Brian Freeman - The Cold Nowhere

Another crack. Another.

He was shooting at them. The next bullet was so close that she felt a sting on her ear. When she touched her hand there, her fingers came away with blood. Brooke was paralyzed, but Cat yanked her under a concrete arch that made a roof over the frozen creek, where they were blocked from view. They were below the freeway, like pygmies in a giant land, with miles of roadbed stretching no more than four feet over their head.

A one-sided iron ladder, propped against the wall, led out of the water and into the secret no-man’s land between the two sides of the interstate.

‘Come on,’ Cat urged her. ‘We’ll hide in the graffiti graveyard.’

‘Gunshots,’ Stride said.

They headed north into the city on Michigan Street. When he heard the distinctive pop-pop of shots in quick succession, he braked sharply and pulled to the curb near the depot. As they listened, the gun went silent.

‘Where?’ Serena asked.

‘Somewhere near the tracks.’

He turned into an alley that led to the railway yard. His wheels bumped over the maze of tracks. The alley dead-ended at I-35, and he followed a gravel road beside a line-up of old passenger cars and Wisconsin Central engines. The freeway above them was lit by streetlights, but the area around the tracks was black. He turned on his high beams, giving the train cars a white glow. The loose rock under his tires was loud as he inched through the rail yard.

He stopped, leaving the lights on. When he opened his door, the wind ripped it out of his hand. Serena got out on the other side. They both slid their weapons from their holsters.

Stride followed the wall of the freeway overpass and gestured to Serena to remain on the other side of the alley, in the shadow of the trains. The two of them crept south, the wind fighting them, drowning out the noise. Cars shot by on I-35 a few feet over his head. He saw Serena clearing the space between each rail car.

They were alone.

Then he heard it, distant and muffled, as if coming from inside a wall. A young girl screamed, and the scream cut off sharply into silence. He was sure he recognized the pitch of the voice.

It was Cat.

Serena ran across the road to join him. Thirty yards ahead of them, the wall beside the interstate ended and the weedy ground sloped downward under the roadbed. On the other side of the freeway was the harbor.

‘Do you know where they are?’ she whispered.

‘Sounds like the graffiti graveyard.’

He led the way to the end of the freeway wall and stole a look around the corner. He was conscious of his truck headlights illuminating him from behind and throwing his shadow like a giant. The sunken area between the freeway beds was dark. He heard water dripping. The winter branches of a bent tree scratched his face as it fluttered in the wind.

Stride inched his way down the slope. Serena followed. He reached a dirty creek, which stretched like a ribbon between six-foot walls under the southbound lanes. The creek water was frozen. Boulders and rusted debris jutted out of the ice. He saw a ladder leaning on the east wall. Where light from the freeway spilled over the maze of concrete, graffiti art bloomed in a wild, psychedelic maze of colors. It was everywhere, covering everything.

He listened and heard nothing, but somewhere over the wall, a cone of light speared through the darkness. A flashlight. He cupped his hand over Serena’s ear and whispered. ‘Stay with the creek.’

Stride crossed to the opposite side of the canal, wincing as the ice broke, flooding his shoes with frigid water. Serena stayed behind him, almost invisible, following the wall on the fringe of the creek. He balanced a wet boot on the slippery steel of the ladder and pushed up one step. The ladder vibrated. He climbed two more steps and then shunted over the top of the wall. With a squishy thud, he dropped into snow and mud.

In the land ahead of him, a shot exploded through the darkness.

*

Cat watched the flashlight go on and off as Ken McCarty crept closer to them. She pressed her lips shut, trying not to scream again.

The graffiti graveyard was a grassy shelter tucked between the north-south overpasses. The ladder up the stone wall from the creek was the only way in, but once inside, the enclosure stretched for hundreds of yards, with drivers speeding north and south just overhead, unaware of the odd playground beneath them. The homeless came here, along with druggies and artists. The ground was littered with hypodermic needles, broken glass and aerosol cans. Every wall and column was covered with elaborate spray-painted designs, like a multicolored museum.

Cat squeezed herself behind one of the concrete pillars that propped up the roadbeds. Brooke stood behind another pillar ten feet away. There were other people around them. Despite the cold, she saw blanket-shrouded bundles huddled against the walls. In the occasional flash of light, their eyes glittered at her like cats.

The flashlight swept the ground on either side of the pillar where she stood. She pushed her ankles together to keep the beam from finding her. She heard another shot, and the noise was deafening inside the concrete jungle. She knew what he was doing. He wanted them to move, to run, to show themselves. She clapped her hands over her ears and held her breath.

Each flash of light, on and off, teased her with examples of graffiti art around her, making the paintings on the concrete look scary and alive.

Flash. A smoking monkey with suspicious, squinting eyes.

Flash. A green-and-blue chain of spiked barbed wire.

Flash. A row of bone-white skulls with black eye sockets.

Flash. A fanged spider.

Flash. A single sentence scrawled in drippy red, covering up a golden devil-robot. Alone we are nothing .

Cat stared at Brooke, who pointed a finger northward. Ken was getting closer; they had to move or they would be trapped here. When the light went off, they skidded across icy ground, jumping past three more pillars and ducking into cover just as the flashlight shot across their feet, nearly exposing them. Each time the light came from a different angle. He was zigzagging as he tracked them north. Soon he would be so close that they would be able to hear his footsteps.

They were more than a hundred yards from where they had started. It was cold, and they clung to each other, shivering.

‘He won’t stop,’ Brooke whispered in Cat’s ear. ‘He’ll find us, and he’ll kill us.’

‘We have to double back,’ Cat said.

She knew there was only one way to escape. They had to cross the graveyard to the southbound overpass, climb the wall, and drop down into the frigid creek. They could slip past him in the water, back toward the railway yard and the downtown streets. They would be safe, unless he heard them and found them there. If he did, there was nowhere to run.

‘The creek,’ Cat said.

Brooke nodded.

The graveyard was dark. His flashlight was off. They didn’t hear him coming; he was somewhere in the field of concrete, waiting and watching. Above their heads, a highway light made crazy shadows and lit up the graffiti. As cars passed, the light flickered like a strobe. They had to cross a stretch of dead grass to move from the northbound to the southbound lanes, and there was no way to dodge the light. If he was looking when they ran, he would see them like black silhouettes. They had to risk it.

Maybe he was a hundred feet away.

Maybe he was right there, with the gun.

They dashed across the snow. Their running footsteps through the wet drifts sounded loud. The light stretched out their bodies on the ground. They crossed from the shelter of one cross-beam to the next cross-beam in no more than two seconds, and they stopped, listening. Cat expected to hear him running. She expected to feel the flashlight beam dazzling her eyes. Instead, there was silence.