Pym_ A Novel - Mat Johnson [128]
“You turn the heat up any higher and you’re liable to blow us all straight to hell. The damn thing’s broke, so just grab yourself a shotgun. I’m sure filling them with lead holes will kill them just as good.”
“My wife has never spoken a truer word,” the painter said, and he even put down the double-barrel in his hands for a moment to grab her face and kiss her.
“You fellas want to make yourselves useful?” Mrs. Karvel continued when he released her. “Then take the other exits and guard them too. Somebody cover the boiler room and somebody cover the garage door. Because they sure as hell are coming for us now. Just a matter of holding them long enough, right? As long as we keep firing these rifles, we’re going to do us just fine.” Mrs. Karvel gripped her Browning as she said this, giving it a little shake. Her husband did as well, massaging his hand along the hilt as he stared at the banging door. I wanted a gun too. I wanted to feel that strength, to have something to cling to. I wanted to know the texture of revenge, the weight of it. To at least feel powerful in this moment of complete doom. So loading up with arms and ammunition, Garth, the engineers, and I did just that. And it was as good to grab something within the tempest as I thought it would be.
But it was all illusion. The shooting began only moments after we left the room, the first gun blast coming as the Tekelians finally managed to burst open the exit door. I tried to count the shots as we made our way down the ladder to the main level, and the Karvels must have got off more than two dozen between them, stuttering their blast so that they could take turns reloading. Still, despite the impossibly long pauses between shots, the whole endeavor couldn’t have taken more than forty-five seconds. By the time the four of us had climbed down to the main floor, the guns went silent. In their wake was the dull sound of meat being pounded and the short yelps that could have come only from human mouths. The inevitable had come to pass, the beasts had stormed the gates, with all their might. I didn’t even bother looking to my compatriots to discern the moment. It was all so fast, but there was no question what was happening.
“Plan B! Plan B!” I began to yell to Garth, scuttling him toward the boiler room. I wanted it hot in there. I wanted it Texas hot. I wanted it hot like the very line of the equator. I didn’t want to simply defend myself: I wanted to see those monsters melting. I wanted them to be like the tigers in “Little Black Sambo,” pooled like butter on the floor. I didn’t care what else firing up the boiler would do, I was going to turn that thermostat as high as it would go and burn those beasts to the ground.
“I’ll do it.” Jeffree, his hand on my wrist, stopped me. “You don’t know nothing about anything mechanical, man. I’m not even trying to insult you. We’ll manage the boiler, even fix it if we have to. Leave this to the professionals. Leave this to Jeff Free.”
In that one moment, I believed Jeffree was every bit as heroic as he always told everyone he was. His jaw was so square, his forehead so shiny, the cowrie shells around his neck announcing a triumphant chorus as he spun around, possibly smelling his mechanical prey. I no longer saw a fool, an incompetent. This was a man. A silly man sometimes, sure, but a man nonetheless. Jeffree knew the dangers of his task, that if he was going to make a successful escape he would have to cross back through the BioDome to get to the snowmobiles. Jeffree knew this, and he took this nearly suicidal action anyway. Jeffree got to be the hero, and for my part, in that moment, I was actually happy to have him on our side. I would like to think that maybe I had never truly “gotten him” before this moment. Jeffree had simply stood outside the proper context. And Carlton Damon Carter caught him there in his element for digital posterity, both Jeffree’s heroic speech