by Jen Blood
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. She shouted my name, and she didn’t sound happy.
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. 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.
“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 get
ting 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.
The first thing I noticed about the office was the smell. It wasn’t a good one: human waste and the underlying, sweetly metallic scent of fresh blood. The office was dark, but light filtered in from a window in the upper half of the door. A wash of pale yellow illuminated a tidy, carpeted office with three desks and a coffeemaker. Two bodies lay slumped together in the corner.
In the corridor, I heard footsteps approaching. Doors opened and then slammed shut again. Jenny shouted to me with growing desperation, drawing closer by the second.
I ignored the bodies and sought a hiding place, opting for the desk in the furthest corner of the room. I bolted for it, nearly there when my foot caught on something warm and solid and I sprawled forward.
I got back up on my hands and knees, winded. Beside me, lying on his belly with his eyes vacant and the color gone from his face, was Dr. Munjoy. His arm was up, as though he’d died mid-crawl. His fist was clenched. Jenny’s footsteps were just outside the door. I crawled past the professor and dove under the desk just as Jenny opened the door.
She flipped the light on. I sat with my knees up to my chin in the narrow space under the desk, my heart beating a rhythm I could feel to my toes. From the small space below the desk, I could see her shoes—boots, actually. Black leather with a low heel, laced to her knee. Perfect for the psychotic dominatrix in your life. She stayed at the door for a minute, surveying the scene.
“Jenny! If we’re leaving, we gotta go now!” I heard the Giant say.
“I’ll be right there,” she said. The panic was gone from her voice. I thought she was leaving.
She wasn’t.
Instead, I watched as she walked across the floor. She stepped over Munjoy’s body without hesitation, walked around the desk, and pushed the chair out of the way. She leveled her gun directly at my head, her eyes bright.
“Hello there,” she said softly. There was a grin on her full lips. “I thought I might find you here.”
“Jenny!” the Giant called from the doorway. Jenny looked at me one more time, lowered her gun, and winked.
“See ya in hell, slick.”
She turned on her heel and walked back to the door. Turned out the lights.
And locked the door behind her when she left.
00:02:16 - Danny
“Now?” Casey asked.
Danny nodded. He kicked the seat in front of him gently and Biggie turned around. They exchanged a quick smile. “Go,” Danny mouthed to him.
“Good luck,” Biggie mouthed back.
That set off a chain reaction as everybody got the cue.
Zip ties weren’t hard to get out of, it turned out—especially if you weren’t alone. Biggie showed everybody how you just used your thumbnail to shim the locking piece and slide your partner free. Then you returned the favor, and presto, no more plastic tearing into your wrists.
Danny maneuvered himself back-to Casey and they sat up enough to touch hands over the armrests. He went first, every passing second speeding by like a freight train.
Reverend Barnel had everybody in their seats praying. All the kids were crying by now, and it seemed to Danny that the reverend’s plan wasn’t as popular as he might have thought. Because as far as Danny could see, about half the congregation was talking about how maybe it wasn’t their time after all, and couldn’t they just get those fellas with the guns to step off and go about this another way?
“This is the path the Almighty has set for us,” the reverend hollered.
“This is the path you set for us, you damn fool,” Sally Woodruff hollered back. A few of the people in the congregation hollered back at her, but it didn’t look like everybody thought Sally was so off the mark.
Danny couldn’t get a grip on the plastic. In front of him, Biggie freed one of the rednecks, who turned in his seat to help him.
“Now, I want you all to take these cups representing the blood of the lamb,” Reverend Barnel said.
Only about a quarter of the people did. Everybody in the place was crying and praying. Danny watched a couple of little boys hanging onto their mama, their faces red from wailing. The reverend stayed strong, ignoring everybody’s complaints.
Danny’s finger finally found the tiny hole locking the zip tie in place. He slid his thumbnail in. They had one minute.
“Drink it down, brothers and sisters,” Reverend Barnel hollered. “Drink it down, and know that our pain has ended.”
A man in the front row sobbed. About twenty people toward the front tipped their cups up, draining the blood of the lamb.
Casey’s zip tie came loose. Another dozen people tried to get their kids to drink. A little girl threw hers on the ground and started screaming, her face pink like Ida’s used to get when she was throwing a tantrum.
Casey’s tie slid off her wrist.
She was free.
00:00:20 - Diggs
My hands were slick with sweat and blood and shaking as bad as Biggie’s by the time I got the door unlocked and let myself back out into the hallway.
It was deserted.
The music from WKRO had long since stopped. In its place, I could hear Barnel talking—shouting, actually, in his best fire-and-brimstone tenor. The source was obvious: It came from behind double doors with a plaque beside them reading KILDEER AUDITORIUM in bold letters. I could hear children crying and people wailing through the walls.
I looked at my watch:
Fifteen seconds.
I thought of Solomon. Of all the time I’d wasted that I wasn’t getting back. There were a hundred places I wanted to take her, a thousand things I wanted to say. When she’s pissed, Erin gets this fire in her eye that undoes me in ways I’m almost ashamed to admit to. I would have given anything and everything to see that fire again. I wanted to hear her laugh; watch her sleep...map every curve, every slope, every delicate detail of her body, until night gave way to morning and we slept tangled in one another, oblivious to the world.
And then I wanted to start all over again.
It didn’t matter what I wanted, though: I’d officially gotten my last chance to screw things up.
The end was here.
00:00:04 - Solomon
“No one’s gotten in there at all?” I asked Juarez. He looked grim. We were flying over Smithfield now. Below, I could see ambulances and flashing lights, fire trucks and cop cars. Rick hung onto his seat so hard his knuckles were white.
<
br /> My eyes were dry. It felt like I was living in some kind of nightmare—like there was no way to move, nowhere to go. I watched as the clock struck midnight.
No one said anything.
Thirty seconds passed.
Forty-five.
Juarez held a rosary in his right hand. He looked up. “Maybe they didn’t—”
And the world exploded.
The helicopter canted far to the left from the force of the blast, the pilot losing control for a second. Orange balls of flame burst into the air, debris falling in every direction. A second blast followed maybe five seconds later, rocking us again. Rick closed his eyes. Blaze swore softly, her eyes haunted in the way of those who have seen tragedy before, and know all too well what it means.
I kept my eyes on the ground, watching the chaos below.
“How soon till we land?” I asked, my voice flat.
March 16
12:05 a.m.- Diggs
The heat was the worst part. I remembered interviewing guys in a burn unit in Fallujah years ago, but I never really understood what they were telling me until the flames were raging just above my head and I could feel my shirt melting into my back. I crawled toward the auditorium, screams splitting the air over the roar of the fire.
The door was hot to the touch. I took my shirt off, wrapped it around my hands, and pushed.
Inside was the stuff of nightmares: images that will never leave me. Boy soldiers lay fallen beside their rifles, some of them already burning. All of them dead, as far as I could see. Children screamed. The auditorium was ablaze. I spotted Barnel seated on the floor of the stage, inert, the flames dancing closer. He sat with his back against the lectern, eyes half open.
He was smiling.
I crawled into the fray, searching for a sign of our group, but the smoke was thick and the noise was deafening. The flames were everywhere.
