Dr. Albert Nash pressed his back against the wall in the narrow gap between two sets of shelves and tried to will his heart to quit beating so hard. The pounding of his pulse inside his head was so loud he was sure that the gunman had been able to hear it, too.362Please respect copyright.PENANAkN9ybdPoMw
The gunman was prowling around the Special Science Collection on the 3rd floor of the library. Nash had been in here by himself when chaos erupted below. He had no idea what was going on, but he had heard several muffled gunshots from one of the lower floors.
At least, he believed they were gunshots. He had never heard a gun go off in real life, only on TV and in the movies, and he knew those were made by special effects departments and might not be what firearms sounded like when they were going off in real life.
He was damn sure that someone was shooting, though, and the very idea of being around someone firing a gun was sufficient to make a cold ball of anxiety form in the pit of Nash's stomach. His fingers trembled.
Then, as he stood up from the table where he had been working on his laptop and turned toward the open double doors at the entrance to the collection, he'd heard quick footsteps in the hall outside.
Something, some primeval instinct Nash didn't even like thinking about, had made him duck back out of sight. Moving as fast as he could, he had hurried around the bookshelves until he reached a spot where he couldn't be seen easily from the entrance. He could watch the open doors through a narrow gap between shelves, though.
Because of that, he had seen the stocky, young Hispanic man who'd stalked into the room with a pistol of some kind in his hand.
Nash knew at that moment that the man was there to kill him. Not him specifically, maybe, but anyone he found in here. What other reason would anyone have for brandishing a gun that way.
The man turned right instead of left when he came through the door. That took him away from Nash. After that, Nash couldn't see him anymore, but he could hear him and could tell that the man was searching through the shelves on the other side of the room to see if anyone was there. When he was finished on that side, he could come over here, Nash was sure of that.
And then he would kill Nash.
The professor considered making a run for the door, but he didn't think he could do that quietly enough to escape detection. And even if he made it out of this room, that'd put him in a corridor that led to the reception area for the Special Collections department, where there was an elevator leading down to the lower floors and up to the offices of the 4th floor. There was nowhere to hide in the corridor. Nash would make a good target and would be gunned down before he could reach the reception area.
Instead, he thought about the storage closet in the back corner of this room. If he could reach it, maybe he could hide. It was unlikely the gunman wouldn't at least glance in there, but there was a stack of boxes in the closet containing books that had been culled from the shelves, Nash recalled. Maybe he could arrange them so they looked like they filled up the space, and he could hide behind them.
An odd thought crossed his mind as he stole in that direction making as little sound as possible.
He wished Calhoun Weaver were here. Weaver was a crude, obnoxious, violent young man----but he probably had some idea how to handle a gunman. More than Albert Nash did, certainly.
He thought about his ancestors then, too, Ever since he had been old enough to understand the evils of imperialism, he had been ashamed of the role some of his forebears had played in colonizing America. They had been brutal rapists and exploiters and killers.
But if one of them had been able to come down through the mists of time and stand between Nash and that gunman right now, he would have welcomed the old reprobate with open arms.
Not that that was going to happen, of course. Nash knew with a sickening certainty that he was on his own here.
He hadn't reached the storage closet yet when he heard a footstep not far away. The gunman had finished searching the other side of the room sooner than Nash had expected. He knew he couldn't make it to the closet in time to hide, so he drew back into the gap between two sets of shelves and tried to make himself as small as he could.
He had always been slender, and the shelves were deeper than most because they were built to hold oversized technical volumes. They stuck out from the wall perhaps 18 inches. The gap was wide enough for Nash to stand with his back against the wall, and he hoped that if he sucked in his stomach and kept his back and shoulders flat, he might be concealed well enough for the gunman to miss seeing him.
He held his breath as the footsteps echoed hollowly and came closer. If the gunman came along the aisle between the wall and the shelves, Nash was doomed. If the man just looked along the aisle and didn't see anybody, he had a chance....
The steps stopped. A long moment of silence dragged by. Then a man's voice said, "Yeah, this is Clay. The third floor's under control. We herded everybody who was up here into the reception area in the middle. We'll wait for your orders."
