David Koepp - Cold Storage

Teacake shouted to him from his end of the hall. “Griffin, you asshole, put the fucking gun away!”

Instead, Griffin put both hands on the grip and extended it in front of him, pointing it at Teacake’s head as he advanced. “Hands in the air!”

Teacake put his hands up. “It’s me, okay?!”

Griffin kept coming, stalking forward on bent legs, both hands on the gun, unconsciously mimicking the movements and posture of his avatar in his copy of School Shooter . “Drop the gun!”

Teacake looked up at his own hands, which were both empty. “What gun?”

“Drop it!”

“Griffin, I don’t have a gun, okay?”

From behind Griffin, Dr. Friedman peeked out, assessing the situation. “It’s true, Darryl, he does not appear to have a gun.”

Teacake, trying to keep his hands in the air, pointed at the mess on the floor that had been Mike a short while ago. “Don’t get any closer to that, man.”

Griffin stopped, staring down at the remains. Revolted, he looked back up at Teacake, pointing the gun at him again. “Down on the floor!”

“Why?”

“Against the wall!”

Teacake, who had been about to get down on the floor, stopped. “Which?”

“Do it!”

“Seriously, you want me to get down on the floor or up against the wall?”

Griffin, hearing something behind him, whirled around with the gun. Dr. Friedman, whose right boot had squeaked on the floor, barely got his head out of the way as the barrel swung toward him, aimed wildly around the empty hallway, and then swiveled back to Teacake.

“Where is the shooter?!” Griffin shouted, bringing some focus to his ever-changing list of demands.

“He’s gone,” Teacake said, lying only in the sense that he used the wrong pronoun. “Took off as soon as he shot.”

Griffin looked down at Mike’s body again. “Who is that?”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” Teacake said, taking a step forward.

“Don’t come any closer!”

Teacake sighed and stopped. The night had been weird, then exciting, then terrifying, and now with Griffin in the mix it was just annoying. “I don’t know. He’s got some kind of disease or something. It’s contagious. It’ll kill you. The fucking army’s coming, or at least some guy who knows the army or— Can I put my hands down or what?”

“You called the cops?”

“Yeah. Sorta. DTRA.”

“What the hell is that?”

Before Teacake could answer, a sharp banging sound from the right startled Griffin and he swung the gun around again. Dr. Friedman dove out of the way faster this time, doing a good job of not getting his head shot off, and Griffin pointed the gun at the storage unit right next to them. “What’s that?!”

Voices shouted from inside the unit, more fists pounded on the door. Griffin recognized them. “Ironhead?! What the fuck are you doing, man?!”

The voices shouted some more, the door rattled and banged, and Griffin noticed the lock, hanging unlocked in the hasp. It was enough to hold the door closed, but it wasn’t clicked shut, so if the door rattled long enough it was bound to be dislodged.

Griffin turned the gun back on Teacake. “What’d you lock ’em in there for?!”

“I didn’t. That guy did.” He pointed to Mike’s residue. Griffin frowned, his reptilian brain trying to process it all. Keeping the gun on Teacake, he moved toward the locker.

Teacake took a step forward. “Don’t, man.”

Griffin stopped, swinging the gun back on him. “Why not?”

“They’re infected.”

Dr. Friedman stepped out of Griffin’s shadow, recognizing he might have some role in this conversation after all. “Infected? With what?”

“ I don’t fucking know!” Teacake said, his patience nearing an end. “Bad shit! For the last time, will you put that fucking gun down already?!”

Griffin squinted at him. There was a dead guy on the floor, his friends were all locked in a storage unit, and Teacake was the only one in the hallway. No, he would not put the fucking gun down, no goddamn way. He took two steps back from the storage unit, gesturing with his gun from Teacake to the door. “You open it,” he said.

Teacake looked at him. There was no reasoning with this lump. He looked over at the door. He saw the lock, dangling in the hasp, clicking against the sides of the metal loop as the people inside the storage unit continued to pound on the door, demanding to be let out.

“No fucking way,” he said.

“Now!” Griffin shouted, taking a step forward with the gun. As he moved, his sweaty right index finger tensed on the trigger, which he’d adjusted for maximum sensitivity. He inadvertently squeezed off a round, which leaped from the barrel and sliced through the very outer edge of Teacake’s left ear, drawing a spurt of blood before it flew the rest of the way down the hallway, ricocheting off two metal doors and finally burying itself in a cement wall.

Teacake screamed and grabbed his ear in pain. “What the fuck, man?!” he shouted. He pulled his hand back in amazement and saw it was now smeared with blood. It wasn’t much of a gunshot wound, more like a razor slice, but it was a gunshot wound, Griffin had definitely shot him, the fuckwit had shot him.

“You shot me!” Teacake pointed out.

“You shot him!” Dr. Friedman confirmed.

Griffin did everything he could to conceal the fact that he had in no way meant to do that. He took a second to erase the stunned look from his face, then stiffened, pointing the gun back at Teacake. “And I’ll do it again if you don’t open the goddamn door! Those are my friends in there!”

They were also his customers, but he didn’t bother with that detail. In his mind, there was a chance, admittedly an outside one, but at least a tiny chance that the rest of the stolen TVs could still be moved out of here before the cops or the army or whoever showed up. There was still $450 on the table, and Griffin intended to take it home with him.

Teacake needed time to think. He wiped the blood from his ear on his pants and walked forward toward the door, as slowly as he could. He kept an eye on Griffin, who was following him with the gun and an increasingly unhinged look on his face—he’d never shot anyone before—and on Dr. Steven Friedman, who was backing up, putting a bit more distance between himself and Griffin. Teacake looked back at the lock, dangling there, unlocked. The sounds from inside, which had stopped for a few moments after the gunshot, had resumed, frantic voices calling, hands pounding on the door, people demanding to be let out. Their tone of panic was rising.

Teacake got closer. He reached out to the lock. He closed his fingers around it.

From the other end of the hallway, a woman’s voice cried out. “Hey, Griffin!”

Griffin turned, and then everything happened at once. Foam exploded from the spout of the fire extinguisher Naomi was holding from about thirty feet away, and it sprayed Griffin and Dr. Friedman in the face, momentarily blinding them. Griffin swung his gun crazily and another shot went off, again by accident.

Teacake reached out to the lock and snapped it shut, and Dr. Friedman, who’d had enough of Griffin’s reckless bullshit, grabbed Griffin’s gun hand and tried to wrestle the thing away from him before he actually killed somebody.

That was all the opening Teacake needed. He turned and took off, racing down the hallway toward Naomi. She was turning as he got to her, dropped the fire extinguisher with a noisy clang, grabbed his hand, and they took off into the other hallway. They headed for the side door through which Mary Rooney had just escaped.

At the storage locker, Griffin wrestled his gun hand free and gave Dr. Friedman a ferocious shove, knocking him on his ass. “The fuck is the matter with you?!” he shouted at the dentist, wiping foam from his eyes. He turned back to the locker door and pawed at the lock. There was more pounding from inside the locker, frantic now, and the voices were changing, rising in pitch and intensity. There was panic inside the locker, the situation in there was changing, something was happening, and it wasn’t good.