Down & Dirty: A McCray Crime Collection

by McCray, Carolyn

  “Yeah?” Allie made her response sound like a question, but then reached out for his hand again. This time, there was no dragging. They were walking forward hand-in-hand, no clue what was waiting for them around the bend.

  What they found was so much worse than anything they could have imagined.

  The entire club was covered in blood.

  Everywhere they looked there were dead bodies sprawled out in awkward positions, lying on top of one another. The foam, still swirling around in the middle of the dance floor, was streaked with red. Nothing moved inside the dance hall. It echoed with the dead silence of a crypt.

  And then, behind them, the door to the club slammed shut with a resounding boom, followed by the ominous click of a lock.

  Josh and Allie were trapped inside.

  CHAPTER 7

  Allie couldn’t believe what she was seeing. The worst thing she had ever seen in her life up to this point was that time when she was twelve and her friend Suzie had broken her leg and the bone had stuck through the skin. Allie had had nightmares about that for weeks.

  This? The flashing lights and remnants of glow-in-the-dark paint swirling through the foam added to the sense of unreality. Allie closed her eyes, seeing the pulses of lights play against the insides of her eyelids. But when she opened them back up again, nothing had changed. Everyone was still just as dead as they had been a couple of seconds ago.

  Stumbling through the near-darkness, Allie caught her foot on something. Looking down, she recognized the still form of the elfish girl she had been dancing with earlier. The lights reflecting back from her lifeless eyes, the ones that had so captivated Allie earlier.

  Above her throat was a gaping mouth, with ruby red lips pursed as if to cry out in horror.

  There was nothing Allie could do about her death, but at least she could keep from vomiting all over her dead body.

  As she leaned over, dry heaves wracking her body, she felt a hand placed on her lower back. In the stillness left by the music’s end, Josh’s tone seemed forced, almost irreverent.

  “Who c…could have done this?”

  Allie’s lips tightened as she pushed her nausea down. “I have no idea.”

  “Do you think we should check to see if anyone s…s…survived?”

  The thought of going from body to body, checking pulses and looking for signs of life, caused Allie’s body to convulse once more. If there was anything she did not want to do, this was definitely it. She held up her hand and shook her head, unable to do much more at the moment.

  Josh backed up and gazed around the club. His brow was furrowed again, and while he seemed to be holding it together better than she was, he did seem to be several shades lighter than he normally was.

  “You okay to come with me? We should at least check the bathrooms and st…stuff, and there’s no way I’m leaving you alone for even a millisecond.”

  Somehow, the fact that Josh was thinking of her safety lifted her spirits, just a little bit. Even with horror surrounding them on all sides, he was worried about her. Mormon or not, Allie’s mom was going to approve of this boy. Or else.

  She straightened up, wiped the back of her hand across her mouth, and gave Josh a nod. He held out a hand for her, and she gratefully slipped hers into it. With his other hand, he fished around in his pocket, pulled out a breath mint and handed it to her.

  Totally a keeper.

  Hand in hand, they waded through the remnants of the foam which before had been braided with swirls of phosphorescent paint, but which was now patterned with the darker red, almost black, of blood. Everywhere they turned, more bodies appeared, as the foam drained out through the grate in the middle of the dance floor.

  The search through the bathrooms revealed nothing but more death. One poor couple had been taken out together in one of the stalls. What they had been doing there beforehand would remain unknown, although the guesses had been narrowed down by the fact that both of them had been caught sans pants. Allie and Josh did their best not to catch each other’s gaze until they had shut the stall door on that particular scene.

  Picking their way with care back through the main dancing area, therapy was sounding less like a good idea and more like a necessity for both of them once they got out of here. If they got out of here.

  Josh’s voice broke her morbid reverie. “How could someone do this?”

  “I guess some people are just…messed up.”

  “Yeah, no, I get that. What I meant was, how could any one person take out an entire crowd of dancers? It’s not like we were out there for hours or anything.”

