The Sunshine Dame of Doom (16 page)

“Are you sure this is the shaft? Man, those flashlights don’t help much!”

Sounds of heavy steps grew louder in the near distance.

“Better make up your mind, bro. We’re about to have some company.”

“I recognize this metallic reek. Some heavy stuff went through here before, most likely on a conveyor belt. Follow me.”

“Right on.” Vince signaled to the rest of the group, and one by one the message went through.

They were on the move again. And the shaft was even narrower than they thought.

“Damn it!” Hector cursed. “I might consider losing some weight when we’re out of here.” He spoke, sucking his bellybutton as much as he could.

“You might also consider becoming a little gentler.”

“This is beyond me.”

The deeper they went into the aisle, the hotter it got. The power shut down brought about by Transmission also turned off the ventilation system.

“Man, this is starting to look a lot like Palm Beach.” Vincent observed.

“Do not stop everybody!” Hector ordered the group. He then whispered to his brother “We still have a long way to go.” They were both sweating a lot.

Breathable air was running thin. An older man in the rear fell on his knees. Mate came to his aide.

“Are you alright?”

“Yes, I just need a second to catch my breath.”

He managed to stand up, with the help of Clark and Natasha.

“Thanks guys. I’m good to go.”

However, loud steps other than theirs echoed again through the awfully closed environment.

“Stop, stop, stop!” Hector commanded, trying to keep his voice low but audible.

That sudden halt of the front squad almost caused the entire group to fall on each other like a domino.

“It sounds like those steps are all over us!” Hector noticed. “Where are they? Did they find us?”

“Not yet, but we might have a little problem.” Vince carefully directed his flashlight beam upwards.

There was a grid on the ceiling through which it was possible to see the boots of the guards running on the upper floor. Obviously, the soldiers would also be able to see the fugitives downstairs, if they pointed their flashlights at the grids by their feet.

“Don’t anybody make a sound…” Hector said.

But the heat was unbearable, not to mention the excess of carbon dioxide produced by their own respiratory systems. And they were all panting hardly.

The steps silenced on the upper floor. One man coughed.

“Damn it!”

They waited a little more.

“I guess we’re good to go now.” Vince suggested.

“Not yet.”

“Man, it’s really hot in here.”

“There might still be one or two of them up there.”

“Our brains are too deprived of oxygen already.” Aaron alerted, wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. “We need to go now.”

“Alright” Hector gasped. “We should have used the main corridors.”

“Those men upstairs are the proof we did the right thing by coming through here.”

And they walked and walked as best as they could, but most of the group was tired and dizzy. The shaft seemed to never end.

“Hey bro, look at that.” Vince gasped with all breath he had left.

There were natural light visible from a curve up ahead.

“Man, I’m glad to see this!” Hector cheered. “I think we made it.”

He ordered the group to stop again. He and Vince went to the curve and took a peek.

“It’s an exit, yes!” Hector breathed in relief. “And it seems the coast is clear. Let’s go real slow.”

One by one, the whole group left the narrow shaft, finding ways to squeeze in that new section of the plant. Nobody knew how long they had been walking. The crossing took a lot longer than expected. The first sunlight of morning was already invading the place.

Some workers gazed at the big glass windows above, like children in an amusement park. It had been long since they last saw the world outside.

“Alright, let’s take five. The air is way fresher in here.”

They all sat down on the floor, sweating and panting a lot.

“Do you know where to go from here, bro?”

“I have an idea. We’re close. If I remember those layouts, we have to follow those windows… that way.”

“Cool.”

Five minutes later, they continued with Hector taking the lead. They found the warehouse, former game room, currently weapons shop. Two men in suits with machine guns were guarding the door.

“What we do now?”

“We wait”.

After ten minutes or so, a man in military outfit came. The ones in suits made room for him. He unlocked the door.

“Alright” Hector whispered. “Mate, Aaron, commence operation
old ladies’ yak
.”

Aaron and Clark started yelling at each other as loud as they could manage:

“You let them escape, you blundering incompetent!”

“No, you let them escape, you bumbling fool!”

“You called me what?”

“No, you called me what?”

“What the heck!” The men in suits went to their position, to be easily subdued by twenty-three men and women.

The lonely soldier also came out of the room with pistol in hand, but was also overwhelmed by the remaining twelve.

The fugitives entered the warehouse. There was more than enough room for everybody.

“Sweet!” Vince said. “Yo Hec, get a load of this! Arnold Schwarzenegger would reach sexual climax in here!”

“Good. Arm yourselves and grab all explosives and ammunition you can carry.”

“Here you go, milady, some hair-dryers for you.” Vince handed two guns to Maria, together with magazines.

“Thanks.” She loaded them with impressive ability.

“You do know your way around hair-dryers!”

“Some customers got a little rough sometimes.”

Hector took a semiautomatic machine gun and loaded it. He also found a shelf full of walkie-talkies.

“Let’s see, frequency, frequency… Hey Marcellus, are you still with us, over?”

“Hector, my man!” came the voice over the radio. “I’m glad you made it, over!”

“Don’t pop the champagne just yet. We know they’re looking for us and they are pissed. Now, if you could please tell us how to get out of here…”

But he was interrupted by heavy machine gun fire. Bullets crossed the air all around.

“Oh God!” Hector screamed.

“They found us!”

“Get down, get down!”

“Return fire, goddamn it!”

Soldiers came into the room firing weapons and splitting in smaller details to flank the group. The fugitives tried to return fire, but most of them didn’t know how to shoot. Some workers were hit and fell on the floor dead.

Vincent, Hector and Maria took cover behind a wooden crate. Others tried to do the same. 

“What the hell is going on there, over?” The old man shouted on the radio.

“Marcellus, Marcellus… Oh God!”

