Keeping the Pieces

by Brenda Lowder

  “You. Tell us your name and”—he paused a moment in thought—“what city you’d visit if you could go anywhere.”

  The first victim was Calvin, a young man with a struggling mustache who would like to go to Thailand (not a city) and was on a second date with the redhead at his side named Briana. Derek listened as they all introduced themselves and awaited his own turn with dread. The four strangers looked young. Derek was willing to bet they were his brother Ryder’s age, maybe even younger. Definitely college-aged.

  Next up was Calvin’s date Briana, who’d buy a red Ferrari if she had a million dollars. Next to Briana was her sister, Jane, who had light-brown hair and was just a year older. Jane wanted to be a sea otter if she were an animal, and she was already married to Jordan in the skinny blue jeans so tight he could barely stay seated, whose favorite kind of pie was cherry. Next up was Honey who’d wanted to be an astronaut when she was a child, Cameron, whose favorite toy growing up was his Ninja Turtles, and Emma, whose favorite subject in college was statistics. When it was his turn he was asked what he’d had for breakfast. He unclenched his fists in relief, answered, “A protein shake,” and they were ready to begin.

  “From this point forward, you eight are employees at the Center for Disease Control.” Joel smiled and rubbed his hands together. “An experimental toxin has been released in the city following an explosion at a nearby chemical plant. This toxin has had a strange effect on all those who have breathed it in.” He paused for effect. “They’ve become zombies. Brain-eating zombies intent on finding every last human survivor. Your mission is three-fold.” Joel ticked the mission goals off on his fingers.

  “First, you must shut down the CDC before any of the toxin-affected zombies get to you. Second, you must find the scientist Dr. Niles Vanderhooft so he can tell you where the antidote is. Third, you must locate the antidote and perform the sequence of tasks that will allow you to release the antidote into the city.

  “Sounds like a lot of work,” Cam muttered.

  Honey hushed him. Joel continued.

  “If you fail to release the antidote by the ninety-minute time limit, the CDC will be breached and your brains will be eaten by zombies.”

  Emma shivered next to Derek, sending goose bumps up his arm.

  “We’ll be watching and listening to you the whole time.” He pointed at a camera attached to the ceiling in the corner of the room, not far from Derek, who suddenly had the uncomfortable feeling of being observed by persons unknown.

  Joel leaned away from the counter and straightened to his full, gangly height. “Everybody ready?”

  The four younger players and Honey gave enthusiastic yeses while Emma and Cam murmured their reluctant assent. Derek didn’t say anything, but he was already itching with the desire to get out, and he hadn’t even been locked in the room yet.

  “All right then. If you’ll all follow me.”

  They all got up from the bench and filed behind Joel, the strangers up front. Despite her obvious enthusiasm, Honey hung back and let Cam and Emma pass in front of her. When they were two steps away, Honey sidled next to Derek and let her fingers brush his.

  “Hey,” she said with a slow smile.

  “Hey.” No need to be overeager. He’d let her do the advancing this round.

  She allowed her fingers to graze his again, but this time she caught his hand in hers and squeezed.

  “I’m happy to see you,” she whispered.

  He permitted himself a small smile. “You too.” But he didn’t have time to say more because they were at the door to the room.

  The eight of them crowded into the small hallway.

  “From the time that I close the door behind you, your ninety-minute timer will start. Nothing is concealed behind anything on the walls, so there’s no reason to take pictures or signs down. Also no clues are hidden inside anything that would need to be dismantled. No taking anything apart.”

  When everyone had nodded their understanding, Joel held the door open. They filed silently into the dark room.

  “Good luck.” He flipped the light switch and closed the door, leaving them behind.

  Switching on the light hadn’t done much to illuminate the area. Only one dull light bulb lit the space. Derek supposed the low light added to the mystery and sense of danger. A television monitor hanging above the door immediately began counting down from ninety minutes. Derek turned away from it and looked around. Small monitors and keyboards were mounted to a console in the center of the room. Green, red, and blue lights blinked on and off next to levers and dials, highly visible in the dim space.

