Dayfall

by Michael David Ares

  As Jon searched for words to mollify her, he glanced back at the street to see that the group of murderous cops was almost to his side of Fifth Avenue, though a bit south from where he was. He hoped they would turn farther south as they continued their sweep of the area.

  “Did you say CityMD on Twenty-Third?” Jon suddenly asked, a weird look on his face. “Is that across the street from a big home store?”

  “Yeah,” Mallory said, with her own odd look. “But … what the hell are you talking about?!” She started crying again.

  Jon looked at the cops again to see which direction they were moving, and this time one of them looked back at him. Jon was sure the Blue Shirt recognized him when the cop started talking to his comrades and pointing toward him.

  He felt a kind of panic he had never experienced before, and his chin started pulsating with the worst pain yet, which spread to the rest of his head. He had to force himself to think about whether he had implicated Mallory by talking to her, or whether the cops would ignore her if he ran away by himself. He was about the do the latter when the cop with the megaphone settled the issue with what seemed like a form of divine revelation.

  “Hey, you,” the cop’s voice rang out. “Stay there, both of you!”

  Since he said “both of you,” Jon took this as a sign, and reached down with his cuffed hands to pull Mallory to her feet.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said, shrugging him off.

  “Look, Mallory,” he blurted out, “see those cops coming our way? They will kill both of us. You have to trust me, and come with me now.”

  “I’m not leaving my dad,” she said, but seemed conflicted because she could now see the cops, the look in their eyes, and the guns they were raising as the first of them cleared the last row of cars on the street. Though they were still at least a hundred feet away, the only thing that kept them from a clear shot at Jon and Mallory were the obstacle of the tables and downed umbrellas in the little square.

  “Your dad would want you to stay alive,” Jon said, holding out his hands again. “Come on!”

  She didn’t take his hand, but after a few moments of consideration, she laid her dad’s body gently down and stood up, staring in fear at the oncoming cops when she saw the one in the front raise his gun higher and point it directly at them, after nonchalantly blowing away a pedestrian who had gotten too close to him.

  “This way,” Jon said, giving up trying to take her hand and diving into the jam of cars to his left on Broadway. As he navigated quickly through them to the other side of the street, he glanced back to make sure Mallory was behind him, and was glad to see that she was. He glanced back farther at the squad of cops, and was even more happy to see that a suicidal motorist had turned out of the left side of the jam and barreled into several of the tables and umbrellas, directly in the path of the cops. Jon didn’t know if the driver was angry at them after witnessing their street-shooting spree, or trying to save him or Mallory, or what. But whatever the reason, it was definitely suicidal, because the cops paused their pursuit to riddle the car and driver with bullets.

  Jon and Mallory streaked through the last of the cars on Broadway and around the bank building on the corner of Twenty-Fourth Street. Jon pulled her against the wall on the other side and looked around the corner to see what was happening with the cops. Other motorists nearby had become enraged at their deranged brand of justice, or were trying to protect themselves, and they were pulling out of the jam and trying to run over them with their cars, or smash other cars into them. At least one of the cops was hit, and they all seemed occupied, at least for now, with firing into all the cars around them.

  “Was this the way you were gonna go?” Jon hurriedly asked Mallory, panting for breath. “To the urgent care?”

  “Yeah,” Mallory answered, still puzzled, “there’s an alley in the middle of the block that goes over to Twenty-Third.” She watched as John nodded, then added, “But my dad’s dead.… Where are we going?”

  Jon peered back around the corner and saw that while three of the remaining Blue Shirts were still occupied in some way with the cars on the street, four of them had now broken away and were coming after him and Mallory.

  He grabbed her arm and started pulling her down the sidewalk. She shrugged it off almost immediately, but did run after him. The sidewalk was almost empty, except for a few dead or injured bodies that they had to swerve around—most people by now had sought shelter inside buildings or vehicles. The street itself, however, was packed pretty tightly.… It was a one-way going west toward Broadway, with only one lane for cars trying to move between the ones parked on each side.

  Jon left the sidewalk and ran into the middle of the cars after the murderous cops had rounded the corner behind them and could see where they were. Before he and Mallory could reach the left turn into the alley, some of them fired, their rounds sailing past them in the air or hitting the cars near them.

  Jon and Mallory turned into the alley and ran into a small crowd of noticeably frightened people who were hanging there because it was in the shade of the buildings on each side. When the group saw his handcuffs, they gave him a wide berth, but he stopped abruptly after passing through and turned around to face them. He snarled maniacally and stepped forcefully toward them, which caused many of them to retreat back toward the north end of the alley, where the cops would soon be entering. Then he turned back around and ran toward the other end of the alley.

  Due to her own feelings of disorientation, Mallory couldn’t see the method to Jon’s madness, and she was even more confused when he passed the urgent-care facility at the corner of the alley and Twenty-Third Street, and began crossing it toward the big home store on the other side.

  “What’re you doing?” she called out.

  She breathed heavily as she said the words, but noticed that she wasn’t nearly as tired as she thought she would be, after half-carrying her father for a block and running at full speed for another two. It occurred to her that this extra physical energy and adrenaline might be an effect of the sunlight.

