P Deutermann - The Moonpool

We hung there, frozen halfway up the sidewall of the storage cage like a pair of lizards, as that light got brighter and brighter. If they’d looked up, they’d have seen us immediately, but they were all focusing on the loading ramp door. One kept trying the handle, as if they’d asked someone to unlock it remotely. The noise of the fire behind us suddenly increased, probably as a fuel line melted down and put the heating oil out onto the floor at full throttle. A modern system would have shut itself down long ago, but that boiler plant had to be 1940s vintage. I looked at Moira, who was staring at the four Marines in pure disbelief. Then a horn went off and one of the steel loading dock doors started to roll upward.

The Marines didn’t hesitate. All four bolted for the widening gap between the door and the concrete ramp, hitting the floor like paratroopers and rolling under the gap as if it were concertina wire. One minute they were there, the next minute they were gone and down the road. Or at least up the ramp.

“Go! Go! Go!” I yelled at Moira, because I knew what would happen next-they’d shut that door as soon as they knew their Marines were safe. If left open, that door would create a firestorm. I could already feel the blast of cool night air headed in to help with the fire.

We scrambled the rest of the way up the wall, then went sideways along the top to the front section of the cage, heedless now of the ragged edges of hardware cloth at the top. Over the top, drop to the floor, and run like hell for that ramp, pursued now by the heavy cloud of thick black smoke that was coiling along the ceiling like an angry incubus. I took one breath of some truly noxious gases of combustion from wiring, pipe lagging, and cardboard boxes, which put me momentarily on my knees. We were forced to get down to all fours as we arrived at the ramp, just in time to hear that horn go off again.

It was harder rolling up the ramp than it would have been rolling down, but we had plenty of motivation coming down the passageway after us in the form of a flame front. The door slammed down onto the concrete just as Moira made it through, and the air began shrieking under it as the fire demanded more and more oxygen.

We huddled at the bottom of the ramp to get our bearings. I was almost afraid to look up the ramp, expecting to see a four-pack of smiling Marines waiting for us. But they were gone. What we could see was that every light in the building above us was on, which probably meant that there was a full-scale evacuation in progress. We’d wanted a diversion, and by God, we had one.

We crawled up the ramp on our bellies to the sidewalk from which the exercise pens extended into the foggy night. Still no guards in sight. The interior gates to the exercise pens had latches but no locks, as there were always guards out on the sidewalk when the detainees were in the pens. I quickly counted to the third gate, and we went through, closing it behind us. We could hear a commotion of voices growing on the other side of the building, but no sirens yet. The fire in the basement was invisible behind all that concrete, but we could still hear it sucking a shrieking gale of air under the steel ramp doors.

We trotted out the length of the pen through wet grass, and the building grew indistinct behind us as the fog closed in. By the time we got to the far end and the dreaded white line, all that remained was a yellow-white glow behind us and some muffled sounds of emergency personnel. We pressed up against the chain-link of the perimeter fence and stopped to listen for signs of guards. Or dogs. Moira looked back into the gloom.

“Suppose the whole place will go up?” she asked quietly.

“It’s old, but it’s mostly concrete and brick, so maybe not,” I said. “They should have time to get everyone out.”

We finally heard distant sirens in the fog, which should mean that this would be the best time to make our run for it, before the guard force was relieved by EMS people and could come looking.

I dropped down to my knees against the fence and tried to lift the bottom. It didn’t move.

What the fuck! Had they found it and fixed it? Or were we in the wrong pen?

“What?” Moira asked, seeing me look up. I explained the problem. She swore and immediately began climbing the side fence. She flopped over the top and dropped to the ground, checked the perimeter fence, and hissed a “here” at me. We’d miscounted.

I went over the side fence to find her already sliding under the pushed-out skirt of the perimeter fence. I dropped to my back, pulled myself under, and got back on my feet.

“Good thing you don’t have tits,” Moira said with a grin, but then we heard that goddamned trapdoor bang behind us in the fog.

I don’t know where they kept that dog, but, apparently, it had not been in the basement. We didn’t waste time: We ran straight away from the fence and the lights, hurtling out into the fog as fast as we could go, and hoping like hell we weren’t running in a big circle right back to an unpleasant canine rendezvous.

We couldn’t see a thing out ahead of us, so after what seemed like the length of an entire football field, we stopped to listen. Moira was breathing really hard and went down on one knee to catch her breath. I tried to orient myself in the fog, but of course there was nothing to navigate by except our own trail through the wet grass. It looked pretty straight, but I knew we could still be way off course. The sirens were louder behind us, but the fog distorted sound direction.

The big question, besides navigation, was whether or not my rescuers were out there in the woods. There was one way to find out: I let go a short, sharp whistle. Moira made a face as if asking if I were nuts, but then I heard something coming through the grass. An animal something, not human. The new question of the moment: my dogs or theirs?

“Ready Mace,” I whispered, and put us in a back-to-back stance, each with a Mace canister pointed and ready. The sirens had stopped, and now the fog had completely enveloped the building and the fire. I could feel Moira’s legs trembling against mine.

We waited.

A full minute passed, then another.

Then there was a low, rumbling growl out there in the fog. I felt Moira tense up. I wanted to point the canister in the right direction, but there was no way to tell in that fog. Little beads of cold moisture were forming on my face that had nothing to do with the weather.

A second growl, seemingly closer, but from a different direction. I tried desperately to think of something we could do, but we were blind. I think it would have been better if we’d also been deaf.

If it was the rottie, he was circling us. He knew there was human prey out there, but not how many, and, once he left our scent trail, he was operating blind, too. Our scent wouldn’t go anywhere in this fog.

More sounds of something moving in the grass, but not necessarily closer. The grass crunching quietly, low panting.

Another minute of aching silence, then a third growl-much closer. I leaned out, pointed my can down low, and fired a burst in that direction. I got a satisfying little whimper out of the fog and the sounds of some frantic pawing in the grass.

I reached behind me and grabbed Moira’s belt, and then we advanced in the direction I’d fired until I could see a darker shape low on the ground. It saw me at about the same time, and this time the growl was more like a roar. I fired again, and the roar changed to a prolonged yipping. The rottie backed away into the fog, and I did, too, dragging Moira with me to make damned sure we didn’t get separated.

We’d solved our rottweiler problem, for the moment, anyway, unless we managed to step on him out there in the fog. He shouldn’t be able to smell anything for a week if I’d managed to get any of that spray onto his face.