Total pages in book: 68
Estimated words: 69772 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69772 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 349(@200wpm)___ 279(@250wpm)___ 233(@300wpm)
I wouldn’t tell him that money was tight as hell, and sometimes I wondered if it would be easier to start traveling again, without Ande this time.
In an act of desperation, I decided to go for a walk.
It wasn’t the safest place in the world, but there was a movie theater across the street that I knew I could make it to without too much fuss.
It wasn’t the nicest one in town.
In fact, it was the one I most expected to be closed by the end of the year.
I got into the movie theater thanks to the owner, who’d been working the booth since his employees refused to come to work. He must’ve given my name or photo to the staff, because they all knew to let me in free of charge.
The phone in my pocket rang again, and I ignored it.
I walked up to the ticket counter and smiled at the older woman.
Before Nonna had died, I’d brought her here with me to escape reality for a few hours.
Now I stopped by and the owner always smiled sadly at me and let me in.
After insisting that I pay like I always did, and her insisting that I go in without paying, like she always did, I reluctantly left without paying because I was going to miss the movie.
Today was a rerun of Battleship.
I loved the movie, and though I’d seen it so many times I could recite every single word, I still wanted to see it from the beginning.
I also didn’t examine the way my brain lit up with happiness because I’d been with Quinn the first time we’d both watched it, and we realized it was one of the best movies ever created.
I took my usual seat in the front left closest to the emergency exit, then snacked on my popcorn and Dr. Pepper that was also free.
At first, I wasn’t aware that there was anything going on around me.
The movie I was watching had a lot of gunfire in it.
Also, the acoustics in the place had definitely seen better days, so I could be hearing clatter from the next theater over, as well.
But then a faint ‘pop’ had me glancing up.
I watched in confusion as the man’s extra-large drink just down the row from me started to leak.
Brown liquid gushed from a hole…
My heart seized.
Panic started to fill my lungs.
Gunfire.
I was hearing actual gunfire.
I started processing it a half second before everyone else and found myself diving onto the sticky ground.
My fingers landed on something lumpy and hard, and I forcibly opened my eyes to see that it was stuck on a gummy bear.
My eyes were so focused on that gummy bear that at first, I didn’t notice the man whose drink had exploded was on the ground next to me.
He was staring at me with panic in his eyes, and I felt the calmness I always had when flying take over.
With a look of understanding, we both turned and started crawling toward the exit.
People were screaming. The movie was still playing. And it was as I was about to get into the aisle to head toward the exit door that I saw the pile of bodies that’d already tried before me.
People were a writhing mass on the floor as they cried and screamed.
Blood.
There was a lot of it.
It was coming in flashes because of the movie playing above us. Light. Dark. Light. Dark.
Blood and mayhem. Dark. Blood and more blood. Dark.
Time seemed to slow as I tried and failed to think about what I should do next.
“We have to get out of here,” I heard the man behind me say. “Let’s go another way.”
We did the awkward turn thing again and started crawling back the way we’d come.
I ignored the fact that we had to crawl over a clearly dead woman at the end of the aisle, and also ignored all the neon green that I kept seeing standing up in the front as we crawled farther and farther away.
What many didn’t know about this theater was that it had three exits.
Technically, there were only really two for the public.
One where you came in, and the emergency exit.
However, there was a third, lesser known place we could go.
I touched the man’s leg and stilled his progress that would’ve taken him to the main entrance.
“Here,” I pointed as I army-crawled past him. “This way.”
I led him to the back curtain and said, “This is where I saw…”
I pushed the curtain aside, and there was the entrance to the media room where there was a set of stairs that led to the projector at the top.
I’d actually spoken to quite a few people about the maze of rooms that would lead them from projector room to projector room. A couple of months ago, a storm had rolled in, and the staff had urged the ten people in the theater into this same entrance where it then led to a back door that was an enclosed room.