Fourteen
Mort awoke as if poked with a cattle prod, crying
out, flailing, and scrambling to his feet. He backed away, turning around
and around in astonishment. He tripped over several desks trying to back
away from Rick Kaiser before he recognized both the boy and the
classroom.
"I'm still alive," he gasped.
"You're okay," Rick said cautiously. "It just takes
a minute to shift gears."
Mort was astonished and outraged. "Oh, those lying
creeps! I never shot her! I was just a kid when that happened! It was a
trick! I told you, Kaiser! We're being set up!"
Rick held out his arms, not realizing that he was
blocking Mort's way to the door. "We've got to talk about this first."
Mort shoved him out of the way. Rick staggered back
and fell against a desk.
"I'm finished with talking!" Mort bellowed over his
shoulder. "I'm getting out of here!"
Mort all but ran over Marla in the corridor. Marla
backed against the wall to avoid a collision. Mort saw disgust in her
expression, and loathing, too, but also a measure of curiosity. If only
she'd loosen up a bit.
What a waste.
Mort glanced back at Rick, wondering what had gone on
between the two of them to set Marla off. He had never seen Marla acting
so flaky, or Rick so lost and confused.
"You two breaking up?" he called back at them. "You
want out of here, Marla? Come with me!"
"What are you going to do," Marla growled at him,
"run your head through a brick wall?"
"Yeah, well what good are brains if you don't use
them?" Mort leered at the girl. "Or are you planning to stick around and
let them mess you over some more? It's all a rotten trick, you know."
"It's not what you guys think," Rick said.
Mort frowned. "Not what we think? What do you think
is happening, Kaiser?"
"I don't think we should take anything for granted,"
Rick said. "It's a trick, but not the way you think."
"He's right," Marla said. "You don't need to be so
paranoid about everything. It won't help if we panic."
Mort felt his anger building. His entire body
shook. "I don't know how they did that, but they're not getting away with
it."
"What happened?" Marla says softly.
Mort couldn't help the sudden tears in his eyes.
"I'm not going to tell you or your wimp boyfriend nothing. You coming
with me, or what?"
"Me?" Marla oozed sarcasm. "With you?"
"We're the same inside," Mort said, more convinced
than ever that he had a future with the Ice Queen. If he could escape
with Marla at his side, he would have everything worth having. "Rick has
never been anything but a crutch to you," he told her. "It's time to
learn to fly."
"You're badmouthing the only friend you got," Marla
said in amazement.
"All I ever hear from him is not to rock the boat."
Mort didn't bother to look to see how Rick was reacting to his betrayal.
He felt guilty, but he needed to make the break if he stood a chance with
Marla. "He's a fistful of clay that anyone can squeeze to suit
themselves. I'm not built that way. You guys don't know what I've been
through. It's a bum trip and I'm not taking any more."
"You can't get out of here," Rick said. "I've
tried. Everything's locked."
Mort sneered. "I'll bet you tried, as long as you
never scratched anything, or made too much noise at it. Watch a pro at
work, Kaiser. I'll show you how to make a wave or two."
Mort stormed down the hall toward the back of the
building, not bothering to look back to see whether or not he was being
followed. He went down the staircase to the basement, banging doors as he
went. He turned in the classroom marked METAL SHOP and paused while the
lights flickered on. Marla and Rick brought up the rear.
He had been disqualified from metal-working for
horseplay, but he knew where they kept the equipment he wanted, and he
hadn't forgotten how to use it. He walked to a large metal cabinet and
tried the doors.
"What are you going to do?" Rick asked, his eyes wide
with concern.
Marla sighed. "Just watch and shut up. It's his own
neck he's risking, not ours."
The cutting torches were locked up, but not the
hammers and chisels. Mort selected his tools from a nearby drawer and
with a single blow from a hammer bent the cabinet handle down. The noise
he made sounded like an explosion in the quiet. Mort stuck the chisel in
the crack he had made and pounded the lock through the sheet metal. The
door creaked open.
He selected a small cutting torch roughly the size of
his forearm.
"Mort, you're a self-fulfilling prophecy," Marla
said. "You'll go to jail for this."
"I'm not sticking around to get messed over again,"
Mort muttered with determination.
He turned and hurried away. At the top of the
stairs, Rick started toward the main doors, thinking Mort intended to use
the torch against the heaviest locks in the building. When Rick looked
back and saw that nobody was following, Mort chuckled at his lack of
foresight and imagination. Rick's grades were good, but in Mort's
opinion, he was too used to being led around by the nose.
Armstrong Cattle Farm for Young Adults.
Laughing, Mort headed in the other direction, toward
the main offices. He kicked in the door. Glass shattered. Shards danced
across the tiled floor. Grinning, he hurried down the main isle to a back
room. The second door barring his way was even less a challenge. He used
a flower vase to break the glass and reached inside to open the door.
Mort stood facing another locked metal cabinet, this
one equipped with a lock that needed more than the bang of a hammer. Rick
hung back, glancing again and again toward the front of the office, as if
expecting Security to come pouring through at any moment.
Marla stood at his side and watched in fascination.
Mort thumbed the auto-ignition button. The torch burst into a glare of
unbearable heat and light. He put the torch to the lock and quickly
melted his way through. Black smoke curled to the ceiling. A smoke alarm
went off, beeping loudly through the offices.
