by Jack Kilborn
She wadded up the dirty tissue and tossed it into the nearest trash can.
“Merv Johnson,” the commissioner said into the PA system. Merv stood up and waddled over to Jessie Lee. He winked as he passed her.
Jessie Lee came after Merv on the lottery commissioner’s list. She frowned. As ridiculous as her theory was, the thought of going by herself into that locker room suddenly seemed like a really bad idea. She hurried after Merv, reaching out and grabbing his arm.
“Merv—”
“Can’t talk now, Jessie Lee. I’m going to grab my check, then hop on the Internet and search for Vettes.”
“What if,” she felt stupid saying it, but she couldn’t get it out of her head, “what if there is no lottery?”
Merv stopped walking. His fat face scrunched up, making him look like a bulldog.
“What do you mean?”
“Did anyone show any credentials? And it’s past one a.m., isn’t that a strange time to be passing out checks? And why is the lottery commissioner guy wearing a black army outfit? And where’s the media? Winning Powerball is a big story.”
“Well, why are we all here, then?”
Jessie Lee chewed her lower lip. This all felt foolish, which meant that it probably was foolish. Still …
“I want to go in with you,” she told her boss.
Merv shook his head. “The mayor said one at a time.”
“Take a good look at the mayor, Merv. He looks positively freaked out.”
They both glanced at Mayor Durlock, who wore an expression that could easily be interpreted as fear.
Merv shrugged. “I’ll ask the commissioner. But if he says no, don’t push it. I don’t want to get on his bad side.”
Or he’ll eat your toes, Jessie Lee thought. But she agreed, and they approached the boys’ locker room together. The lottery commissioner met them at the entrance.
“Only one at a time.” He stared at Jessie Lee when he said it.
She wound her arm around Merv’s. “We want to go in together.”
The commissioner smiled without warmth.
“Your turn will come.”
“You know who you look like?” Jessie Lee blurted it out before her internal censor could stop her. “That serial killer. Marshal Otis Taylor.”
Merv’s expression became pained. “Jessie Lee!”
The commissioner narrowed his eyes and Jessie Lee suddenly felt cold. She realized that her far-fetched fantasy was right. This was Taylor, and if she went in that locker room she was going to die.
“I … uh … changed my mind.” Jessie took a step backward. “I don’t want the money.”
Taylor grabbed Jessie Lee’s arm, his fingers digging in.
“We’ll make an exception this time. You can go in together.”
“I don’t want to.” Jessie Lee tried to pull away, but he gripped her too tightly.
“Nonsense,” Taylor said. “Let’s go.”
“No!”
Her shout brought silence to the gymnasium. It stretched on for a few seconds, until someone in the bleachers yelled, “I’ll take her share!” which prompted everyone to laugh.
Jessie Lee continued to tug against Taylor’s grasp, and Merv put his hand on the man’s shoulder and said, “Maybe you should let go.”
Taylor glared at Merv, then at the crowd, and finally at Jessie Lee. His eyes were black, expressionless. Like a shark. He opened his hand and she stumbled backward, landing on her ass.
“I’ll see you later,” he said.
Merv didn’t appear scared in the least, but he did ask Jessie Lee, “Are you okay?”
“Don’t go in there, Merv.”
“You’re acting silly. And you’re causing a scene.” He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “Are you on something?”
Jessie Lee felt her face get hot. She was trying to save Merv’s life, and he was treating her as if she was stoned, or crazy.
“Merv, you’ll die if you go in there.”
Merv shook his head, like she was a disappointment, and then Taylor escorted him into the locker room. Jessie Lee stood up, noticing that everyone in the room had their eyes glued to her. Several were snickering. Morons. Didn’t they see how crazy all of this was? Were they so blinded by greed? They were all going to die, and they just sat around waiting for it, like sheep.
Maybe if she had proof of what was really happening, she could convince the crowd what was going on. At the very least, she could convince herself she wasn’t crazy. Jessie Lee held her chin up and marched into the girls’ locker room, located next to the boys’.
