The Escape Diaries (38 page)

Leaping off the
stage, Bear thrust between tables and barreled in our direction, the

Janitors slithering out of some
rodent hole and hurrying in his wake. As Bear lunged for the computer, Labeck
stood and blocked his way, a grim goalie who wasn’t going to let anything past.

           
When
Labeck didn’t move, Bear swung a punch. Labeck sidestepped and the momentum of
the missed punch staggered Bear off balance. As he went down he locked his arms
around Labeck’s knees. Both men toppled to the floor, grappling and punching,
banging into tables, sending plates and glasses crashing to the floor. The men
were evenly matched size-wise, both big and muscular, but my money was on
Labeck. A hockey brawler from way back, he probably knew even more dirty tricks
than Bear. Women screamed, cameras snapped, people climbed on chairs to see
better.

           
Then
the Janitors bowled in. Kim Jong kicked Labeck in the ribs, allowing Bear to
roll away. Custer hauled Labeck upright, locking his arms. Jong chopped Labeck
in the stomach, making him grunt in pain, then drew back his fist for another
punch.

Not on your
Zippo-flickin’ life!
Launching myself off my chair, I hurled myself at
Jong’s back, clawing, gouging, ripping what was left of his frizzy hair out by
the roots. Shrieking in pain, he whirled me around helicopter style and sent me
skidding across the top of a table. Labeck jacked his elbows into Custer’s
belly, pivoted and hit Custer so hard he went sprawling into Bear, who’d been
attempting to get up and went down again. Eddie leaned over and tried to smash
a champagne bottle on Custer’s head, but missed. The bottle shattered against a
table edge, spraying everyone with jagged shards of glass.

           
“Mazie
Maguire!” Bear shrilled, crawling to his feet, pointing at me. “It’s her,
look— it’s the escaped convict!”

           
The
news telegraphed across the room.
Mazie Maguire Mazie Maguire Mazie Maguire,
a sound like buzzing bees. Suddenly I was surrounded by people thrusting
out ballpoints and dinner menus, blinding me with their cell camera flashes.

           
“My
daughter is such a huge fan.”

           
“Make
it out to Heather—”

Neat trick,
Bear’s siccing the autograph hounds on me to allow himself the chance to
escape. I shoved my way through the crowd, yelling to Labeck. “He’s getting
away!”

In the melee, a
lit candle overturned onto a stack of benefit programs, which burst into
flames. Someone tossed a drink on the fire, but the alcohol acted as an
accelerant. The flames flared up like a bonfire, licking along the tablecloth
and leaping to the paper streamers festooning the ceiling. Fragments of crepe
paper spun across the room like flaming jellyfish, setting fire to everything
they touched. For an instant the crowd was still and silent, like a herd of
zebras deciding whether to run from a lion, and the next instant they broke and
stampeded, screaming, toward the exit.

           
 
“Mazie,” Labeck yelled. “Get out.”

           
 
The wealthy, well-bred museum patrons now
became animals, elbowing, biting, kicking, and trampling anything in their path
as they rampaged toward the door. There was a blinding flash as the electrical
system short-circuited, then all the lights went out and the galloping flames
provided the only illumination. Smoke roiled through the air in choking clouds.
The fire alarm went off, adding its deafening clamor to the uproar and
belatedly, the sprinkler system kicked in, the hissing water creating a fog of
steam that only created more panic.

Dropping to my knees,
keeping to the cover of the tables, I began crawling. I was halfway across the
room when someone with size-fourteen dress shoes plunked his foot down on my
skirt hem, pinning it. “Get off, you oaf!” I screamed.
 

The klutz didn’t
hear me. I yanked at my skirt. Seams ripped, sequins popped, the fabric
stretched like Silly Putty, but the skirt remained pinned by Elephant Man. No
one was moving; two hundred people were bottlenecked like slow ketchup, all
trying to plunge through a single door at once. Above the panicked roar of the
crowd and the jangling of the fire alarm, sirens were audible.

