The Resort

by Bentley Little

  “They were at the amphitheater last night.” Black turned toward Lowell. “How many would you estimate?”

  “I don’t know,” Lowell admitted. “All of the Roadrunners. What’s that, fifteen or so? Plus their families.” He paused. “I saw some recruits, too.”

  “Let’s figure fifty to be on the safe side.”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “The question is: what do we do when we find them?” Black sounded just as angry as he had before, but a sense of pragmatism seemed to have entered his thinking. “I doubt we could overpower them even with the element of surprise. Do we watch them, follow them, take them out one by one when we get the opportunity, or—”

  “Take them out?” Jose said.

  Lowell was thinking exactly the same thing. If the firefighter had said “capture them” or something along those lines, he would have been right with him. But Black clearly had no problem with killing Roadrunners, with murdering each of them individually, irrespective of their culpability in any of this.

  “Yeah,” Scott said defensively. “Take them out.” He motioned around at the battered resort. “You see what they’re capable of. Hell, we all knew it before that first volleyball game. Now it’s kill or be killed, and unless we want to be the victims here, we’ve got to strike hard and make it count.”

  “It’s stooping to their level,” Lowell said quietly, though he was not sure he believed his own argument. He, too, felt the pull of violence, understood the satisfaction to be gained by taking that sort of action.

  “I came here for a vacation with my family,” said a clean-cut young man Lowell didn’t know. “I’m not going to end it by murdering someone.”

  “I suppose it’s against your religion,” Scott sneered.

  The man faced him. “As a matter of fact, it is. Do you have a problem with that?”

  “Okay, okay,” Black said wearily. “Let’s not fight among ourselves.” He turned back toward Lowell. “Any suggestions?”

  He didn’t have any. He agreed with the religious guy, he wasn’t willing to kill anyone—

  not yet

  —but he also thought they should be keeping tabs on the Roadrunners, especially if Blodgett and his crew were expecting them to participate in some sort of tournament. “Let’s find them first,” he suggested. “We’ll see how it plays from there.”

  They could see from here that the lobby was still sealed shut, and Lowell was sure that was where the Roadrunners were hiding, but just in case, they set out for the amphitheater, approaching it cautiously in three split groups, one from the rear, one from either side. As expected, the amphitheater was empty save for several nude and broken bodies strung from the rigging above the stage. The bonfire had burned itself out without causing too much damage, but all of the seats had been ripped from their moorings and piled in front of the stage in obvious preparation for another bonfire. Graffiti marked the walls all around, and on a big boulder in back of the stage was a frighteningly realized depiction of an ancient scraggly-haired man who had to be the same figure the kids had seen. As the other men prowled the aisles and backstage area of the amphitheater looking for Roadrunners or any living victims, Lowell studied the drawing. It was in ash or charcoal, and portrayed a man so thin and desiccated he looked almost like a corpse. Only his eyes were alive, and even in this rough amateur sketch their irredeemable darkness shone through chillingly.

  There was nothing else to be found here, and they made a quick tour of the remaining resort, including a short trip to Laszlo’s garage, where the battery bought for Lowell’s car still sat forlornly on a metal cart next to an open bay, before returning to the main building that housed the lobby.

  According to a waiter, the building was also home to the Starlight Pavilion, a secret restaurant catering exclusively to winners of the tournaments. Lowell had not realized before how integral these tournaments seemed to be to life at The Reata. He’d known before the first volleyball game that it wasn’t just the casual diversion the activities coordinator had made it out to be, but he hadn’t understood until now just how much importance the powers that be attached to these competitions.

  They stood under the awning by the front entrance, which had been sealed shut with plywood onto which had been painted a childish red skull and crossbones. “Any ideas on how to get in?” Black asked Jose and the other employees.

  “There’s a service entrance around the side,” Jose said. “But it’s probably boarded up, too. It’s worth a shot, though.”

  As if on cue, a spear shot out from an unseen opening, hitting Laszlo in the arm. It pierced the skin and carved a slash above his elbow that immediately started gushing blood, but the mechanic merely pulled off his T-shirt and clamped it against the bleeding wound as the rest of them retreated. Jose thought to grab the spear.

  The wound obviously hurt, but it wasn’t life-threatening, and Laszlo didn’t seem too concerned. He appeared to be more angry than anything else, and he pulled the spear from Jose’s hand as the entire group continued moving farther out into the parking lot.

  “Still think we shouldn’t strike first and ask questions later?” Scott demanded.

  They looked slightly ridiculous, Lowell thought, thirty or so grown men cowering in a huddle in the middle of an empty parking lot, and he, too, thought they should be taking some kind of action, but he didn’t know what and didn’t know how.

  “So I guess our tournament this afternoon is the javelin toss?” someone said dryly, and the laughter that greeted his remark at least alleviated some of the tension.

  Black, standing next to Laszlo, looked at the spear, as did Lowell. It looked old, like something taken out of a museum. “Where—?” Lowell started to ask.

  “They sell ’em in the gift shop,” Jose said, and Lowell remembered seeing a display case with several overpriced pots and Native American artifacts.

