She watched the smoke rising from the production building and wondered if Matt was even still alive. She would give him a few more minutes, and then she would go have some fun elsewhere.
But where? A fragment of song from her childhood popped into her mind, something about starting at the very beginning, a very good place to start.
Good idea, she thought. Get them young before they can turn into the kind of miserable fucks who’d stolen her life away.
In her mind she mapped out the route to the daycare center down the road.
11:12 a.m
In a little while, after you’re good and dead, I’ll be sipping on a cold one at the Retro and thinking about how famous I’m going to be.
Matt was no longer worried about getting shot. He figured K-Rad had already left the building.
Of course he was gone. Why would he have stuck around to get blown up?
Matt carried Terri through the walkway to the office suite. The air was better up there, but only slightly. Smoke and fumes had started to seep through from the production area, and with no ventilation and all the doors sealed tight, it was like trying to breathe mud.
There were dead bodies everywhere.
Matt opened the door to the safety office, set Terri on the floor, and found respirators for them both. He put Terri’s on first, and then donned his own. It was an immediate improvement, and after a couple of minutes Terri sat up and said, “Now what?”
“Follow me,” Matt said.
He could have taken car keys from any of the corpses, but he knew what kind of car Officer McCray drove. It was a 1966 GTO convertible, maroon with patches of gray primer and a white top. Matt had noticed it in the parking lot his first day on the job, and Shelly had told him whom it belonged to.
Matt led Terri to the security office, reached into McCray’s pocket, and snatched the keys.
“How are we going to get out of the building?” Terri said.
“There has to be a way out. Firefighters and rescue personnel and hazmat teams are able to gain access during lockdown situations, so there has to be a way. I would imagine it’s wherever the breaker box and all that kind of stuff is.”
“The main power closet,” Terri said. “I know where it is. I used to date a guy in Maintenance.”
“Let’s go.”
They made it to the power closet, saw the drop-down ladder and the hatch, and two minutes later were on the roof. They took the respirators off and tossed them aside.
“Amazing how you take things like fresh air and sunshine for granted,” Terri said.
“Yeah.” Matt walked to the edge of the flat roof. His leg still hurt, but the pain wasn’t nearly as bad as it had been previously. The wound had already started to heal, another part of the enigma his life had become since the avalanche. “You think you’re able to climb down this drainpipe?”
“I’ll give it a shot.”
Matt went first, so if Terri fell while climbing down he could catch her. He used his powerful arms to shinny down the pipe, guarding the bum leg the best he could. Terri did fine, and in a couple of minutes they were in the GTO, heading for the gate.
“Where are we going?” Terri said.
“The Retro. I want you to climb in back and get on the floorboard. I have a feeling K-Rad’s killing spree isn’t over.”
Terri started sobbing. “I just want to go home.”
“I’ll get you home,” Matt said. “I promise.”
He urgently needed to find Shelly, too, but he had no idea where to start looking.
Worse came to worst, he’d have to wait… and follow the trail of bodies.
11:15 a.m.
Shelly watched McCray’s ’66 GTO take a right out of Nitko’s driveway.
Matt was driving, and some bitch was riding shotgun.
Was he fucking her, too?
Had he been all along?
Fuck it. The daycare could wait.
Shelly started her car and followed the GTO.
11:16 a.m
Tami had left an ice pick on the bar near the garnish tray. K-Rad picked it up and put it in his pocket. He sucked the last few foamy ounces from his Shiner Bock longneck and walked outside to once again admire his handiwork. He looked southeast, and the horizon in that direction was now completely shrouded in a haze the color of pencil lead. What fun! Thousands of people were dead now, all because of K-Rad and his perfect plan. This was just too cool, and there was even more amusement yet to come.
K-Rad wanted to be arrested, the sooner the better, so why wait for the authorities to put two and two together and figure out he was the one responsible for the Nitko explosion? Why not just open fire on the lunch patrons at the Retro and expedite the whole process?
The idea had come to him halfway into his second beer. The Berettas were in the car, and he still had plenty of ammunition. No point in all those bullets going to waste. He would drink another beer or two, until the joint was good and crowded, and then he would go at it with a pistol in each hand. He would jump behind the bar and kill Tami first, and from that position would start picking off customers. Someone would use a cell phone to call the police, and when the cops got there K-Rad would walk out with his hands in the air and surrender peacefully. Perfect.
On their way to the Retro’s entrance, a young couple stopped where K-Rad was standing. College students, K-Rad thought, taking a break between classes. The guy had a goatee and diamond studs in both ears.
“Hear anything about the fire?” the young man said, gesturing toward the smoke with his thumb. He was sucking on a cigarette, trying to consume as much of it as he could before going inside. His girlfriend stood beside him with her arms folded, obviously impatient with his vice.
“Nothing yet,” K-Rad said. “I’ve been sitting at the bar watching the news. I’m sure they’ll get to it eventually.”
“Tyler, can we please go in now? I’m starving.” The college chick had a tight knit shirt on and very short cutoff jeans. Daisy Dukes, they called them, after a character in a largely forgotten television show from a largely forgotten decade. She had a pretty face and a nice body.
“Let me finish my cigarette, babe,” Tyler said.
“You need to quit that vile habit. You smoke and then you want to kiss on me. It’s like kissing an ashtray.”
“A sexy ashtray.”
“That makes no sense at all.”
“Go on in and get us a table. I’ll be along in a minute.”
She stalked away without saying another word. Once she was safely inside, Tyler turned to K-Rad and said, “Women.”
“She’s very attractive,” K-Rad said.
“Yeah, and she’s right. I really do need to quit smoking.”
“You guys in college?”
“Yeah, CH State, but I’m planning on transferring to the University of Florida when I get my associate’s degree.”
“Sounds like a good plan.”
Tyler dropped his cigarette on the pavement and crushed it with the toe of his sandal. “I better get on in there before she starts freaking,” he said.
K-Rad pulled the ice pick from his pocket, gripped it tightly, and jammed it into the side of Tyler’s throat. Blood pulsed skyward, as though being shot from a squirt gun. Must have punctured an artery, K-Rad thought. Tyler fell to the sidewalk, twitched a few times, and then lay still.
“Now she’s really going to start freaking,” K-Rad said. He dragged Tyler’s limp body behind a stand of ornamental shrubs and walked toward his car to get the Berettas.
11:20 a.m
Terri climbed into the back of the GTO and got down on the floorboard, as Matt had instructed. Matt switched on the radio and turned it to the news channel, just in case Shelly was unleashing whatever hell she had in mind. If a bulletin came on about an ax murderer loose in a school or a department store or something, at least Matt would know where to go.