When Tonya got home from work, Harris was already sitting on the small front porch with his feet propped up on the rickety railing, which meant he’d either quit his job or been fired again. The mail was piled beside him on an overturned bucket they used as a table. A letter lay unfolded on a torn-open envelope.
“Want to take a guess what this is?” he said without looking up.
“Final notice,” she said. “How long we got?”
“End of the week.”
“Shit. Can they do that? That soon?”
“They did. They are.”
“But is it legal?”
“They doing it. Legal don’t much matter. The whole street. Clear out all us riffraff so they can redevelop out here.”
Tonya stood there a moment. Tired from being on her feet at work all day. Tired from smiling and making nice with people who hardly paid her any attention as she waited tables at Mama Broussard’s Down Home Buffet.
“I see you’re home early,” she finally said. “Which is it this time? You quit? Or got fired?”
“Babe, you know I got a low threshold for people’s bullshit,” Harris said.
She nodded. Looked beyond the little house they overpaid rent for because they couldn’t afford anyplace else. It was a ramshackle, asbestos siding place. Just past her small back yard herb garden and the row of oleander bushes was a dense stretch of brush and trees against a tall hurricane fence with razor-wire coiled along its top. The edge of the Containment Zone.
“Harris, how many times do we have to do this? It’s why we can’t get anywhere. I don’t know what the hell to do.”
He stood, came to her with his arms out as though about to embrace her. But he set his hands heavily on her shoulders, too heavy for a rangy guy like him. With his stringy hair and sinewy arms and sleeveless shirt, Harris looked like the no-good creep that he was. “Well, babe, I don’t see as you got any better offers. And we know how it goes when you try going off on your own.”
Yeah, she knew. She still felt a catch in her shoulder from the last time she’d tried leaving, where Harris had grabbed her arm and wrenched her to him. It was a possessive fear of loss. Not so much of losing her, she knew, as of losing something he felt belonged to him.
“What I’m going to do,” he was saying now, “is have another beer.” His breath was stale with plenty of beer already. He turned to go inside. “The crew’s coming over later. I told them you’d make a pot of chili. You might better get started on that.”
Beyond the little house, in the distance past the Containment Zone fence and the thicket of trees, towers from the old Sabine PetroChem Plant stood blackened and silent.
She’d long ago stopped wondering how she got stuck here. She only wondered how she’d get out.
#
The house was too small for them to gather comfortably inside, so as usual they sat on fold-out lawn chairs and ice coolers in the yard. To help keep the mosquitoes and humidity at bay, a fire burned in a shallow pit edged with broken chunks of concrete. It was Harris and Tonya, Gary and Lisa, and the brothers Robb and Mark. This was the crew. They all lived in run-down homes on this forsaken street.
“I don’t know what we’ll do,” Robb was saying. “This is already the worst neighborhood in town. Where the hell do we go from here? Gary, you got any jobs in mind? We got to make some fast money.”
Mark hunched beside him, his head hanging, elbows on his knees. He drew circles in the dirt with a stick.
Tonya tiptoed quietly among them, serving bowls of chili.
“Always got something in mind,” Gary said. “Issue is the right opportunity and the right kind of help.”
“You suggesting we’re not the right kind of help?” Harris said.
“I’m not suggesting it. I’m saying it outright. Kind of job for any money worth the trouble means doing things y’all don’t have in you to do,” Gary said.
Harris mumbled a curse under his breath.
Gary stood. “Want to say that louder?” His keys jangled from where they were chained to a loop on his jeans. As usual, his demeanor was somewhere between an antagonizing pal and a menacing bully.
Dressed like a biker—boots, denim, leather—Gary was large and powerful with a thick beard and drooping mustache. Lisa was dressed to match him and was a good match in size and toughness. She was sturdy like a weightlifter and was mean to boot. Across the fire sat Robb with his chiseled looks earned from working construction. That is, when he showed up for work. He tended to bounce from job to job, though slightly more reliably than Harris. Robb preferred to spend his time rotating among a contingent of housewives while their husbands worked. Beside Robb sat Mark. The smart one, as they saw him, but also the butt of most of their jokes because of his softness—in physical presence and demeanor.
“Gary threatened to rob a bank,” Lisa said as Tonya handed her a bowl.
Gary grabbed the bowl Tonya held toward him next. “Gave it some thought,” he said, then took a heaping bite.
Gary and Lisa had been involved in some heavy stuff. Robberies, thefts, assaults. Harris and Robb had joined in a few times, but mostly minor jobs. Petty thefts, burglaries.
“What if we really did rob a bank?” Harris said, taking the bowl that Tonya offered him.
