"No, I'm not. Didn't you hear the siren?"
He stayed quiet for a long time, then said, "I guess it is over, one way or the other."
"Right. Let's make a deal."
"What sort of deal?"
"You give me the gun, we get out of here and get to your boat, quick, then to a hospital. We talk to the DA about your voluntary surrender and you get out on bail, then a year from now, we go to trial and everyone has his or her chance to tell lies. Okay?"
Tobin stayed silent.
Of course, the chance of getting out on bail on a charge of multiple murder was zero; also note I didn't use words like arrest or jail or anything negative like that. I said, "I really will go to bat for you if you voluntarily turn yourself over to me." Right, pal. "Really. Cross my heart."
He seemed to be contemplating this offer. This is a tricky and sticky moment because he had to choose between fight, flight, or surrender. I kept in mind that Tobin was a lousy long-shot gambler with an ego too big to cash in when he was down.
He said, "It occurs to me that you're not here as a law officer."
I was afraid he'd figure that out.
"It occurs to me that you've taken all of this personally. That you'd like to do to me what I did to Tom, Judy, the Murphys, and Emma…"
Of course, he was dead right, and that made me dead anyway, so I dived left, out of the beam of light, into the dark, and shoulder-rolled across the floor. Tobin swung the flashlight and fired, but I was much farther across the floor than he'd judged. In fact, I did another roll in the opposite direction as the shot echoed and covered the sound of my movement. I got the knife out of my pants before it sliced off my dick.
The narrow beam swung wildly around the room, and now and then he'd fire blindly and the bullet would ricochet off the concrete walls as the blast echoed into the blackness.
Once, the beam passed right over me, but by the time Tobin realized it and swung the light back, I was gone again. Playing tag with a flashlight and bullets is not as much fun as it sounds, but it's a lot easier than you'd think, especially in a big space like this with no obstructions.
I felt around for the shotgun each time I did a roll or a scramble, but I never came into contact with it. Notwithstanding my lack of firepower, the advantage was now mine, and as long as the idiot kept the light on and kept firing, I knew where he was. Clearly, cool Freddie had lost it.
However, before he figured out that he should shut off the light, I charged like a linebacker right toward him. He heard me coming at the last second and swung the flashlight and the pistol simultaneously toward me just as I collided with him.
He made a sound like a popping balloon and went down like a tenpin. No contest. I wrenched the pistol out of his hand easily enough, then pulled the flashlight from him. I knelt with my knees on his chest, one hand holding the flashlight in his face, the other hand holding my fleshing knife to his throat,
Tobin had trouble breathing but managed to say, "All right… All right… You win…"
"Correct." I brought the butt of the knife down on his nose and smashed the bridge. I heard the crack and saw the blood spurting out of his nostrils as he screamed. The screams turned to whimpers and he looked at me wide-eyed, then let out a groan. "No… please… enough…"
"No, no, not enough. Not enough." My second blow with the butt of the knife cracked his capped teeth, then I reversed the knife and sliced at the base of his hair weave, and I ripped the rug off. He let out another groan, but he was in semi-shock and wasn't fully reacting to my nastiness. I heard myself screaming in the darkness, "You bashed her head in! You raped her! You fucking bastard!"
"No… oh, no…"
I knew I was not rational anymore, and I should have just gotten out of there. But those images of the dead were truly lurking in the darkness, and by this time, after the terror of the boat ride, the chase across Plum Island, the biohazard leak, and dodging bullets in the dark, John Corey had reverted to something best kept in the dark. I smashed the butt of the knife down on his forehead twice but couldn't crack his skull.
Tobin let out a long, pathetic wail. "Noooo…"
I truly wanted to stand up and run out of there before I did something that was irretrievably evil, but the black heart that lurks in all of us had awoken in me.
I reached behind me with the fleshing knife and sliced through Tobin's pants into his lower abdomen, a deep, lateral incision that parted the flesh and muscle and caused a rupture of his intestines out of the abdominal cavity.
Tobin screamed, but then went strangely silent and stayed motionless, as though trying to figure out what happened. He must have felt the warmth of the blood, but otherwise his vital signs were fine and he was probably thanking God he was alive. I would soon put an end to that.
I reached back with my right hand and grabbed a nice big handful of warm guts, which I pulled out and dragged along beside me; then I threw the entrails into Tobin's face.
His eyes met mine in the illumination of the flashlight and he looked at me almost quizzically. But since he had no point of reference for the steaming stuff lying across his face, he needed a word or two from me. So I said, "Your guts."
He screamed, and screamed again, his hands flailing at his face.
I stood, wiped my hands on my trousers, and walked away. Tobin's screams and cries echoed in the cold, cold room.
CHAPTER 37
I wasn't looking forward to the long walk back through the dark tunnel. Also, it's good tactics not to go back the way you come; someone may be waiting for you.
I looked at the opening above. A dark, stormy sky never looked so inviting. I moved to the steel structure that rose from the floor to the ceiling of the ammunition magazine. This was, as I said, the elevator by which huge cannon shells and gunpowder were once hoisted to the gun emplacements above, so I figured it was built right. I got up on the first crossbar and it held. I went up another few crossbars and noticed that they were pretty rusty, but they also held.
Rain fell on me from the opening above, and Fredric Tobin's screams assailed me from below. You'd think a guy would run out of screams after a while. I mean, once the initial horror has passed, then a guy should get a grip on and see about stuffing his guts back where they belong and shut up.
Anyway, the air was better the higher I got. At about fifteen feet, I could feel the wind blowing through the hole. At twenty feet, I was at the opening and the rain was driving hard and horizontally; the storm had returned.
I saw now that the opening above was surrounded by a barbed wire fence, obviously put there to keep animals from falling into the hole when the gun emplacements were used as animal pens. "Damn it."
I stood on the last rung of the elevator structure, half my body out of the hole. The wind and the rain drowned out Tobin's screams now.
I contemplated the four-foot-high barbed wire fence that surrounded me. I could climb the fence or go back down and get out through the tunnel. I thought about Tobin down there screaming his life out with his entrails all over the floor, And what if he got himself under control and found his shotgun or his pistol? So, having gotten myself this far, I decided to go the last four feet.
Pain is mostly mind over matter, so I made my brain blank and climbed up the barbed wire fence, got to the top, and leapt down to the pavement below.
I lay there awhile catching my breath, rubbing the cuts on my hands and feet, happy that the hospital docs had given me my tetanus booster in case the three slugs were dirty.
So, ignoring the pain of the cuts, I stood and looked around. I was in a circular artillery emplacement about thirty feet in diameter. The emplacement was cut into the hillside and was surrounded by a shoulder-high concrete wall that had once protected the big gun that sat here. Embedded on the concrete pavement was a steel traversing mechanism once used to swing the gun in a 180 degree arc.
I saw on the far side of the sunken gun emplacement a concrete ramp that led up to what looked like an observation tower. As far as I could determine, I was on the south side of the pork chop bone, and the artillery piece had pointed south, out to sea. In fact, I could hear the waves crashing on the shore nearby.