  Thinking it through, Allie realized that Josh had a point. A very good point. A very scary good point.

  “So, you think there’s more than one person?” Allie’s voice, try as she did to keep it in check, trembled with the fear she was trying to keep under wraps. This was not the time to lose it. She’d seen enough horror movies to know that the heroes had to keep it together. It was always the ones who freaked out and ran that got cut down cold.

  “If it’s only one guy, he had to have worked pretty fast. Not sure.” Josh had a thoughtful look on his face, but then shook it off and started walking again, faster this time. “Let’s go check the clothes check area and then see if there’s any way out of here. I don’t want us sticking around here any longer than we have to.”

  Allie was more than down with that idea. This place had been scary enough when everyone in it was alive. It was hard to believe it was the same club they had been dancing in less than twenty minutes ago.

  Rounding the corner to where the attendant chick had taken their clothes, Josh rushed up and tried to turn the doorknob. It rattled as he attempted to move it back and forth, the noise overly loud in the smaller space.

  “Locked,” Josh breathed. “All right. I guess there’s not much more we can do here. Let’s go see if there’s another exit anywhere. I think I saw a door over behind the deejay stand.”

  Allie reached out for Josh’s hand and squeezed, making Josh stop for a second and look more closely at her. “We’re going to be okay, right?”

  Josh squeezed her hand back and then released it in order to hold on to both of her shoulders as he stared straight into her eyes. “We are going to be fine. I promise.”

  Hearing him swear, Allie’s fears diminished. She knew it was stupid, that they were in serious trouble here, but she also knew how seriously Josh took his promises. He had once walked three and a half miles to her house in the rain because his car had broken down and he’d promised to come by to work on homework with her.

  As they turned to head out across the dance floor once more, a sound halted them dead in their tracks. A click and a creak. Behind them. Someone had opened the door.

  All of a sudden, Josh’s promise meant a lot less.

  * * *

  Josh’s heart stopped. The door behind them was no longer locked, it was no longer closed, and they were no longer the last living beings inside the club. There was someone else.

  The last thing in the world Josh wanted to do was turn around. The only thing left in the world for him to do was turn around.

  So he did.

  “Hey, dudes…what happened to the music?”

  It was Seven.

  Josh wasn’t sure if he wanted to punch him in the face or cry in relief. During their search of the club, Josh had been looking for one face and not seeing it. That had been a good thing at the time, even though he had been pretty sure no one had made it out intact. But now, there Seven was, right in front of him. Looking smug.

  And then the reason for his smugness stepped out from behind him. It was the attendant chick. Her purple hair stood out in wild tangles, her purple lipstick, which matched her hair, was smeared all over her face. And Seven’s, Josh realized. Wait. What?

  “You…you two…w…w…were…?” Josh stammered, then forced himself to stop. Those words were just not going to come out of his mouth. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been this st
unned. You know, other than when he had walked back into the club to find everyone dead. But this was almost more surprising.

  And Josh wasn’t the only one suffering from a case of disbelief. Allie’s jaw hung wide open for a moment before she recovered her ability to speak. And then, it was only word she managed to get out of her mouth.

  “How?”

  Seven’s grin stretched across his entire face. “Dude. I have no idea. I asked Kat if she wanted to make out with me…not sure how I did that, probably the X…and she said, ‘Sure. Why not?’”

  As one, all three of them turned to Kat, who stared back at them and lifted her shoulders a centimeter or two in a mini-shrug. She couldn’t even muster the enthusiasm to give them a full gesture.

  “Whatever. I was bored.”

  Josh darted a look at Seven to make sure he wasn’t crushed by that statement. He needn’t have worried. Seven’s enthusiasm was unmarred by the attendant’s obvious lack thereof. He appeared to be floating somewhere in the vicinity of cloud ten or eleven.