Nash wanted to have a sigh of relief but still didn't dare. The man hadn't seen him. Now there was at least a chance the man would leave this room without looking around anymore. Nash could find a better place to hide and wait for someone to come and save him. The cops had to have received reports of the trouble by now. They would be on their way, and they would deal with the threat. Wasn't that their job?
Normally, Nash thought of the cops as racist, trigger-happy, power-mad bullies just looking for an excuse to shoot innocent black men. He was an ardent supporter of Black Lives Matter. But right now he couldn't wait for the cops to get here.
The footsteps faded out. Nash could tell from the sound of them that the gunman had left the room and was headed back to the reception area where his cronies gathered their captives. So they weren't here to just wantonly slaughter everyone they found, Nash thought. Would he have been better off letting himself be taken? They might be more likely to hurt him if they found him later and thought he was trying to cause trouble for them. Could he still surrender?
No, he was too nervous to risk that. He decided he would hide. His first instinct had been the right one.
Finally, desperate for air, he drew a deep breath. Steeling his nerves, he stepped out of the gap.
From the corner of his right eye, he saw the man standing at the end of the aisle in that direction, the thought flashed through his mind that there must have been two of them, and somehow he had missed that fact. One of them had suspected someone might be hiding in here and had pretended to make a report to someone else, then sent the second man away so anyone who was in here would hear him leaving.
The ploy had worked. Thinking that he was alone and safe, Nash had stepped out into the open, right into the sights of the gun that the man was pointing at him. Nash stared in horror over the barrel of that pistol and saw the icy smile on the man's face.
The next instant, flame erupted from the gun muzzle.
Nash was already moving when the shot rang out, though. He threw himself back into the small area where he had been a moment earlier. As he did so, he thought he felt something brush against his left ear and heard a high-pitched whine like a mosquito.
That was the bullet passing by him, he realized. It'd come that close to killing him. Panic gripped him as he heard rapid footsteps thudding closer to him and knew he had only seconds to live.
That panic somehow allowed him to find more strength than he would ever have dreamed that possessed. He grabbed hold of the shelves beside him and heaved. They weren't attached to the wall, but fully loaded with books the way they were, he shouldn't have been able to budge them.
But with the power that his fear gave him, he tipped the shelves forward away from the wall, and once they were unbalanced, they went over with a big crash, spilling books everywhere. Nash heard a surprised cry from the gunman and knew that the man had been caught in the literary avalanche.
The falling shelves hit the ones across the aisle and stopped, leaving a small, book-littered, triangular space underneath them. The pistol came sliding out of that space, and as Nash saw it, he knew the man must have lost his grip on the gun when the toppling shelves and books knocked him off his feet. Curses from underneath the shelves told Nash the man might be trapped under there.
Well, Nash was never one to look a gift horse in the eye. He bent down and picked up the gun, the first time he had ever held a firearm in his life. He hadn't even had any toy guns when he was a child. His parents would have been appalled by the very idea.
But even though he had no clue as to what kind of gun he held, he knew which end of the gun the bullets came out of and how to make them fire. At least he hoped the gun didn't have some kind of safety catch that was engaged. That seemed unlikely, considering that the man had fired it at him less than a minute earlier.
Nash knelt, held the gun in both hands, and shoved it into the mouth of the opening formed by the fallen shelves. He pulled the trigger three times as fast as he could, crying out in involuntary shock at the deafening sounds and the way the weapon jumped in his hands.
He stood up and scrambled backward as he continued pointing the gun at the opening. He couldn't hear anything because of the gun-thunder that had filled the room. He wasn't sure he would ever be able to hear anything again except the throbbing roar of blood inside his own head.
As the gun's barrel wavered wildly in front of him, though, he realized that his hearing was coming back. He heard shouts from somewhere else on the Special Collections floor.
However, he didn't hear any more cursing from underneath the fallen shelves, which made him wonder if he had killed the gunman. Ordinarily that thought would have horrified him, as would the idea that since he now held the weapon, he was the gunman.
Right now, though, survival was the only thing on his mind. The man had friends close by. They would've heard the shots and the crash, and they would come to see what had happened.
