Company Town

by Madeline Ashby

  “Hey, those were miracle Space Age fibres, back in the day.”

  “Wow. No wonder you’re so pissed off, all the time.”

  Joel wrapped the pad over Hwa’s wound. Then she helped him slide his tie up her arm. He tightened the loop around the pad and then wrapped the rest of the tie’s length around her arm and tucked the end into the wrap.

  “Can you still move your fingers?” he asked.

  Hwa flexed them. “Yeah. Thanks. You’re kind of a genius.”

  Joel shrugged. “I know. That’s what my test scores say.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Pretty much. I have a certificate and everything.”

  She licked her lips. The wound in her arm was now more of a dull, throbbing ache. She could work with that. But only so much. “Well, you got any genius ideas for getting us back into that elevator? I can’t force the doors with this arm.”

  Joel pulled the tie pin from his pocket. “Actually? I do.”

  * * *

  The elevator had two access mechanisms: a standard chip-reader, and an old-fashioned lock-and-key system for when the power went out. Hwa stood guard as Joel worked the pin into the elevator’s key slot.

  “This always looks easier, in the dramas,” Joel said.

  “Don’t force it,” Hwa said. “Just feel around gently until you feel something push back.”

  The doors chimed open. They fell inside, and Hwa slapped the “door close” button. Then she looked up at the ceiling of the elevator. There was all kinds of shit up there, wedged up between the lights and the plastic panels that were supposed to protect them. Pencils, rubber bands, dead flies both organic and robotic, even a pink assignment sheet with the word GULLIBLE written across it in green marker.

  Hwa pointed. “Jump up there and take down one of those panels.”

  Joel reached up and jumped. It took him a couple of tries, but the panel fell open and showered him with dead flies and paper clips. “Now what?”

  Hwa told him how to turn the lights off and gain access to the ceiling panel that would pop open the trapdoor on top of the elevator. She had to kneel down and let him stand on her knee to do it, but he had good hands and worked fast. Soon he had the trapdoor open, and after he climbed up through it, he helped her get up there, too.

  “Hold on. Let me get into blueprint mode, here.” Hwa found the blueprint icon in her vision. The school being a publicly funded building, it had to release all its plans. So she could see where all the shafts and ducts went. It took her a moment to orient herself, but the light booth was unmistakable. And as she suspected, it had a major HVAC duct sitting right up on top of it. With the stage lights, the auditorium got awfully hot during performances. The only way to control the temperature was to force the air one way or another. And the only way to do that without impeding anyone’s view of the stage was to stick a big fan on top of the light booth.

  Hopefully the quarantine would last long enough that none of the fans would be spinning while they were in the ducts.

  She pointed at the spiny ladder leading up the shaft. “Okay. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Climbing ladders and crawling through ducts with one arm was excruciating. There was no other word for it. Hwa smeared blood everywhere she went. The ducts were smaller and tighter than she’d expected, and the only thing that greased their way through the aluminum tunnels was anxious, frustrated sweat. It felt like being born, if your mother was an unfeeling machine with a pussy made of steel who didn’t really care if you lived or died.

  That was a fairly accurate description of Sunny, actually. Hwa would have to remember that for later. If there was a “later.”

  Finally, they made it to the light booth. The fan was still off. Hwa checked her watch. This was a long time for the cops not to enter the building. What were they waiting for?

  “Let’s get through before it starts up again,” Joel said.

  “Yeah.” Hwa wriggled around until her feet faced the fan. “Turn around so your back is to mine, okay? I need you to brace me, so my kicks have more force.”

  “Okay.” He turned around. Through his shirt, she could feel how hot and damp he was. But he didn’t seem frightened. He was doing well with this whole thing. “You’re doing pretty well with this whole thing.”

  “I have an antianxiety implant,” Joel said. “It’s perched right on my amygdala. It’s sort of like a pacemaker, for my emotions. I don’t feel high highs or low lows. I’m right in the middle, all the time. Dad had it put in right when my voice started to change.”

  Hwa kicked twice. The fan squealed the second time, but didn’t budge. “No shit?”

