by Jon Sauve
Mary and Luke both looked at me a moment before recognition came. Some people are good at remembering names but not faces, and vice versa. I've always been really good at both. I guess when you aren't talking you have plenty of time to observe.
"What do we do?" Mary asked. She seemed to be asking me. I felt a stab of fear; acting as I had been, she probably now viewed me as a leader of some kind. Fuck. Now what?
Leave it to the awkward, jealous nerd to solve my dilemma. Luke came forward, standing between Mary and I.
"We get the hell out of here," he said. "I say we go through the front door."
"They'll hear us," Mary replied.
"Yeah, but we can run." He took his keys out again. "My car is halfway across the lot. It's old, but I can still get it up to seventy miles per hour if I have to."
"The door's locked," Mary said.
"How do you know that?"
"I was there. Duh. That electronic thingy..."
"Whatever. We can just break through, right? It's almost all glass."
Mary looked to me, chewing her lip. “What do you think?”
Thrust onto the hot seat again. "I think... we need to get out of here. All the windows are boarded up. The front door is the only way out that I can think of."
The words tumbled out of me, or maybe they flooded out like diarrhea, making wet sloshing noises as they went. I had to make a conscious effort to swallow the spit that had accumulated in my mouth.
"One problem, though," Luke said. "We don't know where Jeremy is. Or that other guy."
Mary sighed. "Well, we probably won't find out just sitting here. We just have to hope we get lucky. And we're not completely defenseless."
She lifted her ax and gave it a few twirls.
"Where'd you even find that thing?" Luke asked, eyes wide.
"It was in my room. Guess I got lucky."
"No kidding. This guy only got a multitool, and I got nothing."
"Orin," Mary said. "His name's Orin. And I would rather have one of you guys take this thing. It's fucking heavy and I've never used one before."
Neither had I. And if I had a million dollars, I would bet it all on the assumption Luke hadn't either.
The IT nerd reached out for the ax, and Mary handed it over. It probably was better if he had it. For one, I wasn't ready to hurt anyone else yet. And Luke had long arms. Add the ax handle to that, and his reach was ridiculous.
"I guess we should go now," Luke said.
Neither Mary or me responded. We didn't leave straight away. There was a period of about a minute where we gave each other uneasy looks. Mary feigned opening the door a couple times, only to step back and grin at us. It was the grin of a constipated person, set below eyes pinched nearly shut with concentration. Finally, painfully, she opened the door. She took a page from my stupid-book and stuck her head out. The three of us stared across the second floor landing and down the stairs. We waited, to see if anything moved.
After a nudge from Mary, Luke moved to the front and stepped out onto the landing. I tensed and held my breath, ready to see our humble IT nerd tackled from the side. By the time I realized it wasn't going to happen, Mary was already out in the hall, staring back at me as if to say, "You coming, dumbass?"
I went. My heartbeat rushed and screamed inside my ears, making the hotel seem alive with noise. In reality, it was as quiet as a country cemetery at midnight. And I guess that's what the place was, really.
Luke approached the edge of the stairs and put out his foot, dangling it in shadows. It found a purchase, and he stepped down. There was a creak, soft but long. Mary stopped in front of me. And I, focused totally on Luke, walked into her back. Some of her hair went up my nose. I stepped back, and my movement caused another noise, this one more of a short-duration pop. We froze in place like morons, not realizing that moving was safer in the event someone had heard us.
But nobody did. Nobody dangerous, anyway. So we kept going, Luke in front sizing up all the creaky boards. Even though he was skinny, his height made him the heaviest one. Maybe the fact that his feet were as long as those of a cartoon clown caused his weight to spread more evenly, thus reducing the noises he made. Mary and I followed him down into the common area, and we made it there without hearing or seeing anyone else.
I hoped we were in the clear, but knew that we weren't. Intuitive knowledge, I guess. If only I had known how not in the clear we were, things might have turned out vaguely different.