Nash could not be standing here in plain sight, gun in hand, when that happened.
He turned and fled toward the storage closet that had been his goal before he was trapped and nearly killed.
As he yanked open the door, another thought occurred to him. He looked up. The ceiling was acoustic tile to make it quieter inside the library. That extended into the closet. There were air-conditioning and heating ducts up there above the ceiling, and he remembered seeing movies and TV shows where people got into those ducts by lifting out ceiling tiles and climbing into the enclosed spaces.
That thought made a shiver go through him, but he knew he had only moments before the gunman's friends found his body and started searching for whoever killed him. Nash set the gun aside on a box of books in the storage room and started moving some of the other boxes, building a pyramid that he could climb.
He had never been one for physical labor. Where he found the strength to do such a thing so quickly, he didn't know. Human beings were capable of incredible feats when it was a matter of life and death, or so he'd read.
When he had the boxes stacked high enough for him to be able to reach the ceiling, he pulled the closet door closed. Just enough light came under it for him to be able to see what he was doing as he picked up the gun and held it awkwardly while he climbed onto the boxes. Now he worried about shooting himself accidentally. But if he didn't get out of here, he'd wind up being shot anyway, he was sure of that, and it wouldn't be by any accident!
He reached up, working almost blindly, and lifted one of the tiles. He moved it aside and then felt around. There had to be something sturdy enough there to support his weight. After a few seconds that seemed much longer, his fingers brushed a board. He explored it by touch. It seemed strong, and it might be wide enough for him to lie on it.
He put the gun in his pocket. He didn't like that, but he didn't have any choice. He had to have both hands to pull himself up.
Usually one thought of descending into darkness, but in this case, Nash was climbing into darkness. The faint glow seeping under the closet door rose into the crawlspace between floors but was absorbed by the gloom almost right away. The professor's eyes had adjusted enough for him to see the broad plank and the looming bulk of the air duct next to which it ran. The board was there for the convenience of repairmen who had to work on those ducts, obviously.
His muscles trembled badly as he tried to kill himself. That brought back humiliating memories of being forced to attempt pullups in gym class when he was a boy. A bitter taste filled his mouth as that came back to him. That time was nearly 40 years in the past. Why couldn't he forget about it?
A shout sounded somewhere not far away, muffled by the wall but clear enough for Nash to hear it. The threat it represented was sufficient to galvanize his muscles yet again, but he sensed he was nearing the end of his strength and endurance. If he was going to escape, he had to do it now!362Please respect copyright.PENANAznUFnhRdia
With a final surge, he hoisted himself high enough to get a leg on the board. As he pulled himself higher, his head bumped painfully against something. One of the boards holding up the floor above, he thought. He ignored the pain as he sprawled belly-down on the wide plank. His heart hammered, and he couldn't seem to get his breath.
But he was still in danger, and that awareness clamored in his brain. He had tried to stack the boxes of books so that they didn't look too much like a stepladder to the ceiling, but with that tile set aside, leaving a plain opening, it was obvious what had happened. Nash tried to calm his breathing and began feeling around for the tile he'd moved out of the way.362Please respect copyright.PENANA2Ox9z7Ru4w
He found it, maneuvered it back into place, and pressed it down. As it dropped into position, the last of the light really was gone. Blackness closed in around him. Nash shivered at its embrace.
But he was safe now, he told himself. That was all the mattered.
After one moment, his brain started racing again. The gunman's friends would know that someone else had been in there. That had to be, since the man was dead or at least wounded. And they would know that their quarry had gone somewhere. They would search the room thoroughly.362Please respect copyright.PENANA6bsdDpfsJA
They might even think to look in the ceiling!
He had to get away from this spot, Nash told himself. Had to put some distance between himself and those who wanted to kill him. He would have gladly just laid here and tried to recover from the ordeal he'd been through, but if he did that, everything he'd done might turn out to be for nothing.
Whether he liked it or not, he had to move! He reached down to his pocket and carefully worked the pistol loose, being extra careful to keep his finger away from the trigger and not let it catch on something else.
Then, holding the gun in front of him, he started crawling forward into the impenetrable shadow that awaited him.
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