Beautiful Disaster

by C. J.

  Danny and Kevin looked at each in amazement before Kevin spoke, “Great there’s some in our lab and could be in the other labs downstairs and other parts of the building. Also, Suzanne is stuck on the NMR so don’t go in there. Since both of you have more metal attached to you than Iron Man, I’d strongly suggest you stay clear of the NMR room.”

  “Man, all you had to say was Suzanne was in there, and that would have been enough to keep us out, right Roger?”

  “You said it, Mitchell. She is on our shit list now for destroying Betty, I mean the video surveillance system, and we have no wish to see her unless it’s behind bars.”

  “It’s alright, guys,” said Kevin grasping their shoulders. “We know all about Betty and how much she means to you. If airplanes and boats are named after women, why not a video surveillance system?”

  “Hey, that very nice of you to say,” Mitchell said. His voice cracked and then turned toward the stairway, sniffling.

  “Come on, Mitchell, let’s find us some C4.”

  With that, Roger propelled Mitchell toward the door and down into the stairwell but suddenly turned around.

  “Wait, I almost forgot, Kevin, I found your phone. It was in the planter by the elevators.”

  “Does it work? Did you call anyone? Are the police on their way?” Danny gushed in one breath.

  “I believe it does work, to answer your first question, since I see several bars showing. No, I didn’t have I just found it shortly before you came upstairs. And finally, yes, the police are here.” As Roger finished this last sentence, Danny started running for the lobby entrance with Kevin slowly running behind him, apparently deep in thought because he stopped and turned back toward the elevators after only a few yards.

  Roger and Mitchell were calling them back. “No, don’t get near the lobby windows. The police don’t understand who’s who.”

  Danny screeched to a halt. “Who’s who? What do you mean who’s who? There’s me and, there’s Kevin playing living statue over there.”

  “I mean I already went toward the front windows, and I’m pretty sure a red dot was going to appear on my chest,” explained Mitchell.

  “Red dot? What do you mean, red dot?”

  “I mean a sniper’s laser attached to a rifle aimed at my chest. They don’t know who in here are the bad guys, and who are the good guys.”

  “Oh, okay. At least now we have a phone and can talk to someone and straighten this out. I’ll go tell Kevin. Do you have the phone?”

  “Here you go. I guess we better get started downstairs.”

  “Hey have you notice a spike in intelligence in the Tweedles since this all started or is it just me?” Danny said to Kevin after he relayed Mitchell’s information regarding the SWAT team outside.

  “No, I noticed that too. I thought maybe it was my imagination.” As Kevin said this, he and Danny both turned toward the stairway entrance and saw Mitchell and Roger try to go through the doorway at the same time and get stuck Winnie the Pooh-like.

  “Ah back to normal,” said Danny as he ran over and gave an almighty push to their backs. This squirted them through the doorway but caused their rifles and shotguns to interlock like teenagers’ braces during a heavy make-out session.

  “Damn it, Sonuvabitch, mother fucker!” echoed throughout the stairwell.

  “Well, we will leave you boys to it,” said Kevin as he steered Danny toward the VIP entrance while dialing 911.

  “Why are we going out this way?” asked Danny.

  “If we wait around for the police and explain everything to them, we’ll never get the formula off of Lexi’s property. What if they want to search our cars or something?

  “Good thinking.”

  “Yes, my name is Mitchell,” Kevin said into the phone and then had a panicked look on his face and mouthed to Danny, “What is Mitchell’s last name?”

  “I don’t know,” Danny mouthed back. “Tweedle?”

  At this statement, they both nearly lost it, and with great effort, Kevin regained his composure and continued with the dispatcher. “Yes sorry, this is Mitchell. I’m in the Lexi Corp. building, with a crazy woman running around with guns, but now I think she’s trapped downstairs in one of the labs. Yes, I work here as a security guard. I think she also placed explosives down in the labs and I’m checking for them now with my partner, Roger.”

