Darkside

by P. T. Deutermann

  “I open this thing, we’re going for a ride,” he said, his brain beginning to spin from lack of oxygen. Branner said something, but he didn’t hear it. The air had filled with a white mist as the rising water compressed it. He was barely aware that there were more flashing vaults on either side of them as the supposedly watertight doors gave way.

  He felt himself swept down the stairs and into the ancient brick-lined tunnel in a roar of rushing water. Just before he was tumbled down the arched passageway along with Branner, some detached part of his brain noted that the air was a lot better now. Somehow, he managed to hold on to his flashlight while trying to ignore what was happening to his arms, elbows, knees, and head as the tidal wave rushed them into the tunnel. He caromed off the small cave-in he’d caused the last time down and only just managed to grab Branner as she whirled past him. They didn’t stop until the wave of water came to the T junction leading down into the magazine area, and even then it was only because Jim got wedged across the intersection, with Branner plastered against him, yelling something he couldn’t hear above the roar of the water. He held on to the edge of the wall with one hand and grasped Branner with the other as the water quickly filled the tunnel.

  Dumb idea, dumb idea, dumb idea, his brain chanted as he watched in horror while the water just kept coming. If they were dislodged, they’d be swept down into the magazines and pinned against that ceiling until they drowned. There’d be no time to get into that hole. They were screwed, blued, and tattooed.

  Branner had managed to wedge herself in place and was yanking on his arm. He turned to see what she wanted and she pointed urgently at the wooden door in front of them. The door to the cross tunnel.

  “Key?” she yelled above the roar of the water, which was now swirling back up to their chests and rising fast.

  He grabbed for the keys and for one horrible moment couldn’t find them. Then he remembered he’d attached them to a belt reel. He reached way underwater and found the bundle dangling there. In the process, he dropped the flashlight, and this time it went down the stairs into the magazine vestibule before he could grab it. Branner saw it go. She didn’t hesitate. She launched off the wall and let the water take her down into the vestibule. By this time, only a few feet of air remained near the top of the tunnel, and Jim was left in total darkness. But the current was slacking as the tunnel filled, so he could relax his grip on the wall and push across the tunnel to the door. Except he couldn’t find it in the darkness. His grasping hands felt only tottering bricks, and he actually dislodged a couple of them while patting around for the oak door.

  For a moment, he wondered if he’d become disoriented and was searching the wrong wall, but then he felt the smooth surface of the wood. Holding on to the key with a virtual death grip, he pushed it at the door, searching in the darkness for the lock. Now only about eight inches of air remained at the top of the arched ceiling, so he had to duck underwater to find the lock. It took him three tries, but he finally felt it. Then, amazingly, there was light as Branner surfaced alongside him, the Maglite in hand. He pointed with his chin, and they both went under, Branner pointing the light while Jim worked the key. The lock turned and the door swung open, and once again they went for a ride, but a shorter one this time, fetching up with a painful crash against yet another door at the end of the thirty-foot-long cross tunnel. This time, they managed to get to their feet as the water swelled through the open door behind them and filled the cross tunnel. When it was just about two feet from the ceiling, the current slacked off and Jim pointed to the open door.

  “We need to close that before we open this one,” he gasped. “That way, we won’t flood the other tunnel.”

  Branner understood at once. They swam down to the door and pushed it shut, holding it by kicking vigorously while Jim got the key back into it and locked it. Then they took a moment to get their breath. The water was no longer rising in the cross tunnel, although they still only had about twelve inches of air. Then they heard a deep sustained rumbling from behind the door and the entire door frame began to shake, rippling the water in the cross tunnel as they stood there on tiptoe.

  “It’s caving in,” he said, watching the ceiling now as the vibrations from the other side precipitated the ominously familiar rain of dried mortar. “We’d better move.”

  They half-walked, half-swam down to the other door. Jim wasn’t sure whether they’d gone up the tunnel or down. In the darkness, it was hard to tell. Branner held the light while Jim put what he thought was the right key in the door. It didn’t work. He tried the other key. It didn’t work, either.

