Rather than continuing toward the doors of the big store, Jon suddenly veered to the right and headed down the sidewalk.
When they weren’t much farther down the block, the four relentless policemen emerged from the alley onto Twenty-Third, and only had to scan the street for a few moments before they saw Jon and Mallory headed west along it. Even though there was even more distance between them and their targets than on the last street, they again fired their guns numerous times as they pursued, this time hitting some of the windows near where the couple was running. At one point, Jon felt some small pieces of glass hit him as a pane shattered in front of him and he ran through the resulting shower.
But they weren’t hit by any of the bullets before Jon was able to disappear down a subway entrance built into the sidewalk, near the end of the block close to the intersection of Sixth Avenue. Mallory followed him down, still not sure that he was completely sane, but having no other good option for safety from the obviously insane cops.
They had to slow and stop when they realized the subway platform below was filled with refugees from the street. There was someone sitting or standing on almost every patch of floor, some of them wounded and only some of the wounded being cared for by others. There was very little talking going on, but there were some soft cries and gasps, especially when the handcuffed Jon led Mallory to their right along the platform, and they had to push their way through the crowd to move in that direction. These people were much more docile than the ones on the surface above, probably because they had been out of the sun for a while. But they were definitely scared.
No one else besides Jon and Mallory seemed to be moving—perhaps they were waiting for a train to arrive so they could try to leave the city, or get home. The feeling in the air, however, was that no train had arrived for a while, and none would likely be coming.
Mallory had no idea where Jon was going, and wondered if he did. She could also see him becoming more and more agitated, as moving through the throng was slow going, and they were losing ground on the cops, who would be arriving at the subway steps at any moment. She herself was becoming more afraid, and started pondering the idea of leaving Jon by hiding in the crowd of people or taking off across the tracks.
They reached a section of the platform that widened away from the tracks and was beyond where a train would stop. There was much less of a crowd there, only a few people sitting out near the edge of the platform and none in the open space behind that. Jon stood in that open space, and was looking around frantically.
Mallory just stared at him for a moment, ready to put her Plan B into effect, when he stepped toward her rather violently, grabbed her by the arm, and whispered something into her ear.
“What? Why?” she said, pulling away from him.
“Just do it!” he half-whispered and half-shouted, with a look of desperation on his face.
34
“Get away from him, he’s crazy!” Mallory shouted at the people sitting and standing near the edge of the tracks, shooing them in the direction of the crowd she and Jon had just passed through. Then she added, “He’s losing it!”
Jon waved his handcuffed hands in front of him and let out a wide-eyed snarl, like he had in the alley a few minutes before, and sure enough, it worked here, too. As every one of the frightened people near him and Mallory withdrew quickly away from him, that sudden movement and the screams some of them let out caused the larger crowd on the other side to also retreat up the tunnel in a brief but chaotic frenzy.
As this was happening, Jon grabbed Mallory again by the arm and pulled her toward the back of the platform, where he produced a key from his pocket and opened a big metal door that was built into the wall there. Before she had time think about what was going on, Jon pushed her through the door and closed it quickly behind them.
“I needed to get those people away so no one would see where we went,” he explained, and she just nodded slightly, still not fully understanding.
This Below had a light switch inside the door, which Jon turned on, and about ten steps leading down to several rooms below. Jon started down the stairs, gesturing back at Mallory.
“Come on,” he said, “We’ll be safe here…. I don’t think the cops know about this place, and by the time they get through that crowd they’ll think we took off down the subway tunnel.”
At the bottom of the steps there was a central room about twenty feet in diameter, which was empty except for a wooden cabinet on the left side. It was obviously not currently in use, unlike the other two Belows Jon had seen earlier. There were four doors near the corners of the main space, three of which led to smaller rooms with bunk beds in them, and one that led to a bathroom. Jon darted in and out of all of them briefly, disappointed that he didn’t find any weapons but happy to discover that the cabinet held some dry goods and food stores.
“There’s coffee,” Jon said, with his head down inside the door of the cabinet, then straightened up and turned around to see Mallory standing in the middle of the room with an angry look on her face.
“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” she said. “How did you know about this place? How’d you have a key for it?”
“I saw it on a GS map yesterday, and noticed the big store and the urgent care near it on the map. Wasn’t totally sure, but it worked out.”
His wide eyes and skewed smile seemed odd to Mallory, and made her feel more suspicious of him.
“If those cops are really gone,” she said, “I need to get back to my dad….”
She started to turn toward the steps, and Jon moved close to her, saying, “Whoa, whoa, hold on.” When she shrugged off his hand from her arm and turned further, he moved even closer and put both handcuffed hands over her head and arms, locking her into an involuntary embrace with the chain and the cuffs pressing against her arm.
“You can’t go up there yet,” he said.
“Let me go,” she hissed, and started to struggle against him.
“We were just in the sun,” Jon grunted as he held her. “We need to settle down.”
“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.