  Danny started imitating Roger by puffing out his chest and making or trying to make muscles with his bicep. Making a gun with his fingers and thumb, he twirled it around, blew on the “barrel” and jammed it into an imaginary holster. Kevin shook his head, gave Danny’s an almighty slap and continued with his call.

  “Yes, she’s the only offender, and she’s trapped in a highly dangerous lab. It has a high magnetic field, so you need to warn your officers about going into the lab with anything metal. It would be highly dangerous if they did. It’s the NMR lab and has warning labels on the doors. You can come to the front entrance, but I’d wait for the bomb squad regarding the explosives and be careful of that woman. She’s called Suzanne Verassing, and she is still heavily armed but can’t get to her weapons right now. Sorry, I’m losing the signal now that I’m in the lab.”

  Kevin ended the call, but the phone rang again. Thinking it was the police, Kevin threw it to Danny who then threw it right back. Kevin looked down and saw who was calling and answered. “He’s right here, we’re OK,” Kevin said and then handed the phone to Danny.

  “Who is it?”

  “Maggie.”

  “Oh crap, I forgot I was supposed to go to that boring conference with her. She’s going to be super pissed.”

  “Hello, stupid. You almost died, Maggie is super worried about you. Use this to your advantage.

  “Babe, is that you?” Danny whispered into the phone.

  “Oh, baby I’m almost there.”

  “I think the police are all around us. I don’t think...

  “I’m coming; I see where I can get in. I’ll meet you near your car. Can you get to the lot? ”

  “Yes, but we may need a need a diversion to get out. Do you think you could?”

  “Oh yes. I think I can manage that, but you two owe me a huge explanation.”

  “Oh yes, I can manage that, but you two owe me a huge explanation.”

  “Yes. Of course. Love you.” And with that, Danny shut off the phone.

  By this point, Danny and Kevin had reached the VIP entrance, used their own ID’s, and were heading out the exit into the parking lot. They were just in time to see a Jeep fishtail its way into the lot followed by two police officers on foot waving and shouting at it.

  “Here’s our distraction, right on time. Now if I could only find the right key.”

  Having reached the car, Danny was fumbling with his keys and trying to see how Maggie was doing with the police. He poked randomly at the door lock while bopping up and down to peer over the car’s roof to check Maggie’s progress.

  Kevin helpfully asked, “Hey dumbass why don’t you use the remote?”

  “Well, I tried to amp up the range and sorta fried out the key fob.”

  “Just how far do you need to have the range and why would you even need to amp it up?”

  “Christ you sound like a woman. Why don’t you just put on a dress, you pussy? Does every experiment have to have a purpose or reason?” This brilliant summation was cut short by a long blast of a horn. “What was that? Seeing that Maggie was now out of her car and running around it with two puffing police officers behind her, Danny added, “I think Maggie wants us to hurry up.”

  As soon as Danny and Kevin got in their car, they slowly inched through the lot, stopping and starting to avoid detection by the police.

  The VIP entrance was temporarily unguarded as the police who had been assigned to block this entry were now engaged in a confusing discussion with Maggie.

  “Oh, officers’, thank God you’re here. I’m so worried about my boyfriend. I haven’t heard from him, and he works in this buil
ding. I just didn’t know what to do.” Maggie breathed out in a rush while nervously playing with the first button on her blouse which she was slowly unbuttoning.

  “Now Miss...?

  “Hmm. Humpersink, Ms. Humpersink.”

  “Ms. Humpersink you must have seen us blocking the entrance to the plant and yet you drove around our cars and recklessly sped through the parking lot,” wheezed Officer Mantle. He attempted to declare this statement in his most authoritarian voice. However, after 20 plus years of a two pack-a-day habit, the authority got lost in a series of coughs. His partner, Officer Quert, nodded arms folded in silent agreement beside Mantle, oblivious to the hacking.

  Maggie looked from Mantle, a small, still wheezing, thin man in his mid-thirties to Quert, an oversized baby-faced man in his late 20’s whose body armor looked more like a bib than a vest, and decided that she would trade the endless possibilities of entertainment value for a speedy egress.

