James Axler – Watersleep

Ryan squinted with his single eye. Vague shapes were beginning to become apparent in the gloom as they moved and shifted in the blackness. His son shifted position with Krysty and Jak and ended up standing next to him. Ryan knelt and cupped his hands, offering a step onto his back for the boy.

Dean placed one foot in his father’s hands and used his hands to brace himself on the knotted muscles of Ryan’s shoulders. The youth’s weight wasn’t much, and Ryan was able to lift as the boy carefully balanced himself. He reached up and gripped Dean’s up­per thighs with both hands, further stabilizing him.

Ryan waited as Dean felt around the roof. No one spoke. The only sound was everyone’s breathing, which was starting to become more labored in the stifling heat of the elevator car. Then there was a dis­tinct clack, followed by a slight raking sound.

“Got it,” the boy said.

“Good. Now come down.”

Dean did so. “J.B?” Ryan asked.

There was another shifting of the mass of bodies, then J.B. was next to Ryan. “You going up?” the Armorer asked.

“Not much of a choice. Dean opened the door, now I’ve got to take a look outside.”

Ryan removed a tight pair of black gloves from one of his long coat’s pockets, then shrugged out of the garment, accidentally slapping J.B. across the face and knocking his spectacles off as he struggled to free his left arm.

“Dark night, Ryan, be careful!”

“No space to move,” Ryan muttered. “You should’ve kept back.”

“How the hell was I supposed to do that? Just no­body move until I find them,” J.B. replied.

“I’ve got them, John,” Mildred said. “They flew back and hit me on the hand. They didn’t have room to fall to the floor.”

Carefully, Ryan also took off his long white scarf with the weighted ends and bundled it up into a tight ball. The extra clothing would just get in the way of what he was about to do.

“Here, Krysty,” Ryan said, handing her the still slightly soggy bundle and his rifle. His callused fin­gers brushed against her warm skin. “I’ll be back for these in a minute.”

J.B. leaned down and interlocked his fingers to­gether as a stepping-stone, unconsciously duplicating Ryan from before. The one-eyed man took a deep breath as he pushed his hands into the gloves, then stepped up into his friend’s offered hands. The Ar­morer lifted as Ryan extended his arms above his head and gripped the edge of the hatch Dean had opened, pulling himself up and out of the car.

Half of Ryan still dangled down into the cabin, but from the waist up he was exposed to the four walls of the elevator shaft. As inside the car, the lighting out there was also nonexistent, but he was surprised to see glowing fluorescence extending vertically up the far back wall. As he gazed at the glow, Ryan realized he was looking at a pattern.

With a grunt, he pulled himself completely through the hatch and managed to brace himself along one of the sturdy upper beams of the elevator, not wanting to test the strength of the ceiling with his weight. He reached up and gripped the steel frame of the car as he swung one leg to the opposite side of the roof, then the other and squatted on the beam.

He looked at the glow-in-the-dark shapes stretching up along the wall of the shaft.

What he was seeing were the rungs of an emergency ladder, no doubt designed for just this kind of happenstance. The rungs were evenly spaced about two feet apart, one after the other, and bolted into place. They snaked up as far as Ryan could see.

“What’s the situation?” J.B. called.

“There’s an emergency ladder in place along the front wall of the shaft,” Ryan said. “We’ll go up in two groups. You, me and Krysty will recce upstairs. After we’ve cleared the area, then Mildred, Doc, Dean and Jak can come up. We’ll have to do this one at a time. I don’t want to put too much weight on the top of the car or have anybody accidentally fall off. Go in order of how we usually approach a triple-red sit­uation.”