“You
don’t tell us, we hogtie you like a Sunday roast lamb and shove you in the
furnace while you’re still alive,” Jong said. “You burn up real slow. Nobody
hears you scream.”
Insane
with fear, I whipped my head to the left, smothering out my burning hair
against the belt’s rubber surface. But now I was aware of something
else—my blood-soaked right hand was sliding out of the duct tape. I
twisted it, hoping they wouldn’t notice.
Obviously
a man who enjoyed his job, Jong flicked his Zippo again, bringing the flame
toward my face. I gave one last, frantic tug and yanked my arm free, the reflex
swing catching Jong in the crotch. He shrieked as though he was having his
prostate examined with a fondue fork. The lighter flew out of his hand, arced
through the air, and landed in a pile of old wooden excelsior shavings.
Feathery as air, flammable as hair, the fiery curls wafted upward on air
currents, igniting stacks of cardboard cartons and floating around the room
like fiery moths. A dozen small fires broke out.
A
sprig of burning excelsior swirled up and torched the back of Custer’s pants.
He swatted awkwardly at his backside, bellowing at his partner to help, but
Jong’s pompador was now on fire.
“Fuck!”
Jong screamed, clubbing at his head. “Fuckfuckfuck!”
Preoccupied
with saving their own skins, they didn’t attempt to stop me as I ripped my arms
and legs free, heaved myself off the conveyor belt, and bolted across the room
toward Muffin’s crate. As I hauled Muffin out, it seemed as though the very air
ignited—all those molecules of malt dust in the air spontaneously
combusting. With a roar that sucked the oxygen out of the room, the fire
flashed over and everything was burning. The furnace thumped and thudded and
suddenly a warning klaxon sounded with an ear-blistering blare.
Clutching
Muffin to my chest, I sprinted out through a doorway, through a series of
interconnected rooms, and finally onto railroad tracks that ran along an arched
brick tunnel. Bursting out of the tunnel, I found myself in a train yard where
row upon row of old boxcars, hoppers, and switch engines stood on a web of
rusted tracks the size of an interstate highway.
I
risked a look over my shoulder, hoping my would-be barbecuers had burned up.
No such luck. Here they came,
staggering out of the tunnel, coughing and hacking and with half their clothes
burned off, but so mad they were emitting rays of fury nearly visible to the
naked eye. Custer spotted me, yelled, and charged after me.
I
hopscotched between tracks, slid beneath the undercarriages of boxcars, hid in
the shadows of the big train wheels. Sensing the danger, Muffin remained quiet
in my arms, his heart beating wildly against my own. The Janitors split up and
began running between the tracks, hunting me. But the sun was setting now, and
my skin and clothes were dark from soot and dirt. I blended into the dark like
a tomato in spaghetti sauce.
Suddenly there
was an explosion. The malt building’s walls bulged and enormous orange flames
reared up. Another explosion followed on the heels of the first, then another.
If you’re going to heat a malt furnace to twelve hundred degrees, you ought to
keep an eye on it. The explosions sent the scumbags running. Peering from
beneath a boxcar, I saw them dashing toward the brewery’s ornate iron gates.
Sirens
sounded. First from the north, then from all directions, louder every second.
The green Lincoln peeled out an instant before the first hook and ladder
screeched to a halt. Every fire truck in the city was going to be needed for
this monster, I thought. Already flames were leaping fifty feet into the air
and the ten-story grain elevators on the brewery’s east side were glowing. When
those elevators went up, this fire was going to be visible clear across Lake
Michigan.
This
was not a good place for a girl and her dog. By the time the third fire truck
careened to a halt, Muffin and I had squeezed beneath a fence and melted into
the night.
Escape tip #26:
Use what the good lord gave you.
I’d
reached a new low. I was stealing from ten-year-olds.
Half
a dozen kids slouched in front of a small grocery store on the corner of Buffum
and Locust, slurping Popsicles and staring off to the north, where the sky was
lit by the glow of the burning brewery. Business was brisk, with people popping
down to the store for last-minute dinner fixings and lottery tickets.
