The screech of tearing sheet metal pierced the store.
High above the roof of Starlight Mart #04, the sixty-foot document shredder groaned on its massive iron chains. Its twin counter-rotating cylindrical drums ground together, diamond-tipped teeth gnashing at the red fog. Tiny shavings of pulverized steel drifted down through the frozen raindrops, pinging off the store’s tin roof like freezing sleet.
The downdraft carried the stench of sulfuric acid and dead cellulose straight into the open vestibule.
Inside the store, the air pressure dropped by twenty millibars.
Thomas Vance’s boots slid another twelve inches across the linoleum, leaving wide black skid marks in the floor wax. The lateral torque was immense. The bottom flange of the steel upright on Aisle 1 buckled outward, bending like a tin can under a boot.
The floor anchor bolts shrieked in their concrete sockets, fine grey powder flaking across the tiles.
The hydraulic pulse in the red-ink cords descending from the clouds roared at two hundred beats per minute.
The cords were as thick as fire hoses now. They pulsed with blinding crimson light, their slick surfaces vibrating like iron bridge cables in a hurricane.
