Dark Sky (The Misadventures of Max Bowman Book 1) (23 page)

Then came another text from the same strange number.

             
Still at the hospital?

I had been afraid they knew where I was and I was right, not that that was anything to pat myself on the back about. Maybe Skip wasn’t all the way dead, maybe a neighbor told them the EMT crew had been in the building, there was no way to know how they figured it out, I just had to deal with the consequences. So I worked my way through the hallways, towards the north side of the building, the parts that were no longer much in use. The back of the building, the side facing the northern end of the island, the side opposite Lighthouse Park, was virtually empty from disuse. I couldn’t make it all the way there, the doors were bolted shut, but I came out the side as far north as I could. As I opened the exit door, a rush of water came in over my feet.

I shut the door behind me and faced Mel like a man. And Mel almost knocked me right back on my ass.

The wind was so strong I had to lean back against the hospital wall to adjust to its power. I had exited the hospital on the western side of the island, and as I looked toward Manhattan, I saw how bad things had gotten. Huge waves were crashing over the fence at the edge of the walkway, which was now under a few feet of water. I imagined the walkway on the east side of the island was in the same condition. That meant I wasn’t getting to Public Safety on foot.

I had to switch to Plan B. Which wasn’t going to be a whole lot of fun.

I started heading north, staying on the highest ground possible. The area at the very back of the hospital was already flooded - in the small parking area, I saw an ambulance with water up to the top of its tires. Meanwhile, I was already fucking soaking wet, and the rain was nowhere near over.

I headed north to Lighthouse Park and sloshed up one of its small, grassy, tree-covered hills, where I grabbed a tree for support and scanned the sky. I thought I saw some clearing to the east - a good sign, except, just at that moment, all the streetlights around the park went black.

The power on the island was out.

I turned back to the hospital. The lights flickered, then came back on. The emergency generator was working, which meant they could still take care of Jules.

I kept moving forward across the park, avoiding the mammoth lakes of water that had formed over the low areas of grass and heading for the very the tip of the island and the lighthouse that anchored that tip.

It was slow going. The ground was saturated along with my feet and every once in a while, I sunk down into a pit of mud. The wind was so strong I kept having to stop and grab a tree to keep from blowing away. I probably looked just like one of those idiot television talking heads I loved to make fun of – the Kens and Barbies who stayed outside when the NWS told everyone to stay inside, desperately clutching their hand mikes and hoping their immaculately sprayed-down hair wouldn’t get too mussed.

Except this wasn’t about me making it on YouTube. This was about me making it to tomorrow.

Finally, I made it all the way north to the paved walkway that led directly to the lighthouse. It was under a foot of water, but, as I saw it at the time. I had no choice. Whoever was coming for me was probably already staked out somewhere by the hospital. They had to know I couldn’t make it back to the main part of the island.

If I was going to make a stand, it had to be someplace where I could see everybody before they saw me. Where I could control as much of what was about to happen as I could.

That place was the top of the lighthouse.

The lighthouse wasn’t much – it was just fifty feet tall and maybe fifteen feet across. It had been built out of stone, legend had it, by an inmate of the old asylum about a hundred and fifty years ago.

That was appropriate, because there was a lot of madness coming its way. 

I made it to the building’s too-short-by-a-foot entrance, which was padlocked. That meant I finally got to do something I had always wanted to do – bust it off and see what was inside. I took out my gun, stood back a few feet and shot it – just like they do in the movies. Turns out I’m not Tom Cruise. First of all, I don’t buy Scientology and second of all, it took me three shots to shatter the lock. But the important thing here is that I did, in fact, shatter it, and opened the door and ducked inside. It was cold and clammy, but it still felt like paradise after my evening with Mel.

It was also time to make my presence known.

I took out my phone and replied to the last text from a few minutes ago.

Meet me in lighthouse park – north end of island.

And I climbed the narrow rusted iron ladder straight to the top.

There was another too-short door up there that led out to a small octagonal balcony that surrounded the lighthouse crown. I hunched down, opened the door a crack and looked out. It was definitely clearing to the east now and the rain was starting to let up. The worst was over, but I could see the East River was still churning like a million motorboats were racing through it, sending ever-higher waves of water crashing onto the island.

A text came in answer to mine:

Is he with you

“He?”

Did they mean PMA? I didn’t know who they were talking about and I didn’t answer it.

Even though the park lights were dark because the power was out on the island, the lights of the skyscrapers across the river on the Upper East Side were still working, and gave me some visibility to see out over the park. The sky continued to clear in patches and that helped a lot too, because the moon was close to full. I reloaded the gun to replace the bullets I used on the lock and waited.

Then I saw them.

Three figures emerged way back from the side of the hospital and began slowly walking over the grassy park area that I had just passed through. All I could tell at first was that one of the figures was being forcibly held by another – and the remaining person’s silhouette indicated a rifle being held by his side.

Even a mace to the head couldn’t keep a good man like Herman down.

And the sick bastard was wearing a Stetson in a hurricane, holding it down with his free hand. You had to admire the guy - he had a look and he was going to stick to it.

As they came closer, I was able to figure out who the other two figures were. One was the bartender hunk from Branson – and the person he was forcibly holding onto was, unfortunately, PMA.

This, of course, complicated things.

They stopped on one of the small hills in the park, where the bartender hunk started tying the kid to one of the trees, while Herman furtively looked all around, in all directions, not knowing who was where.

