Andrew Klavan - Empire of Lies

Piersall had pulled the trigger of his weapon. And now he pulled it again and again. There was another blast and another. And another as he pulled the trigger again.

I turned and turned in confusion and terror, Serena screaming in my arms. I saw Todd drawing Juliette to him. I saw Juliette lifting her lips for a kiss. I saw Angelica looking on in fury and frustration and the old Arab man looking wise and kind.

And I saw Jamal. His eyes were wide. His arms were flung out on either side of him. The front of his shirt was being torn to bloody shreds in front of my eyes as Piersall's bullets pounded into his chest. The detonator fell from his hands as he reeled backward a step, his arms pinwheeling. He tumbled right through Todd and Juliette and dropped down into a pool of light that swirled over the stage floor like sand.

A girl shrieked. I looked toward the sound. No, it wasn't a girl. It was a skinny little man jumping to his feet in the first ring of seats above me, his hands clutching the sides of his head. It was Todd-the real Todd, up in his seat, watching the movie. His face was quivering with realization and fear. His hands flew from his head to grip the tier rail in front of him. He let out another high-pitched shriek.

"That's not in the movie!" he screamed. "That scene's not in the movie. Those people are real!"

"There's still a timer," Serena said to me. "It'll still explode!"

"There's a bomb!" I shouted. "It is real! There's a bomb in the theater!"

For one more moment-one more and then one more-all those faces flickering in the seats rising higher and higher around me remained as they were. Coiffed and bejeweled and beautiful and distracted. It struck me as an almost wistful tableau, like a daguerreotype of a vanished and well-loved past. For one more moment, all those rich, lovely, comfortable cosmopolitans gazed down at the movie, their minds trying to convince themselves that whatever was not the movie must just be some kind of joke or mistake.

Then at last-at last-the truth dawned on them: They were under attack.

As if on cue, there were more explosions. It nearly stopped my heart as a medallion of fire and debris leapt out of the air at my feet. A moment later, I realized this, too, was only part of the movie, another scene in the movie in which bombs went off. But even as I realized that, I became aware of another noise, a deeper noise: a low rumble as of a great beast stirring. I listened to it through the blasts and the music. On every side of me, there were murmurs-murmurs becoming voices, voices spiraling up into cries-a rising grumble of movement as people stood up out of their seats, a growing thunder rolling down from tier to tier and over the stage to tremble above me, beneath me, around me.

An explosion went off beneath the sphinx, hurling bodies and flame and sand: still the movie. I lifted my eyes in the blazing, flickering light and saw the faces above me starting to flow and migrate into the aisles. I heard more voices, more screams.

"It is real! There's a bomb!"

"Someone's been shot!"

"Oh my God! Oh my God!"

I saw a man in a tuxedo tumble frantically over a low railing to get down to the stage. Another followed. Then more men and women started to spill over and others above them were pushing out of their rows of seats, fighting their ways to the aisles. Every moment, there were more of them moving, a thick flow of them moving faster and faster.

"It's real! It's real!"

"Is there a bomb?"

"Someone said there's a bomb in the theater!"

"There's a bomb, a bomb!"

Suddenly I saw Todd racing toward me-wispy little Todd in his tuxedo-racing across the bright stage with his arms and legs churning, running for his life with all the intensity and dedication of a cartoon mouse. I stood and watched fascinated as he rushed right into the gruff three-dimensional image of himself-Todd with a day's growth of beard and a gun in his hand. For an instant, they seemed to be a double image of one man. And then the real Todd burst out of the phantom Todd and dashed up an aisle and vanished into the shadows.

I turned-turned with Serena in my arms-turned past the phantom of Angelica Eden as she laughed wickedly at the destruction around her. I turned to Patrick Piersall. He stood where he was, staring down at the sprawled, bloody body of Jamal on the floor. Piersall's arm was still extended in front of him, the gun still in his hand.

As I watched him, he seemed hardly to notice the commotion growing around him. He lifted his eyes slowly. Vaguely, he looked up at the tiers of seats. He seemed barely to know where he was.

The music thrummed dangerously now. Phantoms fired phantom rifles in our direction. Phantom explosions went off at our feet and in the sand and around the pyramids.

"Piersall!" I shouted.

The old actor blinked. He looked at me vaguely.

"It's done," I said to him. "Let's get the hell out of here."

There were others running across the stage now-real people, I mean-more and more of them. Men in tuxedos and women in evening gowns legging it through the desert sands beneath the sphinx's impassive gaze. The rumble above me was growing louder, stronger as more and more people began to panic and flee. The atmosphere quivered with their movement. The shouts and the footsteps were merging into a single quaking thunder.

"Let's go!" I shouted.

I broke for the aisle behind me. Carrying Serena in my arms, plunging through the phantasmagoria, out of the light, back into the flickering shadows of the aisle. I raced down the short slope, charging at the swinging doors.

I made it out into the corridor, headed down the corridor toward the red exit light, part of a swiftly moving stream of black dinner jackets and glittering gowns. The whole building seemed to be shaking now with footsteps and motion. The walls seemed almost to be rocking. The ceiling seemed to jump as if the roof would fly off. My stream of people crashed into another coming from the opposite direction. We converged and meshed and became one greater stream under the red light.

The door under the light was open by the time I reached it. Serena and I went through it with the rapid wash of rhinestones and bow ties flashing past on either side of us. I stepped out into the cold, damp air and took a great, welcome breath of it. But there was no time to feel relief. I was in an alleyway-a different one from before. I had to keep running or be knocked over. We all kept running, trying to reach the alley exit, trying to reach the street and put some distance between us and the doomed theater. Even here-even outdoors like this-we could hear the thunder in the theater continue to grow. It sounded as if some enormous tsunami were ripping itself out of the ocean bed and hoisting itself up to the surface of the sea.

I was halfway down the alley when the tidal wave caught up with us. Every theater door flew open. The people burst from them in the full flight of panic and swept over me in a flood. I clutched Serena to my chest with all the strength I had. I heard her scream, then heard her screams lost in the thousands of screams all around me. Wild faces were everywhere and the solid softness of bodies engulfed us. The tide pushed us and stopped and spurted forward suddenly in a broken rhythm impossible to outguess. I fought frantically to stay on my feet, clutching Serena, shoving to left and right to make a way for us. I felt myself lifted up and carried and hurled down to the pavement so hard I thought I would fall. But the crush lifted me up and bore me on, my toes scraping over the alley floor. I had lost all control. I was being carried along at the mercy of the billowing surge of the mob. I was conscious of my racing heart and a flow of some chemical energy through me that I suppose might have been called fear. But I was detached from it. It was something happening inside my body, not to me. In me, there was only an intensity of experience and force all funneled into my effort to keep my feet, to hold on to Serena, to go on, and to survive.