Everything in Between

by Hubbard, Crystal

  “I’m sorry, Elton, for causing so much trouble for you this semester.”

  “Get on your knees and say it, and maybe I’ll believe you.”

  Chip put himself between Zae and Elton. “Give me the detonator, son.” He held out his hand. “This is your one chance to do the right thing before something phenomenally bad happens.”

  Dr. Kirby, having seen that everyone else had exited the building, stomped toward Elton. “Where on earth would you find dynamite?” she thundered. “Give me that box, young man!”

  Aiming the detonator at Dr. Kirby, Elton pressed one of the glowing red buttons. An explosion shook the building at the far end of the west corridor. Dr. Kirby whirled to see what everyone else saw—the ceiling and walls crumbling in a deafening roar and a thick cloud of dust. Chip shielded Zae with his body as Braeden clapped his hands to his ears and Dr. Kirby covered her head with her arms.

  “You bastard!” Dr. Kirby growled upon emerging from the shelter of her arms.

  “Name calling? Really?” Elton pressed a second button. An explosion sounded overhead. Broken glass rained past the lobby windows and the ceiling shook, but nothing happened to endanger the few people remaining in the lobby. “My business is with Teacher’s Pet and the teacher from hell, Dr. Kirby. Why don’t you and the karate man get the hell out of here?” Elton suggested. “You’ve got ten seconds before I push another button. Who knows, the next one might bring the chandeliers down on us.”

  “Go.” Zae gave Chip a little push. “Get Dr. Kirby and her big mouth somewhere safe.”

  “I won’t leave you here!” Chip insisted in a low voice.

  “I won’t hurt her,” Elton said blithely. “If Braeden’s experiment works, they’ll make it out of here in one piece.”

  “I’ll stay,” Chip offered. “Let everyone else go.”

  “Can’t do that, karate man.” Elton shook his head. “See, I want Prof. Richardson to see that I’m just as smart as her little pet Braeden.” He displayed the detonator once more. “This is frickin’ ingenious. Braeden’s project uses radio waves to detect explosives. I use radio waves to trigger them. I want you to see our work in action, professor.”

  “Please,” Zae urged. “Chip, you have to go.” Police sirens and the screams of fire engines grew louder beyond the front doors. “You can help the authorities by telling them what we’re dealing with in here. Braeden and I will be fine.”

  Chip’s shoulders heaved, his hands clenching and unclenching as he visibly struggled with his urge to protect and Zae’s quiet request that he leave. “I won’t leave you here. I can’t.”

  “Are you sure about that, big fella?” Elton took a step closer to him, but carefully remained well out of his reach. “Tell you what. I’ll give you ten seconds to get the hell out of here and leave us in peace, or I’ll bring the ceiling down on all of us.” He covered another button with his thumb. “Wouldn’t you rather see how Braeden’s gizmo works from the standing room only area out in the parking lot?”

  “Chip.” Zae rested her hands on his shoulders. She spoke low, forcing him to bow his head to hear her. “He’s fixated on me, and he will hurt you, to hurt me.”

  “I can’t leave you with that head case,” he insisted.

  “You’re not leaving me.” Zae forced a brittle smile. “You can do more to help us out there than in here. Please…” She caressed his jaw. “Please, go.”

  Chip’s jaw hardened. He squinted his eyes shut and cursed under his breath. Suddenly, he turned to Braeden. “Are you sure your invention works? You’ll find the rest of the explosives?”

  “I’m betting my life on it,” Braeden responded.

  “Your ten seconds are up,” Elton said. “Get out, Kish.”

  Chip held his ground, even when Zae gave him a gentle nudge toward the door. “If anything happens to Zae or Braeden, you better pray I don’t get my hands on you before the cops do.”

  Elton grinned. “You and Dr. Kirby go bye-bye or I’ll go boom boom.” He aimed the detonator at Dr. Kirby, cowing her with it.

  Chip tore himself away from Zae, took Dr. Kirby by her right elbow, and walked her to the glass double doors. He opened a door, and Dr. Kirby raced through it, loudly sobbing. Staring at Zae, Chip exited the building. Slowly walking backward, he kept his gaze on Zae until police officers swarmed him.

