Night of the Living Trekkies (5 page)

“Yeah,” Matt said. “Get her drunk and she’ll show you
her
goatee.”

“If he’s lucky,” T’Poc smiled.

“That sounds . . . great,” Jim said uncertainly. “What do you do in the real . . .”

Rayna shot him a look.

“I mean, what do you do aboard the evil, mirror-image
Enterprise
?”

“I’m the commanding officer’s personal yeoman,” T’Poc said. “I assist him in his amoral, selfish quest to claw his way to the top of the command chain. It’s roughly analogous to the job belonging to my counterpart in this universe.”

“And that would be?”

“She’s my executive assistant,” Matt said. “Keeps track of all the stuff I’m too busy to remember.”

“Speaking of which,” she said, “you need to get Gary off the ship. He’s really stinking up the place.”

Matt sighed, then pounded on the side of the RV.

“Hey Horta, get your pimply butt out here!” he shouted. “Front and center, mister, before Imp Entertainment decides to replace you!”

“Coming,” called a voice from inside.

The door opened once more, and a grossly overweight young man climbed out. Unlike the others, decked out in their full convention splendor, he wore ratty jeans, faded yellow Chuck Taylors, and a threadbare shirt that read “I Stole a Bird of Prey, Resurrected Spock, and Saved the Planet, and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt.”

He also reeked of putrescence and was spattered with vile black goo.

“Meet Gary Severin, my pet Horta,” Matt said. “You know what a Horta is?”

“Not a clue,” Jim lied again, when in fact he knew all about the lumpy, silica-based, acid-spewing subterranean monsters that debuted in the classic
Trek
episode, “Devil in the Dark.” But he played dumb, forcing Matt to spend more than a minute explaining the concept.

“I call Gary a Horta because he’s large and lumpy, too,” Matt concluded, just in case the comparison wasn’t clear.

“I also suffer from acid reflux,” Gary said forlornly.

Jim frowned. “Is that why you’re covered in slime?”

Matt walked over to Jim and put his arm around his shoulders. He left it there, as if they were old friends. “Gary had a run-in a few miles back with a psycho soccer mom . . . or something.”

“Or something?” Jim asked.

“He can tell you all about it. As a matter of fact I guarantee he’ll tell you since he hasn’t shut up for one goddamn minute since it happened. But never mind all that. Right now we need to find our rooms and change our clothes, because the Klingon Feast starts at . . . T’Poc?”

“Seven o’clock in the Gweagal Room,” the Vulcan said tone-lessly.

“We’ll be there ten minutes early,” Matt decided, “so we can find a table big enough for all five of us.”

Jim did the math and then shot a look at his sister, who seemed to have found something very interesting on the garage floor to observe. “You told me
we
were meeting for dinner at seven,” he reminded her. “This was your plan?”

“I’m booked all weekend,” Rayna apologized. “But I really want to see you.”

“Trust me, you’re going to love it,” Matt said. “There’s a bat’leth demonstration, barrels of bloodwine, and all the gagh you can eat.”

“I don’t want to spoil your Trek buzz,” Jim said. “You go eat your gagh and have fun.”

“Please come,” Rayna said. “For me?”

“Actually . . .”

“Did I mention that Matt has been hitting on me nonstop for the last three hours?”

“I’ll be there,” Jim decided. He retrieved a trio of room keys from his pocket and distributed them to Matt, Rayna, and T’Poc. “You’re all checked in,” he explained. “Just take the elevators over there. Gary and I will take the freight elevator way over
there
, so he won’t scare off the paying guests.”

“Where are the elevators?” Matt asked, his head swiveling around. “I don’t see them.”

“Lose the shades,” T’Poc said.

Matt, with great reluctance, finally took off his Ray-Bans.

“Ah, target acquired,” he said. “See you later, Jim, Brother of Rayna. And here’s something for your college fund.”

He slipped a ten-dollar bill into the breast pocket of Jim’s jacket.

Jim felt a flash of true anger. He was about to suggest someplace else where Matt could slip his money when, once again, he caught a glimpse of his sister. And he refrained. Instead, he grabbed Gary’s duffel bag from inside the RV and then led him across the dimly lit garage toward the service elevators.

