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Within forty minutes, enough deadly gas would escape to pack the furnace cavities and begin creeping upstairs to the main floors. By the time the rotten-egg odour became noticeable, both woman and child would be in a deep slumber.

Within seventy minutes, the slightest spark would be enough to turn the quaint two-storey, lemon yellow and white trim home into a blazing pyre. For each additional minute, the gas would build until the entire block was in danger of being reduced to an impressive crater.

The watcher looked once again at the plastic lighter in his hand. The continual motion of his thumb had worn away a patch of orange paint. Like all the others he had handled in his time, the colour underneath was a pale, almost translucent white.

With a sad smile, the watcher eased back into his chair, rolled the metal thumbwheel against the flint and watched as a tiny flame leapt from its plastic womb. In the silent darkness, he could hear the creature begin to scream.

3

Dr Zack Parker pulled his silver, four-door Mercedes E320 sedan to the kerb, his heart pumping so hard he could hear the blood rushing through his veins.

He wiped the back of his hands across his dripping forehead, and glanced out of the window at the cheerful yellow house across the street.

As he blinked away more nervous sweat, he saw a brief flicker of life from the upstairs bedroom. It could have been the shadow of a lace curtain fluttering in the night breeze, but Zack was sure he had seen the soft, dark skin of his daughter framing the prettiest little mouth he had ever kissed.

The lips were turned up in a smile.

As Zack threw open the car door, his cellphone rang.

No. Please, no
, he whispered to himself.

The phone continued to ring as he stood frozen in
the middle of the road, eyes locked on the bedroom window and the unmoving darkness beyond.

With building dread, he flipped open the phone and lifted it to his ear.

‘Change of plans,’ said the distorted voice.

‘Nooooooo!’

Zack’s protest became an agonized wail as he began to run, leather soles slapping tarmac, hands outstretched. The names of the two people he loved most in the world erupted from his throat.

His eyes were blurred with tears when the force of the blast hit him like a locomotive.

Zack was lifted off his feet and tossed back the way he had come. His limbs flailed and his lungs screamed from sudden decompression. He felt his feet skim the top of his sedan before his body arced down, feet lifting higher, his head and shoulders dipping towards the ground.

His solid German-made car rocked against the blast, but its heavy chassis kept its wheels firmly on the ground. The calm pocket of dead air behind the Mercedes lacked the force to hold Zack aloft and he crumpled onto a green lawn, as all around him car alarms began to howl.

Where the yellow house had stood, a column of flame licked the sky.

Lying on his back, winded, bloody and bruised, Zack watched as a giant cloud of fiery debris began to fall like hell’s own rain.

Let it come
, Zack thought as his mind retreated into a silent darkness so deep that he prayed to stay there.
Let it come
.

4

Crunch!

Sam White bit down on a tuna and potato-chip sandwich and admired the sixty-inch, high-definition, widescreen plasma television in the window of the Sony store. The television wasn’t switched on as the store was closed and the mall long emptied of its customers.

Even switched off, the screen was impressive: thin, sleek and with a sticker price greater than anything Sam could take home in a month. Hell, two months with no overtime.

Sam finished his sandwich and licked his fingers before topping up his plastic mug with coffee from a new red thermos emblazoned with the winking mascot of the Portland Beavers. With a smile, he dug back into his brown paper lunch bag and produced a large, misshaped oatmeal cookie. Baked by his daughter, the cookie was overloaded with chunks of chopped Mars Bar. It was a recipe he had taught her when she
first started taking an interest in the kitchen.

Sam dunked the cookie in his coffee and sucked the melting mess into his mouth just as his two-way radio squawked to life.

‘Come in, Sam. You there? Over.’

Sam rolled his eyes at the sound of Kenneth Baker’s tremulous voice. The twenty-two-year-old was studying to be a criminal psychologist at the local university, but Sam had serious doubts he would ever make it to graduation.

Sam unclipped the radio from his belt, held it to the side of his mouth while he finished chewing, then pressed the transmit button.

‘What’s up, Ken?’

‘Uh, nothing much. What you doing? Over.’

Sam chuckled.

‘Just having a bite to eat and admiring this TV I’ll never afford.’

‘Cool. Hey, I saw your commercial this afternoon on the sports channel. You were great. Over.’

Sam groaned.

