by Shows, Greg
The container holding it was a thick hardened glass vial that wouldn’t break if you hurled it against a brick wall. That was because the chemical inside was so dangerous that one drop on your latex glove would go right through and kill you.
When her class had been learning about the chemical, Dr. Willis told Sadie’s class the story of Dr. Wetterhahn.
About how she had worked with dangerous chemicals for years but one day spilled a drop of dimethylmercury from a pipette onto her glove.
She didn’t get the glove off quickly enough.
“The mercury drove her insane,” Willis said. “After it destroyed her kidneys and lungs and turned her hands and feet and face pink and she lost so much weight she slipped into a coma.”
Sadie almost left the little bottle where it was. But then the smell of vinegar intruded into the room, overpowering the molten metal stench, and she considered the possibility that in this new world—a world that sent former police officers charging at you with murder, rape, and cannibalism on their minds—maybe she would need a deadly poison.
She would certainly need the silver foil she found, and the box of fifty dust masks, and the latex gloves. Without hesitation Sadie took the box of a hundred she found on the bottom shelf of the cabinet.
Sadie smiled, remembering how latex gloves had a tendency to disappear from laboratories when they were full of undergraduate students. Dr. Willis used to scream himself hoarse about it.
One day, after seeing yet another empty box, he yelled, “You guys go through these gloves like condoms!”
Sadie drank from her canteen before tucking it inside her backpack. She zipped the pack closed and slid it across the table so she could leave. She looked back and played the flashlight’s beam over the shelves one more time.
When she was satisfied she’d taken everything she needed, she closed the door and hung the periodic table—just in case someone else came looking for chemicals and knew the value of what she’d left behind.
Sadie returned the way she’d come in, passing by the meth cooking set-up, retracing her path back to the stairwell, and descending to the first floor. She turned off her flashlight and stood outside the stairwell door until her eyes had adjusted to the dim light.
Less than ten seconds later she was to the building exit, ready to push out into the storm and run for the relative safety of the creekbed.
Then she heard the scream.
“No!” a woman’s voice shrieked. “No! No! No!”
There was laughter and the sound of a fist smacking into flesh just as a fork of lightning came down and struck the top of the library building a hundred feet away. The laughter was drowned out by a crack of thunder.
“Mind your own business, Sadie,” she told herself.
She wrapped her fingers around the latch bar and got ready to go, almost convinced that she could mind her own business if she tried hard enough.
But then she heard a man’s “Haw haw haw!” come booming down the hallway toward her.
Then she couldn’t mind her own business.
Something about the sick glee in the man’s voice made her turn and creep down to the hallway where she’d found the slaughter room.
“Please!” a woman wailed.
“Oh, you gonna please Big Jim all right,” the man said, “In more ways than one.”
He began to whistle.
So this is Big Jim.
Sadie remembered what the cop had said about roasting her heart, and though she was shaking and nauseous and just as terrified as she’d been an hour earlier, she made herself pull the sawed-off shotgun out of the holster and step around the corner.
She crept to the open door and stood in the shadows next to the yellow lightspill. She listened to the low hiss of the propane torches, the boiling water, and the woman whimpering. The stench of vinegar became so strong her eyes began to water again.
When she got to the door she glanced inside. The dead woman was still on the table, her head lolling and her eyes still open and staring. Only now both arms and legs were completely gone and her belly had been sliced open.
The giant had begun removing organs from her.
Sadie couldn’t see Big Jim, so she leaned over farther. The room was much brighter now, and Sadie saw that the big man had lit a dozen or more candles and waxed them onto the Ball jar table. Still she saw no one. She cradled the shotgun with both hands, slipping her fingers into the trigger guard and resting them against the triggers.
“Please don’t kill me!” the woman whimpered again.
“Give me a reason not to,” the man said.
“What do you want?”
Sadie slid her foot even with the door frame and when she leaned sideways to look she finally saw him. The big wooden cabinet was open now, and Sadie realized that the girl had been inside it the whole time.
The girl stood naked, with her hands tied to a metal eyebolt above her head. Her feet had been chained to manacles attached to the bottom of the cabinet. A loop of cloth—obviously a gag—had been pulled down around her neck so that the man could enjoy her screams. Her dirty blond hair, tangled and soaked with sweat, lay flat against her head. Tears and snot streamed down her face.
Sadie felt sick as she watched the man tease and taunt the girl. His back was to Sadie and he held a long butcher knife in his right hand. He waved the blade back and forth in front of the girl’s face, and slapped the flat of the blade against her skin.
The girl closed her eyes and began to pray wordlessly.
Sadie stepped away from the door, pressing her back against the wall and trying to breathe calmly.
She didn’t know what to do. The man was too close to the girl for Sadie to step out and fire. The blast might go through and kill her. She could try to run in and get a better angle, but he might turn and fire with a hidden gun.
She considered retreating and tossing something down the hall to try to draw him out, but he might send the girl out in front of him.
She was spared the trouble of coming up with a way of getting a clean shot at the man when she heard him say: “You want to pray, little girl, you gonna have to get on your knees.”
Sadie heard the sound of rope being cut, then the sound of a rattling chain.