“Hey, Oscar,” he said into his radio. “I’ve got my sister and her friends. Thanks for letting me know they were coming.”

“Can’t talk now, buddy,” came the static-filled reply. “I got some knuckleheads causing trouble out here. Standing in the street. Harassing cars. Drunk frat boys, I’m guessing.”

“You need help?” Jim asked.

“Go have fun with your sister,” Oscar told him. “I’ve got this situation under control.”

Jim clicked off his radio and turned his attention to Gary. “I don’t mean for this to come out the wrong way,” he said, “but is your buddy Matt as big of an asshole as he seems?”

“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” Gary promised. “Once he settles down at the Klingon Feast and has a few drinks, his douche-bag powers will go to full strength. He’ll crank it all the way up to warp 9.95.”

Jim assumed this was bad. Very bad.

The two plodded the rest of the way to the elevator in silence. Jim mused that there was an excellent chance, a truly excellent chance, that Matt wouldn’t get out of the Botany Bay Hotel alive.

Meanwhile, in a distant level of the hotel far, far away, Princess Leia Organa lay handcuffed by the wrists to the headboard of a queen-size bed.

The man holding the key to her freedom was named Donnie Trill. He was a self-styled Web entrepreneur, videographer, and the closest thing she had to a confidant. They’d known each other for about a year. Whenever Trill needed a female model for one of his oddball Internet video projects—and had cash in hand—he gave her a call.

She watched as Donnie messed with the settings on his digital camera. He wore an ill-fitting gold uniform from the original
Star Trek
series. It stretched in a profoundly unflattering way over his gut.

But that wasn’t what troubled her now. She was mulling over the larger issue of how she’d reached such a crossroads in her life. How a perfectly normal—well,
reasonably
normal—person such as herself wound up doing such patently abnormal things.

She’d been pondering that question a lot lately.

“Tell me again what this is for,” she asked.

“Some fan site,” Donnie said, not bothering to look up from his camera. “For people who despise the Star Wars franchise. Actually, it’s for Trekkies who despise Star Wars.”

“Does it have much of a following?”

“Just fifty thousand paying subscribers.”

“Good Lord.”

“You know what’s really impressive? Their creative director pays cash up front. I’ll send him the video tonight and it’ll go live almost immediately.”

“What do I have to do?”

“Just lie there. The premise is that you’re a Star Wars groupie dressed as Princess Leia, and that I’m an obsessed Star Trek fan who’s kidnapped you, handcuffed you to a bed and then . . .”

“Nothing sexual.”

“Honey, have you forgotten who you’re with?” Donnie said. “I’m gayer than George Takei. All I’m going to do is stand around and berate you about how much the Star Wars universe sucks and how Star Trek is superior in every way.”

“And then what?”

“And then the Death Star explodes and the rebel base is saved. What do you think? I shut off the camera, unlock the cuffs, give you a thousand bucks, and we’re done.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes.

“How long will this take?”

“Maybe fifteen minutes. The guy gave me a script. You don’t have any lines. Just look annoyed. Kind of like you do now.”

“Well, hurry up. I’ve got another job right after this one.”

“Booth babe?”

“What else? They’ve got this ridiculous outfit for me—a silver-blue bathing suit—and they want me to carry a spear. I’m playing Shahna from ‘The Gamesters of Triskelion.’”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“It’s a classic Season Two episode. Kirk, Chekov, and Uhura are captured by disembodied brains who use them as gladiators—”

“Do you wear a wig?”

“A nice one,” she said. “Platinum blonde. Very Lady Gaga.”

“The fanboys are going to love that. Maybe you’ll make a new friend this weekend.”

“I’m just here for the money,” she assured him.

She never had the interest nor the ambition to pursue conventional modeling—and at a healthy six foot one, she didn’t exactly have a clothes-rack body. But at a small-scale event like GulfCon, she was invariably a belle of the ball. And when the fanboys discovered that she genuinely loved science fiction—that she could quote chapter and verse from
Deep Space Nine
, they’d plead to have their pictures taken with her. She usually worked two or three gigs a month and every dime went right into the bank.

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
Okay
, she thought.
Character. Get into character. If I’m going to spend the weekend as bikini eye candy for pervy fanboys, no one has to know who I am. As long as I’m wearing this getup, I
am
Princess Leia.

