Fire and ice

10:22 a.m

How in the fuck did that bitch get the tape off her mouth?

K-Rad thought about going back to the tanks and blowing her away. He should have done it before, but the idea of blasting her to mincemeat had been too appealing. He thought about going back, but he was only a few feet from Hubbs’s office now. Plus, his legs were hurting like a motherfucker. It was at least a hundred degrees in the production area, and the bulletproof vest and the gas mask and the heavy backpack had K-Rad sweating profusely. He was getting dehydrated. He could feel it. He was lightheaded and his legs were cramping. The two Mountain Dews hadn’t been enough. He needed more fluids. After he killed Hubbs, he would go to the fountain by the time clock and fill his belly with water. Then he would go to the Retro and fill his belly with beer.

K-Rad was about to kick the office door in when he was blindsided and knocked to the floor. The pistol in his hand skittered away, and a man straddled him and hit him in the face with a drum wrench. K-Rad recognized the man. It was Fred Philips from Shipping and Receiving. Fool. The initial blow smashed the right side of the night-vision binoculars, and Fred was about to come down with a second when K-Rad reached into the pocket of his fatigue pants and pulled out a switchblade. Before Fred knew what had happened, K-Rad buried all five inches of the blade in his windpipe. Fred gurgled and spat blood and fell sideways clutching his throat. It took him about thirty seconds to die.

K-Rad crawled to his pistol a few feet away, picked it up, and checked it for damage. It looked all right. The altercation had given him a surge of adrenaline. His legs didn’t hurt anymore. He couldn’t see as well with one side of the night-vision binoculars broken, but he could see well enough. He got up and kicked Hubbs’s door in. It flew open and showered the office interior with splinters and lock parts. Hubbs was alone, crouched down in a corner like a mouse in a snake’s cage.

“Kevin, it was the guys upstairs. I had no choice. I swear, I tried to talk them out of firing you. You were always one of my best workers.”

“Hal fucked up the loading-dock door. Just so you know.”

“Hal did it?”

“Yeah. When we were working nights together.”

“Then he’ll be dealt with, and you’re off the hook.”

“He’s already been dealt with,” K-Rad said. “As for me being off the hook, it’s way too late for that.”

“We can work something out.”

“No, we can’t.”

“I have some money. I have about twenty thousand dollars in a savings account. I’ll give it to you. All of it. We can go to the bank right now.”

“What am I going to do with twenty thousand dollars?”

“You could leave the country. You could go to South America. Anywhere. I’ve heard you can live like a king in the Philippines for five dollars a day.”

“Really?”

“Sure. So is it a deal? We can leave right now, and you can have the money in your hands in ten minutes. You can book a flight and-”

10:27 a.m.

“There’s only one problem,” K-Rad said. “That would involve letting you live.”

Matt was outside the office, standing to the side of the broken doorway. Fred was lying on the floor a few feet away with a knife handle sticking out of his throat, and the drum wrench he’d taken for a weapon lay a few inches from his lifeless hand. Surrounded by what seemed like gallons of inky black blood, he looked like a fallen character in a horror movie.

Matt picked up the drum wrench, pulled the knife from Fred’s throat, and stood by the broken door to the Waterbase office, listening.

“I want you to just think about my offer for a minute, Kevin. With twenty thousand dollars, you could fly anywhere in the world and start a new life.”

“I would be a fugitive. Living in the shadows. Who wants that? I want the spotlight for once. I want the world to remember the name Kevin Radowski for a long, long time. Forever would be nice. I want to be immortal. I’m not going to hide in South America. 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.”

“I’m begging you. Please don’t do this. You don’t have to do this. I have a family.”

“All you motherfuckers say the same thing. I have a family, blah, blah, blah. You think your family really gives a shit about you? They’ll shed a few tears at the funeral, and a few weeks later they’ll cash the life insurance check and fly to Maui and sit on the beach with tall blue drinks in their hands. They’ll guzzle twenty-dollar cocktails with the money you busted your balls for. You know, I’m tempted to let you stick around until eleven and see the show. It’s going to be fabulous.”

“What are you talking about?”

There was a pause, and Matt knew that K-Rad was about to shoot Hubbs.

Matt wanted to rush in and try to do something, to save Hubbs from his doom.

But he knew it would be suicide.

And he needed to stay alive, to beat K-Rad… and stop Shelly from whatever she was going to do.

One life-Hubbs’s-would be sacrificed for the many Matt could possibly save later.

It sickened Matt… but it seemed that he had no choice but to let Hubbs die.

Then again, maybe there was another way. Maybe a diversion would do the trick.

He hurled the steel drum wrench as far as he could, and it landed on the concrete floor with a series of loud clanks.