COLD DEAD HANDS

A novella by Jeff Strand

Cold Dead Hands copyright 2018 by Jeff Strand

Cover design by Lynne Hansen http://www.LynneHansenArt.com

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the author.

Hardcover limited edition coming from Cemetery Dance Publications.

For more information about the author, visit http://www.JeffStrand.com

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ONE

"Get in! Get in!"

Barry pulled the freezer door shut. Since he was the one whose arm had been slashed up, it would've been nice if somebody else took the initiative to close the damn door, but he'd gripe about that later.

"Is everybody okay?" a woman asked. She was dressed for an evening out on the town, not for a morning of grocery shopping. Probably still wearing last night's attire. Though she was quite a bit overweight, she'd sprinted into the back area faster than any of them.

"Yeah, I'm fine," said Barry, as a drop of his blood hit the steel floor and immediately began to freeze.

"We're okay," said a man in his forties, standing with a woman who Barry assumed was his wife. They were huddled closely together, probably less because of the temperature and more because they'd almost just been killed.

Another man in his forties, who wore a SpongeBob SquarePants tee shirt, walked deeper into the freezer, looking closely at the shelves. There wasn't much further he could go; this definitely could not be described as "spacious." Fifteen or sixteen feet long at the most, and maybe twelve feet across. The shelves that lined the walls took up half of the space.

"Sir?" the dressed-up woman asked.

"Huh?"

"Are you okay?"

The man glanced back at her and nodded.

Somebody began pounding on the other side of the walk-in freezer door.

"Don't open it!" said the woman who was huddling with her husband.

Somebody else outside joined in the frantic pounding.

"It could be one of them," said the guy in the SpongeBob shirt.

"It's not," said Barry. He wasn't one to put his own life at risk to save others, but he also didn't want people out there screaming and giving away their hiding spot.

He opened the door. Five more people shoved their way into the freezer. Crap.

Without peeking out to see if there were more, Barry pulled the door closed. Seriously, his arm was dripping all over the place, why the hell was he on freezer door duty?

"Lock it!" one of the new people said.

"You can't lock it," said Barry.

"Why not?"

"Why would a freezer lock from the inside? Drag over one of the shelves!"

No, wait. The door opened the wrong way. A shelf wouldn't do any good. Feeling stupid, Barry picked up a broom that was leaning against one of the shelves and wedged it through the utility handle above the door release, hoping that would be good enough to keep the door shut. It was far from an impenetrable fortress, but if they were lucky, getting in here would require enough effort that the psychos outside wouldn't bother.

"Yes, that's right," said a sobbing young woman into her cell phone. "We've locked ourselves in the walk-in freezer. Please, send somebody quickly!"

They had cell phone reception in here? That was a pleasant surprise.

With the door barricaded, almost everybody took out their own cell phones. Barry looked at his arm. The broken bottle had gotten him bad—stitches for sure—but nothing was gushing. He wouldn't bleed to death before this was resolved.

So, there was him, the married couple, the well-dressed lady, and the weirdo in the SpongeBob shirt, now joined by a freaked out looking guy in his early twenties who was wearing pants that were way too big for him (though at least they were pulled up properly). There was also the young woman who'd called 911, an elderly black man, a woman who Barry could tell just from looking at her was either a cop or military, and...damn, a little kid. Maybe six years old. He was in the corner, crying, and since nobody was consoling him, he must've been separated from his parents.

"Let's compare notes," said Barry. "What's happening out there?"

"Didn't you see?" asked the married guy. "They came in and just started killing people!"

Barry shook his head. "They started attacking people. I didn't see anybody die. Did anybody else see something different?"

Nobody answered.

Barry pointed to his arm. "One of them slashed me with a broken bottle. It's a pretty damn inefficient way to do a grocery store mass killing. Maybe they aren't actually trying to murder anybody."

"They are," said the woman who'd called 911, still sobbing. "One of them shot an arrow at my head. He was definitely trying to kill me."

"Are you sure he didn't miss on purpose?"

She shrugged and wiped her nose on her wrist. "Maybe. But it came like two inches from my head while I was running. Unless he's a circus performer, he was shooting to kill."

"I didn't see anyone die," said the old black man, "but I promise you, those folks aren't out there trying to cause superficial injuries. Did you see the one who was swinging an axe?"

"No," Barry admitted.

"They're trying to kill us. Why they're doing it with crossbows, axes, and broken bottles instead of guns and explosives, I couldn't tell you, but those boys most assuredly want us dead."

Barry sighed. "Okay. Well, they're not going to get in here. Not before the cops take them out."

"I agree," said the old man. "It's not comfortable in here, but it's safe."

"Unless we freeze to death," said the guy in the SpongeBob shirt.

"We're not going to freeze to death," said Barry. "This will all be over before that's even close to being a concern. Don't say things like that when there's a little kid in here. What's the matter with you?"

"Somebody needed to say it."

"No, they didn't. It was a dumb-ass thing to say, and right now we don't need anybody being a dumb-ass. Stick to the things we should be scared of and don't create new problems. If nothing else, I'm sure we can adjust the temperature from the inside."

"Maybe."

"Look at my arm. I'm in worse shape than you. When I start to worry that we're going to die in here, then you can worry, too. Until then, all we need to do is stay calm and keep that door closed. The police will be here soon. Let them do their jobs."

"It's all over social media already," said the married woman, looking at her phone.

"What are they saying?"

"Unconfirmed reports of an attack at Sav-Lotz. Authorities on the scene. Three or four assailants. Hostages."

"Us?"

The married woman swiped at her screen a couple of times. "I don't think so. I think they mean other people. We're not hostages; we're just hiding."

"Are they terrorists?" asked her husband.

"Nobody knows the definition of 'terrorist' anymore," said the old man.

"I wasn't asking you."

"And I wasn't answering for her. Just making an observation."

"Police are already here," said the married woman. "And somebody uploaded a video of a woman getting hit in the leg with a claw hammer."

"Jesus," said Barry.

"Probably most of what's being shared right now isn't accurate, but it sounds like maybe a dozen people got out safely. There are a few hostages inside, including a woman who's eight months pregnant. No gunshots fired."

"Are any of them even carrying guns?"

"I don't know."

"Okay, well, the two I saw were both white guys," said Barry. "Twenty, twenty-one, around that age. I saw the guy with the crossbow from a few aisles away, and I didn't see if he was carrying anything else. The guy who got me with the broken bottle was wearing a belt that had a bunch of stuff dangling from it. I definitely saw a hunting knife."

The crying young woman who'd called 911 said, "The one with the crossbow also had a belt like that."

"So did the axe man," said the old man. "I didn't see any gun holster."

"All right," said Barry, "so we've got the guy with the axe, the guy with the crossbow, the guy with the broken bottle, and the guy with the hammer."

"No," said the married woman. "The one with the crossbow is the same one who used the hammer."

"Good, maybe there are only three of them. Did anybody see one we haven't mentioned yet?"

Nobody had.

"Worst case scenario, we have to keep three men from pulling open the door. And there are what, nine, ten of us?"

"Ten," said the old man.

"We're totally safe. They were too stupid to bring firearms, and the whole front of the store is one big window. They'll be dead in twenty minutes." Barry, of course, pulled this timeframe out of his ass, but he felt confident that they were in no real danger.

The crying young woman looked at her cell phone and gasped.

"What's wrong?" asked the well-dressed woman. She'd gone over and put her arm around the little boy's shoulder.

"I thought my husband and daughter got out! I saw them at the exit! He'd taken her to look at the coloring books, so they were on the other side of the store from me, but I saw them right there at the exit! They're supposed to be safe!"

"They're not?" Barry asked.

"I texted my husband not to worry, that I was someplace secure, and he texted back 'Cind.'"

"What's Cind?"

"My daughter's name is Cindy. Why didn't he send me the full message? What happened to them?"

"Call him."

"I tried. He didn't answer."

"Look, uh, what's your name?"

"Vanessa."

"Look, Vanessa," said Barry, "people send incomplete text messages all the time. You can't read anything into it. If you saw them at the exit, then they got out, I promise you."

Vanessa vigorously shook her head. "No, something's wrong."

"It's chaos out there. This is nothing to worry about."

"You have to let me out."

"Absolutely not. That's not safe for you or anybody else. I don't know your husband, but no way in hell does he want you to go out there with those three maniacs. Right now the psychos probably don't even know that they've got an extra ten people hiding in a freezer. If we open the door, that could change."

"But—"

"We're not going to let you get hurt. Your kid needs a mom."

"Okay, you're right, I'm sorry, you're right." Vanessa wiped some tears from her eyes, switched the strap of her small purse to the other shoulder, and texted a reply to her husband. Barry hoped that she wasn't specifically telling him that she was in the walk-in freezer, but for Barry to say, "Hey, let's keep this little hiding spot to ourselves, okay?" would imply that he thought her husband was one of the hostages. Having Vanessa go completely hysterical in these tight quarters was a much larger risk than a psycho seeing a text message on her husband's phone.

Anyway, if the attackers searched the grocery store, the freezer was an obvious hiding spot. No big secret.

No way was Vanessa the only one close to the breaking point. They were lucky this freezer wasn't filled with ten screaming, blubbering, batshit insane people. It was important to keep things light. Keep people chatting. Get to know each other.

"I truly believe that this will be resolved quickly," Barry told everyone. "But you never know, we might be in here a while. I'd like to know who everybody is. My name is Barry."

Nobody said, "Hi, Barry!"

"Then we've got Vanessa, of course." Barry pointed to the well-dressed woman. "And you are?"

"Dana."

"Hello, Dana. Who's that with you?"

The little kid turned away.

"He told me his name was Pete," said Dana.

"Good to meet you, Pete. You're being braver than the rest of us, believe me." Barry pointed to the married couple. "And you?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Anderson," said the man.

"No first names?"

"Mr. and Mrs. Anderson is fine."

"Suit yourself." Barry supposed that they didn't want to associate too closely with the unwashed masses in the walk-in freezer at Sav-Lotz. Or they were trying to seem mysterious. Or they were just dicks.

"I'm Trevor," said the old man, without being asked. "I'm seventy years old and I've had a long, full life. When God is ready to call me home, I'll be waiting. But I know for sure that God doesn't want me to die at the hands of an axe-wielding hoodlum. We're going to be all right."

"Thanks, Trevor," said Barry, smiling. He pointed to the last of the four women, a lady in the unfortunate clothing choice of shorts and a tee shirt. She was extremely attractive but not dressed or made up to accentuate that beauty. It wasn't as if she had bulging muscles or anything, but Barry was relatively certain that, if the occasion arose, she could kick his ass.

"Minnie," she said.

"Hi, Minnie."

"Before you say it, yes, like the mouse."

"I would never have said that. I try not to say things about people's names that they've heard a million times."

"I appreciate that, Barry."

"Are you a cop?"

She looked surprised. "No. Why?"

"You carry yourself like one. Military?"

"Yes."

"Marines?"

"Nope."

"Army?"

"Nope."

"Air Force?"

"Guessed it in three."

"Currently active?"

"Yes. On leave. I should be at the beach and not in a freezer."

"Well, if the bad guys pull the door open, we'll make sure you're right up front to give them a nasty surprise," Barry joked.

"That's where I plan to be," Minnie said. Barry didn't think she was joking.

The guy in the SpongeBob shirt had a "please don't call on me, teacher" expression on his face, but Barry couldn't just ignore him. "You're next."

"I'm Syllabus."

"Syllabus?"

"That's right."

Barry wanted to make a comment, but he felt that he should give Syllabus the same name respect he'd given to Minnie. "Nice to meet you, Syllabus. Wish it were under better circumstances."

That left the freaked out looking guy. He was sweating profusely, even though they were in a freezer, and he was twitching. He had a definite "junkie needing a fix" vibe, but Barry would give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was simply terrified like the rest of them. In the unlikely event that he was a junkie, and he went berserk as junkies sometimes did when a freezer door separated them from their precious drugs, Barry was confident that they could subdue him with very little effort.

It would actually be kind of funny, in retrospect, if they were locked in here with a twitching junkie. One more problem they didn't need. "Hey," he said, "are there any pregnant women in here about to give birth that we should know about?"

Dana scowled at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Oh, shit, no, that's not at all what I was saying. It was a joke. This would be a terrible time for somebody to go into labor, so I was joking about it. Just trying to keep us all from wallowing in misery. I apologize."

