by T J Payne
A man, whom Amy recognized as the shift manager, stood in front of the group. He flung open a locker, reached inside, and began pulling out handguns. But not just any handguns — antique, ivory-handled revolvers. They were the type of weapon that Amy could imagine an old colonel with a bushy mustache and a monocle sporting on his hip.
The manager passed them out to eager hands.
They were going on the offensive.
They were going to quell the uprising. And then, they would probably come to the Control Room. They would come to stop Amy and kill her.
And yet, at this realization, Amy didn’t feel the cold sweat form on her brow. Her hands didn’t get clammy. Her breath didn’t become short and panicked.
As six staff members, all with guns, set out into the hallways, Amy felt nothing. Either Mariko and the others would kill the staff, or the staff would kill Mariko and Amy.
One way or another, there would be blood.
One way or another, the night would end.
Amy was fine with that.
CHAPTER 29
Brad waved his axe above his head. “Follow me!” he bellowed.
Mariko was first behind him. Her one good hand held a slender sword she had pulled off the wall. She believed it was called a “rapier,” but she wasn’t sure and didn’t really care. It was light and it was pointy. Good enough.
Thirty or so people had gathered in the ballroom by then with more arriving by the second. The men had long since ditched their coats, and the women had rid themselves of their heels. Every person carried a weapon. Many opted for smaller swords or machetes — weapons that they could confidently swing.
Brad let out a roar and ran forward.
Everyone pushed up against one another to follow his lead. The horde crushed against Mariko’s back, practically carrying her forward.
They ran through the staff door and entered a white room with a glass window and glass door. The floor of the room was smeared with what looked like blood and frosting. Brad yanked open the glass door and ran out into the hallway beyond. He barged forward and—
Bang!
A bullet struck him in the chest.
More shots followed.
Rage seemed to fuel Brad on a few additional steps.
Three more shots rang out.
Mariko could only watch as the bullets ripped into Brad. She stopped, holding back the other guests in the process.
Brad fell to his knees in the center of the corridor.
From her spot at the glass door, Mariko could see down the hall. About twenty feet away, a group of staff members crouched behind a corner as they fired into Brad.
When Brad’s body finally collapsed to the floor, Mariko saw the staff members angle their aim higher.
Toward her.
She yanked the glass door shut just as three sharp cracks of gunfire split the air. The bullets struck the glass and violently ricocheted off. But the glass door held.
Mariko gazed through her bullet proof door at the staffers down the hall.
“Well, what’s the plan, hon?” someone asked.
Mariko looked. The voice came from Mrs. Crawford, the third grade teacher.
“They have guns,” Mariko said.
“So? I don’t give a hoot. Ten minutes ago, I was counting myself as dead.”
Mariko looked through the elderly teacher’s large glasses, still connected to the homemade beaded chain, and into the woman’s eyes. Mrs. Crawford’s gaze was positively alight with fire. Her eyes danced. In this sweet old lady’s hand was a saber that she gripped so tightly that her knuckles were pale.
The image made Mariko smile. She could have laughed out loud.
This old woman was ready to charge to the death.
Why tell her no?
“Get a table,” Mariko said.
***
The manager gazed down the hall.
He felt that the situation in the ballroom was momentarily resolved.
The staff only had six revolvers among them. The rest of the weaponry, including the shotguns and assault rifles, were hidden in a compartment in the Control Room. Whoever had taken over the Control Room was probably armed with the weapon from the poisoned and battered bellhop he had seen in the hallway.
The manager made a tactical decision to quell the uprising in the ballroom first. Next, he would lead a team to retake the Control Room. Once they accessed the remaining firearms from there, they would sweep through The Venue and put an unceremonious end to the night.
As he debated how many people he wanted to bring with him, he saw a group of guests enter the security chamber, carrying the DJ’s body with them.
Using their hands as paintbrushes, they smeared his blood over the window and door. They glopped it on so thick that soon the manager couldn’t see through the glass to what was happening on the other side.
“Savages,” he said aloud to no one in particular. The armed staff members with him nodded in their own astonishment.
A burst of static crackled through the speaker in the hall. The guests were activating the DJ’s announcement system.
“They will try to bargain with us,” the manager told his crew. “But they want to do it through a microphone. Because they are afraid.”
With his revolver raised, he took a step forward, motioning for his men to follow behind him.
Suddenly, the speakers came to life, set to the highest volume. The manager froze in place and put his free hand over his ear to try to block out some of the deafening noise. It wasn’t the voice of a guest that came blaring through. It was a song. A loud, American rap song.
His men stopped moving. The noise seemed to disorient them.
As he debated how to respond, the security room doors flew open. A rectangular hors d’oeuvres table, held upright like a shield, barged through and raced toward them. The top of the table was big, barely able to fit through the door. Several people must have been behind it, carrying it and supporting it. Screams echoed out, blending in with the music.
The manager aimed his gun, as did the other staffers, and fired off a wave of bullets. The tabletop — although made from a fine, thick oak — wasn’t nearly bullet proof. The bullets bored through the wood, rewarding the staff with yelps of pain from the people carrying it.
