The Devil's Graveyard

by AnonYMous

  ‘What is it?’ she asked, as he closed the door behind him.

  ‘Three of the other finalists have gone down with a stomach complaint. I’m worried that someone may have poisoned them.’

  ‘What?’ Emily felt her knees go weak. At once she thought back to the last time she’d eaten. It was at breakfast time, when she’d had a bagel and a cup of coffee. Since then she’d been too nervous to eat. ‘Oh my God! Are they okay? Do you know what they ate?’

  Powell tugged uneasily at his shirt collar. ‘No. There’s a suspicious character in the hotel somewhere who we suspect is responsible. We’re trying to track him down now.’

  Emily cast her mind back to a couple of earlier incidents that day. ‘I saw a creepy guy at the side of the stage, watching the show. He said he knew it was rigged. He was dressed all in black. Was it him?’

  ‘It just might be. Don’t you worry, though. I’m moving you to somewhere safe where he won’t be able to get to you.’

  Emily felt not only relieved but also (although she wouldn’t admit it) excited about the fact that three of her closest rivals were out of the final.

  ‘Which three were poisoned?’ she asked.

  ‘It may be four. I can’t find the James Brown guy at the moment. The other three are definitely out of the running.’

  ‘Oh dear. Poor souls,’ Emily said, with as much sincerity as she could muster.

  ‘Quite. Anyway, would you be so kind as to pack up your stuff and come with me. A bellhop will bring everything from your room. And my apologies for the inconvenience, of course.’ He sounded anything but apologetic. But he did sound distracted.

  Emily did as he asked, grabbing a few personal belongings from the dressing table and following Powell and the two security guards to the elevator, and from there to a room on the ninth floor. They walked very briskly, and it wasn’t hard to pick up on a distinct sense of urgency about the way they eyed with suspicion everyone they passed.

  Room 904 was a large and comfortable double room. Emily sat herself down on the king-size bed in the middle and waited for further instruction from Powell. Initially he stayed outside the room, muttering quietly into the ears of his security staff. Emily considered her new surroundings and decided that they were actually much better than the crappy dressing room she had been sharing with the four guys or the single room she had been assigned for her overnight stay. She was still busy admiring the size of her new room when Powell stepped in and approached her.

  ‘I’ve set two of my security guards to stand outside in the corridor,’ he said. ‘They won’t let anyone in here but me. But that also means you can’t leave this room until the security people tell you it’s okay. When the finalists are due to be announced they’ll escort you downstairs.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Are you okay, Miss Shannon?’

  ‘I’m fine, thanks – uh – Nigel.’ This was the first time she had used his name, and she wondered if that was acceptable. He held so much power, after all.

  ‘Good. I just have to go and work out who my new finalists are going to be, and then we’re ready to go.’ He leaned down and stroked Emily’s bare left arm. There was a light in his eyes that made her feel a little uncomfortable. Where he had been reassuring and gentlemanly before, for a moment he seemed creepy and untrustworthy. He winked, then fixed her with a piercing gaze from his hypnotic blue eyes.

  ‘I think you have a great chance of winning this competition, Emily. You’ve been the best contestant so far. I’ve a feeling we’ll be seeing a lot more of each other. So unless you lose your voice or –’ he gave a surprisingly high-pitched giggle – ‘get struck by lightning, you should be planning to stick around for a while.’

  He stopped stroking her arm and stepped back. She felt excited at the thought of winning the competition, but also slightly repulsed by this new sleazy side to Nigel Powell. She shrugged it off. After all, he probably hadn’t intended to be creepy. He was just trying to be reassuring, surely? She watched as with a pleasant ‘See you at the final,’ he left the room, closing the door behind him.

  Increasingly, it dawned on her that she now had a good chance of winning the show. In spite of her natural caution, her mind filled with the thought of seeing the joy on her sick mother’s face when she returned home victorious with a winner’s cheque for a million dollars. That money would pay for all the care her mother needed, and it was now so close. It was as good as hers for the taking.

  After Powell had left, the two security guards opened the door with a master key and poked their heads into the room, nodding at Emily as if to reassure her that they were outside. They were both pretty bulky nightclub-bouncer types, and she felt a fair degree of reassurance as a result. And, with her closest rivals now out of the picture, she was more and more optimistic about her chances in the final. She longed to call her mother and tell her how she was doing in the show, but she was equally excited at the thought of surprising her by returning home with the winner’s cheque. And a big fat contract to perform at the Pasadena.

  For half an hour, she sat on the large double bed in the middle of the room. There was no television to watch and no radio to listen to. No two ways about it, the Hotel Pasadena really was a strange place. With no television or radio, it was impossible to keep up with current affairs. Iran might have flattened Rhode Island with an A-bomb, for all she knew.

  With nothing to do but sit and consider her situation, Emily began to think a little more deeply about things. She had no way of contacting her mother to tell her how she was doing in the show. What if she had wanted to call to find out how her mother was? She had absolutely no way of contacting anyone outside of the Devil’s Graveyard. The telephones in the hotel rooms could only be used to make internal calls, and cell phones couldn’t pick up a signal, and so were equally useless. It was kind of creepy, really. Then, as she thought about the three other singers who had allegedly been struck down by a stomach ailment, she began to ask herself more probing questions. Like, how would an ambulance or the police get to this place in an emergency? How could they be contacted? If she were to suffer some kind of poisoning, would help arrive in time?

