"Yeah, good luck with that," He said "I was running back to base to get more arrows when I fell off the girders."
"Why'd you kill Doctor Prendick?" I said "He was your coworker!"
"Oh trust me, he broke his NDA when he told you what he did, trust me, a crossbow bolt through the head is better than the death by litigation that Walton's World would have brought down on him."
"So now what?" I said "What's your plan?"
"Our interests are the same, Patterson." Wells said, "Turn the power back on, get these doors unlocked, and keep Denise from hurting anyone else."
I kept the crossbow aimed at him, which was the definition of an empty threat, but aiming a theoretically deadly weapon at him certainly made me feel better about the current situation.
"You have an ulterior motive." I said.
"Well obviously." He said.
I waited.
"So why should I trust you?"
"You shouldn't." He said.
Another moment passed.
"So what now?" I asked.
"Nothing." Wells said, "I'll stay here, you go turn out the power and unlock the doors."
I waited again, then lowered the crossbow.
"What do you know that I don't?"
"I have a bachelor's in political science, a master's in sociology, and I wrote my doctorate dissertation on behavioral psychology in customer decision-making. You look like you have a diploma from a high school with a racist mascot. I suspect I know a lot of things that you don't." Wells said, "But for now, know that our interests are aligned, and I have no problem sitting here while you run off and do all the legwork for me." He tapped his bad ankle. "It'll be very much appreciated, all things considered."
"Okay then." I said, "Well, then you're coming with me."
"I really doubt that." Wells said, tapping his ankle.
"Yeah, you really are." I said.
"And for what possible reason would I come with you?"
I walked over to Wells and looked at his pockets, all I could see was the multitool in his pocket. I walked over to the closet and picked up his shirt, opened the chest pocket and withdrew his book of coupons.
"A couple are missing." I said "So I guess Denise can be distracted with one at a time?"
Herb was still looking at me, but his sense of smug superiority was starting to fade.
"Now, this," I said, waving the book of coupons as I walked across the room "Isn't the end of the world to lose, I mean, I've made it halfway across this store without one of these so far and hey, I only almost died three times, four if you count what the managers were trying."
I walked over towards the kitchen and put my hands on top of the ceramic cat on the end table.
"You know what the issue with nostalgia is?" I said, "Sometimes, we tend to forget that the past was full of some really, truely, obnoxious novelties."
I opened the cat's head.
"What's New Pussy Cat? Wow! Wow wow wow! What's New Pussy Cat?"
I smiled as the cookie jar continued its electrical screeching, Wells's face blanched as, somewhere in the cold darkness of the store, Denise cried out in annoyance.
"Anyway, I'll be going now, and I guess I can just leave you here, unless you feel a powerful urge to..."
"Oh just take me with you, you jackass."
I won't lie, after staring down into an existential abyss shaped like my childhood home, it was oddly comforting to be back in merely treacherous and deadly abyss that was the showroom floor. The southern tower was still shrouded in darkness, in stark contrast to the southern wall, bathed in the synthetic torchlight of a mob of angry easterners.
"Hmmm." Wells said, dragging himself along besides me, "Seems the crazies made it to the utility room before your girlfriend."
"Not touching that one." I said, still carrying the crossbow, slung over my shoulder and looking at the group.
"They're not trying to beat down the doors," I said "So she probably hasn't made it inside."
I looked from the warm not-fire light to the cold lights to the west.
"If she knew she couldn't get the power going." I said "Then she would have headed to the others, maybe try and get help making it in, or maybe, I don't know, something with the generator."
"I'm surprised to see how much effort everyone's been putting into fixing the fridge." Wells said "I figured everyone would have just fucked off at the first chance to get out of work."
"We can't just leave it alone." I said.
"And why not?" Wells asked.
I suddenly realized that, while this man had multiple degrees, his entire pedagogy was a soft science nightmare. Maybe he didn't know what was going on with the refrigerant hazard.
"Because some people take pride in their work..." I said "If you don't just leave a job unfinished."
Wells rolled his eyes as we walked. I noticed that the typically cool warehouse air had started to warm.
"Well," I said, "Your company helped design riot control mode, right?"
"We didn't help design it." He said "We designed it, in house, ourselves."
"And we're very proud of you." I said in a way that would have given Allison a run for her money "But I mean, you would know if there was a way in or out of the building, right?"
"Yes," Wells said. "And if there was a way out, I'd have taken it by now."
"Okay," I said "So why is it getting warm in here?"
Wells thought about this for a moment.
"You know, there's actually an interesting reason behind that."
"Yeah?" I said.
"Yeah, see, when the power cut off for the building, it triggered something called the fucking air conditioners turned off."
"Oh." I said.
"Dumbass." Wells said under his breath.
"It'd explain why it's not getting humid." I said.
"Yeah, the buildings hermetically sealed, the idea was that, if protestors surrounded the building, the police could just flood the area with enough tear gas to make that Battle of the Marne look like a fog machine, and everyone inside would still be fine, and verse vica."
"You mean vice versa?"
