Ch. 49 – Sweet Escape

Derrick burst through the door to the stairwell.

“You’re going to beat him there if you run fast,” Maxine said through the earpiece. “The Dixie heading down towards X is checking the third floor carefully, so he won’t make it before you will.”

A spike of pain erupted from Derrick’s foot as he missed a step and hit the next one hard. Derrick windmilled his feet and grabbed the railing as he lurched forward, trying to regain his balance. The wood railing groaned, but held, and he landed on his feet with a thud onto the landing. The stairs were bowed in the middle of each step from years of use, so rushing down them was risky. But then again, so was the whole job to begin with, and he was running out of time.

“Are the second floor cameras taken care of?” Derrick asked, as his hand hovered over the handle of the door to the second floor.

“Yup, I’m feeding them the looped footage right now.”

“Okay.” The door creaked as Derrick pushed through it, and then slammed behind him when he was halfway across the hall. Silence wasn’t so critical anymore, if they were about to flee the building. The air rushed past his face as his shoes squeaked on the tile floor—the flooring wasn’t consistent throughout the building, it seemed.

There they were. Bettie and Xavier were peering at an ice machine in the middle of the hallway, with Bettie holding up a bucket to the machine and pushing the dispense button to no avail, and Xavier seemingly egging her on.

“Taylor! There you are!” Derrick called, using Xavier’s undercover name. “There’s been an emergency, we have to go back home now!”

“Oh! You’re back! I thought you were having some stomach issues?” Bettie asked, her mouth gaping in surprise. “Are you feeling better now—poor dear, you’re still hunching over in pain, of course you’re not feeling okay.”

“I’m doing well enough, thank you, Bettie,” Derrick said. “Now, if you’ll excuse us—” Xavier jerked his arm away as Derrick reached for it.

“Where’s the thing, babe?” Xavier asked in falsetto. “I don’t see nothing on you, but you must have it somewhere, right?”

“Listen to me,” Derrick whispered, grabbing Xavier’s wrist. The cheap perfume that Maxine had sprayed on Xavier was nauseating this close to his face. “I’ve got the package. Come on. It’s time to go.”

“Shit, alright we outta this joint,” Xavier said, his falsetto barely holding. “Keep trying to get that ice, Bettie. It’ll come out if you shake the damn machine.”

“Ice?” Derrick asked, keeping his face calm. If Xavier had created any more problems in the brief time they’d been separated, it would be tough to resist strangling him.

“Yes, Taylor’s been kindly helping me with the ice,” Bettie said. “My machine at the restaurant makes ice slower than molasses, and I’ve got to use more of it when I get back. So Taylor said, ‘why not use the ice machines here?’ And I thought that was a wonderful idea. It’s just that this dispenser ain’t working at all.”

“Oh, is that all? I tried the ice machine up on the fifth floor. That one was working.” Derrick looked at Bettie and raised the corners of his mouth in the approximation of a smile. “Now come on Taylor, let’s get moving.” Derrick jerked Xavier along by the arm.

“Fine! I can walk by myself; you’re gonna rip my arm off,” Xavier said, before matching Derrick’s pace. The two of them walked faster and faster until they were almost jogging down the hall.

“Oh my,” Bettie called out from behind them. “You ought to treat the lady a little better, don’t you think? Oh, what’s this?” A series of thunks came from behind them: hard objects hitting plastic. Derrick looked back. Ice was dropping from the dispenser, shooting down the small ramp below the outlet, and into Bettie’s bucket.

Maxine’s voice came in through the earpiece. “I saw them messing with it for a while and it bothered me. The ice dispenser was stalled on an uncompleted task, so I fixed it for her over the network. Call it a small favor to Bettie to make up for the trouble, since she’ll be questioned by the Dixies when they find out she let you into the building.”

“Shit, I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that,” Derrick said. Forget stealing a girl’s favorite vibrator, his real sin was getting that restaurateur in trouble with a local gang. Bettie was innocent of course—just wanting to help out her customers, and not knowing they would break into the maintenance room and make off with a bag of high-grade Afterburner.

Derrick pushed through the door to the stairwell leading towards the ground floor. “Damn, this is all your fault,” he said to Xavier as they thundered down the steps. “Why’d you have to take that Afterburner? Get rid of that shit before someone searches you.”

Xavier’s footsteps stopped.

Oh no, this can’t be good.

A few steps above Derrick, Xavier was patting his dress all over, shifting around his padded bra in the process. “Shit! Where’d it go? Fuck, did I drop it?” Xavier’s eyes went wide, and he turned around, his skinny legs kicking up his dress as he thudded back up the stairs towards the door to the second floor.

“No!” Derrick yelled. “What are you doing? Leave it! They’re coming right behind us!”

