Dennis Raveley - chapter 14

The opera theater is a short drive from the Spacescrapper, and the journey there is undertaken in an empty milk truck that reeks of dairy products, Dennis does not know why, and the journey is silent. Strangely  no one has anything to say after the performance in the atrium, as if a mute has been imposed on the troop.
The roomy truck comes to a halt, and Dennis is led into a building he presumes to be the theater through the back entrance. Some hallways and staircases later, Dennis is guided into a small room and his blindfold is taken off. The room is dimly lit by a single twenty watt incandescent bulb, still Dennis rubs his eyes adjusting to the light source. The blindfold has been so tightly wound around his head there is now a red crease on the skin where the fold left its mark. The person who guided Dennis to this room is revealed to be Kenny.
'There's a wall of glass behind those curtains at the far side of the room, you have the crow's nest, you can see everything there is to see.' Kenny says, and pulls open the curtained wall to reveal a single panel of glass giving view to the entire theater, the stage to the left down below, and the first, second, and third floors of the seating, the box perches on the opposite end, and the ceiling catwalk which is at level with the room Dennis and Kenny are in.
'Why here?' Dennis asks, taking in the view.
'It will get crowded down below, and the oxygen not as pure.' Kenny smiles and heads towards the exit, before closing the door, he says, 'If anything happens, don't go anywhere, one of us will come and get you, you can count on that.' His head disappears behind the door and it shuts with a click.
Dennis sees that a chair has been proved for him, he sits down and stares below to the ground of the theater, which is quickly filling up with people in suits and dresses, all in black. He expects an orchestra to accompany the Wyatt siblings, but instead, when the audience is fully seated and the lights dimmed, the quintet enters alone in single file, dressed in an assortment of black and white semi-formal clothing, with Jerry pushing Addy on her wheelchair to her position next to Raymond. Their instruments are readied, and they begin to play. Dennis does not hear anything.
At first he thinks there is some trouble with the microphone, or perhaps they are only air-bowing. Both possibilities are proven false when a thorough search of the room unearthed no microphones or speakers, and when the audience, in their genuine astonishment and delight (despite most having attended the quintet's concerts before), begin to sway to the intoxicating melody. Dennis is puzzled that he is unable to hear the music, it is even more puzzling for him to come up with an explanation of why.
Dennis decides to concentrate on the quintet and their movements. At the fiftieth bar of the fifth piece, the audience gasped and held hands over their gaping mouths, Dennis does not understand this collective action, until he sees with some squinting that Raymond and Kenny seem to be conversing with each other as they each continue to bow vigorously. Soon, Jerry and then Chelsea joins what appears to be a full verbal conversation taking place simultaneously with the performance of their instruments. In another instant, Dennis follows Kenny's movements as he stops playing upon completion of a segment and carries his instrument offstage, waving goodbye to the audience before exiting. Then, Jerry packs and makes his exit, followed by Chelsea, wheeling Addy off stage with her, she comes back to haul off the bass, and Raymond is the only player left, standing alone with the spotlight trained on his now solo performance, like a musician auditioning for a seat in an orchestra. Raymond seems to not be aware of everything around him, swaying slightly to his own bowing, performing to a dumbfounded audience.
Raymond continues to play for a little while, enjoying his moment alone. Chelsea reappears at the fringe of the curtains in the same moment a man dressed in a black trench coat runs up the central aisle towards the stage, the barrel of a rifle appears at the curtain, and the man speeding up the aisle is shot a direct hit to the head, spilling red brain matter in a meter radius. Pandemonium breaks out, people duck, and then they rise, and being to run wildly, Raymond stops playing.
Someone from within the huge flurry of black that is the audience fires a shot, Raymond leaps in a dodge and lands sideways, tossing his violin in midair towards the curtains, a hand appears and catches the violin in flight, Chelsea appears fully from the cover of the curtain and returns fire, Raymond rolls his way from the open stage, an automatic machine gun fires from somewhere else within the fleeing masses, Chelsea ducks out of the way, bullets rip across the backdrop curtains and punch holes into the wooden flooring, a man jumps onto the stage, a long saber in hand, another join him, this man has a hatchet.
Raymond suddenly bursts from the side entrance waving a microphone stand, whacking the man with the hatchet in the side, the other man swings his saber, Raymond ducks and thrusts the end of his weapon into the man's knees, cracking them, the hatchet man gets back up, he is shot in the chest by Chelsea, reentering the stage, who fires several rounds into the audience, hitting several fleeing individuals in the backs, Raymond stomps the saber man's neck, and he is still. Chelsea drags Raymond from the stage, they flee as another volley of shots assaulted the stage.
Then Dennis sees a man on the catwalk, coming towards his window, an aimed shotgun in his hands. The door bursts open, Jerry rushes in, firing into the glass past Dennis (who runs into the ground for cover), which shatters, the man with the shotgun fires into the room as he walks unperturbed towards the perch room. The shotgun slug peppers into the wall near the door, Jerry fires furiously and empties the magazine in seconds, the man with the shotgun is hit, he goes down. Jerry throws down the pistol and takes out another from his dress suit.
Jerry takes Dennis' hand, 'Time to rush!' he says. When they come to the end of the hallway, the assailant around the corner is surprised when Jerry is the first to press a fully loaded barrel against his chest and fire a single bullet that tunnels through his flesh in straight trajectory before exiting from the back. Dennis does not get a second chance to observe the slumped man that Jerry has just killed before being pulled away.
There is a helicopter waiting in air on the roof of the theater.