“Get off me, you little monsters!” she shouted good-naturedly.
Her shirt rode up during the scuffle and I caught sight of her lower back. Tan, muscled, gorgeous.
She was in better shape than me. By far.
“Let’s get more blankets,” Niko said. “And do another layer. Then I want to see if there’s some plywood and make it more sturdy.”
I wiped the sweat off my head and the air felt nice and cool on my forehead. It made me realize something and the something hit me like a fist in my gut.
“The AC,” I whispered. Then I shouted, “The AC!”
The AC was on. The huge industrial AC unit was sucking in the air from outside. It was why we all felt so nice and cool after working so hard.
“Son of a bitch,” Niko said.
CHAPTER FIVE
INK
“Where’s the main controls?” Niko asked Astrid. “Do you know from when you worked here?”
“There’s some kind of security office in the back,” she stammered. “In the storeroom.”
The little kids clung to Astrid so she stayed behind while the rest of us raced with Niko toward the back of the store.
We headed through two giant metal double doors into the storeroom.
It was dark back there. Most of the storeroom was filled with crashed-over boxes and toppled shelving units. Lots of smells mixed together: fruit juice, ammonia, electricity, dog food.
Set into the back wall were two giant loading bays, each with two huge metal doors.
I hadn’t even considered that there would be loading bays but of course there would be. Safety gates had come down over the huge doors, just like up front.
To one side of the big, cavernous space was a booth with the words Operations Center on the door. It had had glass walls before the earthquake, but now it just had glass debris scattered everywhere.
“Bingo,” said Brayden, king of stating the obvious.
The door to the Operations Center was locked but since the glass in the door had been smashed to pieces, Niko just ducked through the jagged-edged door.
There was a row of security cameras, seeing into every corner of the store, though most looked focused on the Media Department.
“This is awesome,” Brayden murmured. He pointed. “Look, you can see into the women’s changing rooms!”
“Focus, Brayden,” said Jake. “We need the controls for the AC.”
Alex pointed. There were four panels, built into the wall. One controlled the solar harvest system on the roof. The function lights were steady green, which confirmed what we already knew: We had power.
One was about the gates. A flashing override message read, “Remote Trigger—Riot Gates.” And one had to do with water pressure. That seemed fine.
And there was the one we needed: AC.
We all scanned the panel.
It was all numbers and zones. Percentages and lots of icons that were impossible to decipher. One looked like a lightning bolt. Another looked like an upside-down smiley face. One looked like someone mooning you, I’m not kidding. It was a totally indecipherable.
“Oh man,” Alex said anxiously.
Brayden started pressing elements on the flat screen randomly.
“Don’t—” Alex started, but Brayden cut him off.
“One of these buttons will turn it off!”
“But you can’t just press them all like that,” Niko objected. “You could just be—”
As if on cue, the AC picked up intensity, blasting us with cold air.
“Making it worse.”
Brayden threw up his hands.
“We’re going to have to find the unit and shut it off manually,” Niko said. “That’s the fastest way.”
“It’s probably on the roof,” Alex said.
We all looked at him blankly for a moment.
“I’ll go,” Niko said.
“Me, too,” Alex added.
I couldn’t let my little brother go and not go myself.
“Me, too,” I said.
“I’ll be right back,” Jake said. “Wait!” He ran off into the store for something.
“How do we get on the roof?” Alex asked.
“Up there,” Niko said, pointing.
A perforated metal staircase ran up a wall and led to a hatch in the ceiling.
The hatch was open and yellowish sky shone through.
“What the—?” I stammered.
“Sahalia,” Niko answered. “She must have found the hatch.”
I was about halfway up the stairs when Jake came bounding toward me.
“Here,” he said, handing me three industrial-strength air masks. He’d gotten them from the Home Improvement Department.
“Thanks,” I said and looped their straps over my shoulder.
“I guess you better get some for you guys,” I suggested. “Just in case.”
Jake raised an eyebrow at me giving him a direction, no matter how gently put.
“Already on it, man,” he said.
* * *
I stepped through the hatch, up onto the roof.
How can I describe what I saw?
First off, the roof was covered in hail and the surface had huge pits in places.