  “Uh. Okay. Wow.” Josh ran a hand through his hair, wanting to figure out their next move but completely distracted by the sight of the two in front of him. The girl seemed to have no sense of embarrassment about it at all, and Seven? Seven would remember this night for the rest of his life.

  Which might not be very long.

  Dead bodies. In the club. Right.

  “Hey, guys,” Josh began, trying to find a gentle way to do this. “Before we go out there…it’s not pretty.”

  “I doubt that,” Kat stated. “We’re on X. Everything’s pretty.”

  “Except those tighty-whities you’re sporting. Yikes.” Seven turned to Kat and snickered. Her lip curled up in a micro version of a smirk.

  And just like that, Josh was done with the shielding. He led them out to the main area of the club, where most of the devastation had occurred. Let that sight sober them both up a bit.

  To his surprise, there wasn’t much of a reaction, at least not from Kat. Seven turned an interesting shade of green and had to close his eyes for a minute, probably to keep from throwing up, like Allie had. Josh knew exactly how he was feeling. He still wasn’t sure how he had made it so far without emptying the contents of his stomach.

  But Kat just gazed around like nothing had happened. Was she really that uncaring? Josh couldn’t accept that anyone would be that callous.

  Apparently, he wasn’t the only person that thought so. Allie stalked over to Kat and faced off with her.

  “What’s wrong with you? Can’t you see that everyone here has been murdered?”

  But Kat just waved her off. “No. That’s not real. It’s just a bad trip. As soon as we all come down, things’ll be just fine.”

  “Um, right.” Allie responded. “Just one problem with that. I’m not high. Neither is Josh.”

  Watching the reaction set in was like a study in slow-motion videography. Josh could see every tiny change as it crossed the attendant’s face. From apathy to confusion to…well, it wasn’t exactly concern and it wasn’t exactly horror, but it was something.

  “Whoa,” she said.

  “Yeah. Whoa is right.” Josh replied. “And now it’s time to get out of here before whoever it was decides to come back and finish what they started.”

  Josh led them out toward the deejay station. Before, there had been a wall of people surrounding the station, clamoring to hear their favorite music. Now, that wall had fallen into heaps of crumpled humanity mixed with blood and foam.

  The hot female deejay who had been whipping the crowd into a frenzy before was slumped over the wall of the station, looking like she was just taking a breather, or maybe talking to one of the clubbers below.

  Moving around behind the station, Josh made a beeline for the door that he was hoping was a way out of here. He grabbed the knob, and once more was confronted with a locked door. But, this time, he heard the rattling of what sounded like keys on the other side, and the knob began turning under his grasp.

  Much as he wanted to get out of here, Josh was pretty sure he didn’t want to see whoever was opening the door from the other side.

  * * *

  Keaton was flummoxed. That was something that didn’t happen all that often. Come to think of it, ever. Not to him. He watched other people get flummoxed, but he’d never really understood what was going on. Your mouth is open, you should be able to talk. You have feet, you keep moving forward. You know?

  Now, he got it. He totally, totally got it.

  But everything was going to be okay. He would get Stavros his ecstasy and show him the club and everything would go back to being peachy keen. Who knew? It might even get him back on track to being Stavros’s wingman.

  A man could dream.

  After following the athletic man through the length of the house, Keaton’s appreciation for him had ramped up a couple of notches. Stavros had found three—count ‘em, three—different traps laid for their group, and had managed to bypass or disarm every one of them.

  It was not enough that he was lean and mean and had the grace of a panther. Stavros was like a modern day MacGyver, too. Oh, and his shaved head was perfectly smooth. He was probably the only guy on the planet who made people with hair jealous. Keaton contemplated what he might look like if he went bald, shuddered, and refocused on the task at hand.

  And the task at hand was finding the right key for the club. It was one of only two entrances in and out…not exactly up to fire code, but what fire marshal in his right mind would come out this far into the high desert to check on a violation?