  “What the fuck?” Branner said, pushing a hank of wet hair out of her eyes. Beyond the far door, the rumbling was tapering off, but the door itself was making noises now. Jim flashed the light down on it and they saw that it was bulging under the sudden pressure of the tunnel collapse. Jim frantically tried all the keys that fit the Fort Severn doors, but none of them worked. Righty-tighty, lefty-loosey, he reminded himself, but the lock didn’t budge. Damn thing had let them into the tunnel-why didn’t one of these keys work? He had never gone into the right-hand tunnel because-why? He couldn’t remember. Hell, he couldn’t even think. There was more water than oxygen in the air. The rain of mortar dust was turning into a spatter of old lime. Branner was looking at him expectantly. Then he had a bad thought: Maybe it had been the right-hand tunnel that had collapsed. But no-that wouldn’t affect the door behind them. He shook his head in frustration and to get the sweat out of his eyes. Why was it so warm?

  “Is this water rising?” he asked Branner.

  “I don’t think so,” she said, still staring back at the other door. The whole door frame was creaking and cracking under some enormous strain. Just for the hell of it, Jim tried the ornate iron door handle, reaching underwater and pushing it hard down. To his astonishment, the door opened, allowing yet another tidal wave to sweep them off their feet and out into the right-hand magazine tunnel in a tumble of arms and legs. Branner dropped the light and the wave of water swept it down into the tunnel. But the waterfall effect was over quickly this time, as the full flood couldn’t reach them. Not yet anyway, Jim thought, remembering the cross tunnel’s door.

  He got to his feet and chased the Maglite. He came back to where Branner was sprawled on the floor in about six inches of water.

  “This is getting tiresome,” she said, spitting out bits of mortar and wringing out the edges of her clothes.

  “Lemme get this door closed in case the other one gives way. But as long as these doors hold, we’re not going to drown.”

  He shone the light at the other door, which was leaking water around its seams. He closed the near door, then tried to find a key to lock it. This time, one of the keys worked. Once he had the door secured, he looked around by the beam of the Maglite. As far as he could see, this tunnel was the mirror image of the one he’d been into before. He could see the cement-block wall where the PWC people had sealed the gun pit tunnels. The anteroom to the actual magazine sloped down, just as the one on the other side had. The air was mustier and reeked of wet cement. Branner got up and came over to where he was standing, sniffing the air.

  “What?” she said.

  Jim shone the light up and down the tunnel area. Then he held it still. There was a mist in the air, but it wasn’t water. He felt the pressure in his ears again and tried to clear them, to no avail.

  “What’s that mist?” Branner asked.

  “Mortar dust,” he said. “These tunnels are unstable. The cement between the bricks isn’t really cement anymore.”

  “What’s holding it all up, then?” she asked, lowering her voice.

  “Faith, hope, and charity,” he said. “And some Roman engineering. Look, on the other side, there was what looked like a way out, in the powder room. Some kind of ventilation hole. We searched topside but never found the outlet. We need to see if this magazine has the same arrangement.”

  “Why not go back to the main tunnel-that way, rig
ht?” she said, pointing back up toward the main tunnel complex.

  “Because it’s flooded to the ceiling by now, remember?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, frowning, aware now that her brain wasn’t working all that well, either. “Does that mean we go down this tunnel?” She eyed the locked oak door behind them, remembering how the frame of the other one had been shaking. Obviously, down wasn’t what she wanted to do just now.

  “I think we have to take a look,” he said. “By now, they have to know something’s happened. All the utilities, all the electric power in Bancroft Hall’s gonna be out. All sorts of shit shorted out. Phone lines dead.”

  “I’ll buy that,” she said, leaning against a wall and examining the bruises on her arms. “Except that it’s almost two o’clock in the morning. But what can they do about it? And how can they get to us?”

