“Yes, sir.”
After a moment, Travis heard footsteps echoing down the hallway of the half-finished hospital building. He pulled his gun but quickly placed it back in its holster when the man came into view. He checked his watch. He could set the thing by Dr. Callow’s visits.
Girard nodded to the doctor, a rotund man with a thick gray beard, but Travis noted a strange look on Girard’s face. “I’ve been wondering why you hadn’t called for us to open the door. How the hell did you get in here, Doc?” The older cop looked directly at Travis. “The place is supposed to be locked up tight.”
Realizing the implications, Travis sat up straighter. “I checked everything, boss. I swear that—”
The doctor chuckled as he moved closer. A stubby finger reached up and pushed the glasses back onto the bridge of his nose. “Don’t worry yourself, Travis. The work crew opened up the new access tunnel today.”
“What tunnel?” Girard said.
“They didn’t tell you? Since this new building is located a good distance from the others, they needed to come up with a way to transport patients back and forth. The board ended up deciding that a tunnel system connecting all the buildings would be more economical than some sort of enclosed skywalk. It’ll be really useful, once it’s finished. We’ll be able to transport patients between all the different sections of the hospital as easily as just going down the hall.”
Girard closed his eyes and released a slow breath. “Great. I wonder what genius on the work crew decided that tidbit of info wouldn’t be useful to me?”
The doctor shrugged. “Sorry, not my area. How’s our patient?”
“Trying to sleep, last I knew. Her kid just left a few minutes ago.” Girard opened the door for the doctor.
After a few moments with the patient, Dr. Callow exited the room and noiselessly slid the door shut. “Vitals are good. I gave her some medication to help with the pain and let her get some sleep. It won’t be long until she’s well enough to get out of here.”
Girard nodded. “Thanks, Doc. Heading home? You look tired.”
“Yeah, enough excitement for one day. See you boys tomorrow.”
With those words, Travis watched the doctor’s shoes clip clop down the hallway. Work lights positioned at sparse intervals would illuminate Callow’s path through the hall and down the stairs. The construction team foreman had promised that the overhead lights would be active within a couple of days, but Travis hoped to be gone by then.
With the departure of the day’s only visitor, he returned to his book.
The scream echoed down the hallway like the characters in his crime novel had stepped from the page into the real world. For a split second, he thought the sound originated within his own imagination, but the idea faded when he saw Girard pull his gun. The other member of their group, a pot-bellied trooper named Dobbs, also came awake and went for a shotgun. The novel skidded across the floor as his trembling hand pulled the 9mm. He took cover next to an empty nurse’s station.
No one spoke. The air felt thick. The silence pressed in on him as if he was underwater.
The last set of work lights at the end of hall blinked out.
A tremor shot through his arm. He glanced at Girard. The man was rock-steady. His commander’s strength gave Travis confidence.
He watched Girard retrieve his portable packset radio and bring the device to his lips. “We’ve got a Code 30. Send backup immediately.”
Movement in the darkness. An impact. The sound of rolling wheels.
His finger shook on the trigger as the white object rolled into view.
The hospital gurney skidded down the hall toward their position. It gradually veered to the right until it came to rest against the wall, halfway between them and the darkness.
A large sheet covered the gurney on all sides, almost reaching the floor. Other than a flower of red on the very top, the sheet seemed ghostly white. The layer of white concealed an object shaped like a human body.
Girard caught his eye. “Wait here. Cover us.”
He nodded in rapid fire as a response.
Girard and Dobbs moved toward the gurney in leapfrog formation, taking cover in the doorways. All the doors along the corridor were closed, but the doorjambs were deep enough to provide concealment. Within a few seconds, they arrived at the gurney. Girard shined his flashlight toward the end of the hall but illuminated no threats.
Travis kept his gun trained on the end of the corridor but watched as Girard motioned for Dobbs to cover the gurney. He saw Girard reach out with a steady hand and pull back just enough of the sheet to reveal the face of the body.
