by Lee Hayton
“Fuck me,” Gary said, skidding into the block and falling to his knees. Crimson blossoms immediately appeared on each leg, the porcelain shards biting deep.
“How many of them are there?” Tyler asked. He could venture his head into the row of breeze-blocks where they were spaced apart to let daylight through and see for himself. The problem being, sunlight wasn’t the only thing the gaps let through.
“I counted ten easy, which probably means double that hiding out along the way. We need to get into the granary if we’re to stand a chance. They've got firepower you wouldn’t believe.”
“Okay.” Tyler had once mulled over decisions, thinking out every angle while spinning in place. Often, the only conclusion he made was not to make one, a choice that came with its own consequences. That Tyler was long dead.
“Let’s go,” he said. “I’ll lead, Wilma middle, Gary—you bring up the rear.”
Where once there’d have been arguments, now there was immediate compliance. Tyler sprinted out first, laying down a hail of fire to keep the attackers pinned to the ground.
“Wilma, stay close,” Tyler barked at her as he accelerated into a sprint. For a man whose only exercise a month before had been lifting a glass up to his mouth, he’d quickly grown into a champion at running away—not to mention, hiding. At that, he was a bloody pro.
Gary cried out behind him a split second before Tyler felt a bullet whistle past his ear. He dropped and looked over his shoulder. Wilma was already down on the ground, checking out the view behind her. She was further back than Tyler would have liked, but where he was the king of sprinting, Wilma could crawl.
Gary had been hit. The way his body was positioned on the ground, hunched over for protection, it wasn’t serious. Tyler couldn’t see the evidence of where it had landed, but his friend still had mobility to spare. As he looked on, Gary rolled into the scant shelter of a rusting vehicle. The car had been up on blocks so long, they seemed melded to its frame.
Tyler angled his gun just above the height of Wilma and Gary’s head. If any buggers were still standing, they’d soon be clasping at their knees.
“Wilma, can you make it?”
She yelled back in the affirmative. Now, it was just a matter of laying down enough fire for Gary to get into a better place. If his leg had been hit, they were fucked.
“Gary?”
The warthog was so far away that Tyler could barely hear his shout back. “I’m good.”
Excellent. No more talking, then. None needed. Tyler gave a series of hand signals, ones they’d made up late at night when under siege for the first few days. Ones only they knew what they meant.
Tyler rolled onto his back and laid down fire for a burst, then reloaded while Gary used the lull to sprint forward, hiding out in the shelter of the tree line as best he could.
Jesus! He was still such a long way away.
Wilma crawled, but even a champion crawler was slow as a snail compared to someone who could get to their feet and run. Tyler motioned for Gary to drop again, then spread another layer of fire across their heads to keep the enemy pinned to the ground.
Tyler turned and wriggled forward. The grain silo was now only a few yards away. He would definitely make it.
Another cry from Gary. He was copping flack today. Tyler turned. His friend had been hauled upright to dangle from a gunman’s arms.
This wasn’t the usual dumbfuck society shoot-‘em-up. The guy looked like trained militia. What a day for everyone to get so serious.
Wilma. Where was Wilma?
Tyler turned and wriggled another yard closer to the goal. When he turned again, he spotted Wilma. She was fighting off a man and losing badly. Soon, the guy—dressed in camouflage—had her pinned.
She and Gary were trapped. There was nothing Tyler could do to save them. At best, he rescue himself, or the whole endeavor would be lost.
He rolled onto his stomach again. The grain silo entrance was just a few feet away. A doddle. He could be there, safe, in a few seconds.
Instead, Tyler turned with a road and stood upright. He pointed his gun at the camouflaged dickhead straddling young Wilma and shot him through the head. Aiming at Gary’s attacked was a more delicate business. It took a long time to settle the crosshairs so that he wouldn’t catch his friend in the gunfire.
Too long.
As bullets punched into his shoulder and across his chest, Tyler held his gaze steady on his friend, letting loose a barrage of bullets that felled the man holding him. Gary sprinted towards Tyler, gathering Wilma up into his arm as he ran.
