by Bill Bunn
“I’m calling for back up, right now,” Larry replied.
A ceiling tile behind them opened up and a burly man climbed into the space. He lowered a gun towards them. Steve took the cell phone and hurled it at the man. The man tried to duck and stepped backwards onto the middle of the ceiling tile, which split in two with his weight, sending him crashing through the ceiling. He landed heavily on the floor below. No one came up into the ceiling area after the man had fallen, but Steve could hear sounds of more people approaching the scene.
Steve turned and caught up with Lindsay.
“I can’t go on,” Uncle Edward muttered weakly. “I can’t go any further.”
“You have to,” Lindsay said.
“I can’t,” Uncle Edward said as his legs buckled under him. Steve caught his other arm and fought gravity to keep Uncle Edward on his feet.
“Why don’t we drop you two down into the room below,” Steve suggested. “We’ll find a safe place to hide until the police come.”
He pulled a tile up quickly, scanning the room below. It seemed like some sort of storage room with all kinds of storerooms boxed in with chain-link fence. Steve dropped into the room and found a couple of empty crates. He slid them underneath the opening and stood on each of them to test their strength. Once he was sure they’d hold Uncle Edward’s weight, he motioned to Lindsay to help Uncle Edward lower himself into the opening. Uncle Edward’s frail legs dropped into Steve’s view; he grabbed them in a bear hug. Then slowly, with Lindsay guiding Uncle Edward’s upper body, Steve lowered his uncle’s legs to the crates. Uncle Edward stood unsteadily on the crates, while Steve piled junk in front of him to form a makeshift set of stairs.
He helped Uncle Edward to the floor as Lindsay dropped lightly onto the crates. None of the chain link storage gates were closed. The three could hear sounds of people approaching.
Lindsay pointed towards the back of the room. “There’s a window. Maybe we can make it outside.”
Steve measured the time it would take to get out the window against the sounds of approaching footsteps. He knew Uncle Edward wouldn’t be able to move fast enough to get to the window in time.
Steve suddenly had an idea.
The chain-link gates would take a padlock. The handcuffs.
Into his backpack he flew, fishing for the handcuffs. He stuck one of the cuffs through the padlock holes and cinched it tightly locked.
He threw his hand into the bag to look for his stone. It wasn’t there.
Where’s my Benu stone?
“Lindsay, do you still have your Benu stone?” he demanded urgently.
“Yes. Good thinking,” Lindsay noted quietly.
“I’ve lost mine. I’ve got to go back.”
“Are you insane?”
Steve and Lindsay half-carried, half-dragged Uncle Edward into another chain link cubicle with an unlocked gate. In this storage compartment, however, there was a window.
“Lock yourselves in here,” Steve ordered. “Turn Uncle Edward’s watch into a lock. I’m going to create a distraction, so they don’t come looking for you.”
“Clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-clock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock-lock.” The watch flattened into a single dimension and in a flash of light with a violent wind, it became a padlock.
Steve climbed one of the chain link walls of a storage area, pushed a ceiling tile out of the way, and hopped into the ceiling opening. He fit the ceiling tile back into place and began to make loud noises with his feet as he crossed the ceiling on the ceiling’s support brackets. As Steve stomped through the ceiling cavity, a couple of heads popped through the tiles. Steve went for it, swinging wildly from support to support. The ruse seemed to work. The men hopped into the ceiling space and began to lumber carefully over the ceiling frame towards him.
Several more figures poured through the ceiling’s opening, several ceiling tiles around the building popped upwards, and several squares of light shot into the darkness above the ceiling.
Steve knew he wouldn’t last very long where he was, and he needed to find his lost stone. He heard sirens approaching the building, which seemed to throw the faces and figures in the ceiling space into mass confusion.
In the far end of the building a bright orange light licked through one of the ceiling panels. It was a flame. The building, despite being soaked with water, had somehow caught fire.
The fire alarm bells clanged into the confusion all over the building. Steve heard a dull thud as an orange ball of flame shot through the back half of the ceiling tile, throwing him backwards. The tile broke, and he plummeted through the opening to the floor below.