“You’d get yourself killed,” Gary answered.
“We got to do something,” Harris said. “At least you have a job, G.”
Gary gave a dismissive hiss. “Yeah, I’m getting rich changing assholes’ oil at the Lube Shop.”
“I still say we just pack everything we got and hit the road,” Robb said. He watched Tonya make her way toward him.
“We’d be broke before we got out of town,” Mark said.
“But if we pooled everything we have.”
“How long’s that going to last?”
There was a still silence except for the crackling fire, which cast shadows against the house.
“Now y’all got me all tense,” Harris said, leaning forward with his elbows propped on his knees. He was shirtless. “Babe, how about rubbing my shoulders. Since you’re bringing me another beer.”
Tonya had just sat down on the ice cooler to take a bite of her chili. She took a deep breath, looked for a long moment toward Harris, but said nothing. She put down her bowl, stood and opened the cooler and pulled a beer from the ice. She carried it to Harris, gave it to him, and stood behind him while working her thumbs into his shoulders.
“What if,” Tonya said, surprising herself with the thought even as she said the words, “We could rob the robbers of a bank?”
They all looked at her. She tilted her chin toward the Containment Zone.
“You’re talking about going after the money from the Sabine Bank hold-up?” Lisa asked.
“That was, what, twelve years ago?” Robb said.
“Yeah, and it was the ballsiest thing I ever heard of,” Lisa said. “Broad daylight. Guns blazing. Shooting it out with the cops. Those guys made away with a couple hundred grand.”
“Ballsy maybe,” Mark said. “But I don’t know how smart. Didn’t three of those guys get shot dead in the street?”
“Yep. The other two fled into the CZ,” Robb said. They’d long ago shortened it to the initials C.Z. and from there taken to pronouncing it as seize. “Shot their way past the security guards at the gates. Cops went in after them and not all of them came back out. No one ever found out what happened to the two guys. And the money never turned up.”
“Gary,” Tonya said. “Didn’t you once tell us about a friend of yours who knew one of the robbers? One who made it out of the CZ? Or maybe it was alcohol talking. I’m pretty sure I was the only one sober.”
Gary looked at her as though trying to figure her angle. The whites of his eyes blazed bright in the fire and there was a glint of teeth when he grinned. “Well shit, we got to watch out for this one.”
“Girly don’t miss much,” Lisa said in her way that made a compliment sound like a threat.
“Yeah,” Gary went on. “Guy I did a few jobs with, Jimmy, told me one of those dudes from the Sabine Bank robbery made it out but got picked up for something else and later got killed in prison. Cops didn’t know he was part of the Sabine crew. Jimmy did some time with him.”
He had everyone’s attention.
“Jimmy said the dude told him he hid the cash in the old high school, inside a wall behind a case or bookshelf. Something like that. He planned to go back and get it once he was released. Needed help doing it.”
“Wait,” Robb said. “Some old con told you that. Why?”
“Hoped to collect a finder’s fee if I managed to get hold of the money. Jimmy’s in no shape to do it. He’s got some kind of cancer rotting him away,” Gary said.
“Why are we just now hearing all this?” Robb went on. “Shit, if you told us before, you didn’t tell us everything.”
“Didn’t matter before,” Gary said. “What were you going to do about it?”
“Guys—” Tonya said.
“Go in and find the money,” Harris said. “That’s what we’d have done.”
“Guys—” Tonya said again.
“The entire CZ’s locked down,” Gary went on. “They drive the perimeter. There’s not only the fence with razor-wire, but there’s an electrified inner fence. Hell, I’ve seen them fly drones over the place. It’s likely still toxic in there where that old butadiene plant exploded. Believe me, I’ve given it plenty of thought.”
“So why are we even talking about this?” Mark said.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell y’all,” Tonya said with a firmness that made them all turn to her. “All that development that’s getting us kicked out of here? The guys working construction have lunch at Mama Broussard’s a couple times a week. I overheard them talking. The power’s off on the electric fence. They have a section ripped out where they’re bringing in heavy equipment, getting ready to level everything, I guess. Security’s still set up in the main gates, but . . . .” She let the thought hang there.
There was a momentary silence as everyone considered the possibilities.
“They got no one out here on our side of things,” Robb said. “And no electricity running through the inner fence.”
“So if we go in right here behind our street,” Harris cut in, “we might can get through without anyone knowing.”
“Y’all really think the money’s there? After all this time?” Mark asked.
Gary leaned forward into the firelight, his mouth working as he chewed on a thought. Then he said, “I think there’s a real good chance, yeah.”
“And if that’s all bullshit?” Mark said. “If there’s no money to be found?”