           
Only
one thing to do. I peeled the dress down over my hips and squirmed out of it, a
social butterfly emerging from her cocoon. The sticking point was my heels,
which became hopelessly tangled in the dress hem. So I abandoned them, too. Now
all I had on was the iron maiden bra, bikini underpants, and panty hose.

Bucking the tide,
I crab-walked toward the rear exit, hoping to spot Eddie or Labeck, but the
men, in their black-and-white penguin getups, were indistinguishable in the
scrum of people. Finally hauling myself to my feet, I groped along a wall,
slipped through the stage door, and found myself in a smoky, pitch-black
service corridor. Silent in my panty-hosed feet, I padded along, feeling my way
by touch.

           
Phase
two of Operation Payback
had turned out to be a smashing success. Except
for the part where the museum caught fire.

Behind me, the
door leading to the stage opened. Someone paused there, then began moving
toward me, the tread of hard-soled shoes unmistakably male. Not Labeck—he
would have called out. I quickened my pace. Behind me, the stalker sped up,
too. I broke into a flat-out run. Turning a corner, I spied an exit
sign
at the end of the corridor and hurtled toward it. I burst through the door,
then reeled back in shock as I came face-to-face with a grinning skull.

Escape tip #32:

Don’t get mad. Get even
.

A Panama hat
perched jauntily atop the skull, whose flesh had been split down the center and
fanned out to frame the cranium like clown hair. Its body was posed arms out,
flasher style. Flaps of skin had been flayed off the torso and splayed out like
orange wings. He looked like a comic book villain.
Skele-pimp.

           
He
was creepy beyond description. Recoiling, I lurched into the extended arm of a
basketball player frozen in driving-for-net position, the top of his head
hinged to reveal his brain, a basketball suspended in mid-dribble beneath a
bony palm. I realized that I’d stumbled into the room housing the BodyWorks
exhibition.

           
Behind
me, the door crashed open and my pursuer burst into the room, silhouetted against
the nimbus of light from the exit sign. He spoke in an undertone to someone behind
him. “She’s in here.”

           
Bear’s
voice.

           
Scarcely
daring to breathe, I crept backward,
trying not to look at the grotesque
sculptures looming around me in the dark. Footsteps clacked purposefully in my
direction, the sound of predators hunting prey. I crouched behind two football
players entwined in a flying tackle, aware that my near-naked body must
practically glow in the dark. I could hear two sets of footsteps, Bear’s heavy,
the other’s lighter. One of the Janitors? Bear whispered something and the second
person moved off toward the left. I thought of yelling for help, but that would
give away my position. Even if I yelled, who would come? The Operation Payback
Expeditionary Force might already have been carted off to jail.

           
 
As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I was
able to pick my way further back into the exhibit. It was laid out like an
elaborate maze, constantly folding back on itself. Wallboard separated one
small room from the next, so that every time you turned a corner you were
startled by a new display:
Acrobat Man,
frozen for all eternity on gym
rings;
Nervous System Man; Mammary Gland Woman
—humans caught in a
single moment of action and posed as though they were still alive, but for some
reason had shed their clothes, skin, and organs.

           
I
tripped over an extension cord and fell, banging against a plastic cube
displaying cross-sliced brains. Bear was there in a flash, hurtling around a
corner and skidding to a halt in front of
Marlboro Man
. Posed in the
attitude of a nicotine addict, one arm bringing a cigarette up to his lips,
Marlboro
Man
had his torso peeled open to reveal his tarred, scarred lungs.

“Mazie?” Bear
called softly. “Come out, we need to talk.”

Yeah, I’m that
dumb.
Bear’s first and second attempts to kill me had failed; he wasn’t about
to let this opportunity slip through his fingers. I wanted to explain to Bear
that killing me would serve no purpose. With the photos out in public now,
there was no point in attempting to silence me. But I sensed that Bear had gone
beyond all reason; he only wanted revenge on the person who’d brought him down.
So I kept quiet.

