11. The Haunted House Has a Name and I’m Not Using It #2
"Can we please focus on whether the building is clear?"
"Medieval Roomba, Grace. That's your title now. It's non-negotiable."
Then a shriek of metal tears through the room. The floor shudders. The chain drive grinds once, twice, then catches on something with a sound that goes straight through my teeth.
Joel's head snaps toward the track. "That's not good," he says.
"Is it medium not good or very not good?"
The grinding gets louder. Somewhere ahead, something crashes. The animatronic dragon exhales one sad puff of fog over the whole situation like even it's disappointed.
"Very," Joel says.
And then, from deeper in the haunted house, something starts moving toward us. Several somethings.
The chain drive shrieks. The carriage is stuck halfway through the castle gate, tilted against the guide rail with Staff Jacket wedged beneath its front edge. Missing Shoe is beside it. Neither of them is finished being a problem, which feels rude after being hit by an enchanted carriage.
From the room beyond, something bumps into the back of the stopped vehicle.
Then something else. Then another something else.
"Zombie bowling has a flaw," I say.
Beck's grin fades. "Zombie bowling has a second frame," he says.
The wrong people behind the carriage start climbing. One of them crawls over the carriage hood. Fingers dragging across the cracked fiberglass, mouth working.
I don't back up fast enough. Of course I don't. My body receives instructions by mail.
The wrong person drops off the carriage and hits the floor on its knees. Its hand catches my pant leg.
I swing the friendship paddle down.
The first hit lands on its shoulder. Useless. The second catches the side of its head and makes a sound I'm never going to successfully describe to a therapist. The third hit is me, both hands on the paddle, screaming as I drive it backward into the track rail.
Joel's wrench comes down.
The wrong person stops moving.
For one second, all I can hear is the gnome hammering in the other room.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Like applause from hell's smallest carpenter.
Beck vaults the edge of the track and swings at the next one. The axe catches on a dangling strip of fake ivy. Beck jerks once. Twice.
The wrong person keeps coming.
His face changes. The bright, delighted Beck drops away and underneath is a young man in a fish vest in a dark room with something dead reaching for him.
Joel moves. But Beck gets there first.
He lets go of the axe, grabs the nearest fake treasure chest with both hands, and shoves it into the wrong person's knees. It goes down.
Beck yanks the axe free and brings it down once. Then again. Then he steps back, breathing hard.
Joel looks at the carriage. Looks at the control panel. "The maintenance controls."
"The what?"
He doesn't answer. He crosses to the wall panel beside the gate, opens it, and holds down a yellow button.
The chain reverses. The carriage jerks backward a foot. The wrong people climbing over it lose their balance and spill onto the track.
"Now," Joel says.
Beck swings. I shove with the paddle. Joel hits the forward control, and the carriage surges into the gate again, pinning the crawlers against the frame.
"Doorstop kill," Beck says.
"No."
"Track smash?"
"No."
"Haunted carriage combo?"
"Beck, please develop grief."
Once the carriage pins them, Beck and Joel finish what the ride started. Joel backs the vehicle out with the maintenance controls, and we move through the rooms behind it in pieces: throne room, wizard tower, grand hall.
Joel keeps one eye on the track. Beck keeps the axe ready. I keep the friendship paddle in both hands and try not to think about the fact that it has graduated from "prop I stole" to "thing with a job."
The finale room is worse than the dragon because it's trying so hard to be beautiful.
Animatronic dancers spin in slow circles beneath a ceiling of fake stars, held in each other's mechanical arms, smiling with painted mouths while the music doesn't play. Their skirts brush the floor. Their glass eyes catch the emergency lights. Around and around and around.
And between them, wrong people move.
I can't tell which bodies are mechanical and which bodies are dead. Everything is turning. Everything is smiling. Everything has hands.
"Nope," I whisper.
A dancer rotates past me, gown whispering against my knee.
Behind it, a wrong person reaches out.
I swing at the wrong person and hit the dancer instead.
Its mechanical body turns, arms extended in a frozen waltz, and catches the wrong person across the chest. The wrong person staggers sideways into another dancer, which turns into another dancer, which turns into a chain reaction of haunted ballroom violence.
The entire room becomes a formal dance and a workplace accident.
Beck whispers, "Zombie ballroom."
"No."
"You invented zombie bowling and zombie ballroom in the same building."
"I'm under a lot of stress."
We sweep the rooms after that, which is a very calm way to describe walking through a fairy-tale murder tunnel and checking which things still have teeth. Beck handles the still-moving ones with the axe.
I don't watch that part.
Beck steps away long enough to clean the axe on a torn velvet curtain from the wizard tower. When he rejoins us, the blade is clean.
He always cleans it. I noticed that. I'm going to ask him about it someday when we're safe enough for questions like that.
Joel extracts three battery packs from the ride vehicles that didn't participate in zombie bowling, which I appreciate because I have boundaries now. They're heavy. He leaves them beside the entrance. We'll need a maintenance cart to move them, but they're ours now.
We walk out of the Haunted House. Through the stone archway. Past the LED torches. Into the daylight, or what's left of it, the sun low and orange on the horizon like even the sky is tired.
I pull out the where picture. Seafoam green crayon. I draw an X through the last building.
Four X's. Four buildings. Zero team casualties. Multiple wrong people neutralized or contained across the adventure part.
I fold the where picture. I put the crayon behind my ear. "Okay," I say. "The adventure part is secured."
Beck's arms shoot up. "We fucking did it."
His voice starts climbing toward a whoop. Joel points one warning finger at him, and Beck converts it into a silent victory dance that somehow makes more noise visually.
Joel nods. But the nod is deep, a full head movement, and I'm counting that as Joel's version of a whoop.
"Back to the crime boat," Beck says. "Victory funnel cakes."
"We need to plan next steps," Joel says. "Wonder Garden. Solar Plaza. Entry points, coverage, supply mapping."
"Victory funnel cakes and next steps," I say, because I want a funnel cake and planning is better with sugar. "We go back to the crime boat. We eat. And then we figure out the rest of the park. We need a room for that."
"Beck's cabin has a table," Joel says. "The captain's quarters. On the ship."
"The captain's quarters," I say. "The thinking box."
Joel stares. Beck grins.
"Because it's a box," I explain. "A room where we think. The thinking box, Joel. Come on."
"I know what you meant."
"Then why are you staring?"
"Because I always know what you mean and it never stops being..." He pauses. "It never stops."
"Is that a compliment?"
"It's an observation."
"It felt like a compliment."
"It was an observation, Grace."
But his eyes are doing the thing. And the almost-smile is back in the lobby of his mouth again, refusing to check in.
"To the thinking box," Beck says.
The park speakers are warbling Wondie's broken loop, the hydration reminder stretched into a ghostly drone that follows us through the empty avenue.
I trip on a cobblestone. Beck catches my elbow. Joel's hand twitches toward me. I straighten and keep walking, trying not to think about the fact that I now have two people who reach for me before I hit the ground.
I'm used to getting myself back up. I'm not used to being caught.
The ground and I will eventually have to renegotiate our arrangement. Not today.