Gerry cups a hand over the end of his cigarette and flicks the lighter a couple times. He’s just about managed to get it started when he feels rather than hears a vehicle pull up alongside him and a low, sharp whistle.
Sighing, he shakes the cigarette out and tucks it back into his coat. “Figures.”
He turns away from the gate of the cemetery to see Detective Tonner—Daisy—staring fixedly out the front windscreen of an incredibly battered Breekon and Hope delivery van. Basira leans around her and raises an eyebrow at him, but doesn’t say anything, just jerks her head backwards. Gerry takes the hint, goes around to the back, and wrenches one of the doors open, then pulls himself in.
“No,” Martin says immediately.
Gerry ignores him and slams the door shut. There are no seats back here—it’s a cargo van, after all—so he just plops himself down on the floor between Melanie and the doors. “Okay, go,” he calls up to the front.
He half expects Daisy to peel out of there like a bat out of hell, but instead, she moves away from the curb at a remarkably sedate pace. Gerry reaches up to make sure the locks are engaged just the same.
“Gerry,” Martin says.
“Martin,” Gerry mimics. Martin’s eyebrows draw together. “Don’t look at me like that. You didn’t actually think I was going to let you two go off on your own, did you?”
Melanie scowls at him. “Yes.”
“It’s like the biggest Leitner we’ve ever burned,” Gerry says, repeating what he said on the tape last night. “You need me there.”
“He wouldn’t take no for an answer.” Jon looks up at Martin. “If it helps, I told him he could come when I still thought I was in charge of this operation.”
Basira looks over her shoulder. “You never thought you were in charge of this operation. Even when you thought you were still the Archivist, you kept saying we couldn’t make plans until Martin got back.”
Martin laces his fingers through Jon’s. He seems to be struggling to stay angry. Gerry decides to finish him off with something he can’t argue against. “I promised Tim.”
“Well…fuck.” Martin sighs and deflates. “If we’re not going to be able to make you stay back—”
“You’re not.”
“Then I suppose my options are to stay mad at you and make this drive unpleasant for all of us, or let it go, and I don’t hate anybody else in this van that much, so. Fine.” Martin huffs. “You’re not technically a member of the Archives staff, so it’s not like I can order you to stay back, and you’re my big brother, so it’s not like I can tell you what to do.”
“Never stopped you before,” Melanie mutters.
“Yeah, but when have either of you ever listened to me when I said to stay out of something?”
“We’ve listened to you plenty of times!”
“Oh, yeah? Name six.” Martin folds his arms over his chest and raises an eyebrow.
Melanie’s cheeks turn red, and she mimics his pose, but doesn’t answer.
They ride in silence for a while—not exactly a comfortable one, but not exactly an uncomfortable one either. Gerry watches the sky gradually lightening, sort of, and wonders what the weather is going to be like in Great Yarmouth, if they’re going to have to immediately go in or stake the place out for a while, if he can really protect all of them. If he can keep his promise to Tim.
After a bit, he becomes aware of someone humming, just barely audible over the rattling of the van. He frowns and focuses, trying to catch the song. The name is just on the outside of his knowledge, so he starts humming along, hoping the words will catch up to him before long.
Martin’s head suddenly snaps to attention. “Not that one.”
Gerry blinks and the song flees from his consciousness. “Huh?”
Melanie suddenly comes to herself. “Oh—Jesus, sorry, just—don’t even know why that’s in my head, honestly. You pick something, then.”
“Wait, no, what was that?” Gerry insists. “I couldn’t come up with it, I don’t think it’s one of our usual—”
“No, it’s ‘Guinness for Two.’ You know, the one we usually sing at the pub when someone…stops coming.” Melanie hunches her shoulders and looks down at her knees. “Last time we sang it was…”
“Evan,” Martin completes.
Gerry remembers it now, even if he wasn’t there for Evan’s farewell. “Oh. Yeah, no, not that one.”
Jon looks from one to the other. “I’d like to hear it sometime.”
