Level 26

by Anthony E. Zuiker

  There.

  A slithering, squirming flash of white.

  Dark aimed, squeezed the trigger. He felt the baby jolt in his arm, recoiling from the gunshot blast.

  But no direct hit; he could hear Sqweegel chuckling to himself.

  “You missed,” he said.

  Dark charged forward. He wasn’t going to let history repeat itself—this was not a church in Rome. This was not scaffolding. He had the monster trapped in his own lair, and Dark was going to kick and shoot and pursue and punch until he found the monster no matter where he tried to hide—

  There.

  Twisting under what looked like a heavy wooden worktable. Spindly leg retracting itself, tucking itself away behind a paneled door—

  Dark raced forward and slammed the edge of the table with the heel of his boot, sending it tumbling over on its side. He fired, then fired again, directly into the open door of the table like he was firing into the mouth of a beast, and the baby started crying and—

  Nothing. Sqweegel wasn’t inside.

  Fuck!

  And then—

  Over there. The white wraith twisting its way inhumanly down a corridor. Dark held the baby tighter against himself—he wasn’t putting the baby down anywhere, not in here—and charged after him, praying for just one clean shot. A bullet to snap through the latex and his flesh and nerves and maybe even a bone, enough to cripple him for a few seconds, because a few seconds were all Dark needed…

  Dark took three steps before something exploded.

  He felt a sledgehammer blow to his right biceps, causing him to stumble. Dark caught himself, turned.

  Sqweegel was moving toward him, smoking gun in hand. Sqweegel had a gun, too.

  “Uh-uh-uh,” Sqweegel said, singsonging, then fired again.

  The bullet this time hit Dark’s leg and sent him tumbling to the ground. The baby fell out of his arms and began to scream-cry, face flushing bright red. Dark fumbled in the bag strapped to his side. His fingers scrambled for the sharp edge he knew was in there…

  “It’s not fun unless you’re fighting,” Sqweegel said. “So, come on. Fight! The world will be watching!”

  Dark turned around. The baby let out a plaintive wail from somewhere on the disgusting floor nearby. Sqweegel was in his face now, fetid breath invading his nostrils, beady pinpoints of black just inches away…

  “Shut up,” Dark said, then hooked three fingers into the open mouth zipper of Sqweegel’s mask and pulled forward. As the latex-clad freak tipped toward him, a ghastly smile plastered across his face, Dark whipped the business end of a carbide glass cutter across his throat.

  The blade sliced through latex and Sqweegel’s neck, opening a wicked gash that seemed to unleash the very vapors of hell from within. Black blood spurted twelve feet or more across the room.

  Sqweegel tried to scream, but all that came out was a thick, syrupy gurgle.

  And now Dark ripped the monster’s mask from his head, tearing the material at the neck. The latex peeled apart in a neat circle all around his writhing, bony neck as bright black blood gushed across the virginal white suit below.

  Dark looked at Sqweegel’s naked face.

  And saw that it was completely…unremarkable.

  Dull black eyes, which didn’t seem as menacing now. A shaved bony head. A narrow forehead devoid of eyebrows. Bad teeth. Mottled skin. A geek grown up. An abused little boy who never outgrew his hate and as a result grew up hateful.

  A hate so powerful it turned his blood black in his veins.

  “You like poems?” Dark asked. “I’ve got one for you. Maybe you’ve heard it before. In fact, I know you fucking have.”

  The monster’s fingers pushed at the gash in his neck as if he could seal the wound by hand. His arms trembled. His black eyes rolled around in his head.

  Dark stood up now, even though the bullet wounds in his biceps and leg were agonizing. He scanned the torture room for a moment and immediately saw what he wanted. Sqweegel could only choke and hack and spit in reply.

  Dark turned to stand over Sqweegel’s writhing body now, and held up the small silver hatchet in his hands.

  “Lizzie Borden took an axe,” Dark recited, “gave her mother forty whacks. And when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one—”

  And on the one, the hatchet blade swung down and chopped through the monster’s right shoulder.