"Apology accepted," said Dana. He couldn't tell if she was sincere or not.

"A pregnant woman is one of the hostages outside," said Syllabus. "So your comment was even less funny."

"Sorry." Oh well. Barry had gone several minutes without putting his foot in his mouth. At least he didn't do it in front of a client.

"You're the last one," he said to the hopefully-not-a-junkie guy.

"Why are you trying to make friends with everyone?"

"I'm not. I'm doing basic introductions. There's nothing we can do right now but wait, so I'm trying to keep us occupied during a stressful time."

"Well, we don't need somebody to entertain us."

"If I wanted to entertain you, I'd start crooning. I have a lovely singing voice. I'm sorry that you don't think it's important to know the names of the people you're trapped in here with, but it seems like a no-brainer to me."

"Fine. I'm Chad. Kids used to call me Hanging Chad and I thought they meant that I looked like I should be a hangman."

"Thank you, Chad," said Barry. "I'm good with names, so we've got Vanessa, Dana, Pete, Mr. Anderson, Mrs. Anderson, Trevor, Minnie, Syllabus, and Chad. Any mistakes?"

"No, sir," said Trevor. "I hope there's not a quiz for the rest of us."

"Any news on how things are going outside?"

"A lot of it's contradictory," said Mrs. Anderson. "One report says that they came in with machine guns. I'm still seeing stuff about hostages."

"Me too," said Vanessa.

"I don't suppose there's anything online saying that their brains have been splattered against the wall?" asked Barry.

"Sadly, no," said Mrs. Anderson.

"I don't see a temperature control," said Syllabus. "It must be on the outside. Even if it was in here and we could adjust it to seventy-two degrees, it would take forever to get the temperature up to a reasonable level."

"We're not going to be in here forever," said Barry.

"And our oxygen supply is limited."

"We're not setting up camp in here, for God's sake. We're waiting out a dangerous situation. If we felt like we were going to suffocate, we'd open the damn door and let some air in. We don't need your doom and gloom."

"It's realism, not doom and gloom."

"No, it's scaring people about things that we shouldn't be worrying about yet. How about this? I volunteer you to figure out a solution to our temperature and oxygen problem. Report back when you've solved it. How does that sound?"

"You're being condescending."

Barry sighed. The mist from his breath reminded him that he wished he had a cigarette. "You know what? Fine. I won't interact with you anymore. I'm not in charge here; I'm just the one with the biggest mouth. Whatever you feel you need to say to the group, go ahead and say it."

"I don't need your permission," said Syllabus.

Barry decided that it was time to ignore this creep. There was a zero percent chance that this conversation would end with Syllabus saying, "Goodness, I must apologize for my atrocious behavior!" It would end with Barry trying very hard not to crack him over the head with a frozen turkey. It was okay. He didn't need to get in the last word.

Everybody was quiet for a couple of minutes, except for some sniffling. At least they had elbowroom. Not a lot of elbowroom—the freezer wasn't designed for ten people to be hanging out inside—and if this did turn into a marathon waiting session, things were going to start to feel mighty cramped.

But for all they knew, the attackers were already lying in pools of their own blood. Concerns about claustrophobia and hypothermia and suffocation could wait. In terms of being stuck in this freezer for an extended period of time, Barry's only true concern right now was that he wished he'd peed before the carnage began.

He owned a cell phone, but really only used it as a phone, and only then if absolutely necessary. He liked to look at people when he talked to them. This video chat crap didn't count. Barry understood the advantages to being able to send text messages, and if he thought his ex-wife gave a shit that he was in mortal danger he might send her one to assure her that he was currently okay. Otherwise, he was happy to be part of a generation that grew up without cell phones, and he'd let the younger people in the freezer worry about monitoring the Internet.

"Hmmm," said Mrs. Anderson, frowning at her phone.

"What?"

"They think they've identified the three culprits." She gestured at Barry with her phone. "Take a look. They already know who all three of them are."

Barry walked over to her. The headline said Florida Grocery Store Attackers Identified.

The accompanying graphic had four pictures.

Mrs. Anderson raised an eyebrow at him, as if to convey the message that he should not say this out loud.

The pictures were obviously very small on her cell phone screen, but it was still easy to identify the faces of the man with the axe and the man with the broken bottle. The third man, another guy in his early twenties, was presumably the one with the crossbow.

The fourth was Chad, who stood ten feet away, still twitching and sweating.

TWO

Barry tried not to give anything away, even though he felt like he'd been kicked in the stomach. They didn't have much time to figure this out. One of the other people tapping away at their cell phones would see this, too, and they might just start pointing and screaming.

Obviously, this could be inaccurate. Information about the culprits that found its way online this soon couldn't be the result of careful, thorough research, so the vetting process could've been as simple as, "Hey, we saw this guy walking into the store; he must be one of the attackers!" Later they could say, "Whoopsie, were we wrong? Sorry, dude."

Therefore, they couldn't just grab Chad and bash his brains out against the steel floor.

Everybody had sort of spread out the way you do when you're on an elevator. Syllabus was standing near the far wall, and Minnie was close to him, and then there was Chad. If Barry could get the other two to walk over to him, Chad would be easier to deal with.

"Hey, Syllabus, Minnie, check this out," said Barry, pointing to Mrs. Anderson's cell phone screen. "You're famous!"

Minnie, looking confused, walked over to him. Syllabus, who apparently was never going to make anything easy, also looked confused but stayed where he was. "What's it say?"

"It doesn't say anything. It's just a picture of you."

"Hold it up."

Asshole.

"If you don't care, then never mind," said Barry. "I'm sorry that I started talking to you again so soon after saying that I wouldn't. My mistake."

Barry worried that this whole exchange might seem suspicious to Chad. It didn't matter, though, because Vanessa suddenly pointed at Chad and shouted, "He's one of them!"

Everybody stepped away from him. Barry was sure this was going to turn into their own private hostage situation, but Chad backed up against the far wall while Syllabus moved past him and joined the crowd of the others.

"There are four of them!" said Vanessa. "He's one!"

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Chad.

"It's online."

"And you believe that?"

"True or not, we have to deal with it," said Barry.

"We could use him for leverage," said Mrs. Anderson. "Tell the others that we'll kill him if they don't let us go."

Trevor shook his head. "He's no leverage. Four young fellas come into a grocery store and start randomly attacking people, they don't have an exit strategy. This ends in suicide. They don't care what we do to him."

"It's not true," Chad insisted. "What site are you on? I was running away from those fuckers just like the rest of you."

"I don't suppose anybody has a spare set of handcuffs?" asked Barry.

"If I'm one of them, where are my weapons?" Chad asked.

"You could have dropped them," said Vanessa.

"Why would I drop my weapons and then run in here with you? It doesn't make any sense! Are you people already going to turn into a paranoid mob? We've only been in here a few minutes!"

"We're not paranoid if it's true," said Vanessa.

"It's not true. It's ridiculous."

"Everybody take a deep breath," said Barry. "I agree that it doesn't make any sense for you to be in here with us, and I'm sure we're all completely aware that the information we're seeing could be wrong. But, Chad, I'm sure you understand that we can't just ignore this. We need to keep ourselves safe."

"By killing me?"

"Nobody said a thing about killing you. Here's my perspective: one unarmed man against the other nine of us does not pose a threat. Are we all in agreement?"

"I agree with that," said Trevor. Nobody else said anything, but nobody contradicted him.

"So we need to make sure you're unarmed. And unfortunately, that means you have to take off your clothes."

"Are you kidding me?"

"No."

"I'm not going to strip in a freezer."

"Then we have to consider you a threat."

"This is bullshit."

"If the Internet is wrong, then yes, it's extremely unfair. Can't help that. Sorry."

Barry supposed that they could just frisk the guy, but if he did have a weapon, somebody could get a knife to the throat during the pat down.

"Just let me leave, then."

"We didn't let Vanessa leave. We sure as hell aren't going to let you."

"You're all going to feel really fucking stupid later."

"Not as stupid as we'll feel if you kill somebody. We're not going to make you stand around naked. We just need to verify that you're no danger to us."

Chad spun around and kicked the wall. "Fuck!" He turned back around, clenched his hands into fists, and squeezed his eyes shut. He looked like every blood vessel in his body was going to simultaneously burst.

He opened his eyes and spoke so quickly that it was a little hard to understand him. "Yes, I'm with them. I never wanted to go along with it. They made me. Once the attack started I couldn't deal with it. I dropped my belt, threw down my machete, and ran."

"We need to knock him out," said Vanessa. "Make sure he doesn't have a gun."

"I don't have one," said Chad. "That's the whole point. Gun control is bullshit. You can do a mass killing just as easily without them. If somebody wants to kill people, they'll do it, no matter what kind of freedom-stealing laws you try to pass. That's what we're trying to prove. You don't need guns or explosives."

"But you didn't actually kill anybody," said Barry.

"Shut the fuck up! It's harder than it looks! But we will. The others probably already have. There'll be dead bodies scattered all over this place. You want to take away the rights of Americans? It doesn't make you any safer!"

Why had Chad confessed? He had to have a weapon.

"You want to kill me?" asked Chad. "Go ahead. Tear me limb to limb. Here, I'll give you a knife to help out."

Chad knelt down and pulled up his pant leg. This was the point where they all should have rushed him, but nobody wanted to get stabbed. By the time Barry realized that it was not a knife, but rather a small pistol, Chad had already removed it from the holster and was pointing it at the group.

"I thought you weren't using guns," said Barry.

"This was for the suicide. If we got caught, we'd shoot ourselves."

"Well, you're caught, so..."

"Shut up!"

"If you shoot us, you'll undermine your whole motive," said Barry. "This will be just another mass shooting. You'll be forgotten by tomorrow."

"Then don't make me undermine my motive." Chad waved his gun between several people, as if trying to decide whom to shoot. "You," he said to either Mrs. Anderson or Minnie. "Get over here."

"Who do you mean?" asked Barry.

"The bitch who wouldn't say her first name."

"I'm not moving," said Mrs. Anderson.

"I would."

"Take me instead," said Mr. Anderson. "I won't give you any trouble."

"Neither will she, if she's smart."

Mrs. Anderson shook her head. "You'll just have—"

Chad shot her in the face. There was no spray of bone fragments or brain matter, just blood, but her body immediately dropped to the floor.

Everybody screamed.

Mr. Anderson rushed at Chad. Only a few feet separated the two men, and had he been just a bit faster, Mr. Anderson actually might have made it. Instead, he took a bullet point-blank to the forehead. This time, there was a spray of bone fragments and brain matter.

The mass screaming continued as Mr. Anderson collapsed. His body struck a shelf, and then he hit the metal floor so hard that were he not already dead, he almost certainly would've died from a cracked skull or a broken neck.

"Everybody shut up!" Chad shouted. "Nobody make a sound! The next person who makes a peep dies too!"

The screaming stopped, although there was still plenty of whimpering and sniffling, which apparently Chad did not categorize as a "peep."

Barry wanted to tell him what a horrible mistake he'd made, but it wasn't worth getting shot in the face. And Chad probably knew this; it wasn't all that insightful of an observation.

"Look what you made me do! You've ruined everything!" Chad kicked Mr. Anderson in the head, doing further damage.

If Barry believed that Chad was going to execute the rest of them, it would be worth having everybody rush at him, since he couldn't shoot them all. But he'd take a less cynical approach and assume that this situation could still be diffused without anybody else dying.

Barry raised his hand.

Chad looked surprised by the gesture and unsure of how to respond. He blinked a couple of times. "What?"

"May I speak?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry this happened. She should have listened to you. It was stupid on her part."

"It sure was."

"None of the rest of us are that stupid. Nobody else needs to die."

"Yes, they do."

"No, we can work this out. We'll let you leave. We'll just yank out the broom, open the door, and you can join your friends."

Chad vigorously shook his head. "I screwed everything up. I wasn't supposed to shoot anybody. That's not how this was supposed to go. I ruined it. I ruined everything. You made me ruin everything."

"They'll never know."

"Of course they will! We've got two head-shot corpses in the freezer!"

"Yes, but your friends are planning to kill themselves, right? They won't know what happened. They'll be dead."

"He speaks the truth," said Trevor.

"But the rest of the world will know! My friends will have died for nothing!"

