Authors: Lewis E. Aleman
Tags: #Thrillers, #Science Fiction, #Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General
“You are coming with me, Elise,” then pointing to Chester, “He’s not.”
Edmund lifts his shirt and reaches for the gun.
Chester
runs toward an opened door to a supply room. It’s a door that he never saw left ajar during his stay here, but he spent most of his time in his room. It’s only open today because Elise has been preoccupied with impending death.
“In here!” she shouts slamming into Chester’s back, shoving him into the room, “Shut it! Shut it! It’s already locked.”
“I was just going to—”
The door shuts.
Shaking his head, Edmund mutters, “In the supply room? Don’t believe this. Stupid. Ain’t nobody scared of a gun no mo—”
Stepping slowly into the hallway and pointing a finger up at Edmund’s face, Titor says, “I remember you, you no-good bum. Stealing people’s money, gone to jail. You’re gonna go back there too, because you’re still too stupid coming back here. Too stupid to stay a—”
Pointing the gun close to the bridge of the wrinkled nose, “Out of my way, old man, and shut yer mouth.”
Titor steps back and raises his one free hand, his other trembling on the cane’s handle. Keeping his head down until Edmund is one step past him, he raises his cane off the ground, grabbing it at its bottom, and he flings the handle at Edmund’s ankle, snagging it in the hook.
The crash onto the floor is thunderous in its echo, both the gunman and the cane smacking the tiled ground.
Titor hobbles into his room, closing the door, flipping the lock, and grabbing the lamp with the yellowed shade off his nightstand. He stands against the wall by his door waiting and shaking for it to open.
“Son of a—” shouts Edmund as the stinging registers through his body. His knuckles are raw and busted on his right hand from getting smashed between the gun and the floor.
His thoughts are already upon kicking in the door and pumping a round into Titor, but they’re interrupted by the same repeated dings that signify most of the floor’s resident’s have called for assistance. The calls go to Elise’s station, which is unmanned, but eventually someone downstairs is going to notice all of the unanswered attendant lights and come investigate what is going on.
Edmund knows his time is limited before things get much more complicated.
“Friggin’ old people,” he mutters getting to his feet and looking at the windowless locked door to the supply room.
Inside the long, narrow supply room several moments before, just after Elise made Chester close the door, he says “—grab a broom.”
“Come on, come on! Supply room’s got a door to the entertainment room. We can try to hide in there. What’re ya doing with that broom?”
Grasping it near the bristles and holding it like a baseball bat, “He’s a little bigger’n me if you haven’t noticed. Plus, there’s the whole gun thing.”
“We’re not fighting—we’re running,” she says as she runs toward the other door at the back right of the supply room.
Just as a loud crash echoes from the outer hallway, Chester says, “We’ll never make it away from him.”
Pleading with him, eyes filled with panic as she shoves a key into the lock on the door to the entertainment room, “We’ve got to try.”
Titor’s door slams out in the hallway, and its lock clicks.
Chester
says, “You can get away if I stall him.”
“He’ll kill you!”
A loud thud booms from the door to the supply room.
“Come on! In here,” she shouts turning the handle to the door to the entertainment room, “Shut the door behind you; it’ll lock.”
They sprint across the large room filled with a giant video screen, three sofas, two recliners, numerous randomly scattered chairs, small tables with Scrabble boards, puzzles, decks of cards, and a bookshelf along the back wall that is stocked with many haggard boxes that are labeled Bingo.
Chester runs with the broom still in his hand, looking over his shoulder to make sure Edmund has not broken through the first door and caught up to them yet.
Elise keeps her head ducked as she runs, the sound of bullets firing repeating in the imaginary world of her mind and pulsing through the real world of her nerves.
Her shoulder bumps the closet door on the other side of the room as she comes to a stop. Fumbling with her key ring, she opens it.
The light exposes worn Bingo boxes from decades past stretching from the bottommost shelf to the ceiling. Some lids are torn and sticking out at them, others are mended with yellowed and cracking tape. Pulling Chester inside with her, she closes the door.
The closet is cramped. Chester’s back is pressed against the door, and his chin pushes into Elise’s forehead. Elise is sandwiched between him and cardboard Bingo containers that give and bend.
“This is like a little bomb shelter stocked full of Bingo. What kind of emergency are you guys planning for? A mob of bored ninety-year-olds hellbent on destruction?”
Another loud thud travels from the supply room door.
Changing to a grave tone, Chester whispers, “I know. He’ll figure out we’re in here and break that door down soon.”