  “Now that it’s just us, let’s get this party started,” Elton said. “Too bad Eve isn’t here. She did as much work on Braeden’s project as he did. Did you know that, professor?”

  “Yes,” Zae said. “There’s very little about my daughters that I don’t know.”

  “Did Eve tell you that I asked her out?”

  Zae gritted her teeth. Elton Dye was the only person she’d ever wanted to choke, and it was becoming harder and harder to suppress that urge, detonator be damned. “No. She neglected to mention that to me.”

  “She came to the lecture hall one afternoon at the end of one of your classes. She’s so nice and so pretty,” Elton’s gaze seemed to drift inward. “It took me a month to work up the nerve to ask her out. All I wanted was to take her to dinner or a movie. But she said no. Because of you.”

  “She said no because she’s already got a boyfriend!” Braeden shouted from the table where he was powering up his experiment. “She told you that!”

  “She didn’t want me because her mother doesn’t like me,” Elton said. “She never gave me a second look. She’d hang out with a squid like you, but she wouldn’t give me the time of day.”

  “You’re right, Elton,” Zae said. “It’s my fault. Eve is a good girl, and she didn’t want to disappoint me. It’s my fault, all mine, that she wouldn’t go out with you.”

  “You’re just saying that because you’re worried that I’ll do something to Eve,” Elton said.

  “Shouldn’t I be?” Zae asked.

  Elton snickered.

  Braeden used the cuff of his button-down to wipe perspiration from his forehead. “It’s ready.” He picked up a dark-blue disk, a handheld device with a digital meter, and he adjusted the antennae on the transmitter. He extended the antennae as high as it would go. After a moment of silence spent staring at the meter, he began walking toward the wooden column in the middle of the lobby.

  “I’ve got something here,” Braeden said. Zae warily approached the column.

  Braeden ran the meter along the column. “It reacts most strongly here.” He softly tapped the base of the column, where fresh cuts had been covered with something that smelled like Sharpie ink. Braeden carefully pried away the piece of wood concealing the hollow in the column. A hollow now stuffed with several sticks of dynamite wired to a small timing device.

  “Crap,” Braeden muttered, a tremble in his voice.

  “What’s the matter?” Zae asked anxiously.

  “It’s degraded. It’s old.”

  “You found it fair and square, Squid,” Elton said, clapping his hands. “I gotta tell you, I didn’t think you could do it. I’ll disarm this one, but you’ve got a bunch more to track down.”

  “Don’t touch it!” Braeden clamped his hand on Elton’s wrist, stopping him from touching the bundle of dynamite. “See the crystalline particles on the wrappers? It’s sweating nitroglycerin. It’s totally unstable. It could blow up if you breathe on it the wrong way.”

  “It was fine when I was working with it,” Elton said.

  “It’s not fine now,” Braeden responded.

  Elton dropped his detonator, its clatter on the hardwood floor startling Zae. “I’m getting the hell out of here.”

  “Where is the rest of the dynamite planted?” Braeden shouted after him.

  Elton backed toward the exit. “You can find it with your sensor.”

  “Not if they’re all as unstable as this bundle,” Braeden explained. “There isn’t time. Sound can be enough to trigger a blast. We’re lucky the whole building didn’t go down after that first explo—”

  Another explosion cut off Braeden’s words a
nd brought part of the ceiling crashing around them. Braeden put his arms around Zae and tried to hurry her to the door, but then another blast sent them flying backwards. Rubble from that blast struck the wooden column, which initiated a third blast that took the hardwood from under Braeden and Zae, sending them plummeting to the basement while a broken symphony of explosions brought half the science building down on top of them.

  * * *

  “The gas, water and electricity have been cut so there shouldn’t be any more explosions,” said Fire Chief Early Dunlop. He tipped back his hard hat to scratch his forehead. “The first few blasts should have been enough to set off any degraded TNT within three blocks of this place. I never would have expected something like this to happen here.”

  Chief Dunlop pushed news microphones out of his way and ignored questions as he proceeded to the sawhorses and high-beam lights that had been set up around the perimeter of what was left of the science building. The smoldering ruin smoked in places where gas explosions in labs had been triggered by the dynamite blasts. The wreckage remained eerily quiet in the aftermath of the deafening blasts that had driven Chip back when he’d tried to re-enter the building.