Too late.
Tyler dropped to his knees, bleeding from a dozen places. He coaxed the stone out of his hand, ready to pass over to Gary. Who gave a shit about the rules—he was family. The best family that Tyler had ever known.
With a heavy thump, Tyler landed on the desert floor. Wilma and Gary looked over, expressing little interest in his plight as he struggled to his feet. The same shower of pink sparks erupted again. This time, he was too exhausted to brush them away.
“Congratulations! You’ve successfully completed trial number two.”
“Let me guess,” Wilma shouted out. “We’re still not home free.”
She sounded as put out as if she’d been the one just shot with a hail of gunfire as she fought to free her friends. Tyler gave her a sharp glance.
“Just an observation,” she said, holding her hands up. “There’s no need to be so pissed.”
“How’d you do, this time?” Gary asked. “You beat the system again?”
“I think so.” Tyler stood, looking at the glowing neon above him. He could still feel the puncture wounds from the gunshots. They burned and tickled his flesh.
A third door appeared, a giant arrow pointing down to it in case Tyler’s brain had fallen out somewhere along the way.
“It’s all right for you two,” he complained, heading for it. “Just sit there and sun yourselves, why don’t you?”
“Hey, person who isn’t a warthog or a ten-year-old, how about you start showing some gratitude?” Wilma spat into the sand at her feet causing a sizzle of stem to rise into the air. “We’ve all got problems.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Tyler waved his hand at her and opened the door to the third trial.
This better be an easy one. Tyler desperately wanted to go home.
Chapter Twelve
Tyler stared up at the grand façade of the Almighty Hotel. It stood in a place of pride place on the strip in Las Vegas, putting the other hotels of repute into the shade. Literally, in some cases. The Almighty Hotel ran so many floors high that it cast a pall across the hotels opposite. During the night that changed into a dance of light as the hotel’s frontage burst into neon in a thousand different shades.
If ever a hotel stood a chance of being seen from space with the naked eye, the Almighty Hotel was the one.
It didn’t have parking, though.
“Full up, dude,” the garage attendant said as they cruised next to the booth to get a ticket.
Wilma elbowed Tyler in the ribs and raised her eyebrows, jerking her head at his hand, then at the attendant.
“What?”
“Do your magic stuff, dude,” Wilma said in as low a voice as she could manage. It screeched out of the car, catching the walls in such a way that it echoed in an ever-increasing volume while it spun into the cavernous mouth of the parking garage before being swallowed and silenced by the floors spiraling below.
The attendant looked expectantly at Tyler, apparently waiting for the magic stuff to begin.
“Whatever.” Tyler held out his hand and commanded, “There is a parking space available. Let us in.”
The attendant nodded and handed over a ticket. The pink glow now surrounding his head blurred out the edges of his acne, giving him an improved appearance. “Lucky. There’s only one space left.”
The problem inherent in commanding an attendant into thinking a parking space was available, soon came into plain view. T
here wasn’t. Shrugging, Tyler eventually parked the car right across the walkway from the elevators. It was the only available two yards of concrete that wouldn’t box someone in or cause significant damage to Wilma’s vehicle. Tyler got out of the car and locked the doors, expecting that sooner or later there’d be a full complaint.
“Crap, this place is swanky,” Wilma said as the elevator came to their button call. “Look at this—full-length mirrors in the lifts.” She stared at one side, pulling faces while Gary gazed at the mirror next to him, his face still. Despite Wilma’s efforts at manipulating her features into a horror show, Gary clearly won.
Tyler pushed the penthouse floor, half-expecting that there’d be a lock on that call button. Instead, the elevator started up at once.
“I hope whoever is getting the magic stone is nice,” Wilma said. “It’d be a pity to come all this way just to hand it over to a raging asshole.”
“Yeah,” Gary agreed with her for once, “if it wanted an asshole for its master, we could have stayed at home.”