  Good questions, Jim thought. At the least, they’d have to drain the tunnel, and the main route for doing that, the storm drain, was blocked. He wondered which lucky soul would get the honor of going up the storm drain from the river and pulling that blockage loose.

  “They’ll realize the storm drain’s blocked. Once they get that opened, the tunnels will drain themselves.” All except these old fort tunnels, he realized-they were one level below the main passageways. From the sound of it, the left-hand tunnel had already caved in, and this one didn’t look too great. He shone the light beam down the tunnel again and saw the same silent cement snowfall. If that bastard goes, he thought, we’re buried. And they might not even know we’re in here.

  “Wonderful,” she muttered, as if reading his thoughts. “Powder room it is.”

  They walked down the now-slippery brick slope. When they got to the anteroom in front of the magazine, there was at least two feet of water pooled on the floor, glimmering in the light from the flashlight. The magazine doors were identical to those on the other side. Jim sloshed through the water to one of them while Branner held the light on it. He worked the latches and pulled hard. The door resisted but then moved, and, to their astonishment, the anteroom was flooded with white light.

  Inside the powder room, the floor was flooded to the same depth as in the anteroom. But that wasn’t what got their attention. The room was lit by four fluorescent light fixtures mounted vertically on the wall beneath the domed ceiling. These lights were on despite the lack of electrical power throughout the rest of the system. There were six lab benches, all filled with various kinds of electronic equipment: video monitors, what looked like PCs without their cases, oscilloscopes, tools, a crude telephone switchboard, several printers, and three large wiring patch panels where wires of every description were jumbled into complex loops. On one side of the room, now almost afloat, was a single mattress, of the kind found in most midshipmen’s rooms. Next to it there was a small refrigerator. A makeshift hanging bar for clothes was rigged on the opposite wall, where there were some civilian clothes, as well as what looked like the vampire costume. A trash can in one corner had pizza boxes and beer cans in about equal numbers.

  “Son of a bitch,” Jim murmured as he surveyed Booth’s lair. “I wonder how long he’s been hiding out down here.”

  “Two, three years anyway,” Branner said. She walked over to one of the printers. “Check this out-doesn’t this look like an exam?”

  Jim went over and examined the printout. “Sure does. Shit, he’s probably been tapping the whole Academy intranet down here. Listening to E-mails, copying admin traffic. Look at that headset-it’s tied to that PBX switchboard.”

  “Where’s he getting power for these lights?”

  As they looked around, they heard the whine of an inverter. They found a stack of car batteries hooked to the inverter, which was producing the AC power for the lights.

  “Pretty slick,” Jim said. “Got his own power supply. This whole place looks like some mad scientist built it. Remember what that kid said about Booth-supernerd with a bad attitude?”

  Branner nodded and ran her fingers through her wet hair.

  “What pisses me off is that I never came over here,” Jim said. “Everybody agreed that this side of the tunnel complex wouldn’t be useful, because it went nowhere near Bancroft Hall. That damned door wasn’t even locked. Let’s look for the way out before any more of that tunnel caves in.”

  There were the same two square holes in the back corners of the domed ceiling at the end of the room. Each one had a small pipe running up into the hole from about two inches above the floor. But this time, there was no ladder.

  “Where are we, in relation to the buildings topside?” Branner asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “The maps we had were wrong about the other side, and about the Fort Severn layout in general. I never came over on this side because I was looking for a way in and out of Bancroft. We could be anywhere under Lejeune Hall, or even the field house. Or maybe even into the city. Hell, I don’t know.”

  They heard some more noises from the tunnel complex outside. Jim went over to the steel magazine door and pulled it shut. It seemed to him that the water was a little bit deeper. Probably leaking around doors, he thought. Then they heard a loud bang from in the right-hand tunnel. They looked at each other, not saying anything. Jim was about to go back to the door for the cross tunnel to see what had happened when they heard what sounded like a small giant banging on that door.

  “Cross tunnel just flooded out,” he said. “Damned door didn’t hold.”