“Then we’re no worse off than we started,” Lisa said.
“Sure, if we make it out alive or without getting arrested,” Mark said.
“The question is, do y’all have what it takes?” Gary said.
“Hell, yeah,” Harris said.
“We got to,” Robb said.
Tonya didn’t bother answering.
“Okay then,” Gary said. He tossed his empty bowl onto the ground at Tonya’s feet. “I’ll take a refill,” he said to her, then to the group, “One thing. If we’re doing this, y’all got to do exactly what I say.”
At that Harris twisted beneath Tonya’s hands and looked up at her. “All right Babe, we’re getting down to business out here. And these dishes ain’t taking care of themselves.”
#
While the others carried on about plans, Tonya carried empty bottles and dishes inside. After a moment, Mark followed her into the kitchen with a few more bottles and his chili bowl.
“Did you mean to get all that started?” he asked.
“I think it’s mostly alcohol talking,” she said.
“I think they’re serious,” he said. “I think you know they’re serious. Everyone’s desperate enough. Are you really going in there? The CZ.”
She dropped her load of bottles into a garbage bag, held it out for Mark to drop in his, then twisted the bag closed. She turned and leaned against the counter and stared at the diamond pattern in the chipped linoleum flooring. “I think I have to,” she said.
“I think it’s a fool’s errand,” he said.
Outside, Gary and Lisa’s voices were authoritative as they strategized. Harris could be heard offering an occasional hell, yeah.
Mark looked at Tonya, his eyes heavy and sad. “Why do you stay with him? With us? I know it’s not that simple, but…”
Tonya thought about the times she’d tried leaving. How Harris and Gary and Lisa had forcefully, and literally, dragged her back time and again. “Where would I go? How?”
“Maybe I could help you. Even go with you. If you wanted.”
“They’d just come after me. I’ve tried. Honestly, if any of us could go on from here, it’s you.”
“Right. I worked my way to stocking produce at the Market Pantry. I’m blazing my way in this world.”
“Harris can’t keep a job. Gary and Lisa are lucky they’re not behind bars. Robb would be dangerous too if he weren’t so busy fooling around with married women. Whatever plan they come up with, just don’t show up, Mark. Go to work and forget about all this.”
“You trust them?” Mark asked. “’cause I got the feeling Lisa and Gary’d slice any of us open if the price were right.”
Tonya studied him. “I’m not sure it’s only Lisa and Gary who’d do that.”
Mark nodded slowly then held his bowl toward her. She reached for it, her fingers brushing his. They held there a moment. She didn’t take the bowl and he didn’t let go.
The screen door banged open and she quickly turned to the sink. Robb came inside. “Harris says you still got some dishes out there. And Gary says he’s still waiting on more chili.”
#
They’d been brought together by a connection they hadn’t chosen—all of them the children of workers who’d been at the Sabine PetroChem Plant when it had exploded two decades earlier, killing dozens, destroying homes and businesses, and severely damaging the high school and surrounding neighborhoods. The workers ended up being blamed by the authorities and company executives for the incident, although it had truly been a result of years of poor safety practices and corner-cutting maintenance measures.
In school, they’d become the Containment Zone Crew. The kids whose parents blew up the town. Left with no hope or opportunity in their gritty industrial town, but with little means of leaving either. Kids when it started, they found themselves forced together as their families suffered years of ripple effects—spirals of depression, self-destruction, and substance abuse until the crew was all that remained. No family to speak of. At least, none who’d claim them.
#
They gathered again the next morning at Harris and Tonya’s place. Tonya made biscuits and brewed coffee, then served everyone. Mark didn’t drink coffee, so she made him tea despite the ridicule the others heaped on him.
“Did some research last night,” Gary said. He broke out a crude map he’d drawn.
They squeezed together over the map while Gary explained the layout of the Containment Zone. In all, it was nearly thirty square miles, the perimeter a few miles out in every direction from the chemical plant.
“We cut through the fences behind us, go through the old plant, and we come out right at the school,” Gary said. “It’s our best way in to avoid any chance of security. Being at the ass-end of the CZ’s what made our street the shittiest in town. Now it makes it the best place to be.”
“So say we get in there, we find the money, we make it out of there,” Tonya said. “Then what? We have to leave town, right? We can’t be suddenly spending money around here. And what if that cash is marked or something? Won’t we need to be careful about it, no matter where we go?”
“See,” Lisa said. “She’s more than a pretty face. She always was a smart one, too.”
Which, Tonya knew, was why they didn’t like her. “I’m just thinking, maybe Robb was right last night when he said we should pool our resources. Be prepared to lay low. Have cash on hand so we don’t leave a trail.”