“This is where it’s meant to be,” Tyler reassured them. “Once it’s back with the person it belongs to, you’ll both be returned back to normal, and we can all go home.”
“I don’t want to go back to normal.”
Tyler turned to Wilma in surprise. “You want to stay as a ten-year-old?”
“No.” Wilma shook her head and bit her lip, staring down at the floor. “I want to be like I wished for, just without the age change.”
“I wouldn’t mind being returned to a better state than the one I left,” Gary said. “Life seemed like it would be easier if I looked like Ryan Gosling rather than a seedy drug dealer.”
“You never looked like a drug dealer, Gary.” Tyler turned to him with a smile. “Heavy drug user, maybe. Drug dealers tend to keep more of their teeth.”
His attempt at levity fell flat on the floor and sprawled there for a moment, gasping for air.
“Let’s just get the reversal done first,” Tyler said. “Then you can ask for new wishes to your heart’s content.”
“Do you think there’s a finder’s fee?” Wilma asked. “A nice reward could go a long way to softening my woes.” She paused as they advanced another three floors. “Or paying off what you owe me in damage to your trailer.”
“And for replacing my coffin.”
Tyler nodded while his stomach surged up the back of his throat and tickled his epiglottis. When he swallowed, his spit was thicker than usual, forming a barrier that wanted to gum his lips shut. He could see his heartbeat flashing in his bulging eyes. The elevator came to a stop, dinging in welcome. Tyler swayed on his feet, a wave of dizziness sucking his balance out from under him. Whatever was on the other side of that door would determine not only his fate but the fate of the entire world.
The lift doors opened.
An entrance hall that could have encompassed Wilma’s office and the first ten rows of trailers with ease stretched out before them. Tyler stepped onto the light gold carpet, remembering to check the soles of his feet a second too late. When he lifted his shoe, a mark comprised of traces of everything he’d stepped in over the last few days soiled the light weave. Without much he could do, he stepped further inside, his shoe prints a trail of breadcrumbs behind him.
“And I thought the ten bucks a week row back at the trailer park was fancy,” Gary said. His voice was low, pure wonder eating up the volume before it could escape his mouth.
Wilma took the beauty in her stride, walking across the entry hall to pat the back of a silk-covered couch. She sniffed. “I suppose whoever it is, they’re a high-roller. My daddy taught me not to trust gamblers.”
“Your daddy’s in lockup,” Tyler reminded her. “Perhaps he’s not the source of wisdom you should trust.”
Wilma cast him a glance that would have seared through his skin a few days ago. Now, it was a lot thicker, and she’d have to try a great deal harder than that to wound him.
“Anybody home?”
Tyler strode across the room and opened a double door to expose a dining room behind with one wall made entirely of glass. The breathtaking view was spoiled only by the pinnacles of the hotels further up the strip. The ornate decorations formed a cheap bedazzled blanket atop which the sunset sprawled in all its naked glory.
“Ooh. A drinks cabinet.” Gary pushed past Tyler, running over to the wall as though the bottles were a mirage that might soon disappear. Wilma hovered at Tyler’s shoulder, sniffing again at the opulence in front of them.
Eventually she caved, walking across to the kitchen. “Wouldn’t mind a decent feed, if they’ve got something,” she said, attacking the fridge.
“Where the hell is everybody?” Gary had already socked back one shot glass of whiskey and had poured himself another. “If this is the place we’re meant to make the handover, to whom exactly are we supposed to hand the stone over to?”
“I don’t know.” Tyler walked to another set of doors, pausing to knock before he opened it wide, exposing an entertainment room. A TV almost the same size as the wall drew his immediate attention. Even turned off, the television emitted a hypnotic aura. On the sofas and chairs arranged in front were a scattered selection of games and machines. Tyler bent down and picked up an old controller, pressing the buttons even though nothing was turned on. It had been ages since he’d held one in his hands. They cost too much for him to own and when there was food and beer to buy, he didn’t want to waste the money on renting.
