by Greg Enslen
Bethany wanted to leave, but she saw the exit was crammed full of people. The hellish moaning from beneath the floor continued, growling louder and louder, and all she wanted to do was get out of there. She was worried for David too, and Norma, and Julie, lying there on the ground with two cops pointing their guns at her - she’d only tried to help, to get the people out of here! One of the cops left, running over to help the other cops try and control the crowd shoving around the door, and Bethany stepped quickly up behind the other, swinging the folding chair and knocking the other deputy to the floor. His gun and the one he’d taken from Julie clattered away and Julie grabbed them both up as she stood, one hand to her back.
“You okay?” Bethany asked, pulling her towards the Girl’s locker room.
“Yeah, but my back is killing me. I hit those chairs wrong. Where are we going?”
Bethany jerked her head at the main doors out. “No way we’re getting out that way. But the Girl’s locker room has a door out to the tennis courts.”
The ground rumbled so loudly beneath her feet that it was no longer a question of if the boiler would blow, but when.
Julie followed her through the door into the locker room, which smelled of old towels and sweat and mildew, even on the weekend. There were piles of dirty towels in fabric bags and thrown haphazardly on wooden benches.
“This way.” Bethany yelled, tugging on Julie’s arm, pulling her towards the closed doors that lead outside. Others were following them now, seeing that they seemed to be headed outside to safety, and Julie saw several people chasing them, but none of them were cops. She saw Blake and he was helping people through the doors into the Girls Locker room.
Bethany let go of her and stopped, and Julie slammed into her, her back suddenly flaring with pain - the chair had hurt her more than she’d guessed, and now the pain was like a huge hot spot in the center of her back.
“There’s a chain on the door.”
Julie turned around and saw the door had two of those kind of metal bars that you pushed down on to open, and the heavy metal links of a chain looped around both, joining at a heavy-looking padlock.
They were trapped.
There were no tools anywhere. Norma was still at the boiler controls, trying to turn the knob with her bare hands.
“Nothing,” he shouted, trying to make himself heard over the moaning cry of the boiling water trapped, for the moment, inside this massive tank above them.
Norma shook her head, her hands falling away from the control panel. “It’s no good - I can’t get a grip on it without the knob. And none of the other knobs fit.”
He saw her fingers were bloody from trying to turn the hot, raw metal post.
David nodded. “We gotta go.”
She nodded, cursing Jasper Fines under her breath. He’d beaten her 18 years ago, and he was doing it again now, here. She nodded at David and headed for the stairs.
They were about half way up when the whine started behind them, low at first and slowly increasing in pitch and volume. It was as if the boiler were screaming at them, screaming for them to get out.
Now.
Bethany was looking at her, her eyes wide, the frantic need to escape written across her face. They couldn’t go back now - there were too many people between them and the doors, and as hot as it was back there in the gym, the boiler could go at any moment. No, Julie had to get them out...
“Step back. Quick!”
Julie raised the deputy’s gun she had taken and shot at the padlock, the chain and the door, hoping to strike something. She succeeded. The first bullet punched though the door, but the second one hit the padlock dead on and split it open, the bullet ricocheting off into the showers. Thank God no one had been standing over there. Julie leapt up and tugged the chains away and threw the doors open.
The cold air and lashing rain blasted her, the howling wind rushing over her as she ran out onto the rain-covered tennis court. Bethany followed, pulling her scarf close around her face, and as she and Julie ran around to the front of the school, people streamed out of the Girl’s locker room, covering the tennis courts and racing away towards the parking lot.
Julie saw a lot of people coming out of the front doors of the school and there were many people in the parking lot, but there weren’t nearly enough. The rain pounded around them in huge wet puddles, louder than the screams of the fleeing people.
There were still a lot of people inside, and as she turned to start towards the front doors, a loud, rough groaning sound issued from the gym. It sounded like the walls and the floor and the ceiling of the gym were straining, buckling, striving to contain something that would not be contained. A high-pitched whine accompanied the deafening moan, and as the squeal whined higher and higher, Julie knew what would happen next.
She turned, grabbed Bethany‘s hand, and ran for the parking lot.
Jack sipped his Roy Rogers coffee and waited. It was getting later and later, but he hardly noticed the time or the lackluster taste of the coffee. He had forgotten all about the Cinnamon Raisin biscuits he had bought - his eyes only stared down the hill at the collection of buildings and lights and cars below him.
The van was parked on a slight rise overlooking the town, about a mile north of the high school. He was easily at a safe distance, and now he could just sit back, relax, and watch the show. It was going to be just like the fireworks they used to shoot off in Salem at the Harvest Festival every September. The coffee wasn’t very good, but the entertainment should make up for it. And it was a straight shot to his hotel, and then out of town.
David was out first, bursting out of the janitors locker room and into the main hallway. There people milling around the doors into the gym, and he shouted at them to leave, to get out, shouting that the boiler was going to blow. Some listened, and some looked at him like he’d grown a second head.