‘I transform into a giant rodent, Ken. Not exactly Oscar-winning material.’

‘Uh, no, but . . . uh, I thought you were very convincing. Over.’

‘Thanks, Ken, I appreciate it. Gotta keep my hand in, you know?’

‘Sure, sure. Lots of actors get discovered doing commercials, don’t they? Over.’

‘Yeah,’ Sam said. ‘Me and Jodie Foster, kid.’

‘Jodie Foster did commercials? Over.’

‘When she was two she starred in a spot for Coppertone. Eleven years later she was nominated for an Oscar.’

‘Oh, wow. Uh, I didn’t know that. Over.’

‘Yep.’ Sam laughed. ‘But then, she’s Jodie Foster and I’m playing the freakin’ Portland Beaver.’

‘Uh, but you did it well, Sam. You had me laughing, anyway. Oh, and I burned it on disc for you. I’ll give it to you later, OK. Might be good for your résumé. Show you in action, you know? Over.’

Sam paused, touched by the support of his co-worker and embarrassed by his own ingratitude.

‘That’s really thoughtful, Ken. I don’t think my daughter has seen it yet. That’ll be nice to show her.’

‘No problem. I just thought it was so cool seeing you on TV. I showed my mom, too, and she was thrilled. I heard her bragging to the neighbours that I was working with a famous actor. Over.’

Sam laughed again. ‘Why don’t you do your rounds, Ken? Check all the doors. We’ll meet up later for coffee.’

‘Yeah, OK, sure. Over.’

Sam swallowed the last mouthful of coffee and screwed the plastic cup on top of his thermos. As he walked to the trashcan to dump his empty sandwich bags, he caught himself reflected in the dark store windows.

The security guard’s uniform – crisp black
trousers, light blue shirt with darker blue accents on the pocket flaps and shoulder epaulettes, rugged black belt and holster with gun, flashlight, aerosol mace and expandable baton – was designed to mirror the Portland City police. That illusion was intended to instil fear in shoplifters and respect in the regular shoppers.

In theory, anyway.

Over the last few years, the daytime security guards’ role had changed from a babysitting service for the stores’ merchandise to the more pro-active chore of making sure the customers felt safe. That meant working in tandem with local authorities to crack down on drug dealers, pimps out to recruit naive schoolgirls, hopped-up muggers in need of a quick fix, plus patrolling the parking lot for opportunistic car thieves.

The overnight shift, however, was still just glorified babysitting. And that’s exactly the way Sam liked it. As a mall sitter, he didn’t have to think too much, and more importantly, he didn’t have to care.

As he walked the long, lonely halls, checking doors and sipping coffee, he could allow his mind to ponder the screenplay he was going to write one day. He often imagined himself pulling a Stallone and telling the major studios they could only produce the movie if he got to star.

Unlike
Rocky
, however, Sam still hadn’t come up with a sure-fire plot that would make moneylenders salivate.

His two-way radio crackled again.

‘Uh, Sam, you there? Over.’

‘Yeah, Ken. What’s up?’

‘I heard something. Over.’

Sam sighed. The kid was so nervous, he would jump a mile at the sound of a mouse fart. And everyone knew vermin in the Pacific North-west were never that rude. This wasn’t L.A., after all.

‘What did you hear?’

‘Err, voices, I think, and a muffled bang on the side door behind the jeweller’s. Over.’

‘Did you check it out?’

‘Yeah, the door wasn’t locked. I must have missed it on my first pass. I think someone’s inside. Over.’

Sam dropped his trash in the circular bin and brushed the cookie and potato-chip crumbs off his shirt.

‘Stay where you are, Ken. I’ll be right there.’

He walked at a steady pace across the mall, past the food court and down the frozen steel teeth of the sleeping escalator. On the ground floor, he headed up the hallway towards the public washrooms and through the
Authorized Personnel Only
doors to the labyrinth of corridors and storage bays beyond.

He found Ken biting his nails beside a set of double doors that led out to the rear parking lot. Even in his blue-and-black uniform, Ken looked exactly like what he was: a geeky, knob-kneed kid who had just enough upper-body strength to
wrestle an eight-year-old girl to the ground. If she happened to be on Ritalin, so much the better.

Ken had also been cursed with a bout of late-blooming acne that, despite a vigorous cleansing routine, turned his cheeks, forehead and chin into a lunar landscape of shiny pink pits. When you combined this with his general geekiness, Sam was amazed at how the kid still managed such a positive outlook on life.