“I think we’re almost out,” Lindsay murmured happily. Just when they were close to making their exit, a man waving a gun entered the storage room. He saw them and gave a triumphant shout.
“I’ve got ’em.” He screamed against the confusion in the building. “They’re in here.” He took his gun, steadying it with his other hand, and leveled it at Lindsay. He squeezed the trigger. The loud explosion from the barrel of the gun screamed in Lindsay’s ears. She thought she had been hit, but she couldn’t feel any pain.
She quickly checked her body—there was no visible wound. She realized quickly that his bullet had probably hit the chain-link fencing and deflected somewhere into the room. The man took aim again and squeezed the trigger.
An click replaced the explosion. The man examined his gun, then pulled the trigger again. Click. He squeezed the trigger several more times—empty.
In anger, the man thrashed against the locked storage gate with all of his might, then threw his gun across the room.
There was only one gate between Lindsay and Uncle Edward and a big, angry man.
Lindsay and Uncle Edward backed through one last gate. She stopped and removed her own watch, and threaded the soft leather strap through the padlock clasps. She watched as the angry man threw his weight against the first storage gate.
She waited until he was completely involved in trying to break the lock and then she whispered the words. A burst of light and wind cut through the room. The angry man stopped for a moment, gazing around the room, trying to assess what had caused the wind and light. On the last gate there hung a stylish, delicate, feminine-looking lock. When he couldn’t find the source of the disturbance, he threw his weight against the gate. The lock exploded into a cloud of parts. He was through the gate!
He growled at the escaping pair and hurled himself against the last gate. Lindsay helped Uncle Edward back towards the outside wall, near the window. Lindsay took a piece of pipe she found on the floor and bashed the glass of the window, showering shards of glass through the storage room. The winter air belched into the room. She forced the bar along the bottom edge of the window to knock out the sharp pieces of glass that stubbornly clung to the bottom of the window frame. She dropped the bar outside of the building when she was finished.
“The outside is clear,” she yelled to Edward. “Let’s get out there.” She led a confused Uncle Edward to the window, grabbed him around the waist, and hoisted him into the opening. His body drooped over the window frame.
The burly beast threw himself at the last gate with another roar. But the gate held.
Lindsay pushed Uncle Edward’s legs through the window, and leapt out after him.
The man lunged at the gate again, This time the hinges gave way and the gate swung aside. He threw open the gate and ran towards the window, diving through the opening after Lindsay and Edward, but his progress stopped abruptly as his head met a metal bar—a bar that Lindsay held in her hands. The man’s body dropped back inside the building like a rag doll. Lindsay turned to Uncle Edward.
“We’ve got to keep moving,” she said.
She squatted behind Uncle Edward’s seated body and hugged it. His legs dangled uselessly between hers as she stood. Undaunted, she began to move very slowly towards the sound and light of the sirens.
Suddenly an explosion ripped through the back of
the building, and people began to run from various entrances and exits. Those who were jumping through the windows frightened Lindsay at first, until she realized they were trying to escape, not recapture the two of them.
She and Uncle Edward moved very slowly as people ran helter-skelter around them. Uncle Edward’s weight grew in Lindsay’s arms. She knew what it meant. They needed medical help.
A long line of police officers blanketed the outside of the building, collecting each of the escapees, rounding them up into the backs of several waiting paddy wagons. An officer, with her gun drawn, approached Lindsay as she hugged Uncle Edward.
“Put your hands where I can see them,” the officer ordered.
“We were the hostages,” Lindsay explained.
“I said, put your hands where I can see them,” the policewoman repeated.
Lindsay slowly released Uncle Edward and he slipped to the ground in a heap. She raised her hands in the air.
The policewoman called another recruit over to carry Uncle Edward. The second officer scooped Uncle Edward’s wilted frame from the ground. The two officers escorted the both of them toward the vans.
