| |
SUZANNE AND JOE HAD moved to the rear of the laundry room and took cover behind the dryer. Joe had pulled his weapon but saw that Ridgeway and Rucker were in the way, and he couldn’t get a clear shot. Suzanne, on the other hand, was shooting from behind the dryer toward the area of the door, hitting mostly opposite wall. Joe grabbed Suzanne’s arm. “Hey, is this a gas dryer?”
“What the fuck? Are you looking to buy? I don’t think this house is structurally sound anymore.”
“I’m asking because you are shooting close to the rear of this dryer and if it's gas, I don’t want to go up in a ball of flames.”
“Oh, good point.” Suzanne took a look at the dryer and saw it was plugged into the wall. “Nope, electric,” she said, and shot several more rounds into the laundry room door.
Joe put up his hand for a cease-fire. “Quiet. I think whoever is on the other side moved on, is full of holes, or out of ammo.”
“Hey, you guys up front, check the door,” Suzanne shouted from her position behind the dryer.
Rucker and Ridgeway looked at each other and then back at Joe.
Joe glared at them and said, “Well, go ahead. You two are closest to the door. Which are you afraid of, an accountant, a lab rat, or a chemist? Nah, it couldn’t be that guy. Wait, the notes, he has the notes. Fuck!”
Rucker shrugged his shoulders and cautiously edged toward the door. He stood next to the doorframe and listened. When he sensed no one was outside the door, he attempted to open it and found it jammed. He waved Ridgeway over to help. “Hey, something is blocking the door, come help.”
Ridgeway sighed deeply. “Okay princess, let me show you how to open a door.” He grabbed the doorknob and yanked with all his might, but nothing happened. “Shit, this fucker is stuck tight. We’ll have to go out the other door. That last blast must’ve jammed this mother good and tight.”
Rucker and Ridgeway whirled around and headed for the door leading into the garage.
“What the hell is this gunk?” Suzanne asked as she and Joe were gathering together the formula into canvas bags they found in the laundry room. She was prodding a lumpy mass on a counter underneath a section of locked cabinets.
“Don’t worry about it. Let’s break into these locked cabinets and get the hell out of here.”
Suzanne was just about to smash open one of the cupboards when she realized there were a couple of bodies missing. She looked around and jabbed Joe in the ribs. “Hey, where did those other two nerds go?”
Joe grabbed onto the doorknob leading to the garage with one hand and pulled out his 9mm from his side holster with the other. “Not far, would be my guess.”
Suzanne had her rifle at the ready and was pointing it at the door.
Joe pushed the door and met with resistance. He heard people on the other side and fired a round through the door. “Damn, that barely scratched the paint, what is this thing made of?” Shouts and screams came in answer to his gunfire. Something thumped against the door as Joe stared at the dimple on the door his last bullet had made. Whoever was in there had evidently, jammed the door shut somehow. Joe motioned for Ridgeway and Rucker to help force the door open.
With the extra bodies, the door started to give way somewhat. As it inched open, Joe heard an engine start, and then felt a large thud against the remaining exit. The door and wall gave a large tremor as if a heavy object had just slammed against them.
“Fuck it. They blocked the door with a car,” Joe shouted as he fired several more rounds and made some more dimples in the door. “We’ll see how you like it when we blast our way through. I’ve been holding back and using restraint all day, but no more. When we come through, you are done. I’m finished with the lot of you.”
Suzanne turned to Joe placed her hand on his shoulder, looked into his eyes and cried, “Oh, Joe, where have you been all my life?” After gazing into Joe’s eyes for a few seconds, she bent down to rummage through her weapons bag.
Joe froze at Suzanne’s touch, then realized Rucker and Ridgeway were staring at him. He told them to dig out some C4 from his bag and place some on the door.
“Ten Seconds...”
“I’m hurrying, keep your shorts, on boss,” Rucker said, “Your bag were shoved behind the dryer, and it took a while for me to locate it and the C4.”
Joe whirled around, looking for the source of the voice. “That wasn’t me.”
“Well, it sure as hell wasn’t me,” Suzanne said as she rose to her feet, and turned in a semi-circle to look for the speaker. “I don’t give warnings.”
“Five Seconds...”
From inside one of the locked cabinets, a thunk was heard, followed by a clanking noise as if bottles were rattling together.
Joe was more concerned with an exit plan than looking for the sound of the scary, down to business voice. “C-4, where’s the fucking C-4?” Joe barked as he pushed past Suzanne who twirled around and looked for the source of the countdown and what may follow. She saw a vent by the baseboard stuffed some towels she found in the dryer in front of the vent, and then pushed the dryer in front of the vent. “You’re not going to gas us, motherfuckers.”