  “This looks like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise,” Jordan commented.

  Emma nodded. “Have any of you done an escape room before?”

  Jordan glanced at Jane. “Yeah. We do them all the time. You?”

  Emma shook her head. “No. This is our first one.”

  “It’s all about unlocking the locks,” Jordan told her. He bent to examine a lower cabinet, straining the seams of his skinny jeans.

  “Locks?” Cam asked, twirling one of the dials on the console.

  “They always hide the clues in locked boxes, and you have to figure out the combinations to get to the next clue,” Jordan answered.

  Derek glanced around for a locked box. There was a metal chest on the floor by his feet. “Found one.” He bent to examine it. “It takes five letters to open it.”

  “There’s one over here,” Jane said. “Looks like it needs two letters and four numbers.”

  “There’s a line of colored test tubes here with letters and numbers on them,” Calvin called from a table in the back corner.

  “How many?” Emma asked.

  “Six.”

  They tried the test tube letters and numbers in a few combinations that didn’t work until Emma suggested they put the test tubes in order by color per the electromagnetic spectrum, and it unlocked.

  “Good going, Em.” Cam smiled at Emma and bumped her arm with his. She beamed back at him.

  Inside the box were two laminated cards, each with a letter on them. A “U” and an “R.”

  “What are these for?” Honey asked.

  “They’re probably two of the letters we need for the computer’s activation code.” Jordan nodded toward one of the small monitors on the console that Derek hadn’t yet examined. Unlike the others around it, it was on. The green letters spelling “Activation Code” waited, followed by six blanks with a blinking cursor resting on the first.

  “Hey, there’re letters circled in this book.” Briana was leafing through a copy of A History of Modern Diseases that she’d pulled off one of the shelves against the back wall.

  “Are there five?” Derek asked, eying the locked chest he’d first discovered.

  “Yeah. Here. It’s the first letter of the first five chapters. E, T, Q, A, Z.”

  Derek dialed several different combinations of the letters into the lock and got it on his seventh try. “Got it open,” he called. He pulled out two more laminated letters, an “N” and a “W.”

  “If these are letters to the activation code, then we still need another box to open,” Emma said.

  “Found it.” Jane brought what looked like a book down from the shelf. It was a box painted to look like a textbook and had a three-digit-number dial on the long side where pages would have been.

  “Find something with three numbers on it,” Cam told the room.

  Thanks, genius.

  Derek shook his head and examined the serial numbers on the side of one of the monitors. Far too many numbers and letters.

  “I’ve got it.” Emma brought over a sticky note with the message “Meeting at 3:15” written on it.

  Jane rotated the dials until she reached 315. The book-shaped lockbox popped open.

  Inside was one laminated card with the letter “O” on it.

  “Where’s the other letter?” Calvin asked. Derek hadn’t known he’d been paying attention. But since none of them
had their phones, what else was there to do but play the game?

  Derek glanced at the monitor over the door. Almost forty-five minutes had already passed.

  Something banged against the door. Honey jumped and squealed. Derek put his arm around her in a comforting gesture. He cut his eyes to Cam who was busy playing on one of the computer keyboards. Honey snuggled against Derek’s arm. He buried his nose in her hair and inhaled her floral perfume, the scent tightening his pants.

  “What the hell?” Cam yelled. Honey and Derek sprang apart. But Cam wasn’t looking at them. He was looking at the wall next to him where it was bowing inward, pulsing each time an invisible fist pounded behind it.

  The eight of them gathered around the wall, through which could now be heard a low moaning accompanying the sounds of the pounding.

  “The zombies are trying to get through?” Honey’s voice quavered.

  “Sounds like it,” Calvin answered blithely.

  “This is the most realistic escape room I’ve ever done.” Jordan sounded impressed.

