Mitzi accepted a clipboard from the girl at the front desk. A standard insurance liability waiver. Where it asked, “Are you pregnant?” she checked the box marked NO.
A scream, a woman’s ragged, choking scream made her jump with surprise.
One thick-legged behemoth was resting between sets in the squat rack. The scream had come from a phone he held sideways, his eyes glued to the screen.
Again the scream rang out. A woman. A woman’s sobbing, rasping scream, it was a movie playing on his phone. The scream drowned out the grunts and clanks. It was some woman, begging, beseeching, “Please, no! You can’t! I’m your wife!”
The scream stood Mitzi’s hair on end and drew a cold finger down her back. She knew this one. It had been used in a cheap Halloween release years back, the kind of schlock shocker theaters rent to show at midnight on Friday the thirteenth. The movie’s title was The Warlock’s Blood Feast. The scream’s formal title, written in her father’s handwriting on a tape Mitzi had found by accident, was Traitorous Woman, Dispatched Quickly, Rusty Ice Pick. Mitzi had listened to it more times than she could count.
This scream was precious to her. It was her mother’s.
Gates Foster flowed with the tide of costumed witches and spacemen. He let the mob steer him through the convention hall. There, booths showcased television programs and comics publishers. Huge banners hung from the rafters to tout blockbuster summer movie releases and video games. Everywhere he looked, Foster saw nothing but people massed together.
Somewhere in this maze of aisles divided by booths selling toys and tables where artists drew and autographed their work, somewhere was Blush Gentry. According to the convention program she’d be meeting her fans—for a fee. The program listed her in Hall K. Where that was, Foster had no idea.
He’d felt idiotic while buying the elements of his costume: the hood, the spandex leotard and tights, the boots and breastplate and ridiculous cape. The gloves. The store shelves had been picked almost clean by convention-goers, so he’d been forced to mix and match. His spandex sagged, or it bunched in the wrong places, showing the lines of his underwear and binding. The holes cut in the executioner’s hood seldom aligned with his eyes, so he often stumbled over galactic storm troopers or hobbits. But here he wasn’t foolish, in costume he was invisible.
The gun sunk lower in his boot. Its hardness bit into his ankle with every step. The hood trapped his breath and made his scalp itchy with sweat. A map printed on the back page of the program showed that Hall K would be to his right, and Foster tacked slantwise to cut in that direction through the lurching robots and staggering zombies.
He was always on the lookout for Blush Gentry, for her trademark blonde curls. On pirated internet videos he’d seen her eaten alive by an army of rats. Since the dawn of films when young women had been tied to railroad tracks and tied to logs sent into huge sawmill blades, Hollywood had never lacked new ways to take pretty girls apart.
He found her line long before her. Long, long before. It snaked into Hall H, three halls away from where she sat at a folding table autographing glossy photos and chatting with her fans. It cost fifty dollars merely to receive a ticket and join the line. He hadn’t gone three steps before another cache of fans had paid their money and fallen in behind him.
The place was a target-rich environment for any pedophile. Tens of thousands of children broke away from their parents and milled in awestruck wonder at the sight of their cartoon heroes. Everywhere, exits linked the halls to the outside world. Any pervert in a Teddy bear get-up could take his victim by the little hand and spirit her away without notice.
Foster tugged his eye holes into place and studied his phone, comparing his gallery of screen captures with people in the crowd. Not far from him, an astronaut removed his helmet and tucked it under one arm. The man’s thin hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, and his haggard face had flushed red from the heat. Not only did this middle-aged geek look out of place, he looked familiar.
Slyly, Foster brought his phone level with the man in the near distance and quickly thumbed through old images. His nose, his chin, and his neck matched perfectly those of an otherwise pixilated face. Here was the answer.
Something tugged at his cape. A voice said, “Hey.”
Foster turned to find a sandal-wearing gladiator with a spray of pimples swelling his cheeks. The gladiator asked, “What are you?”
A princess with fake braids coiled beneath her crown asked, “Who are you supposed to be?”
The astronaut-slash–child molester had struck up a conversation with a small girl dressed as a ladybug. The pair seemed alarmingly chummy.
He told the gladiator, “I’m nobody.” The astronaut’s nose at the very least looked to be an exact match. If Foster left the line to save the kid, he might never meet Blush Gentry. But in another beat the pervert could walk that tiny ladybug through any exit and into oblivion.
In line ahead of them, a legion of samurai and ninjas turned to give Foster a good looking-over. Someone took a step forward and they all took a step. They were all bored, flicking their phones and needing more distraction.
Foster directed their attention to the astronaut. “You see that
