Duck Boy (25 page)

Steve tried to swallow the lump in his throat. “I’m not liking the sound of
what you’re saying. You want me to get into the other part of the building and
try and find Uncle Edward and Lindsay?”

“You’re the one who wants to stay. What needs to be done should be done by
professionals, so quit and come home.”

Steve sighed and thought for a moment. “I’m going to do it. I need to do
this.”

“You’re insane. Don’t do this.”

“I’ve got to. I’m staying,” Steve declared quietly.

Silence as Larry fumbled around for a moment. “The other difficulty we have
is this: we have to muster a group of police officers to swoop in and back you
up. That means I need to make a few phone calls and drive up there myself. So
I’ve got to hang up for a while. I can reach you on that cell phone you have,
and I’ll contact you when we’re all ready to go. It’ll probably be a couple of
hours to get everything together. I’ll give you a call and you can tell me
what’s going on inside the building. We’ll work out a plan from there. Got it?”

“Got it,” Steve whispered.

“Please do me a favor, do yourself a favor. Just hide and take it easy until
I get back to you, all right?”

“Sure.” Steve listened to the phone on the other end click and go dead. As
the sound died away in the cell phone’s speaker, Steve’s heart floundered.

These next few hours are going to be agony.

His ears hummed with silence as he listened for sounds of a human presence.

That bumping sound must have been a mouse or a rat or
something.

For a few minutes, Steve weighed the pros and cons of waiting against a
little exploration. But his backpack brought him some confidence.

Even if they catch me, I could always disappear with my
stone.

And with this thought, he felt the grip of fear loosen a little.

He scanned the warehouse through the dirt-caked windows again. He couldn’t
see anyone or anything. He waited, just to be safe. Nothing.

After another fifteen-minute eternity, he decided to explore the warehouse.

I can’t handle waiting around like this.

He stood and tiptoed to the shipping office’s door, opened it, and scanned
the space. His breath wafted like little ghosts around his head.

The door to the rest of the building—I need to find it.

He worked his way up the side of the warehouse closest to the office wing he
had seen outside. He loosened his coat, as nerves warmed his body to a near
boil.

There has to be some kind of entrance or some kind of
sign to help me find it.

As he walked towards a far door he heard a burst of sound, like footsteps
running towards him just to his right side. Steve froze in his shoes and forced
himself to turn and look. A frightened pigeon clacked away from a small cloud
of frozen dust on the floor, to find the safer heights of the warehouse.

Steve let out a white, smoky breath and continued.

As for an entrance into the administrative wing of the building, there was
one solid possibility. A set of heavy metal double doors with small glass
windows, located in the middle of the warehouse’s inside wall, seemed to guard
the entrance to some kind of a hallway.

He stalled for a minute as he remembered the two small clocks joined by a
chain in his backpack. He slid the bag partway off his back, and put one hand
in carefully and fished around carefully for the alarm clock. When he found it
he pulled it out, and put it into his other hand. Then he put his hand back
into his bag, pawing around for his plaque. When he found it, he thought the
transformative words, and the clock burst into a ball of light, falling from
his hand to the floor. A small tornado of dust pulled from the floor circled
him. And in the settling dust, he reached down and pulled a shimmering set of
handcuffs from the dirt. He placed them in the backpack carefully, so as not to
damage his plaque. Then he gently swung the pack onto his shoulders.

The cuffs might come in handy.

Steve crept close to the doors. The windows were dark. For a minute or two
he balled up his courage, then used it to take a look through the small pane of
glass in the left door.

The hallway was dark, so Steve couldn’t tell if it led into the other part
of the building. It didn’t look promising. He stepped back and looked around
the warehouse carefully again. Towards the far end of the warehouse there was a
sign that read “Manager,” with an arrow underneath pointing to a single metal
door blocking the entrance to another hallway. The door had a long narrow
window, but he couldn’t see through it.

He looked around the walls of the warehouse for any other doors that seemed
as though they might do the job. The double doors seemed like a more likely
entrance to the rest of the building. Steve retraced his path to the double
doors. His eyes raked over the ground nearest the door looking for fresh
footprints. The arc of a door inscribed in the dust indicated that one of the
doors had been opened fairly recently. Clusters of footprints surrounded the
entrance, but it was difficult to tell if they were recent. As he toured
another possible entrance, a single door at the far end of the same wall, he
noted fewer footprints around the door’s foot and a sheen of dust resting on
the surface of the door, something he hadn’t seen on the other door. The set of
double doors looked like the best option, so he took up his position next to
them again.

Steve took a breath and forced himself to look again through the small glass
window in the door. No one seemed to be in the hallway.

With the heel of his hand, Steve scrubbed the glass in one of the windows and
stared through the door-glass one more time. No one. He slid his hand across
the door lock and thought the transforming words while he touched the plaque
with his other hand. Bright light focused in the door lock and radiated into a
fierce blast of light that shot through the warehouse and up the hallway.

Once Steve recognized the face of a clock where the lock had been, he ducked
around the corner and hid in a crevice in the warehouse wall, waiting for some
kind of reaction. The light was so bright that anyone wandering close by would have
noticed the flash.

Steve waited another while, listening carefully for any kind of sound.
Cautiously, Steve returned to the double doors, opened one, and slipped inside.
The hallway before him looked deserted. Fresh footprints dotted the thick layer
of dust.

