by Jen Blood
“Little over an hour, maybe,” he said reluctantly. “A little less with no cars on the road.”
Juarez still didn’t say anything. “Jack,” I pressed. “This is it. They’re spreading you thin on this end—you said it yourself. You’ve got all units on call here in Justice to respond to whatever happens at midnight. Places outside Hickman County aren’t even on your radar right now.”
I thought I’d have to argue some more, but a half-second later I heard him call Blaze over. They conferred.
“Where are you now?” he asked me.
“About five minutes from the school.”
“Good. Rick—you have those plans you made for your project with you?”
“Yes, sir,” he said with a nod. “If you can get me a computer, I reckon I’ve got everything you need.”
00:30:29
DANNY
Danny figured he ought to be happy they weren’t bothering with the hoods anymore. Instead, all he could think was what that meant. No more hoods: Jenny was leading them straight to death’s door. They might as well be walking the plank. Casey leaned on him a little, but she stayed strong, not shedding so much as a tear.
“What do you reckon they’ll tell Dougie and Willa?” she asked. “Once I’m gone, I mean?”
It was the first time she’d mentioned her kid brother and sister. Danny shook his head, a lump in his throat.
“They’ll be all right,” he said. “We’re gonna get back to ‘em.”
She got quiet, trudging along beside him with her eyes straight ahead.
“You never said yours,” he said to her as they topped a steep flight of stairs and then waited while Jenny unlocked the door.
“My what?” Casey asked.
“Top twenty-four,” he said.
The door opened. They blinked in the glare of fluorescent lights. They were in a hallway with a cement floor and blank white walls. There was a red exit sign and metal double doors at one end, and a freight elevator like they had in the basement of his school. A janitor’s closet door stood open. Jenny walked them past and down the long hallway, in the opposite direction of the exit sign. He saw a few stairs leading down to a door marked BOILER.
Jenny stopped at a stairwell at the end of the hall. Her friend in black opened the door, and she waved her gun at them.
“Go on,” she encouraged. She’d been pretty easygoing up ‘til now, but she was getting tense—he could hear it in her voice.
“C’mon, Case,” he coaxed when he realized she still hadn’t answered. “Your top twenty-four albums of all time.”
She looked at him and kind of smiled. Her eyes were bright and her body was warm against his side, like maybe she had a fever.
“Top twenty-four,” she said. Her voice was rough. In the distance, he could hear music again: Van Morrison… “Sweet Thing.” He’d always liked the song, but it didn’t much fit what he figured they were headed for.
“No Doubt—Tragic Kingdom. Janis, of course. Cheap Thrills—the cover art on that one’s as good as the album. Fleetwood Mac. And don’t give me that look,” she said before he could say a word, bumping into him a little. “You just don’t give nothin’ a chance if it don’t strike your fancy in the first minute. You settle in and listen to Rumours again with me—the whole album—and I’ll change your mind.”
He bumped back into her and nodded. “It’s a date.” He could feel his face burning when she met his eye and smiled.
“I’m gonna hold you to that, Durham,” she said.
They reached the first floor. Jenny pushed the door open. The music was louder now, the place wired with a sweet sound system. They were in another hallway, but this one looked more like a building than a basement: linoleum floor, more cement walls, doors with numbers on them lining both sides.
“Smithfield,” Casey said quietly. Danny nodded. They’d come here for a couple of gigs before—they were supposed to play here next week, as a matter of fact.
Jenny poked him in the back with her gun.
“Pick up the pace, kids. There’s not a lot of time.”
Danny tried to remember what he knew about the building. Besides the classrooms, there was an auditorium on one end, and he thought there might be offices above. He’d kind of dated a girl who went here. She told him Kildeer Hall was the best place to work because they wired in WKRO. You just rock out all day and do your research. Nobody ever bugs you there.
Jenny stopped them and looked at The Giant. “Take them,” she said, nodding at the professor and the hot college girls he worked with. “I’ve got these guys.”
The Giant nodded without an argument, and pulled the three Jenny had pointed out from the group. One of the girls started crying. Casey started to say something, but Danny shook his head. The Giant pushed his gun into the crying girl’s back and pushed them on ahead. He stopped at a doorway, took a key from the professor, and unlocked it. Danny stood there, frozen, until Jenny pushed him to keep going.
They walked another few steps and he heard one of the girls scream. A gunshot went off. Casey flinched beside him. He wished he could hold her hand. Wished he could just run off somewhere. Two more gunshots went off.
They were at the door to the auditorium when The Giant came back, alone.
00:28:16
DIGGS
We’d gotten maybe three feet deep with our tunnel when I heard the gunshots—three of them. Glenda screamed. I saw the horror on George’s face, and shook my head.
“Don’t give up yet,” I said. “We don’t know what that was. Or who.”
He nodded. Beside me, Sally kept digging without a word.
By the time Jenny came in to get her next batch, we’d broken through to the room next door—not enough for anyone to actually make it through, but enough to give me hope that we’d get there. When we heard someone coming this time, George plopped down on top of the hole like a nesting hen while I tried not to look like I’d been digging an escape route for the past two hours.