  “No shit.”

  “That’s a long time to go without worrying.” Hwa tried not to sound as snide as she felt.

  “I’m fifteen,” Joel said. “I only got it like three years ago.”

  Hwa focused all her surprise into her legs and kicked again. “Fifteen? You’re a senior! You’re graduating this year!”

  She felt him shrug against her shoulders. “Like I said: I’m a genius.”

  “Wow.” She kicked right at the centre of the fan. It dented around her feet. Now they were getting somewhere. She could see a rim of light around the panel. “So, that means I’m, what, seven years older than you?”

  “I don’t know how old you are,” Joel said. “Does it matter?”

  Hwa kicked hard. The fan fell in, and a couple of little kicks at its edges with her heels popped it the rest of the way. “Nope,” Hwa said. And she pushed herself through.

  The first thing they found was food. The light booth had an impressive array of snacks. All of it was the high-calorie contraband that the school had outlawed years ago: bright pouches and boxes of crisps and chocolate (a whole box of the cherry brandy kind), seaweed crackers, “cheddar” popcorn, “kettle” popcorn, and bottle after bottle of energy drinks. Hwa mainlined one like it was the blood of Christ.

  Tossing the empty bottle into a bin, she took stock. The light booth’s equipment was still all tarped over; no one had come in to use it since the summer. She plunked herself into one of the chairs and pulled the other one out for Joel.

  “What’s going on, out there?”

  “Let’s see.”

  Hwa opened the security tab again. More feeds had come online. Students in darkened rooms cowered under their desks. Teachers held fingers over their lips. The halls remained empty. It was standard protocol in an active shooter situation, one Hwa had drilled her self-defence students on: run, and if running is impossible, then hide.

  The shooter was on the second floor, now. He was in the foreign language pod. He was standing outside Madame Clouzot’s class—Hwa recognized the French flag across the door—and trying to kick it down. Hanna Oleson was in there, Hwa realized. She’d figured out Hanna’s whole schedule when Jared took her. Was she as scared now as she’d been then? Had Hwa saved her just to watch her die here?

  “Hwa?”

  Just as she was about to explain, the bell sounded. First period was over. Christ, where were the cops? Maybe they knew something she didn’t. Like maybe this asshole had chemical weapons, or there was a bomb somewhere, or he’d rigged himself to blow up. Maybe he wasn’t the run-of-the-mill batshit shooter, after all.

  Maybe he was the one trying to kill Joel.

  Maybe he was going to kill everyone in his way until he found Joel.

  “Fuck this,” Hwa whispered. She stood up and started digging in the supply racks. Most of it was just extra wire and batteries and folders of gels. There was an old red toolbox that looked promising, but it had a big fat padlock on it and Hwa had no time.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “The emergency ladder.”

  Hwa fished a box cutter out of one bin. That could come in handy. She tried stuffing it down her skirt, but that didn’t work so well. She dug out a tool belt, cinched it over her waist, and stuck the cutter in there, along with a couple of flat-head screwdrivers and a heavy
flashlight. There was a drill, but it was a small battery-powered job without much force. She needed something bigger. Like a nail gun.

  Fortunately, she knew exactly where to get one of those.

  “I think I know what you’re doing, and I think it’s really stupid,” Joel said.

  “Probably is.”

  “You’re wounded. You shouldn’t even be standing up.”

  “Got us this far, didn’t I?”

  Hwa’s hands lit on the emergency ladder. It was lightweight yellow nylon. Joel would have no trouble hauling it up after her.

  “You’re not supposed to leave me,” Joel said. His voice was flat. He wasn’t afraid, but he wasn’t happy, either. Hwa had a feeling this was the first time he’d seen somebody on the family payroll doing something they weren’t supposed to.

  Well. It was a school. Might as well make it a teachable moment. “You’re safe up here. But everybody else down there is still in danger. Now you can order me to stay, or you can let me try to help. Which is it?”