“Whatdowedo?” she squeals in a slur, “This is all I could think of with him in the hallway.”
Chester opens the closet door, and grabbing her arm he pulls her out into the entertainment room.
“
What’re you doing?
” she squeals, yearning to get back inside the thin security of the closet and out of the nakedness of the vast room.
“Take this,” he says pulling the device out of his pocket and shoving it in her hand, “This is what took me back in time. Use it to get away.”
A deeper thud along with the sound of cracking wood.
Shaking her head, “No!”
Chester bends down below the first shelf and throws a picnic basket from out of the closet into the entertainment room. Several Bingo games that were atop and around the basket fall into its former space at the bottom of the closet. As he flings them out of his way, their lids fly off, markers and sheets scattering across the room.
Chester
cocks back and kicks with all his might into the cleared wall space at the bottom of the closet. His foot cracks through the sheet rock on the closet side and exposes the remaining sheetrock that is the outer layer to the stairwell.
Elise flips open the picnic basket and pulls something out.
Kicking again, his foot breaks through the outer sheetrock into the stairwell. With a few quick blows, he clears an opening to the stairs.
Looking back to Elise, he sees her holding an odd-looking gun at him.
“Take it. Flare gun; brought it along on picnics.”
Taking it from her and looking over its unfinished fat barrel and primitive-looking wooden handlhe asks, “Did this come over on the Santa Maria? Sure it works?”
“No.”
“Excellent.”
“Don’t have nothing else but the broom.”
“Well, alright then. I’ll keep him busy—you get out of here,” handing her his keys to a car that took years to modify as an exact replacement for the one that turned into a fireball, “It’s a 1969 Chevelle Super Sport. It’s in the first row. You can’t miss it.”
“No.”
A heavy thump reverberates followed by a stream of unintelligible profanity. The lock is broken, and the door into the supply room opens.
“You don’t have a choice here. I lived my life; I got a second chance at it. I don’t have anything else to lose. You need a second chance at yours. It’s the only way.”
Words flying like debris in a hurricane, “How long were you trying before this worked?”
“Eleven years.”
“When did it work the first time?”
“Today, but twenty years ago.”
A flurry of vulgar words cuts through the air and startles them.
“He just found out the back supply door’s locked too. Only got a minute to get out of here.”
“What was different then? What made it work that time?”
“She lost her face. Had to help her. Urgency’s what did it.”
Voice cracking and shaking her head, “Well, how many times have you used this thing?” she asks holding it up in her quivering hand.
“Just once.”
“Did it work right? Safe?”
“‘Course it did, or I wouldn’t be here.”
She tucks her bottom lip beneath her top front teeth.
A pounding comes at the door from the supply room to the entertainment room, and a split rips the wood in its center.
“Running out of options.”
She nods her head.
He pushes her back into the closet, closing the door behind them. The light from the hole in the wall makes the closet dimly visible.
“Don’t look back once you get through that hole. While I’m fighting this gorilla; you’re running. Got it?”
“Yes.”
The door to the entertainment room rips deeper down its center, its lock breaking loose and flinging open. Loud stomping of his feet follows, momentum pushing him through the jagged hole in the door and making him stumble into the room.
“Once you’re away from him, unlock the keypad, and put in the password. It’s Dr. Moses. D-R-Moses, no spaces, no periods. Go. Go!”
“I don’t know—”
“Do it! Now.”
Butting his head against the outside of the door, a cold, deep voice speaks, “Elise, I’d rather you come back with me alive, but you ain’t getting away after whatchyou did to me. Giving you to the count o’ five to decide to come out, or I’m gonna shoot up that closet and everything in it.”
Chester
pushes her down toward the opening. She doesn’t resist.
“One.”
Sticking her feet into the stairwell, they touch nothing but air.
“Two.”
Sliding her body down with font>
“Three.”
Holding her at her wrists, Chester eases her down, her right hand still clutching the device.
“Four.”
He lets her go. Dropping the remaining few inches, her ankles buckle to catch her weight on the turnaround platform at the middle point of the stairs.
“Five.”
The handle turns.
“Hold on there, caveman. I’m coming out.”
The door swings open, and Chester steps toward Edmund.
“Where’s Elise?”
“She’s gone, but let me ask you something. How long did you work here? Six months? A year? And you didn’t remember the supply room has another door?”
“Shut up!”
“You know if you weren’t so stupid you could’ve killed both of us by now.”