“No,” said Rebecca, her own words making her feel sick. “They’re going to come inside.”
“We’re getting the hell out,” said Bert. It sounded like he was moving.
“Where?” Rebecca whispered.
Another noise now. Faint, distant as the engines had been. A high-pitched squeal getting louder. It was a whistle, growing...
“Ohmigod.”
Rebecca scrambled to her feet. She took off running down the weaving hall to the function room, rounding the tables and breaking through the swinging doors to the kitchen where the kettle was screaming with steam. She slid the glass pot off the burner and burned her hand holding the spout open to silence the noise. The kitchen doors swung behind her, slowing until only the whistle echoed in her head.
She put the kettle down on a cold burner. It hissed at her and she turned without breathing. She was separated from the others now. She had backed herself into a blind corner.
Footsteps, hard and quick through the function room. Fern entered with her rifle, barrel-first.
“Maybe they didn’t hear it,” said Rebecca, fooling herself now.
Fern said, “They heard it.”
Rebecca held on to the stove as more footsteps approached and the rest of them pushed through the black doors behind Fern. Everyone except Bert and Rita.
“Weapons,” Rebecca said. It was all she could think of. “We need weapons.”
She pulled open counter drawers, looking for knives. A noise outside made her pause: a single snowmobile engine running past the delivery door.
Rebecca could feel the hysteria rising in herself and in the room. She found a drawer full of cutlery and was pulling out knives when the panic started behind her.
“I need a gun,” said Terry, grabbing at Fern. “I need a gun!”
Terry began to wrestle with her for the rifle. Fern twisted away in amazement. “Who do you—?”
“Give me the gun!” Others tried to intervene, and Terry began to fight them too. “Get away from me!”
Dr. Rosen and Robert tried to lock Terry’s arms behind him, but he shook them off with nailing elbows and then ran to the delivery door. He was working the handle, trying to get outside. He got it unlocked before Rebecca and the rest seized him, pulling him back and forcing him up against the walk-in freezer door. His face was red and grunting. A full-blown panic. They handled him roughly, fighting Terry instead of the prisoners.
Only the sled engine stopped them. It passed the door again, this time followed by footsteps.
And Terry had unlocked the delivery door.
The steps stopped outside as the sled engine thrummed in the distance.
Then glass broke at the far end of the building.
They could not lock the outside door. They would be heard. They all stood frozen in the kitchen as though darkness hid them. Dr. Rosen was holding Terry by his collar and Mia’s raw nose was buried in her tight, mittened fists.
Fern stepped away from the rest with her rifle. She trained it on the swinging doors leading to the function room.
More glass shattering. The prisoners were inside the country club.
Terry moved again, and this time no one stopped him. He left Dr. Rosen holding a torn scrap of collar as he raced away through the swinging doors into the function room.
All reason fled with him. Darla inexplicably ran out too. Dr. Rosen stood immobile for a few seconds, watching the doors swing, then went after her. The black doors swung and swung.
The first gunshot sounded far away. A man yelling, perhaps Terry. Rebecca shrank into the corner. Hiding helplessly was the worst feeling she had ever known.
Two quick screams in the hallway, and gunshots to match. In her mind’s eye Rebecca saw Darla twist and fall.
Another yell and then footsteps charging through the function room. Fern steadied her rifle and the swinging doors burst open and a man ran inside. Fern shot him in the face. It was Terry.
Terry’s hand went to the hole in his cheek. He fell forward against the center prep table.
Mia was screaming, Rebecca was screaming. Fern was stunned and shrouded in smoke.
Terry continued on his knees to the outside door, a man possessed. He fumbled at the handle, finally pulling it open.
A prisoner with a deeply grooved face was waiting for him. Terry fell back with two gunshots in his chest.
Everyone was moving in the room except Rebecca. Fern doggedly worked the bolt on her rifle for another shot as the prisoner rushed inside, yelling in Spanish, firing at the first person he saw. Robert crumpled to the floor. Mia screamed through her hands.
Fern raised and fired again. The shot jolted the prisoner. A bit of insulating fluff flew out his right sleeve.
Then he kept coining. She was working the bolt again when he shot her in the stomach. Fern sagged a bit and raised the rifle but the mechanism had jammed. The prisoner walked up to her with her barrel trained on his crotch and shot Fern in the chest. She fell back and the rifle clattered to the floor as the prisoner stood over her.
Rebecca reached blindly into the open drawer. She was standing there holding a two-pronged serving fork. The prisoner laughed and came at her as the swinging doors opened behind him.
It was Kells. The gun in his hand went off and the prisoner’s shoulders flew back. Kells advanced with the gun held in front of him and fired twice more before the prisoner could turn. Kells kept coming and firing until the prisoner was lying dead.
The revolver did not explode in Kells’s hand. It made only a dull loud cracking noise. There was no explosion of flesh, only coin-sized holes that gurgled blood. And he did not grin. He appeared deadly purposeful and short of breath.
Silence then, the strangest, loudest silence, a smoky moment in the room. Kells heard words spoken in the hallway and walked back out through the swinging doors. The doors rocked back and forth.
For some reason Rebecca followed him. Kells strode around the tables with his gun ahead of him like a flashlight. The second prisoner, dark like the first, turned the corner into the function room and Kells fired first and fast, hitting him in the stomach, the face, and a leg. The prisoner stumbled to the empty bar, slipping to the brass foot rail and falling still. He was alive and concentrating hard on his breathing. Kells kicked the man’s gun away.
“How many more?”
Kells was talking to her.
“One,” she answered, shocked that she was even visible.
Kells proceeded into the hall. Rebecca went only as far as the edge of the carpet.
Halfway to the main doors, lying twisted and still in a lilac ski suit, was Darla.
An older man inside the front doors wore a long black overcoat and wielded a long rifle. Kells stopped near him and called down the hall in Spanish. He yelled again, then started along the opposite wall toward the reception desk.
A prisoner rushed out of the manager’s office firing a rifle. Kells cut him down. The prisoner collapsed in the hallway, and Kells advanced, sticking his revolver back into his shoulder holster. The prisoner was dragging himself toward his dropped rifle.
The man in the overcoat stepped next to Kells. He raised his long rifle over the prisoner but could not shoot.
Kells reached down for the prisoner’s rifle and finished him with a single shot to the back of the neck.
There were no flourishes. He killed without style and without hesitance. Dutifully, he killed.
The man in the overcoat just stood there. Kells started back past Darla to the function room, right around Rebecca to the prisoner lying at the bar. He searched the inside of the man’s unzipped North Face jacket as the prisoner watched, for some reason unable to move. He flexed his hands but his legs were still and loose. He was saying something over and over in Spanish, with what sounded like a Cuban accent. Kells responded in Spanish, finding a small, thin canister inside the prisoner’s jacket.