Jude Hardin - Fire and ice

K-Rad made it to the water fountain, took the mask and helmet and binoculars off, and stood there slurping for more than a minute. The air was unpleasantly thick with fumes from the warehouse area and the Fire and Ice tanks, and the water from the fountain wasn’t very cold. It wasn’t very cold, but it was still good. It was what he needed. He drank until he could drink no more, and then he put the mask back on and took the walkway to the office building.

There was a way out, of course. Most Nitko employees didn’t know about it, but there was a way out. How else could a hazmat team come and go in the case of a catastrophic spill? Of course there was a way out. How could there not be?

He opened the door to the main power closet and used a step stool to reach the steel panel in the ceiling. He loosened the four thumbscrews securing the panel to its frame, pulled it forward until its four tabs were aligned with their corresponding slots, lowered it with his hands, and threw it on the floor. He undid the Velcro straps holding the drop-down ladder in place, lowered the ladder, and climbed through the ceiling to the hatch in the roof. The hatch was wheel operated, like the watertight doors on a ship. K-Rad turned the wheel counterclockwise until the seal broke and the hatch swung open. He climbed out onto the roof. The sun was shockingly bright. He took the half-broken night-vision binoculars off and whizzed them like a Frisbee. He didn’t need them anymore. He kept the gas mask, just in case. He shinnied down a drainpipe, ran to his hole in the fence behind the diesel tank, got in his car, and drove away.

Matt drove the forklift as fast as it would go. He’d covered about half the distance to Waterbase when the battery died. The lift rolled to a stop, and Matt got off and started limping toward the tanks. Every step shot blue spears of electric pain up his leg and into his spine. When he got close enough, he saw Shelly forty feet in the air, dangling from one of the water pipes near the ceiling. She was making her way, arm-over-arm, to one of the ventilation fans.

There was enough light shining through the opening for Matt to see her face, which looked like something exhumed from a graveyard.

Matt hobbled to one of the forklifts plugged in by the wall, unplugged the charging cable, put the lift in reverse, swung around, and knocked four empty drums off an oak pallet with the forks. He picked up the pallet, positioned the lift under where Shelly was hanging, and raised the platform. He wanted to knock her off the pipe and onto the pallet. Then he would lower the fork and deal with her on the ground. He had to stop her from leaving the plant. If she made it outside, there was no telling what she might do.

Except that people would die.

Shelly looked down and saw the pallet rising toward her. She was only a few feet from the fan now, and she sped up her actions.

“You’re too late,” she said.

The pallet was about two feet from her when she made it to the fan. She held on to the pipe with one hand and yanked the grate off with the other. The grate fell to the floor, and Shelly climbed into the opening. Matt rammed the wooden platform toward the fan, but Shelly was inside the cylindrical housing now and the pallet was too fat to reach her.

“Shelly, I want you to-”

“You want to fuck me as long as it’s convenient for you-then you want me to smile and wave good-bye when you’re tired of me,” Shelly said. “Too bad I don’t give a shit what you want. I’m going to do what I want for once.”

“And what’s that?”

“Your ax is in my car,” she said. “Maybe I’ll try chopping wood. Chopping something, anyway.”

She started laughing, an insane cackle Matt hadn’t heard before, and then she was gone.

But then he saw Mr. Dark sitting on one of the pipes, his feet dangling over the side, sipping his martini.

“Oh, yes, this is much more fun,” Mr. Dark said.

K-Rad drove by his childhood home on the dirt road behind the plant. He stopped and put the car in park. He just wanted to look at his old house for a minute, to see it one last time. School hadn’t started yet, and there were three boys in the front yard running gleefully through a sprinkler. They were probably second graders, about seven years old. K-Rad remembered doing the same thing when he was that age. Such a simple thing, but such fun.

The house hadn’t changed much since K-Rad was a kid. White clapboard siding, red shingle roof, swing on the front porch. It really wasn’t such a bad little house after all. Lots of fond memories there. Too bad it still belonged to the greedy motherfuckers at Nitko.

“Hey, mister. Take a picture-it’ll last longer,” one of the boys shouted. The others laughed.

K-Rad put the car in gear and drove on. Brats. If they only knew what was going to happen to them at eleven. If they only knew.

Matt thought about trying to navigate the water pipe, as Shelly had, and following her out that way, but the pipe had bowed under her weight and he was fairly certain it would break under his. Mr. Dark smiled down at him.

“You should have killed her when you had the chance.”

For a moment, Matt feared that the son of a bitch could read his mind.

Because the thought had occurred to him.

Matt had killed before, but only when there was no other choice. When not killing would have meant more deaths. He wasn’t a murderer.

Not yet.

The voice in his head was his own… but it sounded eerily close to Mr. Dark’s.

Matt got off the forklift, limped behind the tanks, found Terri, and once again removed the duct tape from her mouth.

“Why did you leave me here like this?” she said.

“I didn’t want you to walk around with me and maybe get your head blown off.”

“Oh. Well, thanks. I guess.”

Matt switched on the flashlight from Hubbs’s office, put it in his mouth, and started unwrapping the tape binding Terri’s hands. He wanted her to raise him to the vent fan with the forklift so he could go after Shelly.

Then he saw the red glare.

He stopped what he was doing and scooted one of the bags of chemicals out of the way. A cavity had been created underneath it, and in the center of the cavity was a red metal gas can, the kind people use to fill lawn tractors. But this was no ordinary gas can. Two holes had been drilled through the lid, and a pair of electrical wires snaked from the holes to a black metal box the size of a deck of cards. The box was secured to the top of the can with duct tape.

Matt looked at the bags of chemicals stacked from one end of the tanks to the other. He shined the light on one of the bags and saw the words ammonium nitrate printed in bold black letters.

He didn’t know much about chemistry, but he knew that ammonium nitrate was one of the ingredients terrorists used to make bombs. Timothy McVeigh had used 108 fifty-pound bags of the stuff to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

There were easily ten times that many stacked behind the Fire and Ice tanks.

Matt figured the explosion would not only destroy the plant-it would wipe out a couple of square blocks of nearby residences and businesses as well.

You know, I’m tempted to let you stick around until eleven and see the show. It’s going to be fabulous.

Matt had wondered what K-Rad was talking about, and now he knew.

“What are you doing?” Terri said. “Untie me!”

Matt frantically unwound the tape from her wrists and then started on her ankles. “I don’t want to scare you,” he said, “but if we don’t move really, really fast, we’re going to be blown to smithereens.”