“Sure, Jon, but not when we’re going into something dangerous, okay?” Martin says gently. “Let’s save it for wh—if we really need it.”
The temperature in the truck drops several degrees—even Gerry can feel it. They all know it’s a matter of when, not if. Someday, probably sooner rather than later, they’re going to run across something that at least one of them won’t walk away from. They’ve been lucky so far, but realistically, how long can that hold? Especially since the Eye’s ritual is still coming up. The other Fears aren’t going to want it to succeed before they get the chance to try again—they’ve probably assumed that’s why Gertrude, and now Martin and his team, have been fighting them—and they’re going to attack the Archives to prevent that. Sooner or later, someone isn’t going to come back.
To keep them from dwelling on it, he launches into “The Shannon and the Chesapeake,” which has never been much use as a burning shanty but at least is more cheerful than a mourning song. Martin and Melanie join in before he’s gone more than a line into the song, as they usually do, and Jon leans against Martin and seems to relax. Seems being the operative word. Gerry doesn’t think any of them are particularly relaxed, but at least they’re not as tense.
They get to Great Yarmouth about an hour after sunrise, nominally. A cluttery spell has set in and it’s been raining off and on for the last hour, which puts Martin on edge for reasons Gerry isn’t quite ready to ask about. Daisy parks the van what she says is about a block from the bed and breakfast they’ve been booked into, and she and Gerry get out to scout the area before they let the others out. It seems safe enough, but Melanie stiffens and grabs Martin’s arm the second her feet are on solid ground.
“It’s there,” she murmurs, jerking her head in a direction that could imply the building next to them and could imply the street they’re about to cross. “The middle building on this street. I didn’t realize we were going to be that close to the House of Wax.”
“Back in the van,” Daisy orders, her voice low and sharp. “We’re coming at this from the other direction.”
Nobody argues with her, and she makes a wide circle before parking two blocks further down. Both Jon and Martin make the same sound of exasperated annoyance when they discover that they’ve been booked into a place called The Hive, but Martin handles the checking-in with his usual intentionally awkward charm and they go up to the rooms they’ve been assigned. There are two of them, and one only has one bed, but since Gerry doesn’t plan to sleep until he’s home and with Tim—he’s not ready for Martin to be around him during a flashback yet—he doesn’t mind. They convene in the other room so that there’s at least more room for them to sit while they plan out their final strategy. Gerry opts to stand with his back to the door, watching the others; Daisy opts to pace the room, occasionally glaring at the knickknacks and flourishes put around the place to make it seem rustic and homey.
Finally, Jon says in what’s obviously an attempt at humor, “So, straightforward frontal assault, then?”
Martin laughs, but shakes his head. “As I see it, we’ve got two options. Either we sneak in pretending to be, uh, participants in the dance and hope there’s not security at the door, or we find a back way in. Whichever one we do, we’ll need to stake the place out first, make sure it’s, you know, safe to go in. Ideally, we’d like them to be distracted enough by the preparations to not notice us going in but not so far along in the preparations that we don’t have time to get set up before they start.”
“Why not?” Basira argues, logically enough, Gerry thinks. “Even if they start before we’re finished, we can still get out and blow it, and that way we’d know the timing was good, right?”
She looks to Daisy for support, but Daisy simply looks to Martin without speaking. Martin meets her eyes, and there’s a flash of—something—between them. Gerry hesitates to call it respect, but—no, that’s exactly what it is. Not the kind of respect his mother and Aunt Lily always insisted upon, the worship the ground I walk on kind, but the mutual understanding and acknowledgment of skills and intentions, the look of one leader to another. They’re more or less on an equal footing, but in that look, Gerry understands that Daisy is ceding control of this operation to Martin.
For now, anyway.
