by Kate Morris
She presses her right side up against the wall and walks in this manner, leaning into it slightly. She learned over the years on the road scavenging old buildings to keep herself as close to the building as possible and make herself as small a target as she could be.
They reach the end of the hallway, not seeing anyone in other hotel rooms with open doors. The ones with closed doors have zero light or noise coming out from under them, so Cory indicates they should go to their left. Paige agrees because she can see light at that end of the wing and none on the other.
The creepy music grows slightly louder as they walk cautiously forward. Her heartbeat taps out a nervous cadence in her ears. Then she hears muffled women’s voices. Someone nearby is playing a guitar softly, a melancholy blues rhythm. A child’s voice hums along to it. They come to a lit room with an open door.
Paige looks across the hall at Cory, and he nods. He remains still with his back pressed against the wall as Paige enters first. She startles the woman playing the guitar, who immediately stops and jumps to her feet. Paige holds a finger to her lips.
“Shh, don’t scream,” Paige warns. “We’re here to help.”
The little girl runs over to the woman, likely her mother since she looks just like her with the same dark hair and matching eyes. She barely even peeks up at Paige from behind her mother’s apron.
“It’s ok. Don’t be frightened,” she tells them.
“Who are you?” the woman asks, staring at Paige’s gun, which is raised and pointing at them. She lowers it, and the woman releases a held breath and rapid fires a bunch of questions at her. “What are you doing here? How’d you get in? They’ll kill you if they see you.”
“I know,” she states. “We’ve been hunting these people for a while now.”
“You’re the ones, aren’t you? The ones they are calling the outsiders,” she says.
“I’m not sure, but we’ve been fighting them, helping people get away from them, taking them out,” she confesses. “We need help from the inside. We’re going to get you all out of here but not tonight.”
“When? Take my daughter! Please!”
“Soon. We’ll be setting up communications with some of the women here, maybe you. Then when the time is right, we’re going to fight them and get you guys out.”
“Oh, thank God,” she praises with tears in her eyes. “They’ve got my other daughter, too.”
A shriek in the hallway signals Paige, and she rushes out of the room. A woman has spotted Cory and has dropped her laundry basket and is holding her hands in the air as if he is going to kill her. The woman with whom Paige had just been speaking shushes her and orders her into the room.
She relays to the other woman what Paige has just told her, and she begins crying. Paige gives her a few seconds to compose herself. Cory can be an imposing person when he wants to be.
“I work in the laundry,” she offers forth, all of her fear replaced with hope that shines in her eyes.
Paige nods, not sure why she’s telling her this.
“We’re allowed outside to hang the clothing on lines. It’s behind the hotel. I could help. I could be your liaison. I want to help.”
“Good,” Paige tells her. “Who can I trust and not trust on this floor?”
“Everyone is trustworthy. We all want out of here,” the first woman, Gabriella, explains.
Cory says into the room from the doorway he is still guarding, “Is everyone on this floor women?”
“Yes,” she answers. “Or our children.”
“And none of them are colluding with the enemy?” he asks.
“No, sir,” the woman from the laundry tells them. “Those…those women are on the other side of the hotel with the men.”
“We’re in,” Cory tells John through his mic. “I’m going to find the mother. Paige, stay here. Ladies, gather as many as you can without being noticed.”
She doesn’t stay put but follows the women and helps them. The creepy music she’d heard earlier is from a child’s musical jewelry box two doors down. The toddler is blonde, wearing ragged clothing, and is thin. She is just sitting there holding her tiny jewelry box that does not contain anything but a photograph of a woman that was probably her mother. Her older sister is her caretaker according to Gabriella.
It doesn’t take long for Cory to return with Adam’s mother, who looks like she is sixty but, in fact, is probably around thirty-five or so. Paige feels sorry for her. She has fear in her eyes of Cory. She can tell the woman has been crying as she wipes at her damp cheeks.
“Adam is alive?” she asks Paige as if she can’t trust Cory’s information.
“Yes, he’s fine. He’s in our town,” she tells her, and the woman hugs her tightly to her.
“Oh, thank God,” she expresses through more tears.
Paige steps back and pats her arm before asking, “Where is the laundry room?”
The second woman steps up and says, “In the basement.”
“Show me on this map,” Cory says and pulls out the map from his cargo pocket.
“Where are we on here?” she asks with confusion.
He points it out.
“Ok, then that would make the laundry over here,” she says.
She is pointing to the farthest point from them on the entire other side of the complex. It is not marked as a laundry area, just that it is personnel appointed space. Dave would have a clear view of this section of the complex from his position on the freeway overpass if he looked through binoculars.
“Good,” Cory says and puts it back in his pocket.
“I work down there. A parking garage butts up to our laundry room. It’s a big space. Lots of washers and dryers. We don’t use them most of the time. What gets done is mostly done by hand in the utility sinks. It’s hard work, but they only run the generators sometimes. I do it because I don’t want the older women to have to do such hard work.”
“I’m sure it is,” Paige nods.
