by steve higgs
‘Why don’t we just let them escape?’ asked Gina. ‘If they are finished with the robbery, they can go, the police can catch them later and we can escape. Why do we need to bother with all this escape room nonsense? Isn’t this just prolonging the time it takes to get Dr Parrish to hospital?’
Her questions were fair. I hadn’t explained much to them yet. ‘I don’t think they plan to leave here with us alive.’ That statement brought a few sharply drawn-in breaths. ‘We have all seen their faces and they have pulled off a major robbery, taking hundreds of pieces of artwork which are probably worth millions. Think about it; they went to a lot of effort. Would they really leave a load of eyewitnesses behind?’
Professor Wiseman argued, ‘Surely, if they were going to kill us, they would have done it already.’
Tempest answered him. ‘That would make sense, but what if you had just emptied this place of all the artwork and wanted to ensure no one was looking for it. How would you make sure none of it was reported as stolen? Ever?’ He let the question hang for a second before answering. ‘I think they plan to burn this place to the ground. They can’t shoot us because they need the police to find our bodies and determine that we died of smoke inhalation or just plain burnt to death.’ There were more gasps.
Tempest’s dad nodded. ‘That makes perfect sense. We can’t fight back because they are all armed and if they had to shoot one of us, they can just take the body and dispose of it elsewhere.’
‘That’s what I think,’ I agreed. ‘If we wait until they go, even with us sealing ourselves in here so they can’t get to us, I think it likely they will still light the fires. The police will conclude we gathered here to hide, and the smoke or heat got us.’
‘So we just trap them upstairs until the police come, yes?’ Gina still had it wrong.
‘If we do that, we expose the police to a fortified position filled with heavily armed criminals.’ She put a hand to her mouth as she got what I was suggesting. ‘We have to disarm them or otherwise separate them so they cannot form a coordinated response. Chief Inspector Quinn of the Kent police is even now gathering his forces. He’ll bring paramedics with him, but it will take an hour, if not more for them to get here and by then we need to have disarmed or affectively trapped all of Lord Hale’s men. Otherwise, this might turn into a siege with us trapped inside. If that happens, it could be days before we get Dr Parrish to hospital.’
As my words sunk in, they could see the likely truth of them. None of us knew what the caterers had planned and anyone with a brain wouldn’t want to wait to find out. Our only choice was to take the fight to them.
Now that they were on board, albeit, quite reluctantly in many cases, it was time to share out the tasks because most of us had a role to play.
Escape Room. Sunday, December 11th 0512hrs
The first task was one of the most dangerous, so it was no surprise when the three ex-servicemen volunteered. ‘You’re too old,’ insisted Mary to her husband. She got a rude word in response.
Frank wanted to go with them, and no one was going to stop him, but then the remaining three men in the room, the three middle-aged and quite portly professors all felt they were failing to pull their weight so also volunteered. I didn’t need any sexist nonsense in my life at any point, let alone now. Tempest, Big Ben, and Michael were handling this task because they had applicable training and were used to hitting people. The professors didn’t need to be involved just because they were men.
Narcissus had stopped the elevator between floors just to make sure the two men inside couldn’t go anywhere but flicked the power back on now. Professor Wiseman did his best to imitate Lord Hale’s voice as he used the emergency speaker in the elevator to speak with them. ‘Chaps, we got hit by lightning. It knocked out everything. We’re just rebooting systems now. Won’t keep you long but to be safe we’re going to let you out at the next floor. You can make your way back from there.’
A husky voice replied, ‘Just hurry, will you?’
‘We’re bringing you up now,’ said Professor Wiseman.
‘Just hurry up,’ growled the first man again.
Big Ben thumped Tempest on the arm, ‘Let’s go, wet pants.’
I watched them on the monitor as the four men positioned themselves, two each side of the doors as they waited for the car to arrive.
In the elevator, visible on another screen, the two men I mentally named, Igg and Ook, were saying nothing and staring forward. My heart hammered in my chest as I counted down with the guys. Then the doors opened, Tempest and Big Ben threw themselves in and up, catching the muzzle end of the weapons to drive them upwards, thus ensuring any shots fired went in a safe direction. Igg and Ook then got a knee to the midriff apiece and were thrown out of the elevator as the two guys pulled their weapons away, turned and pivoted. Upon landing they found Frank and Michael weighing in to ensure they couldn’t get up.
It lasted less than two seconds and not a shot got fired.
Not right away anyhow.
Narcissus offered me a fist to bump. ‘Two down. Ten to go, plus Lord Hale.’ It was a good batting average, but hardly a winning score yet. Rosemary and Hazel were on hand to help tie the caterers up, binding their hands and feet with yet more dream catcher string so the guys could drag them to the storeroom.
On their way past, Tempest stuck his head in the control room. ‘Ready for the next bit?’
I nodded. ‘Go for it.’
He raised a radio, freshly liberated from either Igg or Ook and pressed the send switch. ‘Boss!’ he yelled in a panicked voice. ‘Boss, there’s something down here.’
Lord Hale’s voice came over the radio. ‘Stop panicking and report, man.’