Three children cowered in the corner, not listening to David. Their parents were still trapped inside the gym, its doors crammed with people trying to get out, and the only reason they had made it out was because they had left to use the bathroom just before Julie’s impromptu gunshot had sent the town meeting’s attendants into riot. Now, the children cowered in a corner, waiting for their parents to come out. They looked scared and confused, and did not move towards the door when David ran past them, not even seeing them.
Norma saw them and thought about shouting to David, who was only about ten steps ahead of her, running for the doors outside and trying to get the others by the door outside, but then she thought better of it. If he made it out, that would be good - she’d let his father down, and she wasn’t going to let David die too. She stopped and grabbed the smallest kid around the waist, hoisting him up, asking him where his parents were and shouting at the other two kids that they had to get out now. They seemed to be stunned or in shock or something, not sure if they should listen to this stranger but also confused by the noise and the confusion around them, so she scooped up the middle aged one too and grabbed the third’s shirt with the same hand in which she carried the smallest boy, tugging them towards the door.
They made it outside and were just down the steps into the pouring rain when it happened.
David never stopped running. He heard the banshee whine of the boiler beneath the gym as it squealed higher and higher and he knew it was going. The doors seemed so far away as he sprinted toward them, and if Norma had shouted at him to come back, to help her, he probably wouldn’t have heard. The doors were relatively free of people - most of them were still grouped around the gym doors, a tight little knot of people, and he shouted at them as he ran past them, shouting for them to leave, and then he hit the doors at a dead run, bursting through them and out into the rainy night.
Below, the boiling steam filled the last empty spaces inside the massive metal tank. Boiling water strained the metal, stretching it, and finally the metal could hold the fervent water’s energy no longer. The pipes below the massive metal tank blew first, shooting bubbling,
boiling water from the bottom of the tank like rocket engines, and the boiler leapt straight into the air, crashing into the ceiling above it. Connections between the boilers’ pipes and the gas main used to heat the water were severed, adding more explosive energy to the conflagration.
Anyone in the gymnasium saw an amazing sight in those next few seconds before the explosion. The floor buckled up from below, the ferocious visage of the Liberty Fighting Bobcat leaping upward as if it had come to life, the wood and flooring below bursting. The top of the school’s boiler leapt up two or three feet out of the floor, and several people were struck and thrown high into the air. One man was skewered with a jagged piece of the wooden floor, stumbling away and falling.
In the next second, the boiler exploded with the force of a massive bomb.
Julie and Bethany and David and Norma and two hundred other people heard the explosion and felt a huge warm hand slam them to the ground. The two women were almost to the parking lot and David was near the large bare oak that stood in front of the school, and the huge noise that sounded like a combination of lightning and thunder roared behind them. The next few seconds were filled with a deep rumbling sound as the whole world vibrated around them, shaking the ground. The force of the explosion threw Norma and she landed on top of the small child she was carrying, shielding him from the blast with her body.
When the sound died, David rolled over and looked. The gym was gone, blown in a hundred different directions. Large pieces of the roof crashed to the ground around the gym, falling with the rain. One of the metal basketball hoops crashed to the earth not ten feet from him. The bare oak had been slammed over, its naked roots reaching for unfamiliar dark sky.
He didn’t see Bethany, or Norma.
She’d been right behind him, and he knew that some people had made it out behind him - he could see them on the ground between him and what was left of the school, but none of them was Norma. There were some little kids struggling to their feet just outside the doors, but he didn’t see Norma.
He staggered to his feet and was starting back towards the school when the gas main blew, throwing him to the ground again. A massive, rolling ball of flame and gas boiled up into the air, flash-evaporating all the rain puddles for a hundred yards around the school and bathing everything and everyone in a blast of hot air, searing those that were too close. David lay on the wet ground and covered himself against the blast.
Julie and Bethany were not so close and therefore didn’t feel as much of the heat as David. After the initial explosion of the boiler they stood and continued running, making it to the parking lot and sinking behind a car. Julie had guessed that the gas main would go soon after the boiler went, and she had had to drag Bethany most of the way to the car - and falling down had not helped Julie’s back, which screamed in pain. Bethany cried his name, shouting to him, begging Julie to let her go so she could go look for him, but Julie wouldn’t. Julie knew that David Beaumont was probably dead now, and even if he and Norma Jenkins had somehow managed to make it out before the boiler went, they wouldn’t be able to find each other in this mass confusion. Already, there had been several fender-benders in the school’s parking lot as people had frantically tried to get away. Now there were people wandering around in the howling rain with that dazed look of shock setting in, and Julie reached for her phone to call 911 when she realized it wasn’t in her pocket. Must’ve lost it somewhere.
The gas main exploded next, and Bethany tried to dart around the car and back towards the school, but Julie held her fast. It would probably be safe in a minute or two, but there was no need to let one more person die, and Julie was starting to like Bethany - it was good to see that people could still be loyal. After the sound of the gas explosion quieted, she let Bethany go, and the girl jumped up and ran off.