“We can’t be in the building when the Unknowing gets underway,” Martin says, returning his gaze to the room at large after no more than a second’s pause. His tone is deadly serious. “It’s too big of a risk. We’re pretty sure they have the calliope—they probably took it when they delivered the table, nobody’s seen them since and Rosie let them directly into Artifact Storage—and from all the statements we’ve heard about it, it whips people into a frenzy, even ones who haven’t already been Touched by the Stranger. Between the draw of the music and the fact that we’re all in some way touched by the Eye, the chance of us…opening a door and waltzing into the middle of it because we want to know what’s going on, it’s too high. Our best bet is to get in, set the charges while they’re still…um, warming up…and get our asses out of there. What’s the range on that detonator?”
“Not great,” Daisy says. “Good enough, though. Based on the plans Basira found, that spot where I parked earlier is about the extreme limit of where we can stand and be sure a charge on the opposite corner goes, and I wouldn’t trust it. Probably need to be right across the street.”
Martin nods. “We’ll—I’ll need to watch it burn, anyway.”
“We’ll need to watch it burn,” Jon says firmly. “You were right the first time.”
Basira doesn’t look convinced. “How will you know it’s the right time to blow it if we aren’t there when it starts?”
Martin looks at Melanie. Slowly, identical grins curl across their faces, equal parts mischievous and satisfied. Gerry feels the same smile spread across his own face as he realizes what it is they’re thinking.
Turning back to Basira, still grinning, Martin says, “Leave that to us.”
Basira still looks unimpressed, but moves on. “Fine. So we need to stake the place out, then.”
“I’ll do that,” Gerry says. “They’re not like you, Martin, they can’t sense all the little Marks underneath, just the big ones, so they won’t peg me as having the Eye or the Buried. All they’re going to see is an Avatar of Terminus watching the building, and really, what’s suspicious about that? The Unknowing is meant to consume lives, sacrifices, so it’s no surprise I’d turn up to watch, maybe catch some of the, uh, spillover. And if I’m not supposed to know what’s going on…” He spreads out his hands, palms up. “You four are Marked by the Eye too deeply to escape attention, and they’d definitely be suspicious of a Hunter lurking nearby.”
“If they sense me,” Daisy growls.
“They will,” Martin says quietly. Static gathers, very faintly, and his eyes seem to glow dimly. “What’s the fun in Hunting something that doesn’t know it’s prey? Even if you’re being stealthy, anything you’re after will know, and on a night like this, the Stranger will take no chances.” He blinks and shakes his head minutely, and the static dies off abruptly. In a more normal tone, he continues, “Gerry’s right. If anyone’s going to escape attention while still figuring out what’s going on, it’s going to be him.” He looks up at Gerry. “‘William Taylor’ for the front door, ‘Golden Vanity’ for the back?”
“And ‘Hanging Johnny’ if we’re going through the roof.” Gerry holds up his cell phone. “See you soon.”
Leaving Martin and Melanie to explain what the hell they mean by that, he slips out the door.
It’s drizzling, which helps, both in keeping people away and in keeping him from being conspicuous; while this is a tourist town, luckily, since the House of Wax closed, it seems most of the activity is focused further down the beach, closer to the pier. Gerry finds a convenient light pole, leans against it, and relights his cigarette, then positions himself so he’s able to watch the House of Wax without it being obvious that he’s watching it. He doesn’t feel the cold right now, or more accurately he’s just cold all the time; it’s been too long since he’s…fed, for lack of a better term, and he’s closer to death than life. The raindrops practically sizzle when they hit his bare skin. And he waits.
A pattern quickly emerges. A Breekon and Hope van—not the one they came in, a bit older model—pulls up in front of the House of Wax, disgorges a dozen or so passengers at a time, some carrying objects, and then drives away, only to return some time later and disgorge more. It’s definitely the same van; there’s a rather distinctive dent on the front fender. Gerry briefly toys with the idea of Daisy driving them around and them pretending to be part of the chorus, but that thought is dashed instantly when he sees the sort of…things…that are getting out of the van. No way will they pass for Strangers.
After a while, he takes a slow walk around the block and confirms that the only entrances are on the front, then resumes his previous position. Once he’s sure the coast is clear, he calls Martin, then quickly tucks the phone under the collar of his coat so that no one passing by can see he’s using it. Still staring vacantly in the direction of the House of Wax, he begins whistling “Hanging Johnny.”