Back when she attended school here the peephole rumors were legendary. Supposedly there was a loose brick in the boys’ shower, and when it was removed you could see into the girls’. Jessie Lee, and every other girl in school, used that excuse as the reason they never took showers, rather than admit to body-image issues and the general all-around embarrassment of public nudity.
Jessie Lee remembered looking for the loose brick on more than one occasion. Not because she feared boys peeping at her, but because she wanted to peep at them. At thirteen, she’d never seen a boy’s dick—back then she called them wieners—so she and her best friend Mandy Sprinkle went into the girls’ locker room during a basketball game and climbed up onto the lockers and into the ceiling panels. They crawled over to the boys’ locker room, through pink insulation and mouse droppings, and waited above the showers for the game to end. Then they took turns peering through a small crack, giggling so badly that they thought for sure they’d be caught and expelled.
They didn’t get caught. And they saw a variety of wieners. But ultimately the whole episode left Jessie Lee unimpressed. She remained that way for two more years until she made out with her first boyfriend and saw his dick, which looked much more impressive up close and erect.
The memory returned to her as she climbed the last locker and pushed the ceiling tile up and to the side. Her breathing became quick, and her heart rate increased, just as it had the last time she’d done this years before. Only this time she was alone. And this time she wasn’t giggling.
She grabbed on to a board—Jessie Lee couldn’t remember if they were called rafters or joists—and peered through the opening. Though petite, she weighed more than she did in junior high, and the space above the ceiling tiles felt even more cramped. The pink insulation had been replaced with yellow stuff, and she tugged her shirt up over her nose so she wouldn’t breathe in any fiberglass particles.
The ceiling tiles were made of that brittle fire-retardant material and hung below the joists on wires. She reached above the tiles, to the boards, and pulled herself up. The joists were about eighteen inches apart, and she kept her bare knees on one and her hands on another and inchwormed toward the boys’ locker room.
It became very dark, and very hot. Sweat dripped down her forehead and stung her eyes. Dust clung to her, making her skin itch. Heat and dust seemed to clog her nostrils, and after only a few breaths her mouth went dry.
Jessie Lee couldn’t remember how far she had to go and couldn’t see anything ahead of her. She began to count boards. Six should get her out of the girls’ area, and four more would probably take her above the boys’ room, though she didn’t know where.
The boards were easy to climb across but not comfortable at all. No more than an inch or two thick, they put creases into her knees and palms and made it impossible for her to stretch out and rest.
After crossing four boards her shoulder muscles began to cramp up. She paused, trying to relax her neck, rolling it around in the hot, claustrophobic air. Then she arched her back and reached for the next board.
Her hand found something else. Something furry and bony.
A dead mouse in a trap.
Jessie Lee screamed. She couldn’t help herself. Mice freaked her out. She pulled her hand away so fast that her elbow banged into some overhanging support beam. This brought fresh tears to her eyes and a tingling sensation that felt like she’d licke
d her fingers and stuck them in an electrical outlet.
She froze, squeezing her eyes shut, holding her breath, waiting to see if her outburst had been heard.
Ten seconds passed.
Twenty.
She was met with only silence.
The tingling passed, and Jessie Lee brought the mouse hand back and wiped it on her jeans. She could smell the rot on her fingers—or perhaps she only imagined it—and her tongue curled in her mouth and she gagged. She maneuvered two feet sideways so she’d avoid the mouse trap and then continued forward.
After three more boards she heard something. A man’s voice, faint, coming from below. She thought it said, “Were waring.”
Jessie Lee eased her body down, resting her chest on a joist. It hurt her boobs and made it hard to breathe, but the board took her weight and she lowered her hands to pull back a ceiling tile below her. She lifted it a centimeter, pushed it to the side, and stared. Her view revealed nothing but tile floor and empty lockers.
“I don’t know.”
Merv’s voice, and it sounded like he was crying.
Jessie Lee finessed the tile back into place, did a push-up to get onto all fours, and crawled two more boards forward.
Beneath her, Merv screamed.
