Something cracked across Amy’s shins and she became entangled in a piece of submerged furniture; she lost her grip on Basil and spun off into a support pillar, nearly dropping her flashlight. She scanned it over the swift-moving water and saw Basil’s head and shoulders bobbing away from her.
“Grab that rack!” she yelled.
With his good arm, Basil lunged for one of the massive shelves at the end of the aisle. He clung to it and when he looked back at Amy, his eyes went wide. “Swim!” he yelled. “Don’t look back!”
Amy did what anyone would do in that situation. She looked back.
A storm surge of rats was bearing down on her. It was a cresting wave of them, pushed by the current, aimed directly at her face. There were thousands of them surging through the water in a massive swell. She imagined them scrabbling at her lips, worming their way inside her mouth, down her shirt, shrieking and tearing at her. She threw herself forward in a blind panic, swimming fast.
Basil kicked alongside her and together they swam like hell. They made it over the checkout counters, where the ceiling dropped to a standard ten feet. Amy’s head brushed past a “See You Soon” banner that hung from the rafters. Squealing echoed in the darkness behind them. Her bruised body ached. Her arms were leaden. Her skin burned from the cold, and her lips were chapped from the oily water.
But they were close. She could see the glass doors to the parking lot. They were mostly submerged but the tops were still visible. Orange light poured through from outside, looking like full daylight after the endless night of Orsk. Amy swam to the motion sensor above the door and waved her hand in front of it. Then she slapped and hammered it with her fist to no avail—the power was off and the doors were locked. Water was exiting through a tiny gap between the glass doors, spraying out onto the sidewalk with a mighty hiss.
“Rats,” Basil said, teeth chattering. “Coming.”
The hopelessness of the situation overwhelmed Amy. They would drown, separated from fresh air by less than an inch of glass. And the rats were right behind them. This was where the current terminated.
In minutes the water around them would be boiling with rodents clambering over her face, weighing her down, pushing her underwater as they tried to keep themselves on the surface, squealing, tearing, biting, clawing, an aquatic tornado of rats, churning the water, and she and Basil would be torn to shreds or drown.
“Fire extinguisher,” she said.
“What?” Basil gasped, struggling to stay afloat.
“Where is it? Which side of the door?”
“Left?” Basil said. “Yeah, left. No, right. Right.” He shook his head. “Or left.”
Amy locked eyes with him. “I can only do this once.”
“Left,” Basil said. “It’s definitely left.”
Amy took a breath and dove.
The water was so full of cleaning chemicals that it burned her eyes, but she forced herself to keep them open. She swam down, pulling herself along the side of the panes, fingers hooking onto the metal runners that separated them, pulling herself deeper and deeper. The cloudy water refracted the beam of the Maglite, bending it into crazy angles, but it was enough. She spotted the red blur of the fire extinguisher to the left of the door and pulled it off its brackets. It was reassuringly heavy in her hands. In case of emergency, break glass.
Something solid slammed into her back, tangling in her legs. Amy panicked and thrashed about. By the time she realized it was a Poonang, it was too late. She’d lost the extinguisher, which floated down to dong against the floor and settle on its side.
Amy kicked the chair away and dove after it. Her lungs were burning, but there was no time to go up for air. She swam down the final three feet and gripped the extinguisher. Bracing her feet, she rested the butt end against the panes of the door. Exhaling fully to ease the pressure on her bursting lungs, she drew the extinguisher back to her shoulder and rammed it into the glass.
Water resistance stole all the energy from her thrust, reducing it to a lame tap. The bottom of the extinguisher barely bumped the door. She had no leverage. The glass was too thick. The extinguisher was too heavy. It bounced off the glass, and the heart finally went out of her. The glass was an orange blur. Through it she could dimly see movement. Something was strobing blue and red out there. Sirens? Cops?
Blackness crowded the edges of her vision. So close, she thought to herself. She was so close. All her life, she’d been backing off, falling short, dropping out. Her whole life she had quit. She’d really tried this time, but it was too late.