"Whatever happens in here doesn't change what they're doing out there," said Barry. "I'm sure they're killing plenty of people without using guns. What happened to Mr. and Mrs. Anderson won't dilute your message."

"Yes, it will."

Barry agreed that, yes, it would, but he couldn't come out and say that. "So, okay...how about this? We're in close quarters. Accidents could happen. We'll say that one of us killed them while trying to shoot you."

Chad gaped at him for a moment. "What kind of dumb shit is that?"

"Hey, I'm working with what we've got. You've already shot two people. There's nothing you can do about that. Why make things worse?"

"I have to make up for it," said Chad. "I have to prove our message to the world. The rest of you have to die." He walked over to a shelf and picked up a metal tray. He turned it sideways, spilling several steaks onto the floor, then pointed the pistol at Barry. "Get over here."

"Why?"

"Because I'm going to beat you to death with this tray."

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me."

"You're forcing me at gunpoint to walk over there so you can beat me to death with a tray? To prove that you don't need guns to kill people?"

"I'll worry about how that sounds. Get over here."

Barry wasn't sure what to do. He certainly didn't want to meet Mr. and Mrs. Anderson's fate, but given the choice between a bullet to the brain and a metal tray repeatedly to the skull, he'd take the bullet. He felt like he was going to throw up. If he shouted, "Get him!" would the others join him, or would he rush at Chad solo?

He really, really, really wished he'd peed before the attacks began.

"Coming through, coming through," said Dana. She'd been closest to the door, and because of her girth it was hard for her to get through the crowd. "Please don't shoot me," she told Chad.

"I won't."

"I work with troubled kids."

"Are you calling me a troubled kid?"

"No. What I mean is that I work with people who have problems. It's not insulting to say that right now you have a problem, is it?"

Chad shook his head. "No."

"Then let's find a solution that works for all of us."

"Your psyche games aren't going to work on me."

"I'm not playing games," said Dana. "I'm trying to help you sort this out."

"There's nothing to sort out. The cops aren't going to say, 'Well, gee, he only murdered two out of nine, that's not so bad.' Sorry, but there's no solution that works out for both of us."

"Yes, there is. You leave the freezer. Rejoin your friends."

"So what you're saying is that you want me to go out and kill other people instead?"

"No."

"That's what it sounds like."

"That's not what the young lady is trying to say," said Trevor.

Chad pointed the gun at him. "You don't have permission to speak."

Trevor nodded.

Chad pointed the gun at Dana. "I don't like you. I don't like Barry, either, but I like you even less. So if you don't want me to beat your fat ass to death with this tray, I'd advise you to stop trying to help."

Dana looked at the floor and said nothing.

"How about this?" Chad asked. "Does anybody want to volunteer? Anybody want to take one for the team? Hmmm? Anybody?"

Everybody avoided eye contact with him, including Barry.

"You sure? Hey, for all we know, the FBI is about to bust down the door. If you volunteer, you may be sacrificing yourself to save the others. Pretty fuckin' noble. What do you say? Just put your hand up high in the air where I can see it."

There was a long moment of silence. Then Trevor raised his hand.

"Seriously?" asked Chad.

"Yeah. Like I said, I've lived a long, full life. Maybe this is how God wants me to go out."

"Well, screw that," said Chad. "I'm not killing a black dude. At least not if I let a bunch of white people live. That might make this look like a racial thing." He pointed the gun at Pete. "Send the little kid over here."

"What?" asked Dana.

"The little kid. That's right, he knows I'm talking to him. Send him over here."

Pete's mouth fell open. He stood there, motionless.

"Come on, Chad," said Barry. "You have to understand how utterly messed up and deranged that is."

"Yep. Sure do."

"You can't kill a kid."

"Not your choice. It's mine. And if I don't get a volunteer, I'm killing the kid."

"Everybody will say how cowardly that is."

Chad shrugged. "This isn't about bravery. It'll sure draw attention away from the two people I shot, huh? What's his name? Peter? Pete? Get over here, Pete. I know you hear me."

"This is the wrong decision," said Barry. "You're in a position where every decision needs to be a winner, and I assure you, this is the wrong one."

"Pete? You think I'm playing around?"

"We're not going to let this happen," said Barry. "You can't kill all of us."

"Nope, I sure can't. But I can kill a lot of you. More than one, at least. And it could be any of you. Is it worth the risk? You don't even know this kid. He could be a rotten little shit. Looks pretty rotten to me. Bet he's cooked his share of ants with a magnifying glass."

Dana stepped in front of Pete.

"I'll shoot him right through you," said Chad.

"Now!" shouted Minnie, rushing forward. She was the only one to truly rush forward, although technically Barry and Trevor both stepped forward. Trevor most likely would have rushed forward if he were younger. Barry would have rushed forward if he were braver.

Chad looked surprised that anyone had charged at him, and for a second didn't seem to know what to do. That second was enough. Minnie grabbed him by the arm, the one that held the gun, and gave it a good twist. Then she slammed his arm against the shelf. A piece of bone burst through the skin between his wrist and elbow. Chad howled in pain as he dropped the gun.

He tried to bash her with the tray, but it was a feeble effort. Minnie grabbed the tray right out of his hand and smacked him on the head with it. Chad fell to his knees, bellowing.

"Enough," Minnie told him. She tossed the tray aside and picked up his gun. "I'll twist your arm right off if you don't quiet down."

Chad didn't go completely silent by any means, but he stopped the bellowing.

"Uh, thank you for that," Barry said to Minnie. The slashes on his arm suddenly didn't seem so bad.

"Sure."

"Now what do we do with him?"

"He's not a threat."

"He'd be less of a threat if he was dead," said Syllabus.

"We're not going to kill him," said Minnie. "We're better than them. I did what needed to be done to subdue him. That's as far as it goes."

"We might be in here for a long time," said Syllabus. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't feel safe with him in here alive. We should put it to a vote."

"We're not voting," said Minnie. "I took him out while the rest of you stood there and watched, so it's my say."

"That sounds fair," said Trevor.

"I'm not sure it does," said Barry. "I mean, yes, she's the one who stopped him, but if he's still dangerous, we have to deal with that."

"He's not," said Minnie. "Look at him."

"He might have other weapons."

Minnie slammed Chad against the floor and gave him a quick pat down. "He doesn't."

"We don't have anything to bind him with," said Barry. "If we could tie him up or handcuff him to a shelf or something, I'd feel comfortable, but having him in this tight space with just a broken arm seems like too big of a risk."

Minnie stood up, pulling Chad to his feet.

"Here," she said, holding the gun out to Trevor. "I'll want this back."

Trevor took the gun from her.

Minnie grabbed Chad's good arm with both hands, then slammed it against the shelf. When the first try didn't expose bone, she did it again and got a better result. Then she shoved him back onto the floor.

"Is everybody satisfied now that he's not a threat?" she asked.

"I am," said Trevor.

Minnie held out her hand. Trevor gave her back the gun.

Chad lay on the floor, whimpering and crying and calling Minnie an evil bitch.

"We can't have dead bodies lying in the middle of our space," said Barry. He held up his bleeding arm. "I volunteer to lift them onto the shelves if nobody else will, but it's going to mess my arm up even more. Syllabus?"

"I'd rather not." Syllabus sighed and then bit his lip. "Okay, I guess I can do it."

"I'll help," said Dana.

"You sure?" Barry asked.

"It's not what I'd be doing for fun in my spare time, but it needs to be done."

"Let's clear off the shelves."

While Minnie kept an eye on Chad, the others pushed away food to make enough space on a lower shelf for the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Anderson. In an apparent effort to be a gentleman, Syllabus let Dana take Mrs. Anderson's feet, while he took her arms, closer to the messy part.

"Aren't we tampering with evidence?" asked Vanessa.

"Does anybody else give a shit if we're tampering with evidence?" Barry asked the group.

Nobody did.

"I think the FBI will understand if we don't want to keep stepping over corpses."

Syllabus and Dana hoisted Mr. Anderson onto the shelf without an unfortunate dropping incident, then pushed him against the wall. They lifted his wife onto the same shelf, and though it looked like Syllabus lost his grip for a split-second, he regained it in time and Mrs. Anderson's dead body was also spared the indignity of being dropped.

Done. The corpses weren't completely hidden, but they weren't lying in the middle of the freezer.

"Thanks, both of you," said Barry.

There was a lot of frozen blood on the floor. Trevor picked up one of the metal trays and slid it across the floor several times, scraping up a pile of red ice.

"I think we tidied this place up pretty well," said Trevor. He pointed at Chad. "Excluding that piece of garbage over there."

"Go to hell," said Chad.

"You do not get to speak anymore," Minnie told him. "I'm keeping you alive because it's the right thing to do, but if we don't see perfect behavior from you I'm going to shatter some ribs."

Chad returned to softly weeping.

"Somebody want to get us the latest news from the outside world?" asked Barry.

There was a knock on the freezer door.

THREE

Everybody turned and stared at the door.

Five knocks. A pause. Then five more knocks.

"Maybe it's the police," said Dana.

"Maybe," said Barry.

The door handle moved.

Barry and Dana hurried over together and grabbed the handle, just in case the broom wasn't good enough. Sure, it could be that they really were keeping out a law enforcement officer who was there to rescue them, but until they could confirm it, nobody was getting in here.

"I've got this," Barry told Dana. "See what you can find out."

Dana tapped and swiped away at her cell phone for a few moments. Whoever was on the other side of the door stopped trying to get inside.

"I don't see anything about the police being in the store," said Dana. "What I'm seeing is that they're still outside trying to negotiate for the release of hostages."

"That doesn't mean they aren't secretly inside," said Minnie.

"It could also be another poor bastard who got trapped in here," said Trevor.

"No, they'd be knocking more desperately," said Minnie.

Five more knocks.

"Do we even know for sure that this freezer is soundproof?" asked Barry. "Hey!" he cried out. "Who's out there?"

Nobody answered.

"Okay, okay, okay, here's what I've got," said Dana, looking at her phone. "Apparently they have at least five hostages near the front of the store. One of the attackers has said that he'll kill them all with a crossbow if anybody tries to come inside. Nobody has died on either side."

"Anything about people hiding out in a walk-in freezer?"

"Not that I've seen."

"We should open the door," said Vanessa.

"Are you out of your mind?" Barry asked.

"We won't open it all the way. Just a crack. Just a tiny crack. Enough that we can talk to whoever's on the other side. If it's the police or the FBI or the marines and they're here to escort us out of here, we'd be insane not to talk to them."

"And if it's not somebody here to help?"

"We won't even open the door enough to let an arrow through. We've got more people than they do. Even if all three of them are pulling on the other side, which we know isn't the case because at least one of them will be guarding the hostages, they can't get in."

The door handle jiggled again.

"That would be a mistake," said Barry. "If cops, feds, military, or whatever are in the store, then this will be over soon. We're fine in here."

"We're not fine! We're freezing to death!"

"Not in the next few minutes!"

"How do we know this will be over in the next few minutes?" asked Vanessa. "If they put a crossbow to somebody's head, they could be talking that out for hours. You're imagining that the cops have snipers ready at every angle, but that's not necessarily the case. Yes, they brought an idiot with them. That doesn't mean the other three are just as dumb."

The door handle continued to jiggle.

"I vote we open the door a crack," said Dana. "The fact that it's wedged shut is already a giveaway that we're in here."

"I agree," said Syllabus.

"I disagree," said Trevor. "That's a bad, bad idea."

"Minnie?" Barry asked.

"No, don't open it."

"So what do we do? Leave the tiebreaker to the kid?"

"Actually, you know what, I've changed my mind," said Minnie. "If it's one of them, we call the police and let them know the attackers are outside the freezer. Every extra bit of information helps."

"Okay," said Barry. "We open the door one inch. That's all. And we pull it closed at the first sign of a problem."

"Don't make a goddamn sound," Minnie told Chad. She placed her foot on the back of his neck. "If you try to send any kind of signal, I'll kill you. Understand?"

"Yeah."

"Say it like you mean it."

"Yes, I understand."

"I'm not kidding."

Barry slid the broom out of the handle and set it aside.

Everybody waited.

The door handle jiggled, and then the door popped open. Barry grabbed the handle to keep it from opening more than a crack.

"Who's there?" Barry asked.

"FBI."

He didn't sound like an FBI agent. Barry had not, to the best of his knowledge, heard an actual FBI agent speak outside of movies and television, but still, this guy sounded wrong. A real fed wouldn't have a nervous tremor in his voice.