Derrick pounced up the stairs and then froze in front of the door as it was closing behind Xavier. Xavier was going to be right back after he found his bag, right? It was probably just on the ground somewhere; if Derrick entered the second floor again, he would be unnecessarily exposing himself. Maybe he should just wait here.

No . . . given his prior behavior, Xavier was sure to get sidetracked by something else. Derrick flung the door open. Xavier was standing in front of Bettie in the middle of the hall. The large women raised her eyebrows at Xavier as he pointed at the bag of orange powder she was holding up in the air, and—

Fuck, it was the Dixie, right behind them.

“What the—?” the Dixie said, grabbing Bettie’s wrist.

“AHH! That hurts!” Bettie screamed, dropping the bag of Afterburner.

The Dixie and Xavier dived for it at the same time, and hit their heads together with a crack. Xavier got up first, and started scrambling across the floor, bag of Afterburner in hand. His eyes were wide open as he broke into a sprint back towards Derrick and the stairwell.

“Slow down!” Derrick said, holding the door open. The Dixie was pushing himself up from the floor, and bleeding from his head.

Xavier skidded as he rushed through the doorway and flew past Derrick down the stairs. “Runnn fool run!”

Derrick followed. Their footsteps echoed in the stairwell, and were met with the echoes of slower footsteps coming from below.

“And that’s why I came down to get you guys,” a familiar voice said, rising up from the bottom of the stairwell. Her unnaturally huge chest appeared from around the bend first. Charlene looked up, her straw-like blonde hair bobbing. She stared at Xavier, who had frozen mid-step. Two men came up from behind Charlene—one in a security guard’s uniform, and the other in a plaid shirt—and followed her gaze.

Xavier’s mouth was shut tight. Good, he was smart enough to stay quiet. Even if his disguise worked, his ex-girlfriend could probably recognize his voice from behind the unconvincing falsetto.

“Excuse us,” Derrick said, nudging Xavier forward. If they could get past Charlene and the two men, then they could run the rest of the way out of the building.

“That’s him!” Charlene screamed, pointing at Xavier. “He’s the one who broke into my room, he’s gotta be!”

The two men with Charlene looked at each other, and then lunged toward Xavier, who scrambled backwards up the stairs on his hands and feet, like a little kid pretending to be a spider.

“Fuck! Go up, go up!” Derrick screamed. He and Xavier sprinted past the second floor landing just before the door to the second floor burst open, and the Dixie who was chasing them stumbled into the stairwell, still clutching his bleeding head.

“Travis!” someone called from down below. “What’s going on here?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Travis yelled. “Get them!”

PUMP, PUMP, PUMP. How many stairs had they gone up and down? Derrick’s heart felt like it was going to burst open. And yet they were still running up the stairs. They had to lose the Dixies and security at some point. “M,” Derrick said through the earpiece, as clearly as possible through his ragged, phlegmy breathing. “You didn’t warn us she was coming!”

“Shit. Sorry, I kind of forgot about her after she entered the apartment management office. There aren’t many cameras in the back of the first floor that are connected to public Wi-Fi,” Maxine said.

“Whatever! Keep wiping us from the cameras, we’re going to try and lose them,” Derrick said.

“Roger,” Maxine said.

They were up on the fifth floor already, and Xavier had been keeping up—there was a lot of speed in those wiry limbs.

“Go in. We’re going across,” Derrick breathed, pointing at the door to the fifth floor. Derrick’s arms shook with adrenaline as he pushed the door open—it felt heavier this time. They shot through the doorway and sprinted down the hall towards the other stairwell on the opposite side of the building. Up or down? That was the question. There weren’t likely to be many on-duty security guards for an apartment in Dixieland. But the Dixies had plenty of time to call their friends. They would likely have posted people in the lobby, so going down to the ground floor was a dead-end.

Derrick and Xavier couldn’t leave through the main entrance, then.

But, the Dixies had been following them up the entire time. Maybe it was time to juke them.

“Go down,” Derrick said, between breaths, and he and Xavier left another door behind them as they entered the stairwell and started descending. “Did we lose them?”

The distant rumble of footsteps coming from above their head said ‘no.’

“Wait, you guys are going down?” Maxine asked.

“Yeah,” Derrick said into the earpiece, forcing air into his lungs so he could talk. “We need . . . fire escape . . . if main entrance blocked.”

“So you’re going to the one on the fourth floor?” Maxine asked.

“Yeah,” Derrick said.

“Even if you go down the fire escape, how are you going to stop them from catching you when you get down to the ground floor?” Maxine asked. “They’ll have gang bangers waiting there.”

“I’m thinking!” Derrick said.