I
stared longingly at the Popsicles. My throat felt as though I’d been gargling
with hot sand, my slashed hand throbbed, and I could feel the skin on my left
cheekbone puckering into burn blisters. After escaping from the brewery, I’d
walked for nearly an hour, creeping along side streets, jumping every time a
vehicle came up behind me. I could
feel
the Janitors out there, hunting
me. As darkness fell their job would be easier. A lone woman was a target for
every creep on the streets. Even the hookers usually banded together for
protection after dark.
Muffin
sucked up shamelessly to the kids, wagging his stumpy tail and licking up the
sweet icy Popsicle spatters on the steps. While the kids fussed over Muffin, I
eyed their bikes, left sprawled in untidy heaps on the sidewalk. Choosing a
purple bike with a white wicker basket that looked as though it might be a good
fit, I set it upright, scooped up Muffin, plopped him in the basket, straddled
the bike, and pushed off.
“That’s
my
bike,” cried a little girl with
stubby braids, jumping to her feet.
“I
need to borrow it,” I called back over my shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
I was lower
than a squashed bug on the sidewalk.
“Hey!”
A small boy pointed at me, spitting Popsicle pulp in his excitement. “That’s
Mazie Maguire!”
“That
escaped killer!” another kid shouted. “The one that busted down the walls of
the state prison with a tank—”
“And stole a helicopter—”
“And bombed that
toilet factory!”
A
teenaged girl came running up alongside, thrusting a pen at me. “Autograph my
shirt, Mazie!”
Word
spread at the speed of Twitter. Customers poured out of the store, cell cameras
snapped, people yelled my name. Arguments broke out:
That’s her all right,
just like on TV! The hell it’s her—she looks like a bag lady!
“Yo,
Mazie!” A boy on a skateboard lobbed a bottle of lemonade into the bike basket.
I
outdistanced the kids, but now a large man wearing a barbecue apron ran out of
a backyard and halted in front of me, blocking the sidewalk like a defensive
lineman, obviously determined to stop me. He grinned, and I could see the
dollar signs gleaming in his eyes.
No wiggle room to
the left because of parked cars; none to the right because of a fence.
What else could I
do? I balanced the bike with my knees and hauled my jersey up to my armpits.
Mazie
Maguire don’t need no stinkin’ bra! Eat your heart out, Pamela Anderson!
The guy’s eyes
locked onto my boobs, his mouth fell open, and in that nanosecond I—ahem—
flashed
past him.
Heart
thumping madly, I pedaled off like the wind, leaving my posse far behind,
praying I’d make it out of the neighborhood before the police showed up. But,
funny thing—minutes ticked by and no patrol cars came sharking around.
Maybe the cops figured it was just another crackpot Mazie Maguire sighting and
weren’t going to be suckered into investigating it.
No
one tried to stop me as I flew along the narrow, potholed streets, grateful for
the shot-out streetlamps that left the streets dark and shadowy. Finally I
stopped to catch my breath in an empty lot, plopping down onto an old abandoned
tire. I broke open the lemonade and shared it with Muffin, pouring it into my
cupped hands for him to lap.
Grimacing
at the sour taste, he looked up at me:
What is this stuff?
“I
know,” I said. “Bummer. But it’s all we got, buddy.” I pulled off a strip of
duct tape still clinging to my jeans and wrapped it around my bleeding palm.
Duct tape was amazing stuff, I thought. It could cure warts. It could repair
broken fan belts. It could tape people to malt conveyor belts. Maybe it could
hold together the edges of my knife wound so I wouldn’t need stitches.
What
was I thinking? I wasn’t going to live long enough to require stitches. It was
only dumb luck that I wasn’t already a mass of blackened carbon. Poor Luis
hadn’t been so lucky. He’d died of a heart attack after Bad and Badder got
going with the knives and the lighters.
