Cutthroat Chicken (5 page)

The competitors sprang forward, elbowing each other in an attempt to jockey a better position to get their ingredients from the pantry. Spry for her age, Sybil Lent once again showed her ability to sprint. Unfortunately, she ran straight into the line of meat hooks, which were laden with several more of the head-on chickens that had messed up the last round for Tim Burr. There were more of them than necessary, practically a battalion of naked, staring, poultry bodies, swinging from their hooks, with their legs hanging down.

The chickens had been one of Abe Braun’s tactics. He liked messing with his contestants. It had seemed like the perfect idea, making the players butcher their own chickens. Stuff like that made for hilarious TV, with all the complaints and challenges butchering always created. It had been the perfect gag.

It didn’t seem quite so funny just now.

Oliver Dye was the first to reach the fridge. He jerked it open. Contents of more than twenty little plastic containers full of random ingredients came pouring out onto the floor. A few of these burst open, spreading cheese and crème freche all over the floor.  Oliver Dye grabbed arms full at random. He would sort out all of his ingredients, once he was back at his station.

Sybil Lent reached over his head and snatched the last bottles of cream and half-and-half before they, too disappeared into Oliver Dye’s cornucopia of ingredients.

Abe Braun counted down the time for getting ingredients from the pantry. Sybil Lent and Oliver Dye sprinted back to their prep stations, ready to get things started.

“Crap,” Sybil Lent muttered. “I didn’t grab any eggs.”

Oliver Dye grinned triumphantly in his competitor’s direction. He had all of the eggs from the entire pantry in his basket. Unless all of them broke at the same time, he was in the clear.

His smile slipped when Sybil Lent jumped in and gave him a sabotage that gave her his eggs, and left him holding a baggy of powdered eggs.

“We’re all walking on eggshells in their round,” Abe Braun said. “But, what if your competitor really had to wear eggs on the bottoms of their shoes?”

“You can’t make flan without breaking a few eggs,” Oliver Dye quipped. He was still feeling good about his chances. He might be able to pull this round off and win the money. He grinned and pumped his fists. “How’d you like that? Bam!”

“That’sss omeletsss, not flan,” Sybil Lent shot back.

Oliver Dye rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Lame.”

Sybil Lent ended up with the egg shoes. She grimaced as she squeezed the slippers with the eggs under the heels onto her rather long feet.

“Damn, what size shoes do you wear?” Oliver Dye wagged his head, impressed.

“Ninesss,” Sybil Lent said succinctly. She straightened up, standing on her tip-toes so as not to crack the eggs that hung precariously underneath her heels. She pirouetted gracefully around on her toes. “I used to dance.”

“That’s money down the drain,” Oliver Dye muttered.

“Start cooking… Now!” Abe Braun waved his arms, setting the countdown clock into motion.

A familiar sort of chaos ensued. The players rushed back and forth between the stoves and their stations. They whipped, stirred, cursed, and popped pans into water baths inside of ovens.

Oliver Dye gnawed his lower lip. He had never worked with powdered eggs. He wasn’t feeling overly confident that the custard would set properly. He set to making sides and garnishes to his flan. If the custard itself didn’t turn out, maybe the sides would make up for that. He set to whipping up a quick churro batter, planning his next moves under his breath. With his vast reservoirs of energy applied properly, he was getting incredible amounts of work done.

Sybil Lent was taking a more traditional route. She’d put all her eggs in one basket, so to speak. Part of that had been sheer necessity. Moving around on her tip-toes to prevent breaking eggs was more tiring that she had expected. Her legs were burning and trembling.

“I can run triathlonsss, but I can’t walk around on tip-toe for thirty minutesss,” she muttered to herself as she opened the oven enough to get a look at her custard. She glanced at the time. If her custard didn’t set quickly, she’d be serving hot flan to the judge. She didn’t like hot custard and she was pretty sure he wouldn’t either.

The round continued as it always did. The chefs did their dance, scurrying around in an attempt to put their hearts and souls on the plates. Sybil Lent pirouetted through the kitchen, while Oliver Dye moved in a jerky, almost robotic way. All they lacked was the music to go with their dance.