“Better think hard. The guys who were chasing you figured out you crossed the hall, and are heading down the stairwell soon,” Maxine said. “I saw a few guys go into the stairwells on lower floors too. Wait! Some rough looking guys are walking near the fire escape on the fourth floor.”

“Fuck,” Derrick said, as he and Xavier reached the fourth floor landing. “Down again.” Derrick half-expected to get hit from behind by Xavier, as the latter was running out of steam and stumbling down the steps. The door above them opened and footsteps and shouting echoed through the stairwell.

“Listen,” Maxine said, over the frantic clacking of her keyboard. “When you get to the third floor, don’t go directly to the fire escape. Keep going straight and loop by the ice machine first.”

“Why?” Derrick asked.

“Just do it!”

They pushed through the door to the third floor and Derrick and Xavier went straight like Maxine instructed, their feet pounding the tiled floor. The ice machine was halfway down the hall, and past it was a red fire alarm. Wait, fire alarm?

The door opened behind them, and Charlene’s shrill voice pierced through the air. “There they are!”

Derrick’s legs felt as heavy as lead, but he pumped them frantically as his lungs burned. He needed to speed up, because his next maneuver would burn valuable time to do it right. Luckily the alarm wasn’t covered in glass. “Keep going! Don’t stop!” he yelled to Xavier as they passed the ice machine. The machine itself rumbled, and ice started coming out of it, sliding down the small ramp under its dispenser and clacking onto the floor.

Xavier, not one to look back, kept going down the hall as Derrick skidded in front of the fire alarm, pulled the switch, and then pushed off the wall into a sprint, not daring to linger.

A piercing siren filled the building, and strobe lights flashed; hopefully it would create enough chaos with the crowd of people evacuating the building that Derrick and Xavier would be able to blend in as they made their escape. The floor shook behind them as something heavy thumped onto the ground. Derrick looked back, and saw Charlene, the Dixie, and the security guard writhing on the ground amid a thick layer of scattered ice cubes. The ice dispenser kept spitting out the cubes, as if it were possessed.

“Haha, suckers!” Maxine said, cackling. “Ohhhh this brings me back to high school. Those old ice dispensers were a ton of fun.”

Doors across the hallway began to open, as residents came out and searched for the source of the supposed fire. “Gosh darnit, not again!” one of them yelled.

The big window to the fire escape was right around the corner, and Derrick threw the window open and hopped through. “Come on!” he yelled to Xavier, “We’re going down this way.”

“Fuck, man, I’m scared of heights!”

“Get over it!”

Then, the only noise was of the fire escape rattling as Derrick and Xavier pounded down the narrow steps, Derrick pressing his pecs together to keep the vibrator in place as they went down. There was even rattling far to the left of them, as a young couple ran down their own fire escape. They would be good cover for Derrick and Xavier.

“That was a good move pulling the fire alarm, D,” Maxine said. “The Dixies are running around the building, stopping everyone with a hoodie or hat and a similar build to either of you. They’ve got a few men near the entrance too, but they’re caught up looking through the crowd that’s leaving the building.”

At the end of the fire escape, Derrick squatted over the drop ladder and unhooked it, letting it screech down the railings until it bounced against the asphalt. Derrick gripped the railings and swung a foot down to test his weight. It miraculously held as he took step after step down, and then hopped the last few feet back to solid ground.

There was a crowd of people around the building who had evacuated. A few were watching Xavier descend the ladder after Derrick, but most gawked at the growing crowd near the apartment’s front door and snapped selfies.

“Let’s go,” Derrick said, slapping Xavier’s shoulder as the skinny man yanked his dress free of a snag on the ladder. “Come on.” They broke into a run, sprinting across the open square, towards the road leading out of Dixieland. Thankfully, most of the outdoor diners sitting in the restaurants near that road had their eyes on the apartment building, and didn’t give Derrick and Xavier a second glance as the two sped past. The few men loitering near the bakery at the entrance to Dixieland, however, perked their heads up, and one of them pointed at Derrick with his cigarette.

“Keep going! Don’t stop until we’re two blocks away,” Derrick said to Xavier.

They kept running and running, leaving Dixieland behind them, darting through alleyways to confuse any pursuers and hide from the police quadcopters that roamed the streets, until an alleyway spat them out in front of a bus stop on the line to the transit center.

“You did it, you fucking bastards!” Maxine said, laughing. “Went into the Dixie’s den and came out with your prize. I wish I could have come with you.”

Derrick swept his sweaty hair to the side and allowed himself a grin. Xavier cackled as a bus pulled up the stop. They got onto the bus, squeezed into their seats, and breathed a sigh of relief as the doors closed, and the bus lurched forward into the city, now shrouded in darkness.