As she leaned against the dryer, she saw movement out of the corner of her eye. From above, sprinkler heads attached to the ceiling receded and little round grayish balls slightly smaller than the sprinkler heads dropped down from the sprinkler head holes. Suzanne didn’t have time to look at the orbs for very long because they split open and turned into blobs that stuck where they landed. Most of the balls rolled around on the cabinets onto which they’d dropped, but as more balls came out of the openings, they gathered speed and shot out further and further from the holes into the room.
Rucker froze. He knew he should be doing something, but he was mesmerized by the dropping blobs. He followed the trajectory of one that had just been expelled. It fell onto a laundry table across from him and then sort of split open and turned itself inside-out. This blob doubled in size and stuck to the counter. No more than a second or two passed before it exploded, taking out half a cabinet and its contents. Rucker hit the floor but still received table shrapnel in his hair and neck.
On top of this particular cupboard were several other balls. When one detonated, it made a convenient hole for the others, which then rolled inside the cabinet and exploded. The other cupboards in the room suffered similar fates. Splinters, laundry detergent, fabric softener, and cabinet debris blew through the small, enclosed space. Joe, Suzanne, Rucker, and Ridgeway tried to avoid the flying fragments but the area was too cramped and the blobs too numerous. Rucker belly-crawled toward the nearest wall, hoping to keep out of range of the erupting balls. He had been trying to pick cabinet splinters out of his neck and hands when he heard the sound of several objects drop onto the floor in front of him. He quickly stood up, backpedaled into the wall and momentarily became stuck on something. He pushed off from the wall, and kicked three balls that had landed in front of him toward the door leading into the main house, where they then exploded. Rucker caught Ridgeway’s eye, and Ridgeway gave him the thumbs-up. Rucker saw another ball fall from the ceiling. He turned and kicked the ball, in mid-air toward the door. When Rucker turned toward the blocked exit, Ridgeway saw six blobs on Rucker’s back.
“Hey man, you’ve got...” Ridgeway stepped forward to pull them off and then remembered the short time frame of the other explosions, and decided to get the hell out of the way.
Rucker looked at Ridgeway and saw his expression then his sudden retreat.
“I know that was close. I got those mothers out of the way just in time. Hey, what’s the matter with you?”
Ridgeway spun around and ducked down behind the washing machine as pieces of Rucker rained down upon him. He was just processing this when the cabinet above the washing machine erupted, and its contents spewed all over him. Ridgeway froze in horror for a moment and then realized that what had just spilled onto him were the various formulas Joe and Suzanne had been talking about earlier and sighed with relief. He looked around and attempted to avoid the popping blobs. As he stood up he tried to wipe the gunk out of his eyes. It suddenly seemed foggy in the room, and he realized vapor or something was coming from his clothing. Well, that’s kinda odd, thought Ridgeway. Everywhere the formula had landed, a strange mist rose.
As Ridgeway slowly stood up, he staggered and grabbed onto the washer for support. His legs barely supported him, and now he could hardly breathe. It was like sucking air through a straw. He looked around for those exploding turds, but his vision was going in and out of focus. He rubbed his eyes again. To his horror when he wiped his eyes with his right hand, he could feel skin had ripped away from his cheek and stuck to his knuckles like fat, pinkish boogers. One stubborn sliver of skin on his hand was still connected to his cheek like a piece of melted cheese. Horrified, he tried scraping the hanging skin off his knuckles with his left hand, but instead, he pulled the torn skin as well as all the skin and muscle off his right hand, exposing his knuckles down to the bone. Ridgeway stumbled backward against the wall and looked at his hand in horror. When he looked down, he heard a small pop and his vision blurred even further. He felt something slide down his face, and when he slowly reached up with his left hand, he touched a roundish slimy object resting on his cheek. From what sounded like far away Ridgeway heard a voice cry, “Oh God, your eye!” There was a loud buzzing in his ears and then silence. Ridgeway attempted to scream for Joe to help him, but everything came out as a gurgle. His mouth seemed to be suddenly full of teeth, and not where they had been seconds ago. They seemed to be swirling around in his mouth, with more than a little blood.
Forgetting that the door to the laundry room into the main house was blocked, Ridgeway moved jerkily toward the door, feeling his eyeball bounce against his cheek. He managed all of two steps when he heard a cracking sound and crashed to the floor. He attempted to move and felt bone against bone. “God, is that my hip?” he tried to say, but only a mass of blood and teeth poured out of his mouth.
Ridgeway attempted to drag himself under a laundry table to avoid the exploding blobs and foggy air, but when he pulled himself forward, an arm rolled in front of him. Fuck?! Is that mine or Rucker’s? Ridgeway’s last conscious thought as his organs shut down and his blood congealed was, Oh, thank God, that’s Rucker’s ugly, cheap ass watch, not mine.
