Free Crisis Event: Black Feast by Greg Shows, Zachary Womack

she only took a few small bottles: glycerin, potassium permanganate, magnesium ribbon, aluminum powder, methanol, hexane, three containers each of calcium hypochlorite and calcium hydroxide, and a plastic canister of sulfur.
    By the time she’d finished packing all the new acquisitions into her bag, her she was on the verge of vomiting. She’d been in the building over an hour, and the constant explosions of thunder that somehow penetrated all the way into the lab had exhausted her. She was hungry and anxious, and she needed to lie down.
    Downstairs, in a science building in Shanksborough, Ohio, there’s a guy canning people. To eat.
        Sadie knew she should leave. That she should head out into the lightning and sludge storm raging outside since it would be the perfect cover for her escape.
    But that locked cabinet wouldn’t let go of her. It was as if she'd morphed into a cat named Pandora—a cat whose curiosity was just dying to get her killed.
    “Why can’t I be like a coyote?” she asked herself, and considered how a lack of curiosity or desire to meddle would be a great effective survival mechanism.
    If only.
    Sadie wanted inside the metal locker, but didn’t have the tools to get it open: no bolt cutters, no acetylene torch, no air chisel.
    But she did have something she could use, so she crawled back over the metal table. She used her metal bowl to scoop up the manganese oxide she’d found, then grabbed the iron rod. She returned to the meth room to retrieve the electronic scales and carry them to the table.
    She made several trips up and down the narrow supply area, carrying a folding metal chair and a stack of chemistry textbooks, adding her footprints to the hundreds already present. The last thing she brought was the three brick pieces she'd seen lying among the shattered glass on a shelf in the third lab she’d searched.
    After gathering her supplies Sadie went back through all the lab rooms and closed the doors, sniffing the air for any increase in the scent of vinegar. She listened for any sound from the whistling giant, but all was quiet and dark.
    Unless y o u counted the thunder claps and black hailstones stri k i ng the roof and windows.
    Even if someone was coming up from downstairs, she doubted she would hear them.
    Her back and arms prickled at the thought.
    “Focus,” she said.
    Back inside the storage room she set her flashlight on the table and pointed it at the locker. She shoved the front of the chair as close to the locker doors as the chair legs would allow. Then she piled on the text books, stacking them one atop another next to the locker door so that they would form a platform high enough to reach the lock.
    Once she’d arranged the books she lifted the lock and slid a final book beneath it. When she let go of the lock it lay flat on the book’s cover. Afterward she set the brick halves on both side of the lock and angled them in toward each other so that they made a sort of triangular form.
    Sadie put her pack on its back and wedged the flashlight into the top of it so that its light shone across the table top. In the round pool of yellow light she set up the scale.
    The batteries inside the scale were dead, but she had the Chinese batteries for the Geiger counter so she replaced the dead ones and poured the manganese oxide out of the bowl to weigh it. Once she knew how much she’d gathered, she poured it back into the bowl. Then she weighed out the amount of aluminum powder she thought she’d need.
    Doing the stoichiometry in her head wasn’t all that hard, even after all these years. She didn’t have to calculate it down to the hundredth decimal point, and Dr. Willis wasn’t here to check her numbers—or to yell at her for messing around with chemicals without gloves or an eye shield.
    After weighing the aluminum powder she scraped it into her metal bowl and mixed the two powders together with her fingers.
    “Wash your hands,” she reminded herself a few minutes