Gary swigged some coffee and scrutinized Tonya. Then he said, “I was just getting to that. We go in three days. Between now and then we all sell everything we can. Put together as much cash as possible. No bank accounts, no cards. We’re going off the grid.”
“Right, we all liquidate our assets,” Harris said.
“We’ll travel light,” Lisa said. “No more than you can carry in a single bag each.”
Gary stood with his feet planted firm and crossed his arms over his thick chest. “We got to work out some details. Tonya, make yourself useful and keep the coffee coming.”
“Yeah, Babe, we got it under control here,” Harris said. He gave her a harder than necessary slap on the butt as he handed her his mug.
Tonya felt Mark watching her with sidelong glances as she topped off everyone’s coffee. Then she left them to make their plans and retreated to her little backyard herb garden among the oleander hedges against the fenceline.
#
Over the next two days, they prepared. They gathered each morning and evening at Harris and Tonya’s place. Gary and Lisa directed, gave orders, laid out plans. Harris buzzed with energy, hanging on Gary’s every word. Proud to be part of something he thought was big. Robb got a satisfied look like he was pleased to be sticking it to the world. Mark lingered near Tonya and helped as she cooked, served, refilled plates and cups, and ferried dirty dishes.
#
Three days after the idea arose and two days before they had to be cleared out, the crew gathered in front of Tonya and Harris’ porch one final time. In the pre-dawn dark they got geared up and ready by lantern-light. Gary and Lisa both wore black cargo pants and vests. They each had a large handgun holstered on their belts, a machete sheathed along their thighs.
“I see y’all brought your hand-cannons,” Robb said. “What are you expecting? Zombies? A colony of outlaws?”
“Just prepared for anything,” Lisa answered.
The rest of them wore jeans and long-sleeve shirts to protect against the brush and vines they’d have to cross. Tonya wore a baseball cap and tucked her hair through the open space at the back strap. They all wore backpacks with various tools and supplies—bolt cutters, shovels, flashlights, hatchets. Harris tucked a pistol into the back of his waistband. As planned, they stowed the gear they’d packed for the road, Gary and Lisa in saddlebags on their motorcycles, Robb and Mark in Robb’s truck, and Harris and Tonya in Tonya’s sedan. Mark set down a small animal carrier.
“He insists on bringing that damn cat,” Robb said.
“Mr. Nibbles is one of us,” Mark said. “Besides, I don’t have much else.”
Gary shook his head and Lisa let out a laugh.
Harris sneered. “Keep that thing away from me.”
Tonya knelt before the carrier. She wiggled her fingers in front of the cage-door. Inside, an orange nose nudged her fingertips. She’d always wanted a dog or cat. But Harris said he was allergic to pains in the ass. So she never dared bring an animal into the house.
Gary unlocked a saddlebag on his motorcycle. “Everyone’s cash goes in here. We can’t risk losing anything inside the CZ. If anything happens to any of us, we don’t want to lose that share. We thank you for your sacrifice and appreciate you supporting the greater good. When we come back, everything’s safe and we’ll divide the shares among everyone who makes it out.”
“That’s reassuring,” Harris said.
“Downright inspiring,” Mark added. “I can’t tell if Gary’s a good patriot or a good communist.”
“I’m a realist,” Gary said. “You do what I say, things will work out fine.”
“What I’m hearing is if something were to befall some of you, my share goes up?” Robb said.
“You think you can manage something like that, go for it,” Lisa said.
Without being told to do so, Tonya handed Gary a mug of coffee. He took it and sipped without acknowledging her. She went on to hand Lisa, Robb, and Harris coffee she poured from a thermos. Mark offered to help her, but she waved him off, “No, I got it.”
Lisa made a show of running her fingers across the ends of a rubber-banded stack of cash so it made a fwipping sound. Then she dropped the cash into the saddlebag. “That’s our share.”
There was a momentary pause. Then Harris stood and pulled an envelope of cash from his back pocket and dropped it into the saddlebag. Silently Robb followed suit, then Mark.
Gary nodded. “Good. We’re all in.” He closed and locked the saddlebag, then hooked the key onto a ring of keys chained to his jeans.
“All for one, one for all, and all that shit, right?” Harris said.
“Something like that,” Lisa said.
Tonya went around topping off everyone’s coffee. “Brewed extra strong. Got to be alert today.”
#
They went to the back yard and pushed through the oleander hedge to the fenceline behind their soon-to-be-razed-houses. Even in broad daylight, no one would see them in the brush and bushes.
“Let’s be quick getting in and out of there,” Mark said.
“You scared?” Harris taunted.
Mark didn’t answer.
