iron shell, and it was capable of sending deadly shrapnel in all directions up to two hundred meters. You had to take cover after throwing it or you were likely to get hit yourself. K-Rad pulled the pin and tossed it out the door, toward the area the clanking sounds had come from.
10:38 a.m
Something flew out of the Waterbase office and clattered across the concrete floor. Matt didn’t know what it was, but his instincts told him he needed to get away from it. As he was diving behind the forklift by Fred’s corpse, there was a bright flash and an earsplitting boom. Sparks rocketed in all directions, and a molten chunk of red-hot hell seared its way into Matt’s left leg above the ankle. It felt like someone had driven an acid-dipped railroad spike through the fleshy area between his shinbone and Achilles tendon. He rolled onto his back, gripped the wound, felt the viscous warmth of raw flesh. He wanted to shout out in agony, but he knew doing so would be a death sentence. He wiped the stinging sweat from his eyes, peeked around the edge of the forklift, and saw the dark zombie astronaut figure known as K-Rad stagger out of Mr. Hubbs’s office and disappear from sight.
Matt tried to stand. He could barely put any weight on the leg now, let alone walk or run. He would have to use the forklift to get around, and the whining noise of the electric motor would allow K-Rad to know his location. Fortunately, K-Rad had headed toward the time clock, and Matt planned on going in the opposite direction, toward the Fire and Ice tanks. He felt around for the switchblade but couldn’t find it anywhere. He’d dropped it when the grenade went off, and now it was gone. He belly-crawled into the office and felt around on the floor. He’d heard K- Rad dumping the contents of the desk drawers and thought there might be something among the debris to use as a weapon. He felt a stapler and a box of paperclips and some pens and pencils and Post-it pads and a bunch of other crap you’d expect to find in any well-stocked office. What he wanted, but did not find, was a letter opener or a whiskey bottle or something. He was thinking a gun would be nice when he felt the cold metallic cylinder and for a split second thought he’d actually lucked into finding one. He picked it up. It wasn’t a gun but a small steel flashlight. He switched it on for a second to make sure it worked, and then crawled back out of the office. He climbed onto the forklift, pointed it toward the big tanks, and pegged the throttle.
10:40 a.m
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.
10:45 a.m
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.
10:48 a.m
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.