Lindsay studied the burning building and remembered the man she had hit with the bar, lying inside the building still. She turned towards the policewoman. “There’s a man inside that room there. He’s unconscious.” The policewoman called another officer over who was approaching the scene.
“You wanna check out that window over there? This girl says there’s a guy inside and he’s unconscious.” He gave a nod and headed towards the broken window.
“Let’s keep moving,” the policewoman said to Lindsay.
Aunt Shannon spotted Lindsay and Uncle Edward.
“Lindsay, dear,” Aunt Shannon squealed. “You’re all right.” She was weeping, as she spoke. She grabbed Lindsay in a fierce, boney embrace.
“Edward, you old dog,” she said tenderly, putting her hand to his forehead. “I’m so glad to see you.”
“Excuse me, ma’am,” the police officer said. “I have to take these two over to Detective Garner. I need to make sure they’re OK with him.”
Larry was in his element. He barked orders left and right. One by one, each of the kidnappers was brought to him. He scribbled some information and had them put into several paddy wagons waiting in the building’s parking lot.
“We’ll sort this out back at the office,” he said to a handcuffed woman, who was pleading with him. The policewoman escorting her hauled her away.
Larry saw Aunt Shannon with Lindsay and Edward and walked towards them, waving.
“These folks are OK. You can let them go,” he said to the officers standing by. Aunt Shannon held Uncle Edward’s hand awkwardly; Lindsay hovered next to the two of them. “You must be Lindsay,” Larry said. Lindsay nodded.
Larry scanned the trio from head to toe. “Let’s get Edward to an ambulance.” He turned to survey the building again. “We’ll talk when this is over,” he said as he headed back to his command post.
Lindsay and Aunt Shannon followed Uncle Edward to an ambulance, where they lay him on a stretcher and covered him with a blanket. The ambulance attendants checked his vitals.
“This guy should go now,” the head attendant announced.
Aunt Shannon face turned gray.
“It’s just a precaution,” the attendant added, noticing Aunt Shannon’s reaction. “Nothing life-threatening.”
Aunt Shannon put a hand to her chest. “I’m relieved to hear that.” She bent over her husband of nearly forty-seven years, and smooched him on the lips. “I’m sorry, Edward, but you deserved that one.”
Uncle Edward turned very, very red, but beamed.
Aunt Shannon looked towards Lindsay.
“Your dad is desperate to see you,” Aunt Shannon said.
“Sure,” Lindsay replied, in a distracted tone.
The ambulance driver wanted to leave, but Uncle Edward stopped him from doing so. He asked the driver to keep the doors open and prop him up in the stretcher.
“I’m going to wait for Steve,” he said to the driver. “He saved our lives.”
The three of them watched as the fire gorged on the building. Another wild explosion blew through the back end of the building, and the building’s fate was sealed. A firefighter held a megaphone up to his mouth and shouted to the fighters around the building.
“It’s too far gone,” said the firefighter, “let her burn. Make sure vehicles and equipment are clear, and spray the fire to contain it.”
Aunt Shannon, Uncle Edward, and Lindsay huddled in the back of the ambulance, holding on to each other as police officers and paddy wagons slowly cleared the scene. Larry finally left his command post and wandered over to the group in the ambulance, huddled in blankets.
“Where’s Steve?” he asked.
“He lost his stone. He went back to look for it. Isn’t he out here somewhere?” Lindsay replied, concerned.
“Not me.” Larry whipped through several sheets of scribbles on his notepad. “I thought he was with you.” He looked up from his pad and shouted to a constable who was coordinating the arrest efforts. “Hey, Cassandra,” Larry shouted. She nodded, quit her conversation with a firefighter, and strode over to where he was standing. “Have you seen anyone outside of the building since our last batch?”
Cassandra shook her head. “We’ve got everyone, haven’t we? Except for John Dee, the ringleader. We’ve identified all of the gang, except him.”
Larry’s face turned gray. “We’re missing someone. We’re missing a teenager named Steve. Is there anyone else wandering around, someone we’ve missed?”