  He opened the steel door enough to shine the flashlight outside. The hammering sound had subsided into a steady vibration, which was being transmitted by the aging masonry to every joint in the anteroom ceiling. The mist became a fog as more and more of the cement vibrated out of the cracks between the old bricks. He swung the door closed again and reset the latches. They didn’t have much time before the whole thing caved in. He looked up at the ceiling of the magazine itself, but the cement covering it was smooth. Even if the anteroom caved in, this would probably hold. He hoped. He looked over at Branner, who was staring fixedly at that door. The expression on her pale face revealed that she fully understood their situation. The vibrations outside got louder.

  Jim pocketed the Maglite and began pulling one of the lab benches over toward the right-hand corner of the room, underneath the closest vent hole. The fluorescent lights flickered and then steadied. He shone the Maglite beam up into the hole. He couldn’t see anything at all, just blackness.

  “Try the other one,” he said.

  They shoved a second bench under the left-hand hole. This time, he could just make out something way up in the exhaust shaft. The fluorescents flickered again and the pressure in their ears mounted. Branner looked over at the steel doors as they shifted audibly on their tracks.

  “The other one had a ladder. He doesn’t just drop into this room. But how the hell we’re going to get up there, I do not-”

  There was a crashing roar from outside the steel doors and then a wicked thump as something big hit them from the other side. One of the fluorescents fell off the wall and crashed down onto a bench in a flare of chemical light as a hundred sprays of water began blowing through the cracks around the doors, low at first and then rising fast. As the water began to swirl around their legs, Jim leaped across the room to the low rack where the inverter was mounted above the batteries and got it turned off just as the first of the batteries sputtered beneath it. The lights went out immediately, but they were no longer standing in water with an AC generator going. He sloshed back to where Branner was trying to hold the lab table in position beneath the hole.

  “We’ll try to hold our position here,” he shouted above the rush of water as it boiled through the cracks now, flooding the space at the rate of a foot a minute. “The water’ll lift us to the hole.”

  Branner’s face was frozen in fear in the glow of the Maglite. “Then what?” she wailed.

  “We pray,” he shouted back as the doors, which had been built to resist pressure from inside the magazine,
let go with a groan of fracturing metal and the room flooded with dizzying speed. Holding on to the thin pipe at the side of the hole, they rose with the water until their heads were bobbing directly beneath the four-foot opening in the ceiling. Stuffing the Maglite into his trousers pocket, Jim grabbed Branner and turned her around so that he could hug her from behind. The water forced them into the hole, where the air pressure rose immediately as the pocket was compressed by the flood below. Jim felt his right ear and then his left pop painfully, and heard Branner yell in pain as her ears resisted the pressure change. But then they stopped rising as the water pressure and the pressure in their air pocket reached equilibrium. Jim fished out the flashlight and switched it on. The water boiled ominously around their legs as the magazine finally flooded completely. Small bits of debris from Booth’s lab surfaced around their faces. Jim shone the light straight up.

  “Anything?” Branner gasped. Jim saw that her eyes were closed. She had said she didn’t like confined places; this must be sheer terror for her, he thought. To his vast relief, the light revealed the bottom rungs of a ten-foot-long ladder. It was not permanently mounted to the shaft wall, but appeared to be hanging from a hook up at the top of the shaft. There was a rope coiled around a pulley at the top of the ladder. Finding the ladder was the good news, he thought. The fact that the bottom rungs were fifteen feet or more above them was the not-so-good news.

  “Ladder,” he said. “This is the way he got in here. Now we just have to get to it.”

  Branner opened her eyes and looked up. The movement put their faces together. She looked at him and he grinned at her. “This has to be true love,” he said.

  She tried to laugh, but it didn’t quite come off. “I’m right on the edge of screaming my head off until this all goes away,” she said, her voice cracking.

  “Except that it won’t,” he reminded her, trying to keep it light. The Maglite was beginning to give out, so he switched it off. She immediately asked him to turn it back on, which he did.