  Dark lifted the hatchet again and slammed it down into Sqweegel’s left shoulder this time, cleanly severing his toothpick arm from his body, which rolled off to the side and rocked slightly before coming to a stop. Black blood spurted from the wound, splattering the blade of the hatchet before Dark had a chance to lift it up again and choose another place to bury it.

  The right leg joint, right below Sqweegel’s hip.

  Then the left.

  The monster’s spindly legs, which had allowed him to slither and crawl and hide and contort, were no longer part of his body. They were useless hunks of meat and bone now. They would not grow back. They would just cool and spurt and eventually rot away to nothing.

  Dark whipped the hatchet up in the air and felt the warm dots of fetid blood dribble on his face. The smell was unholy, almost like the monster had liquid sulfur pumping through his veins.

  He glanced down and saw that Sqweegel was staring back up at him, complete calm on his face. Black eyes boring into his own. Like he was expecting something.

  Here! Here’s what you’ve been expecting!

  What you’ve been begging me for—

  Dark heard a gleeful scream escape his own throat.

  —this— he turned his wrist to get the angle right

  —whole— and slammed the hatchet down into Sqweegel’s neck

  —time! and the force of the blade chopping through hard spine sent Sqweegel’s head spinning across the dungeon floor.

  As Sqweegel listened to Dark recite his little nursery rhyme, a holy peace came over him—even as the blade took off his right arm at the shoulder joint. Then his leg, midthigh. Dark was a strong man, even with two bullets in him. The blade had no problem slicing all the way through the meat, the bone. Sqweegel watched a dollop of his own blood escape gravity and explode in the air above him.

  The hatchet took the other leg, then the other arm, but he was still alive.

  Which was so fortunate. He didn’t want to miss a minute of this.

  He was even conscious for a little while after the blade cut through his neck, all the way to the floor. It was strange; he could hear the sound of his spine snapping not with his ears, but in his skull. Consciousness faded in and out for a while, and Sqweegel struggled to stay on the mortal plane just a few seconds longer.

  He’d worked long and hard on his heavenly mission and he knew he deserved to rest, but he wanted so desperately to cling to this world just to see it all end.

  It was too bad Dark had sliced his throat. Sqweegel honestly hadn’t seen that coming. In those early moments of his death, Sqweegel thought it might be possible to close the hole in his throat and form the last few words. But all that came out were the awful hacking sounds of an animal. Which was too bad.

  He’d been trying so hard to tell him one last thing.

  He’d been trying to thank him.

  chapter 98

  Upstairs there was the thunder of broken windows, pummeled doors, boots on the floor. Dark listened, if only to figure out how much time he had left with Sibby. How long before they found the bloodstained knob, the marble steps. And then…

  Sibby didn’t have much time left at all. The maniac had savaged her body, sliced at it with surgical precision. Her breasts were gone. Her legs and stomach streaked with slash marks.

  “We’re going to get you out of here,” Dark lied as he placed the baby on the gurney and went to Sibby. The skin around her wrists and ankles was pale white. He kissed her wrists, pretty much the only place on her that wasn’t bleeding.

  Sibby shook her head and looked up at him.
She tried to speak, but a dollop of blood came out instead.

  “Hey, it’ll be okay,” Dark murmured softly, knowing full well it wouldn’t be. She was going into shock. Pupils narrowing.

  “No,” she said, “it won’t.” Her voice was a gurgling rasp at first, but she gave him a sweet smile anyway, then cleared her throat of the blood that was pooling there.

  “Don’t talk that way.”

  “Your worst nightmare’s come true,” Sibby said. “You’re the father of a beautiful baby girl.”

  Even Dark had to smile at that one. They’d joked about it when Sibby had first learned she was pregnant. Dark told her he was praying for a son because a girl would be the end of him. He’d be posted at the door on a permanent basis to frighten away any potential suitors.