  “You see officers, people are always stopped at the entrance gossiping, and I’m just used to having them wave me past. I’m just so worried about my boyfriend. He, my mother, Gabby Humpersink, and I were supposed to attend the opening of the new wing at the museum.”

  “Now that is no excuse for,” began Quert, but stopped mid-thought. Quert’s brain started to go into overdrive. Quert was a man of connections, a man on the move. Police work was just a way to network and get to his real career goal, politics.

  “Humpersink? As in the new Humpersink modern art wing at the museum?”

  “Ah, yes officer, I do apologize, again, but my judgment was clouded. I was worried about my boyfriend and of course in fear of the wrath of my mother.”

  At this point, Danny had crept out of the parking lot and had eased his way over a curb and around the squad cars blocking the entrance.

  “Better call Maggie and tell her we’re out,” Danny told Kevin.

  “Doing it now.” After a moment, Kevin said, “Franklin, who the hell is Franklin? Oh, you are still with the police. Righto. See you back at your place.”

  “So who’s Franklin?” asked Danny.

  “Maggie was going on and on about some fictitious guy, and his mother and they were late to some party or something. Whatever she was telling them, it worked.”

  “I wonder how Suzanne and the Tweedles are doing.” Kevin wondered out loud.

  “I bet you they all get arrested. Imagine the SWAT team that comes upon them looking like a mixture of Rambo, Terminator and Bruce Willis from Die Hard” said Danny.

  “Now who are you talking about the Tweedles or Suzanne?”

  “Ha! Good one!” snorted Danny.

  Just then a car rocketed by them and turned onto the next street, brakes squealing.

  “I see Maggie has caught up with us,” said Kevin as he and Danny pulled up behind Maggie’s Jeep.

  Maggie had parked her flame red Jeep Wrangler Rubicon in front of her one-car brick garage on a cement pad that doubled as a BBQ patio and one car driveway.

  As soon as she exited her car and looked at Danny and Kevin, she saw the guilt written all over their faces. Danny, who had known Maggie slightly longer that Kevin, knew what was coming, so grabbed her and threw her over his shoulder fireman style. Since he was utterly out of shape, he immediately collapsed with Maggie falling on top of him and knocking the wind out of him.

  “What did you just try to do? You, Neanderthal? What am I, some sort of baggage you can just haul around whenever you feel like it?” shouted Maggie

  “Apparently not considering what just happened” laughed Kevin.

  “So you think this is funny do you?” Maggie said, but seeing that Danny was still flopping around on the ground and gasping like a fish out of water, she burst out laughing.

  “Come on, Kev, let’s go inside and have a natter.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  MAGGIE HAD A CARRIAGE house behind her home that she had converted into a workable lab. With help from Danny and Kevin, the lab had the usual equipment and some very unusual inventions made by one or more of the trio.

  Usually in a group of friends, there is one who is the voice of reason. One who will rein someone in if they go off on a tangent. In this trio, there was no voice of reason. There were only varying degrees of insanity when it came to their experiments.

  The lab had one long table for general use equipment, microscopes of various types and questionable provenance, as well as a laboratory centrifuge and an autoclave, each of dubious origin. Three other tables stood against opposing walls, leaving the large carriage door available to be opened for a quick exit or airing out. Each table had epoxy resin countertops and held equipment related to its owner’s particular specialty.

  Maggie’s space was organized chaos with a small square area on the table in which she actually did her work. The remaining space was filled with chemistry, nanotechnology and biology books, as well as several laptops and a computer tablet. Recently there had been an addition of several books titled Aquatic Animals and a few on organic olive productions. Danny had read through some of Maggie’s notes one day and immediately took everyone out for seafood that night. Maggie’s tablet looked worse for wear as though someone may have used it to mix or chop ingredients on its surface. Maggie mostly worked on hair-care formulas and had various liquids and different components piled in boxes under her desk. She was also interested in nanotechnology, nanoemulsion, and synthetic chemistry to manufacture her own chemicals.