I felt my brain
going into shutdown mode. I could have lain back on that filthy tire and slept
until the crack of doom. Instead, I forced myself to my feet.
“C’mon,
Muff,” I said, my voice a raspy thread. “Onward to Piggsville.”
If
you want to get a good bar argument going, ask a Milwaukeean how Piggsville got
its name. It was—take your pick—named for a hog slaughterhouse that
once stood there, for a foundry that produced pig iron, or—most
popular—for a Mrs. Pigg who once ran a whorehouse on the site. A small
town gobbled up by the city of Milwaukee, Piggsville was a pocket-sized patch
of city tucked beneath the thundering ceiling of the I-94 viaduct, cut off by
the Kinnickinnick Canal on one side and by the Thirty-fifth Street Viaduct on
the other.
I
hid the bike in a clump of bushes near the canal and forged ahead on foot.
Muffin trotted behind, delighted to be out of his basket. I had no idea where
the pickle factory was, but figured it had to be somewhere in Piggsville’s
industrial area. We crept cautiously past a tent and awning warehouse, a
snowmobile factory, and a concrete-producing facility. I was about to give up
on the pickle factory when a prickly-sour aroma reached my nostrils. There it
was, down close to the canal: Piggsville Pickle Products
.
Its
buildings were painted a hideous shade of olive probably intended to be gherkin
green, but which instead made the place look like an army base. Hidden in the
shadows, I watched as a truck pulled out of the complex. Its trailer bore the
Piggsville Pickles logo: a dancing pickle with big, bugged-out eyes and stick
arms and legs. I guess Mr. Pickle was supposed to be a knockoff on Mr. Peanut,
but he looked sort of like a giant green turd. This was definitely a company in
need of an image makeover.
There
didn’t appear to be a night shift and the plant began closing down soon after I
arrived, employees streaming out of the building to the parking lot. The
prospect of entering a dark factory after nearly being grilled alive in another
was unappealing. It was probably a complete waste of time, anyway. I no longer
had Luis’s locker key and—even assuming I managed to find the locker—what
were the chances that anything of Luis’s would still be left in it?
But
I’d exhausted all my other leads and having come this far, I might as well give
it a shot. Getting into the building wouldn’t be difficult. Security was so
spongy you could have driven a tank through it. Pickle factories apparently
weren’t high on terrorists’ hit lists. The guard in the booth out front showed
no signs of making rounds. He sat comfortably ensconced in his shack, and I
could see the flicker from his television as Muffin and I slipped through the
employee parking lot and into the complex.
The
plant was laid out in a rough square, with water towers and vinegar silos in
the center and the processing buildings ranged along the sides. Enormous vats
of fresh cucumbers sat next to bins of dill, salt, garlic, and mustard seed.
Tiptoeing through the buildings, which had been left unlocked, I noticed how
clunky and old-fashioned the machinery looked. The wooden floors creaked, the
work surfaces were caked with grit, the forty-watt lightbulbs threw menacing
shadows on the walls, and the flypaper coils dangling from the ceilings were
studded with dead flies like furry raisins. Making a mental note never to eat
Piggsville Pickle products again, I crept through three buildings, jumping at
every noise and shadow, without finding a single locker.
One more and out,
I promised myself. And after that? I didn’t know what happened after that.
Possibly death by exhaustion.
I slipped into
the fourth building. Cider vinegar fumes slapped me the instant I opened the
door. This would be the brining room, I guessed, where enormous vats of pickles
were soaked to the desired degree of sourness. Eyes stinging from the fumes, I
crept along the main aisle. Five more seconds in here and my skin was going to
start pickling. Double doors at one end of the building led to the employee
lunchroom. Why would you stick the lunchroom in here where the workers would be
forced to eat amid the stomach-churning fumes? I cracked the lunchroom door and
glanced inside. The room was unlit, but I could dimly make out a few tables and
chairs, a row of vending machines flashing
Out
of Order
signs, and restrooms.