  Rather than continuing toward the doors of the big store, Jon suddenly veered to the right and headed down the sidewalk.

  When they weren’t much farther down the block, the four relentless policemen emerged from the alley onto Twenty-Third, and only had to scan the street for a few moments before they saw Jon and Mallory headed west along it. Even though there was even more distance between them and their targets than on the last street, they again fired their guns numerous times as they pursued, this time hitting some of the windows near where the couple was running. At one point, Jon felt some small pieces of glass hit him as a pane shattered in front of him and he ran through the resulting shower.

  But they weren’t hit by any of the bullets before Jon was able to disappear down a subway entrance built into the sidewalk, near the end of the block close to the intersection of Sixth Avenue. Mallory followed him down, still not sure that he was completely sane, but having no other good option for safety from the obviously insane cops.

  They had to slow and stop when they realized the subway platform below was filled with refugees from the street. There was someone sitting or standing on almost every patch of floor, some of them wounded and only some of the wounded being cared for by others. There was very little talking going on, but there were some soft cries and gasps, especially when the handcuffed Jon led Mallory to their right along the platform, and they had to push their way through the crowd to move in that direction. These people were much more docile than the ones on the surface above, probably because they had been out of the sun for a while. But they were definitely scared.

  No one else besides Jon and Mallory seemed to be moving—perhaps they were waiting for a train to arrive so they could try to leave the city, or get home. The feeling in the air, however, was that no train had arrived for a while, and none would likely be coming.

  Mallory had no idea where Jon was going, and wondered if he did. She could also see him b
ecoming more and more agitated, as moving through the throng was slow going, and they were losing ground on the cops, who would be arriving at the subway steps at any moment. She herself was becoming more afraid, and started pondering the idea of leaving Jon by hiding in the crowd of people or taking off across the tracks.

  They reached a section of the platform that widened away from the tracks and was beyond where a train would stop. There was much less of a crowd there, only a few people sitting out near the edge of the platform and none in the open space behind that. Jon stood in that open space, and was looking around frantically.

  Mallory just stared at him for a moment, ready to put her Plan B into effect, when he stepped toward her rather violently, grabbed her by the arm, and whispered something into her ear.

  “What? Why?” she said, pulling away from him.

  “Just do it!” he half-whispered and half-shouted, with a look of desperation on his face.

  34

  “Get away from him, he’s crazy!” Mallory shouted at the people sitting and standing near the edge of the tracks, shooing them in the direction of the crowd she and Jon had just passed through. Then she added, “He’s losing it!”

  Jon waved his handcuffed hands in front of him and let out a wide-eyed snarl, like he had in the alley a few minutes before, and sure enough, it worked here, too. As every one of the frightened people near him and Mallory withdrew quickly away from him, that sudden movement and the screams some of them let out caused the larger crowd on the other side to also retreat up the tunnel in a brief but chaotic frenzy.

  As this was happening, Jon grabbed Mallory again by the arm and pulled her toward the back of the platform, where he produced a key from his pocket and opened a big metal door that was built into the wall there. Before she had time think about what was going on, Jon pushed her through the door and closed it quickly behind them.

  “I needed to get those people away so no one would see where we went,” he explained, and she just nodded slightly, still not fully understanding.

  This Below had a light switch inside the door, which Jon turned on, and about ten steps leading down to several rooms below. Jon started down the stairs, gesturing back at Mallory.

  “Come on,” he said, “We’ll be safe here.… I don’t think the cops know about this place, and by the time they get through that crowd they’ll think we took off down the subway tunnel.”

  At the bottom of the steps there was a central room about twenty feet in diameter, which was empty except for a wooden cabinet on the left side. It was obviously not currently in use, unlike the other two Belows Jon had seen earlier. There were four doors near the corners of the main space, three of which led to smaller rooms with bunk beds in them, and one that led to a bathroom. Jon darted in and out of all of them briefly, disappointed that he didn’t find any weapons but happy to discover that the cabinet held some dry goods and food stores.

  “There’s coffee,” Jon said, with his head down inside the door of the cabinet, then straightened up and turned around to see Mallory standing in the middle of the room with an angry look on her face.

  “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she said. “How did you know about this place? How’d you have a key for it?”

  “I saw it on a GS map yesterday, and noticed the big store and the urgent care near it on the map. Wasn’t totally sure, but it worked out.”

  His wide eyes and skewed smile seemed odd to Mallory, and made her feel more suspicious of him.

  “If those cops are really gone,” she said, “I need to get back to my dad.…”

  She started to turn toward the steps, and Jon moved close to her, saying, “Whoa, whoa, hold on.” When she shrugged off his hand from her arm and turned further, he moved even closer and put both handcuffed hands over her head and arms, locking her into an involuntary embrace with the chain and the cuffs pressing against her arm.

  “You can’t go up there yet,” he said.

  “Let me go,” she hissed, and started to struggle against him.

  “We were just in the sun,” Jon grunted as he held her. “We need to settle down.”

