# # #
“No, I realize that,” Liz said. “We’re in a bit of a rush to get back to our son. If you could just accompany us back to our vehicle.”
“Sit tight, ma’am. We just need to make sure everyone is okay first,” the man said.
Liz rolled her eyes and sighed. She turned to Alan and whispered, “Let’s just leave. They can’t keep us here.”
“We still have to get to the car,” Alan said. “Let me talk to him.”
Alan slid to the edge of the table, took a close look at the floor before he committed himself, and then slid down to the floor. He walked carefully on the scattered rice. Liz turned to look at the brightening sky outside. Dawn had never looked more beautiful. The scattering clouds were hot pink against the violet sky. Liz massaged her temples and watched her husband trying to negotiate with the firefighters. They had their process and they weren’t willing to deviate from it. Liz understood. She dealt with rigid processes all the time. Sometimes it felt like most of her job was manipulating those rigid boundaries to her advantage.
At the moment, all she wanted to do was let someone else deal with it.
She closed her eyes and sighed again.
When she opened them, she saw something in the corner of the room. She had to blink a couple of times to make sense of what she was seeing. Jennifer couldn’t have looked more different. When she and Jennifer had gone through the doors to the back hallway during the reception, Liz had felt like she needed to rescue Jennifer for a moment—give her a break from the “performance” of the event. Now, Jennifer really looked like she needed rescuing. She was wearing sweatpants and sweatshirt. Her hair was a tangled mess and her makeup was running down her face. Her wide eyes were still weeping.
Liz cocked her head and a smile played across her lips.
It was good news. Jennifer was okay after all. She must have escaped the honeymoon suite somehow and evaded the hotel’s monsters. The idea wasn’t impossible. Most of the guests had probably survived. Liz turned back to look beyond Alan, out to the hallway. More firefighters with flashlights were escorting guests down the hall. Everyone was being evacuated from the hotel.
Liz’s focus was drawn back to Jennifer.
She looked so sad, huddled in the corner.
“We should help her,” Liz whispered to herself.
# # #
Ricky just stared at the person and tried to answer the questions.
No, he wasn’t injured. Yes, he knew his name and the date.
It was all so impossible. A moment before, they had been fighting for their lives. Now, they were simply props in someone else’s drama. This was the tale of the rescuers. Ricky and the others weren’t even characters in this story.
“We should help her,” Liz whispered.
Ricky looked over and saw that Liz was looking towards Amber and some firefighter. For a moment, he assumed that Liz was referring to one of them, and he puzzled about what help either of them might need.
But she wasn’t. Liz’s jaw was slack and her eyes were unfocused. She didn’t appear to be looking at anything at all until Ricky followed the direction of her stare. Liz was actually looking between Amber and the firefighter, all the way to the corner of the room. The sky was brightening outside and that light made the shadows even deeper than they had been before. It took Ricky a moment to see anything at all over there. He squinted and really concentrated.
“Sir?”
“Huh?” Ricky asked. He had missed the last question.
“We’ll be right back, okay, sir?”
“Sure,” Ricky said.
The shape was a blanket or maybe a forgotten jacket. One of the guests had probably left their jacket on the back of a chair and it had been kicked to the corner during cleanup. But there was another shape as well—this one was right near the door that led to the back hall. Ricky’s heart went cold when he recognized that shape. It was one of them. A scaly arm pulled in tight to the body as the thing tried to disguise itself against place where the wall met the doorframe. The thing was looking directly at the corner and Ricky finally figured out why. The shadow wasn’t a discarded jacket. It was a person.
Liz’s whispered statement finally made sense.
“We should help her,” Liz had said.
“Yes,” Ricky whispered back
They had to help her or the monster was going to get the woman in the corner.
# # #
Amber put up her hand to ask for a moment.
There was something going on between Ricky and Liz.
Liz began to pull herself to the edge of the table.
“Liz, what are you…” Amber started to ask.
Liz’s feet hit the floor and she started shuffling through the rice.
She saw what had caught Liz’s eye. There was a glow coming from the corner. It was every bit as beautiful as the sunrise outside, but Amber wasn’t fooled. The thing beyond the scattered rice and beyond the tables was deadly.
The firefighter in front of Amber was unfolding a blanket. Amber snatched it from her hands and hurled it at Liz. The blanket wrapped around Liz’s face, but it didn’t slow her down. Liz pushed the blanket away and kept moving. Amber scrambled to catch her. Throwing the blanket back over Liz’s head, Amber wrapped her arms around Liz and tried to overpower her. The woman had turned into a zombie. Amber raised her feet and let her bodyweight bring the two of them to the floor.
“Ricky, help me,” Amber said. She looked up to see that Ricky was shuffling too. He had been ensnared by the thing in the corner, just like Liz.
The woman firefighter stepped up to him and he simply put out an arm to hold her at bay while
