Murderfunding, p.16
#MurderFunding, page 16
But instead of an open cargo bay, the elevator revealed another hallway—shorter this time, with a set of double doors at the far end flanked by two more Russians (because the first three weren’t enough), and it wasn’t until after Alexei and his countrymen herded the cast out of the elevator that Becca noticed Eddie had remained inside.
“You’re not coming?” she asked sharply as he frantically pushed the “door closed” button.
Eddie had gone deathly pale. “N-no.” The doors began to close. “Sorry.”
“Sorry?” The elevator snapped shut, and Becca felt her heart thundering beneath her sequined spandex dress.
We are so fucked.
Alexei stepped in front of her, two of his goons on either side, blocking her access to the elevator. “That way,” Alexei said, nodding down the corridor.
As if she had a choice.
The rest of the cast, though not privy to Becca’s experiences earlier in the day, seemed to have absorbed some of her tension. Lord Cancellor kept looking around, as if trying to get his bearings, while Sumo Sutra stood protectively close to Mistress Distress. Even Fiona looked concerned, her ever-present scowl replaced by knitted brows and a worried grimace.
The defensive line of Russian thugs marched them forward toward the doors. Becca had no idea what was on the other side, but she had a feeling it might be the last thing she’d ever see.
“Guys,” she whispered, gripping Stef’s arm as they reached the closed doors. “We need to get out of here. Now.”
Stef sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth. “How?”
Ten people against five armed guards? They probably had no chance even if they worked together, but they couldn’t just give up. “We could—”
Too late. The doors opened, swinging noiselessly outward by remote control, revealing the craziest, most overwhelming scene Becca had yet experienced in her seventeen years, and she was momentarily stunned by the sensory overload of what she saw before her.
The interior of the soundstage was built to look like an enormous arena, reminiscent of an indoor Roman Colosseum. Three rows of balcony seats rimmed the entire space, overhanging the main floor twenty feet above their heads. The entire studio was lit by a variety of swirling strobes and spotlights, whose intensity and speed had been turned up to eleven. Industrial house music blasted through the speakers, the thump of the beat immediately intertwining with the roar of blood in Becca’s ears, and dancing lasers raced around the arena, highlighted by billowing fog emitted through several pipes scattered around the perimeter.
But more than the lights or the music or the musty mildew stink of the smoke machine, Becca’s eyes were drawn to a massive two-story jungle-gym thing looming above.
Part pirate fort, part military training obstacle course, it was a towering steel-and-Plexiglas construction. Becca could see through the walls, the distorted images from within suggesting an almost fun-house-like interior, and there were exposed sections that hinted at the trials it held. Some were familiar playground obstacles: ropes, monkey rings, balance platforms. Others were not. Flames shot toward the roof, round platforms suspended from the ceiling promised terror from above, and on either side of the structure were wide-open areas potted with holes like a putting green gone wild.
Coop gazed up through the swirling lights. “I was not expecting this.”
“Remember when Victor asked Jax about a rope ladder?” Becca said. “Now we know what he meant.”
“This is not just a visit to the set.” Stef nodded toward the walls. “Look.”
Becca followed her eyes. Despite the lights and the smoke, she noticed a red dot that seemed to be coming out of the wall. Then she spotted wires strung across the structure from the ceiling, suspending several free-moving cameras. Her eyes attuned to what she should look for, she suddenly discerned dozens more red lights—on the ceiling, on the turrets of the structure, and fuzzy through the Plexiglas walls. Becca had watched enough of The Postman app back in the day to know exactly what that meant.
She swallowed. “They’re filming us.”
“What do you mean?” Lars asked.
But before Becca could answer, a voice boomed through overhead speakers. “Welcome, everyone, to the first episode of Who Wants to Be a Painiac? I’m your host, Tristan McKee, and I’m so excited to have you all here today, logged in and watching from around the world.”
“First episode?” Becca said.
“Around the world?” Stef said. “Reality Network doesn’t broadcast internationally.”
“Logged in,” Coop said, repeating Tristan’s words. “I think they’re streaming this.”
