Page 102 of Wild Oblivion

Four minutes until noon.

55

Dispatch had gotten through to the sheriff. He met us at the entrance to the locker room with a ladder. "Are you sure you know what you're doing, Wild?”

"You might want to get as far away from here as possible.”

"I'm already knee-deep in it now. If this thing’s going to go, I doubt I'll be able to get far enough away. Besides, I think this place might be considerably less interesting without you two around.”

I gave him a curious look.

“I'm going to deny I ever said that.”

I laughed as we hustled into the locker room. The sheriff set up the ladder underneath the smoke detector of doom. I put on a pair of sunglasses to protect my eyes from falling debris, climbed the ladder, then sprayed the device with several passes of liquid nitrogen until it was nice and frosty.

"30 seconds!" Jack called out.

I climbed down, took aim at the device with the sonic rifle, then squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

My eyes rounded like saucers. I shook the sonic gun. The lights had all gone out. “I thought you said this thing could go all day!”

Emily’s brow wrinkled. She took the weapon as I handed it to her.

“19 seconds,” Jack said.

Emily fiddled with it, flipping it on and off.

Still nothing.

“10 seconds,” Jack said.

Emily dropped the battery out, wiped the terminal, then jammed it back in like a magazine. She flicked it on and powered it up.

“5, 4…”

The lights flashed, and she handed the device to me.

“3, 2..”

I shouldered the weapon and fired the sonic pulse as Jack counted down to one.

My insides rumbled, and the pulse dusted the doomsday disk.

Adrenaline flooded my body. My heart punched my chest.

The lights of the disk went out.

Flakes drifted down from the ceiling.

We all shared an anxious look.

Jack looked at his watch again. “It’s after noon.”

Nothing happened.

I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. But the bomb didn't go off.