  Outside the lab, Kevin was the prudent one, the spoilsport in the group who advised against chili dogs or garbage pizza after midnight, but inside the lab turned into Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Dr. Frankenstein rolled into one. He employed the philosophy, “why the hell not?” instead of the more prudent, “this may need more thought and testing.” He always dressed nattily, though. That never changed in or outside of the lab. Kevin’s space was set up identical to the other two but on a much neater scale. He was the Hercule Poirot of lab setups. Everything was in neat rows, arranged by use and size. Books were in bookcases rather than in un-tidy heaps on the floor, like Maggie and Danny’s. Kevin had a flat screen monitor attached to the wall to make more room on his spotless counter with the keyboard affixed under the bench also as another space-saving measure.

  Kevin felt that the perfect, and safe energy source was out there in the environment and didn’t require digging deep into the earth to retrieve. He tried combinations of wind and solar. He also tested several types of alternative fuels, although the test drives almost required the services of the local fire department. Luckily Maggie was a firm believer in accident prevention, knew her lab mates well, and thus had every type of fire extinguisher on the market in her lab.

  Danny’s area was nearly bare as he preferred to use everyone else’s instruments and laptops, or utilized the general use equipment since he’d destroyed his own several times over. He did have a beat-up laptop that had survived longer than most of his property. He referred to it as his silver laptop even though to Kevin and Maggie’s eyes it looked jet- black. Even though Danny’s space was the sparsest, he seemed to come up with an incredible number of half-assed inventions. There were countless pieces of equipment and samples of liquid that would make an appearance for one or two days and then disappear never to be seen again. There was the MP3 microwave that would play during your microwaving experience. He felt that depending on the cooking time he could set the appropriate song. Popcorn equaled a three-minute song. Reheating a baked potato could be a TV theme song. Unfortunately, the songs had to be set precisely, and random play had to be turned off completely, otherwise, significant malfunctions could occur. If, for popcorn, the MP3 randomly played on “Drown” or “Siamese Dream” by Smashing Pumpkins (both over eight minutes long) Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (running time 17:05) the odor of burnt popcorn would definitely be smelled for a long time. Kevin’s favorite Danny’s concoction was his super cleaning solution that ate through everything like the alien blood in the Alien movies. That
scary stuff had burned through the epoxy resin countertop, the cement floor, and then possibly continued on through to the earth’s crust.

  Kevin told Maggie in confidence once that he had a private theory that Danny had another secret lab somewhere funded by radicals where he kept all his failed experiments. Or were they failed?

  Inside the carriage house/lab, they had all settled at their workstations. Maggie stared at Danny and Kevin for a few seconds and then realized she would have to start the ball rolling.

  “So, are you two going to tell me what’s going on or do I have to read about you in the Yahoo headlines. ‘Lexi employees run amuck at the plant and piss off SWAT team in the process.’ I am not a complete idiot, either. You two have done something to yourselves. Under the most extreme torture imaginable, I’d deny it, but you two look incredibly good. Either you guys have actually discovered something amazing or have given me something that fools me into thinking you look fantastic. Now spill.”

  “Okay, Okay it all started when we realized we weren’t as far along on the formula as we had led Conner to believe. We needed another month or so for testing and were behind schedule,” Danny began.

  Maggie stood up and waved her arms in front of Danny as if warding off a plane coming in for a landing. “Wait a second; I don’t want the courtroom version.” Maggie punctuated this with a poke to Danny’s chest. “I want the truth.” Another poke. “Behind schedule means you guys were screwing around like you usually do at work.” Poke, poke. “Now continue.”

  Danny rolled his eyes, rubbed his chest, and admitted “Well, yes it was something like that.” He proceeded to tell a very abbreviated version of the story, which made it seem like he and Kevin were incredible scientific geniuses. Kevin chimed in from time to time, adding spectacular sound effects and occasionally re-enacting some of the more exciting elements of the last few hours.