He could see people fall. Their blood splattered onto the floor. The table was a shield, but an imperfect one.
And yet, the forward charge never slowed.
As those who carried the table fell to the ground, the people behind them surged forward to take their places, trampling their fallen comrades in the process. Even the guests who were shot and stomped on didn’t seem to care. With their final breaths, they howled in an inhuman fury and urged their side on.
Perhaps a dozen had fallen. But it made little difference.
The table, quickly being shredded by bullets, raced forward.
It closed within ten feet.
Then five feet.
The manager had run out of ammunition several seconds ago. The deafening sounds of blaring music and furious screams masked the fact that his last several trigger pulls produced only inconsequential clicks.
His mind didn’t quite register the lack of recoil in his weapon. Much like his revolver, his brain and body had locked up.
He yelled at his men to run. To regroup.
But no one heard him.
His men fumbled in their vest pockets for any spare bullets, but they dropped them to the floor in their haste to reload.
The table smashed into their group.
As it did, a wave of men in suits and women in gowns poured over the top of it. What few rounds remained in the staff’s weapons were fired off. The bullets ripped into people, but they slowed no one. The rage fueled the attackers on, making them momentarily impervious to bullets.
The manager turned to run away.
But his legs refused to work. A stinging sensation rippled through his lower back. He looked down and saw the tip of a sword protruding from hi
s stomach. Before his body could even collapse, before gravity could take hold of him, a blunt object connected with the back of his neck, shattering his spine.
His body tried to fall, but someone was holding him up from behind.
A knife… two knives… three knives furiously stabbed into him.
It all happened with incredible speed, but the final echoes of his consciousness drew out the experience. The world slowed, and he registered each penetrating strike of steel into his body.
His head drooped. He saw the chef laid out on the floor, staring back at him with glassy eyes as a whirlwind of hatchets and machetes hacked the man apart. The head waiter tried to run, but someone grabbed him and pressed him against the wall, holding him up as blades sliced into him.
Everywhere around him, the manager saw his team cut to pieces. Rabid dogs or a hungry bear would have been gentler, more civilized, in their killings. This was a fury he had never seen and could hardly believe existed in nature.
One final thought slipped through the manager’s mind.
What is wrong with these people?
Then his world went black.
***
Amy watched the battle on the monitors.
One of the waiters dropped his gun and tried to run away, but a man whom Amy recognized as Caleb’s Uncle Mark tackled him and began slamming his face into the floor. Uncle Mark, despite being in his sixties, ground the waiter’s face into the concrete. Time and again, he pounded the man’s head, well past the point when it was clear he was dead.
Space became a problem. Not all the guests could fit around the six-or-so staff members, and so some were left with no one to attack. Instead of waiting their turn, they ran off down the hall in packs, hunting for more.
No one tended to the wounded, who didn’t seem to mind. They waved their friends and family on.
Amy searched for signs of Mariko, but the bloody sea of humanity was too chaotic and the camera angles were too few.
She turned her attention to the staff lounge. The remaining staff armed themselves with pool cues as they pushed the couches and tables against the door to block it. Unfortunately for them, the door swung both directions. Amy saw some of them arguing, debating how best to seal a door that couldn’t be locked.
They never settled on a solution.
A crazed woman, brandishing a knife in each hand, leapt through the door, landed on a waiter, and began stabbing him furiously in the face.
A baggage porter and a line cook fought her off, bludgeoning her with pool cues and bottles. But the woman had done her job. She had distracted the staff from completing their barricade just long enough.
The door opened again and more and more men and women streamed in. They leapt over the couch and slashed at any red vested person they could find.
Amy watched with a quiet fascination as the staff tried to escape.
One housekeeper, probably a few years younger than Amy, slipped out of the staff area through the door by the front desk and crouched exactly where Amy and Mariko had hidden. Amy could see the young woman shake with fear. Her head stayed angled toward the open front door. She clearly wanted to make a run for it but was too scared.
Bit by bit, she inched her way over the desk.
Amy clicked a button that she assumed was the P.A. system. “Housekeeping escaping through front door,” she said.
The maid’s head jerked up as Amy spoke. She leapt off the desk and ran with a new urgency.
Amy watched. The woman just might make it. She just might escape.
But as she neared the door, a hatchet flew through the air and slammed into her head. It wasn’t a particularly good throw; the blade didn’t embed in her skull or anything. But it knocked her off her feet. She wasn’t giving up, though. She crawled feebly out the door.
A few seconds later, one of Lilith’s sorority sisters, along with one of Caleb’s cousins, stomped over. They grabbed the maid by her feet and dragged her back inside. Her hands searched for anything to grab hold of. Amy could see the woman screaming, although the sound was off and she couldn’t hear it.
They dragged the maid back through the front lobby and through the foyer. She kicked. She screamed. She tried to grab hold of something the entire way.