The sweat made Jessie Lee’s long blond hair cling to her face in spaghetti strands, and she was having a hard time keeping her arms from shaking. Partly from exertion. Mostly from fear. Again she dropped down to chest level and peered through a crack.
This time she saw Merv, sitting in a chair. His chest was covered with blood, and blood drenched the floor around his feet. Behind him, she saw a pair of legs walk past. Legs dressed in black. The face was out of view, but she guessed it was Taylor.
“Where’s Warren Streng?” Taylor said.
Merv whimpered. The strong, self-assured man she’d seen only a few minutes ago was gone. Merv had become a frightened shell of himself.
Taylor touched Merv with a small black object, which made a cracking sound. A stun gun. Merv convulsed, moaning.
Jessie Lee knew she had to reach her cell phone and take a picture of this. She could show it to the town, and they’d do something. But she trembled so badly she feared losing her balance and falling through the tiles. She couldn’t take her hands off the joist.
Below her, Taylor pulled Merv’s head back, exposing his throat. His other hand held a knife.
The motion Taylor used wasn’t slitting. It was gouging. Like digging into a peach to remove the pit.
Jessie Lee sucked in both of her lips and bit down to keep from crying out. She watched Merv shake and twitch and bleed an ungodly amount, eventually falling out of his chair and flopping around on the floor like a fish. His palms slapped at the bloody tile, sending droplets skyward, misting Jessie Lee’s face. Slowly, eventually, his horrible gyrations slowed down, and he rolled onto his back, the hole in his throat making gagging sounds. He stared upward, locking eyes with Jessie Lee. Then his mouth opened as if to say something.
No words came, though a low gurgle came through the hole in his throat. Then Taylor grabbed his ankles and began to tug him away. Jessie Lee needed to take the picture before he went out of view. Shaking, she reached a hand behind her, seeking the purse strapped to her shoulder, and her hand brushed something sitting on the joist.
Jessie Lee heard a loud SNAP accompanied by blinding pain—
She had stuck her fingers in a mouse trap.
Without being able to stop it, she screamed. And as the sound left her lips, Jessie Lee Sloan realized she was as good as dead.
Fran watched, impotent, as Josh fired twice more at the door between her and her son. The bullets pinged off without even making a dent in the steel.
The smoke had gotten so thick that every breath provoked coughing. The door was too hot to touch, and the temperature around them had risen to the point where the air shimmered at their feet. It seemed as if every bit of moisture in Fran’s body had been baked away. But she still picked up the sledgehammer, still pushed Josh aside, and still swung at the doorknob with everything she had.
The door didn’t open.
Josh said something to her, but she couldn’t understand him above the roar of the flames surrounding them. He pried the sledge out of her grasp, eased her back, and swung it. But not at the door; Josh aimed for the door frame, next to the deadbolt.
The wood gave, and the head of the sledgehammer made a chip in the wall. Josh repeated the process. Fran had to get down on her knees to breathe—the last of the good air formed a pocket below waist level. Josh continued to stand, continued to hammer. Fran kept her eyes glued to the doorjamb, saw it splinter away, and then the dull thud of striking wood was replaced by the clang of metal on metal.
Josh fell to his knees next to her, coughing.
“… forced,” he croaked.
“What?”
“The doorway … it’s reinforced. We can’t get in this way.”
Movement, behind them. Erwin knelt next to Fran, put a hand on her shoulder.
“We have to get out of here! The structure is giving out!”
“I’m not leaving my son!”
Erwin and Josh exchanged a glance. Then they each grabbed an arm and dragged Fran out of the house.
Fran kicked. She screamed. She locked her mouth onto Josh’s arm and bit him. But they manhandled her out the front door and onto the lawn, through puddles of raw sewage. Fran felt like she was made of glass and about to shatter.
“DUNCAN!” She continued to fight, but they wouldn’t let her go. “Please! I have to get—”
And that’s when the house collapsed.
Sweat soaked Duncan’s hair and ran down his face. The oversized T-shirt stuck to him like he’d worn it swimming. He’d never been this hot before. Hot and thirsty. His tongue felt really big.