‘Boss! Aaarghh! It’s coming! It’s…’ then we heard a rip of gun fire as he loosed off a volley.
‘Report, man.’ Lord Hale waited for a report that would never come. ‘Report!’ he insisted. ‘Heseltine, report.’
I figured that right about now his men were starting to get just a little creeped out. We could see it in their actions as we watched them on the monitors. Tempest wandered back in, making sure his weapon was set back to safe before letting it hang by the sling.
‘Can this thing do a plague of toads?’ asked his mum as she looked at the myriad switches.
‘No,’ grinned Narcissus, ‘but it can do this.’ Her hand hovered over a switch as she watched the screen in front of her face. Then, she hit it and all the lights went out in the entrance lobby. We heard a pitiful whimper of a scream and the lights came back on to show one less person visible. A man standing just a few feet from Lord Hale had vanished through the floor. In the darkened room, they didn’t see what happened to him, but Narcissus had opened a trapdoor. It was supposed to send the person above down a chute like being on a playground slide, but Big Ben had accidentally disconnected it and moved it out of the way.
Big Ben returned a few moments later with the unconscious man hanging from his right hand like a child dragging a teddy. ‘Did he hit his head?’ asked Gina.
Big Ben smiled. ‘No, sweetie. Big Ben hit his head. You should have seen it. I got him in midair.’
‘Yes, yes, thank you, Ben.’ I waved my arm to move him on. ‘Please put him with the others.’
‘Some fog?’ asked Narcissus.
I nodded but I couldn’t shift the feeling that we had been lucky so far. Six of the caterers plus Lord Hale were still in the main entrance lobby. They were trying to find a way out and I wasn’t sure how long the house’s defences would last. They were designed to deter celebrities from escaping, not a small military unit.
The main body of goons in the entrance lobby were forming up to start shooting out a set of windows. As thick fog started to seep into the room, we could see Lord Hale giving them verbal instructions, and though we had no sound with the picture, we could see when they opened fire and hear it echoing through the house.
Instantly on the radio, the nervous voice of another goon. ‘What are you s
hooting at? Are you being attacked?’
‘I think I saw something,’ came another voice.
We could see who was speaking on our screens; the remaining nine caterers divided into three parties. Six in one, a pair, and a single. It was the pair who were the most jittery, so I chose to pick on them next. ‘Can we force them down to the basement? Trap them in there?’
Narcissus poked a few buttons. ‘I don’t see why not.’
‘What can we do to help?’ asked Professor Wiseman, his beard grazing my arm as he leaned between me and Narcissus to see the screens.
I held up a finger to beg for a moment’s grace and called Big Ben over. ‘Ben can you get back up to the rooms?’
‘Is it time for a performance?’ he asked. He looked neither keen to do it, nor desperate to avoid the task. It involved a definite degree of risk but might be key to winning. We discussed it earlier, when the first tendrils of a daft idea started to form in my head, and he had shrugged in usual Big Ben fashion; he was always up for anything.
‘Dad,’ Tempest called to get his father’s attention. ‘It’s time to go.’
Mary asked, ‘Why does he have to go?’
‘Because it’s in our room, love.’ Michael gave his wife a hug and a kiss on her forehead. Then, the three guys ran out of the control room again.
Focusing on the screens again, I could see the main party had shot the window to pieces and were now examining their handiwork. All the glass was gone but the screens outside the window were still intact. Two men were trying to batter them open with the butts of their guns; they would get through eventually and then be able to escape.
On another screen, Tempest and the others appeared, getting into the elevator where they assumed the standard in-an-elevator position of eyes forward and stand still.
‘Let’s open a door, shall we?’ I asked Narcissus, pointing to the pair of caterers separated away from the rest. They were on the ground floor, but I wanted them trapped below ground if I could achieve it. I was reducing the effectiveness of Lord Hale’s party to repel an advance by the police armed response unit when they arrived. They were using up their ammunition, not that I knew how much they had to start with, and we were reducing their numbers. Trapping two in the basement, even with their weapons, meant they couldn’t return fire on the police and were far more likely to surrender.
‘I’ll give them some motivation too. Watch this,’ announced Narcissus with some glee. Patience, Gina and most others in the room crowded around the monitors. The door in the room they were in swung slowly open. The two men glanced at it, at each other and back at it. They pulled their weapons into a firing position. ‘I’m giving them footsteps behind the wall.’ As she said that and clicked the mouse, both their heads jerked around to stare at a wall behind them.
One of them lifted his radio and spoke into it. ‘Guys, it’s Eddie and Lou. We’re near the dining room. Is anyone else back here? We can hear footsteps.’
Lord Hale lifted his radio. ‘It’s nothing you idiots. Ignore it. You all failed to secure the dinner guests properly and now they are in the control room playing tricks on us, just like Dave and Derek did to them.’
‘It doesn’t feel like a trick,’ the nervous man replied.
‘Ready?’ asked Narcissus just so we were all watching. Another click of the mouse and the wall panel behind them changed to translucent and a gruesome creature that was half spider, half rat and one hundred percent the stuff of nightmares bared its teeth and lunged for them. Both men screamed and ran from the room.