A few minutes later, he hears a familiar hissing noise from behind him. Without taking his eyes off the building, he reaches up to disconnect the call, then murmurs, “Fire escape on the southwest corner. I’ll meet you there.”
Gerry senses rather than sees the group scuttle past him. He’s just about done when the Breekon and Hope van returns and disgorges another wave of…things. This time, though, two nondescript figures get out of the front as well and move around to the back. There’s something about them that ticks an itch in Gerry’s brain, but he can’t think what it is until they open the back of the van again and pull out an object. At first he thinks it’s just a box, but then he hears the faint humming and sees that they’re toting a coffin. A flashback, or a memory of a flashback, slams him between the eyes—two men depositing a casket into a stone vault, a van that kept driving past—and he realizes that they were the pallbearers at Uncle Roger’s funeral.
He decides not to mention that to Melanie. Yet. Instead he waits until they’ve gone into the House of Wax, then flicks his cigarette into the rain-washed gutter and slopes off to meet the others.
The fire escape is little more than a rusted ladder nailed to the wall, and Gerry finds himself wondering how many fires it’s purportedly withstood. Martin is on the bottom rung, Daisy near the top, the others staggered along it. Gerry wonders what they’re doing for a moment until he sees Jon, arm trembling with the effort, swing a heavy case up over his head for Melanie to grab. She manages to heft it up to Basira, who swings it to Daisy, who hangs for a moment and then half-throws it onto the roof. Thankfully, Gerry can’t hear a noise from where he is, so he doubts it’ll be heard inside either. As soon as Daisy, with some difficulty owing to the fact that the ladder doesn’t go all the way up, follows the case onto the rooftop and there’s room on the ladder, he steps on himself.
There’s a panel that might be a missing skylight and might be a damaged trapdoor and might just be a broken bit of roof, but whatever it is, there’s enough room for them to shin down into a low-ceilinged attic. There are a number of sagging cardboard boxes, of the sort Gerry remembers seeing in the Archives, which are therefore likely full of paperwork from when the museum was open. Daisy looks around, then pronounces in a low voice, “Structurally insignificant. No need to waste explosives in here. Let’s go.”
Melanie finds the door leading out of the attic, and they get to work.
It’s…easier than it should be, easy enough that it makes Gerry suspicious and jumpy. They’ve identified a few key rooms from the plans Basira found—Tim’s right, it is three buildings knocked together—and are able to make their way around them. Mostly it involves peering into halls to make sure no one is lurking, then darting to the next room and keeping watch while Daisy molds plastic explosives around girders and studs. She’s remarkably efficient, it has to be admitted. Gerry’s getting twitchy, though, and he can only imagine how the others feel. Still, none of them have those terrible black marks—yet—so he’s cautiously optimistic, even though he knows enough not to be completely relaxed.
After all, he only sees the blackness if they have a chance of surviving.
Finally, they’re ready to hit up the last room on their list, the one that will, if all goes according to plan, collapse in such a way that it draws the rest of the collapse into itself. Gerry admittedly doesn’t understand it, but he reckons he doesn’t have to as long as Daisy does. Melanie leads the way down the hall, peeks into the room, and jumps back. Gerry is at her side in an instant, but she’s already recovered and looked in again. She rolls her eyes at him, looking annoyed at her own momentary fear. “It’s fine. No one’s in there,” she whispers, signaling the all-clear to the others.
The room is…unsettling. Probably it’s to do with what’s in it. The room itself is on the largish side, obviously some sort of warehouse, with nothing but a single bare bulb dangling from the ceiling to illuminate the space. It’s a central room, so no windows; that one bulb is all the light they get. And what it illuminates appears, at first, to be a crowd of people—probably why Melanie jumped back—but on closer inspection, it’s clear. These are nothing but waxworks.