He couldn’t see the face from his position. Dobbs swung the shotgun away from the gurney and toward the end of the hall, and Girard uttered something unintelligible under his breath.
He couldn’t contain himself any longer. “What’s happening?” he called to them.
Girard shook his head and looked toward Travis. His voice barely over a whisper, Girard said, “It’s the Doc. He’s dead.”
The sound of a shotgun erupted through the confined space, and Girard flew into the wall. His ruined body fell to the floor.
Dobbs swung his shotgun back and forth with wild, jerky movements as he backpedaled rapidly down the hall.
Travis also searched for the source of the blast, but he couldn’t locate the assailant. Fear threatened to overwhelm his faculties.
He watched in horror as the sheet fell away to reveal a man with a sawed-off shotgun hiding on the gurney’s lower platform. The man fired, and his fellow trooper’s legs exploded in a spray of crimson.
Travis unleashed a barrage of panicked shots in the killer’s direction, but the man dove toward the cover of a doorway.
Dobbs wailed as he crawled for cover and discharged the shotgun blindly into a wall near the killer’s position.
Two more shotgun blasts exploded down the hall. The trooper’s screaming ceased, and a set of the work lights exploded in a shower of sparks. Darkness consumed the bodies.
A shadow flitted through the black, and Travis fired in the direction of the apparition. Another set of work lights exploded. The darkness crept closer.
Travis trembled all over. His body felt cold, the world surreal. He couldn’t breathe.
The fight or flight instinct took over, recommending flight. He kicked through a set of doors into another hallway near the nurse’s station. This hall contained no lights, but he didn’t care at the moment. Escape was his only thought. After a few feet, he tripped over something in the darkness and remembered his flashlight. He cursed his stupidity and retrieved it from his belt.
As he sprinted through the hall, the beam of illumination bounced up and down until he reached what would soon be a small waiting room. He slid within the doorway and wheeled back in the direction from which he had come. The flashlight’s beam irradiated no pursuers.
He felt light-headed, and he couldn’t catch his breath. For the first time, he remembered why he had been stationed in the hallway. His guts churned, and the bile began to rise. He bit down on his lower lip.
He had been there as protection, and he had just left Emily Morgan behind.
Emily Morgan scanned the hall from the doorway of her hospital room. She had been sleeping peacefully when the screaming began. When she had heard the shotgun blasts, she pulled the IVs from her arms. She steadied herself on the doorframe, but the world crested and fell like ocean waves. Her legs didn’t feel like her own. She seemed to float instead of walk. She wondered if the disorientation stemmed from the trauma to her head or Dr. Callow’s prescription. Either way, she was in no condition to fight or run—but she could hide.
Only the closest work light was in operation. Darkness suffocated the rest of the hallway. She stumbled from the room and headed away from the ruined lights. The corridor was also dark in that direction, but that was her plan. She could hide in the darkness just as easily as the killer.
She had only moved a short distance down the hall when the last of the work lights blinked out.
Her knees threatened to buckle, but she steadied herself against the wall and pressed forward. The darkness seemed fluid as if she were drowning in a sea of oil. Her plan was simple: move down the hall as far as she could, hide in a random room, and pray.
Her breathing and the noise made by her socks shuffling along the floor were the only sounds.
She stopped. There was another sound behind her.
The air was still. After a moment, she continued on.
She stopped again.
Nothing.
She prayed that the noise existed only in her imagination, but she could have sworn that she had heard the rustle of fabric at her back. And the sound seemed to be keeping pace with her.
The world rolled, and she trembled all over. The shaking caused her head to throb.
When she advanced, she did so with as slow and calculated of movements as she could manage. She moved to the opposite side of the hall and crept forward.
A little farther…just a little farther.
She felt a warm wind against the back of her neck, but that wasn’t possible. There was no wind here.
She imagined another possibility—
the killer’s breath.
