Deep Dark Night

by Steph Broadribb

  I turn towards him, find him in the beam of my flashlight. Otis is sitting on the floor beside Mikey, his head in his hands. Mikey himself looks shit – skin flushed and sweaty, body trembling, eyes bloodshot and unfocused – but he’s conscious again.

  ‘You got any suggestions?’ I ask.

  He nods. ‘Maybe there’s another way to get it open.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘This elevator is state of the art – no buttons inside – all controlled by the touchpad.’

  ‘Yeah.’ I look at the touchpad on the wall to the right of the doors. I press at the screen but nothing happens – just like before, it’s dead from lack of power. Has been since the blackout began, and stayed that way even when the back-up generator kicked in. ‘The touchpad isn’t working.’

  ‘That … doesn’t matter,’ says Mikey, forcing out the words. ‘Should be … safety feature to open. In case of malfunction.’

  With my flashlight I scan the doors and the touchpad. There’s nothing obvious. ‘So how do I access it?’

  Mikey opens his mouth to speak, but the words catch in his mouth and he starts coughing, wheezing. Sounds real bad.

  ‘Tell her,’ says Cabressa, pointing the gun at Mikey.

  ‘Put the damn thing down,’ I say. ‘It isn’t helping none.’

  Cabressa ignores me.

  Mikey stops coughing and gets his breathing under control. He uses his non-injured hand to gesture weakly towards the left side of the elevator. ‘There should be a failsafe button recessed into the frame.’

  I shake my head. ‘I checked the frame earlier.’

  ‘The outside of the frame … against the wall – did you check there?’ Mikey asks.

  ‘No,’ I say, spinning back to the elevator doors. Pressing my fingers tight against the outside of the metal frame where it joins with the wall, I run them down from top to bottom. I feel lightheaded, my balance off-kilter, so I put my cellphone with the flashlight app onto the floor and use just my sense of touch.

  A half-yard from the bottom I stop. In the darkness I feel a slight ridge under my fingertips. Moving more to my left, I peer at the spot on the frame. There’s a small, round circle within the frame, barely the size of a penny. ‘I see it.’

  Cabressa crowds closer. Shines his cellphone flashlight at the frame. I can feel the warmth of his breath against the skin on my shoulder. I shudder. Try to stay focused.

  ‘Press it,’ says Mikey.

  Heart pounding, I do as he says.

  40

  JT’s vision goes fuzzy. There’s a metallic taste in his mouth.

  Slumped against the wall, Carl is gasping, groaning, his blood a dark pool mingling with the shadows across the floor. Johnny is standing over him, watching. There’s blood over his clothes and in his beard. He looks like monster, but JT knows it was self-defence. Carl would have killed Carmella for sure.

  JT is dying. He knows it. No doubt. There’s not enough oxygen left and his body has started shutting down. He can’t give up though. Won’t. He pictures Lori’s face and sticks the picks back into the lock. Slides one into the mechanism. Uses the other to try and stimulate the release. He gets them in position. Black spots dance across his vision. He knows this is his last shot. Takes what breath he can. Exhales. Makes his move.

  The mechanism yields. The lock unfastens.

  He shoves the door open. Pushes it wide.

  Can’t speak. Doesn’t have enough breath.

  Johnny moves past him through the doors and up the stairs towards the roof. JT gasps for breath that won’t come. There’s no air. He has to get out. Turning, he looks around for Carmella. Sees her lying on the floor. He staggers as he tries to move towards her, and loses his balance, dropping to his knees.

  ‘Carmella?’ His voice is a weak whisper.

  She doesn’t response.

  He leans over her. Checks to see if she’s still breathing, still alive. He finds her pulse, feels her breath on his skin – faint but there.

  Knows he cannot leave her down here.

  Summoning everything he’s got left, JT picks her up and hoists her over his shoulders. Every muscle in his body is on fire. His lungs are screaming for oxygen. His vision is a haze. But he manages to move through the doorway. He half walks, half crawls up the stairs. He can see the garden room at the top of the stairs and knows from what he saw on the blueprints that from there he can get out onto the roof terrace.

