| |
DANNY AND MAGGIE HAD split up after the rocket shot through what remained of the kitchen. Danny had found Kevin gazing in wonder at the remarkable weapon he had just fired, and then dropped it to the floor because it was red-hot to the touch. He and Kevin briefly knocked heads in diving for the weapon just as they saw a mercenary, enter the family room. Danny and Kevin both mouthed, “Pit” to each other, and crept toward the family room. They noticed that the pocket doors were slightly open. Danny looked in and saw one of the two thugs he couldn’t remember which thug was which, with his back to the door. It looked like thug one was talking to another one to the left, out of Danny’s line of sight. He motioned for Kevin to follow and they both entered the family room with their guns pointed at mercenary number one’s back.
“Hands up!” Danny shouted much louder than he intended to and followed with a soft “Sorry” to Kevin.
“No, I don’t think so,” came a voice from behind Danny and Kevin.
Rucker, the other mercenary, was behind them and pointing a shotgun at them. When they turned around, Ridgeway, mercenary number one drew his handgun and waved it at them, saying “Alright, assholes, see how you like it in the hole.” He then took several steps backward and grabbed a volume of Edgar Allen Poe’s stories from a shelf against the wall behind him. The book was on a hinge, and when pulled away from the bookcase, a section of slightly cracked floor opened up revealing a pit.
Just as the pit opened, a scream penetrated everyone’s eardrums.
“Who just screamed?” shouted Danny “It sounded like Maggie. Maggie, baby, is that you?”
“Don’t worry about her, you’ll be joining her shortly.” With that statement, Ridgeway fired two rounds each into Danny and Kevin’s chests and closed the trap-door. For several moments there was silence then, confused shouting and all-out pandemonium in the small confined space.
“Danny, how bad have you been hit? If you can hear me, try to find your phone and turn on its light. I can’t find mine. Danny, can you hear me? Oh, God, Danny, are you dead? Say something.”
“You’re kneeling on my goddamned chest, asshole,” came a wheezy voice under Kevin.
“Oh, sorry. Thank God. How bad are you hit? I think I’m bleeding internally right now. Not sure.”
“Get the fuck off me!” replied the same wheezy voice.
“Sorry.”
“Maggie. I’ve got to get to Maggie. Phone, where the hell is my phone? Got it. My hands are so sweaty that it doesn’t recognize my fingerprint. Damn it. I forgot my back up code.”
Kevin slapped Danny’s hand away. “Gross. Did you just wipe your hand on my shirt, you fuck? Now what are you doing? Quit feeling my shirt. We have similar shirts. Feel your own shirt. Oh, stupid me, yes, I forgot the lightweight Kevlar. I forgot we are wearing it.”
Danny, sounding like he had just run a marathon, gasped. “Well, I needed a dry finger to unlock my phone, and yes, you are stupid. Damn it, that’s right, no signal in here. I can’t call Maggie. A ha, yes, good light. OK, we put a secret exit in the pit. So simple we open the exit, get out and get Maggie. So, where is the lever to get us out of here?”
“Umm, the lever? I thought it was a switch or maybe a button.”
“Whatever, press it, pull it yank it, just open-sesame it and get us the fuck out of here!”
“Right, sorry. Hey, wait a minute. Why are you putting all the pressure on me? We worked on this together. You should know where the button, lever, counter switch, whatever is too,” Kevin replied.
Danny was pacing in an ever-tightening circle. “Well, yes, I should, but I can’t remember. We had all sorts of good ideas, and I can’t remember which one we settled on for this room, and I can’t think clearly knowing Maggie is up there hurt possibly bleeding to death.”
“Retina scanner?” Kevin asked as he pointed at Danny’s eyes.
Danny waggled his fingers. “No fingerprint scanner, I think.”
“Wait wasn’t there a combo where you had to stand on a button and press a lever and a button simultaneously?”
“The twister release!” they said in unison, Kevin stood on one foot with his opposite arm stretched out. He kicked a nearby spongy wall and said, “Crap, that was for the dining room.”
“If I was a release button where would I be?” Danny muttered to himself.
“You would check all the walls and corners,” Kevin muttered back.
“Center of room!” they shouted, and Danny dove toward the center of the enclosed space, nearly cracking his skull with Kevin’s, to look for a hidden seam in the padded floor.
“Of course we hid it where it shouldn’t be, and no one would look. I can’t believe we forgot where we put it,” Kevin said as he trained the phone light over Danny’s shoulder.
Danny found a nearly invisible seam and pried apart the padding to reveal a button. Danny pressed it. Nothing happened.
“Fuck.”
“Wait. You have to hold the button down for five, I think.”
“Oh yeah, Christ. Next time we design a secret pit, we make things less complicated.”
“It seemed so cool in theory and in the practice runs.”
Sweat dripped into Danny’s eyes and he could barely see the button to press it, but he rammed his finger down, and struck the button, nearly breaking both it and his finger in the process. He could hear Kevin muttering, “1 Mississippi 2 Mississippi...”
“Keep your Mississippis to yourself.”
Just then a panel opened against a wall, revealing a box.
“Jesus Christ, we are psycho nerds. Why did we think we needed all this shit to get out of our own pit?”
“I know, Danny. Next time we keep it simple. Zombie.”
“What did you call me?”
“That’s the password for the voice recognition box.”
As Kevin explained this, a portion of the wall opened up, revealing a passageway. Danny crawled to the wall as his legs were rubbery, and used the wall and Kevin for support to stand upright.
“Danny, Maggie’ll be alright. In times of crisis, the people who survive are the ones who get angry and are fighters. The ones who don’t survive are the quiet, passive people who give up. Now of those two types, which sounds like our sweet, sweet Maggie?”
“You’re not just saying that to make me feel better, are you?”
“Nope, proven fact.”
“Let’s go get my angry, your lovely and sometimes angry, lady.”