To the crew, each second was nothing short of agony. It seemed like everything was moving in slow motion. Each twist of a whisk, each breath the chefs took, were watched intently.

All eyes were on the competitors. Every breath, every heartbeat was set on the outcome of this round. The game was nearly over. If they could get through this round, perhaps the rest of them would be safe.

They really were fools.

Ever toast a friend?

It had been a fiendish thing, that billboard the Viewer had seen all those years ago. It had been referring to drunk driving. Now, however, it suited the Viewer’s current mood. No wonder Abe Braun enjoyed puns so much. Given time, the Viewer himself might become a fan of language abuse.

The Viewer was feeling almost chipper. If he had had lips, he would have whistled to himself as he made his preparations for the next stage of his plan. He wished that he could whistle. He’d never considered it, not having lips had never particularly bothered him before now.

It was a shame, really, not having the right body parts to gloat properly.

At least he could have his perfect dramatic climactic moment. All the flourishes and vanities that any supervillain could desire would be his. His plan would leave the crew and players… breathless.

Again, not being able to laugh was an annoyance.

Pity.

“Crap,” Sybil Lent shouted. She grimaced as she picked up one foot to look at the smashed egg underneath her heel. There was no use trying to hide the crack, this egg was done for. Already it was oozing with white and yolk. One moment of imbalance and now she was facing a fine for breaking her egg, not to mention the time wasted, putting another one in the sling under her foot. In this moment, smashing an egg was the worst thing that could have happened to her.

Oliver Dye laughed with delight at her misfortune. “Careful you don’t slip! You might break a hip. Get it? You’re old!
Burn!”

When the sink at back of the stage area burst into a tower of flames, the contestants actually laughed. They thought it was just another one of Abe Braun’s tricks.

The crew knew better. They scattered, reaching for anything close at hand that might be able to put out flames. A wail went up when one of the technicians discovered that the fire extinguishers were either not working, or spraying something that smelled an awful lot like what Abe Braun liked to drink.

The Viewer was proud of that detail. The devil was in the details, for certain.

The on-site paramedic found a working extinguisher and raced towards the still-burning inferno that was the sink, blasting the flames into submission.

The fire died under the foam, only to spring up again, with greater force than before.

Then the other sink, across the kitchen burst into a second tower of flame. Sybil Lent and Oliver Dye stopped laughing and started to panic. They rushed towards the cameras.

Then the deep fryer burst into flames. It blocked the players from making it off of the stage. They, and those who had attempted to put out the first fire, were surrounded by walls of flames. They screamed for help.

The crew scrambled. Even Abe Braun and Chef Aire-Craft tried to find something in the pantry, something anywhere that would help put out the flames.

The screams inside the inferno grew louder.

The fire alarms all sounded off at the same time. The sirens screamed, red lights flashed. The activation of the system gave the crew hope. Maybe the firefighters would come. Maybe they would be rescued from this hell.

“Don’t worry,” Abe Braun shouted over the screams and yells, and the roaring of the fire. “This is a good thing! The fire safety system is still working. We have a sprinkler system. That will help with the flames!”

“No! Wait!” The shrill cry pierced the air. Goldie Locke stepped forward with a haunting scream of warning, but it was too late.

Instead of life-saving water, the sprinklers cast down a fine mist of the same accelerant that the Viewer had put into the fire extinguishers.

The whole world went up in flames.

When the flames died away, as suddenly as they had come, the survivors climbed to their feet, choking on the heavy smoke that hung thick over their heads. After the roaring of the flames, they felt like they had been deafened. They picked themselves up, staring around like survivors of a bomb.

Soft weeping filled the air. Some of the survivors could only whimper.

“Why,” a smoke-smeared and changed Abe Braun whispered. He cradled a scorched arm to his chest, coughing the smoke out of his lungs as he climbed to his feet. His eyes were haunted, his face taut. If he survived, he would never forget this day. Those screams. That horrible smell of burning flesh. He dragged his good hand across his face, smearing it with soot. He didn’t even notice.