  Chip kept pace with the fire chief. “One of Dye’s frat brothers said that he got the TNT from an abandoned quarry outside Fenton,” Chip told him. “Apparently, the boys like to go there to party.”

  “I’ll send a team out,” the chief said. “He’ll collect a sample of the dynamite and we’ll better know what we’re dealing with.”

  “It’s been nearly a half hour since the last blast,” Chip said, panic in his voice. “In my experience—”

  “You’ve been very helpful, Mr. Kish,” the fire chief said, “but I think you need to see the paramedics about that head of yours.” He nodded toward the dried blood that had trickled from the gash Chip had received in a shower of flying glass after the final explosion.

  “Chief,” Chip began as slowly and calmly as he could, “every minute counts now. There are at least three people in that building. One of them…” His voice broke on his final word. “One of them is my fiancée. And she’s pregnant. I have to get her out of there.”

  “I understand what you’re going through, son, but—”

  “Chief, you have no idea what I’m going through!”

  Sionne broke away from the huddle of Eve, Dawn and Cory to put a restraining hand on Chip’s shoulder.

  “I’ve got some of the best search and recovery men in the state on their way here right now,” Chief Dunlop said. “They’re about an hour away. We just have to wait and hope for the best.”

  “I can’t afford to depend on hope.” Chip stood toe-to-toe with the chief, who wasn’t a small man. His white hair belied his youth, and he matched Chip inch for inch in height and breadth. “I spent six years tunneling through bombed buildings in Iraq and Afghanistan. Every second we leave Zae and Braeden in there brings them that much closer to not making it out alive. They could be breathing residual gas, bleeding or choking on dust. Your best search and recovery men aren’t here, but I am. Let me go in after them.”

  “We don’t even know the layout of the building,” Chief Dunlop said. “I can’t let you go in there blind.”

  “Blueprints are a matter of public record,” Cory called to them. He pulled a weeping Eve from his shoulder and handed her over to Dawn, then joined Chip and Chief Dunlop. “If the blueprints are online, I can find them.”

  “I can’t let you go in there, kid,” the chief told Chip. “I’m sorry.”

  “Chief,” Cory said, “Captain Kish was one of the best tunnel rats in the Marines…”

  While Cory distracted Chief Dunlop, Chip ran to one of the fire trucks. He rolled up his left sleeve and stepped over to the nearby lamp post. After planting his feet and exhaling through his pursed lips, he took a deep, quick breath. Exhaling forcefully as he spun in a fast circle, he smashed his cast against the lamp post. He pulled the pieces from his hand, dropping them as he went to the back of the fire truck. He exchanged a few words with two firemen, and in the next instant, they were handing him a full-face respirator, a headset, elbow and chest pads, Kovenex gloves and three hand-held oxygen tanks. Chip strapped on the gear as if it had been only yesterday and not more than a decade since he’d last entered a bomb-ravaged building to search for survivors. This was the first time his own survival truly depended on that of the victim he needed to find.

  “What’s going on here?” the chief demanded, marching to the truck, where a paramedic was taping Chip’s broken hand.

  “He can’t use the hand with the cast on it, but it’s got to have some kind of stability,” the paramedic explained.

  “I don’t give a rat turd about what you’re doing,” the chief growled at the medic. “What are you doing?” He poked Chip in his shoulder.

  “I’m going in,” Chip said. “Don’t try to stop me.”

  The chief stared at him hard for a few seconds. “Wouldn’t do me much good, would it? I’d be a fool to turn down the services of a decorated, experienced Marine tunnel rat. Take care in there, soldier, and I’ll do my best to give you the support you need.”

  Chip slipped a headlamp on over his respirator and strapped a first aid kit to the small of his back. “Thanks, Chief.”

  With bystanders, media, fire and police watching him, Chip strode to the place where the front doors once stood. The building had fallen in pieces, like a house made of giant cards. The science building had been essentially two parts, a glass lobby budding off the main section, a traditional cinder block and drywall structure. The lobby was a pile of glass and steel, crushed by the weight of the front half of the main building, and in the darkness, Chip had to search for an opening large enough to slip through. He used his foot to kick at broken cinder blocks and a slab of drywall. The stuff wouldn’t budge, and with his broken hand, he couldn’t get a solid grip on the cinder blocks to move them. He was ready to scream in frustration when a dark shadow loomed over him.