  “Here it is! I found it! We’re cool!” Keaton called out over his shoulder, then realized that he was yelling and shut his mouth again. Technically, he wasn’t supposed to be talking at all. Stavros had made that point painfully clear earlier. Keaton hoped that he had either forgotten, or that he wasn’t all that serious about it to begin with. Neither option sounded all that promising, though.

  The key stuck in the lock, the gears inside it more than likely rusted. He never used this door—that was probably half of the reason he hadn’t thought of it before. The door was right behind the deejay station, and Keaton had no desire to break the flow of his very talented and well-endowed spin-mistress. No one knew how to make a party like she did.

  Speaking of which…where was the music? They should be able to hear it, or at least feel it through the wall. It wasn’t like Keaton had invested in soundproofing. He’d just put all the noisy micros on this side of the Hive. Duh.

  With another grunt and a push and a mumbled swear word, the door finally swung open. And Keaton found himself staring right into the petrified eyes of a young blond kid who looked like he had been raised in the Midwest on corn-fed beef. Seriously, he was like a poster child for Tommy Hilfiger, with a helping of awkwardness on the side.

  “What the…?” Keaton blurted.

  Relief seemed to color the kid’s face as he looked beyond Keaton and saw Stavros. Yeah, Stavros had that effect on people. Then the kid looked a bit farther and caught sight of Lacresha alongside her remaining client, and his face crumpled back into something that looked a little bit more like pure confusion.

  Yeah, kid, join the club.

  “What’s going on in there? What are you doing, trying to come through this door? Can’t you see the ‘employees only’ sign?” Keaton pushed past the kid, barely registering the rest of the group as he took in the scene in front of him.

  It was a wasteland of devastation.

  Peering through the flashing lights and remnants of the fog, Keaton saw nothing but blood and bodies. Bodies of young clubbers. Bodies of paying clients.

  This was not okay.

  “That’s it! This guy is really pissing me off now.” Keaton pounded his fist against the wall of the deejay stand and then contorted his face in pain and stuck his bruised knuckle in his mouth.

  “Now? Now you’re angry?” Stavros’s tone was incredulous. “The dead employees? The booby traps? The running
for our lives through your labyrinth of a house? None of that did it?”

  “Hey. Those were employees. They knew the risks.” Then, off of Stavros’s look, “okay, so maybe they didn’t know these risks, but they were all independent contractors. You know…grown-ups. Mostly. The people in here…” He waved a hand around the club. “They were all paying customers. This is just not right.”

  “I have an idea,” Stavros growled. “How about we focus on getting out of here alive, and then go back to the topic of your businesses?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I guess so,” Keaton replied, mostly to keep Stavros mollified. He was not about to let this one go, however. Money making was sacred, and this guy had desecrated Keaton’s own personal temple. There would be a reckoning. You know, at some point in the future. Probably.

  In the meantime, Keaton needed to make sure that this night was not a complete bust. It was time to make his way over to the stash of ecstasy.

  “Okay, so we need to get out of here, but first I have to make a little pit stop.”

  At that, the little Latina girl spoke up. “Um…pit stop? I’m thinking raving murdering lunatic trumps any kind of side trip.”

  Keaton sized the girl up. She was small, but it looked like she might be able to pack a punch. Or she might be carrying a knife or something. There was a glint in her eye that said she might be willing to go toe to toe with him. Better tread softly here.

  “Hm. Yes. That would make an excellent point, if it weren’t for the fact that there’s pretty much nowhere in this entire place that’s safe.” Keaton looked over at the group of four, sizing them up. Other than the spunky Latina, he wasn’t so sure. “What are your names?”

  The blond kid stepped out in front of the Latina, his stance protective. “I’m Josh, this is Allie,” he said, pointing to the Latina. “And this is Seven and…Kat, right?”

  “Yeah,” Kat stepped in. “I work for you, dude. Or I did…” She looked around the club, her thought process obvious.