  “You were,” she said, and thrashed about more.

  As she did, her shoulder slammed into the wound under Jon’s chin, which caused him to scream and swear, but it also distracted him enough that she was able to wriggle downward and out of his grip. When she was free, she hauled off with her right hand and punched him in the face as hard as she could.

  “Don’t ever…,” she spat out, as he reeled back a step and grabbed his cheek.

  Then he stepped up close to her again, and they stood facing each other silently. The expression on both their faces was inscrutable to the other—the meaning and the interpretation of them seemed to be complicated by the lingering effects of the Dayfall. It could have been love or hate or pity or resentment or anything else in between that he felt, or she felt, and it could probably end up changing in the blink of an eye. But they continued to stand still and stare at each other, until Jon’s cuffed hands moved slowly away from his cheek in the direction of Mallory’s neck.

  Her eyes glanced down once very briefly, but then her gaze returned to his eyes, and she didn’t move another muscle as Jon’s hands continued toward her throat. It looked like he was going to choke her, and it looked like she wanted him to do it. But when his fingers were almost touching the skin below her chin, he moved them up slowly and began to softly cradle and caress her cheeks with them.

  Jon tilted his head slightly to the side and down, and kissed her tenderly on the lips, then more deeply.

  Then they suddenly heard the door of the Below being unlocked at the top of the stairs.

  Not knowing who was coming or what else to do, Jon led Mallory quickly and quietly into the room at the back right of the Below. They situated themselves behind the partially open door, and Jon peered out through the crack at the hinges. He was thankful for the loudness of the footsteps on the stairway, and hoped whoever it was hadn’t heard them moving across the floor.

  The Dayfall Killer named Sturm emerged from the steps into the central room, holding a sniper rifle in one hand and a case for it in the other.

  The ex–Navy SEAL didn’t check the adjoining rooms, obviously assuming no one else would be in the Below, but stepped right over to the cabinet on the other side of the room from where Jon and Mallory were hiding. She placed the gun case on the top of the cabinet and started to disassemble it with her back to them. Jon wondered if the rifle was her only weapon, and thought of trying to jump her while she was taking it apart. But before he could even consider whether he could get to her across about ten feet of space, or whether he should wait for her to move to a different position, she stopped what she was doing abruptly and looked up at the lights in the ceiling.

  Evidently she was wondering why the lights were on. She methodically rotated her neck to the left and then to the right, scanning the doorways to the other rooms, which were all dark inside. At one point her eyes seemed to be pointed directly at Jon’s, and he had to battle a wave of fear rising inside him by reminding himself of the fact that there was no way she could possibly see him with the lighting in the big room and the lack of it in the little one. But he also remembered Halladay’s comment about how good Navy SEALs were at what they did, and how Sturm seemed to have a sixth sense about her in the two previous altercations.

  He tensed and got ready to do something—though he wasn’t sure what—if she moved toward them. But all she did was turn back to the rifle, lay it down temporarily, and take off her coat before continuing to work on it. When she did, Jon noticed both her powerful body and the handgun resting on her back right hip. Mallory saw it, too, as she spied through a lower part of the door crack, and then she and Jon looked at each other with raised eyebrows.

  Mallory whispered something quietly into Jon’s ear, he nodded at her, and they both silently slipped off their shoes. A few moments later they both stepped softly out from behind the door and started t
oward Sturm, hoping she would not hear them or turn around before they got to her.

  Jon was slightly in front of Mallory, and when he was about four or five feet from Sturm, the killer suddenly started turning around and reaching for her gun. So Jon lunged toward her with his arms out in front of him, stretching the handcuffs over her head to her neck, and pulling them tight in a choke hold. Sturm arched in pain and began to thrash about wildly, propelling Jon’s legs up in the air and sideways, which made it hard for Mallory to get to the rifle parts as she had planned. But Jon held on for dear life, Sturm wasn’t able to liberate the handgun at her waist, and Mallory eventually reached the biggest part of the rifle and picked it up.

  She swung it toward Sturm’s head as hard as she could, but just then the mercenary’s body jerked violently to the side, and the heavy piece of wood and metal slammed into Jon’s shoulder instead. Both Jon and Sturm grunted loudly as their connected bodies staggered a few feet across the floor, but somehow they didn’t actually fall over. The murderer’s head swung around in the right direction, however, and Mallory’s next blow landed squarely on it.

  Sturm’s body jerked violently once more and then slumped to the ground lifelessly, with Jon going down on top of it. He checked to make sure there was no pulse before he extricated his hands from her throat, and then stood up face-to-face with Mallory, as they had been before the killer arrived.

  “Good plan,” Jon said. “But I need you to stop hitting me.”

  “Sorry,” she said, looking at the rifle butt and then laying it down on the floor. Then she stared at Sturm’s body, and at her hands, as if there was blood on them. “I can’t believe I killed someone.… I feel bad for her.”

  “Don’t,” Jon said. “She deserved it, believe me. In fact, she might have been the one who murdered your fiancé.”

  “She worked for Gant, right? He was behind it all. So what’s gonna happen to him?”