by Daniel Cole
“. . . Everyone’s dead.”
Curtis had to mount the pavement to get through the gridlocked traffic as they drew nearer to West 51st Street. Two blocks out, a young officer waved them through the hastily organized road closure on Broadway. He dragged a flimsy plastic barricade across the icy sludge, opening up the deserted street for them. Curtis accelerated toward the crowd of police cars abandoned across the junction ahead, their flashing blue lights fanning out in all directions.
They skidded to a stop outside Paramount Plaza, as close as they could get to their destination, and ran the rest of the way on foot. Baxter was convinced they were heading in the wrong direction as she scanned the uniform buildings for anything resembling a church, exhaust-stained facades lining both sides of the street. She was even more confused when she followed Curtis and Rouche through the doors of a grand old theater.
The ornate 1930s lobby was an uneasy fusion of decadence, messages assuring that all one really needs in life is God, and police officers wearing traumatized expressions, suggesting that perhaps God was having an off-day.
A set of doors stood open, allowing glimpses into the auditorium beyond. Baxter could see flashlights sweeping across a golden ceiling and the top of a bloodred curtain, drawn closed as if in anticipation of a show.
She followed her colleagues through the doorway.
Just three steps into the magnificent hall, they stopped.
“Oh my God!” whispered Curtis, while Rouche regarded his surroundings in utter disbelief.
Baxter pushed between them but immediately regretted doing so. The old picture-house-turned-theater, reborn a church, had gone through a final metamorphosis, a depraved mutation: a living manifestation of hell on earth. She felt light-headed as her eyes drank in the scene before her. She had forgotten the feeling, the same plunging reaction that she had experienced on first laying eyes on the Ragdoll suspended in front of those large windows in that filthy Kentish Town apartment.
Countless wires crisscrossed overhead, running from stage to balcony, from ceiling to carpeted floor, ornate wall to ornate wall—a steel spiderweb hanging above the tiered rows of plush red theater chairs. Bodies like trapped insects, twisted into unique and yet disturbingly familiar contortions, unnatural and deformed, naked and scarred.
In a daze, Baxter led her colleagues farther into the auditorium . . . further into hell.
The exploring flashlights threw ominous shadows across the walls, distorted likenesses of disfigured subjects, and a hushed murmur emanated from the dozens of police officers already inside as they weaved between the horrors. Nobody was giving orders or pulling rank, presumably because, much like Baxter, no one had any idea what to do.
A roving flashlight passed over a body above them, the beam reflecting brightly off the dark skin. Confused, Baxter drew closer, an eerie creaking sound becoming louder as her eyes ran the lengths of the bent limbs, contorted more violently than the others, fractured in on themselves.
“Do you mind?” she asked a passing officer, adopting an appropriate stage whisper.
Pleased to have somebody to tell him what to do, he shone his light skyward . . .
“There are others,” he informed them as the wooden limbs swayed gently. “Not sure how many.”
They were staring up at a full-sized but featureless replica of the people suspended in the air around them—the head an eyeless oval, sinister expressions formed in the grains of the polished wood . . . a marionette floating before a theater stage, a familiar word gouged through its hollow body, “Bait.” Glancing around the darkened room, it was impossible to tell which of the twisted shapes surrounding them were real.
A moment passed and then Curtis stepped away from them. Holding her identification high above her head, she addressed the room: “Special Agent Elliot Curtis with the FBI! I will be taking the lead on this crime scene. Everyone is to report to me, and any press contact is to go through me . . . Thank you.”
Baxter and Rouche shared a look, but neither said anything.
“Curtis, stay close!” Rouche hissed as she moved farther from them to stand among the seats in the very center of the room, the theater’s real stage, an arbitary point around which all the hanging bodies seemed to be facing. “Curtis!”
She ignored him, assigning an officer the unenviable task of counting up the exact number of dead versus wooden mannequins.