“Good lord. Do you think they have poor eyesight or just needed to flash their wealth in our faces a bit more?” Wilma stood in the doorway, a fried chicken breast in her hand. “You can’t even see the damn thing properly. The room would need to be eight times bigger just to see the whole screen.”
Gary also came through the door, misjudging the angle and shoulder-bumping Wilma hard enough to jolt her forward a step.
“Watch it!”
“Sorry.” Gary stared at the immense monitor in front of him, sipping at his whiskey now rather than gulping. Tyler would have given his first-born to join him. With his head swimming at the strangeness of everything around him, gulping down a few shots might help steady his grip on the world.
“Hello?” Wilma called out. The piercing quality of her young voice made it poke further into the rooms than Tyler could manage. “Anybody home?”
She jumped onto one of the overstuffed sofas then continued to bounce up and down. In a gesture of forgiveness, Wilma grabbed hold of Gary and pulled him up, too. They looked like the most inappropriate girl’s sleepover in history.
One door led off to the left, and once again, Tyler knocked and opened it when he received no reply. A master bedroom greeted him this time, a mirror mounted where the ceiling would usually be.
“How classy,” Wilma said, following in behind Tyler. “Because the first thing a billionaire wants to see upon waking is her naked-ass self. Has this hotel never heard of sleep wrinkles?”
Gary and Tyler looked at her with frowning faces. “Oh, what? You’re saying you don’t wake in the morning with your faces all like this?”
Wilma pushed her cheeks up so that her face contorted into an alien shape, triggering a snort of laughter from Gary.
“That looks suits you, darling.”
“Not so well as being a hairy warthog suits you!”
Whatever Gary’s shame at that jibe, he downed it with the last of his whiskey.
“I’m getting a refill? Anybody want anything?”
“Bring me back another piece of fried chicken,” Wilma said, waving the carcass of her first. “Even cold, this stuff’s the best I ever tasted.”
Tyler paused in front of the door through to the ensuite bathroom. This was the last one on this side of the rooms, though it was possible there were more in the other direction. He hadn’t paid all that much attention when he first got off the elevator.
“Anybody home?” he asked. This time, when he knocked, he waited a good few minutes and tr
ied again before opening the door. If the savior of the stone was inside, Tyler didn’t want their first meeting to be him seeing them clambering out of the bath.
Again, the room was empty. The tense knot replacing Tyler’s stomach, relaxed slightly, letting the blood flow through. Although he felt a strange sense of loss, there was also a feeling of relief. The stone embedded in his palm had become one with him. To let it go, even to its rightful owner, would be harder than he’d first thought.
As Tyler turned to leave, a hissing sound came from the shower stall in the corner. He pivoted on his heel, facing back into the room.
Water?
Close, but no cigar. There wasn’t the trickle of a showerhead gushing onto the floor of the stall. No steam from hot water rose in the air above the closed, misted pane of glass that formed a door.
The hissing came again. Louder this time, even Wilma poked her head through to see where the sound came from.
Tyler sniffed the air for gas, but there wasn’t any scent apart from the ghostly fog of aerosol underarm spray and aftershave permeating the bathroom walls.
“It’s coming from there,” Wilma said, pointing at the shower.
“Well, duh.”
Wilma gave him a shove that bordered on unfriendly. “Well, open the damned shower door then, magic man. Let’s see what you’ve got!”
The hiss grew louder still. A slap sounded on the shower door, right down near the bottom. There was a slick flash of movement from the base, and then the sight was gone, disappearing into the miasma of smoked glass.
Fear slithered in through Tyler’s toes, inching its way up his legs and making his balls climb so far back into his body that his scrotum hung like an empty sack.
That sound. I know that sound!
The thick spit Tyler had trouble swallowing earlier, dried. His mouth was a desert, his tongue a flower drying into dust with no hope of a reprieve. When he pulled air into his lungs, it was laden with the sand of a thousand rocks pounded into dust by the screaming wind. His teeth ached with the heat, stones sticking up like remnants of a fallen empire.