It didn’t matter, though: Jenny skipped right over George and me, picking Glenda, Riley, Sally, and three others. She smiled at me, and I was grateful for the dim lighting.
“I’ll be back for you, slick. Just in case you start to feel neglected.”
“Can’t wait,” I assured her.
As soon as she was gone, I set back to work, shutting out the sound of Glenda’s deafening screams as they led her away with the others.
00:25:40
DANNY
Jenny led them to a bunch of seats on the right side of the auditorium. Danny and Casey sat together, both of them still tied. Biggie and a couple of the big flannel-wearing rednecks sat in front of them. Casey let her head drop onto Danny’s shoulder like she was too tired to hold it up anymore. He knew how she felt.
The reverend was up front, a couple video cameras pointed at him from the center aisle of the auditorium. There were about seventy, maybe seventy-five others in the audience—all of ‘em people Danny recognized from the reverend’s church. Maybe a quarter of them were just little kids.
Another dozen guys were spread out all along the walls. They were all young, maybe a little older than Danny, with buzzcuts and camo pants with pressed white button-up shirts.
Every one of them carried a rifle.
“What in hell is goin’ on here?” Casey whispered to me. He shook his head.
“Hell if I know.”
Whatever it was, Danny wasn’t loving their chances of getting out.
A couple people fiddled with the video cameras, and one of them cued the reverend. He straightened out his tie and cleared his throat before he started up.
“Brothers and sisters,” he said. “The devil is on our doorstep. There’s no more time to waste. We can’t wait another minute before we take that final leap of faith and walk into the arms of the Almighty. We been persecuted and mocked and belittled on this earth too long, friends. The government’s men are on the way, prepared to take our children and say whatever lies they have t
o say to pull the wool over your eyes.”
A couple of the ladies in the audience were crying. So were the kids. Danny felt sick. There was a table up front with five pitchers filled with purple liquid, a bunch of crackers on platters beside them.
Casey shifted beside him. He turned and looked at her. She tried to smile, but she couldn’t quite make herself. Danny wished he could take her hand. Hold her. He tried to get that across with his eyes, while the reverend kept up babbling and everybody in the audience prayed and cried.
“You remember what Diggs said?” he asked, low in her ear. She nodded.
“Soon as midnight’s close, duck down low. Stay down. Don’t panic,” she recited.
He nodded, even though he was already way past panicking.
“I’ll do everything I can to get us out,” he said to her. “But if we don’t…” he trailed off.
“Me too,” she said, her pretty eyes on his.
They just sat there after that, watching the clock wind down, arms touching. Casey’s head stayed on his shoulder, even when the reverend told his people to stand up and get in line. A couple of the boys went to the tables and poured the grape juice into little paper cups.
“This is our final communion on this earth, brothers and sisters,” the reverend said.
Danny swallowed hard, trying to fight back the fear. One way or another, they didn’t have long.
00:15:22
DIGGS
There were only five of us left in the room. I was breathing hard, covered in dirt and sweat, my fingernails bloody from digging.
But we’d done it.
“Go,” George whispered to me as soon as we were sure I’d broken through. “We’ll stall ‘em as long as we can, but you need to get out of here. Try and find a way out. Get to Danny.”
I nodded. The fact that I knew he was right didn’t make it any easier to leave him. He looked pale and weak—nothing like the man I’d known; the man who’d saved me all those years ago. Whatever had happened with him and Barnel and Billy Thomas when they were still kids hardly mattered to me now. I hugged him quickly.
“I’m coming back for you,” I said. “This isn’t the way this ends.”
“Just go, son,” he said. “One way or another, I reckon I’ll see you on the other side.” He held onto me fiercely, his hand at the back of my neck, mouth at my ear. “I’m proud of you, boy,” he whispered. “You’re a good man. This ain’t the way your story ends.”
He released me. I wiped tears away with a muddy hand, and dove down the rabbit hole.
I emerged to find myself in almost total darkness—no ticking clock, no bare red bulb. A thin strip of light filtered in from beneath a door about ten feet from me. My pulse quickened. I stood, tread carefully across a packed dirt floor, and tried the knob.
It stuck for a minute, then gave way.
The door creaked as it opened, the sound deafening. I waited a second, then another, and pushed it open a little more.
The corridor—dirt floor, stone wall, wood beams overhead—was empty. I searched for a sign of a camera somewhere that might be capturing my movement, but I found nothing.
My hand was on the door, ready to free George and the others, when I heard footsteps on the stairs. Jenny’s voice echoed down to me.
“We need to get them up there—then the bus is waiting. Everything’s on schedule.”
“You don’t think it’s a risk, us leaving our post before the clock’s up?” The Giant asked.
“The alternative is going up in flames with Barnel’s nuts,” Jenny said. “You might be up for that. I’m not. We’ve done our jobs.”
I searched desperately for a place to hide as the footsteps got closer. The only doors in the narrow space belonged to the rooms I’d just come from, and as far as I could tell, the only exit was the stairwell Jenny and The Giant were using.