"Slide your badge through the door," said Barry.

"I'm afraid it's under a bulletproof vest, sir."

Barry looked back at Minnie to get her opinion. She shook her head and mouthed "No."

"Ethan! It's Chad! I'm in here!"

Minnie slammed her foot down on the back of his neck and he shut the hell up.

Barry pulled the door closed.

"Asshole!" Minnie screamed.

Jesus, she'd really messed him up. Chad wasn't just silenced; he was dead. Blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth.

Barry wedged the broom back in place as the door handle began to jiggle again.

It didn't matter. The psycho outside wasn't getting in here. Unless he had a stick of dynamite handy (which Barry supposed wasn't out of the question) he wasn't getting through the thick freezer door. Not a chance.

The handle stopped jiggling.

"It's okay," said Barry. "We're no worse off."

He wasn't entirely certain that was true, but this wasn't disastrous. Disappointing, yes. Disastrous, no.

Minnie crouched down beside Chad's corpse. "Oh, God," she said in a whisper. "Why did I do this? Why did I do this? Why did I do this?"

"You had no choice," said Barry.

"What the hell are you talking about? Of course I had a choice!"

"You warned him."

"That doesn't mean I needed to murder him!" Minnie had seemed pretty cold and ruthless before, but she'd instantly switched to somebody on the verge of hysteria. Apparently there was a huge difference between breaking somebody's arms and breaking somebody's neck.

"He deserved it."

"I'm not the one who decides that."

"Look, Minnie, there's not a person in here who doesn't think you did what needed to be done. That murderous piece of crap brought that on himself. Legally and morally, you're in the clear."

"I should have just covered his mouth before we let the door open. That's all I had to do. Press a frozen steak over his mouth and keep him from saying anything. Give him frostbitten lips. That would've been okay. I shouldn't have murdered him."

"Okay, you know what, it's not my place to tell you how to feel about this," said Barry. "You take as long as you need to reconcile things with yourself. But I think we should move him to a shelf."

Minnie gave him a scary look like a lion protecting a dead baby cub, but immediately softened and nodded. They cleared off another shelf, since there wasn't room on the one that held Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, and Dana and Syllabus lifted the corpse onto it.

Well, at least it's not as crowded now, Barry thought, though he didn't actually say it out loud. He wasn't sure how well a joke like that would land with this audience.

"Nice to have a little more room, anyway," said Trevor. It didn't earn him any chuckles, but a couple of the others smiled.

Minnie wiped the corner of her right eye, then the left. Barry had never killed anybody, so he had no concept of what she was going through, but he hoped she saved the complete breakdown for after they were out of here.

She was still holding Chad's gun. She didn't seem to be consciously pointing it up at her face...but that's where it was pointed. This made Barry extremely nervous.

"So, uh, Minnie," he said. "The gun."

"What about it?"

"That's not the best place to point it."

Minnie pointed the gun at the floor.

"Thanks," she said.

"Do you think somebody else should hold it?" Barry asked.

"No," said Minnie. "I do not."

"You sure? I'm not saying you aren't doing a good job. You just seem a little distraught right now. Maybe you'd feel more comfortable if somebody else took responsibility for the gun."

Minnie shook her head. "The gun is mine."

"All right," said Barry. "You're the one who got it from him. If you change your mind, let me know."

"I won't change my mind. I'm probably the only one in here who won't accidentally blow her own face off."

Barry really wished that somebody else was holding the gun, but it wasn't worth pushing the issue any further. He didn't want to enrage her. They weren't at the point where it felt necessary to tackle her and wrestle the weapon out of her hands, and so, in the spirit of the advice he'd given Syllabus, Barry decided to focus on more immediate problems.

The lights went out.

Everyone waited in complete darkness and complete silence for a moment.

"Is this good pitch blackness or bad pitch blackness?" asked Trevor.

Vanessa and Dana turned on their cell phones, providing some illumination. Cell phone lights were surprisingly eerie under these conditions.

"Maybe the cops cut the power to the store," said Vanessa.

"Maybe," said Barry.

"Maybe the guy outside the freezer pulled the plug," said Syllabus.

"Maybe," said Barry.

"Why would he do that?" asked Dana.

"Makes it scarier in here," said Syllabus. "Draws us out. As long as that door stays closed, it's going to stay miserably cold in here. It's a good tactic."

"It's not going to work," said Barry. "So we sit in the dark. So what? We've got lights. We're not going to run out of here flailing our arms and screaming."

"Not yet."

"Would one of you be kind enough to shine the light over here?" asked Trevor. "I still have some ice-blood to clean up."

Dana provided helpful illumination while Trevor scraped up Chad's blood.

"I can't tell if the store has power or not," said Vanessa. "There's nothing online that says either way."

"Did your husband ever text you back?" asked Dana.

Vanessa shook her head.

Barry wasn't sure why the freezer suddenly felt so much colder now that it was dark. If anything, technically it was warmer, though Syllabus was right, it wasn't going to rise to a tolerable temperature unless they were stuck in here for a good long while.

He sat down on the floor. The metal floor was not pleasant on his ass, but his joints were getting stiff from standing in the cold. At least it was distracting him from how much his arm hurt. He should probably take off his shirt and wrap it around the wounds, but, nope, it was too cold for that. He had a long way to go before he bled out.

Dana sat down next to him, on the side where his arm wouldn't get blood all over her. She scooted right up against him. "Body heat," she said. "I hope you don't mind."

"Not at all."

She gestured to Pete. He sat on her lap and she put her arms around him.

"You folks have the right idea," said Trevor. "Mind if I get in on that?"

"Be my guest," said Dana.

Trevor sat down next to her. "Sorry that my bony ass doesn't provide much warmth, but I do appreciate it."

"I'm in," said Vanessa, sitting down next to Trevor and snuggling against him. "This is horrible. I've never been so cold in my life."

"Minnie?" asked Dana.

Minnie shook her head.

"Syllabus?"

"Pass."

Everybody just sat there quietly for a few minutes, shivering. It was an awful place to be, but on the bright side, they weren't out there with the psychos. Barry wondered if any of the hostages had been killed. He assumed that Vanessa would have reported that, but if they'd slaughtered somebody without witnesses from outside...

Five more knocks at the door.

They were slower knocks this time. More sinister. Could knocks be sinister? It was probably just in Barry's imagination, but he could imagine the knocker standing by the door, ear pressed against it, a macabre grin on his face.

"Go away," said Trevor. "No solicitors."

They all waited.

"Just ignore him," said Barry.

They sat there for a few more minutes. God, it was cold. If he'd been alone, Barry might have just succumbed to the need to pee, and enjoyed the sensation of warm urine flowing over him. But others were there, and somehow Barry felt that pissing his pants would not be well received.

"Are you doing okay, Minnie?" he asked, to keep his mind off his bladder.

"No. I'm doing quite poorly, thanks for asking."

"You don't have to be there by yourself. We can't offer much, but we can offer body heat."

Minnie said nothing. Barry wanted to offer more reassurance that she'd done the right thing by stomping on that scumbag's neck, but that seemed to be a lost cause. When she got cold enough, she'd join them.

"This may be a dumb question," said Dana, "and I'm sure everybody else has already thought about it and not said anything, but why don't we just shoot him?"

"It's too dangerous," said Barry.

"It's not risk free," Dana admitted. "But all we'd have to do is have somebody waiting with the gun when we let him crack the door open. Bullet to the face. He doesn't know we have Chad's gun."

"Not for sure, but he'd suspect it," said Barry. "And he wouldn't leave himself exposed like that. It seems straightforward, yeah, but plenty could go wrong."

"I guess you're right," said Dana. "That's why I said it might be a dumb question."

"Here's the real problem," said Minnie. "Let's say it works. He opens the door. Bam. Bullet between the eyes. Dead. We're dealing with men who came in to just randomly murder a bunch of shoppers, but somehow in the midst of it decided that they weren't sure if they actually wanted to die for their cause. Now they're desperate as hell, they've got hostages, and they don't know what to do. If one of them opens up this freezer door and the back of his head explodes, the other two are going to panic even more than they already are. If they panic too much, we've put the lives of the other hostages at risk. Unless we're willing to blow somebody's head off and then hurry out there to take out the other two, we can't poke guns through cracks in the door."

"Noted," said Dana.

"Who's ready for the shitty news?" asked Vanessa, looking at her phone.

"Got any good news to balance it out?" asked Trevor.

"No."

"Damn."

"Actually, yes, I do. I don't see anything saying that any of the hostages have been killed. That's good."

"What's shitty?"

"There's nothing saying the power is out. Somebody just posted a picture and you can clearly see the lights on in the grocery."

Barry sighed. But he'd already been pretty sure that the lights going out was because of the attackers and not the cops, so he wasn't too disheartened.

"The cops have your number, right?" Dana asked Vanessa. "From when you called 911?"

"I guess, yeah."

"Then they'd get in touch with us if they were trying to come into the freezer. We should have thought of that when he was knocking the first time."

"You're right," said Barry. "There are seven of us; we need to think of these things."

"Hard to think of anything but how cold we are," said Trevor. "I blame our poor judgment on frosty brain."

"Agreed, but still."

Dana tapped her phone screen a few times then held it to her ear. "Yes, hello," she said. "My name is Dana Rindell. I'm one of the people trapped in the walk-in freezer at the Sav-Lotz. I need to be put in touch with somebody in charge who can keep me updated about what's happening here. Thank you."

"Oh, no," said Vanessa.

"What?" Barry asked.

"Oh, Jesus God."

"What? What's wrong?"

"They...they said..."

"Did you hear back from your husband?"

Vanessa shook her head and handed Barry her phone. She'd been on Twitter. Barry was familiar with that website (or app, or whatever the hell it was) but he'd never used it. Still, he knew what a retweet was. The retweet on her screen had a very small but recognizable picture of the guy who'd slashed Barry's arm with the broken bottle.

The message said, "2 those of u in the freezer. Come out by 10 or we kill our hostages."

Barry didn't know what time he'd sent that, but it was 9:57 now.

FOUR

"They say they're going to kill the hostages if we don't come out in three minutes," said Barry, holding up the phone so the others could see.

"Is that real?" asked Dana.

Barry shrugged. "You're asking the wrong guy."

"It has to be a hoax. Why would anyone be tweeting from a hostage situation?"

"They weren't wearing masks or anything," said Minnie. "If they don't care that the world knows who they are, why not tweet?"

"Let's pretend it's real," said Barry. "What are the odds that we would've seen this? They wouldn't really start executing people because of a tweet that, as far as they know, we probably have no idea exists, right?"

"You can send a message pretty damn fast these days," said Minnie. "And we did see it. We can tell reporters later that we didn't, but we did."

"I'm not going to get myself killed for people I don't know," said Barry.

"That's reasonable."

"I mean, that would be insane, right? We can't be expected to leave our safe place and go out there so they can whack us in the head with an axe. I'm not trying to be a coward or anything, but I'm not the only one who feels this way, right?"

"I have a family. I'm not sacrificing myself for those people," said Vanessa. "I'm totally with you on this one. That's a stupid way to die."

"Thank you. I don't want to die stupidly."

"Damn it," said Dana.

"What?"

"I'm still on hold. Why is this taking so long?"

"Here's what I'm going to do for us," said Minnie. "I'm going to go out there, and I'm going to have a gun tucked into the back of my shorts."

"I can't let you do that," said Barry.

"You don't have a choice. I have the gun."

Minnie walked over to the door.

"Minnie, no. They'll shoot you on sight."

"I don't think they will. I'm not saying for certain that I won't get a crossbow bolt in my chest, but if I'm calm and collected, I bet I can take them by surprise. If you hear me say, 'Clear!' then get out of here. Run. If you hear anything else, if you hear a death gurgle, then stay put. I'll leave it to your discretion if you close the door or not."

Barry started to say something else to convince her not to do this, then decided against it. This was absolute madness, but if the hostages were executed, he didn't want to be the one who talked Minnie out of her attempt to save them.

"I'm coming with you," said Syllabus. "I can't stay in here anymore."

"All right. Anybody else?"

Nobody else volunteered. Barry felt like crap, but they were safe in here. If Minnie couldn't take the attackers by surprise—and she probably couldn't, since of course they knew she had Chad's gun—she'd be killed.

