I used the ladder first, trying to slide down the rails like I’d seen the hero do in a ton of movies.
Didn’t work.
I did manage to burn my palms and get rust in my eye though.
Blinking rapidly, I waited at the base of the ladder for Nami and Jim to come down.
Main Street had cleared in front of the barbershop, and I thought that now was our best chance to get over to the fire station. It would have been a little easier if I hadn’t almost blinded myself with rust first.
“Dipshit.” Nami hopped to the alley floor and sneered at me. “That’s what you get for trying to be Billy Badass. Couldn’t just go down the ladder like a normal person, right?”
Jim’s face was covered in sweat as he jumped from the third rung and landed beside us. His cheeks had gone pale, eyes tired and droopy. He struck me as a man’s man, and I doubted he wanted to let us know how badly his burns were hurting, but it was obvious.
The fact that he’d made it this long showed how tough he was.
“Across the street, through the next alley, and we’re there.” Jim trotted past me. “I want to get inside before the gas starts coming down.”
I couldn’t disagree with that.
We paused at the mouth of the alley and checked both ways.
Several hundred people were in front of the courthouse. They stood just outside of the range of my telepathy, which was the only thing that kept me going. If we were any closer, I’d have been a raving lunatic by now.
The streets were basically clear since most of the townsfolk had decided to congregate for a good old-fashioned mass murder.
Jim waved us after him as he broke from the alley and sprinted across the street. He cut into the next alley without slowing or even looking back at us.
Nami ran in front of me, her odd gait slowing us down. We moved at a pace barely above a fast walk. I could have run ahead, but I wanted to keep everything in front of me. If something went down, I needed to see it coming.
The next alley had a short, three-foot high, chain-link fence closing it off. A gate in the middle was open, and Nami and I ran right through it. I’d never seen a fence in an alley that low before and guessed that it was probably meant to keep dogs inside.
The gate at the other end of the alley was closed, chains securing it in place.
Jim put his hand on the top and hopped over it.
Nami had to climb it like it stood twice as high. She struggled to toss her leg over the top.
“Here, Short Round.” I reached for her. “I’ll pick you up and put you on the other side.”
“You’ll be pissing blood for a month if you touch me,” she grunted as she teetered on the top of the fence. She got her other leg over the top and dropped a whopping eighteen inches to the pavement.
I hopped over it with ease. “And that’s how it’s done.”
Nami flipped me the bird over her shoulder as she followed Jim to the next building.
Jim stopped at a door with a numerical keypad beside it. “Let’s see if they’ve changed the number since I quit.” He punched in a few digits, and the lock clicked open. “Figured.”
“They aren’t too worried about security, I see.” Nami looked up at me. “They must not have known a negro was coming to town.”
I sighed. “Let it go already. They want to eat your face and you’re worried about the names they’re calling you.”
Jim ignored us, as usual, and pushed the door open. “There’s a kitchen just inside this door and then a banquet hall. The garage is after that. The bay doors open to Main Street.”
“Can they see the front of the place from the courthouse?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“Crap.”
“Yeah.”
“Keep the lights off then.” I gestured for them to go in first with a wave of my hand. “Age before beauty.”
Jim grunted and went inside.
Nami stood there for a second. “You’re older than me and I look like I’m twelve. Your insults are slipping, Gigantor.”
“I have a lot on my mind.”
“And it’s such a small mind too.” Nami stepped into the darkness beyond, leaving me alone in the alley, wondering how I managed to get involved with such a ragtag group of people.
The clatter of falling pots came from inside.
“Goddamn it fuck shit,” Nami mumbled.
I went in after her, pulling the door shut behind me. “Just alert the whole neighborhood that we’re here.”
Darkness swallowed most of the kitchen, only a small nightlight above a stainless-steel counter gave us any illumination at all. Jim’s silhouette moved through the door on the other side of the room.
He moved fast and didn’t seem too concerned about us anymore.
Nami and I worked our way through the kitchen and stumbled into the banquet hall. Sunlight spilled in through a dozen windows. We jogged after Jim and caught up to him on the far side of the room.