“Just don’t get in there and faint like you got the vapors,” Robb said. “I ain’t carrying your ass out of there.”
Gary pulled bolt cutters from his bag, snipped a section of the fence links, then peeled open a space big enough to crawl through. He went first, and one by one the others followed. The overgrowth of trees and brambles and vines was thick on the other side of the fence where vegetation had gone unchecked for years. Gary and Lisa hacked with their machetes. Still, vines grabbed them, thorns jabbed them, tree limbs held them, and they had to twist their way through it all in the dark. When they finally broke through the thicket, they came to the inner, electrified fence.
“We’re sure it’s off, right?” Robb said.
“If we can believe dear old Tonya,” Gary said.
“Yeah, I schemed all this so I could get a kick out of the electric fence frying someone like a giant bug zapper,” Tonya said.
“Girly’s getting mouthy,” Lisa said.
Gary held the bolt cutters toward Tonya and gave her a hard stare. Without hesitation, she took the cutters and snipped the fence. “Satisfied?”
She crawled through first and the others followed. Beyond the fence, they entered a field of unkempt weeds four feet tall. Morning light had come up enough for them to see the blackened chemical plant towers on the other side of the field.
Harris sidled up beside Tonya. “Give G and Lisa some space to lead the way,” he whispered. “They know what they’re doing.”
“Do they?” she said. “Do any of us?”
Harris wrapped an arm around her side and squeezed, more possessive than reassuring. Then he moved in front of her as though showing the way. Tonya glanced back and saw Mark a few strides behind, watching them, his mouth a thin line.
They pushed on through the field, stretched out in single file. It was quiet, except for the keys occasionally jangling on Gary’s chain. A breeze wafted the tips of the grass. They came out of the field to find themselves among a tangled mess of charred metal towers, pipelines, and storage tanks. Shredded metal remnants lay twisted about. A low ground fog hovered at their ankles.
Robb pulled out a package of cheap white respirators from his backpack. “I was assigned to bring masks for everybody.”
“Wish we had real gas masks,” Mark said. “We’re not painting the living room here.”
Harris was sniffing the air. “I don’t smell anything,” he said.
“It’s the stuff you don’t smell that kills you,” Mark said. “They had pits and tanks and pipelines all throughout here. Waste ponds, too, with all kinds of decomposing toxic shit. No telling where the ground’s firm and where you’ll step into something that’ll dissolve you.”
They all strapped on the masks, then followed Gary into the plant. They walked on what appeared to be a gravel lane that had once been wide enough for trucks and equipment to travel. But the explosion and the deterioration of time had strewn debris along the lane and eaten large holes into it. Even decades after the explosion, the gravity of the incident was apparent. Everything bore the charred-black stains of fire damage. Rust ate away at the remains. Towers lay where they’d fallen. Round storage tanks with metal staircases winding around them had collapsed. Pipelines twisted along, broken, jagged, and exposed.
This was what started it. Their containment to each other.
“I can’t believe they just left it like this,” Mark said.
The crew tiptoed through the rubble, staying as best they could on what was left of the roadway. Every step was precarious and slow. They had to step and wait to let the fog clear around them to see their footing. Beneath the fog, ground vines and weeds covered everything. Each step could be a drop into a waste pond, a hole, a shard of metal.
“Guys, anyone else feel queasy?” Robb said.
“Kind of feel like I ate something bad, yeah,” Harris said. He stumbled but found his footing and kept walking.
Gary stifled a pained grunt. “Keep going,” he said, his voice strained through clenched teeth. He’d slowed and dropped back to the end of the line with Lisa.
“I feel okay,” Mark said, now leading the line.
Tonya noticed that Gary and Lisa watched everyone. She didn’t think they were doing so out of concern for safety. This would be a good place for something to go down.
Suddenly Mark yelped. As he’d stepped, his left leg had sunk nearly to his knee in a hole or the edge of a pit. There was a pause when no one moved. Tonya felt it. A hesitation from the others like they were waiting to see what would happen. Even Robb froze. Mark struggled to find footing with his right leg. He tumbled off-balance and fell onto his hands.
Maybe this was the plan. Sit back and let the wasteland do the dirty work.
Tonya stepped close enough to hold out her hand for Mark. He grabbed her wrist and gained enough leverage to pull himself free.
Gary grunted again. Was it nausea? Disappointment? Tonya couldn’t read it and didn’t dare study on it.
“Let’s keep moving,” Lisa said.
They moved on and eventually emerged from the chemical plant property without another incident. They came to the hard surface of what had once been a city street. Brush and canegrass and trees grew along the street’s edge and through the cracks and crumbling asphalt here and there. They followed the remains of the street, moving farther from the chemical plant.