"Let's do this," said Minnie, tucking the gun into the back of her shorts. "We're almost out of time."

Minnie pulled out the broom, opened the door just enough to squeeze through, and they walked out of the freezer. Syllabus pulled the door almost all the way closed behind them as they left.

Barry stood beside the door, keeping out of sight, feeling like he was going to have a heart attack. This was a terrible idea. This was such a terrible idea.

"Where are the others?" a man (had Chad said his name was Ethan?) asked outside.

"It's just us," said Minnie.

"The news said ten people were in there."

"We had casualties."

"Where's Chad?"

"He didn't make it. He took six people with him, if it makes you feel any better."

"Let me see your hands. You too, SpongeBob."

A trickle of cold sweat ran down Barry's face.

"I need to see the bodies in there," said Ethan.

"Be my guest," said Minnie. "I'm not going to stop your ghoulish ass from getting your rocks off."

Footsteps.

Fast movement.

Swish.

Thwack.

Minnie cried out in pain.

A violent scuffle.

A loud grunt from Syllabus.

Before he could even consider that he'd rather not have a crossbow bolt puncture his eyeball, Barry opened the freezer door. It was stupid, but he couldn't just let Minnie and Syllabus get slaughtered.

Minnie was on her knees, a crossbow bolt protruding from her upper right leg. Ethan was frantically trying to load another bolt, while Syllabus struggled to stop him.

Ethan smacked Syllabus across the face with the crossbow, knocking him to the floor.

Minnie pulled out the pistol.

Ethan snapped the bolt into place.

Minnie raised the gun, and though Barry would have bet on Minnie in a pistol vs. crossbow duel, suddenly she had a bolt in her arm and the gun fell out of her hand.

Syllabus tackled Ethan, and the two men stumbled toward the freezer.

Barry just stared at them. Do something, you piece of crap, he thought.

Ethan clawed at Syllabus' eyes. He missed, but his fingernails raked across Syllabus' cheek, leaving four long bloody streaks.

Barry jolted into action and ran out of the freezer, just as Syllabus somehow got the upper hand and shoved Ethan away from him. The psycho bashed into Barry. Then he let out a delighted sounding whoop as he punched Barry in the face.

Yes, Barry had been punched in the face before. Once in high school, by a bully who broke his nose, and once a few years ago by the husband of a woman who he'd sort of believed when she said she wasn't married. But this was his first time being punched by a raging lunatic, and his cold, numb flesh did nothing to ease the burst of pain.

His feet flew out from under him, and Barry struck the floor, landing halfway back in the freezer.

In his blurred peripheral vision, he saw Minnie pick up the pistol again.

Ethan saw this too, and apparently realized that he wasn't going to be able to knock it out of her hand in time, or run out of the room, or find a better place to hide, because he stepped over Barry and rushed into the freezer.

He pulled the door closed, slamming it against Barry's torso. Nothing cracked, but he'd definitely bruised some ribs.

Ethan slammed the door against him again. If that happened a third time, he would shatter some ribs, so Barry had to decide if he was going to try to slide out of the freezer or all the way back into it.

There were still two other psychos in the grocery. And if he tried to get out, the next slam of the door could be against his skull. Better to be inside.

Barry slid back into the freezer as Ethan pushed the door all the way closed.

In the faint glow of Dana's cell phone light, Barry saw Ethan pull a large hunting knife out of his tool belt. The lucky son of a bitch was also wearing a bulky jacket, as if he'd somehow planned to spend some quality time in the freezer.

Barry scooted the hell away from him. The others had backed away from the door as well.

Ethan let out another whoop and sliced the knife back and forth through the air as he pressed himself against the door. The way he was swinging it, he'd be lucky not to accidentally smack it into the shelf. "Yeah, you fuckers better cower! I'm gonna cut you all into sushi!"

Sushi specifically required rice, which made that a pretty silly comment, but still, there was a madman in the freezer waving a knife, so Barry wasn't inclined to chuckle.

"Scared? Yeah, I'll bet you are! I'll bet you are! Who wants to be the first one to get some of this knife? You know you want it! Don't be shy! Come and get it!"

Barry was surprised that the door hadn't flown open yet. What were Minnie and Syllabus waiting for? Sure, Minnie was injured, but there were still two of them. Ethan couldn't hold the door shut very long, and he certainly couldn't do it while swinging that knife around.

"All of you are dead! Didn't think you were gonna die today, did you? I bet not one of you woke up this morning thinking it was your last day!" He cackled. "You can all start begging any time now. I'm listening." He pointed the knife at Dana. "Hey, you! You talking to someone?"

"I'm on hold."

"Hang up or I'll kill you first."

Dana held the phone up so he could see the screen, then disconnected the call.

Nothing was happening on the other side of the door. Minnie and Syllabus weren't even trying to get in.

Of course, Minnie had a gun. There were five hostages who needed rescuing more than the unlucky bastards in the freezer. In theory, Barry and the rest should have this covered. The time Minnie spent trying to get the door open to shoot Ethan in the head was time that could be better spent trying to take the other attackers by surprise.

Barry completely understood the logic, though it still felt like they'd been abandoned.

Even if you discounted the six-year-old kid and the seventy-year-old man, they had three able-bodied people in the freezer who could subdue Ethan. Yeah, it was a pretty goddamn big knife, but it was no Samurai sword. Unless they lined up, tilted their heads back, and offered him their throats, Ethan was going to lose this battle.

"You can't kill all of us," said Barry.

"Oh, I don't know about that," said Ethan. "I think I could do it. Want to see me try? That what you want? The best part of a knife is that it doesn't run out of bullets, so I can stab all day long. Stab all day, stab all night...I can kill, kill, kill until the blade breaks off."

Ethan swung the knife again, making a "Z" in the air.

"Was that supposed to be Zorro?" Barry asked.

"It was what's going to happen to your chest. Gonna cut you deep. It's cold in here, so your guts will steam when they fall out of your stomach."

Barry picked a tray off the nearest shelf. It was painfully cold against his fingers, but he tried not to let Ethan see him wince. He shook the frozen meat onto the floor, then handed the tray to Dana and picked up another one.

"Whatcha doing?" asked Ethan, his crooked smile faltering a bit.

"None of your fucking business," Barry told him. It was meant to sound brave, but Barry wasn't feeling brave, so he stammered when he said it.

"You think those shields are gonna stop me?" asked Ethan.

"They might." Barry handed a tray to Vanessa.

"Your friends are dead by now. You know that, right?"

"We know no such thing."

"Oh, they're dead. Or dying. It might happen slow."

"They aren't our friends. We were trapped in a freezer together. We haven't formed any lifelong bonds." Barry handed a tray to Trevor.

Ethan's window of opportunity to go on a knife-slashing rampage was growing narrower and narrower. If he hadn't run at them right away, when they were much more defenseless, the odds were pretty good that he wouldn't do it now.

"What's your big, bad plan?" asked Ethan. "All five of you rush me at once?"

"That sounds feasible."

"That plan ends with somebody getting stabbed. Maybe the kid. You want that on your conscience?"

"We'd let the kid opt out. And it would be on your conscience, not that it looks like you have one."

"Well, before you knights in armor make your charge to slay the dragon, mind if I show you something?"

"Go right ahead," said Barry.

"This is what we in the biz call Plan B."

He unzipped his jacket and pulled it open.

"Make sure you shine that light right at me," Ethan told Dana. "Yeah, yeah, just like that. Everybody getting a good look? Everybody see what's happening here?"

"We see it," said Barry.

"You sure? Need me to summarize?"

Barry shook his head. "We're okay."

"I want to make sure the little kid understands. Hey, kid, these are called 'explosives.' They blow up. I can make this happen whenever I want with this handy little detonator. What this means is that if you come after me with those dipshit metal trays, I can kill everybody." Ethan pointed with the knife. "I can kill you, and you, and you, and you, and, yes, you. Maybe somebody else will get killed when the door flies off this freezer and hits them. You never know, right?"

"Wasn't the whole concept of this attack to not use guns or explosives?" Barry asked. "If Chad was giving us the right information, this literally was planned to send the message that you can kill people without guns and bombs. Why the hell did Chad have a gun and why the hell do you have explosives strapped to your chest?"

"Suicide."

"That's what Chad said, but I don't buy it."

"It's hard to kill yourself with a knife," said Ethan. "Sure, you can jam it into your throat, but if you lose your nerve, you might not sink it in deep enough, and then you die a slow, horrible death. That's not an issue with a gun. Put it in your mouth and pull the trigger, you're gone."

"It still makes you send out a confused message."

"No. The libtards aren't coming for our guns because people are blowing their own heads off. That part is irrelevant. People will be happy that we shot ourselves. They'll think those particular guns were put to good use."

"You could have used a cyanide capsule or something."

"There's no drama in a cyanide capsule."

"You could choke dramatically."

"You making fun of me?"

"No," said Barry. He was surprised by the way he was talking to Ethan. Apparently he was frightened beyond the ability to censor himself. "No, I'm not. But how many people have you, personally, killed today?"

Ethan frowned. "I don't see where that is any of your business."

"The number is zero, right?"

"Are you trying to piss me off? Seriously?"

"No, this isn't ridicule, I promise. I'm just trying to establish that, thus far, your plan to massacre a whole punch of people in this grocery hasn't had the level of success you might have hoped for. Which means that blowing up six people in a freezer will get a lot more attention than everything else you've done today. That's what people will be talking about, not your message to society."

"That's why it's Plan B and not Plan A."

"Why have it at all? Why bring guns and explosives if you're trying to make a point out of not using guns and explosives?"

"If I wasn't wearing this vest of explosives, you'd all be coming after me with your stupid trays right now. I needed a backup plan."

"It just feels like a lack of commitment to the cause."

"You have no idea about my level of commitment. But you're about to find out. Come here."

"No."

"I said, come here."

"Why?"

"Because I'm going to skin you alive."

"That's not a good reason."

"Come here or everybody in here dies. I know you don't want me to detonate this shit."

This was now the second time today that Barry had been threatened with, basically, "Let me kill you with this weapon or I'll kill you with this other weapon." Obviously, he was not going to stroll over there and let Ethan start slicing off strips off flesh.

"Go over there, man," said Trevor.

"What? No."

"You're the one getting all lippy with him. Don't make the rest of us pay the price."

Somebody shoved Barry forward. He was so taken aback by this that he stumbled forward and almost slipped. When he glanced back over his shoulder, he saw Pete lower his arms. That little shit.

Ethan swung at him with the knife.

It slashed diagonally across Barry's chest, left nipple to waist, but Ethan wasn't quite close enough to cut deep, and it mostly just cut open his shirt. It stung, but there was no spurting blood or falling organs, at least not that he could see.

Barry swung the tray at him. Ethan swung the knife at the same time, and metal struck metal. Ethan jabbed, lower, and Barry just barely deflected it with his makeshift shield. He wished there was a lot more light in here.

Barry took another swing. Missed completely. This time, because his hands were so damn cold, he lost his grip and the tray flew against one of the shelves, clattering to the floor.

Ethan thrust the knife at him. Barry dodged, mostly. The blade wasn't buried hilt-deep in his gut, but it did make a really nasty slice in his side. Barry cried out.

There wasn't enough light for him to truly see the severity of the wound, but it hurt like crazy and it was spilling blood down his jeans. And he wet himself, so he had two streams of warm liquid running down his body.

This was it. He wasn't going to win this fight. The only strategy was to retreat.

He stumbled backwards, holding up his hands in surrender, not that he expected Ethan to say, "Oh, well, if you don't want to fight anymore, that's your right; it's a free country."

He was vaguely aware that by doing this, he was probably leading Ethan toward the four other innocent people in the freezer, and on a conscious level he knew he didn't want to do that, but his "survival at all costs" instinct had kicked in and he just needed to get away from that blade. He might not bleed out from this wound, necessarily, but one more good stab and he'd be finished.

Ethan giggled. "Hurt ya, did I? Didn't like my knife? Didn't enjoy that experience? I don't know why. Looks like fun to me."

Barry pressed his hand tight against his side. Oh, yeah, this wound was horrible. It was more important than ever that the cops break into the freezer, subdue Ethan, and drag him off to be hanged at dawn.

Ethan began to swing the knife through the air again, grinning. He took a step toward the others. "Anybody else want some? He's not saying so, but I think he did like it. I think it turned him on. Maybe we should do a boner check, huh?"

