D. MacHale - The Never War

“C’mon, c’mon!” I coaxed the elevators while furiously hitting the button…not that it would do any good.

“Who’s Winn Farrow?” Spader asked. “Is it Saint Dane?”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” I answered breathlessly. “But those guys were only supposed to give us a warning and they decided to kill us.”

“You can’t trust anybody,” said Spader.

“Hey!”

We both looked to our right and saw the gangsters rounding the far corner, headed our way. We had to keep running. Spader and I jammed it down the corridor. Our only hope was to find a stairwell, or at least another corridor. Luckily it was a long hall and we were too far away from the gangsters for them to take a shot at us.

When we got to the end of the corridor, we found a door that probably led to a stairway, but it was blocked by furniture and painting supplies. If we tried to dig through that mess, the gangsters would have us.

“This way,” ordered Spader.

We turned right and sprinted down the next corridor. This hallway ran parallel with the corridor where our room was, on the far side of the hotel. It was pretty long too, so we could stay out of bullet range. But we couldn’t keep running in circles. We had to find an escape route.

Halfway down the corridor, I saw it. An exit sign. Without stopping to think, I took a right into that door. I was hoping to find a stairway, but no luck. It was a service corridor. We were now running parallel to the hallway with the elevators.

“Maybe we can loop around back to the elevators,” I said. “If we’re lucky we’ll catch one closer this time.”

“Hobey-ho,” Spader said.

We ran to the far end of the service corridor and stopped. I slowly opened the door to peek out. No bad guys anywhere. So far so good. We quickly ran out, turned right, and sprinted back along the corridor toward our room. We had come full circle.

But this was scary. For all we knew, one of the gangsters could have doubled back and would soon be rounding the corner in front of us. We passed our room and had only a few yards to go before hitting the elevator corridor again, when we heard footsteps coming toward us. Oops. At least one of the gangsters decided to circle back. He would be on us in seconds!

We were done. I froze in panic.

Spader didn’t. He grabbed my shirt and pulled me into the last room of the corridor before the turn. There wasn’t a second to spare. I caught a glimpse of the gangster coming around the corner.

The two of us dove to the inside of the door. All we could do was hope the gangster wouldn’t peek in. A few seconds later we heard footsteps run by. I looked to Spader. He winked at me. We waited a few more seconds, then slowly took a peek outside to see the gangster running full throttle down the corridor, away from us. Excellent.

Now we had to move fast. We booked out of the room and back toward the elevators. We made the right turn again and saw an empty corridor. We also saw one of the elevator doors opening up! We took off on a dead run.

“Going down?” a voice called from inside the elevator.

We were too far away for him to see us. We kept on running, and I saw the elevator door starting to close. At this point it didn’t matter if the gangster heard us or not, so I shouted out, “Dewey!”

Too late. The elevator door slid shut. We missed it. A second later the nasty gangster appeared at the far end of the corridor. I guess itdidmatter if he heard us. We were now staring right down the pike at worst case scenario.

That’s when the elevator door opened up again! Dewey heard me after all.

“What are you guys doing?” he asked. We both dove into the open car before the door was all the way open. “Close it! Close the door!” I shouted.

Dewey was totally confused. Both Spader and I started pushing the door closed ourselves. “Hey! That’smyjob!” Dewey whined.

We ignored him and almost had the door shut when the nasty gangster arrived. He got his fingers in the door and tried to pry it open.

“Down, Dewey!” I shouted. “Not that way.” I looked up.”Thatway.” I looked down.

“But there’s another passenger out there!” Dewey complained. That’s when the nasty gangster showed his revolver. Dewey got the message. He leaped at the door and helped us close it.

“Get us out of here!” I yelled.

Dewey grabbed the control lever and surprisingly enough, we started down. Dewey was better under pressure than I would have guessed. But he looked wild-eyed and scared.

“Who was that?” he screamed. “He had a pistol!”

“Where’s Gunny?” Spader demanded, ignoring Dewey’s question.

“I just saw him in the lobby, headed outside. What’s going on?”

“Nothing Gunny can’t handle,” I said. “Forget about what you saw.”

“But I gotta tell my father about this,” Dewey complained.

“Don’t do that!” I shouted. I think I scared the little guy because he backed up against the side of the elevator. I got my head back together and said calmly, “It was just a joke. Like a prank, you know?”

“But, but that guy had a gun,” Dewey whimpered.

“Gun?” I faked a laugh. “That wasn’t a real gun. That was…that was… a costume. For the costume party. You know the clothes we had on before? Those were costumes too. You thought it was a real gun?”

I faked another laugh, looking sideways at Spader. Spader got the idea and he faked a laugh too.

“Yeah,” Spader said. “It was a toy.”

Dewey wasn’t sure we were telling the truth, but I think it was easier for him to accept it than to think there were guys running around his father’s hotel flashing guns. That was good. If Dewey called the police, they’d have to question us, and I’m not so sure they’d like the answers we had to give. No, it was better this way. But we had to find Gunny and let him know what was going on. Finally we got to the lobby, and Dewey opened the door.

“Thanks, Dewey. We’ll let you know when the next costume party is, okay?” I said.

“Great, thanks!”

Dewey was a simple kind of dude.

We ran from the elevator and went looking for Gunny. We hurried to the front doors of the hotel and looked outside. Night had fallen and the garden was lit up like Christmas, with lights hidden among the greenery.

“There!” shouted Spader, pointing to the sidewalk in front.

Gunny was there talking to a man. We ran down the front stairs of the hotel, through the garden and out onto the street. Gunny saw us. He shook the hand of the man and the guy walked off just as we ran up to him. We were both out of breath and excited.

“What’s wrong?” he said, sounding a little angry. “I told you boys to stay put.”

“We had visitors,” I said. ”The guys from the flume,” Spader panted. “They came looking for us.”

I didn’t like the look on Gunny’s face. It was a cross between shock and fear. Bad combination.

“Who is Winn Farrow?” I asked.

For a second I thought Gunny was going to faint. He actually looked unsteady on his feet. Whoever Winn Farrow was, his name made a strong guy like Gunny very scared. This was getting worse by the second.

“I can’t believe he sent people here,” Gunny said. “That’s crossing a very dangerous line.”

“Why? Who is he?” I asked.

Gunny looked down at us and was about to answer when we heard a scream.

It was a horrifying, tortured scream that came from far away. Actually, it didn’t come from far away, it came from farup. The three of us spun quickly to look up at the hotel. What we saw made my knees go weak.

Somebody had jumped out of a window!

The whole building was lit up by floodlights, so the dark figure was easy to see, though I wished I couldn’t. The fall took only a few seconds, but those few seconds will stay with me forever. It was horrible. The figure screamed all the way down. Luckily for us, the tall trees in front of the hotel blocked us from seeing the final second. We stood there frozen, then Gunny broke and ran for the building. Spader and I followed right behind him. I didn’t want to see what had happened, but I was sure I needed to. Chances were this had something to do with the gangsters and this Winn Farrow dude.