“I’ve never been in a fire hall before.” Nami looked around. “Kind of sucks.”
“You suck.” I grabbed the handle of the next door and pulled it open. “Are there any spare keys to the trucks in here? We should have them in the cab with us, just in case some psycho comes in here and finds us.” I tapped my temple and winked at Nami. “Always have a plan B, Short Round.”
“You’re so lame.”
Jim went through the door. “The chief keeps extra keys in his locker.”
We walked into the dimly lit garage. Three large, bay doors stood in front of the fire trucks, light seeping into long, narrow windows in the middle of them.
Jim pointed to our left. “The lockers are on that wall. The chief’s locker is,” Jim’s brow furrowed, “number four, I think.” He looked at the trucks. “Get the key for tanker number two. That’s the one in the front. I’ll get three masks out and meet you up there.”
“On it.” I headed left as he went to the right.
Nami came up behind me. “Are you sure this is going to work?”
“Nope. There’s no telling what these masks are rated for.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”
Thirty lockers or so lined the far wall. Some had padlocks on them, though most didn’t.
Number four, of course, did.
A toolbox sat in the corner, a few feet away. I found a ballpeen hammer in one of the drawers and returned to the locker. I’d never actually tried to break apart a lock like that before, and I had no idea what to expect.
Turns out that lock was a hell of a lot stronger than the locker it was securing.
Three big strikes with the hammer and the metal handle of the locker broke loose, sending the lock clattering to the floor. The door was dented and misshapen from the hammer strikes, and I had to yank on it to get it open.
A pegboard was fastened to the back wall of the locker with little hooks screwed into it. Keys dangled from the hooks. I found the key for tanker number two and pulled it free.
“This is going too smoothly,” Nami said. “We’ve been getting pounded sans lube all morning. This is just too easy.”
I’d been thinking the same thing, but I hoped that even an old warhorse like me could get lucky every now and then.
And by old, I meant awesome.
And by warhorse, I meant unstoppable juggernaut.
Jim already had put a few gas masks on the garage floor by the driver’s side of the tanker truck. He was carrying two oxygen tanks over when we got there. “Don’t know if we’ll need these or not, but I could only find two. Got three masks though.”
“You guys use the tanks. I’ll stick to the mask.” I opened driver’s door and tossed the masks inside.
Guilt had started to creep into my mind again. I had a feeling that this little plan of ours would work and that we’d be safe from whatever gas Nelson was about to dump on the town. But I couldn’t reconcile the idea of me hiding in a truck while all of those people outside were being harvested like wheat.
How many of them would die before the government finally got here? Could I save any of them? I forced myself to keep going with the plan. Running outside and getting myself killed wouldn’t help anyone.
Jim pulled himself into the cab of the truck first. I lifted the tanks to him, and he placed both on the floor under the glove compartment. Nami climbed in second, struggling to get up the side of the truck.
I grabbed a small handrail bolted onto the side of the cab and was about to haul myself up and in when I heard screams outside. I paused beside the door, listening.
“What is it?” Nami asked.
“You hear that? Sounds like a bunch of people screaming.” I let go of the rail and walked around the front of the truck.
“No.” Nami scooted behind the wheel. She cocked her ear toward the door. “Wait… is that a bunch of kids?”
“I think so.”
Jim opened his door and listened, his face tightening when he heard the same thing.
The windows in the large bay doors were too high for me to see out of, so I hopped onto the heavy bumper of the truck like a ninja and then leaned forward. What I saw made me let out a string of curses, Nami-style.
A yellow school bus slowly rolled down the street toward us. Whoever sat behind the wheel was struggling to steer it around a handful of wrecked vehicles.
All the windows were open.
Several kids were hanging their heads outside, screaming for help.
The bus inched closer, weaving around an extended-cab truck that had t-boned a minivan. They drove onto the sidewalk and hit a parking meter, showering the concrete with change.
There was little doubt where the driver was taking those kids.
I looked back at Nami. “Grab your gas masks. We’re going outside right now.”
“What is it?”
“They’re taking a bus full of kids to the courthouse.”