Meanwhile, I was confused. The text asked, “Is he with you?” If they already had the kid, who the hell was “he?” 

I wished I had Herman’s rifle, something I could shoot accurately from a distance. They were over a hundred yards away, if I tried a shot with the handgun all I’d do was give away my position. So I stayed hidden inside the crown of the lighthouse, peeking out through the crack in the door, hoping they’d come close enough for my pistol to do some damage.

But it would still be hard to make a decent shot from where I was.

They left the kid tied to the tree and started walking towards the tip of the island - towards the lighthouse. Towards me. I stayed in the darkness behind the door. They paused and the bartender hunk turned his back to Herman – and I saw that he was wearing some kind of backpack. Herman dug into it and pulled out something, which he held up to his eyes and looked through in all directions.

Shit. Probably fucking infrared binoculars.

I reacted like a scared little bitch and too-quickly slammed the door shut. It was too big and too loud a move. I waited a couple of minutes – and sure enough, another text popped up on my phone.

             
Incoming.

I cracked the door open again, because that’s one word I don’t like to see.

That’s when I saw something else I don’t like to see.

I saw Herman pulling out something else from the bartender hunk’s backpack.

A rocket launcher. And it wasn’t hard to guess where that rocket was going to come calling.

Time for an orderly retreat. I quickly texted back.

             
Coming out.

The reply came back just as quickly.

             
I don’t give a fuck.

I stuck my head out again just in time to see Herman hand the phone back to the bartender hunk and position the rocket launcher on his shoulder. I wouldn’t have time to get down the ladder inside before this whole lighthouse was rubble. That meant I would have to get down the hard way. I crawled out on the balcony as fast as I could and looked down at the flooded paved area below me. It was a long drop. I looked up.

Herman was firing the rocket right at me.

That was all the motivation I needed to throw myself over the balcony guardrail.

I was feeling everything in slow motion again as the heat of the explosion seared my skin, bits of stone ricocheted off of my body and the thunder of the blast seemed to blow out my ear drums as I fell towards the ground. I strained to stay conscious as I landed on my left leg with a splash and a crack. 

Turns out a few inches of water doesn’t really do much to break a fall. I was pretty sure my leg was broken, but I’d have to deal with that later. Right now, there was a big man with a big rifle heading towards me. A man so focused with venomous hate that he didn’t even notice when his Stetson blew off and revealed his bandaged head. Guess the mace left its mark.

“WHERE IS HE?” he bellowed.

I blinked back the tears of pain, shook off the fragments of stone that were covering me and tried to figure out who the fuck he was talking about.

“Who are you talking about? You have the kid…”

He raised the rifle. He was about fifty yards away.

“Where is he?”

“I…”

He shot the ground a few feet away from my arm. We were going to play this game again.

“I don’t know…”

He shot the ground a couple of feet away from my broken leg. He kept advancing.

“Herman, darling…I don’t know who you’re talking about…”

He shot the ground a foot away from my head. Twice. He was coming to the part where the grass ended and the paved area began. He would reach me soon.

“Herman, I swear, nobody is…”

Three more shots. I didn’t know how close they were, because my eyes were closed. Fuck.

Then another shot rang out – but it wasn’t from Herman’s rifle. No, this shot was much further away. I opened my eyes to see the bartender hunk, standing guard near PMA, crumple to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

Herman’s eyes widened in hatred and horror as he twirled around and shot five more times all in the direction of where the kid was tied to the tree.

“COME OUT, ROBBIE!” he screamed. “I KNOW IT’S YOU!”

Oh. That’s who “he” was.

They had come hunting Robert Davidson, not me.

Robert must have fled the premises and came here – but why? Whatever the reason, they sure couldn’t let that cat out of the bag for long, so Wright had no doubt dispatched Herman to come and take care of him once and for all - unless I could do something about it, and it turned out I could.  

“Hey, Herman,” I quietly said.

He didn’t turn back to me, he was too scared of what was out there. He just kept scanning the park and growled, “What?”

“You’re out of bullets.”

That got his attention. He turned to me – and slammed the rifle lever home. But I had counted correctly.

I pulled the trigger on my pistol in my coat pocket, the one Herman didn’t know was there. The shot blasted through the fabric and into Herman’s side.

Boy, the look on his face…

He went down hard with the rifle flying out of his hand and barrel-first into the nearby wet dirt.

I looked over to where the kid was tied up and saw, emerging from behind the tree, Robert Davidson.

His leather face covering was back in place and he had an oversized knife in his hand, which he used to slash the ropes and free the kid. Robert threw the knife into the trunk of another nearby tree and pulled his 9mm handgun out of his holster. Then he started heading down the hill towards us. The kid lingered behind him, not sure what to do. I was hoping he wouldn’t do anything.

Herman, still down on the flooded ground, strained for his rifle and reached it. Lying on his stomach, he pulled the shells out of his shirt pocket and began to reload his weapon with a vicious intent. Even though I was the one who had shot him, he was totally focused on Robert. I didn’t exist.

“You killed him on purpose, didn’t you?” Herman spat the words in Robert’s direction. “You couldn’t stand me being with him, could you?”

The bartender hunk was Herman’s new squeeze? Well, to be fair, at least he had a whole face.

As Robert approached, he raised his gun to finish the job on Herman. I thought that was a swell idea.

But then he lowered it again.