“Looks like someone got here before us,” said Sam quietly. He rubbed his beard. “A building full of drugs. Mmmh.” He looked at Kirstie. “I think you maybe ought to stay put until we check out the inside.”
“Don’t be so bloody chivalrous, Sam.” Kirstie got the flashlight out of her backpack and stepped through the aluminium doorframe. Water was ankle-deep inside. The entry led up two steps to a corridor; she squelched up and found it lined with offices, most of them unlocked.
Sam and Einar followed her in. The three of them moved slowly; their only illumination was from the flashlight, throwing a restless yellow ellipse on floors and walls. After looking into the first office, Kirstie turned to Sam and whispered in his ear:
“Someone’s been in here, all right. Maybe they’re still here.”
The office had been ransacked: desk drawers ripped out, house plants knocked over, filing cabinets dented. Kirstie swung the flash around, and changed her mind: not ransacked, just vandalized by someone feeling very frustrated. Maybe the key to the drug room would still be in Ken Berkowitz’s desk.
That office was two doors up the hall. It hadn’t been touched. The desk looked as if its owner had just stepped out a moment before; papers were strewn over the desk, and a brown-paper lunch bag sat beside colour photos of two small girls and their attractive mother.
The key with the red Dymo tape was easy to find. Kirstie took it and went out into the hall, where Sam and Einar were waiting. She patted Sam’s arm and went on down the hall to the locked door of the drug room.
Someone had obviously tried to break into it, using a hammer: the grey paint on the steel door was chipped away in little circles and crescents. Silently, Kirstie unlocked the door. Warm, stale air puffed out.
It didn’t take long to find the sulfa; the morphine, though, seemed to be in a padlocked cupboard.
“What now?” Kirstie hissed.
“Wait,” said Einar. He took the padlock in one big hand, and tugged at it. Then, gripping it with both hands, he put one foot up on the steel door of the cupboard and pulled.
Something snapped metallically. Einar grunted and pulled again, twisting. The hasp came away from the door, and he pitched backward across the room.
“Jesus Christ,” said Sam. “Did you know you could do that?”
“I think maybe I can do it. No harm to try.”
They were talking normally now, relieved and surprised, as they took box after box of morphine and methadone ampoules out of the cupboard.
“My God,” Sam chuckled. “If we’d done this two days ago, Einar and I could’ve retired to Rio. Son, you’re wasted in astrophysics. You should’ve been a burglar.”
“Fuckin’ A,” said an unfamiliar voice. Then, unnecessarily: “All right, everybody freeze.”
Kirstie saw Einar spin round, and heard a thump. The intruder cried out. Another thump followed, and then a second voice yelled out incoherently.
She swung her flashlight to the doorway. Lying in the hall was a young man with blood on his lips. Just beyond him was Einar’s broad back. The Icelander turned, holding another young man in a half nelson.
“Oh jeez, oh shit, man, my arm — hey, easy, we’re not doin’ anythin’, honest, shit, my arm. Please.”
Kirstie walked quickly to the doorway, keeping the light on the young man’s face. “Shut up!” Her voice sounded shrill in her own ears, but he obeyed. “Sam, you’d better search him.”
“He’s got a knife.”
“What about his friend?”
“A gun,” said Einar. “He dropped it. I kicked it into the room.”
“Good, got it,” Sam said. “What the hell did you do to him?”
“I threw the padlock.”
Kirstie stepped closer to Einar’s prisoner. “I take it you two were looking for drugs.”
“Uh, well, yeah. So?”
She fought down an urge to kick him. “Sam, give me the gun.” She studied it for a moment: a snub-nosed revolver, finished in dull blue. It sat in her hand, heavy and ugly. She turned the flashlight back on the young man, who looked terrified.
“Now listen to me. You and your friend are going to help us get this stuff to where it’s needed. If you try anything, I’ll shoot you. Do you believe me?”
“Yeah, yeah, Christ.”
“All right, then. Sam, get the other one up.”
They filled their backpacks and then emptied the plastic bags in the wastebaskets to use as sacks. Leaving the room, Kirstie locked it. The five of them went to the storeroom at the rear of the building, and found big boxes of gauze and bandages. When everyone was carrying as much as possible, they went back out the side door.
The grey afternoon was dimming into dusk. The two would-be looters looked small and almost pathetic, skinny men with long wet hair and sodden denim jackets.
“Right,” said Kirstie. “Let’s get back to the school.”
“Hey, lady,” said the unhurt one, “you gonna walk up the street with a gun on us?”
“Yes.”
“Thass ki’nappeen,” the other one mumbled. Fresh blood oozed from his split lips.
“And if I shoot you, it’ll be murder. Get going.”
With their arms full, Sam and Einar and their prisoners made slow progress. The streets were deserted now. The fires were spreading, and a sullen orange glow shimmered over everything. The noise of burning was loud. Smoke was thin at times, then thick, as gusts of wind blew in from the bay.
Kirstie looked over her shoulder and saw an enormous cloud, black laced with orange, blotting out the western sky. Its base blazed hot yellow, and it seemed to extend far to the northwest. What could be burning like that, out on the water? A ship?
She was stepping on a fallen telephone pole when a growing rumble from behind made her pause. Before she could turn, the pole heaved beneath her feet and toppled her backward into black, stinking water. It washed over her, carrying slimy lumps of debris.
Gasping, Kirstie fought her way back onto her feet. The water was receding already, but the four men were clambering onto cars. She waded towards them.
“Come on, come on!” she shouted. “It’s not much of a wave, then, is it? Let’s go.”
Sheepishly, the men slid down into the water. A storefront crashed noisily into the street, exposing a show room crowded with refrigerators and ranges. One of the looters staggered and cried out.
“Jeez, I just stepped on a dead body!”
“Go on!” Kirstie shouted.
It was full dark by the time they reached the school. With lights glowing in its windows, it looked warm and welcoming in the black-and-orange night. An ambulance parked nearby flashed red and blue, and the plastic shelters in the schoolyard reflected the colours.
“About time,” grunted the medical student when they met him in the hallway. “I thought you weren’t coming back. Thanks.” He looked curiously at the gun. “What’s that for?”
“Persuasion.”
“Huh.”
“Doc — can you do so’thin’ for my’outh?” asked the injured looter.
The medical student looked dispassionately at him. “Wait your turn.”
Kirstie handed the pistol to Sam, who delicately unloaded it before stuffing it in a pocket of his windbreaker.
“Look,” said the medical student, “you’re soaking wet and you look bushed, but can I ask you and your friends for one more favour?”
“Sure,” Kirstie nodded.
“We got over fifty people too hurt to be moved, even if we had someplace to move ‘em to, okay? And we got maybe a hundred other injured and three hundred with nowhere to go, most of ‘em relatives of the casualties. We got to start feeding these people.”
“You want us to scavenge food for five hundred people?” Kirstie said, slowly and incredulously.
“Grab everyone you can find to lend a hand. Try the Co-op supermarket or wherever, okay?”