There was no way she could reach the surface, but maybe she had enough time to try again. One final effort and then she could let herself quit for good.
Last chance.
She placed the base of the extinguisher against the glass, pulled it back three inches, and held steady. Putting everything she had behind her shoulder, she screamed inside her mind and thrust the fire extinguisher forward. It shook in her hands when it hit the pane, and the glass tolled like an underwater bell.
But it didn’t break.
Amy felt herself let go, the extinguisher drifting away, her mind leaving her body, her lungs filling with filthy water, the lights dimming lower as she floated down into the dark, down toward the chair that had always been waiting for her.
Then there was a sound like a twig snapping, and a glowing silver line crazed across the glass. It was a crack, bright enough for her to see through the murk. As she watched, it grew with a sound like tearing ice. One end headed toward the upper right corner of the pane, expanding and splintering until water pressure took care of the rest.
With one cataclysmic roar, everything happened at once. The glass burst, exploding into the parking lot, releasing an aquatic avalanche that sucked Amy out with it. Her head smashed into the top of the door as she flew past, and she could feel hot blood flowing as she went spinning, spiraling, soaring through, pinwheeling and tumbling in a deluge of garbage, rats, safety glass, dirty water, and soggy receipt tape onto the sidewalk in front of Orsk.
The great gout of water slammed Amy to the sidewalk and then sent her spinning helplessly across the concrete, over the curb, and onto the rough asphalt of the parking lot. Still the water kept coming, pouring out of the store in a massive sideways geyser, a foamy white cataclysm full of squealing rats. One of the creatures smacked into Amy’s chest before the current carried it away. She tried to stand in the spray but was instantly knocked back down. Crawling, spitting up water, her knees torn and bloodied, her palms raw hamburger, she managed to drag herself out and collapse on her side. And then she closed her eyes.
“Ma’am, are you all right?”
Twisting her head, Amy looked around for Basil. She spotted him closer to the entrance, surrounded by a trio of firefighters. They were already checking his vitals, asking him questions.
“Ma’am, can you hear me?”
Amy tried to sit up. A very young officer from the Cuyahoga County sheriff’s department was standing over her. He looked all of fourteen years old. She staggered to her feet, his hand on her elbow, then put her arms around the cop and held on to him for dear life while huge wracking sobs tore themselves out of her body.
“I need an EMT,” he shouted back over his shoulder. Then, more quietly to Amy, “You’ve cut your head … ”
She touched her fingertips to her forehead and felt a bruised flap of skin hanging loose. When she brought her hand away, her fingertips were gray and sticky. The orange parking lot lights leached her blood of color and she stared at it, fascinated. Without a goal, without the urgent need to escape from Orsk, she was in a daze.
A paramedic who looked like a linebacker took her from the cop and guided her to the back of an ambulance. It was bright and white and when he sat her on the rear bumper, she didn’t ever want to leave its sane modern light.
“What’s your name, miss?” he asked.
“Amy.”
He aimed a tiny flashlight at her pupils. “Do you know what da
y it is, Amy?”
“The day after yesterday.”
He smiled. “Can we assume you don’t have a horrible brain injury?”
Amy shook her head and tried to smile.
“Don’t,” the paramedic said. “Try not to move. I’m going to take care of you until we get to the ER.”
That sounded good to her. The paramedic popped a thermometer into her ear and checked the reading, then unwrapped a silver space blanket and hung it over her shoulders to stop the shaking. When Amy tried to stand again, he put a hand on her shoulder and coaxed her down. “Just a few minutes,” he said. Then he pulled on light-blue latex gloves and went to work on her head.
Cops were stringing yellow tape across the front of the store. Fire trucks were parked at dramatic angles, and firefighters were pressed up to the glass storefront, peering inside. Behind the emergency vehicles, a legion of cars had pulled up and people were everywhere, yelling into their cell phones, holding them up to take pictures, sitting in open driver’s-side doors and delivering bad news to someone on the other end of the phone. A gaggle of cops squealed and started dancing a jig as a horde of waterlogged rats ran over their feet.