"Just leave," said Dana. "Just walk out of the freezer and go back to your friends."

"Oh, I will," said Ethan. "You people are too boring to hang out with for too much longer. I may leave one or two of you alive, just so you can tell the story. Or I might not. Might kill all of you. Might carve the story into one of your chests. Haven't decided yet."

"I volunteer to tell the story," said Trevor.

Ethan pointed the knife at him. "I like you, old man. I bet you're good at telling stories. Yeah, you can live, and one of the chicks can live—I haven't decided if it's the fat one or the skinny one yet. The little kid dies, though. Dies next. Hey, kid?"

Pete pressed himself against Dana, who put a protective arm around him.

"I'm talking to you. Kid, have you ever been to the doctor and had a shot?"

Pete said nothing.

"Answer me. It's an easy question. Has a doctor ever given you a shot?"

Pete nodded.

"Did it hurt?"

Pete nodded.

"But it didn't hurt much, right? Shots sound all scary, but it's really just a little pinch that's over in a second. And then you get a lollipop. If I gave you a shot, it wouldn't be such a big deal, would it?"

Pete shook his head.

"Unfortunately, I'm not going to give you a shot. I'm going to stab you with this knife. It's a lot bigger than a hypodermic needle, don't you think? It's going to hurt way more. I mean, way more. And I'm going to do it over and over and over until you're crying and dead. That sounds pretty bad, doesn't it?"

Pete pressed his face into Dana's side.

"Hey, when an adult asks you a question, it's rude not to answer. Respect your goddamn elders. I asked you if being stabbed to death with this knife sounded bad. What's your answer?"

Dana pulled her arm away from Pete and stepped in front of him.

"I still haven't made my decision about which chick to kill," said Ethan. "Could be you. It'll take more stabs, but I can do it. That what you want?"

"No," said Dana. "But when you threaten a child, you force me to be braver than I'd like."

"All right," said Ethan. "Be brave, then. Let's see how this plays out."

Dana walked toward him, moving in a fearless, no-nonsense manner. Barry would not have wanted to be her target, even if he was wielding a long bloody knife.

It was possibly just the cell phone illumination that made her so intimidating, but Barry was kind of worried that Ethan might detonate his vest just to avoid going one-on-one with her.

She swung the tray at his head, bashing him in the temple. Ethan smacked against the door, striking the back of his skull, and his eyes crossed in an almost cartoonish manner.

Was that it? Had Dana really won already? Barry was in too much pain to worry about feeling sheepish and inadequate, but...

Ethan lunged forward and plunged the knife into Dana's belly.

She let out a loud gasp, but didn't back down. She slammed the tray into his head again.

When Ethan stabbed her a second time, she dropped the tray.

She took a half-hearted swing at him with her fist, then fell to the floor.

Pete let out a shriek of horror.

"Let's get the son of a bitch!" said Trevor. "Why are we standing around? Let's get him!"

Barry was terrified and losing way too much blood, but screw it, Trevor was right. They'd been treating Ethan like the hero in a martial arts flick; going after him one at a time.

Barry and Trevor strode toward him. Vanessa followed. And, somehow, Dana was trying to get back up.

Ethan's sadistic smile faded. He still had his knife, but if the others wanted to beat him to death with metal trays, they were probably going to be able to do it.

He reached for the detonation trigger.

"I'll do it!" he warned. "I'll kill all of us!"

Barry, Trevor, and Vanessa hesitated. Dana did not. She got back up to her feet and reached for him.

Ethan pressed the trigger.

Nothing exploded.

His eyes widened and he frantically pressed it again and again.

"Shit," he whispered. "Shit, shit, shit."

Dana lunged at him and he moved out of the way. She spun around, revealing a blouse that was completely drenched with blood, and grabbed for him again, missing.

Ethan continued pulling the trigger, clearly in a complete panic.

Dana fell again.

"Stay away from me," said Ethan, as Barry, Trevor, and Vanessa resumed their forward movement. Ethan still had a knife, so they remained cautious, coming after him slowly, each of them sort of hoping that one of the other two would make the actual attack. (At least that's what Barry hoped; he supposed he couldn't speak for Trevor and Vanessa, but that's what their body language seemed to indicate.)

"I said, stay back!" Click, click, click. "You wanna die? You wanna die? I'll make that shit happen!"

Click, click, click, click...

And then the vest exploded.

FIVE

It was unclear how large of an area Ethan had intended to blow up if forced to enact Plan B. Presumably enough to take out a room full of cops if they rushed him. Barry's knowledge of explosives didn't go beyond lighting off bottle rockets on the Fourth of July and New Year's Eve, so seeing Ethan's vest of explosives really gave him no idea of the explosive power contained within.

What he did know, based on common sense, was that Ethan had intended for the vest to do a hell of a lot more damage than that.

Most likely only one stick of whatever he was using had actually exploded. Because though there was destructive power when the detonator finally kicked in, enough to rattle the freezer door, the only recipient was Ethan.

It blew off his right arm and the front half of his face. A shower of blood hit the door. Ethan stood there for a moment. His head tilted toward the spurting stump of his arm, though since neither of his eyes remained available, he could not have actually been checking out the severity of the injury.

A little bit of his jaw remained. He may or may not have been using it to try to speak, but there was certainly no sound coming forth, and a moment later he dropped to the floor.

Barry's ears were ringing so loudly that he could barely hear everybody else screaming. Yes, it was a good thing that Ethan was dead, but it had been a gruesome thing to witness, and he didn't blame the others for reacting with horror.

He stepped over some small bloody chunks of Ethan and knelt down beside Dana. He let her scream for a few more seconds, then put his hand over her mouth to encourage her to stop. She did.

"You okay?" he asked. It sounded like his voice was coming from twenty feet away.

Dana shook her head. "No."

"Me, either. But we'll live."

Vanessa walked over to the freezer door, her shoes squishing, and pulled down on the handle. It didn't budge.

"What the hell?" she asked, tugging on the handle several times.

"Let me try," said Trevor. He couldn't get the door open either.

"It seriously won't open?" Barry asked.

"Oh, it'll open," said Trevor. "We're just playing a very amusing joke on you."

"Who would've locked it?"

"Minnie?"

"Why?"

"To keep us safe? To keep Mr. No-More-Head here from getting out?"

"That doesn't make any sense."

"I'm not trying to work out a plausible motive. All I'm saying is that the damn door won't open."

Barry tried as well. "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Maybe when the bomb went off, it messed up something in the locking mechanism," said Vanessa.

"No, no, no," said Barry. "I don't accept this. This is not okay with me."

He almost let out a scream of frustration, but no. He had to stay strong.

The freezer motor began to hum again and the lights came back on.

It hurt Barry's eyes for a moment, and he put a bloody hand over them to shield them. When his eyes adjusted to the brightness, he realized that the mess left by Ethan's demise was quite a bit worse than he'd thought. The guy had flat-out splattered. Barry slapped his hand over his mouth, and successfully resisted the urge to vomit. Vanessa was not as successful.

Barry's pants were covered with blood. Both the blood and urine were cold now, and he hoped that the blood would hide the fact that he'd pissed his pants.

"Did you pee yourself?" asked Pete. The first time the kid talked all day, and that's what he had to contribute to the conversation.

"No, it's blood," Barry told him.

"Why do you think the lights came on?" asked Trevor. "Is this good or bad?"

"I don't know," said Barry.

"Could be good, if somebody was concerned about us being frightened in the dark. Could be bad, if somebody wants us to freeze to death."

"It's probably bad," said Barry.

"I thought you were the one scolding Syllabus for his negative attitude."

"Well, I've become more cynical since getting stabbed with a hunting knife." Blood was trickling through Barry's fingers, but he wasn't feeling dizzy yet.

"Unless somebody objects," said Trevor, "I'm going to pound on the door."

"Be my guest."

Trevor pounded on the door with his fists a few times, then began to kick it. If the door really was just messed up from the explosion, they could probably pull it open if everybody worked together, but at the moment Barry felt like an intestine would pop out if he exerted himself.

"Dana, you still with us?" Barry asked.

She tried unsuccessfully to sit up. "Yeah." Her breathing was rapid, but a knife to the gut was a slow, lingering death, so though the clock was ticking on them getting out of here and receiving professional medical attention, they could wait this out a little bit longer. Of course, Dana had been stabbed in the gut twice. Maybe that death wasn't as slow.

"If somebody helpful had turned the freezer back on, they'd have opened the door already," said Barry. "Or we'd, you know, at least hear them trying to open it, if the lock is messed up like Vanessa said. I can't think of any reason that Minnie or Syllabus would turn it back on and not try to get inside, so we have to assume that it's one of the psychos."

"Or something automated," said Trevor.

"Yes. Something automated is actually a much better answer. Hopefully that's what it is instead of a psycho." Now Barry was starting to feel a bit dizzy. He shook it off. "I understand respecting the dead and stuff, but we need to borrow some clothes if Dana and I are going to stop ourselves from bleeding to death."

Ethan's clothes were the most accessible, but they were drenched in gore. Chad's clothes were still clean, except for blood around the collar.

"I'll help you," Trevor offered, as Barry went over to the shelf that contained Chad's corpse.

While Vanessa tapped away at her cell phone and Dana lay there bleeding, they got Psycho #1's body off the shelf without too much difficulty. It made Barry feel bad about how little manual labor he accomplished during the times in his life when he hadn't been stabbed in the side and had his arm slashed up with a broken bottle. His living room desperately needed new carpet. What was his excuse?

Stripping off Chad's clothes was a challenge, because his arms were already hard to move. Barry picked up the knife and sliced the shirt off instead. As he did so, Vanessa gave them a report. "They made it!"

"For real?" Barry asked.

"All of them! No, almost all of them. Minnie and Syllabus, they rushed into the main part of the grocery and they shot one of the attackers! There aren't any pictures but it says they shot him in the throat. They got out and they took four of the five hostages with them."

"Well, that is some surprisingly good news right there," said Trevor.

"Yeah," said Barry. "That's amazing! I can't believe it!"

Vanessa frowned.

"You're about to steal away our moment of happiness, aren't you?" asked Trevor.

"One attacker, the guy with the axe, is still in the grocery. And he still has the pregnant woman with him."

Barry sighed. "Well, if I were in his position, I'd keep the pregnant woman, too. Kudos to him for strong decision making." The joke was a little too much for Barry, and he coughed. He couldn't tell if he coughed up blood or not since there was so much already in his hand. "Does that mean we can leave? It's awful for her, but he's not really in a position to stop us from getting out of here, right? Not if we can get the door open."

"He's right outside."

"Oh. But we can still..." Barry trailed off.

Crap. It would be nice to think that the door was jammed, not locked, and that the freezer had turned itself back on as part of an automated system, but no, if there was a psycho outside with a pregnant hostage, it was way too much to hope that the other things were just coincidence.

"Do we know this for sure?" Barry asked.

"He tweeted a selfie with her."

"Are you kidding me?"

She held up her phone. It was a bad, blurry picture of a grinning creep holding a meat cleaver to a blonde woman's neck.

"That's the axe guy?" Barry asked.

"Yeah. Gary Planton."

"How do you tweet and keep a hostage?"

"It's not hard to tweet with one hand. He probably made a pretty convincing argument that she shouldn't try anything while he had the meat cleaver to her neck."

Barry realized that he'd been distracted from the task at hand. He wadded up Chad's shirt, then pressed it against the worse of Dana's two stab wounds, making her wince. "Hold that as tight as you can," he said. "I'll get you another one."

Dana nodded.

"He can't keep this up," said Barry. "Maybe if you're in a bank, and you've got a machine gun and a room full of hostages, sure, you can draw something like this out, but you can't hold a meat cleaver to a lady's neck and not get shot down."

"I don't know," said Trevor. "No matter how much good the cops do in this whole mess, if their sniper misses and a pregnant woman dies, they've got a PR nightmare."

"They've got a PR nightmare if they don't do anything and he murders her."

"It's bad either way, but it's worse if she dies as a direct consequence of their actions. I don't envy the poor bastard who has to make that call."

"So, essentially, he could hold her there and just wait for us to freeze to death. Rack up a higher body count by flipping a switch."

"That could be his intention," said Trevor. "The libtards sure won't outlaw walk-in freezers."