“Don’t stop shooting, bro!”

“Marcellus, they pinned us down! You got to get us out of here, man… over!”

“The only way out is through a…” Marcellus’s voice faded.

“What? I can’t here you!”

“… up… you… have…”

“You’re breaking up!”

The deafening roar of the weapons continued to break into their eardrums.

“…attic, the only way out is through an attic, over.” Marcellus came back.

“And where’s this attic, over?”

“Right above the place where the pool table used to be, over.”

“Great!” Hector grunted. “Now all we have to do is go back in time before the nineteen-nineties! Hang on.” He turned to Vince. “Cover me, bro.”

“What?”

Hector tried to stand up, but a bullet grazed his shoulder.

“Get down and shoot, you fool! Are you crazy?”

“HEY!” Hector screamed to whoever might listen. “Somebody back there find an attic!”

“Are you alright? You’re bleeding.”

“I’ll live. Let’s try to get our guys back there some cover.”

“An attic, huh?”

“That’s right.”

The brothers shoot all they got, together with Maria. Nevertheless, more experienced soldiers made their way into the warehouse and they were about to put an end to the rebellion.

“Over here!” Natasha shouted pulling some ropes that brought a ladder down.

“Time to go!” Hector said.

“Yes, but let’s try to crawl this time, what do you say?”

“I hear you.”

The fugitives covered their escape with all ammunition they had. One by one, they climbed the ladder. The first ones who got to the attic found a door to the roof. It was locked by a padlock. They shoot it open.

Hector, Vince, Aaron, Pedro, Raul, Prashant, Natasha and Maria waited for the others to come. Only six more survivors made it to the roof, four men and two women. Most of them had to cover faces until their eyes readapted to the intense sunlight.

“Hey you!” Hector called the last one who climbed. “What about the others? There’re still many of us down there.”

“I don’t know.” He gasped, sweating and bleeding. “Only soldiers were coming up last time I looked back. And they almost killed me!”

“Oh God!” Maria cried. “Where’s Mate?”

“He’s not here!” Vince said.

“I guess he’s still down there.”

“We can’t leave him!”

A worker named Harper, former Fourth Brigade sergeant, came with four hand-grenades.

“We’re running out of time.” He said. “I have to blow this thing to Kingdom Come!”

“But we still have people down there!” Maria wept helplessly.

“And their sacrifice won’t be in vain!” Hector said firmly. “I promise you that!”

“Are you sure, bro?”

“We got no choice.”

Hector nodded at Harper. The former sergeant removed four pins and threw the grenades into the attic, and down the ladder.

“Fire in the hole!”

The group ran to the roof edge and covered their ears.

They could see fire balls shattering windows, while the structure shook under their knees. Desperate screams were heard. Maria burst into tears on Vince’s shoulder.

“We had no choice.” He whispered, but his hands were trembling.

“I need to take a look at your shoulder.” Aaron spoke to Hector.

“It’s just a scratch.” He answered and grabbed the radio “Marcellus, you there, over?” His voice faltered.

“I heard an explosion!” The old man replied. “Was that you, over?”

“Yes. We’re on top of the warehouse, now what? And it’d better be good. We lost good people here, over!”

“You have to jump to the roof of the cafeteria. It’s quite close, over.”

Hector stretched his neck “I see it, over.”

“You go down the fire escape and you’ll see some bunkhouses on the right, over.”

“Hang on.”

Hector led his reduced group to the places indicated by Marcellus. The warehouse roof collapsed down in shambles the second the last one of them made the jump to the cafeteria.

Once at the bottom of the fire stairs, Hector brought the walkie-talkie to his mouth again.

“I see the bunkhouses, over.”

“You’re almost there. Behind them, there’s a gravel path. Follow it for about two hundred yards and you’ll find the perimeter fences. You jump them and you’re out of this hell. Careful with the barbed wire, over.”

“We can deal with the barbed wire, but two hundred yards! Over.”

“You’d better rush, young man, over.”

“Alright, we jump the fences, then what, over?”

“Then it’s no-man’s land. You go north and you’ll reach Prescott Road. And I hope you got a lot of weapons. There’ll be flesh-eating walking corpses coming your way.”

All lights and systems came back to life in the power plant.

A couple of men with machine guns entered the Monitoring Sector and walked straight to Marcellus. The soles of their shining shoes hitting the hard ground echoed loudly in the almost empty room.

One of the men pointed his weapon at the old man’s head, while the other took his radio and turned it off.

“Good morning Jolt, Cooper.” Marcellus said calmly. “What can I do for you gentlemen today?”

“Your little escape plan has failed, old timer.” Jolt replied. “All your people were killed by our soldiers.”

“Well, not all of them. I’ve just talked to some friends of mine who used to work here, and they seemed just fine.”

The man put the radio aside and slowly walked to Marcellus.

“And where are they?” He asked the old man.

“Halfway to Shangri-la, last time I checked.”

“You dirty old coot!” He also pointed his machine gun straight at the man’s head.

Marcellus just looked at him with a mild grin.

“When we captured your daughter,” Jolt continued “an entire army detail banged her. And she liked it a lot! You should’ve seen her moaning. No wonder she was smiling when she blew her head off at the patio.”

“That wasn’t my child.” The old man responded. “Anyway, I know she was above you and the rest of your filthy crooks. And you’d better watch your back from now on.”

“Why is that?”

“Because you are a sinner. You did a lot of bad things and our Lord Jesus Christ is watching. And reckoning will be upon you, perhaps even sooner than you think.”

“Maybe, but in the meantime, say hello to your floozy daughter!”

The two men unloaded their machine guns on Marcellus’ body.

Down at Transmission, under the protests of friends and workmates, Bill insisted on taking all the blame, and he was also gunned down several times.