The Trinity Game

“Seen him on TV. What’d he say, exactly?”

“The guy was goin’ nuts, said this place was set to explode this morning. Asked him how he knew, he started on about speaking in tongues and everything’s backwards and I don’t know what all. Didn’t make any sense.”

But it made sense to Andrew. Last night had been a sign, after all. Reverend Tim was speaking for God. Andrew didn’t know how he knew this, but he’d never been surer of anything in his life. He dropped his hardhat on the table and headed for the exit.

“Wait, where you goin’?”

“I can’t stay.”

“Boy, you as crazy as that preacher. Get back here and pick up your lid.”

“You guys better come along,” said Andrew. “You stay, you’re gonna die.”

“You leave, don’t plan on coming back,” the foreman shot back. Andrew turned away. “I’m serious, Andy. You walk out that door, you’re fired.”

Andrew kept on walking.

But as he moved through the sun-drenched parking lot toward his truck, doubt crept around the edges of his mind. He’d just walked away from the only decent job he ever had. Was Reverend Tim really talking for God? The absolute certainty he’d felt in the cafeteria now eluded him.

He climbed into his rusty old F-150, drove off the compound, and headed down the road a couple blocks. He pulled a U-turn, parked facing the refinery. Rolled down the windows, opened his lunchbox, and filled his right cheek with chewing tobacco. Popped the top on a Dr Pepper and settled in to wait.

Thinking: I’m either the smartest man in Louisiana, or the dumbest.

The foreman hated the term productivity meeting. To him, productivity meetings were just about the least productive thing ever devised by middle management, and that was saying plenty. Those corporate frat boys were master time-wasters. Their other major skills included ass-covering, blame-shifting, and brownnosing. But he was a deputy supervisor, which made him junior management, so he had to play along.

At least the meetings were held in the cafeteria. It was the frat boys’ way of showing that they were just plain folk. Those boys loved slumming with the men who worked for a living.

The foreman drank some coffee and tried to focus on the meeting. The IT guy was giving another general warning about sending jokes around by company e-mail. Not naming any names, but the ones who did it knew who they were, and the threat was implied, if things didn’t change soon.

The foreman’s ears popped as if he were in an elevator. Sudden change in air pressure, he thought. Something’s wrong. Something’s—

A blast rocked the building. Windows blew out of the far wall. Men screamed. Everyone grabbed the table for support…

The room went dark…

The HVAC and refrigerators and vending machines shut down, and the cafeteria fell silent…

A low rumble reverberated through the walls. Red emergency lights started flashing and the alarm began blaring, once every second. The generators kicked in, and white light strips set into the floor glowed a line to the door.

Years of monthly fire drills also kicked in, and muscle memory took over. The men abandoned their belongings and moved quickly to the door. A few put their hands on the door, testing for heat. The foreman and the IT guy grabbed the fire extinguishers mounted on either side of the door. Someone opened the door, and the foreman led the other men into the hallway.

The light strips ran left, down the hallway, to the nearest fire exit. The foreman clasped the IT guy on the shoulder and pointed left.

“You’re in charge,” he barked into the guy’s ear. The rumbling had grown to a roar—he had to yell to be heard. “Take them out.”

The group followed the IT guy outside to safety. The foreman turned right, walked through strobing red light toward the double doors at the end of the hallway.

The doors burst open and three men came out in a stumbling run, clothes charred and smoking, skin melting off faces and hands. Through the open doors, everything was raging flame. Smoke billowed into the hallway.

Two of the melting men continued lurching, past the foreman and toward the fire exit. The other man pitched forward onto the floor. The foreman dropped the useless fire extinguisher, ran to the prone man, and hoisted him up in a fireman’s lift.

He ran for the exit. Another concussive blast from behind. The double doors flew open and a wave of heat rolled over him.

The hallway filled with fire.

Andrew Thibodeaux heard the blast. In the distance, a fireball rose through a ragged hole in the metal roof of the refinery’s main building. The top third of the adjoining wall collapsed and more flames leapt free. Thick black smoke filled the air above and climbed into the sky.

For a full minute, he sat watching the fire grow, without a conscious thought in his head. Then his stomach tightened, and he sobbed once, twice, and again. The sobbing stopped as quickly as it had hit him. He wiped his eyes, turned the ignition over, and drove.

Thank you, Lord…thank you, Lord…thank you, Lord…

Julia Rothman heard the call on her police scanner and mashed the accelerator to the floor, making record time to Belle Chasse.

It was a hellstorm. Massive black clouds billowed skyward from a wall of orange flame, and the whole scene shimmered with heat, like a mirage on the highway.

She flashed her press credentials through the windshield, and the deputy waved her past the police line. Michael Alatorre, sheriff of Plaquemines Parish, stood with one foot on the bumper of his cruiser, barking orders at another deputy. Six fire engines and an ambulance idled nearby, lights flashing impotently in the midday sun. A couple dozen firemen stood around smoking, gazing, awestruck by the blaze.

Julia jumped from her car, hooked a few strands of black hair with her little finger, and put them behind her ear.

The sheriff recognized her and tipped his hat, his expression grim. “Young lady.”

“Jesus, Sheriff Alatorre, what the hell happened here?”

“Don’t know yet, some kinda accident.”

“How many dead?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. We can’t get near it. Fire chief says we just gonna have to let it burn for a while.” He flipped open his notebook. “Supervisor says he thinks there were one hundred forty-five men on shift in the main building when the thing blew, but that’s unconfirmed. Far as we know, forty-three came out alive, eighteen taken to hospital in varying degrees of distress. Some were pretty bad off, probably not all of them will make it.” He gestured at the ambulance. “They just stickin’ around in case somebody else staggers out, but…”

They both looked back to the inferno. Nobody else would be staggering out.

Julia raced back to the office, logged onto the Internet, and directed her browser to the Tim Trinity Word of God Ministries.