“A lot of these guys have serious bank,” Donnie remarked. “If you can look past the uniforms and the prosthetic ears, you could land yourself a really nice boyfriend.”

“Just roll the camera, Dr. Phil.”

“You don’t want a boyfriend?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She fidgeted on the bed. The handcuffs were digging uncomfortably into the tender skin on her wrist. “The only person I like to depend on is me.”

“Brrrrr, you’re frigid tonight!” Donnie said, grinning. “But I’ll tell you what. We’re going to get good and drunk in the hotel bar tonight and work through some of your issues.”

He turned off the ringer on his cell phone and set it down on the nightstand along with the handcuff key. Then he mounted his camera on a tripod, turned on its tiny auxiliary light, and looked at the preview screen again.

“Now when I start, I’ll do a few seconds of you trying to yank your hands free. Then I’ll walk in and start reading the script.”

“You’re just going to stand there and read?”

“Nothing in the contract says I have to memorize this. And no one’s going to be looking at me, anyway. I could hold a rabid raccoon and people wouldn’t notice.”

Donnie shuffled through the several pages of typed, single-spaced dialogue. Then he cleared his throat.

“And what’s with Jar Jar Binks?” he announced in a theatrical voice. “People say he’s a walking, talking Happy Meal toy. But you know what? That’s an insult to Happy Meal toys! They’re way more entertaining than Jar Jar!”

“Is it all like that?”

“Pretty much. The guy told me to sound really ticked off.”

“Your fury is almost palpable. Let’s do this thing.”

As Donnie switched on the camera, something thumped the wall above her head.

“What was that?” Leia asked.

“The people next door must be having a quickie,” Donnie said. “Their timing sucks. It’ll ruin the take.”

A moan wafted through the wall.

“We can’t wait for them to finish,” Leia said. “I have to be downstairs in—”

“I know, I know,” Donnie said.

There was a second thump, followed by a short, high-pitched scream.

“You need to shut them up,” Leia said.

Donnie turned off the camera and its light and then started toward the door.

“Hey, I was kidding,” she said. “Don’t you dare leave me like this.”

“Hold tight,” Donnie said. “I’ll just be a second.”

He opened the door and stepped out into the hallway. He pulled the door closed behind him, but it didn’t latch. Instead it bounced against the frame and then drifted open a couple of inches.

Leia tested the handcuffs to see if she could slip free, but Donnie had tightened them all the way.

Thanks, buddy
, she thought.

A few seconds ticked by. Then a few more. She glanced over to the key on the nightstand. It was just eighteen inches away from her right hand—but it might as well have been a mile.

“Donnie?” she called out.

He didn’t reply.

The seconds stretched into minutes.

Leia considered calling out again, but the noises coming from the adjacent hotel room made her think better of it. There were more moans—but not the sort you’d expect to hear under such circumstances. There was no pleasure in these voices. They sounded like they were dying—or worse.

Even more troubling, the voices seemed to be moving into the hallway. The stretch of hallway just beyond her slightly open hotel room door.

Leia didn’t know what was happening, but she knew she wanted no part of it.

She lay perfectly still, using a yoga technique to calm her breathing, hoping that Donnie would return, but gradually understanding that, for whatever reason, he wasn’t coming back.

I’ve got a bad feeling about this
, she thought.

The service elevator was big and poorly lit. Some of the hotel staff used it for cigarette breaks, so it normally reeked of smoke. But today all Jim could smell was Gary. Or, rather, the black viscous goo on Gary’s T-shirt.

The elevator’s doors slid shut. It slowly rumbled up toward the seventh floor.

“You’ll have to forgive me for asking,” Jim said, “but what the hell happened to you?”

“Crazy shit is what happened,” Gary explained. “We were heading down 249 and were just inside Beltway 8 when the Commodore stopped for gas. You can probably guess who had to pump.”

Jim pointed at Gary.

“Affirmative. Now the only other car in the gas station is a Volvo station wagon. And while I’m standing there waiting for the RV to tank up, I realize the driver of the Volvo isn’t moving. She’s slumped over the steering wheel. Her window’s down maybe six inches. The stink coming out of this car is unbelievable.”