Julie took a series of long, deep breaths and tried to organize her thinking, and tried to ignore the pain in her back. Most of the town’s police force, the Mayor, the Sheriff, and a good percentage of the city council had been in that gym, and most of them had still been inside when she’d bolted through the doors to the locker room. Had any of them made it out? Who was in charge? And there was also the fact that Liberty only had one hospital, not nearly enough capacity to handle the sheer numbers of injured that she could see, much less the personnel to affect the major rescue mission that would be necessary to extricate any living people from the wreckage of the school. And what about the Liberty Fire Department, an all-volunteer force if she remembered correctly? How many of them had been inside, and how many of them were left? How fast could they respond?
Julie staggered to her feet slowly and looked at the school. The gym was gone, the roof vanished as if by magic. Two walls were gone above the bleachers-level, and the wall next to the school was slumped over, collapsed onto the main entrance to and from the school. That was bad - anybody trying to get out at the last minute, like David Beaumont and Norma Jenkins, would’ve been crushed. Flames flickered up from the blackened remains of the gym, and a massive cloud of black smoke hung over it. Rain was coming down in sheets, and combined with the flames and the black smoke, it looked like hell on earth.
Off in the distance, she heard the first wailing of sirens.
Jack hadn’t expected it to be that big. The explosion had rocked the van, shaking him and making him almost spill his coffee, catching him by surprise. The first explosion was quickly followed by a second, this one accompanied by a billowing mushroom of fire boiling up into the sky, and he figured that must’ve been the gas main going - something he hadn’t even thought about.
He reached around behind his seat and felt around, pulling out a pair of binoculars. Holding them up to his eyes, he scanned the wreckage. Even though it was dark, the flames and fires lit up some of the area. The rest was obscured by either the billowing smoke or the heavy rain falling between him and the school, but he could see well enough to see that some people had gotten out. They crawled around on the grass around the school or hid behind cars in the parking lot, and it looked like some of them were getting into wrecks trying to get out of the lot.
It was beautiful.
He put the binoculars down and started up the van, rubbing his hands together in front of the vents, feeling the warm air flowing out. He figured there had been around 350 people inside that gym, and maybe a half of them had gotten out.
That was still at least 150, making his new total three-hundred-and-fifty. He'd have to keep an eye on the papers to get the final count - this would surely be the biggest story after the hurricane for weeks to come.
Sadly, there was a chance the whole thing might get blamed on the storm - bad weather, boiler running too hot, tragic accident. But he would know.
He shook his head, delirious with joy. This town would dry up and blow away, fading off the face of the earth. Oh, people might move in and rebuild, but they would be new people, new faces. Beaumont’s precious town was gone, and all the people he’d tried so hard to protect were now smoking pieces of meat.
Jack smiled and turned his van towards the Motel 6. He would collect his things and leave this town behind him forever. There would be years of happiness and content for him in California, and no more dreams of this place or its people would trouble him.
No more dreams.
Jack had won.
David stumbled toward the school, looking for Bethany. She HAD to have made it out, didn’t she? He stepped over the bodies of people he knew, all wearing faces he recognized, and he prayed that she wasn’t one of them. Some of them were moaning or holding themselves, and he tried to help them, but he didn’t stop long. He had to find her.
He’d found Norma already, dead. The little kid underneath her body had been spared the brunt of the gas explosion. David had picked the kid up and brushed him off and sent him on his way. David had closed Norma’s eyes and covered her, wishing there had been more time for them to talk. He’d only really known her for a few hours, but he already missed her.
Th
ere were so many people that he DIDN’T see, so many faces he had seen inside the gym that weren’t here now. The mayor, the city council, even that loser sheriff - not a sign of any of them. Had they gotten out? Were they somewhere else? Panic and fear welled up inside of him as he wondered if anyone he knew had made it out alive.
And that was when he heard his name being called, over and over.
He turned and there she was, staggering towards him. Her hair was messed up and her face was darkened and smudged with soot and dirt and she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life. He ran to her and held her and they stood there for a long time.
Julie directed as much of the rescue effort as she could, but there wasn’t much anyone could do. Rains and flooding had shut down all of the roads in and out of town, and paramedic units from other towns could not get though to help them. Fredericksburg General had been contacted by police radio and offered to help, but even the helicopter was grounded in the face of the hurricane. The roads were out, and Virginia state authorities had been called, too, but it didn’t sound like there was much they could do either, at least not until the storm broke. They were spread too thin, already, with Virginia Beach taking so much damage from the hurricane. Julie had also asked anyone who she talked to to contact the FBI in D.C. or Richmond and give them an update, but she didn’t think that would happen anytime soon - too many people were hurt or dying to worry about the investigation yet.
Julie had gotten all of this information from the policeman she’d found. He had escaped the initial explosion only to be knocked unconscious by the gas main going, and she’d slapped him until he’d come around. Her back was still hurting her, but as she saw the dozens of injured and dead around her, she tried to ignore the pain.