“Is there an exit door to the outside from your laundry room?” Cory asks her.
“Yes, we go out and hang clothing on lines they put up in the yard,” she tells them.
“Every day?” he asks.
“Yes, every day. We do laundry in the basement and push it in the carts through the parking garage to the outside to dry unless it’s raining. Then we have lines inside rigged up in the parking garage where we hang it down there.”
Cory asks, “When you go out, do you use the parking garage as an exit?”
“Yes, that’s what I mean. The laundry opens into the parking garage on one side and the hotel kitchens on the other. It’s where all the service workers used to work.”
“No other entry or exit points?”
“No, not that I know of. Only from the kitchen.”
“Where are the guards located?” Cory asks.
“Usually there ain’t guards. The bosses don’t put guards on us down there ‘cuz they’re needed for going on their killing sprees or to work on the hotel. They know we ain’t gonna escape ‘cuz they’ll either shoot us from the roof, or they’ll track us down in the city. They’ve done that to other women who’ve tried to escape or actually made it out.”
“What do you mean? Do they have snipers on the roof?” Paige asks.
“Sure do. Sometimes.”
This surprises Paige because as far as she knows, none of them have seen snipers.
“What time of the day do you work down there?”
“Usually all different hours, but we try to finish by dinnertime. Then we help with that. There’s always something that needs done.”
“Could you convince them that you need to work later or add another shift?”
She thinks a moment before saying, “Sure. Yes, I think I could. He’d listen to me.”
“Who? The car dealer, Romano?”
“No, his number two. They call him Kansas. I don’t know his real name.”
Paige would like to roll her eyes. These men have a lot of emplo
yees, a lot of strong arms, assistants, bullies mostly. They’ll all be gone soon enough. She remembers their plan and tells the laundress.
“How many work with you down there?” Paige asks.
“Quite a few, probably twenty. It takes a lot to get the work done around here with so many people, and people being added every day.”
“Right. Can you trust the women you work with not to tell on us?”
“Absolutely,” she confirms.
“We’ll communicate with you,” she says. “In three days, we’ll come for more women and children. It will have to be at this time of night. Where do they have guards in the laundry rooms?”
“They don’t usually. They trust us not to try to escape,” Keisha, the woman from the laundry says.
“Why?” Cory asks.
“Because we’ve been with them a long time and have earned their trust. I was bidin’ my time till I could make my escape, though. I wasn’t stickin’ around here forever.”
“Will they put guards on your group if you change the work schedule?” he asks.
She shakes her head. “I doubt it. They do just as many runs at night as they do during the day. I don’t think they could afford to.”
“We’re taking a few of you with us tonight,” Cory tells them. “You ladies decide and do so quickly. You cannot take anything with you. Nothing. You’ll be coming with us with the clothes on your back and nothing else. You go clearing out your space, and they’ll know people are missing. When this is all over, we’ll come back for your things.”
They all want to go, but it is agreed upon that they need to send a few children and women so that it isn’t obvious that twenty children are missing.
“How many of you are there?” Paige asks.
“Just the other day, they moved some of us to the fourth floor,” Gabriella answers. “They’ve been taking a lot of people over the past few months. I think we’re up to around a hundred and twenty women and children here at this location.”
“How come you know more than some of the others?” Cory questions, clearly anxious about her.
“I worked in the kitchen and delivered meals to the men over in the executive suites,” she answers. “I overheard a lot. I pay attention. I listen to them when I can get away with it. Plus, I’ve befriended some of the men who are guards. Sometimes I’d…well, I got them to tell me things.”
She seems reluctant to tell them how, and Paige isn’t so sure she’d want to know, either. This woman has obviously been planning her own escape, and she can’t blame her for that at all. She’s a survivor.
“You need to come with us,” Cory says to her.
Paige doesn’t know if he wants to take her because she has useful information or if he distrusts her and wants to make sure she doesn’t rat them out to the guards.
“Is one of you named Jenny?” Paige asks the small crowd of frightened women.
“I’m Jenny,” a girl says, stepping forward from the others.
“Are you a friend of Adam’s?” Paige asks.
She looks at Adam’s mother, who nods. “Yes.”
Cory jumps in to talk to her, too. “He told us you have a lot of trust with the men here, that you can gather intel.”
“Yes, they trust me. I overhear things sometimes.”
He looks at Paige. “Anything that might help us?”
She pauses before saying, “Probably. I take food to the leaders most days. It seems like they’re always having meetings about their plans and schedules. I hear things. They underestimate me, think I’m just a kid, but I listen to them.”
“Like what?” Cory asks.
Jenny has blonde hair, is petite, and probably about fifteen. Her wide-set, large brown eyes are filled with fear.
“You can trust us,” Paige says.
“It’s not that,” she answers. “I’m just scared if they find out I was the one who told you stuff that they’ll kill me.”
“It will take them a long time to realize who tells us what,” Cory says. “Don’t worry.”
She shrugs and says, “I heard them talking on the radio to the senator and the other man.”
“Who is this other man?”