“I want something to drink,” he said to Mrs. Teller.
“I’m sorry, Duncan. I don’t think there’s anything left.”
Two of the four walls of shelves were burning, along with the supplies on the shelves. The brightness of the flames could be seen through the thick smoke, which had almost filled the room.
Duncan coughed, patted Woof on the head.
“It’s going to be okay, boy,” he said.
But Duncan knew it wasn’t going to be okay. The stairs were on fire. Mom and Josh probably couldn’t get to them. He still hoped that they would. Maybe Josh had a fireproof suit. Maybe he had a fire truck with a big hose that would put out the flames really fast.
Duncan wiped his face. The heat was so bad that it was starting to hurt his skin, like sunburn. His head felt funny, too, like he just woke up and was still groggy.
“We’re not going to burn,” Mrs. Teller said.
Duncan looked at her, squinting through his red-rimmed eyes. Did she know how to escape? He recalled Bernie’s lecture, about how bad it hurt to get burned. He didn’t want to burn to death. He didn’t want to get burned at all, not even a little bit.
“Terrible way to go,” Mrs. Teller said. “Terrible way. Burning in a fire.”
She had her eyes closed. Duncan didn’t think she was talking to him.
“It will be okay,” she said. “It will be okay. I can do this. We won’t burn. The Lord is my shepherd and He’ll give me the strength.”
Duncan coughed, then asked, “Strength for what?”
Mrs. Teller stared at Duncan. She was sobbing, so bad it shook her whole body.
“I won’t let you suffer like that, child. I won’t let you burn to death. I promise.”
Duncan didn’t like seeing Mrs. Teller like this. She was an adult. She was supposed to be strong. It made him even more scared.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“When the time comes, I’ll be strong,” Mrs. Teller answered. “I’ll take care of us both.”
Then she racked her shotgun.
Dr. Stubin combed through the wreckage site, looking for something that might help him. Th
e three soldiers who’d been babysitting him were mostly intact, though the explosion had thrown one of them almost fifty yards from where Stubin had last seen him. Another, the sergeant, had actually lived long enough to ask Stubin for help. He died less than a minute later.
The Green Berets had fared even worse. Stubin had found bits and pieces of them, but nothing larger than an arm.
The Huey they’d arrived in no longer resembled anything other than junk. It, and the previous wreck, and been reduced to smoking scrap iron and burning bits of rubber and plastic. The whole area looked like a scene from Dante’s Inferno.
Stubin knew General Tope wasn’t foolish. He’d counter the loss of his team with firepower, and a lot of it. It was only a question of waiting and the cavalry would come.
The problem was Mathison. After the explosion, he’d fled into the forest. Stubin had called to him, and whistled for him, but the monkey was apparently too spooked to come back. And Mathison was important to Stubin. Very important.
Stubin wasn’t sure how much monkey instinct Mathison retained after all of the brain tinkering he’d undergone, but the doctor doubted his capuchin friend could survive in the wild on his own. He’d seek out humans. And it might be the wrong group of humans. Stubin had to find him. But first, he had to salvage what he could from the wreck.
Stubin walked to the epicenter of the disaster, then began a 360-degree spiral outward, watching where he stepped, eyes peeled for anything useful. A radio would be nice.
After five minutes, he hadn’t found anything except some broken night-vision goggles and a boot containing three-quarters of a foot. Hadn’t they been carrying supplies? Food? Guns? Didn’t they know the danger they were facing?
Apparently not, any more than they expected to be blown up.
Moving to the perimeter of the crash site, Stubin poked at a smoking bush with a stick and pried away something that looked like a shotgun, but with a much bigger barrel. It appeared unscathed. He touched it quickly, ascertained it was cool enough to hold, and picked it up. Stubin took a few seconds to locate the lock on the breech, and the barrel swiveled down, revealing a grenade—probably nonlethal if they were following instructions. He pulled the large canister out, judged it in working condition, and let it drop back in.