  Then something far more serious struck her. Something she should have thought about before. Why had Nigel Powell moved her to another room? He had said it was for her own safety. Safety from what? Food poisoning? Surely that should have meant simply that she would be warned not to eat anything? It shouldn’t have meant that she had to move to another room, provided she avoided ordering meals from room service. If there was poisoned food in the hotel, it wouldn’t be hunting her down. But the person doing the poisoning just might. Maybe Nigel Powell hadn’t briefed her fully about how much danger she was in? And if that was the case, why hadn’t he?

  As she sat on the end of the bed, now bolt upright with alarm and with a mass of paranoid thoughts running through her head, she heard a noise outside her room. One of the security guards was talking. With the door closed, it was impossible to make out what was being said. His voice was muffled.

  Then she heard a curious sound, like a tyre suddenly and instantly deflating. It too was muffled, but Emily recognized it: a shot from a gun fitted with a silencer. A second muffled gunshot followed, and then came the sound of two bodies slumping to the floor outside.

  Emily’s worst fears had been realized. Food poisoning was not the reason she had been moved to this secure location, with two security men standing guard outside it. There was a killer on the loose.

  And he was outside her room.

  Thirty-Four

  Angus was in a murderous mood, which was a good thing at the moment. Since when in the fuck did zombies drive? The successive waves of brutal attacks from the undead creatures trying to bite lumps out of him had annoyed him considerably, but stealing a man’s wheels, by God that made him angry. Fuckin’ angry.

  He’d gunned down six of the zombies, and punched down a good few others that had tried jumping on him. But still they kept on coming. If t
hey weren’t rising up through the ground, they were lurching – surprisingly fast – across the desert to get to him. He reminded himself how lucky it was that there were two dead security guards lying on the ground. Those suckers were fast food for zombies.

  There were probably twenty of the loathsome things on top of the two, now severely mutilated, bodies, and Angus was well aware that once the poor bastards had been devoured he was really going to have his hands full.

  He fired a couple more shots into the chests of two of the zombies, then made a break for the highway. Kicking aside any grasping hands reaching for him from below, he soon made it safely on to the asphalt road. At least if he ran along the centre of the highway, he could be reasonably sure nothing was going to reach out and grab him from below. Some of those zombie bastards were incredibly strong, but he doubted any of them were tough enough to climb up through a the layers of rubble, concrete and asphalt of the highway.

  He ran along the middle of the road in the direction that led back to the hotel, with a whole bunch of zombies pursuing him from behind. Some, faster than others, caught up with him. They were usually dispatched with a belt in the face from one of his handguns or a bullet in the chest. He had enough ammunition to kill about a hundred of the bastards, although it was a real pain in the butt having to keep reloading his two revolvers.

  After running for several minutes, he noticed that the zombies were beginning to keep their distance, always staying about ten yards behind him. Shit! These fuckers were smarter than the zombie movies he’d seen had led him to believe. If he was right, they were hanging back, waiting for him to tire himself out. An exhausted, winded Angus would be a darn sight easier to overpower, and these fuckers appeared to know it.

  Then his luck turned. Another vehicle appeared on the highway behind him. He saw the road in front of him light up in the headlights of a car heading his way. He looked back over his shoulder and saw a Volkswagen Beetle speeding down the middle of the highway, scattering zombies to the side as they jumped out of its path.

  Angus needed to make sure that the driver of the car realized he wasn’t one of the undead, and would therefore stop to offer him a ride. So despite his tiring legs, he put in a lung-busting sprint. He managed to pull a further ten yards clear of the chasing pack, and as the Beetle came zipping through them he waved frantically at the driver to stop.

  The car slowed up as it drew alongside him. The driver’s side window came down and the face of a terrified woman in her forties peered out. She had blonde permed hair and bright red lipstick that was smeared across her face, no doubt caused by trying to do her make-up in the rear-view mirror while attempting to evade the zombies in the road. It was all the excuse Angus needed to take an instant dislike to her. Although he needed a ride back to the hotel, he didn’t need some hysterical bitch thrown into the package.

  She looked at him desperately. ‘What’s going on here?’ she asked in a frightened-little-girl voice. The pursuing zombies were almost on them.

  Angus pointed one of his pistols at her face and fired. The bullet drilled through her forehead, killing her instantly. She slumped over to the passenger side and the car slowed to a crawl. Angus reached in through the window as he jogged alongside and opened the driver’s door from the inside. Half hopping, half running, he jumped in and shoved the woman’s body out of the way. Landing clumsily in her seat, he slammed the door shut and checked the wing mirror. The zombies were still racing after him, the first few almost level with the back of the car. He drove his foot down on the gas pedal and the Beetle sped up.

  ‘So long, suckers!’ he yelled out of the open window.