"You get the irony in trying to correct that, right?"
I chose to ignore him, but I decided to make note of the fact that, if we failed to keep the gas under control, we might all die gasping for air, but the scale of the disaster wouldn't be left up to the capricious whims of the prevailing winds.
I looked up at the skylights, the inky blackness had shifted to a sullen grey.
"Any idea what time it is?" I said.
"No later than 3:30," He said "If I had to guess."
We felt the frozen food aisle before we arrived. I'd expected the area to be frigid cold with clouds of vapor pouring off pipes and out of coolers, but it was hot, and dry and a bone as we approached.
"Halt!" Called a voice "Identify yourself or be shot!"
I couldn't see the source of the voice, but it sounded like it was coming from directly beneath one of the fog lights.
"Friend!" I said, then glanced at Wells "And company. I'm looking for Arthur."
"Approach." The voice called out, before stepping forward.
"Are you Peterson?" the man said. Seeing him now, I noticed he wasn't wearing a store uniform, instead, he was in an unfastened pair of bib-overalls, with the top half wrapped around his waist, and sweat pouring from his chest and arms into his dingy white t-shirt.
I sighed.
"Sure," I said.
"Arthur said we might be expecting you." He looked at Wells "Not sure who this is." He said.
"He's useful." I said, "Potentially."
"Well, right this way, sir."
The man led us first under a long strip of yellow caution tape, then through a mess of tools and parts. Things got hotter and hotter, and we moved closer and closer to the giant industrial fridge. The refrigerators in the store could have been their own towers, save for the fact they went all the way to the ceiling, and the noise and heat above the ground level was intolerable.
The base of the fridge was completely open, and frozen food sat thawing along the outside of the base. Some of the boxes had been opened, and ice cream and other perishables that didn't need to be cooked had been cracked open and snacked on.
We passed the crates of food and made it to the base of the tower. There was a flurry of activity as men came and went, stepping over the propped open doors to the freezer. Little could be heard over the roar of the nearby generator.
"Mr. Arthur!" The man called, "We found him!"
There was a stir from inside, and a young man, comically small next to the larger contractors around him, emerged from the crowd and barreled over.
"Oh good." Arthur said "You're not dead."
"Same," I said "How's this going?"
"Not great." Arthur said, wiping his hands off on a rag sticking out of the waistband of his pants. "At first, we thought the generator would be enough to restore power to each unit, and we could just cycle from one to the other long enough to cool the gasses and move on. That'll work for the freezer and the dairy fridge, but this," He gestured to the large refrigerator behind him, "The boys were called out because this one had a bad compressor. No compressor means that what little gas can make it through the heat exchanger isn’t dense enough to, you know, exchange any heat. We've been running it, every now and then, but we're shaving off minutes until it goes off, maybe second, and we need to start shaving hours if this is going to work."
"What's he talking about?" Wells asked.
I looked to the man who'd escorted us.
"Do me a favor, take him somewhere else for now."
The man looked at Arthur who shrugged and nodded at the same time.
"Who's that?" Arthur finally asked once Wells was out of sight.
"Guy who made the monster, and the program that shut down the store, and basically the brains behind every terrible thing that's happened to us tonight. I figured there's no harm in him not knowing that we have a DIY WMD in the freezer section."
"Huh, yeah, good call, fuck that guy." Arthur said with a shrug.
"Has anyone else made it here?"
"You mean did anyone else who was supposed to go to the utility room give up and come to us, yeah, all of you, as a matter of fact."
Just then, I heard a high pitched squeal of glee, followed by a rhythmic taping of a walking stick. I looked over in time to receive a barreling hug from Maggie, and a look that, if interpreted generously, could have been read as relief on Allison's face.
"Patterson." Allison said as she approached.
"I figured, when I saw the men at the door, that you would have come here first."
Allison nodded.
"I didn't think they'd be open to letting me unlock the door first before I gave them the keys." Allison said "Also, I don't want to give them the keys."
"Good call." I said.
"Yeah, fuck those honkey bastards." Maggie said with a smile.
"So, with them blocking the door, what's our plan?" I said.
"Same as before." Allison said "We gain access to the utilities room, only now we can't use the door."
"Well, how do we do that?" I said.
Allison smiled. A real, honest to God smile.
"The utilities room is the source of power, water, and air for every subsystem in the store." Allison said "Including, but especially, the industrial freezers." She pointed her walking stick up towards the top of the freezer.
"That duct there," She said, "Will take us to the utilities room, past the associates from sporting goods, and if memory serves, there’s an air intake just above the primary breaker panel."
"So that's it then." I said "We've got our way in, no time to lose."
Allison nodded in agreement, then glanced over towards where a very sullen looking man with an aluminium chair for a crutch was being guarded.
"Who did you bring along with you, Patterson?" She asked.
"That's Dr. Wells." I said "Turns out, he's the one who shot Prendick, and basically helped engineer this whole thing."
"I see," she said, striking her cane against her palm, meaningfully.
"I need fifteen minutes." She said,
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