"Do you know what I came into the store for today?" asked Barry. "An avocado. One fucking avocado for one fucking BLT. I'm going to die because of an avocado."

"Worse things to die for."

Instead of tugging down Chad's pants, Barry cut them down each seam. Once this was over, there'd probably be some kind of headline on the Internet saying Deviant Hostage Caught In Sex Games With Deceased Captor, but he'd worry about that later.

He wadded up one of the pant legs and pressed it against Dana's other wound. He wondered if this was like those oxygen masks in airplanes, where you were supposed to put on your own mask before helping others, and that he should be taking care of his own injuries so he didn't die before he could assist Dana. He also wondered if planes actually had the oxygen masks. Who would ever know if they didn't? The corpses strewn around the crash site would never tell.

It was becoming harder to focus.

"You're doing great," he told Dana.

"Thank you."

"Seriously, I'm impressed." He didn't mind being her cheerleader. Kept his mind off his own horrific wounds.

Dana coughed and some flecks of blood appeared on her lips. "Patch yourself up," she told him.

Barry wrapped what remained of Chad's pants around his waist, making a simple knot and pulling it tight. This was a sad excuse for a bandage, but since they were locked in the freezer and not the pharmacy, it was the best he was going to get.

"We need more clothes," said Trevor.

It felt more disrespectful to cut away Mrs. Anderson's clothes than her husband's, so even though they had to take out Mrs. Anderson's body first to get to his, they decided it was worth it.

"Cold in there?" asked Vanessa.

"What?"

"That's what he tweeted. 'Cold in there?'"

"What a dick."

"It's that kind of sadistic little touch that's going to make it so hard for people to get on their side," said Trevor.

"Hold on," said Vanessa to Barry. "You're injured. You shouldn't be lifting anything. Let me do it."

Barry stepped out of the way. He wanted to say, "Now you've decided this?" but there was no reason to be antagonistic when she'd finally offered to help out.

Vanessa and Trevor lifted Mrs. Anderson's body off the shelf and set it on the floor. Trevor reached out to Barry, who gave him the knife. Trevor left Mr. Anderson's body on the shelf as he cut away his clothes, rolling his body over halfway through the process.

"I assume you want me to leave his drawers alone," said Trevor.

"Yeah."

Trevor pulled the clothes away and gave them to Barry. Then he and Vanessa returned Mrs. Anderson's body to its spot on the shelf. Yeah, it was corpse manipulation that they really didn't need to do, but Barry just couldn't cope with the thought of cutting off a dead woman's clothes. That shit was wrong.

While Barry wound another layer of clothing around his waist, Vanessa returned her attention to her phone. "No change in the hostage situation," she said. "At least no new tweets from him. Hey, do either of you have a phone?"

"Sorry, nope," said Trevor.

Barry took his out of his pocket. "Yeah. Is your battery low?"

"No, I'm at 73% still. But I can use yours to try to talk to the police."

"Oh, yeah, good idea," Barry said, handing her the phone.

Vanessa called 911 as Barry wrapped a dead man's shirt around his arm. The cold was really starting to become unbearable. He wasn't sure if that was simply because it was literally freezing in here, or if the blood loss played a significant role.

"Yes, I'm one of the people trapped in the freezer at Sav-Lotz," said Vanessa. "We need to talk to somebody in charge, who can tell us what's happening. Thank you."

Barry crouched down next to Dana. "Stay with us," he said.

"I am."

"You sound sleepy."

"No."

"I'm going to do whatever it takes to keep you alert," said Barry. "If that means dancing around doing the Macarena, that's what I'll do."

"The Macarena? What decade do you think this is?"

"Give the boy some credit," said Trevor. "That's probably the most contemporary dance reference he knew."

"Seriously," said Barry, "don't die. We've been through too much crap for you to die now."

"I won't. I promise."

"I'll have Pete pinch you if you close your eyes."

"That works."

"Yes, hi," said Vanessa into the phone. "We're still trapped in the freezer, except now we're locked in here. Two of us are injured. No, he's dead. Yes, I'm sure." She gestured to Barry. "How do you put this on speaker?"

"No idea."

"Yes, we saw the tweet," said Vanessa. "We understand."

"What are they saying?" asked Barry.

Vanessa waved for him to be quiet. She sat there for a few minutes, with her side of the conversation consisting of little else besides "Uh-huh."

Finally, she said, "Thank you. I'll stay on the line."

"Are we screwed?" asked Barry.

Vanessa shrugged. "It's not necessarily that bad. But he says that he'll kill her if he sees any hint that somebody is trying to come after him, and the back room doesn't have any windows. So it's going to be really hard to snipe him. Right now they're trying to negotiate with him, but he keeps going back and forth between being willing to talk and threatening to kill her if they don't leave him alone."

"Just great," said Barry.

"For now, we can't do anything but wait."

"That's what I figured. At least nobody here is in danger of bleeding to death while we hang around. Oh, wait..."

"So if he does kill the pregnant lady, they'll take him out immediately, and we'll be saved?" asked Trevor.

"Yeah, pretty much," said Vanessa.

Trevor chuckled. "Forcing me to root for the murder of a woman with child. That's some messed-up business."

"We don't have to root for him to kill her," said Barry. "We just need them to talk this out before we freeze or bleed to death."

"I'm not sure he wants to talk this out," said Trevor. "Sounds like he's going to wait until we're all dead. Then he'll kill her. Then he'll die in a glorious hail of bullets."

"So what you're saying is that she's probably going to die anyway," said Barry. "If we leave the freezer, we'll get her killed, but quite possibly save ourselves."

"That's how it sounds to me."

"Are you suggesting that we should open the door?"

"Nope. I'd like to think that I've got another thirty years left in me, but they won't be very good years if I have a pregnant woman's death on my conscience."

"Well then, thank you for your analysis, Trevor. That was very helpful." Barry blew on his hands. "Still okay, Dana?"

"Never better."

"Let me know if you aren't. Sounds like we've got a long wait."

* * *

They waited for about fifteen minutes in miserable silence. Walking around was painful for Barry, but it kept him warmer, so he alternated between pacing and leaning against a shelf. His wet pants were so cold that he wanted to yank them off and fling them across the room, but he wasn't convinced that he'd be better off bottomless.

When this was over, he wasn't ever going to go near anything cold again, not even ice cream.

Pete seemed to be faring okay. Dana kept closing her eyes and scaring the hell out of Barry, but when he spoke to her she'd open them and respond. Trevor groaned a lot and massaged his joints, and though he smiled good-naturedly when Barry looked at him, it was clear that the old man was truly suffering.

Vanessa flinched when her phone rang.

"Oh my God, oh my God..." she said as she answered. "Hello?"

She immediately burst into tears. Barry couldn't tell if they were happy tears or sad tears, but unless the person on the other end had quickly blurted out "Your husband and daughter are dead sorry gottagobye," there hadn't been time to deliver tragic news.

"I've missed you so much! I was so scared! Is Cindy okay?"

She sucked in a deep breath, and then Vanessa's sobbing intensified.

Happy sobbing for sure.

Barry grinned. Finally a bit of good news.

It was kind of hard to understand what Vanessa was saying with all of the blubbering, but after a couple of minutes she assured her husband that everything would be fine, and hung up.

"His phone got knocked out of his hand," she explained to the others. "He couldn't get it back, and we're both so used to just having each other as contacts on the phone that he didn't know my actual number. But they're fine. They're both fine."

"That's great to hear," said Barry. "I'm really happy for you. Now we have even more reason to get the hell out of here."

Vanessa nodded. "I'm not going to freeze to death. I'll be walking out of here even if I look like Frosty the Snowman."

"Did you hear that, Dana?" Barry asked. "Vanessa's husband and daughter are fine."

Dana said nothing.

Barry moved over to her. "Come on, Dana, open your eyes. Open them. Look at me, Dana."

Dana remained motionless. There was no rise or fall of her chest, but maybe her breaths were just too shallow to see. Barry took her wrist between his fingers and felt for a pulse.

"Is there anything?" Vanessa asked.

"I'm not sure if I'm doing this right." Actually, he was sure that he was doing it right, but it felt better to second-guess himself.

"Do you want me to try?"

"No, I've got it." He pushed up one of her eyelids. The eye stared back at him without a soul. He pushed up the other eyelid. He was no doctor, but it was very clear that Dana was gone.

"Fuck," he said, quietly.

Pete buried his face in his hands and began to weep.

"Damn," said Trevor. "That's harsh."

"She didn't deserve this," said Barry.

"Nobody in here deserved this," said Trevor. He considered that for a moment. "I take that back. Chad and Ethan both deserved it. I misspoke."

Barry wiped a tear from his eye. He hoped that his sorrow was for Dana, although if he was honest, it was probably from the proof that he was one big step closer to death himself.

Vanessa picked up Barry's phone. "Sir? Hi. I understand that you're still in a tricky situation. I just wanted to let you know that there are only four of us now."

SIX

"Do you think they'll still sell this food when it's all over?" Barry asked.

"I hope not," said Trevor. He was bent over and hugging himself, and it was difficult to hear him.

"I don't mean the frozen food with blood and brains on it. Obviously they can't put that out for customers. I mean the food that didn't get touched. Technically, there's nothing wrong with it. Why waste a perfectly good pork chop just because some people died in the freezer?"

"Might be haunted now," said Trevor.

"You do have a point. Maybe they'll discount it, like you would in a house where several murders took place. I think that's the best way to handle it. This store is going to have a lot of bad publicity from this incident, so they really can't afford to be wasting stock."

"We should steal this shit," said Trevor. "Sell it on eBay. Genuine pork chop from the murder freezer. Certificate of authenticity included."

"Now you're talking," said Barry. "We'll start our own business."

"What'll we call it?"

"I don't know. I'm too cold to think straight."

"Are you two done?" asked Vanessa.

"Nope. I can babble like an idiot or go silently crazy. Your pick."

"I think I might pick silently crazy."

"Too bad." Barry blew on his hands, not that it was doing any real good at this point. He wished that Dana's corpse wasn't lying right there where he couldn't help but look at her, but even if she'd been slender, nobody was in any position to lift dead bodies onto shelves anymore.

"I'm going to lose my mind if I have to keep listening to you," said Vanessa. "So we've got insanity either way."

"You're the only able-bodied adult left," Barry noted. "We can't really afford to have you go bonkers. I guess we'll be quiet."

"Thank you. God, I have to get out of here. I don't want anybody else to die, but I swear, if they don't take action soon, we'll have to open that door and hope for the best."

"I'm getting close to that point," said Trevor. "My old bones can't take this much longer. And I know Barry's reaching the end of his line."

"I'm fine," said Barry, lying. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open. The idea of just curling up and going to sleep was so very appealing, but if he did that, he knew he wouldn't wake up. He was terrified that if this continued, the thought of not waking up wouldn't sound so bad.

"You're lying."

"Yep."

"Sorry way for us to go."

"Yeah," said Barry. "I wish the psycho in there would get desperate enough to just burst in here."

"Too bad we can't use his buddy for leverage."

They sat there for a moment, while Barry pondered that.

"Are we sure we can't?" he asked.

"Think he might want his arm as a souvenir?"

"We took the approach that since none of them planned to make it out of here alive, it wouldn't do any good to use Chad as a hostage. Is that still the case? How do we know that offering one of them to Gary won't work?"

"Well, for starters, they're both dead."

"Right." Barry pointed at Ethan. "He's a mess. No way can he pass for alive. I'm not sure that's true of Chad."

"I think you just reached the 'silently crazy' point. Well, not so much the silent part."

Barry slowly walked over to Chad's body, bracing himself against the shelf to keep from collapsing. "He does look dead. Maybe he won't look dead in a picture, though."

"He will."

"Vanessa, do you have any makeup in your purse?"

"Yeah, but not anything that could make a frozen dead body look normal."

"But let's say that we put him on the floor and leaned him against the shelf. I sat next to him, put my arm around his neck, and put the knife to his throat. We took the picture from the other side of the freezer. You don't have to make him look like he's on the cover of Esquire; he'd just need to look less dead. Could you do that?"

"I don't know. I guess."

"What have we got to lose?"

"Nothing."

Barry turned to Pete. "Pete, you've been really brave during this whole thing, and I'm going to ask you to be even braver. Do you think you could help Vanessa get the bad man off the shelf?"

"That's demented," said Trevor.

