John Lutz - Fear the Night

His legs were on fire!

His screams drew attention, and through his pain he managed to wrest his 9mm from its holster and fire several shots blindly through the flames in the stairwell.

The bullets splintered wood but missed the Night Sniper, who had bent down to pick up Dillon’s still-shining flashlight and shove it in a coat pocket. He hadn’t brought his own flashlight tonight because he hadn’t anticipated going underground.

The fire provided enough light to work by.

He got a fresh grip on the crooked panel and was through the plywood barrier and running down a frozen escalator, fumbling for the flashlight he’d need for the total darkness ahead.

It took a few minutes for the cops on the street to reach the subway stop and drag what was left of Dillon up to the sidewalk. Assuming, with a glance at his charred and smoldering body, that he was dead, they switched their efforts to trying to extinguish the fire at the top of the stairwell.

They had little other than the soles of their shoes and a shirt one of them had removed to try to smother the flames, but it didn’t take long for the remaining gasoline to burn itself out.

Convinced that Dillon had expired, but also knowing it could be a mistake to mentally pronounce someone dead at the scene of a crime, the three cops decided they couldn’t desert him. The shirtless cop, a big African-American named Wilson, was elected to stay with the fallen Dillon to wait for an ambulance.

It was a good thing. As if responding to their decision not to give up on him, the thing that Dillon had become began to moan.

While the other two uniforms made their way down the blackened steps and through the dark gap made by the pried plywood panel, Wilson used his two-way to call for medical transport and to get out the word:

The Night Sniper was in the subway system, on the run and under hot pursuit.

The Sniper ran stumbling along the tracks, staying close to the tunnel’s dark concrete wall, occasionally bumping it with his left shoulder. He knew that though the stop was closed, the E and V trains still roared through the tunnel. Now and then he thought he could feel the wind pressure of an approaching train shoving cool air ahead of it in the narrow tunnel. But there was no thunderous, clacking roar that accompanied the trains, and no approaching brilliant eye of light.

He knew he could find shelter in the occasional tile maintenance alcove along the tunnel, where he could press himself back while a train passed a few feet away from him. He’d done it more than once during his time as a street kid, and more recently while using the tunnels to get around the city undetected. It was a convenient and private way to move about, once you learned the train times and layout of the underground maze.

What he feared more than the trains was what he knew would soon be pursuing him. There’d been an army of cops in the area, and they’d see where he entered the tunnel. As soon as they’d tended to their burned comrade, and the fire blocking the stairwell was extinguished, they’d be after the cop’s killer.

And they’d be motivated.

He could hear his rasping breath, and every few steps feel the bite of sharp or angled rock beneath his soles.

What if I turn an ankle now, fall, and become immobile? They’ll have me. Here in the tunnel they’ll do what they choose, their own notion of justice.

He ignored the rifle barrel bumping his leg beneath his coat and ran harder, careful to avoid the live rail. Like everyone who’d spent time in the subway system, he’d seen the dead rats on the tracks that had died by electrocution, and it was obvious they had left this world in agony.

His right side began to ache with each step. The intermittent, piercing pain grew sharper, slowing him down, making his stride erratic.

This is insane! Don’t panic! Don’t!

Think! Plan!

He made himself slow to a brisk walk and worked to regulate his breathing. From a pocket he withdrew a fresh magazine for the rifle. He stopped completely for a moment, removed from the rifle the magazine that was missing the bullet he’d fired at Amelia Repetto, and replaced it with the fresh magazine. Soon, any second, every shot might count. The magazine a bullet short went into his pocket. He fitted the rifle back on the sling beneath his coat.

Under way again, breathing more rhythmically, he picked up his pace and rounded a bend in the tunnel. After another hundred yards he reached a shallow alcove and pressed himself back into it. He switched off the flashlight and tucked it in his belt, then brought the rifle up from beneath his coat.

Shifting position and bracing himself against hard tile, he raised the rifle and peered through its infrared scope. Whoever was after him would soon be rounding the bend in the tunnel.

It felt good to be taking the initiative instead of acting, feeling, like a hunted animal. He had options other than mindless flight. He could plan. He could act.

He could shoot.

Oh, he could shoot!

The Night Sniper felt confidence swell in him like a warm revelation. He’d stopped playing their game.

Now they were playing his.

Their flashlight beams became visible first. Now that he had a fix on his pursuers, the Sniper raised his eye from the scope and waited.

Yellow fingers of light played over the tracks and tunnel walls. Then the figures holding the flashlights came into sight in dark silhouette, one quite a bit taller than the other. One of the yellow beams darted close and momentarily reflected off the damp tunnel wall to reveal two uniformed cops. They appeared to have their flashlights in their left hands, their handguns in their right. Their body language gave away their fear.

The Night sniper squinted again through the night scope and took careful aim. He felt solid, steady, and the moment arrived as he knew it would.

His first shot took down the tall cop, who seemed to melt into a dark heap.

The Sniper worked the rifle’s bolt action smoothly, and before the startled shorter cop could get off a shot, sent a bullet into him.

Through the scope, he studied the two still forms on the ground. The tall one had rolled against the tunnel wall and lay motionless. The short one hadn’t moved since he’d fallen and lay on his back near the tracks. The Sniper knew he’d hit both targets, and considered sending a shot into each of them to make sure they were dead.

Then he decided against it. If they weren’t dead, they were surely wounded, probably unconscious, and couldn’t keep up with him.

More confident now, he lowered the rifle and hooked it into its sling, then resumed his journey through the dark tunnel.

He’d taken only a dozen steps before he felt the cool rush of air that told him a train was bearing down on him, coming toward him.

No mistake this time.

Without hesitation he ran back toward the alcove where he’d shot from to bring down the two cops. The rifle bumping against him slowed him down, and he slipped on something and almost fell. He could hear the train now, and feel its subtle vibration. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw a pinpoint of light staring at him like an unblinking hunter’s eye.

He reached the alcove, ducked into it, and stood with his back pressed tightly against the tile wall as the train roared toward him. The tunnel shook. The wall at his back trembled.

Then the train was passing him.

Only a few feet away. How near the passengers were as they blurred past in the lighted cars. He knew he wasn’t visible to them in the black tunnel as they ticked by unaware, kept company by their reflections in the dark glass.

He’d watched carefully and was sure the conductor in the lead car hadn’t seen him.