  “If she takes after her mother, I’m in serious trouble,” Dark said.

  Sibby smiled, then cleared her throat again.

  They stared at each other now, all joking and pretense fading away until there was nothing but two souls, connected at a level that lay beyond the normal senses. Words didn’t mean much anymore. They both knew what they were, what they had been, and what was going to happen. A perfect and heartbreaking understanding passed between them. Dark felt his heart surge and implode at the same time.

  “You take care of her,” Sibby said finally. “I decorated her room, I hope you like it.”

  Her. The baby was a she.

  They’d had a daughter. Congrats, Daddy.

  “Hold her with me in your heart.”

  She inhaled again…

  And that was it.

  Before Dark Arts burst into the room.

  Sibby Dark had a dream once. She’d met a man in a supermarket aisle. They lived together by the ocean and they got married and they were going to have a baby together, and then one day the man of her dreams asked her to dinner at her favorite restaurant and she smiled at him over the candlelight and was overwhelmed with gratitude, gratitude for this life of hers, and this life they were going to bring into the world together, and that’s all that mattered.

  And the dream never ended.

  chapter 99

  “Oh, no, you fucking don’t.”

  Everyone turned—Dark included.

  He hadn’t bothered to turn around when the two agents burst into the room. Dark could only assume they were Wycoff’s babysitters—Buzz-cut and his friend with the missing fingers. They had their guns out, barking commands to freeze and get down with his hands locked behind his head.

  Dark also hadn’t turned when the retching started as they saw what surrounded them. The bodies. The monitors. The stench. The pool of black blood seeping from the broken body of a monster who used to hide under people’s beds and in their closets.

  “Jesus fucking Christ, what the fuck is this…?”

  But a few seconds later there was another voice. One Dark recognized.

  Riggins. And he was telling the Dark Arts agents no, they fucking didn’t.

  And with that, Dark finally turned.

  Riggins had his hands up, palms out, showing that he wasn’t holding a weapon. He looked the agents in the eye.

  “Before you do something foolish,” he said, “look around you, boys. This look like a normal op to you? Look at the baby in that man’s arms. Look at the woman next to him. Her name’s Sibby Dark, and she woke up this morning fighting for her life. That’s her husband, and in his arms is their baby girl, who was born in this fucking dungeon a few hours ago. I know you’ve got orders; I know this is what you do. This is what I do, too. But I’m asking you to think about it, and look around you. Is this something you really want to do?”

  Nellis had spent enough time watching this middle-aged burnout to know that he was quite possibly serious. Their orders had been to erase everything in this house. But a baby? Born to a woman who’d been captured and tortured here, in this charnel pit?

  No, there were such things as too fucking dark for Dark Arts.

  The horrors in this basement…Hell, he’d be lucky to ever scrub the images from his mind, let alone off the face of the earth. There were too many questions here, too many uncertainties.

  And after the last few days, he’d grown a little fond of the broken-down agent in front of him, although he’d never admit it to anyone.

  “Stand down,” Nellis told McGuire.

  Dark watched Constance approach, holding out her arms. She was something out of a dream from another lifetime.

  “May I?” she asked.

  At first Dark didn’t know what she meant. Then he looked down, realizing that, yeah, he was holding a baby. His little baby girl. He’d scooped her up from the floor at some point. Funny he didn’t remember when. Was it before he’d gone to Sibby? Or after? With Dark Arts already stomping around the room? The past few minutes were a blur. The edges of his vision swam.

  He felt Constance lift the child out of his arms, but somehow, the weight remained. Dark’s chest felt like huge pieces of granite had been laid on top of it. He stumbled backward until he reached a wall, then slid down slowly.

  Constance looked good with a baby, Dark thought. She should have kept hers.

  Theirs.

  His.

  Dark hadn’t even looked at the baby. Couldn’t bring himself to. Because what if he saw something in her eyes?

  Something that wasn’t him at all?