With the way fairly obvious and non-threatening, Harris had taken lead. Every so often Harris, Robb, Gary, or Lisa would waver as though disoriented, or groan and clench their stomach and pull away their mask, ready to throw up. After a moment they’d settle the mask back on and curse and keep going.
“Damn, might have been right about needing better masks,” Robb said once. “Y’all feel like you got to puke too?”
Harris mumbled agreement.
But they pushed on until they came to a crumbled section of red brick wall. Bricks lay broken and piled up, swallowed by the vegetation.
“This is it,” Lisa said. “The old high school. I forgot how close it was to the plant.”
They followed the wall. Gary and Lisa hacked with their machetes. As they went, the building took better shape, the walls farther along more intact. High up on the wall, windows were broken, the glass gone and the spaces overtaken by vines.
Then, a set of metal doors, bent and dented. One of them was cracked slightly open and appeared rusted and stiff. Robb and Harris pried at the door, making a terrible grating sound as they loosened its grip in the frame. With a metallic screech, the door leaned open enough for them to step through.
Gary pushed forward, shined a flashlight inside, then went in. The others followed without a word, pulling out flashlights as they entered the dark interior. Very little natural light entered the vine-choked windows. They found themselves in a foyer. A staircase was straight ahead. It went up halfway, then turned at a landing, and went up to the second floor. A long hallway stretched to the left and the right. Along the hallway were doorways to classrooms. Most of the ceiling tiles had fallen out, leaving a skeletal grid of the ceiling frame. Tiles lay broken on the floor in precarious piles and there was a thick layer of grime on everything. Blackened mold crept along the walls and glistened under the shine of their lights. The air was heavy and humid and held a damp, moldy smell even through the masks. Somewhere was a dripping sound.
Which sparked a realization in Tonya. She hadn’t heard Gary’s keys jangle in a while. With a quick shift of her flashlight and a glance, she confirmed it. The chain ran from his beltloop to inside his pocket. He’d tucked the keys into his pocket so they made no noise.
“We’ll split up,” Gary said. “Lisa and me will follow that hallway.” He gestured to his left. “Harris, you and Tonya head the other way. Robb, Mark, you search upstairs.”
“I thought we planned to stay together,” Mark said. “You know, in together, out together and all that?”
“What, you afraid that—?” Robb said, but his taunt was cut short when he groaned and clenched at his stomach. He pulled away his mask, heaving and spitting. After a moment he put it back on. “Damn,” he said.
Everything in Tonya’s being told her to turn and run. But how far would she get? She knew she had to see this through to whatever end would come.
“Let’s just get to it,” she said. She felt Gary watching her. Whatever was going to happen, it would be soon. She started down the hall toward the first doorway.
#
The classrooms were creepy. Overturned desks. The remains of textbooks in moldering piles. Chalkboards with faded writing, as if waiting for students to return from lunch. Bare cinderblock walls. A lot of the furniture had deteriorated or collapsed. Probably some of that from the plant explosion and the rest from exposure and neglect over time.
They moved quickly through each room, Harris checked for shelves or cases covering a cubbyhole where the money might be. Tonya stood by and took in their surroundings. She listened carefully for movement nearby. She tried to avoid looking into the flashlight beams, keeping her eyes acclimated to the dark. From upstairs she heard Robb and Mark moving around, shuffling things. The slightest sounds resounded in the desolate building. What concerned her was that she didn’t hear Gary or Lisa. They were not generally inconspicuous.
Then down the hall, in the foyer where they’d come in, the door clanged shut.
“What was that?” Harris said.
Tonya stepped out of the classroom and into the hallway. They’d made their way nearly to the end. She turned and cast her flashlight toward the foyer. “The outside door closed,” she said. She watched, listened. Nothing moved.
Behind her, Harris leaned over, hands on his knees. He made a retching noise. “Man, I feel like crap.”
Tonya crept down the hall, away from the foyer where the door had just closed. She came to a huge floor-to-ceiling trophy case along the wall. Much of the glass had shattered, though a patchwork of jagged shards remained. A glass door had swung open and still contained a cracked pane of glass. Her flashlight glinted off the glass remnants and cast a blinding glare in her eyes. She redirected her light to avoid the glass. Trophies lay in disarray. Shelves lay broken and piled at the bottom of the case. She paused. Felt exposed and vulnerable standing in the long dark hallway with her flashlight like a beacon to where she stood. She clicked it off. Her breath seemed loud and thick within her mask. She tried to slow and quiet her breathing.
