“We should go there,” she said, pointing toward the orange glow.
She felt the reluctance in his stiffness next to her, and the fear. She experienced the same thing, but she felt even more strongly that unless they all pulled together they would not make it, they would not live to be rescued. Another day as hot as today, with no food or water, and they’d become sick, dehydrated. A day later . . .
She could not allow that to happen to her sons. She would not.
“They’re assholes,” she said. “But they’re people.”
“People who slaughtered dozens of other people.”
“Because they were forced to,” she said. “Because they’d been influenced or corrupted or whatever word you want to use.”
“And you think we can just walk up to them and say, ‘Hi. Let’s make up. We’re all people here, after all.’ ” He shook his head. “Appeals to our common humanity are not going to work.”
She glared at him. “Do you have a better idea? I know! Why don’t we just sit here and starve to death! Or we could hide out until we’re too weak to move and then try to negotiate a truce!”
“What truce? You saw what they did in the tournament. They killed people.”
“Would you have done any different?” she asked, and from the expression on his face, she knew that she’d gotten to him. She took a deep calming breath, placed a hand on his arm. “Maybe you wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much, but you would’ve done the same. You wouldn’t have had a choice. That’s all I’m saying. Maybe . . . maybe they regret what they did.”
He nodded slowly, and she knew he was thinking of that man they’d found sleeping under a bush. “We could . . . look,” he said. “But we’re not just going to walk into the middle of their camp. We’ll check out the situation first, watch them.”
“I don’t want the boys coming,” she told him.
“The boys? You’re not going either.”
“The hell I’m not.”
He held up a hand as if getting ready to lecture her, then apparently thought the better of it. “All right,” he said. “We’ll just make sure the kids stay inside. There are people around. Jose’s in one of the tents on the lawn. I’ll tell him to keep an eye out.”
Ryan wanted to come along—he seemed strangely energized by everything that had happened—but they made it clear he was to remain in the suite with his brothers and David and not open the door for anyone other than themselves. The other boys seemed listless and depressed to Rachel, and showed no interest in leaving the room. Owen, in particular, looked devastated, and she wondered if he was still thinking about that girl.
Brenda
Rachel glanced over at Lowell. She was still unsettled that a figure from his past would appear here at The Reata and attach herself to their son. She wondered how that had happened.
And why.
Lowell went downstairs, told Jose where they were going and asked him to watch the suite, make sure no one entered or left. Then the two of them started off across the grounds.
She’d been cooped up for so long that the world outside seemed like hostile territory, the landmarks by which she’d navigated The Reata for the past few days unfamiliar. She felt rudderless and disoriented, and though she knew they were walking down the slope to the lower portion of the resort, it felt as though they were traveling in the opposite direction. It would be very easy to get lost here, and she knew that she had to be extremely careful outside of their suite or she might end up wandering in some remote area of the property, easy pickings for whatever lurked out there in the dark.
The moon was out and full, providing illumination, and they made their way toward the amphitheater, Lowell leading the way. They stuck to paved pathways, afraid of being out in the open and drawing attention to themselves but more afraid of what might lurk in the shadows.
The back of the amphitheater was empty and unguarded. They approached with caution, peeking around the corner to make sure no one saw them before crouching low and sneaking into the last row of seats, hiding in the shadows thrown by a skinny palm tree. At the front of the amphitheater, the first four or five rows had been torn out, chairs tossed aside to make room for the chaotic revelry that was taking place. There were scores of people here, far more than merely the Roadrunners and their families, and Rachel realized that they must have attracted converts. She thought of the Biblical tale of the golden calf. She had never believed that story, had never bought that after enduring two thousand years of slavery and waiting to be delivered from Egypt only to escape through a spectacular series of miracles, Moses’ followers would start worshipping a golden calf because he was a little late coming down from the mount.
She believed it now, though. Watching the frenetic bodies downslope from them, she could feel the chaotic energy of this place, the pulsing power fueling this lawless confusion. She felt its pull as well, the powerful attraction, and a part of her wanted to jump up from her hiding place and join them. It was only the thought of her kids and the solid presence of Lowell next to her that kept her from dancing in the hot night with wild abandon.
The glow they’d seen from their suite was from a huge bonfire at the back of the stage, a conflagration fueled by dried brush and broken wood furniture taken from various rooms. In front of the blaze, in silhouette, half a dozen men and women were performing some sort of crude play, and Rachel was reminded immediately of Hamlet and the performance put on by the traveling players for the benefit of Hamlet’s uncle. She couldn’t tell exactly what was happening on stage, but it appeared to be a reenactment of the molestation of another resort guest. On the flat area below the raised stage, still illuminated by the bonfire, she saw several people scurrying about under the command of a large dominant figure barking orders.
Blodgett.
They’d caught someone, a uniformed Reata employee, a maid or laundress who had been hiding on the grounds or in the surrounding chaparral, and they’d tied her with wire and connected the wires to a series of broomsticks and branches held by different men. They were making her dance like a marionette, jerking on the wires, which dug into her flesh and generated sheets of flowing blood. Above the singing and screaming and orgiastic cries of the other celebrants, she heard the chilling sound of Blodgett’s rough booming laugh.