  Riggins touched his shoulder. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  chapter 100

  Dark sat on the side of the hospital bed. The meds had finally kicked in. They didn’t take away the pain. Not exactly. They pushed the pain aside and encouraged him to focus on something else. Here, look at this. A giant scrambled fuzz of nothing. Isn’t that interesting? Pay attention to this here now. Not the pain. The pain will always be there. You can get back over to it at any time. He was set to be discharged soon. He’d insisted. Better finish his recovery at home than here, in the hospital that only reminded him of Sibby, and the horrors she’d endured.

  Somewhere in the gray fuzz a thought stabbed at his mind. He felt himself jolt. The flexing of his muscles tore at his stitches. But that didn’t matter.

  “The baby,” he said.

  To his surprise, someone answered him.

  “With Child Services,” Constance said. “They wanted a full evaluation. She’ll be released tomorrow, they said.”

  There were two visitors standing in the doorway of his hospital room—Constance and Riggins. Constance came to his bedside now, put her soft, cool hand on the side of his cheek and smiled at him.

  “It’s a girl, right?” Dark asked. “I didn’t imagine that, did I?”

  “Yes, Steve. A beautiful, healthy little girl.”

  Then this wasn’t all just gray fuzz. There was a point to it, after all. Beyond the carnage and pain and the poems and lies and the blood, there was this. There was still life. Sibby was not dead. Sibby would live on forever in their daughter. The monster couldn’t take that away.

  But with those words something again stabbed at Dark’s mind, and he realized what had pained him even more than the surgeries and stitches. It was the words of the dead monster, booming over the gray fuzz:

  Why don’t you shoot us and find out. Give us both blood tests. Watch the truth wriggle its way to the surface. The truth always comes out. Always.

  “I need a favor,” Dark said suddenly. “Get a nurse. Draw some blood.”

  “For what?” Riggins asked. “You feel like something’s wrong?”

  “No. It’s not that at all. The baby. I need to know if she’s mine.”

  “You need to rest, buddy—”

  “I need to know.”

  Riggins nodded. The look on his face told Dark that he understood that any argument would be futile and that rest and recovery would have to wait until he knew the truth.

  “I’ll get the nurse.”

  To confirm the paternity test results, log into LEVEL26.com and enter the code: father

  chap
ter 101

  Ordinarily there are rules about these sorts of things.

  Bodies of captured serial killers are kept on ice for a certain period of time. Often, various agencies want to claim pieces of them—especially certain scientific divisions. They view hunters of men as a slightly different species, and in need of further study. News of Sqweegel’s demise leaked throughout the scientific community, and everybody clamored for a piece of him.

  After all, he was a new kind of predator. A monster the world had never seen before.

  A Level 26.

  But Dark wasn’t going to let that happen.

  It wasn’t just the nightmares—which were bad enough. Images of the dismembered hand, still in its glove, flittering across the basement floor like a white tarantula. Dragging its own severed arm toward the torso. Veins whipping out like worms, desperate to reattach themselves to their host. His eyes—his awful black eyes—coming to life again through the eyeholes. And then his reanimated body crawling out from under the baby’s crib, reaching up for her, and the baby cooing, and not understanding at all what was coming for her…

  Yeah, the nightmares were bad.

  But it was also the idea that Sqweegel would somehow live on, even if it was just in a petri dish in a government lab somewhere. That was a kind of immortality, and Dark couldn’t allow that. Every piece needed to be obliterated. Flesh burned, bones charred into dust. Every cell burst out of its membrane and dissolved into nothing.

  Sqweegel spent his adult life leaving no trace of himself behind. Dark thought the little bastard’s wishes should be carried out in death as well.

  Which is why they were standing here now, at a private crematorium, with a heavy-duty cardboard box containing the mortal remains of Sqweegel. Riggins had broken at least a dozen laws to make this happen, but what was he going to say at this point—no can do, Dark? No, he made the arrangements without complaint or discussion. Dark suspected that Riggins wanted to fry the little fucker as much as he did.