The Rain by Klavan Andrew

Author:Klavan, Andrew [Klavan, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2011-11-14T19:00:00+00:00

13

I started my ascent again, but I wasn’t moving slowly anymore. I climbed quickly into the darkness above. I swung around the bend, glad to see the red light on the seventh floor landing above me. The footsteps below kept coming, swift and sure. They were maybe two floors below me now.

I hauled my weary bones up the stairs as fast as I could. I was puffing like a bellows, smoking old cigarettes from the inside out.

Then, finally, I was on the seventh floor. I was standing bathed in the red glow, exposed by it. I lunged for the door. I grabbed the knob and pulled. Even before I felt the lock pull back, I saw the sign, two inches from my nose. NO REENTRY ON THIS FLOOR.

The footsteps came on. They were halfway to the dark sixth-floor landing. Three quarters. I shielded my eyes with my left arm. With my right fist, I threw a roundhouse at the light bulb above the door.

There was a sound like a cork coming out of champagne. The bulb imploded, dissolving into a rain of red glass. The filament flared like a torch for a second. Then the blackness closed in on it.

The footsteps stopped. I stood still. I felt the blood start from the knuckles on my right hand. I listened. Under the sound of my own breathing came other breathing from the floor below.

And another sound. The footsteps began again. Slowly, tentatively. They took the last steps to the sixth-floor landing.

I couldn’t just stand there. The landing was small. I had no place to dodge him. If he was armed, I’d be a target even in the dark. I crouched. I started creeping down the stairs.

When I got about halfway down, the faintest outglow of the red bulb on the next floor—the fifth floor—reached me. I saw the sixth landing in a black-red light, like some neglected corner of hell. Into that light came an immense shadow in the shape of a man.

He came suddenly, swinging around the corner as if he expected an ambush. He was armed, all right. He was raising his gun at the landing where I had just been.

I threw myself down the stairs at him. Hit him hard, right in the midsection. I jammed my left arm up against his right, hoping to deflect the fire of the gun. But the gun didn’t go off. As I grappled with the shadow in the darkness, I saw the weapon spinning into the red light of the next landing down. The gun hit the wall, dropped to the stairs. It bounced onto the concrete floor and slid across it with a loud clatter.

Me and my shadow did battle on the landing above. We grabbed each other, slapped and clawed, seeking out pressure points we couldn’t see. My right wrist was locked in his left hand. His fingers tried to tear at my cheek. My thumb tried to find his eye to gouge it. I pressed forward, my teeth bared, hoping to take a bite of him.

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