Bad ones, but still waxworks. They stand in loose rows and clusters, some slumped to one side, others straight and rigid, their expressions fixed and frozen and, well, uncanny. Gerry hates this room on sight and hopes Daisy has a lot of explosives to use in it. He stands aside to let the others in.
Martin is the last to enter, and he’s tense and uncomfortable, his breathing shallow. Gerry figures he’s got the same feeling that it’s too easy that he does, until he narrows his eyes at something just overhead. “Cobwebs. Great.”
Jon looks up nervously. Basira folds her arms over her chest and stands to one side. “Doesn’t that mean the spiders are long gone?”
“If they were regular spiders, yes. But the Web tends to…linger. I think the Mother of Puppets thinks the dust-filled variety are—well, spookier. Even if they’re not as good as catching flies.” Martin’s eyes dart around the room, obviously looking for more spiders. His left hand creeps towards his face.
Jon grabs it and yanks it back down. “No. Not here. Not now. If—if things go bad, you’ll need your strength.”
Martin laces his fingers through Jon’s and squeezes, a faint, sad smile on his face. Melanie looks around. “This is it, yeah?”
“Yep. We plant the last of the explosives here, this whole place goes up nice.” Daisy sounds slightly distracted as she prowls the room.
Basira looks around. “It’s too quiet.”
Jon swallows. “Could be a trap.”
“And? If it is, I give this a squeeze…” Daisy holds up the detonator. “No more trap.”
“And no more us,” Basira points out. Daisy grunts, but puts the detonator back in her pocket and goes back to looking around the room.
“Hey, it’s not like we’re alone in here,” Melanie says, with a false brightness in her voice. She flicks the arm of a mannequin next to her. “Look, it’s Prince Charles!”
“If he’s been zapped with force lightning, maybe,” Gerry says. In response to Martin’s odd look, he adds, “Tim made me watch the prequels with him.”
“That your relationship survived that is a sign that you’re far stronger than I am,” Jon says dryly.
Melanie moves over to another cluster of mannequins. “Ooh, score, the Beatles! You know, if they’d all been in separate accidents. Like if Ringo was in a fire, or Paul was in a car accident, that’s a classic…”
“Yes, Melanie, I get it, the waxworks are bad,” Martin says, a bit testily. His eyes are closed and he’s massaging his temple with his free hand. “Just…keep an eye on them, and if they start moving…”
“Hit them until they stop?”
“Yeah, basically.” Martin sighs heavily and opens his eyes again, looking around. “Christ, this is so much worse being able to see clearly.”
The room goes deathly still. Actually, Gerry knows something about the stillness of death, and he’s pretty sure that still moves more than this. Even the cobwebs seem frozen in place. Jon’s and Melanie’s faces are identical moues of horror, and as he watches, the same emotion rises, simultaneously, in both of their eyes.
Rage.
“Whoa, there.” Gerry lunges with a speed he hasn’t realized he’s still capable of and grabs Melanie’s arm. “Easy, cowgirl.”
Melanie when she’s angry, truly angry, because someone hurt one of her brothers has always been a sight to behold, but now it’s practically incandescent. Gerry stands his ground, barely, and hopes she remembers that he’s her brother before she focuses too much on the fact that he’s restraining her.
“This is where they held you,” Jon says in a choked-off, barely restrained voice. He looks around the room. “This is where they—”
“Yeah.” Martin tugs Jon closer and wraps his arms around him; Jon struggles for a second before giving up or giving in, Gerry’s not sure. “Don’t. Either of you. Just…we can blow the place to bits, but if you start going berserk in here then someone will hear us, and we can’t risk that. Please.”
Jon slumps and goes limp in Martin’s embrace, resting his head against his chest. “I just…I hate knowing you were hurt,” he confesses in a near whisper. “I hate that you were here and—that I couldn’t do anything for you.”
“I know.” Martin kisses the top of his head. “We’ll get back at the place. Don’t worry. But let’s do it the right way, yeah?”
