Nobody Gets Out Alive by Michael G Williams

Author:Michael G Williams [Williams, Michael G]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Falstaff Books
Published: 2019-06-19T22:00:00+00:00

10

Withrow

I closed my eyes and let my senses roll out down the hallways to either side of me, stretching and spreading like a cloud or a slow-moving stream. A vampire can hear a lot, and from very far away. In an enclosed space like this, I could hear a pin drop from its tumble through the air. Someone, somewhere down the tunnels, took slow, steady, calm and collected breaths.

Smiles sniffed the air, his eyes narrowed, his ears perked up.

I reached down and patted his forehead. “Good boy,” I said, though I don’t know that he necessarily understands or responds to stuff like that anymore. A few years ago, he still occasionally acted more like a dog than not, but now, after years of harder combat and more danger than he and I had seen in all our decades before that, it felt like that had been tempered out of him. A part of me regretted that. I got Smiles to serve a purely utilitarian purpose, but I grew fond of him in a way I hadn’t anticipated. As he changed over time into something mechanical, I mourned the pet he used to be. A part of me missed my old dog.

I blinked rapidly at the dot of blood welling up in one corner of one eye, and the wave of melancholy behind it. What the hell was wrong with me? It isn’t that I’m made of steel, no, but thinking like that—dwelling on the tragedy of inevitability—wasn’t really me, was it? It didn’t feel like me. And yet it didn’t feel like something that came from outside.

I cleared my throat and whispered to the others. “There’s someone else down here. One person. I hear them breathing. I think they’re that way,” I said, pointing to my left, “but the hallway curves in either direction. If it’s a big circle, it’s going to be hard to know for sure.”

“I can’t exactly sneak up on them,” The Bull’s Eye said.

Seth smirked. “But I could.”

I nodded. “See you in a second.”

“Less than that,” he replied.

There was a low gonging sound, what I recognized as Seth activating his Last Gasp power and stepping into the space between moments to explore the world outside of time. The shrill response tone sounded right on top of it, and Seth didn’t disappear and reappear so much as twitch into a different stance and expression, like a badly edited cut in a film.

“What in the actual hell?” H’Diane shook her head.

“Long story,” Seth replied. “But don’t worry, detective, I’m pretty sure it’s legal.”

“I doubt that,” she mumbled.

“One guard,” Seth said to me. “She looks like she’s probably a thrall. She’s standing there playing a game on her phone. Not exactly super paying attention, but it could be, you know, she’s crazy.” Seth twirled a finger beside his head. “Or bored.”

“Is she a heavy?” I flexed my arms like a bodybuilder.

“No,” Seth said. “She could pass for a bank officer in a sketchy savings and loan: expensive pantsuit and a vaguely smug expression.

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