infernal engines? Or maybe I was overthinking this.
In my head, I visualized the machine turning off. It didn’t.
I imagined finding the power switch. I didn’t.
Saturn was a useless bitch.
Using the flashlight, we hunted but couldn’t find a plug. Generators operated on kerosene or gas, so maybe that’s what the thing was, although unless those pipes were vents, I couldn’t see how they were discharging the fumes. I swept my light back and forth, but I couldn’t find an OFF switch. This wasn’t the polite little generator my mother had attached to our trailer.
“Turn it into a toad?” Andre suggested—facetiously, I hoped, as he followed the path of my light beam on the machine with his hands, searching for who knew what.
“Right. Poof. Machine, you’re a toad.” I snapped my fingers. “Oops. Guess that didn’t work so hot.” I was nervous. Andre needed to be damned glad he was cool with my Saturn talent, or I’d be turning him into a grinning Cheshire cat. I’d warned him about my instability. I was a lot shakier than I was letting on. Nervousness was bad for my soul.
For all I knew, syringe-wielding mad scientists would be down here any second.
The machine clunked on, rattling the walls, vibrating our teeth. I really didn’t like the appearance of those pipes. They could go anywhere—into the plant, into another machine, into the Zone and surrounding neighborhoods. The ones going down might go straight to hell or the harbor for all I knew. Acme could be brewing their very own terrorist plot. Or an environmental disaster to beat BP on the Gulf Coast.
Apparently with the same thought in mind, Andre circled the enormous boiler. It practically filled the room, so this took some acrobatic maneuvering. If I could have seen him climbing through pipes, I’d probably have appreciated his prowess, but he was merely a vague shadow in my flashlight beam.
I was shaking, but that could have been from fear. In my limited knowledge, boilers could and did explode when they built up too much pressure. But we couldn’t in all good conscience run like crazy. Not only would we have no chance of escaping, but an explosion could take out too many other lives besides our own. Bill, Leibowitz, the lab researchers, and the homeless guys, as well as Paddy, were all still downstairs.
Why wasn’t anyone trying to dismantle the monster?
I inched around the room, focusing the light on Andre so he could see, sort of. On the far side, he located a panel and popped it open. I wasn’t sure if I should back out of the room in case he blew it up or ease over to check out what he’d found. Since I wouldn’t know a gauge from a switch, I opted for keeping an eye on the door to the corridor.
He fiddled and punched until the boiler shuddered, hissed, and expired. The generator switched off automatically.
I wiped sweat off my brow and Andre the Uber-Cool did the same.
The silence was almost frightening. Only then did I realize that the emergency exit lights in the corridor had all gone out. We were now relying solely on my flashlight.
A bloodcurdling scream broke our paralysis.
I thought the shriek was more fury than pain, but that didn’t stop me from running for the stairwell. The noise was definitely above us, and I didn’t want to try the elevators if the lights didn’t work.
I found a public stairwell, not the secret one to the lower levels. Our footsteps echoed off the metal stairs and concrete block enclosure. It smelled of old cigarettes and fried onions and ammonia. Or pee, but I wanted to give the scientists more credit than that.
We burst into Acme’s main corridor and straight into the arms of half a dozen of their black-suited security goons—like the ones who had lied about Andre killing Gloria.
I bit my tongue on an instant curse until I could judge objectively. All black suits looked alike.
As startled as we were, the guards jumped at our arrival. Through the air vents, an outraged bullfrog croaked. He’d found the vents?
“The freaks have ruined us!” a white-haired, Einsteinish character in a lab coat screamed from further down the hall. “That was the last damned batch! We’re ruined!”
His thick white eyebrows almost crawled up his forehead when he spotted us. “There they are! Catch them!”
As if the goons had to be told.
I kicked the shin of the brute trying to manhandle me and elbowed another. “Bergdorff?” I shouted, needing clarification before I got all red ragey. The Einstein character certainly looked like a mad scientist.
The goons were too busy grabbing at us to answer and the troll doll just kept shrieking in rage. Violent, insane rage, as Gloria and the vagrants had demonstrated.
Even though the goons accomplished nothing by jerking us around, they still had to get nasty. The one I’d elbowed yanked me off my feet by the back of my shirt and left me flailing, with the girls practically hanging out of my collar.
I was trained to act instinctively when grabbed by brutes. I swung my bag and kicked backward with all my strength. Unfortunately, the goon’s arm was longer than my legs. He dodged the bag and retained his grip.
Andre sucker-punched the thug lunging for him. With a nifty twist I’d like to learn, he elbowed the bully in the solar plexus to keep him spinning, then thumped our next assailant with two fists to the jaw in a swift upward thrust that left my fighting abilities in the shade.
Not having time to be awed, I swung my puny weight sideways enough to unbalance my captor and kick his jewels. He screamed and released me. Biker boots ain’t light.
I ducked another grasping fist and gut-punched the next thug who got near me, nearly breaking my knuckles. Stupid move, but by this time, I was fueled by fury and not logic. In hindsight, had I been thinking, I would have dodged the brawl and gone for the Einstein with the answers. But I was in red-rage madness and needed to take down brutes while resisting cursing them to Hades. My victim grabbed my hair. I raked his face with my fingernails and reached for the surgical knife I’d stuck in my waistband.
I couldn’t, unfortunately, fight off the gun aimed at my head by the creep who came up behind me. I froze at the cold metal pressed to my temple and the meaty arm choking my esophagus. I’m barely five-five. The goon had to be covering six feet or more. I was out of my league.
Andre had no such problem. Even as I tried to slither down from the choke hold, Andre pulled his automatic out of his belt. Giving me no time to scream in panic, he point-blank shot the thug. The gun at my head clattered to the floor and I whipped free of the brute’s hold. Just like an old oak struck by lightning, he toppled.
While the troll shrieked in outrage instead of shock, I stared in incredulity at the neat hole in the middle of the thug’s forehead. Killing probably wasn’t good for Andre’s health or his future behind bars, but the man was damned good at it. They say that Special Ops training stays with you forever.
I didn’t have the stomach for violent video action. I wanted to barf. I considered taking out Andre’s weapon for the sake of his immortal soul, but the brutes had now rightfully targeted me as the weak link. I was suddenly occupied, swinging left and right, offering vicious kicks at goons lumbering up on me from all sides, while swinging my knife at any others who considered coming closer.
But shock had momentarily replaced my red rage, and I’d finally woken up and realized that what I really needed to do was to break through these goons to get at the shouting white-haired troll jumping up and down at the end of the hall, unapologetically demanding our demise. I wanted answers.
Andre had his legs spread and his gun aimed, waiting for a clear shot in the tangle of arms and legs trying to halt my whirling-dervish act. The guards were nasty thugs willingly following the orders of a nutcase, but they
For the sake of Andre’s immortal soul and my eternal health, I sighed with regret and conjured more toads. Or bullfrogs. I liked that solution, and it didn’t require a lot of mental acuity.
I threw in a hasty picture of frogs turning into princes if kissed. I didn’t know if kisses would actually transform them back to thugs, but if they had loved ones out there, maybe I’d find them and hand them a frog. Someday. If I survived. It was mildly better than letting Andre shoot them all, as he apparently meant to do.
Andre’s next shot winged a fire alarm—because his intended victim had shrunk to boot-heel height and now hopped about the floor, croaking. We both stared in disbelief at the frightened, hopping frogs. Even the guy with the bullet in his middle morphed into a flattened amphibian with his webbed feet curled in the air.