She smiled grimly.
Her grandfather had warned her that all guys were the same.
“Every last one of ‘em think with their peckers,” he’d said more than once, but Sadie was always surprised when the guys she met or knew or heard about proved her grandfather so profoundly correct.
As quietly as she could, Sadie clicked back each of the shotgun’s hammers. Then she moved to the edge of the doorway.
The girl was on her knees in front of the big man. Sadie couldn’t see much of her face, but the important thing was that she was out of the line of fire.
“You know what to do,” the man said, and Sadie heard the sound of a zipper and saw the big man’s hand jerk downward. “Sluts like you always know what to do.”
As the girl leaned forward, Sadie stepped out and pointed the gun at an imaginary spot between the giant’s shoulder blades. When neither the big man nor the girl noticed Sadie, she slid closer.
As she crossed the floor, a sick nausea filled her belly, and a chill ran up her back to stand her hair up. She wanted the big guy dead for what he was making the girl do—and for what he was doing to the body of the girl on the table. But she remembered how awful she felt when she’d shot the cop.
Then she saw the tanning frames. Six or seven of them, leaning against the back of the cabinet next to where the girl had been tied.
The frame in front held the skin of a dead human—a child from its size. Sadie swallowed several times, and asked herself why she hadn’t just left the building. She wondered even now if it wasn’t too late to back out of the room before either the big man or the girl realized she was there.
But then the big man turned his head and said: “You gonna have to wait your turn, Bryce.”
“I’ll pass this time,” she said.
“What the—?” the man said as he shoved the blonde girl away and spun toward Sadie.
Instantly, the hand with the butcher knife went up over his head. His other hand fumbled at his crotch as he tried to tuck himself back inside his fly.
“Don’t move,” Sadie said, and she thrust the shotgun forward.
The big man froze. Then he looked at the shotgun.
His eyes narrowed and he grinned when he saw the way her hands were shaking.
“Calm down, girl,” he said. “There’s enough of Big Jim to go around.”
“You don’t look so big,” she said, and gave a glance at his crotch. “Pretty small, actually.”
“Fuck you,” he said, and stepped forward—much faster than a guy his size should’ve been able to do. He covered most of the distance between them with one big step. His giant boot slammed down on the floor as he swung his knife toward Sadie’s throat.
The smile on his face turned to a snarl.
“Haaaaaaaa!” he screamed suddenly.
Without thinking Sadie pulled both triggers.
The shotgun boomed and her hands were jammed backward by the force. The gun grip smacked into her belly, doubling her over and knocking her back.
She gasped, and her stunned solar plexus refused to fill her lungs with air.
The blonde girl screamed as the paraffin load hit the big man in his chest at the sternum. The waxy slug tore through his coveralls and blasted into his breast bone and chest cavity, holding together long enough to penetrate his chest.
When the wax and BBs and wadding came tearing out of his back they took part of his spine and most of his internal organs with them. A mist of aerosolized blood was left hanging in the air and ropes of bloody intestine splattered over the floor.
Sadie straightened as the big man staggered backward, his feet tangling in his own guts. She was ready to run, but there was no need. The man was already dead on his feet.
Great red gouts of blood and gelatinized lungs and kidneys and stomach had splattered over the girl and the tanning frames. The mixture now coated most of the cabinet’s interior.
Less than three seconds after she fired the gun Big Jim crashed down, his head smacking into the bottom of the wooden tanning frames and toppling them over and onto his body. His legs bounced up and came down on top of the terrified girl, who had curled into a ball on the floor and begun to wail.
Sadie, still hurting from the shotgun grip to the gut, wheezed and coughed as she staggered over to the girl. She wouldn’t allow herself to think about what she’d just done. She couldn’t afford to kneel down and cry over it.
“Come on,” Sadie wheezed. “Get up.
“Don’t hurt me,” the girl wailed. Her eyes were closed and she’d tucked her face into both her elbows—as if not seeing some horror could protect her from it.
“Get up,” Sadie said again. “We’ve got to go.”
The girl opened her eyes. Her lips quavered when she spoke.
“You’re not...going to…?”
“Anyone else around?” Sadie asked, pointedly not looking at Big Jim’s legs, both of which were covered in blood and gore. “Who’s Bryce?”
After a quick sideways glance, she kicked out at Jim’s massive boot and sent his leg rolling off the girl. When the girl sensed the weight had lessened she squirmed out from beneath the big man.
“Who’s Bryce?” Sadie asked again, trying to remain calm and patient. She’d seen behavior before, from crime victims in shock. The girl had probably been on the verge of dissociating during the trauma and torture.
The girl pushed herself up to her hands and knees, then stood and stared at the dead giant.
“Where’re your clothes?”
“They…” she looked around, noticing the dead woman on the table for the first time. “Oh my God!”
She closed her eyes and shoved her hands over them, the way the blind cop had covered his burned eyes.
“You know her?”
“That’s Jenna,” the girl said. “From the Alamo.”
“Where’re your clothes?” Sadie asked again.
She broke open the shotgun. Both shells popped out and clattered to the floor.