Cassandra shook her head. “Nope.”
“Can we get someone to check the inside of the building again?” Larry pleaded.
“Not a chance. The fire-chief just told me that they’re just going to let the building burn. The fire is too far gone—it’s too dangerous to go back in there.”
“He lost his stone?” A look of panic twisted Aunt Shannon’s face. “He can’t get out without his stone! You can’t let him die. He has to be around here somewhere!”
“We’ve covered the ground completely. I don’t think a single person escaped from here on foot. Anyone we haven’t found has to be inside the building. I’m sorry,” Larry said quietly, his eyes focused on the ground. “Look at the building. There isn’t much more we can do.” As he spoke, a large section of the building collapsed into the flames.
Lindsay looked towards the flames. “Let’s look for him around the building. He might have got out from somewhere else—you might have missed him!” she said to Larry. He dropped his head.
“I’m sorry. I don’t think that’s possible,” he said quietly. “We keep careful counts of everyone in situations like this. If he wasn’t with you, and he’s not on my list, I’m certain he’s still inside the building.”
Lindsay nodded slowly.
“You mean he’s probably dead,” Lindsay said, as tears began to well in the rims of her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” Larry replied. “I wish there was something I could do.”
Aunt Shannon stood and began to take strong strides towards the building. “If you’re not going to do anything, Larry, I will,” she growled. Larry grabbed Aunt Shannon’s wrist. He held on to her hand until she collapsed on the ground, in tears. Then he helped her up and placed her in the back of the ambulance. Lindsay got in beside her and slid her arm around Aunt Shannon’s shoulders. Uncle Edward, strapped in his stretcher, let the tears roll freely down his dirty, tired face.
After several minutes of silence, Aunt Shannon spoke. “You’re right, Edward; alchemy is too dangerous. I hurt another person. I quit.” She sunk her head into her hands, as the fire raged in front of her.
A week and a few days later, once the firefighters had gone through most of the remains of the building, the police department issued a report saying that they had found human remains in the fire. The remains were burnt beyond recognition. The repo
rt concluded that Steve and John Dee had died in the fire.
Mr. Best flew back from his business trip to arrange a memorial service for his son. The only time available was in the afternoon of December 24th, Christmas Eve. Doug Best was nothing more than a ghost—shelled, empty, vacant.
“The body is sown in dishonor; it is raised in honor and glory,” said the pastor, quoting from the Bible. “It is sown in infirmity and weakness; it is resurrected in strength and endowed with power. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a supernatural body.”
The pastor paused and gazed around the room. The chapel was packed with students, friends, and family. This case had caused the biggest ruckus the town had seen for quite some time. The local paper told the story of Steve’s daring and courage, calling him a hero. Many turned out to pay tribute.
The chapel was decorated in a minimal way. In front of the pulpit, on a small table, stood a small vase. The vase contained a single red rose. The rose and the vase together represented Steve’s life, replacing Steve’s body—no one had found a trace of it in the charred remains of the building. They found human remains, but none that clearly belonged to Steve.
The pastor hovered over the vase as she spoke. “And when this perishable body puts on the imperishable, then shall be fulfilled the Scripture that says, Death is swallowed up in victory.”
The pastor’s words sounded hollow to most people in the room. After all, once a person dies, what are the chances of a person coming back to life? The service felt heavy and final.
The service concluded, and Lindsay, Aunt Shannon, Uncle Edward, and Mr. Best returned to the Best house to eat supper. No one spoke. Though the weather was bright and cheery, despair smothered the whole house.
No one realized that events during the fire had taken Steve on a much different course.
As the fire raged, and Steve attempted to lead any pursuers away from Lindsay and Uncle Edward, he found himself deep inside the building. A huge explosion burst through a part of the building, throwing him back several feet. He landed heavily on his back in the middle of ceiling tile, broke through the tile, and fell towards the floor. He landed on his heels and toppled backward against the wall, smashing a huge hole in it. Surprised to have survived the fall, he stood up and began to retrace his steps, looking for his Benu stone.