He knew the credit must belong with Ken’s loving mother who always put sweet little notes (which Ken was never embarrassed about reading aloud) in his bagged lunches. She was so thoughtful it wasn’t unusual for her to send along extra treats for Sam.

As he approached his partner, Sam was relieved to see that Ken hadn’t unclipped his company issued revolver from its holster on his hip.

‘I stayed where I was, Sam.’

‘Just like we practised.’

Ken’s smile grew wider. ‘That’s right.’

‘So what’s next?’ Sam encouraged. He knew that if Ken could concentrate on all the things they had taught him, he was less likely to collapse to the floor and curl into a foetal position.

‘We confirm there’s an intruder, secure the area, and then call the police.’

‘Excellent. Now, where did you hear the voices?’

Ken pointed down the short, dimly lit corridor that turned sharply behind the jewellery store.

‘I’ll take point,’ said Sam. ‘Stay close behind, and keep your weapon holstered. Do you understand?’

Ken nodded and gulped.

Sam moved quickly and quietly down the corridor, stopping at the corner to regulate his breathing before darting his head out to take a quick peek beyond. The next corridor was empty, too, but Sam caught a ripple of sound that didn’t belong.

‘There’s someone here,’ Sam whispered. ‘But we need to make sure it’s not one of the store owners. Someone might have forgotten to tell us they planned a late-night stock-take.’

Ken reached for his weapon.

‘Leave it,’ Sam said sharply. ‘I don’t care what kind of training the company gave you, this isn’t the shooting range. We don’t use our weapons, OK?’

‘But the manual says—’

‘Fuck the manual, Ken. We’re not paid nearly enough to put our lives on the line for some overpriced junk. If the intruder has a weapon, we back away and let the cops handle it. OK?’

Ken nodded, but still looked unsure.

Sam grabbed him by the shoulders.

‘You have to be with me on this one. More security guards lose their lives from friendly fire than anything else. That’s because we don’t have the practical training to really know what the fuck we’re doing. We get paid shit wages because our
job is to eat sandwiches, drink coffee and stop the bums from sneaking in and using the storage closets as personal drug dens and toilets. So keep it holstered or go home right now.’

Ken sighed his agreement.

‘Good. Now wait here while I check the situation.’

Leaving Ken at the corner, Sam moved cautiously down the hallway, past the undisturbed rear entrance to the jewellery store, and stopped outside the sliding door that led to
The Candy Factory
. The latch on the door was broken.

Sam pressed his ear to the door and heard soft grunting noises beyond. Nervous sweat began to bead on his forehead as he unsnapped his baton and slid open the door.

In the darkness, the store’s gaily coloured tubes of bulk candy – jawbreakers, boiled sweets, Licorice Allsorts, gummy soothers and jelly beans in 1,001 flavours – looked sadly plain. The grinning plastic clowns and cuddly bear masks that protruded from the ceiling and walls had a creepy, haunted-house quality.

Sam moved slowly and carefully to the cash register and looked around. The register hadn’t been disturbed. He stood listening, his right hand gripping the metal baton by his side.

A rustle of plastic wrap whispered from beyond a large metal rack filled with brightly coloured gumballs.

Sam crept to the far side of the rack. The
rustling had turned to wet slurping and Sam suddenly wondered if, instead of a burglar, he was about to catch some creepy store manager giving a naive new employee the unauthorized after-hours tour.

Click!

Sam froze at the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked.

Then the candy rack exploded – packets of gumballs, Pez dispensers and gummy spiders flew around him like sugared shrapnel.

Startled, Sam stumbled backwards, stepped on a runaway cluster of jawbreakers and lost his balance. As he crashed into the overstocked candy shelves, two teenagers launched themselves through the cloud of confusion, their pockets and cheeks stuffed with sweets. Grinning, teeth coated a raspberry red, one of the boys turned, his hands clutching a highly sophisticated gun.

Sam recognized the weapon’s silhouette as a variant of the Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine-gun. With a retractable stock and its barrel threaded for a silencer, it was the type of gun favoured by the US Navy and anyone else who needed to fire 800 lethal rounds per minute. To enhance its accuracy, the teen had attached a sophisticated laser sight.