"That ought to catch somebody's attention," Mort
said. He opened the smoking doors and studied the rows of switches
inside.
Marla pointed one out. "Automatic locks, main
doors."
Mort flipped it off.
"Turn them all off," Marla said.
Mort did as she said.
Something was wrong. Red lights still glowed by the
switches. Each continued to read LOCKED.
"There must be a security override somewhere else,"
Marla said thoughtfully.
Mort sighed in exasperation. "We'll have to do this
the hard way."
The computer voice murmured from a nearby wall
speaker. "Warning, Mort Braggs. You are trespassing and have inflicted
property damage. You are in violation of school codes..."
Mort walked over to the speaker and put the ball of
white-hot light against the grill. More black smoke coiled to the
ceiling. From somewhere further away, another alarm went off.
Mort turned off the torch and stalked back through
the offices. Marla and Rick followed not too far behind.
"You had better stop him," Mort overheard Rick
telling Marla. "He could get us all in trouble if he does too much
damage."
"Good," Marla muttered, but otherwise ignored the
boy.
Grinning, Mort went to the main entrance and thumbed
the torch again. He shielded his eyes with one hand and held the flame a
few inches from the hefty, polished locks. The metal glowed red hot and
sagged, but refused to burn through. He had expected as much.
Mort stepped back with a growl of frustration and
gave the doors the hardest kick he had in him. He struck again and again
with increasing desperation. He wanted out before the cops arrived. He
had planned on giving himself time to escape.
He gave the glass a brutal hit with the back of the
torch. Now, both his leg and his wrist hurt, and he had accomplished
nothing. With gritted teeth, he tried burning through the glass. The
bronzed, armored glass blackened. He bellowed laughter as an enormous
crack appeared with a noise like a gunshot. With a grin of triumph, he
stepped back and kicked again.
Pain shot through his leg. He limped back and
signaled for Rick to give it a try.
Rick shook his head nervously and backed away.
"You two-bit coward! I want out of here!"
Mort lost it. Only dimly was he aware of kicking and
beating the heated glass like a hysterical girl, burning his hands and
further crippling himself to no avail. Through it all, he remembered the
forty-five semiautomatic of his dreams, the gun that grew more powerful
every time he fired it until it was blowing in the face of buildings.
Wish-fulfillment. Self-inflicted guilt. They had
tricked him into barring his soul. They had made a fool of him.
He had no choice but to let his tantrum run its
course. Bawling like a child, he leaned against the cracked glass and
sank to the floor. Wisely, very wisely, Rick turned back toward room
ninety-four without saying a word. Marla wrinkled her nose and sneered at
him in utter disdain. Then, she, too, turned away.
Mort launched himself to his feet in cold panic.
Nobody had ever seen him loose control before. If he failed in Marla's
eyes, he was a dead man. She'd ridicule him and ruin his reputation.
There was no way he could fight the whole school.
He came up from behind and grabbed her arm. "Let's
try the side doors," he said in a no-nonsense tone of voice. It was the
way he had always treated Rick Kaiser, but Marla twisted herself loose.
"Let me go, you stupid animal!"
Mort backhanded her. The reflex was automatic.
Marla flew back and bounced off a wall. She fell, smearing blood from a
cut lip across her face.
Now it was Rick's turn to come screaming at him with
a cocked fist. Mort held his ground. As expected, Rick's sudden show of
courage was a bluff. He stopped and backed away, blood draining from his
face as he understood how close he had come to getting his own face
seriously messed up.
Mort sighed, knowing he had lost a friend for good.
Like Marla said, Rick had been his only friend. Now he had nothing but
alarms going off and cops on their way to nail him and put him in a cage
for the rest of his life. He had only one avenue of escape left, and he
wasn't about to go it alone.
He pulled Marla bodily to her feet. "You're coming
with me, young lady." He grinned, amused by his imitation of a Security
guard he had seen breaking up a cat fight between two girls. "You've been
a bad, bad girl."
Marla went wild. Before he managed to let go of the
girl, she had scratched his face and kicked him in the shin several times.
The torch inadvertently ignited in Mort's hand. The
sudden glare of heat singed his leg and sent Marla reeling back with
smoldering hair. Sobered by the near accident, Mort killed the torch and
reached for her a second time. He intended only to steady her and to
apologize.
Marla lashed out with flailing arms and an expression
of sheer terror. "Don't you dare touch me! Don't you dare!"
Mort felt his face flush with humiliation. He hadn't
meant to hurt the girl.
He hadn't meant to shoot his own mother.
It wasn't fair. Marla wasn't hurt and the shooting incident in the abandoned
factory had never happened. What had he ever done except stay up past
curfew and help fence a few stolen televisions? What kind of criminal did
that make him?
Guilt lingered. His father blamed him despite his
innocence. That's what the dream had been all about. His father blamed
him for his mother's death just because it had been some useless, stupid
kid who had shot her. And he had accepted the guilt.
He was being set up. He had to get out of the school
and loose himself in the inner city, if he hoped to retain his freedom. He
started back down the hall. Rick gawked at him, indecisive and too
confused to know which way to turn. Marla fell back against the wall,
convinced she was being chased by a maniac with a two thousand degree
torch.
Mort shook his head in exasperation at the both of
them. The two airheads deserved one another. He'd try the locks on the
side doors. If that didn't work, he'd think of something else. Unlike
Rick, he couldn't think about what he was doing. He could only act.
