Fire and ice

8:41 a.m

All this killing had made K-Rad thirsty. He stopped at the drink machine for another Mountain Dew, but of course the machine didn’t work with the power off. He thought about trying to break into it, but he didn’t have the right tools. He’d brought a pair of bolt cutters in his backpack and in the wee hours had used them to cut through the fence, but he needed a pry bar to break into the drink machine and he hadn’t thought to bring one. He hadn’t anticipated the need for one. Fuck. He really wanted another Dew, and he wanted it now, and there was only one way to get it.

8:43 a.m.

The overhead fluorescents blinked to life.

“Ha!” Hal said. “I told you it was just a test. Now let’s get back to work.”

Shelly squinted against the sudden brightness. “We’ll get back to work when Drew comes back and tells us to get back to work,” she said.

Drew was happy, Shelly thought. He’d married his high school sweetheart and saved all his money until he could afford that adorable three-bedroom house and plastic flamingos for the lawn. So what if he was boring and people made fun of him? He’d made all the right choices in his life. So let him make this one-God knows his track record is better than mine.

Fred opened the office door and looked out. “The lights and the fans are on, but the loading-dock doors are still shut. Looks like we’re still in lockdown. I’m with Shelly. We should wait for Drew.”

“We got two semis coming in at four o’clock and we need to stage the product before they get here. If we don’t get a move on-”

“Chill out, Hal,” Shelly said. “If they’ve got us locked down, they can’t blame us for not doing the job.”

“Bullshit they can’t,” Hal said.

Shelly let out a bark of a laugh. “Yeah,” she said, “but they can blame us for violating protocol if we don’t follow safety procedures. So since they’re going to fuck us whatever choice we make, let’s go with the one that doesn’t have us out there breathing fumes.”

Hal stood up and walked toward the door. “Go ahead and write me up if you want to. I’m going back to work.”

“I will write your ass up,” Shelly shouted, but Hal had already slammed the door and walked away.

“What’s with him?” Fred said.

“I don’t know. Maybe the heat and the fumes got to him.”

“Are you really going to write him up?”

“Yeah, because what I really want out of life is to give management an excuse to dock Hal’s pay so they can shovel a little more money to the Old Bastard,” Shelly said.

She sat down and folded her arms over her chest and stared at the wall. She didn’t know how much time had elapsed when Fred said, “Earth to Shelly. Hey, you think Drew’s ever coming back?”

She popped out of her trance. “Damn. Since the lights are back on, maybe the phone’s working, too.”

She picked up the receiver, and the room went black again.