Jude Hardin - Fire and ice

“I’ll go hide somewhere by the Waterbase office, then,” Fred said. “Hopefully I’ll come back and give y’all some good news in just a little while.”

Matt and Fred scooted the desk away from the door, and Fred exited the Shipping and Receiving office. Shelly told him to be careful out there.

As Fred was leaving, a man wearing a tuxedo and holding a martini came in.

K-Rad figured everyone in Petrol was dead by now, but he wanted to make sure. He opened his backpack and pulled out a gas mask and a helmet equipped with drop-down night-vision binoculars. He removed his regular night-vision goggles, put them in the backpack, and strapped on the cumbersome apparatus. As soon as he got it situated exactly the way he wanted it, he felt the overwhelming urge to take a piss. Figures, he thought.

He walked to the locker room. His kidneys were floating from all the Mountain Dew he’d drunk. When he finished urinating, he caught his own reflection in the mirror by the sink. With all the high-tech gadgetry on his head and the flak jacket on his chest, he looked like some sort of machine. That’s what he was. A machine. A killing machine. By the end of the day, he would be famous. Everyone in the world would know the name Kevin Radowski. Everyone in the world would know K-Rad.

The door to the Petrol room was protected by a pushbutton lock, but K-Rad knew the code. He’d worked at Nitko for twelve years. He knew all the codes to all the doors, even the ones he wasn’t supposed to have access to.

When the emergency lockdown had been initiated, the employees in Petrol had essentially been trapped in a toxic tomb. Of course, emergency lockdown was never supposed to happen with people still in the plant. Even if it did, and even if the power went out for some reason, emergency generators were supposed to kick in and keep the ventilation fans in Petrol pumping in fresh air.

But K-Rad had disabled the generators at a little after three o’clock that morning.

On the north side of Nitko’s property, nearly a quarter mile from the main building, stood an above-ground diesel tank the size of a boxcar. Nitko stored the fuel for use in the emergency generators, outdoor forklifts, and delivery trucks. The tank created a blind spot, and K-Rad had easily sliced his way through the fence with his bolt cutters. He knew from experience that the night shift took a long break at three a.m., and he knew from experience that the lame-ass roving security guard could always be found snoozing in his pickup at that time. At approximately 3:05, he filled two five-gallon cans with diesel fuel and then walked to the generators and cut the battery cables. Perfect. Oh, yes. By the end of the day, everyone in the world would know the name K-Rad.

He looked at his watch: 9:41. Still plenty of time for more fun. He punched in the code and opened the door to Petrol and walked in like he owned the place.

Matt looked over at Shelly. She sat on one of the folding chairs, staring into space, unaware of the man in the tuxedo.

Mr. Dark.

“When I go to a show, Matthew, I expect to be entertained,” he said. “If I didn’t have this martini, I’d be asleep already.”

It wasn’t just that Shelly didn’t notice Mr. Dark.

She was totally still, her eyes frozen in midblink.

Time had stopped.

Mr. Dark turned his back to Matt and stepped in front of Shelly, blocking her from view. “Let’s liven things up, shall we?”

And now Matt knew, with horrifying certainty, what was coming next.

Matt tried to shout leave her alone, but the words came out sounding as though they had been uttered from the bottom of a swimming pool. The cheap plastic clock on the wall stopped ticking. Matt closed his fists and tried to launch a series of punches to Mr. Dark’s kidneys, but it seemed someone had strapped something heavy and cumbersome to his hands. It was like trying to box using bowling balls for gloves. He moved in super-slow motion, grabbing for Mr. Dark’s shoulders, but then he was gone, and time suddenly started up again as if the world had been trapped in a cosmic freeze-frame.

The flashlight fell from Shelly’s hands.

When she reached to pick it up, her ball cap fell from her head and Matt saw a cluster of festering wounds crawling with maggots on her scalp, rancid flesh dripping from her exposed skull to the floor in sickening, wet glops.

Mr. Dark had touched her.

9:47 a.m.

Just as K-Rad had expected, the floor in Petrol was littered with dead bodies. They say suffocation is a rough way to go, and from the expressions on their faces, it looked like they had all died horrible and agonizing deaths. Some of them looked as though they were straining to take a shit, their eyes shut tight and their neck ligaments stressfully flexed. Others seemed to have witnessed some sort of ghastly revelation. Their eyes bulged and their faces were puffy and swollen, as though someone had inflated them with a bicycle pump. It was funny. It made K-Rad laugh. He was about to leave the area when he heard a tiny voice say, “Help me.”

He followed the sound to a young woman who had collapsed near a stack of wooden crates. How had she survived when all the others had perished? Interesting. Very interesting. She had beaten the odds with the fumes in Petrol, and it seemed a shame to just shoot her. Maybe he could think of something a little more fun.

He walked over to her and crouched down like a baseball catcher.

“What’s your name?” he said. The gas mask muffled his voice, and she looked at him uncomprehendingly. “What’s your name?” he said again, louder this time.

“Terri. My name’s Terri. Are you going to rescue me?”

“Yes. Everything’s going to be all right.”

“Really? You promise? Oh, thank you. I thought I was going to die in here.”

“I hate to tell you this, but none of your coworkers made it. How were you able to survive?”

“Please. I need air. Please help me get out of here.”

“Okay.”

K-Rad holstered the Beretta, lifted the petite young woman, and carried her out of the Petrol room. He carried her all the way to Waterbase and gently set her down on a bed of ammonium nitrate bags behind the big tanks.

“Stay here,” he said. “The paramedics will come for you shortly.”

“Okay.”

She closed her eyes and breathed peacefully. Her face had regained a healthier color on the trip from Petrol to Waterbase, and K-Rad wanted to make sure she didn’t get up and go anywhere. He opened his backpack and pulled out a roll of duct tape.

10:02 a.m.

Matt’s stomach lurched and he staggered back in horror.

Mr. Dark’s touch had transformed Shelly from a beautiful young lady to a smiling, rotting jack-o’-lantern from hell.

Whatever darkness Shelly had festering deep inside before, Mr. Dark’s touch had brought it raging to the surface.

The evil was eating her alive.

And it was Matt’s fault.

Because if he had never gotten involved with her and brought Mr. Dark into her life… she wouldn’t be about to do something very, very bad.

More people were going to die.

And that, too, would be Matt’s fault.

He had to stop her. Fast. And he had to stop K-Rad.

The easy way would be to kill her right now.

He thought about it for an instant but knew he couldn’t do it, not in cold blood, not when there still might be a chance to save her from her demons.

That split second of hesitation was a mistake.

Shelly sat up and slammed her fist deep into his groin.

It was a sucker punch, pure and simple, to the most vulnerable part of his body, and it landed with full impact before he had a chance to react. When he doubled over, Shelly kneed him in the face. Droplets of bright red blood dripped from his nose and splattered on the tile floor. The world was spinning now, and Matt felt like he was going to vomit. He leaned on the desk, trying to steady himself, and felt something very hard smash into the back of his skull.