  Joel didn’t answer at first. Instead he turned and plucked out a bunch of the gels from the lighting cabinet. On their black envelopes was an orange sticker with a campfire on it. WARNING: EXTREMELY FLAMMABLE, it read. Then he held up a black glass tube with an electrical cord dangling from it.

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a black light. Probably the last incandescent bulb in this whole town. It absorbs most of the visible light spectrum, so it’s spectacularly inefficient. That makes it good for checking for lint on a red velvet curtain, which is why it’s up here.” He knelt down and plugged in the light. He reached for a bottle of water from the tub of snacks. Then he started unfolding the black envelopes.

  “Hey! What are you doing?”

  “I’m starting a fire,” Joel said. “I don’t want him to hear you coming.”

  The fire caught almost immediately. Joel quickly fed it more gels. A weird metallic smell arose from them. Smoke started to rise. Joel backed away. The fire leapt up about three feet. Then the alarm sounded. It was a shrill keening sound, as though the whole building were shrieking in agony at being burned. Then the sprinklers came on. Together they stared up at the water. It tasted of ocean.

  “Great,” Hwa said. “Just great.”

  “I’ll get the ladder.”

  Hwa stomped out the fire and opened the exit. Joel secured the ladder to a set of hooks hanging off the threshold. Hwa watched the ladder fall into the darkness around the nearest catwalk. If she fell, she would die. Period.

  Joel’s head stuck out above her. “If you kill him, I’m sure my dad’s attorneys will defend you in court. They’re very good. They got him out of a whole criminal negligence thing with an oil spill, before I was born. So you probably won’t do any time.”

  Hwa winced. “That’s a real comfort, Joel.”

  He held up both thumbs. “Good luck.”

  “You, too. Lock that door, and turn off all the lights when I’m gone.”

  Going down a nylon ladder with one arm and a heavy toolbelt wasn’t easy, but it was a lot easier than the ducts. Her arm was oozing, but she felt okay. Sitting still and focusing on it would have just made the pain worse. Her feet found empty air, and she looked down. The catwalk was another two feet down. Holding the ladder with her wounded arm she quickly changed her left hand’s grip on the ladder to something more like a one-armed chin-up. Then she slowly let herself dangle down off the ladder, and dropped onto the catwalk. It was slick and she slipped, gripping the railing with her whole body and getting an eyeful of auditorium. One of the screwdrivers dived out of the toolbelt and glittered as it fell into the deep dark far below.

  Righting herself, Hwa looked up at Joel. She gave him a thumbs-up, and he gave her one, too. Then he started pulling up the ladder.

  Twisting on the flashlight and sticking it between her wounded arm and her body, Hwa navigated across the catwalk and down a set of stairs to the backstage area. Right near the outdoor exit (locked) was a fire extinguisher. Hwa lifted it off its housing and carried it to the interior exit that led to the drama department (also locked). She lifted the fire extinguisher and bashed at the lever on the door.

  Behind the door, she heard screaming.

  “It’s just me!” Hwa bashed at the lever. After two more tries, it fell out with a clunk. She opened the door, and a stage sword jabbed her in the belly. “Ow! Fuck!”

  “A rat! A rat!” Mrs. Cressey said. She was holding on to two crying girls. She smiled. Hwa thought she had maybe gone a little crazy. “Dead for a ducat! Dead!”

  Hwa pushed the stage sword away and gave the huge boy holding it a hard stare. He backed off, and she pushed into the classroom. All the other students stared at her. They were freshmen. They looked so small and formless. Like little tadpoles. She had never felt old before. Not until this moment. She was still young, and she knew that, intellectually. But staring at these kids with their jewelled eyelashes and chipped nail polish and their knees all hugged to their chests, she felt like some ancient thing that had crawled up out of a very deep and ugly pit.

  She pointed behind herself. “You’ll be safer up in the catwalks! Get to a higher ground!”

  The students looked at each other. Then they looked at their teacher. Slowly, they got to their feet. Hwa threaded herself through them, and started bashing on the door to the hall with a fire extinguisher. As she did, other students started streaming out of the room. She watched as the last one left, and then kicked open the door and got out into the hall.