"I'll help, too. Three of us can get him down, I'm sure. Are you up for that, Pete?"

Pete nodded.

Getting Chad's body off the shelf was a pain in the ass, and the strain definitely messed with Barry's stab wound. Once they got Chad seated against the shelf, it seemed impossible that he could pass for alive...but if Gary saw the picture, he'd be seeing it on a tiny cell phone display. This didn't have to be Hollywood level special makeup effects. It didn't even have to live up to the standards of a cheap B-movie. It needed to fool a desperate and probably mentally ill man who was peeking at his phone while keeping a meat cleaver to a pregnant woman's neck. They could do this.

While Barry got in place, Vanessa patted Chad's face with some tan powder stuff. "We all look like crap," he said. "All we want to do is make him look less purple."

He shared his idea for what to do next if Gary took the bait. Everybody agreed that it was an awful scheme. They also agreed that they were not in a position to be choosy about their escape plan options.

When Vanessa was done, Barry placed the knife against Chad's throat. "Can you tell he has a broken neck?" he asked.

"His head is at a weird angle, yeah."

"What about now?"

"I think that's okay."

"Does he look even remotely alive?"

Vanessa shook her head. "His eyes are glazed over. It might not show up in the picture, but you can tell he's dead from the eyes."

"All right." Barry thought for a moment. "We can improvise."

He slid the knife blade low across Chad's forehead, just over his eyebrows. Chad didn't bleed much, but Barry had plenty of his own blood to spare, so he dabbed his fingers against the wet cloth and put some blood streaks down to Chad's eyes. Though this certainly didn't make him appear alive, it might distract from his glassy-eyed corpse stare.

In a day filled with things that Barry would have never expected to do, mutilating a dead body was pretty high on the list.

Perfect. Well, not perfect, not even close, but better than waiting for the situation outside to resolve itself.

Barry got back into position. Vanessa stepped as far away from him as she could, then took a few pictures. She walked back and held up her phone. "What do you think?"

Actually, it looked okay. It wouldn't hold up to much scrutiny, but how much scrutiny would it receive? As long as the Internet wasn't instantly filled with people shouting "FAKE!!!" this might work.

"Do you think people will say it's fake?" Barry asked.

"Oh, yeah. But even if it were real people would say that it's fake. If I were him, it might fool me."

"Might?"

"Might."

"That's as good as we're going to get."

"Do I just tweet it?" Vanessa asked.

"I don't know. Is it better to have the police forward it to him?"

"Twitter would be more public. These guys are all worried about the message they're sending to the nation, so if he knows that the whole Twitterverse knows we want to trade hostages, he might be more inclined to go for it."

"Might?"

"Might."

"That's as good as we're going to get," said Barry.

"You two are just adorable," said Trevor.

"He's probably getting thousands of tweets," said Vanessa. "We may have to send it a few times to make sure he sees it." She tapped away at her cell phone. "I'm in the freezer with Chad. He's still alive for now. Want to trade?" She looked at Barry. "How does that sound?"

"Sounds good."

"Sent."

"Cool. I'm part of the social media generation now. Can't say I'm not jumping in with both feet."

The next step was to...wait.

His not-so-brilliant scheme had distracted Barry from the chill, but now that he was back to sitting around, he honestly wasn't sure what he'd do if this plan did work. Have a hunting knife vs. meat cleaver battle with the guy? He was in sorry, sorry shape.

"Anything yet?" he asked a couple of minutes later.

"A few retweets. I don't know if he's not checking or if it's lost in the noise. I'll keep sending it." She looked over at Barry's phone, then picked it up and held it to her ear. "Hello? Yes, we are crazy. We've got to do something. Look, the guy in the picture is in bad shape. No, the other one. We can't stay in here. Yes, we have a plan. No, it's not a good one."

"You probably shouldn't tell him," said Barry. "He'll try to discourage you."

Vanessa told him, and he did indeed try to discourage her.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Barry asked for the sixth time if there were any updates.

"No," said Vanessa. "But he hasn't tweeted anything new. It's getting retweeted like crazy. He'll see it."

* * *

Fifteen minutes after that, Barry's teeth were chattering too much for him to ask for his tenth update.

Everything was cold. He couldn't feel his fingers. Couldn't feel his toes. He was almost certain that his crotch had frostbite. He hadn't tried to move in the past few minutes, and wasn't sure if he even could.

He decided that he'd better try.

He grabbed the shelf, which didn't hurt his fingers because he couldn't feel them, and tried to pull himself up.

Nope. Couldn't do it.

He was going to die.

"Trevor...?" he asked.

"Yeah?"

"Can you stand up?"

"Hell no."

Barry thought of a comment about how, since they had some free time at the moment, this was a fine opportunity for him to prepare his last will and testament. But he couldn't speak the comment, just think it. And he didn't think it very clearly.

Bummer of a way to die.

Mr. and Mrs. Anderson, they got off lucky. Bullet to the head. The end. No pain, a shocking moment, and it was over. Slowly dying from a stab wound while simultaneously dying of hypothermia (presumably) was not a glamorous way to go. It sucked. Barry demanded a recount.

Barry was not entirely sure what his brain meant by demanding a recount.

He did know that, except for maybe giving Gary somebody to stab besides the other three captives, he wasn't going to be contributing much to the escape effort.

He closed his eyes.

Nope. Not gonna do that. He opened them again. That only counted as a long blink. He hadn't given up. If he gave up, he'd die and then fifteen seconds later a SWAT team would burst into the freezer with Gary's guts on their boots, because that's the way irony worked.

He tried to wiggle his fingers. They wouldn't wiggle.

At least this was better than dying in an autoerotic asphyxiation accident. No glory in that. Dying a slow death in a walk-in freezer wouldn't elicit snickers, except maybe from his ex-wife.

Were his eyes closed, or had the lights gone out again?

His eyes were closed.

He opened them.

God, he was tired.

Sweet, sweet sleep.

Better to die here, now, peacefully, than to die on an operating table with surgeons shouting at each other, right? That was no way to go. All that chaos. Right here, right now, it was kind of serene as long as he didn't look at all of the blood on his clothes and Dana's corpse and Chad's corpse and what remained of Ethan's corpse. As long as he didn't look at them, it was fine.

If he closed his eyes, he didn't have to look at them.

He closed his eyes.

"Open your eyes!" a woman said.

Who?

He opened them. Oh. It was Vanessa. Of course.

"He tweeted back," she said.

This seemed important enough that Barry could focus. "What'd he say?"

She held the phone up to him. Barry blinked a few times.

"Too small for me to read."

"He said, 'U 4 real?' With the letter U and the number 4."

"What do we tell him?"

"I already tweeted back yes."

"Oh, good."

"Do not fade on me now, Barry. Same with you, Trevor. I need you guys."

Barry nodded. He'd stay alive for Vanessa. He owed her that much, after all they'd been through.

Stay awake. All he had to do was stay awake. Not for much longer.

The door made a clicking sound.

"I think he unlocked it," Vanessa whispered.

She looked at her phone and put a hand over her mouth.

"What'd he say?"

"He said to come on out."

"You gonna?"

Vanessa took a deep breath. "I'm going to do it just like we said." She reached out for Pete's hand. "Are you ready?"

"I don't want to."

"I know, honey, but I need you to be strong. You can see your mommy, and we can save a new mommy."

Pete took her hand.

Vanessa led him to the door. She turned the handle, then very slowly pulled it open a few inches.

"Hello?" she said.

"Don't try anything stupid," said a man outside. He sounded like he smoked approximately a thousand cigarettes a day, although Barry supposed that people his age probably vaped.

"I won't."

"Let me see Chad."

"Chad is dead," said Vanessa. "But before you get upset about that, I want you to know that I'm not trying to save my own life. There's a little boy in here. His name is Pete. He's six years old. You have to let him go."

"Open the door all the way."

Vanessa did. Gary stood only five feet away. The pregnant woman was in front of him, the meat cleaver still against her neck, with a few thin trickles of blood underneath the steel. Her eyes were so puffy they looked almost swollen shut. She was an inch taller than Gary. Barry could see how it would be difficult for a sniper to get a clear headshot.

"Look at what I'm doing here. You think I care what happens to that kid?"

"Then put him out of his misery."

"What?"

"Put him out of his misery."

"I heard you, but, what?"

"I believe in your message," said Vanessa. "I do. I don't want to be the one to die for it, but I understand its importance. Letting us freeze to death isn't going to do it. He'll have died for nothing. I can't let that happen."

"You ain't got a choice."

"Don't waste him. Let his life mean something. Either let him go to be with his mother and father, or finish him yourself." Vanessa tugged on Pete's hand. "Come on, sweetheart. Go get warm."

Pete very slowly walked out of the freezer, shivering.

"The fuck you doing?" asked Gary. "You trying to get somebody killed?"

"If that's how it has to be. Go on, sweetie."

Vanessa put her hands in the air to show that she wasn't going to try anything, and took a couple of steps backwards.

Pete shuffled forward like a zombie.

Then he dropped to his knees.

"I'll kill the kid," Gary warned. "I'll do it. I don't give a shit."

"I just want my mommy," said Pete.

"Do it," said Vanessa. "End this."

Gary looked at her. "You are one messed-up bitch, you know that?"

Vanessa lifted her shirt, flashing him, and stepped to the side.

It was meant to be a dual assault on the senses. One, a beautiful woman exposed herself at a time when Gary probably wasn't expecting to see bare breasts. Vanessa's bra rested on one of the shelves. Two, the corpses of his ex-buddies Chad and Ethan were suddenly visible. Sure, he already knew they were dead, but seeing them had to give him a momentary jolt.

In a perfect world, this would distract him just long enough for a frightened six-year-old boy to reach behind his back and take out the hunting knife that was wedged in his pants.

Pete pulled out the knife.

Then...he dropped it.

Barry didn't blame him. He was scared and his little fingers were frozen.

As the knife clattered to the floor, Gary did not draw the meat cleaver across the woman's throat. He glanced down at the knife Pete had dropped.

This gave the pregnant woman the opportunity to jab her elbow into Gary's stomach.

Gary didn't drop the meat cleaver, but as he started to double over, he lowered the weapon a few inches. This, apparently, was enough for the woman to feel comfortable pulling away from him.

The blade of the meat cleaver tore across her chest, but, thank God, not her belly or neck.

Pete tried to pick up the knife but couldn't get a grip on it.

Gary screamed with rage as the woman fled. But he didn't go after her. He had a much more convenient target.

Barry wanted to shout for Pete to forget about the knife, he didn't need it anymore, he should just run. But his voice wasn't working.

Vanessa ran out of the freezer.

Gary swung the meat cleaver down at Pete.

Blood splattered onto Gary's shirt.

Vanessa screamed. Barry would have joined her, were he able.

Gary's left ear exploded.

His body twitched as several more bullets pounded into him.

He stepped forward, did a half-pirouette, then flopped forward and hit the floor.

Pete clutched at his bloody shoulder, screaming. It was an awful sight, but it was a little boy who was badly hurt, not a little boy who was going to die.

I think we're going to be okay, thought Barry, as the men in bulletproof vests rushed into the room.

EPILOGUE

As Barry lay on the gurney in the ambulance next to Trevor, he cheered himself up with thoughts that, if those assholes were alive to do a full analysis of how their plan had gone, they'd be extremely pissed at themselves.

"I think I've just earned myself another thirty years on this planet," said Trevor.

"And I'm never going to eat another avocado in my life," said Barry.

"I beg your pardon?'

"Avocado."

"I heard that part."

"I was there for an avocado. That's why I was at the store. I said it earlier."

"Was it while we were freezing to death?"

"Yeah."

"That's why I don't remember."

"Fair enough."

"You shouldn't boycott avocados though. They're good for you."

"I wasn't really going to. It was just something to say after your comment about earning thirty more years."

"We should just stop talking and let the paramedics do their work."

"Yeah."

The End

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Richard Chizmar, Tod Clark, Donna Fitzpatrick, Brian Freeman, Lynne Hansen (who wrote a screenplay adaptation, if there are any movie people reading this), Michael McBride, Jim Morey, Norman Prentiss, Rhonda Rettig, and Paul Synuria II for their assistance with this project.

Remember: Readers who leave reviews deserve great big hugs!

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Books By Jeff Strand

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For information on all of these books, visit Jeff Strand's more-or-less official website at http://www.jeffstrand.com