“There you are! Amy! Thank God you’re all right.” At the sound of her name, Amy turned dully toward the speaker. Pat, the store’s general manager, was jogging over in a Van Halen T-shirt and sweatpants. “Is she okay?” he asked the paramedic.
“So far, so good,” the paramedic said, snipping off the last bit of bandage. “A couple of stitches at the ER, keep her warm, she should be fine.”
“Thank God,” Pat said, turning to Amy. “You look like you might be in shock. Are you in shock? Are you all right? Is she all right?”
“No,” Amy said.
“What happened here?” Pat asked. “This is crazy.”
Amy looked at the flooded store, still gushing water across the parking lot. Here and there among the cops and firefighters were men and women in windbreakers and sports coats, shouting to one another and speaking into cell phones. One was awkwardly trying to compose an e-mail on a laptop while balancing it in one hand. Amy knew these people had to be the Orsk Consultant Team. They had arrived right on schedule. Amy looked down at her filthy clothes, her shredded Chuck Taylors, her torn jeans.
“I don’t know,” she finally said to Pat. “Is Basil okay?”
“His arm is broken and he needs a hospital, but yes, he’s going to be all right.”
“Have you seen the others?”
“Others?” Pat blinked. “There were others?”
“Matt and Trinity. And Ruth Anne. They were all with us.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Pat said, and he ran-walked to the Consultant Team and started talking to them, pointing frantically at Orsk, gesturing wildly.
Amy walked over to Basil. The firefighters had him propped up on the back of a ladder truck. His face was waxy. Bruises were starting to appear, pushing their way through the tight shiny flesh of his cheekbones. He smiled at Amy, splitting open a wound on his lip. Fresh blood glinted in the lights.
“Ow,” he said. “Your head.”
“They didn’t make it out,” Amy said. “I’d hoped they would find a way, but it’s just us.”
The smile fell from Basil’s face and he stood up, wincing at the pain in his arm.
“Son,” a firefighter said, “you need to sit down before you fall down.”
Basil ignored him and he and Amy walked away from the truck.
“What’s Pat doing?” Basil asked.
“What can he do? They’ll find their bodies inside after it drains,” Amy said.
All the relief she felt at having escaped turned to ashes in her mouth.
“They might not,” Basil said. “We don’t know what happened in there.”
“I do,” Amy said. “There was a prison here, and we built a new prison on its ruins, and all the old prisoners came out to give it a try.”
Basil kept staring up at the store and then he nodded.
“Yeah,” he said. “That sounds about right.”
There was a commotion in the parking lot and Amy and Basil turned. A van from 19 Action News was racing across the asphalt, making a beeline for the store. A couple of cops dashed over to intercept it. The consultants from Orsk Regional were retreating to their rental cars.
“How are they going to explain this?” Amy asked.
“They’ll figure out something they can live with,” Basil said. “Pat’s already mentioned the building contractor twice. There will probably be an epic lawsuit.”
“What about you? Are they going to blame you?”
“I blame me,” he said. “I brought all of you here to save my stupid job. Maybe not Matt and Trinity, but I was still senior supervisor onsite. I was the one who was responsible. I’m the one who got everyone killed.”
“That’s not true,” Amy said.
“Hey! Guys!” Pat was snapping his fingers at them as he came over, holding out his cell phone. “What is this? Is it one of our people?”
Onscreen was a one-word text message: help. Amy recognized the number immediately. “It’s Matt!” she said. “Call him back.”
Pat dialed the number. It rang three times and went to voicemail.
Amy snatched the phone and thumbed a reply: where r u?
The three of them stared at the tiny screen for nearly a minute until the phone buzzed back its reply: help.
“He’s still alive,” Amy said. “Matt’s still alive.”
Pat grabbed the phone and went running off to share the news.
