Stevie had been an innocent child, a loving little boy, but Ronald was not innocent, he deserved this.
Duane straightened and walked slowly. He could feel the poisonous rays creeping up his arms, through his ribcage. He had probably received a fatal dose already, but as long as his legs kept functioning — long enough for him to find Ronald — nothing else mattered.
He heard activity out in the hall, bustling movement, loud voices. And Duane saw his chance. He could encounter as many people as possible, spread the radioactive cloud. He could touch and taint many of those who had hurt him. Then it would all be over.
Carrying his plutonium prizes, Duane strode out of the swinging doors. As he passed the room counters and the alpha radiation monitors, squealing alarms went off, startling Duane. But he smiled. That only proved how far the radiation was spreading.
He kept walking, turned the corner, and emerged into the long corridor, holding his plutonium in front of him like a weapon in each hand.
But instead of Ronald and his companions, Duane came face to face with a large group of young children. Innocent children and their sponsors from the Coalition of Family Values, along with two Lab managers, touring the facility.
The children turned to Duane and stared as he stood with the deadly metal in each hand, frozen.
He screamed in despair.
CHAPTER 44
After emerging from their respective change rooms, Paige and Craig met at the glassed-in security portal for entrance to the RMA. They passed through the metal detectors, and the PSO handed them each nuclear accident dosimeters to clip onto their own badges.
“Busy day,” the guard said. “We just escorted through a dozen kids from the Coalition for Family Values. Now the FBI? Place feels like Grand Central Station.”
Craig continued to cling to Paige’s arm to keep his balance. He still felt weak and shaky, and his thoughts were muddled — but he needed to see the soap dispenser, the rest room where Hal Michaelson had unknowingly met his death.
“Guess I shouldn’t talk about my rough day,” the PSO said. “You look like you’ve been through hell already this morning.”
Craig looked up at him with a wan smile. He knew his eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot. “I think that sums it up fairly well.”
They entered the Radioactive Materials Area only seconds before a loud alarm warbled through the intercom. Craig tried to identify it from the confusing series of sounds he remembered from the training videotape.
The guard sat up startled. “Holy shit, that’s a radiation alarm!” Inside the glass cubicle, the second PSO called for backup and other guards stationed in the Plutonium Facility rushed to the location of the disturbance.
“What’s happened?” Craig asked.
The first PSO turned to Craig, trying to make light of it. “The Superblock has alarms going off all the time, security alerts usually. Our systems are set so tight that any time two birds sit too close to each other on the razor wire it sets the system off.”
“I’m sure it’s nothing,” said the second guard inside the glassed-in cubicle. “Maybe those kids on the tour group touched something they shouldn’t have.”
“I don’t feel good about this,” Craig muttered to Paige, shaking his head again. “I want to go check it out.”
“Can’t go in there,” the first guard said. “The alarms are on. No one gets in or out of the RMA.”
“We’re already in,” Paige said.
Craig fumbled between the buttons of his orange lab coat and pulled out the FBI badge from his suitjacket and flashed the intimidating-looking Bureau seal at the PSOs. “This is my authorization,” Craig said and grabbed Paige’s arm, pulling her through the swinging double doors.
The FBI identification had no particular authority here at all, but the sight of it befuddled the guard just long enough for them to pass through. Beyond the second set of double doors they ran into the white hallways laced with metal conduits and pipes, fire extinguishers, and metal lockers.
“Do you know where the alarm was tripped?” Craig asked. “Which increment the guard was talking about?”
As Paige shook her head, her blonde hair flipped back and forth. “This place isn’t that big. If it’s a high-level alarm we should be able to learn what it is. Besides, you wanted to find that one and only rest room, right?”
The set of airlock doors swung open at the far end of the hall. Four people ran toward them; behind them came a stream of fleeing children each wearing a visitor’s badge. Many of the children cried, and even the escorts themselves looked panicked. A burly Plutonium Facility worker with a stormy expression on his face scuttled along, looking as if he wanted to ball his hand into a fist and punch through the cinderblock walls. He smelled of potent aftershave. Craig recognized him as Ronald Cobb, the man he had talked to on his last interview in the facility.
“That little turd,” Cobb was saying to one of his companions. “I can’t believe what a royal screw-up he is. Could you see what he was trying to do to me?”
Ronald looked up and saw Craig. “Hey, it’s that FBI guy. Don’t go in there, man. There’s a crazy dude waving around radioactive material.”
Craig and Paige shot a look at each other. “Thanks for the warning,” Craig said, then pushed forward anyway.
They passed through the airlocks into an empty corridor beyond. The alarms continued ringing.
Then, in the far corner slumped next to one of the metal lockers, Craig saw a wispy middle-aged man about forty-five, with limp pale brown hair, thin at the top, and a face that looked like a wad of crumpled tissue paper. His body sagged on its bones just outside of the swinging greenish doors of a glove-box laboratory. The man was a mound of despair. Tears streamed down his cheeks. On the floor beside him lay four dull metal hemispheres where he had discarded them, each about two inches across.
“You’d better stay back,” said the man. “I didn’t want to hurt anybody… who didn’t deserve it.”
Craig knelt and motioned with a hand for Paige to step back. “My name’s Craig. I don’t think I deserve it. Who are you?”
“Duane… Duane Hopkins. I’ve worked here for about fifteen years. Bodie… a man named Bodie contaminated me ten, twelve years ago, right when I was married. Stevie was born, and he had cerebral palsy. Then Ronald kept picking on me, making my life miserable. Now Stevie’s dead. I was going to make Ronald pay.”
“You were going to expose him to radiation?” Craig asked.
“The radiation caused everything,” Duane said. “It caused Stevie to be sick, it made Rhonda leave me. I tried to get back at Ronald by putting some acid in the bathroom. I wanted to burn his hands — but nothing ever happened, so I had to do something bigger. And now I—” His breath hitched in sobs. “I almost hurt all those kids. Innocent kids. I didn’t want that to happen. I just wanted Ronald. He deserved it, not them.
Craig froze. “You put acid in the soap dispenser? You're the one?”
Before he could say anything else, the swinging airlock doors at the other end of the hall slammed open; two Protective Service Officers dressed in dark blue uniforms charged through, their guns drawn as if expecting to encounter a terrorist army.
“Nobody moves, nobody gets hurt!” one shouted, like a line from a TV show.
The other PSO glanced from Craig and Paige to Duane Hopkins on the floor, assessing the situation. He saw the plutonium buttons scattered on the linoleum a few feet away from Duane. He pointed his weapon at Duane.