I leap out from behind the ice chests and race for Tommy, but he isn’t moving, and I can already smell the sickening tang of charred flesh. The heat has peeled away most of his clothes, exposing patches of swollen, purple-red skin, that glisten in the afternoon sun.
I take a moment to suppress my gag reflex, and that’s when I notice the huge gash across Tommy’s throat and the shards of glass that are still lodged inside. Blood bubbles down his neck and pools along his shoulder until it glides away in silent streams of red, occasionally fizzing against a stray briquette.
This whole thing has gone from dangerous to completely fucked, and I regret ever mentioning that it existed. Spain has managed to pull off this event for over sixty years without incident, and SunVerge has chalked up at least one casualty in about five minutes.
When our investors told us to innovate on established concepts, this probably isn’t what they had in mind.
I’m about to make a break for my car when I see someone else approaching, her huge rack bouncing in time with each step. Tomato juice or not, I’d know that body regardless of what it was covered in.
It’s “Christmas Party” Christine, and she’s headed straight for Tommy’s body, running faster than I can process the potential danger of the tomatoes he’d scattered only seconds earlier.
“Wait, stop!” I shout, but it’s too late. Christine, barefoot and unaware, stomps down on one of the beefsteak tomatoes. A patch of sewing needles sprout through the top of her foot, squirting blood in all directions.
“Fuck!” she shrieks, raising her foot off the ground to inspect the wound. “My fucking foot! What did you do!”
“It was Tommy,” I say, motioning in his general direction. “He dropped them all just before—” Once again, I stifle the urge to vomit. The smell of scorched meat is stronger than ever. “Just try not to move, okay? You’ll drive them in further.”
Christine hops to maintain her balance, careful not to land on another whole tomato. “Well, did he say anything to you?” she asks through gritted teeth. “Like who did this to him?”
“No, nothing,” I say, taking a step back. “He just ran up here and collapsed.”
“Well, I’m sorry you had to see him like this,” she says, slowly reaching into her bag. “Poor Tommy. If only he could have kept his mouth shut.”
I catch a glimmer of reflected glass from the tomato in her hand, and my instinct takes over. In one swift motion, I reach inside my bag, grab one of the rock-filled tomatoes, and hurl it toward Christine’s head. It catches her in the jaw and sends her crashing to the ground, where she sprawls across no less than a half-dozen loaded tomatoes. She screams and flops onto her stomach, clawing desperately at the patches of needles that have sank deep inside her leg, her ass, her shoulder. After a few moments of useless flailing, Christine props herself up on both knees and clutches at her throat, retching and heaving until she coughs up a gob of blood onto the sand. She studies it for a moment, then reaches down and lifts a pile of red-soaked needles out of the splatter. It’s only now that I realize there’s a tomato skin pinned to the side of her neck, held in place by hundreds of tiny pinpoints.
Christine turns toward me and attempts to speak, but her voice is little more than a wet gargle. She holds up the pile of needles between her fingers, waving them at me as blood pours out of her mouth and down her chest, dyeing a path through the chunks of tomato still clinging to her skin. She coughs once more before her body slumps to the side and goes limp. Her eyes flutter for the briefest of moments, then close permanently.
I drop my bag and stare at the two dead bodies sprawled across the sand, covered in blood and tomato juice. Down the beach, people are still laughing and screaming, red shapes dancing in a sea of carnage.
Are there any more co-worker-stalking psychos out there? How many others are injured—or worse—and being overlooked by people like me? I look towards the stage, at the microphone stand positioned near the center. I can put a stop to this, call off the fight a few minutes early, before it gets any worse.
Heart pounding in my ears, I bolt for the stage and reach the bottom stair when I hear a voice call, “Simon, is that you?” I swivel around to see Kenneth’s stained head peering over the lip of a sand dune wall. “The microphone doesn’t work, I’ve tried,” he says, motioning me towards the embankment. “They’ll run out of tomatoes eventually. Get up here, we can wait this out together.”
I run towards the dune, using whatever momentum I can manage to propel myself up the side. Kenneth grabs my hand, hauling me over the top and into the crater, where I collapse onto my back and gulp for air.
We both sit in silence, listening to the distant sounds of La Tomatina. “Is everything okay?” Kenneth says, after I’ve managed to catch my breath. “You seem pretty upset. Not enjoying the game anymore?”
I freeze, then realize he probably didn’t see what just happened from his position up here. This is my chance to get out clean.
“No, sir. Some of the other employees are throwing more than just tomatoes. I think some people are getting hurt.”
Kenneth raises an eyebrow. “That’s a major accusation, Simon.” “It’s the truth, honest,” I say. “Philip Barnes, Tommy Hayes, Christine Dawson. All three of them are out for blood, and who knows how many other people are in on it.”
“Those three? I should have guessed,” Kenneth says. “They’ve been a powder keg ever since Philip caught Christine and Tommy fooling around at last year’s Christmas party.”
His frankness catches me off guard. “Really? I didn’t know that.”
“Not many people do,” he says, sliding over beside me. “I met with them a few months back. We all agreed that as long as the matter was kept secret, they were allowed to keep working for SunVerge. Not to mention, I would have three permanent members of the event planning committee.”
I force a smile, then lean back and rest my head against the sandy bank. Up here, it feels like the insanity on the beach is a million miles away.
“So how do you think they found out about La Tomatina?” I say, staring off into the bright blue sky. “Wasn’t it supposed to be a surprise?”
“Oh, that’s easy. They knew because I told them,” he says, reaching into his bag. “After all, I’m going to need a good alibi.”
As I’m about to speak, Kenneth grabs a golf ball-sized tomato and forces it inside my mouth, then clamps his arms around my head, covering my nose and holding my jaw shut.
“Did you honestly think I didn’t know you were up to something?” he whispers, tightening his grip. “I saw what you just did to Christine. Was that tomato meant for me, by chance?”
I swing my fists wildly but I’m beginning to feel lightheaded. Flecks of light dance in front of my eyes.
“Although I have to admit, you’re a pretty smart guy. It’s no wonder why they’re looking at you to be my replacement. Talking with corporate behind my back, warning them I’d give you a poor review if I felt that my position was being threatened. Well, guess what? You nailed it, and now they want me out of here.”
My lungs scream for air, so I bite down on the tomato and start to chew. At once, hundreds of tiny glass fragments fill my mouth, and it feels like a rusty box grater is being dragged across my gums. Some of the fragments burrow through the insides of my cheeks, while others slice through the lingual vein underneath my tongue. Citric acid floods the cuts, stinging so bad that I scream through my closed mouth, but that only sends more of the glass fragments and acid tumbling down my throat, ripping and burning as they go.
“This job means everything to me, Simon. I wasn’t just pandering in my speech. And if I can’t have it, they sure as hell won’t be giving it to you.”