#MurderTrending

by Gretchen McNeil

  What she did know was that that son of a bitch had just murdered Ethan, and even though it had been the kind of death that Ethan had always wanted, it took all of Dee’s self-control not to sprint past the runway, tackle Cecil, and throttle him with her bare hands.

  It was tempting. She’d have the element of surprise, and Cecil, though eight inches taller than Dee, wasn’t a particularly large man. She could probably take him.

  But moments later, Dee was glad she’d kept her emotions in check. A second figure stepped out from behind Cecil. He wore a futuristic pantsuit of red lamé and Lycra, and matching patent-leather platform boots with five-inch stiletto heels. But the shaved head and signature red-and-green scarf tied around his nose and mouth like a Wild West bandit gave Gucci Hangman away.

  Gucci and Cecil, a match made in hell.

  “What the actual fuck?” Gucci stood at Cecil’s side, staring at Nyles and Dee with a hand on his hip. “There weren’t supposed to be two of them.”

  Cecil tilted his head, as if just registering that fact for the first time. “Huh.”

  “That reward isn’t big enough to take them both out.” Gucci whipped his head around to face Cecil. “Especially since I have to share it with you.”

  There was a reward on the table for finishing Dee off. That was how The Postman had ensured that his Painiacs would all be in the maze. Money.

  Cecil nudged him with his elbow. “Perhaps you’d rather forfeit,” he said through gritted teeth, “and take the punishment?”

  Gucci shuddered, the first sign of emotion Dee had ever seen from a Painiac. “Fine. Let’s finish them off already.”

  So money was the prize, but what was the punishment? Dee could guess. With a new wave of killers en route, losing this battle meant elimination. Just like Dee and Nyles, Gucci and Cecil were fighting for their lives.

  “That’s what I thought.” Cecil cleared his throat. “Actors to their places!”

  Gucci turned to the mirror and straightened his red leather outfit.

  “What’s happening?” Nyles whispered in Dee’s ear.

  “I don’t…” Dee made a sweep of the set, taking in all the details of the runway. Suddenly she knew exactly where she was, who Gucci and Cecil were supposed to be, and she burst out laughing.

  “Are you okay?” Nyles asked.

  “Zoolander !” she said.

  It made perfect sense, of course. A blockbuster movie about male models in the fashion industry, it was the appropriate melding of Gucci and Cecil. And though Dee had been a baby when it was in theaters, it happened to have been one of Monica’s favorite movies, so luckily, Dee knew this scene pretty well. The walk-off challenge between Zoolander and Hansel.

  “That’s another one of your American movies, isn’t it?”

  “Come on,” Dee whispered, “you haven’t seen Zoolander? Ben Stiller? Owen Wilson? Male models?”

  “No,” he said. “But I feel as if I’m going to hate it.”

  “I said,” Cecil repeated, turning to Gucci, who was re-spiking his hair, “actors to their places.”

  With a haughty shake of his head, Gucci pranced by Cecil and stepped up onto the stage.

  “This will be a straight walk-off,” Cecil began, with a hint of a British accent as he tried, somewhat unsuccessfully, to mimic David Bowie’s voice. “Old-school rules. First model walks; second model duplicates, then elaborates.”

  Gucci tilted his head back and forth as if limbering up his neck muscles, then nodded.

  “Loser,” Cecil added, “has a gasoline fight.”

  Gasoline fight? That wasn’t part of the scene. Dee was pretty sure that she and Gucci were supposed to take turns walking down the runway until Bowie declared Gucci-as-Zoolander disqualified, and boom, scene over. Not the kind of re-creation Cecil normally directed, which ended in an explosion, a fire, a man-eating shark, giant lasers, or a barrage of bullets. What did these two have planned?

  “I don’t understand,” Nyles said helplessly.

  Dee pulled him aside. “You’re going to have to do this one.” She glanced down at her bound arm and twisted ankle. “I can’t.”

  “Right.” Nyles nodded. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “It’s a model walk-off,” she explained quickly. “Gucci is going to walk down the runway and back. You have to mimic exactly what he does, and then add your own embellishment.”

  Nyles’s eyes grew wide. “Embellishment?”

