Jude Hardin - Fire and ice

“What are you talking about?”

“There’s a bomb about eighteen inches to your right.”

Terri jumped to her feet and almost fell back down. “Oh my God. What are we going to do?”

“I have an idea, but my leg’s messed up. So you’re going to have to do most of the work.”

“Just tell me what to do.”

They hurried to the front of the tanks.

“Grab some two-and-a-half-inch hoses off that rack over there,” Matt said. “Get three of the twelve-footers. We’re going to need a three-way connector and a reducer and a twenty-foot section of one-inch hose.”

While Terri ran for the hose rack, Matt positioned a pneumatic pump a few feet from the valves in front of the tanks. By the time he ran an air hose from its reel on the wall and secured it close to the base of the pump, Terri had gathered the supplies and it was

Matt instructed Terri to connect one of the fat hoses to the valve on the Fire tank and another to the valve on the Ice tank. The loose ends of those two hoses then went to the cross on the three-way connector. One end of the third two-and-a-half-inch hose was connected to the stem of the three-way, and the other to the pump’s input port. The reducer and the long one-inch hose were connected to the pump’s output. Matt fed the smaller hose between the tanks and let it rest on top of the ammonium nitrate bags.

“I want you to open the valves to the tanks when I give the word,” Matt said.

The exact formulas for Fire and Ice were a tightly kept corporate secret, but Matt knew the pH of Fire was 1 and that of Ice was 14. Shelly had told him that much before his first day on the job. Fire was an acid, and Ice a base. The solutions were highly caustic, and the blenders and packagers were required to wear special suits and gloves and respirators and goggles while performing their duties. A drop of either on bare skin would cause an instant blister, a splash in the face lifelong disfigurement or even death.

But what would happen if the two skin-scalding liquids were mixed together? If Matt remembered correctly from high school chemistry, they would neutralize each other and essentially become water. That’s what he wanted to happen.

Matt looked at his watch. It was thirty-four seconds to the top of the hour-thirty-four seconds until a ball of fire consumed the entire neighborhood.

… 33… 32… 31…

The valves on the tanks were positioned at an angle, and Terri was able to stand between them and reach both levers. Matt jammed the end of the air hose onto the pneumatic pump and said, “Do it!”

Terri opened the valves simultaneously, and within seconds the mixture of Fire and Ice came spewing from the one-inch hose and started flooding the area behind the tanks.

5… 4… 3… 2…

K-Rad walked into the Retro and took a stool at the bar. The place had just opened, and the lunch crowd hadn’t started sifting in yet. K-Rad was the only customer. He’d stuffed his gas mask and other goodies into his backpack, and he’d left the Kevlar vest and the Berettas in his car. The bartender, a chick named Tami with full-sleeve tats on her arms and quarter-inch gauges in her earlobes, slapped a napkin in front of him and said, “What’s up, K?”

“Not much. Let me get a Shiner Bock, okay?”

“Sure.”

She brought the longneck brown bottle and popped the top with an opener. The television was tuned to an infomercial about an herbal supplement called Zark-O. It was supposed to make you live to be around two hundred years old or something.

“Can you turn it on Channel Four?” K-Rad said. Channel 4 was one of the local network affiliates, and K-Rad knew the boneheads on the news team there would have the big story before it went national. Those motherfuckers thrived on human misery. They went after it like vultures went after roadkill.

Tami wiped her hands with a towel. “I heard that stuff really works.”

“Zark-O?”

“Yeah.”

“Come on. It’s bullshit. Nothing’s going to make you live longer. When your time’s up, it’s up.”

“I just heard it makes you feel better. That’s all.”

“I think I’ll stick with alcohol. Can you change the channel for me?”

Tami picked up the remote and switched the channel. “Wouldn’t you want to live forever if you could, though?” she said.

“Immortality isn’t about how long you’re here,” K-Rad said. “It’s about what you do while you’re here.”

“Wow. That’s deep. I still might try the Zark-O. Just to see what it’s like.”

K-Rad didn’t say anything. He looked up at the television, wondering why he hadn’t heard the explosion or at least felt the earth shake. Maybe the Retro was too far away from the plant. Anyway, he was sure there would be some breaking news soon.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “Are those sirens I hear?”

Tami lowered the volume on the television. “Yep. Must be a fire somewhere.”

K-Rad got up and walked outside. In the distance he saw plumes of black smoke rising from Nitko’s direction. Yes! Mission accomplished. He smiled and went back inside to finish his beer.

There had been a deafening boom, followed by a wall of fire rising from behind the tanks. Matt had stood there helplessly, waiting for the flames to consume him, but he and Terri were miraculously still alive. One of the detonators had gone off, and the fuel can it was attached to had exploded, but apparently the blast hadn’t been powerful enough to ignite the ammonium nitrate. Matt’s plan had worked, at least partially. The Fire and Ice solution had prevented the big bang, but the plastic bags containing the ammonium nitrate were burning now and filling Waterbase with greasy black smoke.

Matt held the one-inch hose and sprayed the Fire and Ice mixture toward the inferno, but the liquid wasn’t coming out fast enough or forcefully enough to extinguish the flames. It wasn’t coming out fast enough or forcefully enough, and then it stopped coming out completely.

It took Matt a second to figure out what had happened. There was no electricity to power the compressor, so once the pressure in the reserve tank dropped to a certain level, there was no air to drive the pump.

“Let’s get out of here,” Matt shouted.

He climbed onto the forklift and motioned for Terri to sit on the pallet.

“What are we going to do? How the hell are we going to get out?” she said, coughing and wheezing between sentences.

“I don’t know, but we have to get away from this smoke before we die of inhalation. Come on!”

Terri climbed onto the pallet, and Matt did a one-eighty and headed toward the time clock. His eyes were stinging, and his lungs felt as though someone had stuffed oily cotton balls into them. He wished he had thought to grab some respirators from the safety office when he’d been in the front building. At the time it hadn’t even crossed his mind, but they sure would have come in handy now. He drove on, trying to take shallow breaths, one hand guiding the forklift and the other pressing the tail of his shirt against his mouth and aching nose.

He slowed down and carefully turned a corner, intending to take a shortcut between the floor-to-ceiling industrial shelves loaded with Nitko products, and when he turned Terri went limp, fell to her side, and tumbled off the pallet like a rag doll. The smoke had gotten to her.

Matt stopped the forklift, got off, and knelt beside her. She wasn’t breathing.

He felt her neck for a pulse. Nothing.

Matt put his mouth on Terri’s, gave her two quick rescue breaths, laced his hands together, and started chest compressions. He performed two full cycles of CPR. As he started a third, she coughed and turned her head to the side and vomited. Terri was alive, but she wasn’t going to last long. Matt stood, dizzy and nauseated from the smoke, the heat, the exertion, and the pain in his leg, picked Terri up and cradled her in his arms, and forced himself to put one foot in front of the other.