I run into first maze and see a dozen me’s reflected back in brightly lit silver-framed mirrors.
The passageways are tight.
I drop the stupid coil of wire.
I’m in. Nobody cares who I am or what I’m doing, because the live TV feed is coming from further up ahead, the two camera crews attached to Soozy and Becca, maybe the one with Mike and Dave, breathlessly waiting to see how quickly their competitors complete the course.
Fortunately, when we worked here, Jess and I used to play “mice in the maze.” First guy to reach the end didn’t win a chunk of cheese, just an after-work beer at the Frosty Mug.
Up ahead, I hear laughter and squeals. The happy kind. Soozy and Becca. They might be on the second floor already. Maybe in the area called The Side Show. Audio-animatronic mannequins in a bathtub crack corny jokes as you wander past them in the dark. A clown dummy cackles at you.
I enter a black-lit hallway decorated with glowing clown faces and whirling swirls. Next comes a rolling tunnel, The Barrel Of Laughs. It’s like walking through a psychedelic toilet-paper tube with a spinning clown face at the far end to make you queasy.
“Fuck me. Another maze?” I hear Soozy shout.
Becca giggles. “Come on, girl. We can win this thing!”
I step out of the rolling corridor and onto the oscillating floor where we used to blast air up pretty girls’ skirts.
Next I’m in the hall of mirrors. The frames are clown faces. Their wide-open mouths distort my reflection. First I’m fat, then I’m stretched thin, now I’ve got a huge head and very little body, next my chest balloons up to the size of an elephant’s.
I don’t bother checking my watch.
I’m sure there’s less than two minutes left.
I need to keep moving forward.
I climb the undulating stairs. They’re split down the middle. One side rocks up while the other rocks down. It’s like a spastic escalator.
Now I’m in the side show with the dummies cracking corny jokes. I move past them fast and step onto a spinning disc that’ll make you all kinds of dizzy because you see a dozen reflections bouncing back at you.
I’ve reached the entrance to the second maze of mirrors.
The frames up here are painted colors that radiate bright pinks, purples, and greens under the influence of ultraviolet light.
My reflection moves forward.
No. Wait. That’s not me.
I’m not wearing a knit cap.
49
Knit cap has his compact semi-automatic up in a two-handed grip.
I do the same with my Glock.
Sixteen images of him creep forward.
I don’t know which one is really him, which ones are his reflection.
I inch ahead, match him step for step.
Now the killer repeats to infinity. His reflection is reflected back so many times, it looks like a receding mineshaft full of shooters. I notice he has a communicator headset, the same as the backdoor lookout’s, strapped on underneath his ski cap.
A new image flickers off a mirror.
A blazingly bright light.
From the camera crew. It swings into a full-filament burn and bounces off the mirrors all around me. I am momentarily blinded.
I blink. Try to clear the floating sunspots singed into my retina.
Becca and Soozy jitter into view on half of the endless array of glass panels surrounding me. The shooter is still in the other half. He’s aiming left and right and straight at me. The girls keep moving, bumping into mirrored walls, feeling their way in the dark.
Knit cap keeps following them, moving stealthily. He is a killer cat. A never-ending column of death.
The effervescent mirror frames glow under the black light.
So do the killer’s teeth. Bright white. He’s smiling like a shark.
And I don’t dare take the shot because I have no idea which image is real, which is a reflection. I’m trapped inside a crazy kaleidoscope of killers.
Now the shooter’s white teeth move. I read his lips:
He pivots to take his shot.
His orange I.D. badge glows under the ultraviolet lights.
Big block letters all around me spell out: WERC
And in one flat space: C R E W
That’s the panel I target.
I don’t have time to try something cute, like shooting the weapon out of his hands.
I aim for his chest. The floating I.D. badge.
My Glock explodes. The cramped maze reverberates. Glass shatters as the bullet rips through knit cap’s chest and cracks open the mirror behind him.
The impact spins him around. He drops to one knee.
Becca and Soozy are screaming. Their camera crew is panicking. They drop their handheld light. The tungsten filament sizzles and sputters out. I hear stampeding feet as the hit man raises his weapon.
He sees me. Maybe my reflection.
His chest wound oozing DayGlo red, he squeezes off a round. A mirror to my right explodes.
I fire again.
He won’t be able to.
He flies backward into a sheet of silver glass that crackles into a spider web of slivers.
He is dead.
I glance at my watch.
It’s 9:54:30.
I just gave Layla Shapiro her big ending.
50
Turns out that the instant Ceepak heard me fire that first round, he took down the backdoor dude with a single bullet to his left kneecap.
“I had several minutes to line up the shot,” he tells me. “You, Danny, did not.”
They haul scuba man to the hospital.
I tremble.
I’ve killed yet another human being. Make that two indelible ink spots on my immortal soul. My chances of skating into heaven grow slimmer and slimmer the longer I stay on the job. Pretty soon I’ll be a camel facing the eye of a needle, and not because I’m rich.
Of course Becca Adkinson hugged me and kissed me when she found out I was the one who had taken down the bad guy who’d had his sights set on her.
Then Soozy K bopped over and made a big show of planting wet sloppy kisses all over my face because Jimbo and his crew had found a fresh camera light and were shooting us live for the network and local news