If this show wasn’t on cable, that meant all bets were off. No restrictions, no FCC laws to break. Had this been the plan the entire time? Had the auditions and the deal with Reality Network all been a ruse to get people to audition for something that would be more lethal than a “fake” Alcatraz 2.0 game show?
She sure as hell hoped not.
Stef’s hand found Becca’s, and she threaded their fingers together. Despite the chill of fear that had descended upon her, Becca felt the pleasant warmth of Stef’s hand, and she squeezed it tightly, never wanting to let go.
“We’ve got an amazing lineup for you today,” Tristan continued. “Full of surprises and celebrity guests.”
“I love celebrities!” Kylie said, clapping her hands.
Kayden was less excited. “But I thought this was just a rehearsal or something?”
A spotlight blazed to life, focused on a platform jutting out from the lowest level of the balcony. On it, Tristan McKee stood with a handheld microphone, his overly tanned skin glistening with sweat. “Let’s not waste any time! Welcome to Who Wants to Be a Painiac?!”
On cue, a video projected onto the wall—the name of the show in bright neon letters, along with its logo, accompanied by a raucous theme song. The opening title credits. As soon as it began, Becca felt a guard’s hand on her shoulder, pushing her toward the entrance. She stumbled forward, hanging on to Stef’s hand with a death grip as they entered the arena. The smoke machines had stopped and the layer of thin fog began to dissipate, but the swirling lights were disorienting, and though the thundering music had been turned down for Tristan’s announcement, it still rumbled in the background ominously.
Another set of spots blinded Becca, erupting from the far wall of the arena, and she turned her head to avoid the searing pain as her pupils raced to constrict. Behind her, the guards had backed out of the room. A creepy sensation rippled down Becca’s neck as her eyes met Alexei’s disfigured baby blues. Slowly his cracked lips broke into a smile—a twisted, macabre interpretation of joy, but a curved-lip, crinkled-eye, yellowed-teeth full-blown smile nonetheless.
“Bye-bye,” Alexei said, waving like a toddler, just before the door slammed shut behind him.
Becca pulled her hand from Stef’s grip and raced to the door. There was no handle, though she could see the small screw holes where one had once been connected. Without a handle, there was no way to pull the door open, if it was even unlocked, which she doubted.
The music ended, and the arena became eerily quiet as Tristan took up his microphone. “And now it’s time…” He paused dramatically. “To meet…” Another pause, his eyebrows high with anticipation. “Our contestants!”
Becca was pretty sure the word “victims” was a more accurate description of their intended role.
“Victor!” Fiona screamed, not waiting for an answer. She spun around, scanning the balcony for signs of the executive producer. He was nowhere to be found, so she spun to face the announcer instead. “What is going on? This was supposed to be a field trip.”
Instead of answering, Tristan continued with his speech. “Hailing from six different states, our contestants all came here for one reason. They all wanted to be Painiacs! Isn’t that hilarious?” He paused as if waiting for applause. But though the cameras continued to film, the stands were empty.
“So let’s meet…Mistress Distress! Sumo Sutra! The Conjoined Twins!” Stoplights raced around the stage, illuminating each of them in turn.
“We’re a three-legged race!” Kylie protested. “Like, at the fair.” Not that Tristan was listening.
“Human Gumby! Lord Cancellor!”
Lord Cancellor played along, taking a step forward when he heard his name and swinging his rubber mallet like a baseball player aiming for the bleachers.
“Princess Slaya and John Carpenter, Actual Carpenter.” Tristan laughed, as if getting the joke for the first time. “Oh, clever that.”
“At least someone got it,” Coop grumbled.
“And last but not least, the Disco Dollies!”
Fake thunderous applause erupted from the speakers, then the spotlights cut out completely, leaving them in darkness. At the same moment, the lights in the arena went out, all but a few purple LEDs from within the giant structure in front of them, which gave it a surreal twilight glow.
“Shit,” Becca said out loud. It felt as if something big was coming. The anticipation was palpable.
“And now,” Tristan’s voice boomed, the echo effect turned on, “the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Picked out by The Postman himself. Brought here today to face our contestants in the arena known as the Juggernaut. I present to you: the New Painiacs!”