Baxter took a few steps toward the closest suspended body, placing the victim in his sixties. His mouth gaped open like the recent wounds torn into his chest: “Bait.” Even in the subdued lighting, she could make out the bruised-blue-colored skin of the dead. He had been strung up so that the tips of his toes were just brushing the old red carpet.
She was startled by a loud thump above them but then saw the beam of a flashlight emitting from the balcony as one brave officer checked the upper level. Curtis gave her an anxious smile from the center of the room, standing below the body of a man just a few rows over.
The hushed murmur became a gentle hum as more uniformed officers filled the hall, a tide of blue retreating from the streets of the city to amass in a single room like moths buzzing around a flame. More flashlights shone across the darkened hall.
The additional light fell over four other suspended corpses nearby, causing Baxter to notice something that she had not before. She fumbled around for her phone, aimed its weak light up at a body hanging in midair just below the balcony, and then at the lone figure contorted agonizingly up on the stage. She hurried over to a female victim, positioned with her back to her. Ducking beneath the wires anchoring the woman in place, she shone the light across her exposed chest.
“Baxter?” asked Rouche. He had noticed her erratic behavior and rushed over to join her. “What is it?”
“Something . . .”
She whipped her head around and illuminated the lean, pale body that Curtis was still standing in front of.
Curtis looked over at them quizzically.
“Baxter?” Rouche repeated.
“Bait,” she replied distantly.
“What about it?”
“They’re all Bait. Every one of them,” she explained, looking around in concern. “So where are the Puppets?”
A drop of blood landed on her cheek. She raised her hand to it instinctively, smudging it across her face.
Rouche looked up at the body beside them, the familiar word carved across the slight frame, streaks of crimson still snaking down past her navel.
“The dead don’t bleed,” he mumbled, pulling Baxter away.
This time, she didn’t fight back but turned to him with terrified eyes as her makeshift flashlight beam fell over Curtis’s victim—a spectral white in the glow of Baxter’s light.
Curtis beckoned them over, wanting to know what they were talking about, when the muscles beneath the sallow skin behind her twitched and one of the long white arms unwrapped itself from the wire, a glint of light reflecting off something in its closed hand . . .
Before Rouche could reach for his weapon, before either of them could even call her name in warning, the reanimated corpse had swept its hand across her throat in a single gentle motion.
Baxter stood openmouthed as Rouche fired three deafening rounds into the man’s torso, causing him to jerk violently against the taut wires that held him in place.
In the moments that followed, the only sound in the silent hall was the metallic hum of the web vibrating.
Curtis’s wide eyes met Rouche’s own as she comprehended what was happening. She removed her hand from her neck to find it dripping with dark blood. Copious amounts poured down her white blouse like the stage curtain descending. Baxter was already running toward her as she swayed and dropped out of sight behind a row of chairs.
“Everybody out!” Rouche shouted. “Get out!”
Several of the figures around them had begun freeing themselves from their contortions. The shouts of panicking police officers were amplified to ear-splitting levels by the hall’s natural acoustics
as they scrambled toward the daylight.
The spider had come.
There were reckless gunshots.
Rouche heard a bullet pass within inches of his head.
A cry from above—a split second later, the officer from the balcony landed in a grotesque heap at his feet.
Rouche raised his weapon and ran deeper into the hall after Baxter.
There was a huge, rattling bang from the other side of the room, different from a gunshot, followed by cries of desperation from the evacuating officers. Rouche did not have to look back to know what the sound had been; it had been the sound of hope dying; it had been the sound of heavy wooden doors slamming shut and sealing them inside, inside a place that no longer belonged to God.
He found Baxter crouched over Curtis’s body as the massacre continued all around them. She was feeling for a pulse and listening for breaths, a bloody hand pressed over the mortal wound:
“I think I can feel a weak pulse!” she gasped in relief. She looked up at Rouche.
“Get her gun,” he ordered emotionlessly.