We picked them up on another camera as Narcissus added hissing, screeching noises and controlled the doors to guide them toward the basements. They all but tumbled down the first set of stairs but, Narcissus added more mist from pumps embedded in the steps themselves.
Lord Hale was screaming for them to report, but they weren’t listening. He changed strategy. ‘Dave?’
‘Yes, boss?’
‘Where are you?’
‘Trapped in the billiards room. I went back to check the fuses. Everything is set to go; this house will burn like a tinderbox when this goes. There’ll be no trace left for them to work out what happened. All the police will find is dead dinner guests, one dead Lord Hale, and a mystery that will never be solved.’
‘Yes. Except the dinner guests aren’t where they are supposed to be and now have control of your control room. All the tricks you played on them earlier, they are now playing on us. Chances are they are listening in to this conversation.’
‘You were right about the arson,’ Patience whispered, unwilling to speak loudly in case we missed something the others were saying.
‘Are you there, dinner guests?’ asked Lord Hale. ‘I shall assume you are. Well, you have tipped my hand, so we are coming for you now. No doubt the police will ask why the dinner party ended in a hail of bullets and where the guns came from but don’t worry too much about that, I’ll do my best to arrange you all so it looks like Alexander went nuts and you all killed each other fighting him.’
A stab of adrenalin hit my bloodstream causing me to glance up at the screen showing Eddie and Lou and their flight toward the sub-basement. They were below our level now and about to hit the last door, driven on by Narcissus and her special effects. I had just enough time to yell, ‘Noooooo!’
I was too late to stop her from opening the last door. Eddie and Lou ran right at it, unaware of what might lurk on the other side just as Alexander threw the door open and burst out. The enormous man looked mad as all hell plus he had the advantage of surprise. The two caterers ran right into him; even though armed, their weapons were not ready to fire and neither man got up when Alexander hit them. Clubbing punches; one, two.
‘Quick, shut the doors above him. Let’s keep him trapped.’ My alarmed instructions betraying my concern. I didn’t want another player on the field, especially one so ready to kill.
Then all the lights went out to the accompaniment of several choked screams and gasps.
‘Yes, dinner guests,’ drawled Lord Hale’s voice over the radio. ‘I just operated the master switch. You didn’t know about that, did you? Sorry. All your tricks just went away. None of the door locks work now, so get ready, because here we come.’
Final Stand. Sunday, December 11th 0547hrs
The lights came back on just as suddenly as they had gone off, the overhead lamps blinking and flickering as they settled. We had been in darkness so little time that no one had been able to fumble for a phone to create light to see by. The screens were coming back to life as well, Narcissus stabbing buttons and shaking the mouse to make it do something.
‘Are we good?’ I asked, pleading that we were. ‘Are we back up?’
Her head was shaking impatiently as she tried to make the console work. ‘It’s rebooting. Probably it’s rebooting from a server somewhere. This is going to be down for ten minutes or more.’
We didn’t have ten minutes.
‘What is working?’ asked Patience, staring at the screens which were displaying pictures already.
Narcissus motioned with her head. ‘The screens are, but I can’t change which cameras feed them until the console comes back up.’
I turned to go. ‘Then we need to get out of here. Everyone, grab your things and let’s move.’
‘What about Dr Parrish?’ asked Lily. He was still unconscious, still a terrible colour and he wasn’t going anywhere. My shoulder slumped in defeat; we couldn’t leave him. It was the only sensible thing to do, but I wasn’t going to do it.
‘Patience and I will carry him. Everyone else, just get away from here. They will come from the left so go right and try to double around. The doors will be open now, so if you can make it to them, you can escape into the woods. The police are coming, but don’t come back to the house until you are sure it is safe.’
No one moved.
‘Go!’ I shouted, grabbing Lily’s arm and pushing her toward the door. ‘We’re right behind you!’
Jol
ted into action, the rest followed Gina and the professors through the door, terrified squeals and sounds of panic diminishing as they ran away.
‘We’re not going anywhere, are we?’ said Patience. She knew we could carry Dr Parrish, but his weight would make us slow and ensure we were caught.
‘You should go too,’ I told her.
‘Nuts to that, girl. This game isn’t played out yet. Look at the screen.’ She pointed with her eyes and I saw it too: Lord Hale was coming, the short man at his shoulder and five more men behind him. The room that Dave had been in, the camera still pointing into it, was now empty, so he was heading in our direction too. What they didn’t know was that Alexander was on a collision course with them and he had a machine gun in each hand.
Leaving Dr Parrish, we both rushed back to the console to watch the screens. Lord Hale’s men were making too much noise, assuming us to be unarmed, which we were not. Tempest had left one of the MP5s with me, so we had a chance to lessen the numbers if they got to us. I didn’t think they would though, they were about to run into Alexander, and he had stopped walking to take up a fire position as he waited for them to round the corner ahead of him.
Because the screens were just monitors and produced no sound, it felt like I was watching an old movie. That was until the torturously loud sound of gunfire reached us through the control room door. We were all on the same level, the sound deafening for us so must have robbed those closest of their hearing. Between the cameras, we couldn’t see everything, but we watched Alexander cut down three of Lord Hale’s caterers in the first salvo.