DOMINION Bentley Little (accelerated reader books .TXT) 📖

Holbrook was already navigating the corridor, blithely shouldering aside the bloody corpses as he walked forward. “How far to the wine?” he asked.

Turning back toward the open door and taking a deep breath, Penelope followed after him, her feet sinking into the squishy organs and tissue that covered the floor. “Second door on the right should have some vats,” she said.

Behind her, still gagging, she heard Kevin literally following in her footsteps, his shoes making loud, squelching sounds.

The door must have been locked, because Holbrook had put down his boxes and was kicking it when shelf caught up to him. He kicked, slipped, fell into the grue on the floor, then got up and did it again. On the fifth try the door gave a little, and on the sixth it swung open.

Inside, the pressing room was clean. No bodies, no gore, no blood.

Holbrook let his boxes drop to the floor. He looked around the room at the huge steel vats and various pieces of machinery. He turned toward Penelope, pointing at a red-valved pipe protruding from the closest wall. “The power here,” he asked. “Is it electricity or gas?”

“Both,” Penelope said.

The teacher grinned. “Gas,” he said. “This may work after all.”

Kevin straggled into the room, lurching past Holbrook, trying to get as far away from the door as possible before putting down his boxes and loudly exhaling.

“Uh-oh,” Holbrook said, frowning and patting his pockets. “Did anybody bring a matchbook?”

Penelope’s heart leaped in her chest.

“What—” Kevin began.

Holbrook grinned. “Just joking.” He opened one of his boxes. “Hurry up. Let’s get to work.”

Under the teacher’s supervision, they soaked the rags and newspapers in gasoline, piling them in strategic locations. Penelope showed Holbrook where the runoff valves were, and he opened three of them to a trickle.

It was becoming hard to breathe due to the fumes, and even Kevin was taking gulps of air from outside the doorway.

“Isn’t this going to explode when you put a match to it?” Kevin asked.

“How are we going to get out in time before it blows?”

Holbrook was emptying the last drops of gasoline in a trail leading from one pile of rags to another. He tossed the can aside, walked over, and grinned. “I’m not completely dense.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a folded envelope. He opened it. Inside was a bluish white crystalline powder. “Chlorine,” he said.

Kevin frowned. “Yeah?”

The teacher reached into his box, withdrew a plastic container of transmission fluid. “Mix these two together, and they’ll start a fire.”

“So will a match. What’s the point?”

“There’s a delayed reaction. It’ll take a minute or so to start. I’ll put it next to some paper that hasn’t been doused with gas. It’ll have to burn through that first. Then it’ll start the rags on fire. Then the fire will spread. By the time this place goes up, we’ll be long gone.”

“I hope it works,” Kevin said.

“It will.”

They finished placing the newspapers, rags, and boxes around the room.

“Okay,” Holbrook said. “It’s time.” He poured some transmission fluid into the envelope and heaved the still mostly full container at the wall. He shook up the contents of the envelope to mix them, then twisted the envelope and placed it next to a long length of rolled newspaper.

“Haul ass,” he said.

They ran. Penelope nearly slipped in the corridor, slamming into one of the bodies, a sticky chest cavity hitting her in the face, but she kept going, and the three of them emerged outside seconds later.

In front of them, the house was surrounded by young girls dressed in white and holding hands.

“What’s that?” Kevin asked. “What are they doing?”

“They’re virgins,” the teacher said.

“Vestal virgins,” Penelope said. “Or Hestial virgins. They are to be consecrated to the goddess of the hearth.”

“Consecrated? What the hell does that mean? Sacrificed?”

“No. They’ll merely become the goddess’s servants or handmaidens. Priestesses, as it were. They will devote their lives to her. They will be killed only if they break their vows.”

“Jesus,” Kevin breathed.

“The virgins are probably sober,” Holbrook said.

“That means—”

“We have no choice,” Holbrook said. “We’ll just have to make a run for it.” He looked at Penelope. She nodded.

They dashed between the two buildings, running toward the parking lot.

They were probably spotted, probably seen, but there were not wild screams, no hot pursuit. The virgins remained in place, holding hands, and the other bacchantes continued their revelry and their harvest festival.

They made it back to the car with no problem.

They were on the road, nearly back in town, when the building blew.

15

Mel Scott looked around at the mounted heads on the wall, at the bodies of the doctor and the nurses on the floor. Flies had gotten in somehow and were everywhere, buzzing, constantly buzzing, alighting on the stinking heads and corpses, then flying annoyingly back into the air again.

Paradise wasn’t supposed to be like this.

His head hurt. It had been hurting all day, like a hangover, though he had remained consistently drunk enough that he should not be suffering from a hangover. The DT’s perhaps, but not a hangover.

Barbara was dead.

He had tried to fuck her back to life, had taken her first in the pussy, then up the ass, then in the mouth, but she had remained cold. He had prayed to his new god, but his god seemed to have forsaken him.

And now he was running out of wine.

The room stank and he was running out of wine.

Paradise wasn’t supposed to be like this.

There were people in the church again.

Praying.

To God.

Pastor Robens peeked out through the crack in the door. They had abandoned God, all of them, had forsaken Him for that drunken deity from Greece, and now they were back.

It was too late, though.

They had abandoned God, and now God had abandoned them.

He listened to the frantic prayers, the desperate voices, and silently closed the door, locked it. He walked back to his desk and the bottle of wine. They’d been right the first time. It was the wine god whom they