FIONA GRABBED COOP’S ARM. “What the fuck is going on?” For the first time since Becca had met her, Fiona’s confidence seemed shaken.
Lars answered for him. “I’m pretty sure we’re in some deep shit.”
The New Painiacs. Picked out by The Postman. There had been rumors on the Internet that he’d been planning to replace his lineup and was using #CinderellaSurvivor as a device to get rid of the old ones, but Becca hadn’t realized that those replacement serial killers had already been vetted, selected, and hired. No wonder the chosen few auditioners at Stu-Stu-Studio had been so crappy—it didn’t matter what their costumes were because they’d be thrown to the lions. Victor merely needed people with no next of kin to come looking for them.
“We’re not here to be the predators,” Stef said, reading Becca’s mind. “We’re the prey.”
“What’s happening?” Kylie clung to her brother, confused. “I don’t like this.”
“Do you have a signal yet?” Becca asked, her voice just barely loud enough to carry over the booming music.
Stef nodded, then crouched down, hiding herself behind the bulk of Becca’s enormous wig while she slipped the cell phone from her own. Cupping it in her hands to try to shield it from Tristan and the cameras, she squinted at the screen.
“Nothing.”
Becca felt her stomach drop. That was their one shot at freedom.
“These buildings are designed to dampen interference,” Coop said, sidling up to them as Stef shoved the phone back into its hiding place. “Probably won’t get reception until we get outside.”
“Easier said than done,” Becca muttered.
“First up,” Tristan boomed, “he’s a fast-talking dummy with a penchant for mob movies, and he’s an actual dummy! Meet Talky Montana and Little Friend!”
From the nearest turret, a man emerged. He was dressed in a white wide-collar suit and blue silk shirt, sporting an oversize white fedora that covered the top half of his face with eyeholes that had been cut just above the brim. On his arm, a ventriloquist’s dummy, dressed in a matching outfit. The dummy took a bow, while the ventriloquist scowled at him.
“From merry old England,” Tristan continued, “she’s a British nanny and a nitrate-loving thrill seeker, meet Nanny McEvil!”
Rising up from the floor thirty feet away, umbrella aloft as if the skies might open up at any moment, Nanny McEvil wore a black period overcoat, matching lace-up boots, and a hat with some wicked black feathers pluming from its brim. As her platform stabilized at ground level, she closed the umbrella and reached into her pocket, removing a small yellow bottle, which she quickly twisted open and held to her nose, inhaling deeply.
“Nanny McEvil,” Coop said, shaking his head. “More like Nanny McPoppers.”
“How about Nanny McGoing-To-Kill-Us if we don’t get the hell out of here.” Becca dragged Coop toward the handleless double doors behind them. “We need a screwdriver or something.”
Coop staggered beside her, his props flapping around his tool belt like a grass skirt on a hula dancer. “On it.” He pulled out a flat-head screwdriver and attempted to pry open a gap between the two doors, but it was too thick to fit between. Next, he tried the claw on the back of his hammer, but the curved angle and the length of the handle meant he couldn’t get it wedged in.
Meanwhile, Sumo Sutra was inching his way along the wall of the soundstage, patting the smooth surface with his meaty hands as if searching for a hidden door. Mistress Distress took his cue and started down the other side, while Lord Cancellor, seemingly shell-shocked, plastered himself against the door beside Coop, clutching his rubber mallet to his chest.
“From the hot alkaline lake bed outside Reno, Nevada,” Tristan cried, “I give you: the Burning Man.”
Becca spun around in time to see two massive spouts of flame projected into the air from the other side of the Juggernaut. A tall African American guy, dressed in an orange sequined jumpsuit like a sun-devil Elvis, waved around handheld flamethrowers attached to a tank of fuel on his back. The Burning Man laughed, his voice joining Tristan’s through the speakers.
“They’re miked up,” Stef said. “I bet they’ve been rehearsing a lot longer than we have.”
“Or, you know, at all,” Becca said as she dropped to the floor, attempting to wedge the screwdriver underneath the lip of the door and force it open that way. It wouldn’t budge.