The words didn’t even register with Baxter: “We’ve got to get her out of here.”
“Get . . . her . . . gun,” Rouche repeated.
Baxter stared up at him in disgust.
A blur of white suddenly sprinted full pelt at Rouche. Caught off guard, he was only able to fire a single shot, which struck his attacker in the lower leg, sending him crashing into the chairs across the aisle but granting a few seconds of respite. Rouche leaned over Curtis’s body and pulled her firearm from its holster. He then hauled Baxter roughly to her feet as she struggled against him.
“Let go of me! She’s still alive!” cried Baxter as he dragged her away from Curtis. “She’s still alive!”
“There’s nothing we can do for her!” he shouted, but Baxter couldn’t hear him over the sound of her own protests, the echoing gunshots, and the sickening sounds of death as the officers trapped by the exit were cut down with crude weapons: makeshift blades, tools, and wire. The few people still clawing at the doors were surrounded. “There’s nothing we can do for any of them.”
He was forced to let go of Baxter when the man he had wounded sliced at them with a jagged piece of metal, tearing a saw-toothed line of flesh from Rouche’s waist. Rouche stepped back and winced as he held his side in pain. He gripped the gun he had taken from Curtis by the barrel and struck the floored man forcefully with the heavy handle, knocking him unconscious. He then offered the weapon to Baxter, who just stared at it in her hands.
Several bodies were still hanging motionless around the hall. There was no way to tell whether they were dead, marionettes, or patiently lying in wait. Rouche had neither the inclination nor the time to get close enough to find out because two more pale figures emerged from the darkness at the back of the room, running down the aisle toward them.
“Baxter, we’ve got to go . . . We’ve got to go!” he said firmly.
She was still looking longingly to where they had abandoned their friend when the chair beside her burst into a spray of splinters and stuffing.
Someone was shooting at them.
As they sprinted for the stage, the gunman up on the balcony fired inexpertly around them, bringing one of the wooden marionettes crashing to the floor, before running out of bullets. Rouche led the way up the steps to the side of the stage. As they ascended, he watched the lone figure twisted in the spotlight for any sign of life.
Several sets of thirsty eyes turned in their direction as they hurried between the curtains and into the darkened backstage area.
Rickety ladders climbed the walls, towering over them, while thick, knotted ropes dangled overhead like nooses. Somewhere, they could hear their pursuers coming for them.
The thud of bare feet on wooden floorboards chased them as they negotiated the claustrophobic bowels of the old building, guided solely by the “Fire Exit” signs burning green arrows through the gloom. They kept their weapons raised as they passed open doorways, the endless junctions slowing their progress through the grubby corridors.
There was a noise directly behind them.
Rouche spun on the spot and watched the darkness.
He waited, but the only movement came from a rusty bucket swaying gently on one of the ropes that they had disturbed.
He turned back to Baxter to find that she was gone.
“Baxter?” he hissed, staring down three possible corridors she might have taken. The wild shouts and slapping of running feet seemed to surround him. “Baxter?”
He made a decision and started down one of the corridors, based solely on the fact that it was marginally better lit than his other two options. Halfway along, the muffled echoes of excited voices doubled in volume as three ghostly shapes came around the corner ahead of him.
“Oh shit,” gasped Rouche, turning and sprinting back the other way.
He felt as though he was on the verge of falling face-first into the floor as his legs struggled to keep pace with his desperation to escape. He tore across the junction where he had lost Baxter and continued straight on as the shouting behind him grew more crazed, more frenzied, the hounding predators sensing the hunt’s imminent end.
Rouche didn’t dare look back but fired shots blindly behind him, which did nothing more than pepper the featureless wall. He shouted Baxter’s name, hoping that the panic in his voice would prompt her to run if she was still able. The gunshots became clicks, the last of his ammunition gone. He leaped over an empty paint can, only to hear it clatter across the floor a few seconds later.
They were gaining on him.