  There was a noise like splintering wood. The pulsating part of the wall broke open and a zombie arm reached through.

  Honey screamed and swayed toward Derek. He caught her easily and shrugged when Cam looked at him.

  “I think I peed my pants,” Briana whispered. Derek and Honey took a step back.

  Emma approached the arm. “Is it an actor? Or a prop arm?”

  It wasn’t moving anymore, just hanging through the opening in the wall which Derek, when he got closer, could see was a panel that had been triggered to open.

  Emma poked it. “It’s a dummy arm. Hey! There’s something on its finger. It’s a ring! With the letter ‘N.’”

  Jane ran to the computer and began typing the letters in. “Run now.”

  As soon as she pressed enter, two things happened. The shelves along the back wall swung open revealing another room, and a voice from the television monitor repeated the words “The CDC has been successfully shut down” three times.

  “This is pretty cool.” There was wonder in Emma’s tone as she walked through the secret passage.

  “We paid extra for the best one,” Honey told her.

  When he made his way through the door, Derek stopped short.

  There was a live man—an actor—strapped to a chair in the middle of the room. This room was even dimmer than the previous one. Red light from one small lamp on a table in a corner barely illuminated the room in a low, menacing glow. All eight of them backed as far away from the actor as possible. Like haunted house goers, they were wary of the man’s role.

  He wore a white lab coat, like the missing scientist they were supposed to get information from, and, when the man spoke, Derek’s assumptions were confirmed.

  “I am Dr. Niles Vanderhooft. Thank goodness you all have found me. Now please untie me so I can help you.”

  Calvin moved toward him.

  “Wait,” Emma said, shooting a glance at Derek before returning her gaze to the fake scientist. “Dr. Vanderhooft, where is the antidote?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Calvin nodded. “Forgot that part.”

  “The antidote?” Dr. Vanderhooft pretended surprise. “What antidote?”

  Derek looked around. There was another television monitor in this room as well, counting down the time. Thirty-nine minutes left.

  “Let’s spread out and find clues on our own,” Derek told the group.

  “There’s no point!” Dr. Vanderhooft’s voice rose. “Any clues would be hidden along with the antidote. I didn’t release the virus just to have it reversed so easily.”

  “You released the virus?” Cam asked.

  “Plot twist!” Jordan yelled.

  “Then how do we find the antidote?” Honey asked.

  “We find the locked boxes and figure out the clues,” Jane told her.

  They searched the room and discovered three locked boxes with combinations on them while the actor playing Dr. V spouted discouraging lines. Derek was not easily intimidated, but even he had to admit it was harder to do this with a fake scientist yelling, “You can’t” and “You won’t” and “Zombies will soon be eating your brains.”

  “Thirty minutes left on the clock!” Calvin called.

  They found the letters and numbers they needed on a Periodic Table on the wall, a safety notice on the back of the door, and a letter tucked into the front pocket of Dr. Vanderhooft’s lab coat. Jordan was the one to retrieve that, and Derek was glad not to have to.

  The first box contained a jigsaw puzzle that Jane and Jordan immediately set to work putting together, with some hindering “help” from Calvin and Briana.

  A plastic spray bottle labeled “Antidote,” which appeared to contain water, was found in the second box, and the third box held a single key.

  The minute they opened the third box, zombies started banging on the door again. Dr. Vanderhooft broke free of his restraints and “escaped” when no one was looking, Derek only turning in time to see the back of his lab coat disappear through the door they’d come in.

  Emma ran her hands over the wall next to where Derek was standing. “Hey! I found something. Bring the key.”

  Emma’s hand was on a seam in the wall, and, just to her right, what Derek had thought was only a keypad contained a lock requiring a key.

  Jane handed the key to Emma. It slid in easily and when she turned it, the whole section of wall in front of Emma and Derek swung open. Emma smiled, her eyes alight with excitement. Derek smiled back at her enthusiasm.

