I realized this morning that I was wrong about the tone of this piece. It’s going to be much easier now.
That scream was wild and horrible, sounding precisely like a woman being burned alive, and it wouldn’t stop. Bernice had clearly never heard such a cacophony before, and she took a half-step forward before Greg’s right arm was suddenly an obstacle irresistibly blocking her path. “Don’t look,” he warned her as he stabbed at more buttons, his eyes determinedly lowered. “That’s what it wants you to do!”
From inside the box the screaming increased — rivaling the alarm sirens now going off all around them — as magnesium dust was sprayed into the flames. The box itself rattled alarmingly enough for Greg to reach for the coach gun kept within easy reach of his station, but that commotion died away even as he readied the gun. Greg snapped the breech open anyway to insert two buckshot cartridges. He told Bernice, “Get outside, Inquisitor Jones, and be ready to drop the blast door if you have to!”
“Yes, sir!” Bernice said, carefully not looking back. Greg ignored the honorific: this was business. “In position, sir!”
“Good.” The sirens were either lowering their decibels, or Greg was getting used to them, because it was getting easier to hear. “Now, either what inside’s gotten enough of a dose of burning magnesium to make it decide to give up and try another day, or it’s going to use all its oomph to bust loose. It does that, I’m gonna give it both barrels, and jump for the door. You hear the blast, you give me a three count, then pull the big switch. You savvy?”