More importantly, there was Sahalia. She was sitting on the ledge of the roof, looking out at the sky. She had a box next to her. A home safety fire-escape ladder. It was still unopened.
Sahalia was staring straight ahead.
Niko and Alex were standing behind her, staring in the same direction.
I stopped in my tracks and the masks slipped from my fingers when I saw what they were seeing.
In the distance, near the mountains, a thick streak of pitch-black rose up, twisting like a ribbon through the air. It went up in a line, up until it reached cloud level, and then it gradually expanded out, shaped like a funnel.
It looked like a stream of ink being poured up, pooling in the sky.
Cold water from the hail was seeping into my sneakers and wetting the bottoms of my pant legs. I didn’t care.
The black cloud was growing and growing, this ball of nighttime spreading out over the horizon.
“What is it?” Alex murmured.
“Ask Brayden,” Niko answered.
Sahalia murmured, “They made something evil over at NORAD.”
The ink cloud was now as big in the sky as the mountain range behind it. It looked like an inverted mountain, tethered to the ground by its long black plume.
“AC units,” Niko said. “Now.”
Brave Hunter Man had spoken.
We scrambled to obey.
* * *
The units were easy to find. They stood right in the middle of the roof. Four giant, van-size boxes. They had slits in the sides to let in the clean air and then metal ducts branching out from each machine and connecting into one giant duct. The giant one went in through the roof of the Greenway.
“Shoot,” Niko said. “The ducts.”
The ducts were the problem. They had taken a major beating in the hail. They were battered and perforated. They had big holes in them and were sucking in the regular air along with the processed air from the units.
“Even if we shut off the unit, the bad air will come in through the broken duct,” Alex said. There was panic rising in his voice. He was getting scared.
“We gotta seal off the vent,” Niko said. He turned to Sahalia. “Go get a sledgehammer. If it’s too heavy to carry, get Jake to bring it up.”
“I can carry a stupid sledgehammer,” she sassed.
“Well, go get it then!” Niko yelled.
She hurried to the hatch.
Niko stepped over to the giant duct, about four feet away from where it went into the roof. He shimmied up on top and jumped up and down. BOOM. The metal echoed. BOOM. And it gave, just a little.
“Help me,” he said to me and Alex.
My brother and I got up there and we started jumping on that duct together. It might have been fun, if we weren’t watching a black cloud spread like an oil spill over the sky.
We jumped and together the three of us started to make a dent in it. (Pun unintentional, I promise.)
Sahalia came dragging the sledgehammer. We got off the duct.
Niko took it and WHAM. He started beating down the metal. The sledgehammer was much more effective than our jumping. The muscles in his back were straining and I really had to respect the guy. Niko was strong and tough.
The light went very, very green. Everything looked alien and underwater.
BAM. BAM. BAM, went the sledgehammer, denting down the air vent.
The chemical cloud was sweeping the air along in front of it like a summer rainstorm. Only this air was bitter and my eyes began to sting.
“You guys, go,” Niko shouted. “I’ll be right there.”
“No!” I said. “You need our help—”
Suddenly I realized I’d left the masks by the hatch.
I ran to get them.
I guess Alex and Sahalia thought I was making a run for it. They followed me.
I grabbed the masks, and Alex and Sahalia slipped past me and into the hatch. They started down the stairs, coughing and cursing.
“I’ll be right there,” I shouted.
I turned to start back to Niko …
When I felt sick.
Sick in my throat and body and mind. I felt like my blood was on fire. I was so scratchy and irritated I wanted to kill someone. I really did. I wanted to kill somebody and the somebody I wanted to kill was Niko.
I saw him there, hitting the vent with that sledgehammer and I wanted to throttle him. End his whole noble, heroic no-sense-of-humor thing.
I lurched at him with the mask.
I roared at him.
Then I fell over, facedown in the hail. I’d been tripped.
Someone had me by the foot and I was furious. It was my brother. He had an air mask on and he was pulling me into the hatch.
I swung at him. I’d kill him. Tripping me like that. I’d rip his head off.
I grabbed handfuls of hail and I threw them at him.
He dragged me toward the hatch and pulled me in.
I started beating him with the mask I was still holding. He wouldn’t let go of my leg and was dragging me down the stairs.