A scream, unmistakably Robb’s voice, echoed from the foyer. Then a heavy thump of something, or someone, hitting the floor.
Harris came out of the classroom and went toward the foyer. From the way his dark shape moved, waving his flashlight about, Tonya saw that he walked in a pained, hunched manner.
“Holy shit! Oh God!” Harris said. “Robb? What the hell?” His light pointed at a mass on the floor, then moved about, searching. “Babe! Where are you? Tonya!” He found her and spotlighted her position.
Tonya had to move. Leaving her flashlight off she went toward the foyer and Harris and what she expected would be Robb’s body. Harris’s flashlight beam hit her face as she got closer. She held up a hand to block the glare. The light swept down onto Robb’s body lying twisted at the base of the stairs.
Tonya flicked on her flashlight and shone it toward the landing above. She saw a blur of movement. The dark shape of someone moving away from her light. Someone who’d thrown Robb over the stairrail above?
“We need to find the others,” Harris said. He started down the hall in the direction Gary and Lisa were supposed to explore. Then he paused, made a gurgling sound, leaned his shoulder against the wall and grabbed his mask. “I’m going to puke again. Oh shit.” After a moment he went on, saying, “You stay here.”
Tonya turned off her light and took several careful steps back. She felt her skin prickle. A presence nearby.
A shadow moved out of the dark alcove under the stairs. A flashlight clicked on. Lisa. She stalked toward Tonya. But even in the glare of Lisa’s flashlight, Tonya saw that Lisa hunched awkwardly. She gurgled a pained moan from deep in her stomach. Her breathing was labored. She took another unsteady step toward Tonya. Lifted her hand. She made a sound, like a laugh but tinged with pain. The glint of her handgun reflected in the flashlight beam.
A blur of movement dropped from the staircase landing above. Straight down onto Lisa. There was a horrible crunching sound, bone cracking, the mush of a body slammed hard by another. Lisa’s gun and flashlight clattered to the floor, the light strobing as it bounced.
Tonya flicked on her light and found Mark splayed on top of Lisa’s body. He’d jumped from above, piledriving down onto her. She lay in a crumpled mound only feet away from Robb’s body. Mark was folded in odd angles atop her. His mask had flown loose. He looked toward Tonya, his face a contortion of shock turning to pain.
“Goddamn,” he hissed. “Gary threw Robb over. He’s up there . . . looking for me.” He gasped for breath, then said, “Her gun. I have to get it. You have to get out—”
A gunshot thundered and Mark’s body jerked away into the dark. Gary was on the stairs. Hobbling his way down. He leaned heavily against the stairwell wall. He stumbled, grunted, cursed. He paused, as though to find his bearings. For a second Tonya thought he’d collapse, but then he took another slow step. He shifted his hand, leveling the gun at her.
If she went for the door he’d cut her down. Even in the state he appeared to be in.
Tonya ran down the hall, back the way she’d come. Behind her a booming shot sounded. The concussion rattled the building, thumped her chest.
“Tonya!” Gary roared. He broke into a cough that devolved into a groan.
She kept going, past the classrooms, past the shattered trophy case, until she stood in an open doorway at the end of the hall. She lifted her light to shine it inside. The doorway looked in on an auditorium. One side of the room was littered with debris where the roof had caved in. On the other side, the seats sat empty, moldy, waiting. Plenty of spots to hide. But nowhere to go, no clear way out.
She took off her cap and dropped it in the doorway, then went back to the trophy case. The open glass door. The fallen shelves and scattered trophies. She climbed inside. Pressed herself against the back wall. It was tight but she just fit. She turned off her flashlight.
Just then Gary’s light roved the wall a few yards down the hallway. He was coming slowly down the hall.
“Tonya,” he said, his voice a low growl. “You’re only making this worse on yourself.”
His light scrolled across the trophy case. Tonya squinted against the reflected brilliance. He wouldn’t see her. The light reflecting off the glass would blind him, as it had her.
She hoped.
She held her breath. His footsteps came closer. The light swept away, past the case, to the end of the hall, then back again. His boot crunched the shattered glass on the floor mere feet away.
Then down the hall in the foyer a creaking noise sounded. Gary’s light turned that direction. Through a gap in the trophy case glass, Tonya saw Harris spotlighted. He was pushing on the exterior door, trying to get it open.
“Harris,” Gary said. “You want to come save your woman?”
Harris’s eyes shone wide and white in the flashlight beam, his mask like a big shocked “O” over his mouth. A slant of outside light cut through a slim gap in the doorway.
“Harris,” Gary said again. “You see what they did to Lisa. Come on. Let’s finish it.”
Harris pressed his shoulder into the door.
