I looked at Clyde. I didn't say anything.
“Yeah,” Clyde said. “You're scared big time. I can feel it. I'm very sensitive to these things.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“I am,” Clyde said. “I have heightened senses . . . like a superhero or a werewolf.”
“I understand pigs have a superior sense of smell. Maybe you're part pig.” I was relieved not to have stuttered. I was so scared my mouth felt detached from my face.
“Here's the game plan,” Clyde said. "All the doors are locked. You can't get out. Your only hope is to find a weapon and eliminate me before I get tired of playing with you. I have a loaded gun, a stun gun, and a big sharp knife hidden somewhere in the plant. Plus, there are things you'd naturally find here . . . like acid and hammers and shit like that.
“I've got two of your buddies hanging out here, waiting for you to find them. If you die, they die, too. In fact, if you don't find them soon enough, they'll die. You have a half hour to find the first one.”
“Who are they?”
“That's for you to discover. Oh yeah, and I forgot to tell you . . . you'll be doing this in the dark. You can take the candle if you want. Romantic, right?”
He was smiling again. I guess this was his idea of a date.
“I've disconnected the alarm system,” he said. “If you trip the smoke detectors the signal won't get sent out anywhere. The sprinklers will go off and we'll all get wet, but nobody'll come to save you. That might be fun . . . seeing you in a wet T-?shirt.”
Clyde stood so I could see he was armed. “I have a twenty-?two for the kill,” he said. “And I have a paintball gun and a pellet gun for the rabbit in the shooting gallery. That's you. You're the rabbit. Oh yeah, and I have a taser. It's new. I always wanted to use a taser.” He pointed the taser at me. “This is the start of playtime. I'm going to give you a chance to run. I'm gonna count to twenty and then I'm going to shoot you with the taser. Go!”
He started counting and I took off, forgetting the candle. Halfway down the hall I had to stop running. It was pitch black and I had no idea what was in front of me. I put my hand to the wall, feeling my way, jingling with every step. The hall led to the front foyer and I was prepared to crash through the glass door if necessary. I needed to get out of the building. Crazy Clyde was going to kill me and he wasn't going to spare his hostages. It didn't matter who I found. We were all going to die unless I could escape and get help.
Clyde wasn't going to leave witnesses.
I saw the ambient light from the foyer and broke into a run. I turned the corner, heard gunshot, and felt the sting of impact. I felt blood run down my side, down my leg. I cried out and put my hand to my side. Paint. I was hit with a paintball.
“I'm right behind you,” Clyde said. “If you go toward the door I'll shoot you with the taser. I'm dying to use the taser. Sometimes they use these things for torture. The electric lead stays hooked into you with a barb and you can keep getting shocked. How cool is that?”
I was in the middle of the floor and I was breathing heavy. “What do you want me to do?”
“I want you to run, rabbit. Run away from the door.”
I took a step and stumbled down to one knee. I was too scared to run. Too scared to think. Not good, I told myself. I had to try to stay calm. I managed to get myself to my feet and I ran in blind panic down the other side of the hall, toward Andrew's and Bart's offices.
There was a faint bar of light under a doorjamb in front of me. I pushed the door and it swung open. It was Bart's office. The office was lit by a single candle on the desk. Albert Kloughn was duct-?taped to the desk chair behind the desk. He had duct tape across his mouth and wrapped around his ankles. His eyes were huge and tears rolled down his cheeks.
I ripped the tape off his mouth and was about to go for the tape around his torso when I saw the bomb.
“Don't touch me,” he said. “I'm b-?b-?b-?booby-?trapped.”
I snatched at the desk phone. No dial tone. I locked the door from the inside and pawed through the junk on Bart's desk, looking for something helpful. My hands were shaking and my heart was thundering in my chest. “I hate this,” I said. “I hate this game. And I hate the pathetic excuse for a human being who's out there stalking me.”
“You have to get help,” Kloughn said. “This guy is crazy. He's going to kill us.”
“There are just nuts and bolts on this desk,” I said. “I need something I can use as a weapon.”
“I know where there's a weapon,” Kloughn said. “I can swivel myself in this chair and I was looking out the window into the warehouse when the crazy guy was hiding things. There's a room off to the side with glass windows all along.”
“The quality control area.”
“I don't know, but there's a workstation just by the door to that room. And he hid a gun there. It's right on top of the table part of the machine.”
There was a knock on the door. “You're not allowed to lock yourself in Bart's office,” Clyde said. “It doesn't matter anyway, I've got a key. But now you're gonna have to get punished before we can go on with the playtime.”
I heard the key scrape in the lock and I grabbed a wooden crate half-?filled with gears and threw it at the window that led to the warehouse. The glass shattered and I dove through the window. If I got cut it wasn't going to be any worse than what was going to happen to me at Clyde's hands.