P Deutermann - Darkside

Okay, he’s cracked open a steam valve. To do what? Mask his own sound? Create a fog bank in the tunnel? Based on the sound, there wasn’t enough steam escaping to fill the tunnel, or at least not for a long time. Besides, the tunnel walls were cold concrete; any steam might create a mist, but then it would condense on the walls. So he was masking sound.

His own sound.

Which meant he was coming up the tunnel.

Jim lifted the big Maglite off of his belt and tried to position himself so he could lunge out of the alcove. He turned his body in tiny, silent increments to face down the tunnel, flexed his cramped muscles as he began deep breathing, trying to keep as still as possible.

He’d been wrong about the mist effect: The atmosphere in the tunnel was solidifying before his eyes. He blinked to make sure, because the only light was coming from a single bulb thirty feet back up the tunnel. The mist stank of old iron and wet concrete. It was accumulating on the walls and even on the steel cabinet under which he was hiding. He felt a drip of condensation tap the back of his neck, and then a second one.

He put his finger on the Maglite button. His plan was to blind the guy with the powerful flashlight from his crouched position, then to stand up and confront him. The mist swirled visibly now in the murk of the tunnel. Something coming? Had to be. He got ready to snap on the light. The light from up the tunnel was diminishing rapidly, becoming a yellow glow that seemed to suffuse the mist in every direction.

He felt rather than saw a presence, a gathering mass in the mist. Then it disappeared. He almost moved but then froze as he felt it again. There was something wrong: It wasn’t down the tunnel; it was behind his left shoulder. The guy hadn’t been coming up the tunnel, the guy had been behind him, in the city tunnel! Forcing his head to turn as slowly as possible, he saw a definite darkness in the fog, a solidification, shapeless but clearly there. In an instant, he turned the flashlight, pointed it up, and snapped it on. To his shock, he had illuminated a horror mask: a painted face, dead white, with glaring red-rimmed eyes, carmine lips, and huge teeth exposed in a terrible rictus. The face had no edges, but it seemed to disappear into a black-on-black penumbra. He was absolutely paralyzed for half a second by the sight, but just as his brain came back on line, he was blinded by a blast of something sticky spraying into his face, his eyes. He dropped the Maglite to shield his eyes, but the stuff was all over his face and then his hands. He lurched out from under the cabinet and tried to stand up, but something swept his feet out from under him and he fell heavily onto the deck plates, the impact knocking the breath out of him. He heard a horrible fun-house laugh, and then he felt the black mass stepping over him to disappear down the tunnel toward the Academy.

He wiped at his eyes, then stopped when he realized he was making it worse. Suddenly, he recognized the strong smell: paint fumes. The bastard had hit him with a can of spray paint. Wiping his hands clean on his coveralls, he extracted the plastic bottle of water from his backpack, struggled to rip off the top, and then squeezed water into his eyes until the stinging stopped and he could see. After a fashion, that is, for the tunnel was still full of condensing steam, and the lights were still out. He got up and stumbled down the tunnel.

Half an hour later, he emerged from the grating behind Mahan Hall. He hoped he wouldn’t encounter a passing police patrol, because he suspected his face would be really something to see. As he secured the grating, he remembered something the chief had mentioned that morning-that bit about the “vampire” thrashing those town boys. Whoever this guy was who’d attacked him, he’d been decked out like Bela Lugosi on a midnight ride. He had to admit that, for a moment there, this guy had managed to scare the shit out of him. And since it had sounded like he’d taken off into the Academy precincts, he was probably a midshipman.

He paged the chief to let him know he was out of the tunnels. He didn’t really expect Bustamente to call him back, but when he got back to his pickup truck, he found a message waiting for him on his government cell phone: CALL THE CHIEF, it read.

“Didn’t need you to call back,” he said when the chief picked up. “Just wanted to let you know I was out of the tunnels.”

“It go okay? No bad guys?”

“Not exactly,” Jim said, and told him what had happened. The chief whistled in surprise.

“I wonder if that’s the same guy who trashed those people over in town. That one guy’s still in the hospital.”

“He came up from behind me when I was coming back; I was looking down the tunnel, not behind me. He looked like every vampire I’ve ever seen in the movies, and I have to tell you, that shit stopped me for a second.”

“I haven’t seen any of those since I quit drinking,” Bustamente said.

“Since when did you quit drinking?”

“I mean drinking. Look, I’ll talk to Allan Wells, chief of D’s in town. Tell him what happened. Maybe we can catch this sick fuck.”

“Sick fuck is right. I’m having trouble seeing a mid do this. Dress up, scare people, maybe. But assault and battery on civilians-that’s different.”

“Why don’t you let me handle the reporting side?” Bustamente said. “I’m thinking in particular of Public Works. Those guys who work underground all the time aren’t gonna like this vampire shit.”

“Oh, hell, Chief, it’s some guy playing dress-up.”

“Yeah, but you see what I’m sayin’ here. Those guys who work underground, they tend to be superstitious. We need to be careful. Yard cops start talking vampire shit, ain’t nobody gonna go down there. The Johns’re gonna back up in Mother Bancroft till the end of time, we’re not careful here.”

Jim, grinning in the dark, rolled his eyes. Big mistake: The residual paint came after him in stinging waves. “I need to get this paint out of my face. I’ll stop over at your office in the morning. Oh, hey, I need to talk to you about this jumper case, too.”

“I’ve heard from a second source that this may not be a jumper case.”

“Yeah, that’s what I need to talk to you about.”

On Friday morning, Jim stopped by the Academy dispensary to get some help removing the paint from his eyes. The nurse used a vile mixture of stinging substances to dab the last flecks out of his eyelashes. Looking in his rearview mirror when he got back to his truck, Jim decided that he looked like the vampire now. The gate guards gave him a decidedly funny look.

The chief was waiting in his office with tiny cups of espresso coffee ready; he kept a machine right there next to his desk. Jim closed the door and inhaled the strong vapors gratefully.

“Interesting makeup,” Bustamente said. “And if that’s not makeup, there’s lots more coffee. You said you wanted to talk about the Dell incident.”

Jim sipped some coffee and felt his heartbeat quicken almost immediately. “Yeah. I have a mission, directly from the dant.”

“Should you choose to accept it, Jim,” the chief intoned with a perfectly straight face.

Jim tried to give him the fish eye, but his lashes were still sticking. “Not exactly,” he said. He explained what the commandant had asked him to do.

“You ever get close to Branner?” the chief asked. “Now, you wanna talk about your vampire…”

Jim grinned. “I suspect nobody gets close to Branner, other than perhaps her Calvin Kleins.”

The chief grinned back. “You noticed.”

“She lets you look, but I suspect you better not even think about touch. But to answer your question, no, I don’t know her or her sidekick. Young black guy-what’s his name?”