  Dee glanced back at Cecil, who had climbed up into the makeshift rafters to judge the competition. “Just keep the competition going as long as you can. I’ll try to find a way out.”

  “Two terms premed at Stanford,” Nyles said with a sigh, “and I’m doing a model walk-off.”

  “Age before beauty,” Gucci said. He towered over them at the end of the runway, then executed a near-perfect pirouette on the toe of one shiny red boot and pranced back to the beginning of the runway.

  Cecil crossed one lean leg over the other and reclined against the metal scaffolds atop a stack of wooden crates, like a king taking his throne. “Aaaaaaand, action!”

  As soon as the words left Cecil’s lips, music erupted from speakers mounted on all four walls. Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” just like in the film. At least Cecil had the details right this time.

  From the far end of the runway, Gucci planted his hands against the maze wall and bent forward at the waist, jutting out his sculpted rump as he wiggled it from side to side

  “You’ll be great,” Dee said, guiding Nyles toward the raised runway. Then, before she could even process what she was doing, she kissed him lightly on the lips. “Good luck.”

  DEE PICKED HER WAY up into the bleachers, trying not to put any weight on either her twisted ankle or her broken arm, as Gucci began the competition. He strutted down the runway, hands planted on hips that swung side to side like the pendulum on a grandfather clock. At the end he shifted his weight to his right leg, then his left, and finally flicked his head around and headed back the way he came.

  When he returned to his starting place, he swept his arm across his body, beckoning his opponent to the stage.

  For a moment, Dee wasn’t sure if Nyles was going to be able to do it. He stood at the back of the runway, glancing sidelong at his opponent as if searching for inspiration. Gucci gave Nyles the once-over, then rolled his eyes.

  Which seemed to spur Nyles into action.

  He stuck his hands on his hips, his jacket parted to reveal his bare torso, and with his elbows jutted outward exactly as Gucci had done, Nyles began his walk.

  Duplicate, then elaborate. Dee prayed that Nyles had been paying attention. If he couldn’t duplicate a walk, then he’d be disqualified. And then what had Cecil said? Gasoline fight?

  That could not be good.

  But Dee’s worries proved to be unfounded. Nyles did an excellent Gucci impression. When he got to the end of the runway, he posed perfectly to the right and then the left, just as Gucci had done, and for his “elaboration,” Nyles slipped off his jacket and tossed it over his shoulder as he retreated.

  Dee let out a slow breath. Nyles had this under control. Now she just had to figure out what Cecil and Gucci had planned. She stole a look at Cecil sitting nearby. His attention was wholly focused on Gucci’s next walk, so hopefully he wouldn’t notice if Dee did a little reconnaissance.

  She shifted her body on the wooden crate so she could get a full view of the bleachers, cobbled together from the leftover industrial infrastructure of the warehouse. Everything looked dingy, old, rusted, or moldy, but more importantly, none of it looked dangerous.

  Movement from Dee’s left caught her eye. Down below her, beneath the bleachers. She was positive she’d seen a shadow, as if someone had darted behind a stack of crates, and as she bent down to get a better view, she caught a flash of color in the darkness.

  If it had been painted gray or brown like everything else in Cecil’s set design, Dee might have missed it all together, but the three-foo
t-tall, bright red gasoline tank was easy to spot. It was mounted to a wheeled caddy, complete with hose and pump, and looked as if it could hold several gallons of fuel.

  A chill ran down Dee’s spine. Cecil and Gucci were planning to douse her and Nyles with fuel and burn them alive.

  Unless Dee got to the tank first.

  Back on the runway, Gucci was midway through another walk. He took a step, then swung his leg up in a high kick that would have impressed the Rockettes. Nyles looked at Dee and shook his head, indicating that there was no way he could duplicate Gucci’s high kick. But he had to. Not only that, but Dee needed him to keep Gucci and Cecil occupied for as long as possible.

  Stretch, Dee mouthed, hoping Nyles would be able to figure out what she meant.

  He cocked his head to the side in confusion.

  Dee lifted her injured arm, grimacing as a razor-sharp pain ripped through her entire left side, and brought the fingers of both hands together, then dragged them apart as if she were pulling taffy. Stretch, she mouthed again.