Amy looked at other monitors. Similar scenes played out across The Venue. Housekeepers, waiters, cooks, and receptionists on the verge of escaping were chased down. They weren’t being killed, though. Their pursuers seemed to prefer to drag them off.
No one had coordinated it, but they all appeared to be going to the same destination.
The ballroom.
Inside, the party was in full swing. Guests danced. Guests drank. Guests shouted and laughed.
Throughout the floor, squirming and pleading for mercy, lay the injured staff members. Whenever one of them tried to crawl away, someone danced over and bashed their legs with a hammer. When one would try to fight back, someone would hold them down as other guests stabbed them in the spinal cord.
Near the spiral staircase, a group of ten or so people had gotten together. With knives and swords, they began to advance toward the bridal suite.
Amy took a deep breath.
She was tired.
She was empty.
Amy had been watching revenge play out for twenty minutes now, and the realization had begun to creep in that none of it would bring her parents back.
But she forced herself out of her seat anyway.
It was time to keep the party going and she intended to rally. She crouched down beneath the computer and hunted around until she found the power plug. She yanked it from the wall and the screens went blank.
On the desk was a large pair of metal scissors. Amy picked them up and wrapped the computer’s power cord around the blades. She pressed down on the scissor handles, using all her hand strength to slice through the cord’s insulation and then its wires beneath.
Soon, she had cut the head off the plug. If some staff member were hiding, they wouldn’t be able to reactivate the system. At least not without performing some repairs. The doors in The Venue would remain unlocked forever, as they should be.
Amy stood.
She looked down at the body of the Event Planner. The woman lay perfectly still. Was she faking it? Amy didn’t care to get close enough to find out.
And so, she poked her head out into the hall. “I got another one in here!” she shouted.
Within a few seconds, a man and woman who appeared to be husband and wife — Amy thought she remembered seeing them sitting at Table Eleven — marched around the corner. They stepped into the Control Room and each grabbed a fistful of the Event Planner’s hair. They tugged her from the room.
The Event Planner either woke up then or she had been awake the entire time because she started bellowing. She looked at Amy as she shouted, “No! Please! Please, mercy! I can take you to the bride and groom. It’s them you want. There’s a staircase to their suite. I can take you there!”
Amy nodded. There was a part of her that was interested, or at least a part that felt like she should be interested. But the words stirred nothing in Amy. She simply shrugged.
“I’m sure I can find it on my own,” Amy said.
Then she motioned for the man and woman to take the Event Planner away.
They pulled on the Event Planner’s hair and dragged her off down the hall as she kicked and screamed.
Amy wandered off to go find this staircase to the bridal suite.
CHAPTER 30
Caleb was worried about Lilith.
After the bouquet toss, they had returned to the room to watch the final kills for the night, but all they saw on the TV was their guests taking off their bracelets. Caleb tried calling the Event Planner to demand answers, but he got no response.
And so, they sat and watched as their guests armed themselves in the ballroom.
Caleb tried to put a happy spin on the situation. Obviously there was a malfunction, but perhaps it was all for the best. The bracelets
had made the festivities too uneven. Too stale.
But now, the ballroom finally had some energy!
They should go out on the balcony and start shooting. Make a real game of it for themselves.
But Lilith didn’t respond.
Maybe she was simply coming down off the high from all the drugs she was on. She seemed tired, sure. But also vacant. That empty, glassy look in her eyes was what worried Caleb most.
He tried to egg her on by bragging that he could kill more than her.
Lilith still didn’t move. She just stared at the TV until the relay was cut off and the screen went black.
Thinking that maybe her injuries were bothering her, he went to the bathroom and got her some lotion for her burned face, as well as a few more painkillers. She rejected them all.
And so, he sat beside her, put an arm around her shoulders, and together they laid down on the bed.
He stared at her face that entire time, gently brushing her stray strands of hair out of her burns. He called her beautiful. He said that he loved her.
But her eyes never connected with his.
He looked at her for ten, maybe twenty minutes.
The party down below grew very quiet. Everyone seemed to have abandoned the ballroom, probably to go attack the staff areas.
But then, a few minutes later, it got loud. Insanely loud. The music and the shouting reached decibels that they hadn’t all night. Caleb could hear the screams of what he assumed were The Venue staff being stabbed and tortured.
“Do you want to go down there?” he asked. “Join in the party?”
“What’s the point?”
“You could kill someone. I think your Aunt Stacy is still alive. Or Becky?”
“Do I have to do everything? They were all supposed to kill each other.”
“Is that what’s bothering you? That it didn’t go as planned?”
“Nothing’s bothering me,” she said.
They stayed there for a moment, him staring at her while she gazed off.
“What’s wrong, sweetie?” he finally asked.
“Nothing. Just tired.”
“Didn’t you have any fun today?”
For the first time, she actually seemed to consider the question. Her eyes narrowed and her nose scrunched up. It was the cute face she made when thinking — truly thinking. Although, this time, the scrunching up of her nose made her blistered cheek crack and rip slightly. She didn’t seem to notice, though.