Sadie scooped them both up and tucked them into the pocket of her parka. She glanced longingly at the candles and the propane torch beneath the boiling pot of vinegar and human flesh. Wax and some chunks of sodium might make a good shell load, but she abandoned the idea of refilling the shells at that moment.
“They took our clothes,” the girl said, and looked down at her own nakedness. Her breasts and belly were covered in Jim’s blood and gelatinous blobs of his lungs and heart, all of which were dribbling down over her thighs. “They thought we wouldn’t run off if we were naked. But we would’ve. I ain’t afraid of being naked. I’m afraid of being eaten up and havin’ my skin put on one of them things.”
The girl pointed at the stack of frames that had fallen down over Jim’s head and chest.
“Who’s Bryce?”
“Jim’s brother.”
“Where is he?”
“He went with his boys to get water,” the blonde girl said. “They got a big water tank at the gym. That’s where they all stay.”
“Who?”
“The bikers,” she said. “They all got motorcycles. They ride around and grab people so they can fuck ‘em or eat ‘em.”
Sadie winced.
“That’s what happened to Jenna.” she said. “I told her things was different now and she better do whatever she had to do to keep from getting eat up.”
“How many?” Sadie asked. She slipped her pack off her shoulder and dug into it. Now that the adrenaline was ebbing, her fear was back. She dug out the other two shotgun shells and shoved them into the gun’s breech. Then she snapped it closed and pulled her pistol out and tucked it into a pocket inside her parka.
She wished she’d brought the cop’s .357, but then stopped herself from wishing. It was a bad habit she needed to break.
Sludgy gray water under the bridge.
“I don’t know,” the girl said. “Ten. Fifteen.”
“Jeez,” Sadie said as she pulled out her MIT t-shirt and tossed it to the girl. “How long you think before Bryce gets back?”
The girl ignored her.
“It smells like pee,” the blonde girl said and wrinkled her nose as she shoved her arms through the sleeves.
“Sorry,” Sadie said. She dug out a pair of tight blue workout shorts and gave them to the girl. “What’s your name?”
“Callie Draybek.”
“Okay, Callie Draybek,” Sadie said, “How long before Bryce gets back?”
“Any time,” Callie said.
Sadie grabbed a dozen unlit candles off the canning table and dropped them into her pack. Then she pulled a propane torch out from under the pressure cooker and took it to the wooden cabinet.
“Where do they keep the bikes?” Sadie asked as she tossed aside the tanning frames that had fallen over Jim.
“At the gym,” Kim said.
Sadie nodded and lay the torch on the cabinet floor so that its blue flame licked at the back of the cabinet and Jim’s shoulder. The wood turned black almost instantly, though it resisted catching fire. Jim’s hair crackled and his shirt caught on fire immediately.
Sadie went for the potassium nitrate then, and she carried the whole bag to the cabinet and poured it over Jim’s chest and face and hair. Then she spilled it out all over the cabinet floor around the butane torch and emptied the rest of the bag onto the pile of tanning frames and the human hides stretched inside them.
The potassium nitrate wouldn’t burn immediately, but once it melted down a little, the room would go up in a blaze too hot to stop.
“What’re you doing?” Callie asked.
“Giving these morons something to think about,” Sadie said.
“Oh,” Callie said as Sadie shrugged her pack onto her shoulders, picked up all thr
ee fire extinguishers and carried them over to the door blocked by the tub of blood. She tossed the extinguishers behind the door, into the supply room. Then she took Callie’s hand and they ran out into the hallway.
Chapter 8
Sadie wasn’t sure she ought to trust Callie.
Not the way the world appeared to work now.
Trusting strangers you just met was gambling with your life.
Killing strangers, on the other hand...now that appeared to be the most rational course of action anyone could follow. Humans had turned into vicious monsters, it seemed, and existence had become nothing more than a Prisoners Dilemma for psychopaths.
Still Callie didn't seem capable guile or deep deception. She appeared to be who she said she was, which was a girl trying to get home.
The same as me.
“Where’s home?” Sadie asked. They were sitting inside a dust-entombed pickup in an otherwise empty parking lot.
The windshield and top of the pickup were coated with a thick layer of dust, but that didn’t stop the falling gray balls of mud from splattering down on them with heavy thumps—like the trampling of a zombie herd across a hardwood floor.
The lot where the truck sat was next to the back side of a recreational center with a gymnasium, a weight room, a game room, and a cafe. The kitchen in the cafe was the source of the gray smoke.
“They built a barbecue pit in the kitchen,” Callie had said and shivered.
Behind Sadie and Callie was another building, about a hundred feet away. It appeared to be a dormitory.
Mostly it was dark out, with random, long and short flashes of lightning and a nearly constant rumbling thunder. Callie was watching the rear entrance to the recreational center. Sadie had turned to watch the Allen Science Building through the passenger window. She’d wiped it clean before climbing inside, but the gray mud balls had recoated it.
Sadie couldn’t help but think the guys running this operation were tactical idiots, considering that they’d left the truck where it was. It was like telling your enemy: “Here’s a nice camouflaged forward observation post right next to our headquarters. Enjoy.”