  Nyles paused for a moment, then nodded slowly. If ever there was a time for Nyles to read her mind, this was it.

  His high kick wasn’t nearly as high or as straight or as impressive as Gucci’s, but he managed to get through it, then busted out with a series of dance moves that would have made Beyoncé proud.

  His prolonged choreography was exactly what Dee was hoping for. Gucci and Cecil were mesmerized by the display, which gave Dee the opportunity to creep down the wall of crates. By the time Nyles ended with some kind of Macarena–Funky Chicken hybrid that should probably have been banned from dance floors across the world, she’d reached the tank.

  Gucci glared as Nyles retreated to the top of the runway. “Seriously?” he said, the scarf pulling with each syllable.

  “Duplicate,” Nyles said, throwing the rules back at him, “and elaborate. Unless you can’t?”

  “You wish.”

  Cecil’s attention was fixed on Gucci’s next walk, his hand held before him as if he were taking notes on it with an invisible pen.

  Dee would only get one shot at this, so her plan had to work. It took her a few seconds to unscrew the hose from the base of the tank, and though it was dark, Dee could see the shiny liquid flowing across the floor as the acrid stench dissipated into the air. The fuel spread, flowing along the lines of the wooden crates, and by the time Dee emerged from behind the bleachers, she could see the highly flammable liquid pooling around the base of the runway.

  Gucci had just finished copying the last of Nyles’s improvised moves, when he added one of his own, descending into a perfect split.

  While he held the pose, Dee pulled Robin’s Zippo lighter from the bodice of her dress, flashed it at Nyles, then nodded her head toward the corner of the room.

  Nyles pulled on his jacket and raced down the runway, ignoring all choreography.

  “Hey!” Gucci cried. “He’s not duplicating! He’s not duplicating!”

  Nyles jumped off the end of the stage to Dee’s side as Gucci gave chase, pointing and complaining like a spoiled child.

  Cecil slowly rose to his feet. “I believe we have a winner,” he proclaimed.

  Dee wasn’t sure how neither of them smelled the commercial unleaded spreading through the warehouse, but it didn’t matter now.

  “This is for Blair and Ethan,” Dee said. She held up the Zippo and flicked it to life. “Disqualified!”

  Dee tossed the lighter into the pool of gasoline at the base of the runway; then she and Nyles ran like hell.

  THERE WAS NO VISIBLE exit from the Zoolander set, so Nyles and Dee crouched in the far corner as fire erupted from the lighter, racing away in several directions at once, down the edge of the runway and back to the makeshift bleachers. Within seconds, the entire wooden construction seemed to be engulfed in flames, killing the Michael Jackson background music. Dee had only seen fire spread like that in the movies, and she wondered if Cecil B. DeViolent appreciated the irony.

  Probably not. It had taken Cecil a few seconds to recognize the danger, watching with bemused interest as the flames swept toward Gucci Hangman, but then his head followed the trail of fire as it raced beneath his seat. Dee couldn’t see his eyes, but she could practically pinpoint the moment he realized he was sitting on top of a gasoline tank. He twisted around, searching for an escape, and quickly realized that he was surrounded.

  Gucci wasn’t faring much better. Flames licked the sides of the runway, essentially encircling him in a wall of fire. There was only one way out.

  Holding his arms in front of his face, and with as much of a running start as his five-inch stilettos would allow, Gucci leaped through the mounting fire. His feet slid out from under him as he hit the concrete and he went sprawling across the floor. He smashed into one of the mirrors and lay motionless.

  An ear-shattering explosion ripped through the warehouse. Whatever fuel remained in the gas tank had just ignited. The detonation shattered the bleachers, which collapsed into the seething fire beneath, taking Cecil B. DeViolent with them. Dee curled herself into Nyles as the wall of mirrors exploded behind her. Shards of knifelike glass blew upward, mixing with bits of metal and smoking embers, then rained down around them.

  So much for Cecil, but just when Dee thought they were home free, Gucci Hangman raised his head.

  For a moment, she thought that Gucci had come through the inferno unscathed. Then she saw the flames spreading up his back.