Bear took a
cigarette lighter out of his pocket. For an absurd moment I thought he was
going to light
Marlboro Man
’s cigarette, but he thrust the lighter
forward and began sweeping it back and forth, trying to pinpoint my location.
As he moved closer, I scuttled backward. Something cobwebbed against my face
and I let out a terrified squeak. It was the stallion’s tail from the
Horse
and Rider
sculpture, a magnificent meter-long brush of real horsehair.

           
Bear
immediately pounced, knocking aside
Chess Player
to get at me. The
plastinated player crashed to the floor, breaking into fragments. Half a
million bucks down the drain! I scuttled past
Diabetes Man, Heart Attack
Man,
and
Varicose Vein Woman
. Caroming around a corner, I slammed up
against the most ghoulish exhibit yet—a woman with flared nostrils,
slitted eyes, and lips drawn back in a snarl. In her sequined dress, backlit by
the fire exit sign, she glowed like a human torch. Call this one
Nutzoid
Mother-in-Law with Gun.
Now I knew
what Vanessa had been packing in her purse.

           
I
backpedaled. Vanessa let out a croak of triumphant laughter, raised the gun,
and fired. But her hands were shaking and the shot went wild, hitting the sculpture
behind me,
Archer.
The archer’s arrow spun off, impaling itself in
Soccer
Man
’s kneecap. I dived behind
Skateboarder,
who was doing a
one-armed handstand, legs and skateboard in the air, plastinated for eternity
in a monkey flip.

           
“Goddammit,
Van, put that gun away.” Bear growled. “How am I going to explain her
bullet-riddled body? If we do this right, I can still turn this whole situation
around.”

“I want to shoot
her,” Vanessa said sullenly.

           
“No!
Jesus—are you nuts?”

           
That
was a no-brainer, but nobody asked me.

           
“We’re
going to knock her out, then let her burn to death,” Bear said. “You still have
keys to this room, don’t you? We’ll start a fire, lock her in here.”

           
“Burn
her?” Vanessa sounded happy, as though someone had promised her all the s’mores
she could eat. “Roast her? Toast her to a crisp?”

“Yeah. But it’s
got to look accidental, so no shooting.”

           
Bear
hurried over to
Horse and Rider
. He thumbed his cigarette lighter and a
skinny flame shot up. He held it beneath the horse’s tail, which caught
immediately, the fire burning up to the horse’s rump in a flash, the tail hairs
glowing like microfilaments.

           
“The
sculptures!” Vanessa cried. “They’re irreplaceable—”

           
Bear
snorted. “They’re just Chink coolies. Criminals. Billions more where they came from.
Besides, all these fucking ghouls are insured.”

The stink of
burning horsehair and bubbling laminate percolated through the room. The
horse’s haunches began melting like candle wax.
Nervous System Man
began
to liquify, the purple dye inside his linguine-like tangle of nerves dribbling
down his body. Vanessa and Bear prowled, hunting me. I dived behind
Longitudinally
Expanded Man,
a ten-foot-tall display of body parts, a human totem pole
topped by a skull.

           
Clanking
and hissing, the sprinkler system turned on. Water sprayed from rows of ceiling
nozzles, creating a cloud of steam and smoke that made us all cough.

           
 
“Now she won’t burn up,” Vanessa said,
sounding pissy.

           
 
Attempting to slink away, I circled back
toward
Horse and Rider,
but stubbed my toe against the jagged end of
Archer
’s
bow and let out a yelp.

           
Vanessa
wheeled and fired. Bear tried to wrestle the gun away from her, but Vanessa,
who possessed the adrenaline power of the demented, jerked it away and
continued firing, drilling everything in sight. Horse parts exploded, zinging
all over the room. I cowered, hands over head. She must have run out of bullets
at last because she stopped shooting.