All around him were the less fortunate—those that had not survived the firestorm. There were so many still forms. Some had been burnt, but most of the dead had been killed by the smoke.

No one even glanced into the kitchen area. There was no point. No one could have survived within the eye of that firestorm. Abe Braun only hoped that they had died quickly. He wished he could get the sounds of screaming out of his ears. He had a feeling that they would haunt his dreams forever.

If he survived.

If. If. If.

Every moment that passed, that ‘if’ seemed more relevant. Each survivor realized that they were wearing a target. Each breath could be their last. They knew that getting out of here was less likely than dying.

Most of the survivors were coughing. The black smoke had burned their lungs. With soot and smoke streaked across their faces, they looked like a group of refugees from hell.

That wasn’t far off of the mark.

“We need to regroup,” Chef Aire-Craft announced. If the fire had shaken him at all, it didn’t show on his face. “Roll call. Who is still with us?”

It was a pitifully small group that gathered around him. Some were streaked with smoke, some were untouched by flame or smoke. A few were too weak to join the group. Haunted eyes glanced their way and then away from their pitiful cries. Those were unlikely to make it, with those injuries.

None of the seriously burned victims had survived. Perhaps that was a blessing.

Both contestants were gone, of course, and with them the only person on the set with medical training. They would have to make due on their own.

They were tired and brittle. All they could process was a need to survive for another minute, another hour, another year. There were prayers on lips that didn’t believe in God. Everyone begged in their hearts to be safe, to see their loved ones—furry, scaly, feathered or human—again.

Goldie Locke leaned over the worst of the injured people. She held a weak hand, trying to offer some kind of comfort. She seemed to fill the dying man with a kind of energy and hope. Already he looked like he might just survive a little longer.

Squeak. Squeak. Squeak.

Goldie Locke startled into alertness. She turned her head, trying to stare into the shadows of the darkness around them. Most of the lights had not survived the fire. They were surrounded on all sides.

Squeak. Thump. Squeak. Thump.

Abe Braun covered his ears as the sound penetrated the air around them. It seemed to be growing louder, growing closer. He leaned on his anger. It was the only thing keeping him sane, at this point, and he had doubts about his level of sanity.

He coughed hollowly, staring, as everyone else did, into the blackness that surrounded them. “What is that godawful sound?”

The small group of survivors skulking around him scurried closer, liked trapped animals. They had learned their lessons. They knew they were being hunted. They didn’t know what was making the sound approaching but they knew it couldn’t be good. They were not out of hell quite yet.

One of the cameramen, a middle aged man who had always seemed to be particularly unflappable, let out a shrill scream and pointed in terror towards the pantry, where all the competitors had loaded up their baskets with ingredients for each round of the competition. It was stocked with every edible imaginable, from every country and culture around the world—with an emphasis on American staples such as ground beef and boxes of macaroni and cheese. It was a miracle that the pantry had even survived the fire. What could have survived that close to the inferno that could incite such a reaction?

The few working lights flickered like strobes as those closest to the pantry picked up the panic of the cameraman and added their voices to his. The herd of frightened animals shied away from the pantry and what it held.

Strangers clung to each other, skin bleached by terror and the flickering of the lights overhead. Faces moved in the strobe-light, fear slowing them until they appeared to be underwater, drowning in fear and darkness. With every moment, the last shreds of their humanity slipped further and further out of reach. They were on the verge of madness.

Abe Braun clawed his way through the crowd, not away from the pantry, but towards it. His rage was sustaining him. He had had enough. He found himself standing next to the still, slight figure of the blond woman who had called herself Goldie Locke. She stared in the direction the others had indicated with a blank expression, her hands limp at her sides.

“It has begun,” she whispered. Her hands shook ever so slightly as she raised them and pointed into the pantry, her finger long and pale in the darkness. “Look!”

Abe Braun looked and swallowed hard. Begun? This was just the beginning? If this was the beginning, then what lay ahead for them?

What were they dealing with? He stared through the flashing lights. Bile filled his mouth. He jolted backwards.