  There are seven more stairs to go. He manages one.

  JT collapses. He’s all out of gas. Carmella slumps onto the stairs beside him.

  They’re not going to make it.

  41

  The elevator doors inch open.

  The failsafe must be powered by some kind of mechanical winch that doesn’t need electricity to operate it. It’s slow, but it’s working. And for that I’m real thankful.

  Twisting round, I grin at Mikey. ‘You did it.’

  He smiles, but within a second I see the relief on his face turn to horror.

  I turn back. Feel my stomach flip.

  Cabressa cusses. Otis starts praying again.

  The elevator car isn’t there.

  The shaft is a pitch-black void.

  I check my watch. There’s less than four minutes before the oxygen reaches a critical level. We have to move. I cannot die here.

  Stepping closer to the edge of the shaft, I gaze down into the abyss. We’re on the sixty-third floor; it’s a hell of a way down. And without light, in this heat and humidity, this is going to be far from easy. I look over my shoulder at the others. Otis’s skin glistens with sweat, but his expression is more hopeful than I’ve seen in a long while. On the floor beside him lies Mikey. His eyes are half closed, and his chest is heaving hard from the effort of breathing. He’s bleeding from his hand and his thigh and is looking real bad. I can’t see how he’s going to make this climb. But we have to try. I look at Cabressa. There’s an odd expression on his face. As our eyes meet, a muscle twitches above his eye and he looks back towards the open-plan area.

  My voice is firm and clear as I tell them, ‘We’re going to have to climb.’

  ‘There’s something I need first,’ says Cabressa, backing away from the edge. Keeping the gun trained on me, he moves down the hallway to the living space and disappears inside.

  I don’t know what the hell he’s up to, but there’s no time to pay it any mind. We need to get gone. Fast. I gesture to Otis and Mikey. ‘Come on, we need to start climbing. Oxygen should come up through the elevator shaft. Once you start climbing you’ll feel better. ’

  ‘I can’t,’ says Mikey. His voice is weak. He barely opens his eyes. ‘Leave me here.’

  Otis is shaking his head. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. ‘No, no, no, man. You’re coming.’ Bending down, he gets his huge arms around Mikey and pulls him onto his shoulders. Mikey groans from the movement. Otis grimaces at the weight. He takes a step towards me, and then another, his legs shaking from the effort of the lift.

  I turn back to the shaft. Shine the beam of my flashlight down the sides. The elevator shaft is lined with a metal cage. The struts criss-cross each other. They’re close enough to give us hand- and footholds, but I’ve no idea how Otis can make the climb with Mikey on his back. Mikey’s not fat, but he’s six foot two, easy, and broad with it. As fit as Otis is from his boxing, I just can’t see it working. But I say nothing. It’s Otis’s choice. Has to be. I see no other way of getting Mikey to safety.

  Otis arrives beside me, panting heavily.

  Mikey is slung over his shoulder, his eyes half closed. He pokes at Otis’s back. ‘You can’t climb down there with me. Put me down.’

  ‘I told you no,’ Otis says, tightening his grip on Mikey.

  That’s the moment Cabressa returns. In his free hand, he’s carrying the wooden box containing the chess pieces and in the other he has the gun. Undoing a few of his shirt buttons, he tucks the wooden box between his vest and shirt, and re-buttons
the shirt as far up as he can. Sure that the box is secure, he gestures towards the elevator shaft. ‘Time to get out of here.’

  Otis tries to step forward to the elevator shaft, but Mikey starts to move, pushing away from his shoulder, trying to detach himself. Cabressa can’t get to the shaft. I see the frustration on the mobster’s face.

  Mikey continues trying to get down from Otis’s shoulder, landing ineffective blows against the boxer’s muscular back. ‘I said leave me here, I’ll slow you down.’

  ‘No,’ says Otis, clinging onto Mikey. ‘I won’t leave you while you’re still breathing.’

  I see the movement out of the corner of my eye. Fast. A blur of metal. I yell, ‘No, don’t…’ But I’m too late.

  The shot echoes in the metal shaft.