  “At least we know where they are,” Black said. He thought for a moment. “Okay. We’ll station someone here, rotating shifts, to keep an eye on them. Two people,” he amended, obviously thinking of the spear. “Just in case. If there’s any movement, anything unusual, come and get the rest of us. I suggest we do like they do today, remain all in one place for safety’s sake.”

  “We have walkie-talkies,” Jose said. “They run on batteries and don’t have much of a range, but they’ll work anywhere in The Reata. We could give one to the people standing watch, and spread the others around.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us this before?” Black asked, exasperated.

  “I’m telling you now,” Jose said coolly, and Lowell realized that the employees still did not completely trust the guests. The feeling, he supposed, looking at Scott, was mutual.

  Two men volunteered to take first watch, Jose and a custodian, while the rest of them returned to pick up their families and meet on the grassy area in front of the last set of rooms, the building farthest away from the lobby. Lowell wasn’t sure if it was real or just his imagination, but the entire resort now seemed to have a sickening putrid smell, like spoiled meat, and he could not help thinking of all those dead bodies bloating in the desert heat.

  They spent the rest of the morning worrying and talking, the afternoon practicing and making weapons out of the few materials they had on hand. Lowell sharpened a broom-handle spear, and the boys made smaller shivs from broken branches. Laszlo and another mechanic raided the garage and came away with quite a few wrenches, screwdrivers and tire irons.

  The tension and close quarters caused them to get on each others’ nerves, and a fistfight broke out between one of The Reata’s custodians and one of the guests, a former Coyote who, before all this started, had complained to the front desk about an overflowing litter basket, a complaint that had resulted in a reprimand. People immediately began taking sides, and it would have turned into a huge ugly brawl with employees versus guests had Lowell not interceded and reminded them that they needed to work together against a common enemy. The men grudgingly
gave it up, going back to their respective tasks.

  “What kind of tournament do you think they want to have?” Lowell asked Black.

  The firefighter shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a ball game.”

  “If you had to guess?”

  He looked at Lowell. “Hand-to-hand combat. To the death.”

  Lowell looked out at the awkward guests and the only slightly more agile employees, running around a makeshift obstacle course, weapons in hand. “You think we’ll be ready?”

  “No.”

  The Roadrunners came out at night.

  The crackle of six walkie-talkies across the crowded parking lot and a message from the two most recent volunteers jolted everyone into battle stance. “They’re out,” Scott whispered. “They’re dressed dark and going down the stairs. They’ll be coming out the pool area.”

  That was closer to the lobby than where they were.

  “Go!” Black shouted. “Go!”

  Lowell squeezed Rachel’s hand, gave her an extra spear, told her and the boys to protect the others who were staying. “Keep an eye out. Watch all sidewalks and trails, keep checking behind that palm tree; it’s a good hiding place. We’ll be back.”

  But he wasn’t sure if they would, and as he ran with the other men up the hill, he realized what an untrained, unprepared, ragtag group of fighters they really were. The Roadrunners would crush them.

  At least they had the advantage of surprise. The Roadrunners didn’t know where they were, and they had spies keeping close track of the Roadrunners’ movements. An ambush was still possible.

  He could kill, he realized now.

  He could and would.

  It became quickly clear that they would not reach the pool area before the enemy, so Black stopped them in an easily defensible area near the employees’ quarters, closing the gate that offered the only entrance here, deploying men to every side of the open space, stationing some in trees and in buildings, leaving a small volunteer contingent on the road out front as bait, telling Scott and the other watcher their exact location so they could be forewarned of the Roadrunners’ approach.

  Lowell stood next to Black inside a storage room, peeking out of the partially open door, feeling scared but strangely excited.

  The walkie-talkie crackled. “They’re on their way. They’re almost there.”

  The first few Roadrunners through the gate—not Blodgett—were bludgeoned with tire irons by custodians stationed to either side of the entrance, but then one of the custodians went down, and the two sides came together on the narrow sloping stretch of ground, clashing like armies on a battlefield. Lowell and Black sped out of the storage room, attacking from the side. Lowell stabbed the buttocks of a feral woman in bloody rags who screamed and ran away, then swung at an older man in a dirty summer suit, hitting him across the face. The man fell down, clutching his head and crying out in pain, and Lowell moved on. Should he have stayed to finish the job, stabbing the man through the heart? Maybe so, but he couldn’t do it, and his goal became not to kill but to injure and incapacitate.

  He was pretty successful at meeting his goal.

  For a while, it seemed that men and women were coming after him right and left. He felt like the hero of an action movie as he swung and stabbed, tripped and kicked. He received a few blows himself, including one on the left shoulder that rendered that arm nearly useless, but overall he gave far more than he got, and somewhere in the middle of the skirmish, Lowell realized that individuals were escaping, dashing over the fence or around the buildings, running into the night. Whether they were pursued or pursuer, he could not tell.