"Front door’s that way," Luke said. "Listen. I'll break the glass with the ax. You guys go first, and I'll follow behind and protect us from the back. My car is red and has a sunroof."
Red, check. Sunroof, check. Run your ass off, check. I was ready to get out of there.
We moved through the common area and into the hall. The front door glittered at the end of it, its pane of frosted glass standing starkly in the darkness like a ghost. We all three tunnel-visioned straight onto it. Anyone could have come at us from the sides, from the halls leading to the downstairs rooms, and we wouldn't know it until after the carpet was dyed red. Luckily, no one was around to gut us just yet.
We made it to the door. Luke stopped, the ax propped on his shoulder like a marine's rifle. He looked almost casual, staring solemnly through the glass, sizing it up as though it was a tree he was preparing to cut down.
"Ready?" he asked.
"Just a sec." Mary bent down, yanked on her shoelaces, and straightened again. "Okay."
God, I was nervous. It was like the feeling you get at the top of a rollercoaster’s first drop, only ten times more intense. Why the fuck did I come here? What kind of messed up universe would allow me to be here right now?
Then Luke swung the ax. To my eyes, it seemed to take five or six seconds, slicing through the air in slow motion. I saw a bead of sweat fly off Luke's forehead. Nervous sweat, I guess. It was actually kind of cold in the hotel.
I've seen slow-mo videos of glass breaking on the internet. This wasn't quite like that, but it was close. I perceived the first few slender cracks spreading from the point of impact. Then there was a noise, a terrible goddamn noise, and the whole pane of glass exploded into tiny pieces. As it so happens, glass certainly does fall inward. Luke was doused by it. He was closing his eyes like a nerd trying to catch a football, and that saved his vision, but I could already see blood seeping out of a bunch of cuts on his hands, arms and face. Then, without looking, he put an arm over his face, bowed his head, and barreled forward. I guess in the heat of the moment he forgot all about the plan.
"He has the keys," I remember thinking, "so it's better if he goes first anyway."
Everything happened so fast. The sound of cascading glass was still echoing through the hall. Somewhere beyond that layer of noise I heard another sound, a sharp crack. I was barely conscious of it. I couldn't think of anything other than getting out of this smelly, rotten, piece of shit hotel. So I went forward, ahead of Mary, and swung one of my feet through the jagged opening in the door.
I felt something warm and wet on my face. At first I thought I had gotten cut, too, and I reached up to feel where the damage was. With my hand blocking my eyes, I didn't see Luke collapsing in front of me. His whole beanpole of a body slammed into me, throwing me backward. I crashed into the doorway, catching shredded glass between the shoulder blades. I guess the jacket I was wearing is made from strong stuff, because it barely took any damage. Thanks for the Christmas present, dad. Sure, I love clothes.
Luke wasn't done falling yet. He slid all the way down me, pushing me further back, and finally his bony shoulders scraped down my shinbones. His head came to rest between my ankles. He wasn't dead yet. I could see his Adam's apple moving, his tongue darting around his mouth. He had blood all over him. I could feel it seeping into my shoes.
There was a red dot on my chest. Not blood, not a wound, just a small dot of red light. As someone who has seen a lot of action movies, I instantly realized what that meant. With a sharp bark of terror, I twisted to
my left and threw myself back through the door. Turns out Mary was there, and I sent her stumbling down the hall. From my comfy new spot on the floor, wet with blood but unhurt, I watched as she went six or seven feet before finally losing her balance and crashing down onto her ass. I felt bad about it for a second, but hell, I probably just saved her from taking a bullet through the chest.
"Are you OK?" I asked. The sound barely came out. I had just sent myself through five feet of horizontal space and landed directly on my sternum. It would knock the wind out of anyone.
Mary, having landed on her tailbone instead, didn't have much more breath than I did. "Yeah. Luke..."
It wasn't a question. It was a statement. We both knew Luke was dead. We also both knew that we needed to get away from this spot, fast. We got to our feet and met in the middle of the hall. She started going toward the front door. I had to grab her and turn her back around. It wasn't until a few minutes later that I realized I actually grabbed a woman.