Gerry slowly lets go of Melanie’s arm once it’s clear she’s not going to attack anything either. She gives him a look, then moves closer to Martin and Jon without actually stepping into his embrace all the way.
They wait in silence for a while. Long enough for Gerry to start getting nervous. Something about this room…something more than the fact that it was Martin’s prison cell…is getting to him. He looks around, then back at Daisy. “How much longer?”
“I don’t know,” Daisy replies.
“The others didn’t take this long.”
“The others had obvious structural weaknesses. This one doesn’t.”
“How hard is it to blow up a fucking building with all this stuff?” Melanie hisses.
Daisy stops and glares at her. “It depends. Lots of other buildings around here and I was told to be careful.”
Melanie grumbles under her breath. Basira ignores her, or tries to redirect everyone’s attention to the mannequin to her left. “So, would you say this is supposed to be Churchill or Alfred Hitchcock?”
“Jowls like that, could be either,” Jon says, frowning at it a bit. “I mean, the suit isn’t exactly period, but…”
“It could be Albert Finney, it’s so warped,” Melanie says. She eyes a door warily. “What’s through there?”
“Workroom,” Martin says softly. “But they’ve knocked out most of the middle of the buildings, I think, to make a big sort of…auditorium, I guess. Or theater, maybe.”
“How big?” Basira asks.
“I don’t know. Big. And I’m not risking finding out. Drawing on the Eye hurt in here, and I might be stronger now, but that doesn’t mean I want to risk calling attention to us this close to preparations for the Unknowing.”
“It’s just that it’s not a very big building.”
“Look, today was the first time I saw it from the outside, okay? All I can tell you is what I remember from being here.”
“You’re sure it’s the right place?” Basira presses.
Melanie scowls at her. “I am.”
“It’s definitely where they kept me.” Martin takes a few steps, Jon trailing after him, and then bends down to pick something up. He shows it to the others—a length of cloth with a pair of knots in it, one larger than the other, and a frayed slice through part of it. Bile rises in Gerry’s throat as he realizes it’s the remains of a gag. “I don’t remember this many waxworks, but I had my glasses off most of the time, so…”
“All right,” Basira says, clearly not convinced. “Just don’t want to get this far only to find out we’re in—”
A new sound fills the room, faint but distinct. Gerry’s only heard the song, such as it is, a few times, but the feeling it invokes is one he’s only felt once before, in Chicago—a sensation that intensified his headaches even as it made him want to get out of the hotel room and follow it.
It’s the chords of a calliope organ.
Martin swallows, and it seems to be taking everything he has to keep still. “This is the place.”
“We should look,” Melanie insists, staring at the door. “See what’s in there, what’s going on.”
“No. Absolutely not. No,” Martin says, shaking his head firmly. “There is nothing in there we need to see, and we’re almost done…” He hesitates and looks over at Daisy. “Right?”
“Just about.” Daisy hesitates, too, and looks back at him. For the first time, Gerry sees uncertainty in her eyes. “This going to be enough?”
“You…might want to use all of it. Just to be safe. If they’re hollowing the place out…” Martin doesn’t finish. He doesn’t need to.
Daisy’s eyes darken. “Right. Give me a minute.”
Something about one of the waxworks catches Gerry’s attention, just for a second, and he turns to study it more closely. He’s not entirely sure who it’s supposed to be, or why it caught his attention, but something is drawing him in. He can only see its profile, though, but…
“Jesus!” Basira suddenly hisses.
Daisy whips her head around. “What?”
Basira is staring at the same mannequin as Gerry. “It moved.”
She can see its face. Gerry circles around as Martin says, “Okay if they’re starting to—we need to go.”
“No, just for a second, like a—a flicker,” Basira says, still staring intently at it. “Something in its eyes.”
“If the waxworks are coming alive, we need to go,” Martin insists.
Gerry isn’t listening. He steps past Basira and looks the waxwork in the eyes. They should be nothing but, well, molded wax and paint, but as soon as he gets close enough—she’s right, they flicker, and move, and lock onto his. They’re real—actual eyes, full of pain and fear and something else, something—
Oh. Oh, God.