“One plays guitar, and the other, a wicked tambourine. Put your hands together for the folk music sounds of Psychoman and Gorefunkel!”
“Okay,” Lars said, snickering. “That’s actually funny.”
From another turret, a short guy and a taller one with a tightly curled strawberry-blond perm stepped into the light. They both wore turtlenecks rolled up over their mouths and noses, and true to Tristan’s description, one had a guitar, the other a tambourine. Becca was pretty sure neither of them made music.
“And dropping in from the skies, it’s Bungee Boyd!”
Becca craned her head toward the ceiling, where a woman in a pink flight suit and visor helmet had climbed out onto one of the platforms three stories up. She fanned her arms above her head, then dove off the platform, executing a perfect 180-degree turn before touching down on the ground beside the Burning Man. But her toes had barely hit the Astroturf when the elastic cord attached to her back recoiled, pulling her gracefully back up toward the ceiling.
They’d be coming out of the floor, out of the sky, and out of the Juggernaut? This was going to get real bloody, real fast.
Becca gave one last heave on the screwdriver as she attempted to open the door even a fraction, but no luck.
“I think it’s locked,” she panted, climbing to her feet while Coop was searching his belt for anything else they could use.
“There must be another way out,” Stef said from over her shoulder.
Lars pointed to Tristan’s perch on the balcony. “Yeah, where did that asshole come from?”
Becca caught her breath. Of course. There had to be some exit from the balcony. If they could just get to it.
“We need to find a way up there,” she said. “Everybody start looking.”
Moving as a group, Becca and her castmates stepped tentatively away from the wall to get a better view of the balcony, the Juggernaut, and the general layout of the arena. The balcony itself was shrouded in shadow—the area near Tristan was lit with a sharp circle of yellowish-blue light from the spotlight that projected his animated shadow across the empty rows of seats behind him. As Becca turned around, taking in the whole room, she noticed a faint green glow in each of the four corners of the balcony. She squinted at the nearest one, trying to figure out what they might be, and realized that several shadowy figures were moving beneath the lights. Like people coming in through a door.
“The emergency exits!” Becca cried, pointing excitedly. Someone had tried to cover them up, but their signature green lights bled through into the darkness.
“Yes!” Stef cried. Her eyes darted to each of the corners. “I bet they all lead directly outside.”
Tristan McKee droned on with his overly dramatic echo effect, but Becca was only half listening as he introduced Vladerina, the vampire ballerina, who toddled out onto a rampart on pointe, blood dripping from her fake fangs as she executed a perfect arabesque; FitzKill’em Darcy, dressed in an early nineteenth-century cravat, waistcoat, and breeches ensemble reminiscent of Jane Austen’s most famous heartthrob; and King Gut, an obese guy culturally appropriating an Egyptian pharaoh, though Becca wasn’t sure if the “gut” was in reference to his massive bare belly or the fact that he supposedly enjoyed mummifying people alive.
“There,” Coop said, pointing to the highest turret of the Juggernaut. From the platform where FitzKill’em Darcy stood, straightening his cravat, it was a six- or seven-foot jump to the platform built out from the balcony where Tristan stood. The nearest emergency exit was right at the top of the aisle. If they could get up there, they might catch Victor’s thugs off guard, giving them a slim chance of getting out of the building alive.
Of course, getting there was the problem. It meant entering the Juggernaut. And whatever lay within.
“And last but very much not least,” Tristan cried. “The Sikh with the sickest ride in town, Mandeep Steamroller!”
From the back of the arena, an entire wall opened, rolling up like an overhead garage door. Smoke poured through the opening, obscuring what lay in the darkened room beyond, but even with the thumping beat of the music, Becca could hear an industrial engine roar to life. A train whistle hooted—two blasts, one short and one long—and then something began to emerge from the smoke. It was a massive piece of machinery, an actual road steamroller like Becca had seen many times repaving sections of US-41 between Marquette and Negaunee after winter had potholed it to oblivion. It had an immense metal wheel in the front, as wide as the tractor cab it was attached to, and another in the back. Sitting at the steering controls, wearing a white turban that extended down over the top half of his face, was Mandeep Steamroller.