  Sionne, nearly seven feet and more than three-hundred pounds of solid Samoan muscle, eclipsed the light from the high-beam lamps aimed at the rubble. Sionne had already rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt. He kneeled and began tossing the cinder blocks aside as if they were no weightier than broken Legos.

  “I’ll wait for you right here,” Sionne said, clapping Chip on his shoulder. With a nod, Chip lowered the mask of his respirator and slipped into the narrow opening Sionne had made.

  The lobby floor wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Once his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Chip found himself staring into a big hole edged with twisted rebar, splintered wood, loose wiring and jagged concrete. His heart sounded in his ears at the thought of that ferocious mouth having swallowed Zae and Braeden.

  The gap between what was left of the floor and the layers of rubble that had been the ceiling and part of the main building was no larger than the crawlspace in the average house. The only way Chip could get to the hole was to slide on his belly, and with each inch he progressed, the floor groaned.

  “Zae!” Chip yelled. “Braeden!”

  No response.

  Chip maneuvered as best he could, shining his headlamp all around him. A haze of drywall dust hung in the air, making everything hazy. Chip looked for any sign of life. Or death. Clothing, hair, limbs—anything that could indicate the presence of a human being.

  Very close to where the doors had been, he found the evidence he least wanted to see. Blood. A thick trail of it, black in the glaring white light of the halogen beam strapped to his head, led to the sleeve of a red and gold bomber jacket protruding from a pile of glass and steel. The respirator amplified his breathing, so Chip held his breath, to listen for signs of life. Quiet whimpers reached his ears, and Chip pushed emotion aside to inch his way to what was left of Elton Dye.

  Still on his belly, Chip grabbed a piece of steel and used it as a lever to loosen the rubble pinning Elton in place. The boy had caught the worst of the broken glass from th
e doors. Large shards had punctured his back and arms. Chip marveled that he was still breathing through the mangled, bloody shreds of his once handsome face.

  “Happy now, you little prick?” Chip muttered as he tugged the first aid kit free from his back. He couldn’t stop Elton’s bleeding. There was too much of it. But he unwrapped a syringe of dilaudid and gently pulled up Elton’s sleeve.

  He did not find the hand he expected to.

  He pulled a tourniquet and gauze pads from the first aid kit and dressed Elton’s stump as well as he could, then he found a vein in the boy’s forearm and administered the dilaudid. In seconds, Elton’s agonized whimpers became dull gurgles, and Chip knew the pain relief had taken effect. Elton would need it for what was to come.

  Chip looked for Elton’s hand but couldn’t find it. He grabbed Elton, who was on his stomach, by the shoulders of his jacket and slowly worked him from the rubble. Sweat burned his eyes and sharp stabbing pains shot through Chip’s broken hand with each tug of Elton’s body. Chip’s shoulders and lower back burned with pain by the time he’d dragged Elton, backwards, to the opening where Sionne still waited.

  Mindless of Elton’s injuries, Sionne grabbed the scruff of his bloody jacket and shirt and lifted him out of the hole as though he were a dead gopher. Chip caught sight of paramedics rushing to the site with a gurney, but he didn’t hang around to see Elton carted to safety.

  “I’m going back in for Zae and Braeden,” he told Sionne. He stripped off the jacket the firemen had loaned him, leaving his elbow and knee pads his only protection over his blue jeans and dress shirt. “It’s too tight in there. The coat is in my way.”

  “I can go with you,” Sionne offered. “You’re at half strength with that broken hand.”

  “There’s barely room for a pipsqueak like me to wiggle around,” Chip said with a wry grin. “The last thing I want is for you to get trapped in this glass and mortar pancake.”

  “Go get your girl,” Sionne said. “I’ll wait here. Just holler, and I’ll dig you out with my bare hands if I have to, bro.”

  Chip gave Sionne a quick hug, flipped down his mask, adjusted his air, then allowed the rubble to swallow him once more.