“No,” he says softly.
“No?” Martin repeats.
Gerry ignores him. Horror and anger and pity all mingle in his chest at once as he looks into the eyes that stare back at him desperately. He can see the lips struggling to part, the hands struggling to move, but everything is immobilized except for those eyes, and…
I can’t leave him like this.
“Gerry,” Martin says sharply, but Gerry almost can’t hear him. White noise, not static but something like the wind of a blizzard, fills his ears and the space around him. He reaches out and puts a hand on either side of the waxwork temples. The wax crackles, seeming to suddenly contract as his fingers make contact. He reaches for a power he’s only consciously touched once before, the connection to his patron, and Terminus responds.
“Return to the dust from which you came,” he says, and his voice seems to echo slightly, almost to ring. “Return to the wind and the water and the earth. Return to the sky and the stars. Unloose your bonds and be set free. Go, and shed no tear.”
Something flows through the wax into his fingers, not black this time but pure white, and travels up his arms to his chest, then seems to explode throughout his body. For just a moment, he sees a flash of something new in the eyes before him.
Relief. Gratitude. Peace.
Then the eyes go blank and glassy. The white noise fades away into nothing. Gerry takes a deep breath and steps back, letting his arms slowly lower until they rest by his side. For a long moment, there is nothing but silence.
Melanie finally breaks it. “What. The fuck. Was that.”
A small twinge of guilt strikes Gerry—he tries not to feed in front of his siblings, and that was…unusual. He starts to turn to Melanie, to apologize, when Daisy steps back from a girder. “Done.”
Martin visibly shakes himself. “Right. It’s going to be starting soon. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
He grabs Melanie with one hand and Jon with the other. Basira, Daisy, and Gerry all move under their own power—Gerry makes sure to go last—and they head for the exit. Martin doesn’t bother with the roof. Evidently he thinks that everyone is going to be distracted enough they can get out one of the main entrances without being noticed.
He’s right, even if Daisy does have to pass Jon, who’s closest, the detonator and throw herself, shoulder first, at one of the barricaded side doors to get them out quickly.
It’s still drizzling. Gerry doesn’t even consider that it might cause them problems. A little fall of rain won’t stop this, he thinks, slightly dizzy with relief. It’s also darker than he might have expected, which either means a heavier rain is coming or they were in longer than he thought and night is coming, but either way, it doesn’t really matter. They make it across the street and a little ways up the block, and then Daisy stops. “No further. Any more than this and we won’t get all the charges.”
Basira doesn’t look happy. “I still say we won’t get the timing right this far away.”
“We will,” Martin says simply. His eyes rove over the group, as if mentally counting all of them, and if they linger on Gerry for a bit, well, that’s what he deserves, really.
Jon looks up at Martin. “How?”
Martin tears his eyes from Gerry, looks down at Jon, and smirks, the same way he did in the room. He nods to the detonator in Jon’s hand. “Like Gerry said, it’s just one big Leitner, right? Pick a shanty and start us off.”
Jon blinks for a moment, then suddenly shoots Melanie a mischievous look. “They say life has its ups and downs—”
It’s not hard to recognize “Pump Shanty”—technically a recreation of an older tune, but hey, it works—and Gerry heartily joins in the chorus as Jon passes the detonator to Melanie. Basira looks torn between confusion and annoyance, but by the time Gerry hands the detonator off to Daisy, she, at least, seems to have understood what’s going on. And while it’s obvious she doesn’t actually know the words, she improvises well enough that it should work just fine. Basira fumbles her way through a verse and hands it off to Martin, who gets them back on track.
“Bend your backs and break your bones, we’re just a thousand miles from home…”
Martin actually twirls the detonator around his hand before handing it back to Jon. He takes it, and on the word home, his eyes fixed on the House of Wax, he slams his thumb down on the detonator.
The loud boom, followed by the plume of smoke and column of fire that blossoms from the abandoned museum against the darkening sky, is better than Bonfire Night.