If she levered hard enough, she could feel a trace of air. She pushed very hard once and with a sucking sound the vacuum seal broke slightly. Now she could see a sliver of semidarkness, which represented the more illuminated space outside of the death trap she was in.
But a sliver wouldn’t cut it. It didn’t let in nearly enough air. She was already shaking with the effort of maintaining the break in the seal. A second later her strength failed and the opening resealed itself. Okay, if she didn’t suffocate to death the cold would do her in. Would Roy come looking for her when she didn’t show? He knew where she was. But it would take time. Perhaps hours, when she had air maybe for another few minutes. Her chest started heaving as her lungs sought out every precious molecule of oxygen. Her mind started to fog up, signaling the lungs that these molecules were far from enough to keep everything going.
The insulation strip!
Holding the penlight between her teeth, she began hacking at it with her knife. The blade struck through it easily and it came away in long strips. Very soon she could feel the air start to flow in more steadily. And if she wedged her head against the door, she could actually see outside. She poked the blade through this new opening and lifted it up and down. On the downward stroke it hit the chain. There was no way she could saw through the chain with the knife in less than a day if at all. But at least she could breathe. Now the issue was the cold; she was still freezing to death. She looked up and saw it built into the top of the fridge’s interior: the temperature dial. It was set on four. Seven was the coldest, she quickly discovered. She reached up and dialed it back to one, the warmest. She had no idea in refrigerator technology how “warm” the number one setting would be, but she didn’t want to find out it was still in hypothermia range.
Mace started rocking her body front to back. The Amana was a tall appliance, and she was betting there wasn’t much in the lower freezer section to anchor it. As much as the confined space would allow her, she kept rocking. She’d hit one side with her legs and then slam against the other side with her back. Very quickly her entire body felt like she’d been hit by a car, but she kept going. She could feel the Amana start to lean a bit, to the right and then to the left. As it kept going, the appliance started to walk, like a washing machine out of control. Encouraged by this, she started flinging herself back and forth with renewed energy.
One last smash against the molded plastic with her combat boots and the Amana finally toppled over sideways. Mace braced herself for the impact, which was easy enough to do since she was wedged in. Still, when the fridge hit the concrete floor, her head banged against the hard interior wall right where the bump on her noggin was and she felt herself black out for an instant.
But she’d accomplished her goal. She could no longer hear the slight hum of the Amana’s motor. The power cord had come out of the socket. Now she had air. And she would soon have warmth. But she was still trapped. She had hoped that the collision with the floor might have caused the chain to slip off, but no such luck. One push against the door told her that. She looked down at the molded plastic floor. Below that was the freezer compartment. The chain couldn’t be around that door too. She started stomping her feet. The floor was hard, but she could feel it give just a bit.
She worked her body around so that she was nearly upside down. Taking the knife, she started hacking at the plastic but couldn’t find traction as the blade just skidded off the smooth surface. She turned back around so that she was sitting up in the box and looked around. She grabbed a portable shelf off the doorframe and pointed the knife into the floor, then put her foot on top of the handle and pushed down with as much force as she could, lifting her butt off the interior floor and pressing her back against the top of the box to provide more leverage. Twice