  The hall was a loop that made up the vocational pod. Mr. McGarry’s shop was around the bend. This time, she paused and looked through the window first before raising the fire extinguisher to the lever. No one was inside. Once the door was open, she dashed in and put the fire extinguisher down. The entire wall to her left was a pegboard of tools. The red chalk outlines for each tool’s shape were all bleeding down under the sprinklers’ onslaught. But the tools themselves were still in place and ready to be used. Including the big gas-powered nail gun, complete with its backpack of fuel.

  Hwa wiggled her fingers. They were mostly numb. “Come to Mama.”

  Threading her injured arm through the straps of the backpack made the wound open up again, and she wished she’d taken that other pad from Joel. Then again, it was shop: Mr. McGarry probably had the best first aid kits in school. Hwa found one on the wall and popped it open. Right there was the syringe of puncture-filling foam. She bit the protective cover off the needle and spat it out. Hissing, she managed to peel back the padding and fill the wound with foam. It stung mightily and she howled in shock. She suddenly felt a lot more awake and alive. Endorphins were a wonderful drug.

  She checked her specs. The shooter was back on the main floor, now. The same floor as she was. He’d gone up and around and down, covering the whole school. Looking for something. Or someone. She had to get him before he found the open door to the drama department. Before he found the other students. Before he found Joel.

  Hwa checked the fuel gauge on the tank. It was in the green. She added a couple of cartridges of nails to the toolbelt. Then she wiped the specs dry with a chamois from Mr. McGarry’s desk. In the security tab, she changed the video feed to a basic semitransparent map in the lower left of her vision: the shooter was now just a red dot on a set of lines, and she was the blue one. It would be easier to see what was in front of her this way.

  Easier to aim.

  She took a few deep yogic breaths to centre herself. It wasn’t easy with a heavy pack on, but it was necessary. In (two, three, four), hold (two, three, four), out (two, three, four). And again. The pain dissipated. So did the endorphins. There was only her—a calm person accustomed to hurting other people—and him—an imbalanced student who probably came here with a death wish. They were probably equally frustrated by the fact that the cops hadn’t shown up. One way or another, they would have to end it themselves.

  Hwa entered the hall. She moved past the doors. In other cl
assrooms, there were kids pressed up against the windows. She felt them watching as she walked to the main hall. There, way on the other side of the school, was the shooter.

  Behind her, something splashed.

  Hwa whirled. At first, she couldn’t see it. But in the rain created by the sprinklers was a … shape. A human shape outlined in water trickling off its surface. Only, she could see straight through it. Without the water it would have been completely invisible. She ripped off the specs.

  It moved. Glittered. Like a poltergeist caught in the act. It wasn’t real. Couldn’t possibly be real. She knew that. And yet. And yet. The longer she stared at it the less real everything became. The hallway. The water. The shooter. Even the pain. It was all broadcasting from somewhere else, some other channel, and she was just watching it happen. Blessed, merciful calm descended over her like a hot towel fresh from the dryer. She recognized the feeling. It was deliciously familiar, but she couldn’t remember the last time she’d experienced it. Hadn’t felt it in a long time. Derealization. That was the medical word for it. That moment when everything around you seemingly shifted to another phase of reality. It was one of the brain’s many self-defence mechanisms. In Hwa, it was preparation for a seizure.

  “Oh, Jesus.”

  All her calm vanished abruptly. She was cold and wet and wounded and alone. And she was about to seize for the first time in three years. It made sense: she’d barely eaten anything, meaning there was a dramatic change in her blood sugar, and she was under physical and emotional stress. Her brain had handled all of these challenges just fine until now, and now the sparkling aura in her vision was warning her to sit down and hold on before she hurt herself. Scintillating scotoma. That was the term. Scintillating, the doctors called it, like it was something to get excited about.

  “Master control room,” she said aloud. “Master control room.”

  She pictured the bank of buttons. Big and bright and perfectly fitted to her fingers. Imagined punching them. That satisfying click. The way each button lit up as she locked a series of doors behind her, locked herself away—