Pym_ A Novel - Mat Johnson [110]
“Well that plan didn’t work, did it?”
“No, ma’am, it did not,” we agreed.
“Then you boys need to call for help,” Mrs. Karvel told us with so much calm and acceptance of our improbable situation that I began to realize she was probably heavily medicated as a rule. Trying to match her subdued tones, I made the point that unfortunately there was no one whom it was possible to call: no police, no national guard, no anything.
“Get your friends, the co-workers you said they captured. Whatever you have to do, you do it. We got guns, we just need the people to hold them off, kill them if they try to come in here. And get me some ice for Tommy’s head too, he’s going to have quite the lump on him.”
In the excitement of the moment, motivated largely by a desire to simply run away, I seized on the request to get help as if it was my destiny. Not a thought did I give to the actual logistics of how we would manage to escape the 3.2 Ultra BioDome unprotected, or make it back through the frozen wasteland and repeat the journey that had almost killed me, or how we would do all this in time to make it back here for whatever siege this white woman had in mind. These questions must have also occurred to Mrs. Karvel, because as she stared down at her husband’s slack face, her plans became more specific.
“We got two snowmobiles: Tommy got him a real good blue one, and got me a pink one to match. But you can’t take ’em, can you? Because the garage door is right down there, facing their camp. As soon as you open it, they gonna be all on us. All on us,” she repeated, standing up and grabbing me by the shoulder as if I intended to disagree with her. I wasn’t. “You boys, you take the exhaust tunnel. Exit’s in the mechanical room. Don’t go near the boiler, that thing’s an accident waiting to happen, just head for the back door. That’ll get you far; that tunnel comes up out past where you say they are. You take that, you get out past them, and you get us some goddamn help. You hear me?”
I heard very well. Packing my old snow gear with Slim Jims and PowerBar gel this time, I was ready to get the hell out of there. The exhaust tunnel, it seemed, was perfect for our escape, a better solution we could not have asked for. In his fear that his precious dome would somehow be located by rogue nations with heat-seeking satellites, Thomas Karvel had also provided himself with the perfect escape hatch. Walking past it, I could easily see that this boiler system was a truly monumental construction, something I would have paused to be awed by had the moment allowed for it. After cranking off the water of the waterfall, Garth and I walked under its last sweet drops to get to the mechanical room’s door and make our way out of Karvel’s utopia. Without the waterfall, it was loud. In the room, though, it was absolute cacophony. The roar was the first thing that attacked my senses as we began our trudge. Clogs, pistons, lubes reverberating like a junkyard orgy. Before the vibrations could overwhelm me, I was hit by another assault. The heat. We walked through what felt to me like a nearly solid wall of heat. The main interior of the 3.2 Ultra BioDome was kept at a perfect seventy-two degrees Fahrenheit. Within the boiler room, though, it felt like twice that.
“This is unbearable,” I complained, wiping the sweat that had instantly appeared upon my brow.
“Enjoy it while it lasts, dog. You going to be cold soon enough,” Garth responded.
Still, in that moment, as sweat coated my body in a vain attempt to cool me down, it seemed that the walk back to the exhaust fan exit was endless. I had assumed that the boiler room was just little, merely covering the space under the waterfall and deck above, but this mechanical area went beyond the confines of the Karvels’ living quarters and spread back all the way to the dome’s edge. The supposed “room” was larger than a house, with pipes interlooping between the metal constructs in a way that only hinted at order.