It was dangerous to be here. If they were caught, they would be killed. She grabbed Lowell’s sleeve, pulling on it to indicate that they should leave, and he followed her out from under the palm tree shadow, out of the amphitheater’s last row and into the anonymous night.
There was no peace to be made with the Roadrunners.
On their way back, they took a different route, a shorter route, and passed by the pool. Torches were burning, jammed into cracks and crevices in the fake rock by the top of the slide. In the pool, dead bodies bobbed, their black shapes visible only against the orange reflective torchlight shimmering on the gently rippling water.
“I was wrong,” Rachel said. “They might be people but they’re not like us.”
“No,” Lowell told her. “You were right.”
They didn’t say anything after that, simply continued walking. Rachel was suffused with a numbing deep despair. They were doomed. She could see the black shapes of the bodies from the corner of her eye, floating on the orange-dappled water. She thought of the boys. What would happen to them? she wondered. How would they die?
Suddenly Lowell started running.
“What is it?” she asked, panicked.
“The rooms!” he shouted as he ran, and she could see in the moonlight strewn towels and flattened sheets where the tents had stood. “They’re on fire!”
Ryan sat on the floor in front of the dead television, wishing it was on, wishing they were anywhere but here. David, Curtis and Owen were sitting silently at the table, nibbling on Necco wafers. One of the hotel workers had given them a candle and some matches, and they huddled around that feeble flickering flame, grateful for its light.
They needed to return t
o Antelope Canyon. Ryan knew it if no one else did. He’d brought it up to his dad, his mom, David and his brothers, but his parents were too focused on the here and now, on what was happening at The Reata, and David and his brothers were too scared to go back there again.
Not that he blamed them.
Ryan was scared, too. More scared than he had ever been in his life. More scared than he ever thought he could be. But unless the Rescue Rangers suddenly appeared and whisked them all back to civilization—a possibility that seemed increasingly unlikely—they were going to have to find their own way out of this horror. And that meant putting a stop to the rejuvenation of the old resort. He didn’t know whether there was some special ritual they had to perform or whether they could just blow the place up, but he knew they had to act before the hotel in Antelope Canyon was fully restored.
What would happen when the old resort was fully restored?
He had no idea.
But it was something very, very bad.
Ryan stood and stretched. In the car, he had an old Gameboy that ran on batteries, a toy that accompanied him on all their long trips. If he’d only taken it out and brought it into the room, at least they’d have something to do. He walked up to the table, held his hand out for a Necco wafer, and got a brown one. Popping it into his mouth, he glanced through the open doorway into his parents’ room.
And saw movement.
Ryan’s heart lurched in his chest. He motioned for the others to turn around and look, afraid to speak aloud and not sure if he could do so even if he wanted to.
Something emerged from the gloom, a thin white figure with a blurred blank face that he recognized from his vision at the exercise pool. It floated rather than walked, gliding past the bed toward their room. He remembered his certainty that its touch meant death.
Acting fast, almost without thinking, he ran across the room, slammed the door and with fumbling fingers locked it. “Quick!” he yelled. “Get over here! Push something in front of the door! The dresser!”
Neither Curtis, Owen nor David had seen what he’d seen or knew why he wanted them to blockade the door, but they were there instantly. “The fucker’s bolted down!” David called, trying to push the dresser.
“It doesn’t matter,” Owen said, and Ryan suddenly realized he was right. “The door opens out.”
“What is it?” Curtis demanded. “What’s there?”
Ryan didn’t know how to describe it. “A ghost, I guess,” he said quickly, backing away from the door and keeping his eye on the handle in case it should turn. “A weird white thing that was floating through their room. I saw one of those things before,” he added quickly. “By the exercise pool.” He thought now that if he ever lived through this to write anything it would be a harsh story of survival rather than an entertaining travel book.
Their candle suddenly flared, the flame turning blood red and shooting high into the air, its tip flicking against the vaulted ceiling like a serpent’s tongue.
There was a knock at the door. Not a loud crash or a demanding boom but a mild, almost polite rapping that was somehow far, far worse. It paused, then started again, paused, then started again, and then there were no more pauses, only that light insistent tapping, the wordless plea of that faceless being asking to come in.
“Go away!” Ryan screamed.
The rapping continued, and the tall thin flame not only flicked at the wooden ceiling but spread across it, not burning it exactly but multiplying along its surface. The room was suffused in a red glow. The slats of the upper right shutter were opening and closing on their own, resembling nothing more than the winking of an eye, and there was a pulsing beneath the covers on the bed that made it appear as if the mattress was home to some type of monstrous amoeba. A persistent shadow in the corner, roughly the shape of a monkey, danced hyperkinetically, although there was no figure in the room to which it even remotely corresponded.
“Fuck,” David breathed. “Oh fuck.”