  Otis groans and falls to his knees.

  Mikey slumps backwards from Otis’s shoulders onto the floor. His eyes are open, his lips are parted, and on his forehead a bloody bullet wound marks his cause of death.

  Otis is on all fours, gasping for air. He stares at Mikey’s body. ‘What the hell? I could have carried him. I could have—’

  ‘He would’ve slowed us down.’ Cabressa’s voice has no emotion to it.

  I swallow back the regret, the anger at what’s happened to Mikey. I hate Cabressa for what he’s done, but there’s no time for talk right now, not if we want to live. We’ve barely a minute of oxygen left and even though there must be some oxygen in the shaft I’m not feeling any difference. I kick off my pumps and yank my dress up high enough to allow me full range of movement. Shoving my phone into my bra to try and keep the flashlight focused on the metal struts of the cage, I climb into the elevator shaft. ‘Follow me. We have to move.’

  I start to climb. My hands are sweaty, and several times I lose my grip and think for a moment that I’m a goner. But I manage to cling on. Find more footholds and handholds. As I descend, the air gets cooler and it feels a little easier to breathe. ‘You okay?’ I call into the darkness above me.

  ‘Yeah,’ says Otis. His voice comes from above to the left of me. It’s edged with fear, but there’s something firmer to Otis’s tone now. The tremble has gone.

  ‘Keep moving,’ Cabressa says from somewhere to my right in the darkness. ‘And when we’re out of here, you’re going to take me to where you’ve hidden the knight.’

  Ignoring his instruction I pause for a moment. Grip a metal strut with my left hand and put my other hand up to my hairline. I search the micro camera with my fingers. At first I can’t feel it but I try again, slower this time. This time I feel it, still in place, pretty much.

  I hope Monroe has seen what’s happened on the live feed. I hope he can use it in evidence against this asshole Cabressa.

  As I reach down for the next metal strut and continue the descent, I hope to hell there’ll be a team of federal agents poised to greet us at the bottom of the shaft. Because I realise now why Cabressa wanted me here with him so bad; he wants the complete chess set, and he’s prepared to do anything it takes to get it.

  I think of all the people who’ve died for those chess pieces – from California, to Mexico, to Miami, and now here in Chicago. And in that moment I know the truth. Me and Otis have seen too much of what Cabressa has done, what he’s like; how he’ll murder someone just to get his way. Tonight he hasn’t kept to his usual ‘hands off’ style of terminating those in his way. Tonight he’s been the one shooting the gun, and as soon we’re not useful, he’ll kill us too.

  I think of my baby girl, Dakota, in Florida with Red, waiting on me and JT to come home. If Cabressa gets his way, we’ll never see her again.

  I clench my fists harder around the metal struts.

  I cannot let that happen.

  42

  JT opens his eyes. The stars are bright above him. He moves his head to the side. Sees that he’s in the roof garden. He’s breathing. Alive. He doesn’t remember how he got here.

  He breathes in the sweet night air. City air has never been so good. The memories come to him in a rush.

  Slumping onto the stairs. Carmella falling beside him. Johnny nowhere to be seen. The summer house and door to the roof in sight. His vision going. Feeling for Carmella. Pulling her onto his back again. Crawling up the stairs, the concrete steps scrapping at his hands, his knees. Reaching the top. The door to the roof busted open. Dragging himself and Carmella through. Collapsing onto the tiled patio. Letting the nothingness take him.

  He turns his head the other way. Sees Carmella. She’s curled into the foetal position, her black hair fanned out around her face. He watches her a moment. Checks she’s breathing. Exhales with relief when he sees that she is.

  Gradually, he pushes himself up to sitting. He feels lightheaded and for a moment thinks he’s going to pass out. But he fights the urge away. Takes a few breaths. Wonders where the hell Johnny’s gone.

  He puts his hand on Carmella’s shoulder. Gives her a little shake. ‘You need to get up.’

  She murmurs and her eyelids flicker open. Looks up at him, confused.

  ‘Take a minute,’ he says. His voice is rasping, his throat dry. ‘We made it outside. You can breathe okay now, but you’re going to feel weird a while.’