No heat.

Maybe the entire place is empty except for a security guard. Maybe I saw
a security guard.

Steve glanced towards the door. He thought for a moment, and then touched
the lock that had transformed into a clock. He touched the plaque in his pack
and thought the transforming sequence again. The clock in the door looked
rather odd and would arouse suspicion, so Steve changed it back in case someone
came down this way looking for things out of order.

About thirty feet beyond Steve, the hallway veered to the left. Steve crept
up the hallway to a darkened door, and sank into the door’s recess. He waited,
listening. He heard nothing for several minutes. And then a gentle thumping
sound.

It seemed remote, so Steve stepped back into the hallway and continued up to
the corner of the building.

Then he heard voices, the voices of men talking as they walked. The voices
were faint and their feet tick-tacked over the floor in some far-off place. The
voices seemed to be getting closer. Steve retreated to the darkened doorway and
listened. The voices and steps grew louder.

Steve tried the door latch. It opened easily. Darkness greeted him.

He stepped through and closed it behind him. A musty, odd scent irritated
his nostrils. He pressed his ear to the door and listened as a muddy slur of
voices and tick-tacking footsteps approached. Steve couldn’t make out the
words; whatever they were saying sounded like another language. He heard the
voices pass and walk around the corner. The two jabbered as they completed some
task, then passed Steve’s hiding spot again. He waited until the silence
returned.

Weird smell.

The smell, though, seemed somehow familiar. As the smell wafted into his
thoughts, he remembered smelling the same thing at school in his biology class.

Formaldehyde.

His inquisitive nature got the best of him, and he switched on the light.
Fluorescent lights flickered before they buzzed into a solid white.

The room was used for storage. Jars filled with liquid lined every shelf,
covering every wall. Two huge rows of shelves divided the interior of the room
into thirds. He stifled the simultaneous urge to scream and throw up.

The jars contained pieces of human bodies. A human heart, pickled in a jar
above him. A brain floating in a large glass jar. He turned to scan the room.
His eye caught a particularly gruesome jar displaying a head severed just below
the neck, eyes removed. Another jar held a hand with no skin covering the bone
and muscle. The jar beside that one housed a human fetus. Steve stopped looking
so closely and scanned the rest of the room. Spare parts.

Got to get out of here.

He switched the light off. Cracked the door. Listening. Silence. He stepped
through the door and closed it silently behind him. He edged along the wall of
the hallway, until he met another set of double doors with big windows. This
time the windows were clean, and so was the floor on the other side. The
hallway empty.

He didn’t want to step through those doors, but he knew he had to. He
thumbed the latch on the handle—it opened easily. He pulled the door open and
stepped onto the clean, checkered linoleum.

Chapter 20

The hallway on the other side of the doors was heated. Steve instantly felt
as though he had caught fire.

He crept along the wall of the hallway looking for an open door. He tried
the door and found his way into a huge meeting room. A giant table took up most
of the room, leaving space for only a few chairs around its edge.

Not much of a place to hide.

He closed the door and slunk further up the hall. He found another unlocked
door. The inside was dark, but with the hallway lights he could make out some
shelving loaded with stores. A janitor closet, walls of shelves, filled with
cleaning supplies and equipment. Approaching steps. He closed the door behind
him and dug in behind a couple of large boxes on a bottom shelf.

A hand tried the doorknob, opened the door, and knuckled the light on. A
large, stubby pair of hands reached for a mop and bucket.

A man.

The hands guided the bucket out in front of a sink and dropped a hose into
it. The man muttered under his breath bitterly, in another language. He poured
some kind of liquid into the bucket and turned a tap, splashing water into the
mop bucket. A few pine-scented minutes later, he turned the tap off and guided
the mop and bucket out of the closet. Light off. Off, down the hall. Steve
watched the man leave without closing the door.

He waited until the sound of the rolling mop bucket wheels had faded. He
moved the boxes aside carefully and slipped into the hallway. Following the
direction that the man and the mop had taken, he moved further up the hallway.
He crinkled his nose as a waft of some strange chemical drifted past. He could
hear sounds of activity behind some of the walls and doors he passed.

A door on his left looked unused. A big sign beside the door read “Sterile
Laboratory.” The room was dark, but he could still make out beakers, test
tubes, tubing, and funnels. Steve cupped his hand to his ear and pressed it
against the door glass. Silence. He tried to open the door. Locked. He touched
the lock and grabbed his stone.

The lock burst into a ball of light as it transformed into a clock. Steve
pushed open the door. Once he was inside, he touched the clock, transforming it
back into a lock. Inside the first door there was a second door. The door read
“Warning: Sterile Area. Scrub down and change to proper attire before
entering.” Steve pushed open the second door and entered the room. Beakers,
test tubes, and machines lay around workbenches, as if someone had just gone
for a lunch break, laying down his or her tools, leaving the work still spread out.
Plastic covered everything. One bench had several ceramic dishes that looked as
though they’d been heated to an unearthly temperature. The material inside the
dishes was burnt beyond all recognition.

The contents of the ceramic dishes looked similar to the pictures he had
seen in Aunt Shannon’s alchemy book. Someone was trying to make a Benu stone
the old-fashioned way—by burning substances until they were completely pure.
Steve walked around the lab, being careful not to disturb any of the
work-in-progress.