Devil's Plaything by Matt Richtel

Author:Matt Richtel
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780062091321
Publisher: HarperCollins US
Published: 2011-07-07T05:01:21+00:00

Chapter 32

“Grandpa looks like a retard.”

“That’s a horrible word, and keep your voice down,” Grandma says but I can’t tell if she’s really upset.

“He’s flailing his arms around like a gorilla.”

Now she laughs. She whispers: “Now ‘flailing’—that’s a good word.”

I’m ten, and visiting my grandparents. It’s a hot day in their backyard. Grandma and I stand on the concrete porch while Grandpa Irving, wearing paisley shorts and a white tank top that betrays his farmer’s tan, waters the grass. And he dances, more or less. The radio is on, and he’s moving his arms and the hose—distinctly not in time with the music.

“Your grandfather has no rhythm. He’s not like us.”

“You mean like he can’t dance good?”

“Well. That’s not just it. We’re more colorful—you and I. It’s in our bones. He has different bones.”

“You and I share the same bones?”

“Precisely.”

“Well then how can we both walk at the same time?”

She laughs. But I sense Grandma is communicating something serious that I can’t quite understand.

The conversation stuck with me. I remember that it made me feel Grandma and I belonged to a special club and no one else in the family was a member.

And that happens to be the anecdote passing in an eye-blink through my mind, dreamlike, as death beckons me on a concrete floor of an industrial building. My proverbial white tunnel is a backyard from twenty-five years ago, and my angel of death is my grandfather, watering his lawn.

Then I cough. It’s a violent spasm, sufficient to wrench me to consciousness. My first sensation comes from my legs, which pulse from the scorching heat. My eyes flutter, but I can’t fully open them because of the waves of searing air.

Staying on the floor, I yank the bottom of my shirt to my face and cover my mouth and nose. I know that what will kill me first is not fire, but smoke inhalation.

Then, from above, I feel something remarkable—a burst of frozen air. I think for a moment I’m dead and this is part of the passage. Then I realize the cool relief comes from the air conditioner. The place must be highly climate-controlled to keep the servers from overheating—though the designers of the system never contemplated this. The air-conditioning system must be freaking out to cope with the explosion in heat. Where are the sprinklers?

The burst of air allows me to fully open my eyes. I can make out that the fire is localized in two spots—on the rack of servers to one side and on the rack of monitors to the other. I stand in an ever-shrinking island without flames. The air smells oddly fragrant, like a campfire, but it’s doubtless toxic and filled with melted computer innards. Every few seconds, another circuit explodes, like high-tech popcorn kernels.

I strain to gaze through the heat to the wall the hooded man disappeared through. There must be a door on that side of the building. Regardless, my better survival option is the door I entered, but flames are rising to block the way.

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