  Apparently, red lamé was highly flammable.

  Gucci let out a scream even more horrifying than Hannah Ball’s had been, his eyes fixed on Dee. He crawled toward her, dragging his body with his well-manicured fingers. Dee could smell his burning flesh as the flames raced across his body.

  Nyles leaped to his feet. “Come on!” He hauled Dee up by her good arm and dragged her away.

  But they’d forgotten about the minefield of broken glass.

  Dee cried out in pain as shards pierced the soft soles of her feet, and she collapsed, dragging Nyles to the floor with her. He scrambled to push himself upright, slicing his hands in the process. As they struggled to escape, Dee could feel the heat radiating from Gucci’s body. He clawed toward her, and her bloodied feet slipped against the concrete as she tried to back away.

  Nyles threw himself on top of Dee in an effort to protect her, but as Gucci’s arm reached out to grab her ankle, his strength gave way.

  “Oh my God,” Dee gasped. Together she and Nyles watched in horror as the fire engulfed Gucci Hangman. His face seemed to melt away as the flames disintegrated his signature scarf, and Dee felt as if she were staring into the face of the Devil himself—a mask of fire with two gaping black holes for eyes.

  Just then, an overhead sprinkler system kicked in, dousing the warehouse in water.

  The deluge seemed to go on forever. Nyles tried to keep Dee dry, but she didn’t mind the water. The coolness felt good against her skin, and though the wounds in her feet stung, the fiery ache in her fractured wrist was somewhat dulled by the cold. Finally the water pressure waned, slowing to a trickle before stopping completely. Dee lay on her back, soaked to the bone, blinking through wet eyelashes at Nyles, who lay on top of her. Behind him, the ruins of the Zoolander set smoldered, and the blood from her feet and Nyles’s hands streaked through the pooled water, dissipating from red to pink.

  “Hey,” Nyles said, smiling. Water dripped from his hair onto her face. “Still alive?”

  “Barely.”

  “Good enough.”

  He rolled off her and cradled his hands in his lap. A dozen or more shards of glass protruded from his palms, the skin ragged beneath. He tried to pull one out, but his hands were shaking from pain and shock.

  “Let me.” Dee laid his hands on top of her wounded arm, and with her good hand yanked the largest piece from the fleshy area near Nyles’s right thumb. He winced but didn’t cry out, clenching his jaw fiercely against the agony.

  “I hope you weren’t planning on bei
ng a surgeon, Doctor Strange,” Dee said, trying to distract him as she continued to tear bits of glass from his palms.

  “Ah yes, I get that reference,” Nyles said through gritted teeth. “Perhaps I shall resort to magic as well.”

  “You should grow a beard, too. Complete the look.”

  “Barbaric Barista wore off on you, did he?” Nyles grinned. “I just might, you know. Grow a long snarled thing.”

  Dee rolled her eyes. “Don’t you dare.”

  “You wouldn’t like to kiss me if I had overgrown whiskers, eh?”

  Dee removed the last piece of glass, then glanced up at Nyles. “No, I’d still kiss you.”

  Nyles winked at her before shifting his attention to her lacerated feet. “Your turn.”

  As Nyles worked, Dee stared up at the warehouse rafters and tried to think about anything other than the searing torture.

  With a surgeon’s precision, Nyles wrenched the jagged fragments from the soles of her feet.

  It felt like a movie scene, something she’d seen before but hardly remembered. An action flick, maybe? Ethan would have known.

  Dee was exhausted. She just wanted to close her eyes and go to sleep. It would be so easy to just stay here with Nyles and the water and the smell of charred flesh and wet dog….

  “Wet dog?”

  Nyles didn’t look up. “Huh?”

  Dee sniffed the air again. The stench was unmistakable. “I smell wet dog. That means Molly Mauler and her wild animals.”

  “It’ll be a trap,” Nyles said. He finished with Dee’s feet and removed the sling from her arm. He tied the sleeves around her neck, cradling her broken arm in the rest of the fabric; then Nyles used his teeth to tear what remained of his wet shirt into strips. “Even if we can find the way out of here, we’d probably round a corner, a door would slide closed, and boom: lion appetizer.”