He reached a sharp corner and hit the wall hard, feeling a grasping hand against his face as he propelled himself away. At the far end of the corridor, framed thinly by daylight, stood an emergency exit. He sprinted toward it, his pursuers’ breath in his ears, and threw himself against the bar to burst out into the blinding light.
The stutter of automatic gunfire greeted him, followed by a barked order:
“ESU! Do not move! Drop the weapon!”
His eyes watering in the cold air, Rouche complied.
“Slowly get to your knees!”
“It’s OK. It’s OK,” a familiar voice insisted. “He’s with me.”
The dark blur dominating Rouche’s vision became an ESU officer wearing full tactical gear. Rouche recognized the buildings opposite and realized that the church’s extended network of corridors and storerooms had spat him back out onto West 51st Street, two buildings along.
The armed officer lowered his weapon and strode past Rouche to where two naked bodies lay in the open doorway. Rouche took the dismissive action as an invitation to get up off the ground and sighed in relief when he saw Baxter, but she neither returned the gesture nor approached him.
“Are they inside yet?” Rouche asked the ESU officer urgently. “There’s a woman, an FBI agent, who—”
The officer cut him off:
“They’ll be breaching the doors to the auditorium any moment now.”
“I need to be there,” said Rouche.
“You need to stay right here,” the man corrected him.
“They might not find her in time!”
Rouche turned to approach the main entrance when the armed officer raised his AR-15 assault rifle.
Baxter hurried over to intervene:
“We’re OK,” she called to the officer before stepping into Rouche’s path. She shoved him. He held his chest in pain. “Are you trying to get yourself killed?” she asked. “You told me you didn’t want to die, remember? You promised me.”
“She’s still in there!” said Rouche. “Maybe if I can . . . If I could just . . .”
“She’s gone, Rouche!” Baxter shouted over him, before dropping her voice to a whisper: “She’s gone.”
A muffled rumble . . . and then the front wall of the church was blown out over the street as an enormous fireball twisted and retreated to the hiss of shattering glass. Baxter and Rouche stumbled backwa
rd, holding their hands over their ringing ears as a cloud of smoke engulfed the entire road around them. It stung Baxter’s eyes until she could no longer see. She could feel the grit rubbing under her eyelids and then felt Rouche take her hand. She had no idea where he was leading her until she heard a car door creak open.
“Get in!” he shouted, slamming it behind her as he ran around to get in the other side.
She was able to breathe again and rubbed her eyes until she could open them. They were inside one of the patrol cars abandoned in the middle of the intersection. She could only just make out Rouche’s face as a river of dirty smoke rolled past the windows—a premature nightfall.
Neither of them spoke.
Baxter was trembling as she took stock of the previous twenty minutes.
And then there was a second explosion.
Baxter grasped Rouche’s hand as she started to hyperventilate. The sound had not come from the church this time but from somewhere close by; however, they were blind to anything beyond the interior of the patrol car. Baxter closed her eyes as a third bomb blast went off. She felt Rouche’s arms around her when a fourth and final explosion reverberated through them.
Gradually, the daylight started to return as the smoke around them thinned. Baxter pushed Rouche off her and climbed out of the car, holding her sleeve over her nose and mouth to form a makeshift face mask. She couldn’t see the ESU officer anywhere out on the street, suspecting that he had sheltered inside after the first blast. Rouche climbed out on the other side of the car.
The first licks of fire began coloring the sky over the heart of the city as enormous plumes of black smoke coiled toward the heavens, an image all too familiar over the New York skyline.
“Where is that?” asked Baxter, unable to tear her eyes away.
“Times Square,” whispered Rouche.
The silence was chased away as a thunderous wall of sirens, alarms, and humanity approached like an avalanche.
“Oh.” Baxter nodded in a daze as they stood there, helpless, watching the city burn.
Session One
Tuesday, 6 May 2014
9:13 A.M.