Michael Ares - Dayfall

“ You were,” she said, and thrashed about more.

As she did, her shoulder slammed into the wound under Jon’s chin, which caused him to scream and swear, but it also distracted him enough that she was able to wriggle downward and out of his grip. When she was free, she hauled off with her right hand and punched him in the face as hard as she could.

“Don’t ever …,” she spat out, as he reeled back a step and grabbed his cheek.

Then he stepped up close to her again, and they stood facing each other silently. The expression on both their faces was inscrutable to the other—the meaning and the interpretation of them seemed to be complicated by the lingering effects of the Dayfall. It could have been love or hate or pity or resentment or anything else in between that he felt, or she felt, and it could probably end up changing in the blink of an eye. But they continued to stand still and stare at each other, until Jon’s cuffed hands moved slowly away from his cheek in the direction of Mallory’s neck.

Her eyes glanced down once very briefly, but then her gaze returned to his eyes, and she didn’t move another muscle as Jon’s hands continued toward her throat. It looked like he was going to choke her, and it looked like she wanted him to do it. But when his fingers were almost touching the skin below her chin, he moved them up slowly and began to softly cradle and caress her cheeks with them.

Jon tilted his head slightly to the side and down, and kissed her tenderly on the lips, then more deeply.

Then they suddenly heard the door of the Below being unlocked at the top of the stairs.

Not knowing who was coming or what else to do, Jon led Mallory quickly and quietly into the room at the back right of the Below. They situated themselves behind the partially open door, and Jon peered out through the crack at the hinges. He was thankful for the loudness of the footsteps on the stairway, and hoped whoever it was hadn’t heard them moving across the floor.

The Dayfall Killer named Sturm emerged from the steps into the central room, holding a sniper rifle in one hand and a case for it in the other.

The ex–Navy SEAL didn’t check the adjoining rooms, obviously assuming no one else would be in the Below, but stepped right over to the cabinet on the other side of the room from where Jon and Mallory were hiding. She placed the gun case on the top of the cabinet and started to disassemble it with her back to them. Jon wondered if the rifle was her only weapon, and thought of trying to jump her while she was taking it apart. But before he could even consider whether he could get to her across about ten feet of space, or whether he should wait for her to move to a different position, she stopped what she was doing abruptly and looked up at the lights in the ceiling.

Evidently she was wondering why the lights were on. She methodically rotated her neck to the left and then to the right, scanning the doorways to the other rooms, which were all dark inside. At one point her eyes seemed to be pointed directly at Jon’s, and he had to battle a wave of fear rising inside him by reminding himself of the fact that there was no way she could possibly see him with the lighting in the big room and the lack of it in the little one. But he also remembered Halladay’s comment about how good Navy SEALs were at what they did, and how Sturm seemed to have a sixth sense about her in the two previous altercations.

He tensed and got ready to do something—though he wasn’t sure what—if she moved toward them. But all she did was turn back to the rifle, lay it down temporarily, and take off her coat before continuing to work on it. When she did, Jon noticed both her powerful body and the handgun resting on her back right hip. Mallory saw it, too, as she spied through a lower part of the door crack, and then she and Jon looked at each other with raised eyebrows.

Mallory whispered something quietly into Jon’s ear, he nodded at her, and they both silently slipped off their shoes. A few moments later they both stepped softly out from behind the door and started toward Sturm, hoping she would not hear them or turn around before they got to her.

Jon was slightly in front of Mallory, and when he was about four or five feet from Sturm, the killer suddenly started turning around and reaching for her gun. So Jon lunged toward her with his arms out in front of him, stretching the handcuffs over her head to her neck, and pulling them tight in a choke hold. Sturm arched in pain and began to thrash about wildly, propelling Jon’s legs up in the air and sideways, which made it hard for Mallory to get to the rifle parts as she had planned. But Jon held on for dear life, Sturm wasn’t able to liberate the handgun at her waist, and Mallory eventually reached the biggest part of the rifle and picked it up.

She swung it toward Sturm’s head as hard as she could, but just then the mercenary’s body jerked violently to the side, and the heavy piece of wood and metal slammed into Jon’s shoulder instead. Both Jon and Sturm grunted loudly as their connected bodies staggered a few feet across the floor, but somehow they didn’t actually fall over. The murderer’s head swung around in the right direction, however, and Mallory’s next blow landed squarely on it.

Sturm’s body jerked violently once more and then slumped to the ground lifelessly, with Jon going down on top of it. He checked to make sure there was no pulse before he extricated his hands from her throat, and then stood up face-to-face with Mallory, as they had been before the killer arrived.

“Good plan,” Jon said. “But I need you to stop hitting me.”

“Sorry,” she said, looking at the rifle butt and then laying it down on the floor. Then she stared at Sturm’s body, and at her hands, as if there was blood on them. “I can’t believe I killed someone…. I feel bad for her.”

“Don’t,” Jon said. “She deserved it, believe me. In fact, she might have been the one who murdered your fiancé.”

“She worked for Gant, right? He was behind it all. So what’s gonna happen to him?”

“He’ll get his,” Jon said with satisfaction. “I saved a video that will put him behind bars for the rest of his life.”

Remembering how he had sent Shinsky’s testimony to his personal cell phone, Jon crouched down at Sturm’s body and found hers, thinking he might call Hegde or someone else and see if they could leave the Below. But there was no service.

“Must be pretty bad out there still,” he said, pocketing the phone and putting his arms around Mallory again.

“What do you think caused all that?” she asked.

“Don’t know. I guess one of the theories was actually right, or more than one, maybe. I’m just glad we’re in here and not out there.”

He kissed her again, and then hugged her tight.

“Never thought I’d be happy to be handcuffed,” he said, as he looked at the cuffs over her shoulder while they were embracing. “But I don’t think we could have won that fight without them.”

Then Jon noticed something else—the tattoo on the back of Mallory’s shoulder.

“I see the whole clover,” he whispered in her ear, “all four leaves.”

He didn’t know if this was a lingering effect of the Dayfall, or what, but he didn’t care. And Mallory didn’t either; she just gasped and squeezed him tighter when she heard it.

Before he could look back at the tattoo again, to see if it was still complete, the lights went out in the room.

“Must be really bad out there,” Mallory said.

“At least we have each other,” Jon said.

“And two guns now, in case anyone else comes.”

“Yeah, we’ll wait it out for a while,” Jon concluded, realizing that even the wound under his chin was feeling a lot better. “We’ll be all right.”