first officer was standing close to him and screaming “Drop your weapon!” while aiming his own weapon at DeMarco’s chest, and only then did DeMarco realize that he was still holding the 9 mm, had it in his right hand under Jayme’s legs, so he opened his fingers and let it drop into the grass and he said to the officer, “It’s empty. It’s empty.”

  The sun was too bright and painful in his eyes and all he knew for certain was that he needed to get her to the hospital now. Then the ambulance with its siren wailing was there with a pair of paramedics, and after another brief struggle he finally let them take her. A patrolman pulled him away and said. “Right over here, sir. You can stay close.”

  “Alert the trauma team,” he said, “the operating room, she’s going to need some blood,” and a patrolman stood close and told him, “They have it, sir, they have it. You come stand over here with me. I need to talk to you for a minute. Let’s just stay here where you can see her and you can tell me what happened in there.”

  He did not want to stay with the officers but they promised to take him to the hospital in a minute or two. No, he could not ride in the ambulance, there were still some things they needed to know. He nodded and was as clear as he could be but when the ambulance pulled away screaming he kept looking down the street and felt his body wanting to be pulled along behind it.

  He told the patrolman about Daksh’s phone call to Jayme earlier, and why he and Jayme had gone into the building. Told him that two teenagers had informed them that the building was empty. He was on autopilot and answered all of their questions but wanted only to catch up with the ambulance. When he told them that Connor McBride was on the second floor with a couple of bullets in him, one officer went inside and the other one stayed with DeMarco. Soon the one with DeMarco received a call. He listened briefly and then said, “Okay,” and ended the call. He told DeMarco, “He’s still breathing,” and that another ambulance had been called. He then called the state police to secure the crime scene. DeMarco gave the officer Ben Brinker’s number, and, because McBride and his mother resided in the city, the Youngstown chief was called as well.

  Then DeMarco looked across the street and noticed the two kids he had seen earlier coming out of the abandoned building, the ones who had told him the building was empty, and he said to the officer, “Those two kids over there. The boy and the girl. You need to talk to them.”

  The officer left him for several minutes and came back and said, “They got paid twenty dollars to tell you the place was empty. A guy told them he wanted to play a joke on his friends. The way they described him, he’s the one you shot. It was the boy who called the police when they heard the shots inside. Both of them are pretty upset about what happened in there. They wanted to give me the twenty dollars to give to you. I told them to keep it. I hope that’s okay.”

  DeMarco nodded but he had not followed all of the officer’s story, did not care about the money or about the joke. Only about what the joke had cost him. He kept looking up and down the street in hopes of seeing a sign for the hospital, but everything was so strange and unfamiliar and no matter where he looked, the sun was sharp and fiery in his eyes.

  He noticed a car parked down the street a little way and thought it looked a lot like his car but everything looked different now. Everything was too bright and flaming hot, yet dark and blurry around the edges. His back hurt like hell and his mouth and throat were bone dry, and every time he breathed he thought his lungs were going to burst into fl
ame. He could hear his voice and the voices of others when they spoke, but the pressure inside his head made them sound like voices heard through a softly buzzing fog.

  And then a state police car was pulling up to the curb and then another ambulance and police car and before long the street was lined with police cars. Officers went into the building, then paramedics went in. He was handed a bottle of cold water and moved to the back seat of one of the police vehicles, where he watched the gurney coming out with Connor McBride strapped to it, and saw the ambulance speed away. An officer came out carrying evidence bags containing a knife and two cell phones.

  “One of those phones is mine,” he told the officer standing outside the car. “And Jayme’s weapon should be there. I don’t see her weapon.”

  The officer walked over to the one with the evidence bags, spoke for a minute, and returned to DeMarco and told him that no other firearms were recovered. “It’s a .380 Glock,” DeMarco said.

  “No other weapons were found, sir. They did a thorough search.”

  “Daksh,” he told him. “Daksh took it with him.”

  After another twenty minutes or so, he found himself surrounded by familiar faces from Troop D. By then he was thinking a little more clearly though still in a lot of pain, still anxious to get to the hospital, but he told the whole story again and again, and kept pleading for somebody to give him directions to the hospital now, until finally his former station commander, Captain Kyle Bowen, put DeMarco in his own car and drove him to the facility.

  Eighty-Eight

  Jayme was still in surgery, he was told by a nurse, who then asked why he was standing so crookedly and why did he have such difficulty walking, and some of those lacerations on his arms looked like they might need stitches. Then he was sitting in a small room atop an examination table lined with crinkly white crepe paper, wearing only his boxers and socks as he shifted uncomfortably from one hip to the other, with a dagger of pain shooting up his spine every time he moved.