Krysty listened intently, but the noise was gone.
“Rain on roof?” Jak asked, looking upward. “Mebbe birds?” There was no skylight in the warehouse, and no windows to see outside, only a hooded ventilation fan in a steel cage. The building was a fortress offering no easy way for thieves to get inside.
Slowly, Krysty shook her head. “Can’t say exactly what it was,” she murmured uneasily. “But definitely not rain.”
Ryan went to the rear door and glanced outside. “No sign of anything,” he reported. “Might have been a fan moving from the breeze of us opening the door.”
“Mebbe,” Krysty agreed reluctantly.
“Hear anything now?” Mildred asked, listening herself. There was only the hiss of the pressure lantern to be heard.
“Nothing,” the redhead said, easing her stance.
“Good. Let me know if you hear it again,” Ryan said.
“Bet your ass,” Krysty muttered.
Going to the first storage room, J.B. checked for traps, and Jak stabbed the pry bar into the jamb. The teenager gave a heave, something snapped loudly and the door slid sideways. Mildred raised the lantern to see, and there was only bare floor inside the storage unit.
“Empty as a stickie’s pockets,” Ryan growled, lowering his blaster.
“Sure hope this isn’t a bust,” Dean added.
“Funny,” Krysty said, wrinkling her nose. “Now I smell horseradish.”
Mildred spun from inspecting the corrugated walls of the unit. “You sure?” she asked urgently, sniffing hard. “God no, please, not that.”
“I smell it, too,” J.B. said, puzzled. Horseradish, he’d smelled that before in a predark ruin many years ago.
Retreating a step, Krysty pointed at the baseboard of the wall. “Look!”
With a burbling hiss, thin yellow fumes began to rise from disguised vents, the vapors becoming thicker and stronger in irregular swells.
“Gas!” Ryan cursed, covering his face with a sleeve. “Everybody, out of the room!”
Dashing into the central passage, J.B. shoved the door shut, but the fumes seeped past the jamb, swelling and expanding to sluggishly fill the passageway completely. From the rafters, a beetle tumbled down to hit the floor near a twitching mouse, lying on its side. Blisters were already forming over its furry body.
“Mustard gas!” Mildred spit, backing away fast. “Don’t let it touch you!”
“This way!” Jak commanded, heading for the exit.
But as the companions tried for the loading dock, the swirling yellow fumes were already waist high there, sealing off any possible escape in that direction. Retreating to the far end of the central passage, Ryan and the others put their backs to the brick wall. Steadily increasing in volume, the deadly mustard gas was swirling like a living thing, slowly filling the passage in random spurts. The reek of horseradish was becoming overpowering, their eyes painfully tearing, and breathing was becoming torture.
Pulling out a canteen, Mildred splashed some water on her face, then soaked a handkerchief and held it to her mouth.
“Make masks!” she ordered, passing over the container.
“This stop?” Jak asked hopefully, coughing hard.
The physician shook her head. “Wet masks will only buy us a few minutes. We’re dead meat unless we get out of here right now!”
“Vents must not be working correctly,” Ryan said, his voice muffled by the wet rag.
“Only reason we’re still here,” Krysty agreed, gasping for breath.
“I’ll stop it,” Dean growled, pulling a Molotov from his bag. Igniting the fuse, the boy threw the bottle at the expanding death cloud. In a crash, the cocktail roared into a fireball, but as the poison gas touched the flames, they dimmed and diminished in size until winking out of existence.
“Goddamn it,” Mildred cursed. “Fire is useless. There’s no free oxygen to feed the flames.” In desperation, her mind raced to recall chemical formulas. Did she have anything in med kit to use as a counter agent for mustard gas? Truthfully, the physician wasn’t even sure there was a counteragent effective against the lethal war gas.
Slow and steady, the yellow fumes moved along the passageway, getting inexorably closer.
“Got to find another way out of here,” Ryan said, running his hands over the brick wall. The concrete between the bricks was flush to the surface, leaving nothing for them to use as chinks to climb to the roof.