She pushed the thought from her mind. He would have been just as blind as she was in this place. Unlike some, she didn’t believe Ackerman to be the boogeyman. He was just a man whose mind had been twisted. He couldn’t see in the dark.
She thought back to the night when Ackerman had forever changed their lives. It seemed long ago, but it had only been a matter of days. She remembered his eyes the most. At the time, she had mistaken the look in his eyes for only madness or rage, but looking back, she also saw pain and hopelessness within his gaze. After the incident, she had studied the man who had killed her husband. She had learned of his past. She had needed to understand.
She felt the wind on her neck again. Then, she felt something else, something of substance. A finger traced the line of her neck down her shoulder.
The terror crippled her. She stood petrified.
She gathered her resolve and thrust an arm back against the killer. Her forearm struck flesh, but she was weak and knew that she could do little damage.
She ran down the dark hallway, tripping, stumbling. The swaying of her reality finally overwhelmed her, and she toppled forward. She crawled in desperation, questing for a place to hide.
She found what felt like a table. Something the workmen had used? No, not a table. A cabinet of some kind? She felt wheels under the object. Whatever it was, it was empty, large enough to hold her, and her only option. She crawled inside and quieted her breathing.
Her heart beat at such volume that she feared he would find her by it. She felt him drawing near. She imagined the hammering in her chest calling to him like a beacon.
She willed the pounding to stop. She had never thought of herself as a strong person, but Ackerman had made her realize that she could survive anything. Death would not claim her tonight. She would beat back the reaper.
She thought of her daughter. The loss of a parent and the trauma of the incident would affect the girl in profound ways. Ashley needed her mother by her side, and she vowed that nothing in this world or the next would take her away.
The voice froze her thundering heart.
“Emily. I see you.”
Travis Depaolo stared into the darkness and reasoned that the killer must have extinguished the last of the work lights. He cursed himself again. He felt like a coward. He had to make it right.
He left his flashlight off and listened.
The absence of light made him feel as if he stood in the vacuum of space gazing into the belly of a black hole. He feared that to step forward was to give himself as offering into the arms of oblivion. He stepped forward anyway.
The approximate location of Emily Morgan’s room from his former position next to the nurse’s station was across the hall and back to the left. He wanted desperately to turn on the flashlight and illuminate his path, but he knew that the killer would find him by the light. It would draw death down upon him like a moth to flame.
The doorway eluded him as he moved across the hall and groped blindly for the entrance. He found the opening and moved inside. Once through the entry, he pushed the door almost closed, in order to block the light from entering the hall, and then activated the beam.
His heart sank as the light shone upon the empty bed. The sheets had been thrown back. Tubes ending in needles lay strewn across the floor.
The killer had claimed his prize. He was too late.
He fought back the guilt and fear.
Maybe she made it out of the room?
He extinguished the light and opened the door. He listened in the darkness again.
This time, he heard a faint whisper down the hall. The voice reverberated off the walls. By the time it reached his ears, it sounded as if a legion of the damned lived in the darkness. The voice repeated Emily Morgan’s name.
He moved in the direction of the voice. He didn’t turn on his light at first, but then he decided that he might bump into the killer or walk right past the man and not even know it.
He flipped on the flashlight. His eyes adjusted while his gun sighted along the beam. He mimicked his deceased commander and moved forward by taking cover within each of the doorways. He prayed for strength.
Ackerman watched Emily Morgan tremble in the pale green light.
In the past, night vision goggles had been expensive pieces of equipment purchased by mail order or at military surplus outlets. Now, however, the ability to see in the dark could be attained for less than a hundred dollars at a local toy store. The black goggles had been designed for children playing hide and seek, but the straps could be adjusted for more mature gamers as well. They weren’t quite military grade and didn’t have the range and capabilities of their more expensive brethren, but they served his purposes just fine.
The bandages that encompassed Emily Morgan’s skull made him think of a little girl from long ago—the first person he ever killed.