The floor rolled, as though it was liquid and they were atop it, riding the wave. The building itself was changing around them. Everyone had been so focused on the Roadrunners and finding food and matters of practical survival that they’d almost forgotten the real reason they were in this mess—the resort. Whether it was haunted by supernatural beings or whether it was alive and creating such creatures itself, this place was far more evil and far more dangerous than any human ever could be.
“We have to get out of here!” Curtis shouted. His voice sounded like he was trying to communicate over a jet engine, though despite all of the activity, the only noise in the room remained that maddening gentle knocking.
His brother was right, Ryan knew, but the door outside was through their parents’ room, and their own windows were hidden behind that terrible winking shutter and could not be opened. They’d have to be smashed, and the four of them would be forced to leap to the ground, quite a jump even under ideal circumstances.
David took charge. Picking up the chair on which he’d been sitting, he lifted it above his head and ran toward the shutters, throwing it as hard as he could against the winking upper corner. The slats cracked and fell, the frame jerked loose from its hinges, and both the upper and lower shutters fell away from the window. There was no residual movement, the wood was only wood, and David threw open the left pair of shutters, picked up his chair, hefted it and slammed it into the glass. The pane must have looked a lot thicker than it really was, because it shattered instantly beneath this onslaught, and David awkwardly manuevered his body around in order to clean the glass from the edges of the window with a chair leg.
The room was suddenly filled with the overpowering smell of smoke, but since that strange red flame was still expanding over the surface of the ceiling and not touching the wood, the fire had to be coming from outside. Was the building burning? Or was there a fire down below on the grass into which they’d be jumping?
It didn’t matter. They had to get out of here, and David went first, screaming as he leaped out of the open window into the night. The rest of them were hot on his heels, not speaking, not needing to speak, as they attempted to escape that hellish room.
Ryan hit the ground hard, landing on his feet but immediately falling over from the jolt. Rolling, he had time to see that the building housing their suite was on fire and that the tents on the grass around him had been torn down, their occupants nowhere to be seen. He tried to stand and was grateful that he was able to do so. Curtis, Owen and David were on their feet as well, as surprised as he was not to have any broken bones. They looked up at their room. Through twin tendrils of smoke curling down from the roof, a white figure could be seen standing in front of their shattered window, the ceiling red with heatless flame behind it.
Ryan felt tired, empty, hungry, scared. He wished this was all a dream, a nightmare from which he would awake, but it wasn’t, and his brain and body were overwhelmed by everything he had seen and experienced. He might have read a lot of books, and maybe he had some insights that might help them handle the situation here, but deep down he was just a kid, and he didn’t want to have to deal with this. He shouldn’t have to deal with this.
A familiar shout caused him to turn around, and his heart swelled as he saw his parents speeding toward them across the lawn, calling their names, their faces an alternating mixture of terror and relief. His father reached them first, and Ryan fell gratefully into his welcome arms.
“Dad,” he sobbed.
Thirty-six
Other buildings had collapsed during the night. They saw the destruction from Rand Black’s window when they awoke: an entire block of rooms that had imploded, crumbling into itself; the Santa Fe structure housing the Saguaro Room and the Grille now a jumble of faux adobe, exposed wooden beams, broken plumbing and snapped wiring; the modern building next to it that had been home to the Winner’s Circle completely gone, not even a foundation remaining. Smoke or dust issued from the piles of rubble, polluting the air outside and giving the rising su
n a brownish cast.
Despite the boys’ story, Lowell would have still probably assumed the Roadrunners were behind it all had he not been to that other resort in the canyon. For that is what The Reata now resembled. And if the kids were right about the symbiotic relationship between the two, that other resort was probably in tip-top shape right about now.
But he could not convince the employees or the other survivors of any such thing. Black was stirred up and energized, and going room to room, tent to tent, he gathered a large band of angry men nearly thirty strong to chase down the Roadrunners and their supporters. Lowell accompanied them, but more out of obligation than conviction. Black had offered to share his room with them last night after their own suite disintegrated before their eyes, and the firefighter and his wife had been gracious enough to provide sleeping space for their boys and David in the limited area they had. He owed them.
How many people were here at The Reata right now? he wondered. Even if only two-thirds of the resort’s rooms had been occupied—and the full parking lots had indicated it was probably more than that—that left approximately fifty rooms. An average of two people per room made a hundred. And as far as employees, between managers and support staff and maintenance services there were another thirty.
And how many were left? It was impossible to say, and he only hoped that their side outnumbered the other side.
Not that it would make any difference in the long run. The Reata was pitting them against each other and no doubt had plans of its own for whichever side came out on top.
They marched up the sidewalk to the rooms that were left, gathering recruits. On the gate by the pool, they found a note, written in blood on a white queen-sized bedsheet. The message consisted of two words: TOURNAMENT TONIGHT.
None of them knew exactly what that meant. Obviously the Roadrunners wanted a match of some sort, but what sport they intended to play and where it was to be held and all of the other practical details remained unstated and unknown. The note was aimed at them, however, so obviously they’d been expected to come here and find it. That easy prediction of their movements didn’t sit well with anyone.
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