  At some point, the action wound down, he was no longer fighting all comers, and he looked around, thinking the fight was over, wanting to see which side had won. But the battle had merely moved out into the road, and he took the opportunity to stop and catch his breath. He sat down on a rock for a moment, hoping his brief respite would enable him to get a second wind, praying that it didn’t cause the deaths of some of his fellow Cactus Wrens. He breathed deeply and started coughing. They should’ve carried water with them, he thought, and then he was throwing up, puking onto the dirt. He wiped his mouth, went out over the collapsed fence, and found not the concerted focused fighting of only a few moments before but a wild free-for-all that seemed to spread over the visible area of The Reata before him, individuals chasing each other down trails, around cactus, wrestling on the sidewalks, darting around and in and out of the extant buildings. He’d been planning to join the fight, but there was not really a fight to join, and wearily he made his way down the road toward the bottom parking lot to make sure Rachel and the kids were all right.

  They were gone.

  All of the families left behind were gone, in their place a broken walkie-talkie, and some bloody clothing and the speared body of a man he didn’t recognize. “Rachel!” he called at the top of his lungs, not caring if he drew attention to his whereabouts. “Ryan! Curtis! Owen!” The Roadrunners had split up, he realized, and somehow Scott and the other watcher had missed that. They’d been battling only a partial contingent, which explained the easiness of the fighting. The rest had been dispatched elsewhere.

  Here.

  And it had cost his family their lives.

  No. He couldn’t think that way. And he set off, spear in hand, down what he considered the most likely trail, which led toward the chef’s garden.

  The garden was trampled, but no one was there. He picked up a stone-headed tomahawk from the ground that had to be from the gift shop. The moon gave off more than enough light to see by, but there were still plenty of shadows, and he moved carefully past each one, looking for hiding combatants or dead bodies, praying he found neither.

  The Reata seemed bigger than it had before. The resort was set on sixty acres, and he thought he’d been over most of it, but he found himself on trails he hadn’t known existed, walking past burning rubble that had been buildings he didn’t recognize. He heard screaming from somewhere —sound carried strangely here—and shouts of single words in unison, but there were other screams from other directions, other shouts, and he had no idea what was going on out there. Somewhere on the east end of the resort, standing on a tall boulder so he could see as far as possible, he spotted a group of men and women traveling up a nearby service road. The two in front were carrying torches, and there was something in the angry march of their walk that made him hop down off the rock and head immediately in the opposite direction. There was shouting from this area, too, invectives and words of anger, and he quickly stepped off the trail, ran down the slope to an oleander bush and hid.

  Not a moment too soon.

  They passed by, shouting their desires and demands, Roadrunners and Coyotes and Cactus Wrens and others. They’d come together in the brush, these various factions, and like all anarchic crowds they’d decided to turn on their leaders, no longer blaming their opponents for the wrongs visited upon them but blaming their own commanders for the situation in which they found themselves. They’d turned savage in the night, and whatever their original classes or occupations—rich or poor, janitor or stock broker—they were now children of the desert, spawn of The Reata, and they returned to the ruined buildings looking for scapegoats, looking for blood.

  He waited until they passed by, then headed back down the path the way they’d come.

  He found Blodgett in front of what had been the Grille.

  The man was whimpering, and even Lowell felt sorry for him. He’d been stripped and doused with gasoline and set afire, and though he’d managed to roll out the flames, a large portion of his body had been charred and there was about him the sickening smell of burnt skin. He was lying on the ground, curled up in a fetal position, and he looked up at Lowell with eyes that begged for release or absolution or help or . . . something.

  Blodgett was not the enemy, he realized. The man was just another victim.

  As was the mob that had turned on him.

  But that mob was
uncontrollable, and Lowell knew that if those people found him they would attack him, too. Stone him to death, perhaps. Or string him up.

  Maybe they’d already done so to his family.

  He hurried on, growing increasingly frustrated as he realized that he was on a trail he had already taken, that this was an area of the resort he had explored extensively. Stopping where he was, he made a beeline for the spot where he knew the tennis courts were. He had not been anywhere near that area tonight.

  He found Rachel and the twins huddled together in the shade of a cottonwood tree, hidden from the moonlight in a puddle of darkness. Rachel called his name, sobbing, and he ran to meet her, giving her a hard hug, almost weeping with gratitude as he saw that she had no scratches on her face, that her clothes were still on, that her limbs were not broken. Curtis and Owen, too, gave him big hugs, both of them crying as they hadn’t cried for years, like little children frightened of the dark and grateful for the saving grace of a parent.

  But . . .

  He stepped back, met Rachel’s dark haunted eyes, and a bolt of cold shot through him.

  “Where is Ryan?”

  Ryan saw the old man. The one from the mirror, the soulless cadaver with the scraggly hair. He didn’t know at first whether he was dreaming or whether it was real, but the fact that he was even asking that question gave him the answer he needed because he never questioned the reality of a dream while he was in it, no matter how absurd the scenarios became.

  This was real.

  The old man was striding up the nearby sidewalk like he owned the place, walking fast and sure for someone who looked like a corpse, a gait that only served to make him seem even more frightening. He’d come from Antelope Canyon, and though Ryan had no idea why he was here, the thought in his mind was that the man had arrived to survey his new acquisition. Ryan turned to his mom and brothers, but to his astonishment they were asleep, his mom leaning against the tree, his brothers on the ground. They’d been awake only seconds previously, and Ryan was filled with fear as he took another peek toward the sidewalk.