Fire and ice

8:25 a.m

Kent Dillard, the maintenance man on duty, never knew what hit him. K-Rad had shot him in the back of the head while he was changing one of the steel-mesh filters in the main power closet. K-Rad had then pulled his night-vision goggles out of his backpack and put them on and had thrown the big red breaker switch that cut the power to the entire plant. He had taken the key ring from Kent’s belt and had tried seven different keys before finding the one that fit the emergency lockdown panel. He’d disabled the backup generators earlier, so now the plant was dark and everyone was trapped inside. Perfect.

K-Rad walked to the lab, where Fire and Ice and the other solvents Nitko produced were tested before shipping. There were four people on duty there, a chemist and three technicians. The chemist’s name was Ashley Knotts. He didn’t know the technicians’ names, but he knew they were all men. Ashley was attractive, in a librarian sort of way, with wire-rimmed glasses and hair pulled back in a bun.

When K-Rad opened the door to the laboratory, Ashley and the others were huddled together at one of the counters with a flashlight. They were looking at a trade magazine and laughing about something. Undoubtedly, they were thinking the lights would come back on any minute and the emergency lockdown would be released and everything would go back to normal. K-Rad picked them off one by one, like ducks at a shooting gallery. He worked left to right, Ashley being the last in line. Before shooting her, he said, “Would you mind taking your hair down for me?”

“Please don’t kill me,” she sobbed. “I have children at home. I’ll do anything you want.”

“I want you to take your hair down.”

She reached behind her head and pulled out the pins holding her hair up, and the long, silky blond locks fell to her shoulders. Her hands were trembling. K-Rad could see everything with the night-vision goggles on.

Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Please, I don’t want to die.”

“Maybe we can work something out,” K-Rad said. “Take your glasses off.”

She took her glasses off. She was a very beautiful woman. K-Rad guessed her to be in her early thirties. He aimed and fired and the top of her skull exploded. She fell to the floor, landing on top of one of the techs.

That took care of the front offices. Everyone was dead now. The production area would be trickier, but K-Rad felt up to the challenge. He felt good. He felt strong.

He had picked this day because he knew all the vice presidents were at a convention in Miami and the head honcho was cutting the ribbon at the site for a new toll road. He had worked for Nitko for twelve years, and this was the first time he knew of when all the brass was missing in action on the same day. Boneheads. He had no interest in killing them. By the end of the day, their lives would be ruined. Thinking about it made him smile.

One of the lab techs, the one Ashley Knotts had fallen on top of, started stirring and moaning. K-Rad walked over and finished him off with one to the head.