“What’s going to happen to him?” Amy asked Basil.
“I don’t know,” Basil said. “I guess his battery will run out eventually.”
The realization settled over them like a shroud.
The silence was broken by the return of the medic. “Miss, we need to head to the ER now,” he said. “If your friends are still in the store, the firefighters will find them.”
“No, they won’t,” Amy said.
She and Basil turned and followed the paramedic back to the ambulance. Pat came scrambling after them as the other members of the Consultant Team watched from a distance.
“Look, guys,” he began, “hold up. Can we have a minute?” he said to the paramedic.
The paramedic nodded and stepped back a few feet. Pat turned to Amy and Basil.
“I know you’ve both had a terrible experience and I want to extend my deepest apologies on behalf of Orsk. I also want to assure you guys that whatever happened in there tonight, no one’s looking to assign any blame to employees or management. All our losses are covered, okay? Basil? You understand me?”
“Thank you,” Basil said.
“Orsk is a family,” Pat said. “We take care of one another. The Consultant Team wants you to know this isn’t the end of your journey with Orsk. In fact, it’s only the beginning. There are two openings—good openings—at the regional office. It’s in Pennsylvania, but they pay for relocation and either one of you would be a great fit. Or both of you.”
“We’re getting promotions?” Basil asked.
“They’re desk jobs, but they’re salaried, with full benefits.” Pat pressed a business card into Basil’s hand. Written on the back was a non-Orsk e-mail address. “This is from Tom Larsen himself. He’ll be reaching out personally in the next twenty-four hours.”
“I don’t understand,” Basil said.
“The only thing we ask,” Pat said, “is that you don’t speak to the media. Not for a while. They won’t understand what happened here and it’ll only lead to confusion. We’re going to do a full investigation. We will speak to the architect and the contractors. When we know what happened, we’ll share it with you. And when it’s time to talk to the press, Orsk will make sure that you guys have good people by your side, people who understand how the media works and how to position your statements. We’re going to do right by the two of you, and by Ruth Anne’s family.”
“And Matt and Trinity,” Amy said.
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“Well, that’s something different,” Pat said. “I know you guys say they were here, but I’m sure tonight has been very confusing, and it was probably hard to know exactly what was going on. They weren’t on the clock, you know.”
“They were here,” Amy said.
“I know you believe that,” Pat said. “But this situation is challenging enough without adding more people to the mix. Let’s not start making up things that sound worse.”
“They were here,” Amy repeated. “I saw them. I dragged Trinity halfway through the store. I spoke to Matt. I’m not crazy.”
“No one’s saying you are,” Pat said. “But what we’re wondering is that if they weren’t on the clock, and if Basil wasn’t paying them, are they really our responsibility? Here you go, Amy.”
He held out a second business card. It bore the same address handwritten on the back. Amy felt something building inside her chest, and when she spoke her voice was cold.
“So we just keep quiet and we keep our jobs?” she asked.
“Better jobs,” Pat said. “It’s a win-win.”
“Are you serious? Three of your employees are dead, and you’re trying to bribe us?” Amy knocked the business card away. “You can keep your better jobs, Pat. We’d rather pick up cans by the side of the road than work another day for Orsk. Right, Basil?”
“I know you’re upset—” Pat began.
“Upset?” Amy’s voice was loud. The anchorwoman with the news crew heard her, grabbed her cameraman, and tried to jockey around the line of cops to get closer. The Orsk consultants looked alarmed. “People died, I almost died, and the first thing you want to do is control your liability? Do you know how messed up that is?”
“Amy, stop it,” Basil said. “He’s right. What’s done is done. They weren’t supposed to be here.”
Amy felt like she’d been slapped.
“You’re going along with this?” she asked.
“I want to get all outraged too,” Basil said. “But this isn’t our responsibility anymore. Leave it to the professionals. They’ll do the right thing. I’ve got my little sister to take care of. Just be happy they’re giving us something.”
Horrorstor: A Novel Page 16