Things suddenly seemed very bad.
“Come on, Simon, put the lighter down. Let’s walk out of here together and get you some help,” Jack cajoled, hoping to dissuade him from turning the building into a smouldering inferno. Just to be on the safe side, he took another backward step.
“Oh, but I don’t want any help. I’m a very bad person, and proud of it.” The killer smiled contentedly. Without taking his eyes off of Tyler, he transferred the rag to the hand that held the torch and positioned the lighter directly under it.
“No!” Tyler shouted, raising his hands to stay him.
As the killer thumbed the flint, a blue spark leapt into the air and fizzled out. Tyler cowered down, half expecting them both to be vaporised on the spot. When he realised that it hadn’t happened, and that he was still alive, he turned hard on his heels, running full pelt for the door.
“Run, Tyler, run Tyler, run, run, run. Don’t let the Ripper have his fun, fun, fun,” Pritchard screamed in an insane parody of the old wartime song.
As Jack clambered over the generator, towards the fire door, The Disciple tried the lighter again. This time a bright blue flame burst into life.
Jack glanced fearfully over his shoulder in time to see the rag ignite. He was aware of the killer throwing it towards the cylinder; then he was back in the corridor.
“Run Tyler, run Tyler, run, run, run…”
Jack continued running, legs pumping like pistons, as he tried to distance himself from the danger zone behind. With every step he took the deranged cackle echoed in his ears a little less.
WHUMP!
The storage room exploded behind him. The heavy fire proofed door was blown off its hinges as a powerful concussion wave blew it outwards like a twig, spinning it a full 180-degree arc in mid-air before pummelling it into the thick concrete wall less than a foot from Jack’s head. An enormous fireball blasted out of the doorway, chasing Tyler along the corridor, leaving a trail of blazing flame in its wake.
Somehow, Jack managed to stay just ahead of the expanding ball of fire, which moved like a living thing, hungrily consuming everything in its path. He reached the bend in the corridor and threw himself around it, diving onto the floor and covering his head with his hands. After several seconds he gingerly lifted his head and saw that the flames had begun to recede.
Out of breath, Tyler stood up unsteadily. Poking his head around the corner, he peered into a thick cloud of acrid smoke that was drifting along the corridor towards him. There was no sign of the killer. He wondered if Pritchard had got out in time. No one could have lived through the intense heat of that fireball.
WHUMP!
The second explosion was completely unexpected and it nearly knocked him off his feet. It was a completely different type of detonation to the first one, with much more substance to it. A violent tremor vibrated through the ground as the blast wave resonated along the narrow corridor. The ceiling cracked under the weight of the massive explosion and, as debris fell all around him, he instinctively raised his arms to protect his head.
Like a cork being popped from a well-shaken champagne bottle, a large chunk of metal piping from the old generator shot out of the boiler room, careering across the fifty-foot length of corridor at phenomenal speed, making straight for Tyler. Jack pressed himself against the side of the tunnel as the jagged piece of machinery shot by him, embedding itself into the wall where the tunnel forked around to the left.
Jack realised that something very substantial had just exploded. Instinctively, he understood that the first explosion was a result of the CFC’s contaminating the room’s air supply igniting, sucking all the oxygen from the room and creating a huge fireball. The second blast had occurred when the cylinder, itself, had gone up, causing serious structural damage.
He wondered how long he had until the other cylinders blew up.
Coughing violently, Tyler headed back towards the surface, this time managing to avoid the trolley he’d fallen over on his way in.
As he entered the main warehouse building, he experienced an overwhelming sense of relief. After the claustrophobic darkness of the tunnel below, this place seemed positively light and airy. He retraced his steps back to his initial point of entry, slipping out through the dislodged wooden slats in the old door into the freshness and freedom of the cool night air.
As he moved away from the building line, the third and fourth cylinders ignited.
◆◆◆
WHUMP!
A ten-foot high pillar of flame shot out of a manhole cover in the ground between the warehouse and the dock. Half the windows on the ground floor shattered in sequence as the blast wave hit them, one after the other, sending shards of glass flying in every direction.
“What the hell?” Dillon gasped. For a moment all he could do was stand and stare. He had reached the front of the building seconds earlier and, finding it locked and secure, had drifted around to the back looking for an alternative way in. He began sprinting along the wharf towards the small docking area that connected the warehouse to the pier, where a cloud of fresh smoke billowed into the air.
WHUMP!
Another explosion, seemingly right underfoot, sent him to his knees. Large cracks appeared in the pavement all around him. “Jack!” he yelled at the top of his voice.
Smoke escaped from a series of fissures that had appeared in the wharf floor and a section of concrete, off to his left, crumbled and gave way, falling into a newly formed chasm. A small mushroom-shaped cloud of dust spewed up into the night air from the heart of the hole.
There was another tremor, and a large section of the warehouse