  A minute further down the road, he stopped the car and pushed the dead woman’s body out on to the highway. That would give the zombie bastards something to keep them occupied for a while.

  Angus had other business to attend to. He was now as angry as hell, and determined to kill Sanchez, Elvis, Julius, Powell, all zombies and anyone else that pissed him off. One way or another, he was going home with a stack of cash and another few victims to his name.

  And his Tom Jones CD.

  Thirty-Five

  Emily’s plan was pretty lame. Indeed, in the long and undistinguished history of bird-brained plans, this one would probably have ranked quite highly – maybe even a place in the Top Ten shitty plans. She had a gunman literally seconds away from bursting into her hotel room, with the very real possibility that he was coming to kill her. So what did she do?

  Her first thought was to hide under the bed. But she rapidly discovered that its base rested on four very short legs. Emily was slim, but she wasn’t slim enough to squeeze under a bed that was only two inches off the floor. That cut her options down considerably. She looked at the alternatives. Climb out the window? Not enough time. In fact, she didn’t even know if the window would open. Then there was the bathroom. She could run in there and hide, but it was a dead end and the only place to hide would be in the shower, behind the curtain. Since none of these were viable options, her split-second decision led her to the closet in the corner of the room.

  The cream-coloured closet doors had louvred wooden panels in them to allow ventilation. Emily darted over and jumped inside, closing the doors carefully behind her in order to make as little noise as possible. The closet was empty, and through the louvres, she was able to get a good view of the door into the room.

  She could no longer hear anything from the corridor outside. Had the killer left? Was he playing games? It was agony waiting to see what was going to happen. She found herself drawing long, slow breaths in order to keep as quiet as possible.

  After about twenty seconds, during which she again contemplated running for the window or the bathroom, the lock on the door clicked. She took a sharp intake of breath.

  The closet really was the dumbest place to hide.

  Emily looked around wildly for anything to shield or defend herself with. She was the only thing in it, aside from an ironing board against the back, and a steam iron on a small shelf to her left. If she needed something to defend herself from attack, then it was going to have to be the iron.

  Holding her breath, she watched the door slowly open. A hand holding a pistol with a silencer on the end of the barrel appeared around the edge of the door. Following it in, after peering around the door, was a man. He was well over six feet tall and had a shaved head. He was wearing black leather pants and a black sleeveless leather jerkin. A biker, by the looks of him, and one with a set of three dice tattooed on one of his arms.

  His dark eyes checked every corner, scouring the room to find her. He stepped inside, closing the door gently behind him. Then he walked over towards the bathroom with his gun held in front of him. Emily prayed that he couldn’t see her through the wooden slats on the closet door. Instinctively, she stepped silently backwards and pressed herself against the wall. What did he want with her? Why would he want to kill her? It was clear that he wasn’t intending to hand her a poisoned doughnut. He was intending to shoot her, she was certain of it. She just wasn’t sure why.

  He disappeared out of her sight into the bathroom, leaving her suddenly faced with a horrible dilemma. Should she dash out of the closet and make a break for it? Or continue to hide? A decision had to be made quickly. If she chose to continue hiding in the closet, she was going to have to grab the steam iron and prepare to use it. If she decided to run, she was going to have to do so immediately.

  Her indecision cost her dearly. She had become lost in thought, not paying attention to what the man was doing. The closet door flew open. She gasped as the giant intruder stepped in front of her aiming his pistol at her chest. He had sneaked up at the side of the closet, then suddenly wrenched the left-hand door open.

  ‘Judy Garland,’ he said, smiling a small, thin smile. ‘Please come out of the closet.’

  He seemed very polite. Maybe he wasn’t here to kill her? He stepped aside and gestured with his gun for Emily to move over to the bed. She stumbled out of the
closet and walked over to it. The biker guy kept his gun trained on her the whole time. She realized that her chances of escaping were slim while his eyes were on her. But how was she going to distract him?

  ‘Sit down, please,’ he requested politely. The man had manners, that much was obvious. But he was also a killer. If she was right, there were two dead security guards outside as proof of that.

  ‘What do you want?’ Emily asked. Her heart was racing, and her mouth so dry that she found it difficult to get the words out.

  ‘I’ve come here to kill you.’

  ‘Oh.’ Just as she had feared. The guy was going to kill her. So what was he waiting for? ‘Now?’ she asked tentatively.

  ‘That depends on you.’ He was standing directly between her and the door into the corridor, blocking off any futile attempt at escape.

  ‘I really would like to live,’ Emily said smiling desperately at him, in the hope of convincing him that she was a warm and lovely person who deserved to be spared.

  ‘Yeah, I bet you would. And you can, if you play ball.’

  ‘I’ll play ball.’

  ‘Good. Y’see, you can’t win this competition.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘’Cause someone else has to win it. If you win, a lot of people will die, includin’ you. I can’t allow that to happen.’

  Emily held back the urge to blurt, ‘But I have to win. For my mom.’ She opted instead for afar more measured response: ‘Okay. So what do I do?’

  ‘Leave. All I gotta do is make my boss think you’re dead. So, as long as you get the hell out of here and never come back, I can convince him of that.’