Fire and ice

10:38 a.m

Something flew out of the Waterbase office and clattered across the concrete floor. Matt didn’t know what it was, but his instincts told him he needed to get away from it. As he was diving behind the forklift by Fred’s corpse, there was a bright flash and an earsplitting boom. Sparks rocketed in all directions, and a molten chunk of red-hot hell seared its way into Matt’s left leg above the ankle. It felt like someone had driven an acid-dipped railroad spike through the fleshy area between his shinbone and Achilles tendon. He rolled onto his back, gripped the wound, felt the viscous warmth of raw flesh. He wanted to shout out in agony, but he knew doing so would be a death sentence. He wiped the stinging sweat from his eyes, peeked around the edge of the forklift, and saw the dark zombie astronaut figure known as K-Rad stagger out of Mr. Hubbs’s office and disappear from sight.

Matt tried to stand. He could barely put any weight on the leg now, let alone walk or run. He would have to use the forklift to get around, and the whining noise of the electric motor would allow K-Rad to know his location. Fortunately, K-Rad had headed toward the time clock, and Matt planned on going in the opposite direction, toward the Fire and Ice tanks. He felt around for the switchblade but couldn’t find it anywhere. He’d dropped it when the grenade went off, and now it was gone. He belly-crawled into the office and felt around on the floor. He’d heard K-Rad dumping the contents of the desk drawers and thought there might be something among the debris to use as a weapon. He felt a stapler and a box of paperclips and some pens and pencils and Post-it pads and a bunch of other crap you’d expect to find in any well-stocked office. What he wanted, but did not find, was a letter opener or a whiskey bottle or something. He was thinking a gun would be nice when he felt the cold metallic cylinder and for a split second thought he’d actually lucked into finding one. He picked it up. It wasn’t a gun but a small steel flashlight. He switched it on for a second to make sure it worked, and then crawled back out of the office. He climbed onto the forklift, pointed it toward the big tanks, and pegged the throttle.