“They call him Mr. President,” she says. “I don’t know if he’s really the President or if it’s just what he wants them to call him. He seems really full of himself and very demanding and angry and even bossier than the senator. They talk a lot in code.”
Paige’s gaze jumps to Cory’s. She wonders if it is really the President, the one in Colorado who Robert McClane has pissed off.
“Where is he located? With the senator in his compound?” Cory asks her.
She shakes her head, “I don’t think so. No, he’s somewhere else. I’m not sure where. I can try to find out.”
“What do they talk about with him?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” she says. “Like I said, it’s a lot of code talk. They are trying to establish a territory in this area. Then they discuss head counts and supplies and a lot of numbers. I think the numbers are coordinates on a map or something. They’re looking for a new place to make a bigger compound and combine ours with the senator’s. I heard them say something about a fort.”
“A fort?” she questions.
“Yes, I’m not sure what they meant.”
“And the president guy, too? Is he going to join forces and merge with the two groups?” Cory asks.
She bites her lower lip nervously and shrugs. “I’m not sure.”
“Do you know where his is?” Cory asks quickly.
She shakes her head. “They never say. It’s all coordinates and degrees. I’ve never heard where the senator lives or the other man on the radio. He seems like he’s more in charge than the senator or Mr. Romano.”
Cory’s mouth pinches together with irritation. He turns back to Gabriella.
“Your guard’s dead. When does the guard shift change?” he asks her, to which she doesn’t even bat an eye.
“About an hour,” she answers.
“We need to move,” he says firmly, to which Paige nods.
She turns to Keisha, and says, “We’ll come in three days, at night again, and take another group of women out with us. Have them down in the laundry room and ready to go.”
“And do not discuss this with anyone else. Do not tell anyone we were here. Do not let it get leaked to people you don’t trust,” Cory warns in an ominous, threatening tone.
“We won’t,” Gabriella says clearly. “I promise.”
“What about the women with the men? Are they with them because they want to be?”
“Some,” she answers. “I think some are in the same positions we’re in. They’re stuck. Don’t have options, but some of them are their wives or partners or whatever you want to call them.”
“Do they kill people, too?” Paige asks.
She nods vigorously. “Oh, yes. They may not have wanted to be with them at first or whatever the situation is over there, but they’ve come to enjoy the privilege of being with them. They’re mean, nasty, vicious women, those ones. I know that sometimes a few of them go on scoutings with the men. Last month, a friend of mine, Sylvie, she got out, got free. Mr. Romano doesn’t allow anyone to escape and live. The men eventually found her in the city, and it’s rumored that one of their wives is the one that killed her, executed her.”
Cory nods and asks, “Don’t let this get leaked to them then. None of you.”
“Cory,” Gabriella states, “I…I think I should stay. I don’t want to, but I think I could be more help from the inside. I’ll stay with Jenny. I know she gets a lot more freedom around here like me, but I don’t want her in here alone without someone lookin’ out for her. I’d feel bad if something happened to her. I could be your coordinator from the inside.”
He looks like he’s wrestling with the idea of whether or not to trust her. Finally, he squares up, stands taller, and nods.
“You betray us, and I’ll come back here for you myself,” he
warns with deadly intent.
Gabriella nods nervously, truly frightened of Cory. Paige is not going to supplicate her fears, though. Having a small amount of fear of him will keep them all in line.
“I’ll go, Gabby,” another woman with long dark hair says, stepping forward.
At their confused expression, Gabriella explains, “We work together, Lilly and I. She knows everything I do. We also share info with each other.”
“I can help on the outside, tell them everything we know,” Lilly offers and gets a nod of approval from Cory.
“Now, are there guards in the laundry right now?” he asks.
“No,” Gabriella answers. “I could take you down there and show you around if you want. It’s probably a good idea anyway. Then you’d know if it’s going to work getting the women out that way.”
He looks skeptical. “How would we get past all the guards to get to the other side of the hotel and down to the basement level?”
“Oh! That’s the easy part,” she answers cheerily. “There are tunnels underground. That’s what we use. Sometimes they’re a little bit spooky, but it’s faster and more direct to go that way. And no, there are not guards down there. It’s completely safe. Honestly, I’ve overheard some of them saying how that place gives them the creeps. I think they’re scared of going through the tunnels.”
She laughs, but Cory steps closer to her, and she shrinks.
“You play me, walk me into a trap, and I’ll shoot you first before I kill the guards.”
Her eyes grow large, and she states emphatically, “No, I wouldn’t. What the hell? You think we wanna’ live like this? You’re crazy. We all want out! I’m willing to do whatever I gotta’ do to make that happen. They killed my husband. I want them all dead. Every last one of these bastards. And I know how to work a gun. I used to be a skeet champion in my division. My husband and I were partners. You get me a gun when this kicks off, and I’ll take care of more than my fair share of these pricks.”
Cory looks as surprised as she. Paige steps forward and says gently, “We’re sorry. It’s just that trusting people is hard now. Cory’s just being cautious.” She turns to him and asks, “Can we talk a sec?”