Joe had been crouching under the laundry room sink and saw what had happened to Ridgeway in mere seconds after being hit with the liquid in the cabinets. Joe had been able to dodge the exploding blobs and had only suffered minor injury when the cupboards exploded, which left wooden splinters in his arms and neck. He grabbed a towel from the laundry sink and held it over his mouth when the air started to get foggy. Joe thought he could use the blobs to his advantage and blow a hole in the door leading into the garage. He saw some more towels hanging out of a partially destroyed cabinet. If he could trap some blobs onto a towel and fling it at the door, those bastards just might get him out of here.
Joe waited for a slight lull in the dropping of the balls and jumped up to grab several towels. Just as he was at cabinet height, two balls inside the adjacent cabinet that hadn’t been activated rolled into each other, turned into one fat blob, and blew apart the cabinet. This particular cupboard had been full of bottles in a secure box. This box had opened on all four sides when the countdown started. When the cupboard blew, the 950 ml bottles and their contents spewed out in all directions. Since Joe was directly in front of the cabinet, wood, glass, and liters of formula blasted him. He attempted to shield his face. However, he forgot about the bottles he and Suzanne had stuffed in canvas bags and set on top of the laundry table. Some of the blobs dropped on the bags and drove their contents upward into Joe’s neck and face. It was no longer a vapor that surrounded Joe but a tornado of swirling fog. The mini twister whirled around him and then spun off into the open washing machine, which rocked on its base for several seconds and then burst into several large missiles that drove themselves into the walls and ceiling of the laundry room.
Joe froze after being hit with the massive amount of liquid and dropped the towel. Then other things started to drop from Joe primarily skin and muscle. When the tornado cleared, Joe rocked back and forth a few times and split in two. His torso decided to fall forward and skidded slightly against the laundry table, finally coming to rest with his skull balanced against a cabinet that had stubbornly refused to fall apart. His body reclined on the laundry table, while his hips and legs decided to go backward. His butt ended up resting against the dryer as if he were casually leaning against the appliance.
Danny and Kevin were madly grabbing explosives and anything they thought could blow the overhead garage door while trying not to look at the monitor. When they heard the shouting and the horrible gurgling noises, they froze and turned to look at the screen. Humberto, Cathy, and Maggie, who were huddled in the far corner of the garage, also froze. Maggie, who had been confirmed many years ago, was madly doing the rosary in her head while trying not to throw up all over herself. She was also trying desperately not to picture what Danny and Kevin were seeing on the monitor.
Melissa now had joined Humberto, Cathy, and Maggie in the garage. She was no longer pointing her rifle at the door to the laundry room but trying to think of something that would drown out the sounds coming from the other side of the wall before her. She hoped to God it was an exceptionally reinforced wall and nothing was going to leak out of it.
Danny and Kevin looked on in horror as they saw skin slough off of Joe's face and hands before his torso and hips parted ways. After Joe’s body split and decided to explore different parts of the laundry room, several blobs fell on Joe’s chest, which then exploded and sent bits of Joe’s skeleton throughout the room.
“Did you see his face? He had no fucking face. It was there and then nothing. Oh God, oh God. It was like a snake shedding its skin.”
“Pull yourself together, Kev. Seriously? The fact that he split into two pieces didn’t bother you? How freaking disgusting was that? Freak out later. Now we have to get to our ladies.”
“Of course. We can talk about our damnation later. You go through the tunnel; I’ll go around to the outside.”
“Yes, that’s the plan. Why aren’t we moving?”
“I think we are in shock.” Kevin thought a moment and then punched Danny in the chest.
“Thank you. I’ll let you know when I’m with Maggie.”
Danny felt something tugging on his shirt. “What?!”
Kevin was pointing at Danny’s gas mask.
“Better wait until we are all out of this house, just to be safe.”
Kevin gave the thumbs up, and he and Danny both ran out of the room.
“Maggie, Maggie, Maggie! I’m coming through the tunnel now,” Danny yelled as he shot through a cabinet in the garage, scattering insecticide and car wax ahead of him. He rushed over to Maggie, Cathy, and Humberto. “Oh my God, baby, you look so pale. At least, I think you look pale. It’s hard to see through your mask. How is it? Is it bad?”
Cathy had found a blanket in the garage and covered up Maggie’s wound and a protruding piece of lawn equipment as well to prevent Maggie from going into shock. She also couldn’t look at the pickaxe anymore without fainting, vomiting or possibly both and really didn’t want to throw up in her mask. There had been several close calls already.
Maggie’s muffled voice came out of her mask. “I’m Okay, babe, considering the circumstances. I’m glad you and Kev are all right. Is everyone in the, umm, laundry room, are they you know..?”
“Folding laundry on a different plane of existence? Yes, babe. We didn’t have a choice. They had the notebooks, and various formulas, plus they only had one exit, through this door. We knew they wouldn’t breach it, merrily walk on by and wish you all a lovely day. If there had been another way, we would’ve tried it. Well, Kevin and I better try to blow this door. I just texted him to set up his charges and place them against the southwest corner of the garage. Melissa and I are going to do the same on this side.”