"Someone’s out there," I said. "They shot Luke."
She let me steer her. She seemed to be in a trance. But she snapped out of it as we moved down the hall. I was distinctly aware of my own lack of a plan. I had no hiding place in mind. Anyone could see us, hear us, pursue us, kill us.
I stepped out into the common area. I thought I saw someone moving off in the darkness, through an open door on the left side of the room. But I had been seeing and hearing things for a while. Being trapped in a dark hotel with people who want to kill you will lead to hallucination in a hurry.
Mary tensed up behind me, and let a small gasp through her lips. I knew then that I really did see someone. Mary and I entered the room just as they were going through the door. They probably weren’t aware of us.
Time to make a decision. Run and hide, or move to the doorway and find out who it was back there. Logic told me to do the latter. If it was a friendly, then our newly downsized group of two would become three again. Not a bad thing at all. If it was Jeremy or Elden... I hated to think about it, but they must be taken out.
Never mind the fact that I only had the multitool. Earlier, I had assumed that everyone would have found similar weapons in their rooms. Then Mary almost performed a face removal on me. For all I knew, Jeremy could be walking around with a double-barrel shotgun.
Still, I had to know. The odds of it being someone friendly were good.
I headed for the door. Mary fought me at first, yanking at my grasp on her forearm, but then she shrunk against my back for protection. The floor was creaky, but my shoes were worn smooth from all my walking; I could move almost silently by just sliding along without lifting my feet. As for Mary, she probably only weighed a hundred and ten pounds, but most of it was placed on me. She was hanging off my back like a monkey.
We arrived at the door a bit clumsily. The added momentum of Mary sent me sliding and thumping against the wall, but it was barely even loud enough for me to hear. I felt Mary's fingers dig deeper into my shoulders.
I peeked around the edge of the door. The glance taught me very little. It was even darker in this room than in the common area. I could sense there was someone inside, though. They were walking along the perimeter. I heard the whispery noise of clothes rubbing on the wall.
Mary made a noise like she was trying to suck something out of the air. I looked back, saw her eyes focused on the upstairs landing, and followed her gaze. Someone was coming down the stairs. They were looking directly at us, and moving with no great deal of urgency or stealth. They were making a gesture with their hands, pushing them downward, signaling us to stay put.
I stayed put. Mary seemed almost completely frozen by her fear, but still managed to grab my arms and twist me so that I was facing the stairs and she was between me and the wall.
The person on the stairs reached the bottom and suddenly didn't seem so big and scary. I saw skinny bird legs sticking out of a pair of shorts, a sloped set of shoulders, a collared shirt. Jacob.
For all the casual swagger in his step, he might as well have been walking through the produce section at the grocery store. He came right up to us, put a finger to his lips, and stood directly in front of the doorway into the next room. He stared for a moment, hands in his pockets, then stepped off to the side. He grabbed my shirt sleeve and, with the strength of an ox, hauled Mary and I toward the other side of the room.
There was another door here. Jacob opened it, swinging it quickly and boldly inward. It squealed a little, but not much. As anyone who has ever tried creeping to the bathroom in a house full of sleeping people can tell you, doors tend to squeak less if you open them quickly. And microwave doors make less noise if you shut them quickly. And band-aids hurt less if you just rip them off at once. Also, it’s an unequivocal fact that the quieter you try to be, the more noise you make, and also that noises are enhanced by darkness, and multiplied by how many sleeping people there are nearby. If you really need to take a piss at night, just do it and don't worry about it. You'll end up making less noise.
Jacob was very clearly using all these tactics, perhaps without even realizing it. I suspected it since I first saw him, but I knew it for a fact now; this was one tough bastard. This is a guy who would walk all the way through the house, use the microwave, take a dump with the fan on, open and close all the cupboards, simultaneously without giving a hell or waking anyone up.
He shut the door behind us, twisting the knob so that the latch didn't knock against the strike plate. He then allowed the knob to turn back slowly, effectively shutting the door without making a sound. Good technique. I use it myself all the time.