  ‘Okay,’ she whispers. Slowly she sits up. Blinks. ‘I don’t feel so great.’

  ‘Like I said, give it a minute.’

  She does as he says. Stares out across the roof garden. He follows her gaze. After the pitch-black of the penthouse, it seems lighter out here under the stars. He scans the rooftop. The whole place has been planted like a tropical jungle. There are trees and exotic, brightly coloured flowers, a waterfall feature and a small lagoon. Tiled mosaic paths weave between the planted areas. In the distance, the city of Chicago remains shrouded in darkness.

  ‘The power’s still off,’ Carmella says.

  JT nods. ‘Guess it could take a while. We should make our way down. Get to street level.’

  Carmella frowns. ‘Why? We could just wait here for help.’

  That’s not a good idea. If Cabressa wants the knight, JT knows that he’ll want Lori to take him to it – if they manage to get out of the building. He can’t leave her out there on her own. He promised he’d help her on this job, and blackout or none, he’s going to make it back to her. ‘I don’t do waiting.’

  Getting up, JT pauses a few seconds to get his balance, then walks across the roof garden, searching for Johnny. He spots him over in the far corner and heads towards him.

  ‘Johnny?’

  The retired ball player turns. He looks pale. There’s blood splattered across his T-shirt and down his jeans, and over his face and arms. JT knows most of it is Carl’s, but there’s a bunch of ugly knife wounds across the man’s arms, and a nasty gash across one side of his face. The blood has trickled down his face and stained his grey-flecked beard crimson. ‘He’s dead, dude. I killed him.’

  ‘You did what had to be done.’ JT doesn’t say Johnny’s action nearly killed him and Carmella. That he remembers the man pushing past them on his way to the roof, and that he didn’t give them a backward glance. Instead he says, ‘It was self-defence.’

  Johnny doesn’t meet JT’s gaze. Looks away, off the roof towards the city below.

  JT glances down. There’s a dull throb in his forearm and as he sees the knife cut, he remembers what happened. ‘Carl would have killed Carmella too. Probably all of us.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘You need to snap out of this. Dwelling never does no good.’

  Johnny’s head jerks up. He looks back at JT. ‘Why should I—?’

  ‘Look, I’m getting off this building, and Carmella’s coming with me. You can come with us, or you can stay. It’s your choice.’ JT turns away, starts walking back to get Carmella. It’s time to get moving.

  ‘How?’ asks Johnny.

  JT stops. Turns back around. ‘There’s an emergency stairway – it’s the only route down from the roof. I’m going to find it, and use it to get to street level
.’

  ‘And then?’

  JT holds Johnny’s gaze. Thinks about Cabressa and Lori and the chess piece. Feels a punch to his chest as he dares hope Lori made it out the penthouse alive. He has to get to her, help her. Live up to his promise. He gives Johnny a small smile. Shakes his head. ‘Then I’m going to forget all about what happened here tonight and just get the hell out of this city.’

  43

  And so we climb.

  The lower we get the cooler the air becomes. Breathing starts to feel easier, and the pounding in my chest begins to subside. It’s only after I’ve been climbing a few minutes that I catch a glimpse of my watch. It’s eight minutes after the air in the suite was rendered unbreathable. So far we’ve climbed down six storeys and there’s no sign of the elevator car. There are fifty-seven more to go.

  Above me I see the flashlight that I know belongs to Cabressa flicker and die. Otis’s cellphone battery gave out long before we’d left the penthouse. Mine is all we have now. I glance at the cell tucked into my bra. The screen shows me there’s one percent battery life remaining. It won’t last long enough for us to reach the bottom.

  ‘You okay?’ I shout up to Otis.

  ‘Yeah,’ he says. I can hear the exhaustion in his voice, and the shock. After what happened to Mikey I wasn’t at all sure that he’d even start this climb. But he did, and for that I’m relieved.

  ‘Move faster and shut the hell up,’ says Cabressa.

  Ignoring Cabressa, I yell, ‘Hang in there, Otis.’