  They stepped into the next room. Emma hesitated a fraction of a second to allow him to go first. The rest filed in behind them.

  “Fourteen minutes!” Jordan announced.

  Another monitor with a countdown clock hung close to the ceiling in the third room as well.

  “So what are we supposed to do in here?” Honey crossed her arms.

  Her question was valid. Derek didn’t see anything for them to do. The room was dark. One small lamp sat on a metal console in the corner. The eight of them jostled for space in front of it.

  A small monitor with a keyboard attached awaited their entry, green cursor blinking on the screen. No blanks were there to show them how many numbers or letters they were looking for.

  “So where do we get the code?” Calvin asked.

  “The code is ‘Reverse the apocalypse.’” Jordan pushed forward, and Derek took a step back, letting him closer to the computer.

  “How do you know?” Cam asked.

  Jordan flicked his eyes to Cam. “It was on the back of the jigsaw puzzle once we put it together.”

  Emma typed the passcode. The computer accepted it, or at least it seemed to, because the words and cursor disappeared from the screen before going dark.

  “Nothing happened.” Briana looked around as if expecting applause, but she was right; there was no indication that they’d accomplished their goal.

  “What was the last task Joel said we had to do?” Emma asked.

  “Disperse the antidote.” Jane frowned. “Isn’t that what the computer’s doing now that we put in the code?”

  “The squirt bottle!” Emma and Derek said at the same time.

  “Oh, I left it in the other room,” Calvin said.

  “One minute left!” Jane squealed, looking at the overhead screen.

  Derek grabbed the spray bottle from the console in the previous room and handed it to Emma, who was holding a rubber cord connected to the computer.

  “Maybe we’re supposed to attach it to this?”

  Derek helped her attach the end of the cord to the nozzle of the spray bottle. Nothing happened. He scanned the table and noticed a recessed circular area that looked like a cross between a drink holder and a coffee machine.

  “Should we put it there?” He pointed.

  Together they settled it onto the area. A small blue light turned on above it.

  “Press the button.” Emma nodded to him.

  “Three seconds left!” Jo
rdan yelled.

  Derek pushed the button. Overhead lights came on and a door Derek hadn’t known was there opened in front of them to reveal Joel and the hallway they’d come through earlier.

  Joel was clapping. “Everyone have fun?”

  Still dazed from the pressures of the game and not yet all the way back to reality, they answered in murmurs.

  Joel shook his head and smiled. “You had two seconds left on the timer when you solved the room. That’s the closest any group has ever cut it.”

  This mustered more enthusiastic “woo-hoos.”

  Joel ushered them to an open room by a window. “Let’s take a group photo, and we’ll get you guys on your way.”

  Joel handed them promotional signs proclaiming their escape. Derek headed to the back of the group while the four young twenty-somethings clustered in front. Emma was on his left, with Cam on her other side, and Honey at the last moment ducked in to stand beside Derek instead of Cam.

  She squeezed his arm, and he tried not to react, tried not to read too much into it.

  “You were great tonight,” she whispered in his ear, her breath tickling the fine hairs there.

  He smiled wryly. “Thanks.”

  “I’m serious.” She nudged him lightly in the side with her elbow, emphasizing her point. She gave him a lifted eyebrow and a surge of hope he knew he was a fool for feeling.

  Joel snapped a few pictures then let them go. Honey gave Derek one last long look before peeling off to join Cameron. Emma fell in step with Derek as they made their way out of the building. The younger four chatted excitedly about their narrow escape as they all headed toward a large black SUV in the dark parking lot. They opened the doors and started to get in, but Jordan stopped and turned around.

  “Hey!” he yelled to Emma and Derek. They looked up at the same time. “You two make a really great team. Great couple. Thanks for getting us out alive.” He grinned and saluted them before getting into his car. Jane, Briana, and Calvin echoed his praise and yelled their goodbyes.