Jacob turned to us with both hands stuck in his pockets.
"I heard the commotion," he said. "Trying to get through the front door, huh? There's riflemen out there. Six or eight of 'em, arranged around the building. Oh, here..."
He moved toward the wall, bent down, and turned on a lantern.
We were in a room large enough that we couldn't see its edges in the weak light. Chairs were stacked along the wall near to us. There were other pieces of furniture, covered in dusty white sheets. I could see dingy bronze pedals sticking out from under one of them. A piano.
Jacob stood up with a grunt, the lantern swinging in his hand, throwing wacky shadows across the floor. "As you both know, we are in a deal of shit here. Now, let me get something right. I saw the body upstairs, the bald fellow. And I found the tall guy, comatose in one of the rooms on the second floor. Still breathing right now, but good as dead. And I heard the gunshot. So the toll must be at three, now."
I nodded. "Luke."
Jacob frowned. "Damn. Braver than I gave him credit for. But dumb. And both of you are too. Don't you look where you're going?"
Mary had no answer. Neither did I. But the question was probably meant to be rhetorical anyway.
"Who are you?" Mary asked. "Are you like a Navy SEAL, or something?"
He chuckled. "Not even close, sweetie-pie. But I think I'm starting to get this situation figured. And I could sure use your help."
"With what?" Mary asked.
"Getting the hell out of here, of course. It's going to require a group effort. I've got a little spot where we can sit and talk it over. Come on."
We followed him through the graveyard of furniture. I imagined how the room must have looked in the old days. Bright, full of people and noise. Maybe people had danced, played music, and had dinner here. I was reminded of a story I heard about the Stanley Hotel, when my family and I stayed there one night. Apparently, if you found yourself in the ballroom late at night, you could sometimes hear the phantom sounds of a piano from somewhere else in time.
Jacob led us to the rear of the room and down a short, tile-floored hall. There were double doors at one end, probably leading into a kitchen, but we made a detour into a little closet where more seats had been stashed. Folding chairs. Jacob set a few up, and we sat down.
"Shut the door," he said.
Mary was closest. She nudged the door shut.
"We ought to be safe here," Jacob went on. "At least for now."
"Who was it?" Mary asked. "In that room?"
He stared at her for a second, then seemed to recall something. "Them? Beats the hell out of me. What, you think I can see in the dark?"
"Then how did you know we were friendly?"
"Easy. I saw two idiots shivering against the wall. I knew one of you was female, and too short to be that other one." He cast his eyes my way. "And you, kid. I could tell you were shit-scared just looking at you. It's good to be scared, but bad to show it. Keep that in mind."
I stared at him like an idiot. What could I say to that?
"How the hell do we get out of here?" Mary asked.
"Should be simple," Jacob said. "First, we have to understand the rules of the game. I've been thinking about it, and I think I understand. There is only supposed to be one survivor. Those freaks, Max, Jeremy, Elden... They're no friends to one another. They'd kill each other just as soon as one of us. Basically, last man standing wins. Or last woman standing. So, all we need to do is take out Jeremy and Elden. Someone already buttered Max for us, so our job has gotten thirty-three point three percent easier."
I just sat there, squeezing my lips together.
"Then what?" asked Mary.
Jacob shrugged. "Not sure on that score just yet. First, we have to figure out how the game is meant to work. As in, how do our sniper friends know when only one person is left? I'll bet Jeremy has the answer with him. A walkie-talkie, or something. But before we take any chances with him, we should arm ourselves with a few more teammates. Strength in numbers. And we'll need a weapon. Would either of you happen to have one?"
"I had an ax," Mary said.
Jacob perked up. "Yeah? Where?"
"Outside. Luke dropped it."
"Oh. Tough shit. I ain't about to risk getting shot to grab it. So, we need weapons. Hopefully, someone else will have found a good one. However this thing works, we'll be better off once the freaks are dead."
"Amen," Mary said.