I flattened myself back against the wall just behind the stairwell door. It opened, the knob narrowly missing me as Jenny stepped into the corridor. I waited for her to discover me, pulse pounding.
Just as she was getting ready to shut the door behind her, subsequently finding and probably killing me, I heard George shout from inside our prison. Someone else followed, their voices raised until it sounded like they were about to kill one another in there. Jenny swore, and she and her comrade hurried over to intervene. Or watch the fight. The motive hardly mattered, as long as the end result was the same: they left the door open and the stairwell empty.
I raced up the stairs and opened the door into a bright white corridor with an exit sign on one end. I stayed low, scanning corners and doorways for guards.
There was no one.
My gaze lingered on the exit for only a second: if I left now, there was no way in hell I was getting back in to try and save anyone else. The best thing to do was figure out where I stood and locate Danny and the others. Then, when I made an escape, I could do so with everyone.
I found the stairwell leading up to the next level and took the steps at a run, just as I heard Jenny’s footsteps pounding toward me on the stairs below.
The hunt was on.
00:10:02
SOLOMON
The chopper ride to Smithfield only took half an hour. Unfortunately, we only had half an hour. Juarez called ahead and sent local cops and every other resource available to him out to the site, but so far we’d gotten no word back. I sat buckled in the back beside Rick, both of us on the edge of our seats.
“I didn’t know she’d tell anybody about the place,” Rick said, shouting over the noise of the engine and the whirring rotors. He looked miserable. “Jessie, I mean. I was just tryin’ to impress her. Danny’s good with girls—not me.” He stopped, swallowing hard. “You think Jessie only went out with me ‘cause of that project I did?”
I didn’t say anything. That silence was all the confirmation he needed, though. He looked down, eyes filled with tears, and didn’t speak again for the rest of the interminable flight.
Ten minutes from our destination, Juarez got a call. When he hung up and looked back at me, I knew my hunch had been right… and we still might be too late.
“They sent a couple of local cops out,” Juarez said. “When they didn’t report back, someone went to check on them. Both shot dead. It looks like Barnel has fortified himself inside Kildeer Hall. You know where that is?” he asked Rick.
Rick nodded.
“He’s broadcasting a live feed from the college’s closed circuit TV station,” Juarez continued.
“Can you tap into it?” I asked immediately. Juarez shook his head.
“They’re watching down there,” he said. “Barnel has armed guards at all the exits. No one’s getting in or out of the place. His entire congregation is in that auditorium.”
“What about the others?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I even wanted the answer. “Are they there, too? Danny? Casey?” I swallowed, trying not to sound like my heart was tied up in the name. “Diggs?”
Jack hedged. “We spotted Danny and Casey in the audience, along with more than a dozen others they’d taken.”
“But not Diggs,” I said.
He shook his head. “They could be keeping him somewhere else,” he said. I nodded.
“Do you have a plan for getting in?” I asked.
He looked at Blaze. She looked at me. “We’re still working that out. If the place is set to blow at midnight, though…”
I looked at the clock.
We had six minutes.
00:05:59
DANNY
Danny scooted back in his seat to talk to Casey. The line of Barnel’s worshippers was halfway through, everybody walking away with a cracker and their shot of grape juice—which was supposed to be wine for the blood of Christ, Danny knew. Instead, Danny’d bet his favorite guitar that it was poison. Everybody went back to their sets, still holding their communion cups.
He kept waiting for somebody to get him and Casey up and force them in line, but so far it hadn’t happened
. Maybe everybody else was supposed to get poisoned, but the reverend was gonna let the sinners die in the flames. Barnel kept talking at the camera, all about how there was a conspiracy of men going against God, and they were out to strip everybody of their freedoms. Take their kids. People were getting more and more worked up, but it was nothing compared with the reverend. Sweat poured off him. He’d taken off his jacket, and his shirt was soaked through.
“You think it’s safe to break out yet?” Casey whispered to Danny.
He looked around. The second and third wave of sinners had been rounded up, taking up a good section of the right side of the auditorium. Everybody’s hands were still tied, and they all looked sore and beat up. Diggs had already given them their instructions:
Wherever they take you, your best shot at escape is during the confusion of whatever they have planned at midnight. Don’t drink anything they give you—spit it out if you have to. And just before midnight, get out of the zip ties the way we showed you. There are too many guys with guns for you to try and fight. Just wait. Stay low. Seek cover just before twelve o’clock.
They had four minutes to go.
Danny shook his head. “One more minute,” he whispered back.
He gave the signal to the others to hold off, everybody staying calmer than he ever would have expected of such a bunch of deadbeats and dirtbags.
That was thanks to Diggs, he realized.
You keep cool and stay strong, Danny imagined his daddy saying to him. You do that, and nobody can beat you down. You can do this, son.
Danny swallowed hard. He stayed strong.
00:03:29
DIGGS
I spotted the first explosives at about the same time I spotted the first guards, posted outside the double doors of an auditorium. I ducked into an unlocked room, my heart hammering, and crouched low while I worked on an alternate plan.