“Aww, Harris. I told you you didn’t have what it takes.” Gary raised his gun.
Harris slithered through the door’s narrow opening just as Gary’s gun erupted. The bullet cracked into cinderblock down the hall. The report echoing along the hallway shook the school like it was coming down around them.
“Son of a bitch,” Gary muttered. He hesitated like he might follow Harris. Then he turned and came in Tonya’s direction.
His flashlight moved across the hallway and glinted off the trophy case again. Tonya closed one eye, squinted the other to try to keep acclimated to the dark and avoid being blinded by the flashlight. She carefully slid her own flashlight into her pocket so her hands would be free. Gary’s shape approached. He leaned against the wall, using it for support. He was close enough that she could feel his heat. He was looking down the hall into the auditorium doorway, at the cap she’d dropped there.
“Oh, Tonya.” He sang, sounding delirious. He cut off with a pained grunt, slid another couple steps along the hall. “I’m coming,” he added, softer this time. Nearly to himself.
If he turned he’d see her. He was directly before her now. From here, there wasn’t enough glass to blind him. He took another step.
Tonya braced against the back of the case, then pushed off. Hard. She thrust herself across the hallway, pulled into a tight ball, led with her knee, and barreled straight into Gary.
She heard his gun clatter to the ground. Felt a heavy, hard blow from his elbow. Felt the breath rush from her lungs, her back tighten and throb. But Gary was down. And she floundered with her hands at his belt, feeling for where his keychain should be. He was sucking for air, groaning, and grabbing at her. She felt a weakness in him, though.
And knew she’d be dead right now if not for the coffee she’d served earlier.
Her hand felt the chain. She clenched a fist around it and ripped hard enough to break the loop on his pants and pull the keyring from his pocket. She wriggled free of him and backed several steps away. She pulled her flashlight from her pocket, blared it into his face. Gary lay on the floor. He squinted up toward her, turning his head to avoid the light in his eyes. His mask had broken off. His face was a horror of rage and pain.
“Oleander,” Tonya said, straightening her mask. It had been knocked askew in the scuffle. “The oil from it causes nausea, weakness, disorientation. I put oleander in the coffee this morning. Probably not enough to be fatal.”
He bared his teeth. “You bitch. You planned this.”
And she had. But not like he thought. She’d set it in motion. Given Gary and Lisa the push and let them run with it.
“You never expected to find that stolen money here,” she said. “You expected to steal everything the rest of us had. Kill us or leave us for dead.”
Gary made a low anguished moan. His eyes were closed, his head slowly shaking as though denying the situation. “You’re not the type to kill your friends,” he said.
“I’m also not the type to keep friends who try to kill me,” she answered. “I’m giving you a better chance than you were going to give the rest of us. If you make it out of here, don’t come looking for me.”
She walked to the foyer where Lisa’s and Robb’s and Mark’s bodies lay in dark heaps. She genuinely wished Mark had just gone to work like she’d asked him to do. There wasn’t time to pause, though. Down the hallway, Gary shuffled about, panting and grunting, no doubt searching for his gun. As Tonya slid through the doorway, a wail erupted from the darkness behind her.
#
She didn’t know if the mask was necessary but she kept it on as she made her way back through the remains of the chemical plant. The ground fog was still present. She stepped carefully. Moved a foot forward and let the fog swirl away so she could see before putting her foot down.
She found Harris’s pistol lying at the edge of a waste pond. He hadn’t even tried to use it to help her.
Harris was a few feet away, struggling in the pond. He’d sunk in up to his neck, and now held his head tilted back as he gasped for air. He’d either ripped off his mask or lost it in his thrashing. He choked and spit whatever horrible waste filled the pond. One arm reached toward Tonya. The other flailed in search of something sturdy to grab. His flailing had apparently dissipated the fog around him. In his hurry to escape, he’d rushed through instead of taking his time, waiting for the fog to clear for each step, waiting for the right moment.
As Tonya had done.
They must have passed right by the pond when they came through earlier. They had to have missed it by mere steps.
She felt like she should say something. But nothing came to mind as he slipped deeper into the muck. Tonya left the gun on the ground and Harris in the waste and continued her slow, steady way out.
#
It took a few tries to find the right key on Gary’s keychain. But she soon got his saddlebag unlocked and seized the cash. She picked up Mark’s cat carrier. Mr. Nibbles purred and nosed her fingertips through the cage door as she set the carrier in the passenger seat of her car. Then she got in and started the engine. She had cuts from glass in the trophy case, scratches from pushing through the thicket, and bruises from fighting Gary. But she’d made it. She could go anywhere. There wasn’t anything or anyone holding her back now.
