She sprinted down the hill. When I get my hands on these kids . . .

***

As they pushed at the desk and pawed away at the papers, Kim breathed deeply and slowly. Laura could tell that Kim was trying to stay calm. The girls grunted and strained to move the desk and rubbish away from the vent.

Kim noticed a piece of rope tied to the back leg of the desk. Had they kept a dog in here? Maybe they wanted to tie the desk to the wall, but she didn’t see any hooks or nails nearby. “Hey, you OK, Trace? You’re shaking like a leaf,” Kim said.

Tracy sneered. “Oh, no problem at all. It’s like every day that I inhale enough virus to send me to the grave. This is really it, isn’t it? I’ve always read about people’s final minutes before death and wondered how I would feel.” She pushed a chair away. “I never thought I’d be entombed with three deadbeats in a biohazard facility.”

“Stop it. Stop it. If we don’t get our minds off of the virus, I’m going to lose it. I swear I will,” Liz said, sitting back and rubbing her temples. “I guess this is just what my dad meant when he told me that one day the ‘reality of forever’ would hit me square in the face. Man, I went to church, but none of those messages prepared me for this. I just never thought about eternity. I spent all those years in a youth group and even played a part in the worship team, but I wasn’t ready for dying.”

Kim looked up at Liz, openly surprised. “You went to church? You never said anything about this.”

Liz shivered. “What’s to tell? It was more of a social thing for me. Lots of singing, food to eat, learning how to love yourself . . . all of it was very safe and pre-packaged. A nice, quiet refuge from reality, that’s the way my youth group was.” She swept her hand around. “Lot of good that did me. Sitting here, slowly getting your life sucked out of you. I wish my youth leaders would have grabbed me by the collar and forced me to pay attention when they talked about going to Heaven. I need another chance, you hear me? We gotta get out of here so I can get a second chance, do you hear? I played around and laughed during messages from the Bible. I passed notes, and I flirted like crazy,” she sniffed, wiping a tear from her eye. “Stupid, stupid. I pushed Jesus too far. He won’t forgive me until I get back to church.”

“What will going to church do? I think getting back on terms with Christ goes beyond parking yourself in a pew,” Laura said, moving a stack of papers. “I think it’s more of making a decision inside you, rather than figuring an outside setting can change you.”

Liz’s face looked drained.

Closed Heart
“OK, fine. Forget it. Don’t want to talk about it,” Liz said. “Talk about something else. Anything.” She scraped away at a pile of crumpled trash, trying to keep her trembling to a minimum. “Laura, tell us about the house you had to leave, OK? You couldn’t stay there?”

“Yeah, it was nice,” Laura said, smiling as she pulled at the desk. “I actually got to spend most of the first month in it by myself. My dad and mom were on a business trip right after they bought the house, but I couldn’t go with them, so they let me have free run of the place—we called it our Castle—as long as I didn’t get in trouble.”

She gazed at the wall as she worked. “I remember my first night. I had three friends for a sleepover, but can you believe this—they all got sick, big time nausea. They had to go home that night, so the inaugural night at the Castle was a disaster.”

She ran her hand over the edge of the grate. “Same with the second group—they started complaining about headaches, but I think it was a copycat reaction to the first girls that came over. They started saying the place was cursed. In fact, word got around to my other friends, and nobody would spend the night anymore. Sleepovers became a thing of the past at my house.”

Kim pulled a chair to the side of the room and picked up a box, deep in thinking as she worked. “You told us that you had to move? Did the government push you out?”

Laura nodded her head. “Yeah, some kind of a scare. My dad held out, arguing about it, even calling on a business trip with a threat from a lawyer. The authorities held their ground, though, and we were forced to move. I had a great time at a great place for a grand total of about a month. Strange, huh?”

Kim frowned and reached for a book. “What was the name of the stuff that scared the government?”

Laura squinted as she tried to remember the word. “Started with a B. Hmmm . . . benzene. Yeah, that’s it. Benzene. They said it was some kind of a dangerous thing that could eat up your home or make you go nutty or something.” She rolled her eyes. “I spent a whole month there, around the clock, and nothing happened to me. Isn’t it strange? The only thing I get from living there wasn’t from the Benzene home, but from falling into a pool and losing my memory. Funny how things work backwards.”

Freedom
“I hate to interrupt this walk down memory lane,” Tracy said, “but we need to get out of here and to a doctor. A little help, please?” They got to the grating and pushed their fingernails into the sides of the metalwork. The grate popped off easily.

Laura hacked forcefully. “Let’s go. We need to get out of here.”

Tracy whimpered. “Let Laura go first. She’s got the virus pretty bad. Look at her grow pale.” She wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist. “And I’m not feeling too good myself.”

Liz jumped forward and knocked the girls aside. “I’m going first. I gotta get out of here.” Before any of the girls could respond, Liz had shoved herself into the opening. She’s really losing it, Laura thought. She’s taking a look at eternity and is horrified.

Liz kicked and screamed as she pushed her way through the grating.