Forever Odd

some distance and though I was not the master marksman of my age, I squeezed off a shot, then another and a third.
        He had a gun. He returned my fire.
        As would have been anyone’s, his aim was better than mine. One slug ricocheted off a column to my left, and another round whistled past my head so close that I could hear it cutting the air separate from the boom and echo of the shot itself.
        Trading fire, I would get my candle snuffed, so I ran, crouching and weaving.
        The stairwell door was missing. I plunged through, raced down.
        Past the landing, on the second flight, I realized that he would expect me to exit at the ground floor and that in those hallways and spaces, all familiar to him, he would catch me, for he was strong and fast and not as stupid as he looked.
        Hearing him enter the stairwell, realizing that he had closed the gap between us even faster than I had feared he might, I kicked open the door at the ground floor but didn’t go through it. Instead, I swept the light across the next set of down-bound stairs to be sure they weren’t obstructed, then switched it off and descended in the dark.
        Having been kicked open, the ground-floor door rebounded shut with a crash. As I reached the lower landing, sliding my hand along the railing for guidance, and continued blindly into territory that I had not scouted, I heard Andre slam out of the stairwell, into the ground floor.
        I kept moving. I’d bought some time, but he wouldn’t be fooled for long.

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    FIFTY-THREE
        
        RISKING LIGHT WHEN I REACHED THE BASEMENT LEVEL, I found more stairs but hesitated to follow them. A sub -basement would be likely to present me with a dead end.
        Shuddering, I remembered her story of the lingering spirit of the Gestapo torturer haunting that sous-sol in Paris. Datura’s silken voice: I felt Gessel’s hands all over me-eager, bold, demanding. He entered me .
        Choosing the basement, I expected to find a parking garage or loading docks at which deliveries had been made. In either case, there would be exits.
        I’d had enough of the Panamint. I preferred to take my chances in the open, in the storm.
        Doors lined both sides of a long concrete-walled corridor with a vinyl-tile floor. Neither fire nor smoke had touched this area.
        Because the doors were white but not paneled, I checked out a few of the rooms as I passed them. They were empty. Either offices or storerooms, they had been cleaned out after the disaster because what they contained evidently had not been damaged either by fire or water.
        The acrid stink of the fire’s aftermath had not penetrated here. I had been breathing that miasma for so many hours that clean air felt astringent in my nostrils, in my lungs, almost abrasive in its comparative purity.
        An intersection of corridors presented me with three choices. After the briefest hesitation, I hurried to the right, hoping that the door at the farther end would lead to the elusive parking garage.
        Just as I reached the termination of this passage, I heard Andre crash through the steel door from the north stairs, back in the first hallway.
        At once, I doused my flashlight. I opened the door in front of me, stepped across the threshold, and closed myself into this unknown space.
        My light revealed a set of metal service stairs with rubberized treads. They led only down.
        The door had no lock.
        Andre might conduct a thorough search of this area. Instead he might follow his instinct elsewhere.
        I could wait to see what he did, hope to shoot him before he shot me if he yanked open this door. Or I could follow the stairs.
        Glad that I had snared the pistol from midair, but not daring to take it as a sign that my destiny was survival, I hurried down into the sub-basement, which such a short time ago I had tried to avoid.
        Two landings and three quick flights brought me 360 degrees around to a vestibule and a formidable-looking door. Emblazoned on that barrier were several warnings; the most prominent promised high voltage in big red letters. A stern admonition restricted access to authorized personnel.
        I authorized myself to enter, opened the door, and from the threshold explored with my flashlight. Eight concrete steps led down five feet, into a sunken electrical vault, a thick-walled concrete bunker approximately