by Sean Patten
“Keep the change!” she said as the two of us hurried out of the shop.
Once the door was closed behind us, I grabbed the backpack from the ground and opened it up. Sure enough, everything was still in there.
“We good to go?” asked Kelly as we hurried back down the hall.
“Good to go,” I said.
I slung the backpack over my shoulder and Kelly flashed me a look.
“Something wrong?” I asked.
“Nothing,” she said. “Just that you’re kind of ruining the cool of a suit like that when you throw a backpack on with it.”
A half-grin formed on my lips.
“Got other things on my mind right now.
“Just saying,” she said. “I’d make you leave that thing at home if we actually were going to a party.”
“Nice dress,” I said.
“Isn’t it?” she asked, running her hands down the curves of her hips. “Figures that it’s the nicest dress I’ve ever worn and I had to wait until after the apocalypse to get it.”
“Might want to think about how nice it’s going to be to trek across the city in those heels.”
“I know,” she said. “The guy wasn’t letting me out of there in flats. One problem at a time, I guess.”
Once we were back on the main casino floor, Kelly and I took a survey of the situation.
“Okay,” said Kelly. “Going out the front is a no-go. Too many guards.”
“Right,” I said. “We need to find some other exit, someplace that’s not…”
I glanced to the side, down in the direction of the events hall where we’d watched the show. The massive doors were wide open, giving a full view of the girls gyrating on stage. And in front of them, more than a few of the guards were in the crowd, taking in the sights.
“I’ve got an idea,” I said. “Come on.”
“What kind of idea?” she asked.
“Just come on!”
I started off towards the events hall, Kelly following close behind.
“Justin!” she shouted after me. “Tell me what this is all about!”
When we arrived at the entrance to the events hall, I stopped and looked inside. Girls were still on the stage, shaking their assets to the amusement of the drunken men and women in attendance. And, just like I’d hoped, the guards were paying more attention to the girls than they were the exits.
“Look!” I hissed. “We can make it out through the back exits.”
Kelly moved to my side, standing on her tiptoes to get a good look.
“You’re right,” she said lowly. “These guys are total hornballs. If we go while the girls are on stage, we should be able to get out of here.”
“Okay,” I said. “Just go through the crowd like it’s no big deal. Don’t look suspicious.”
“I’ll do my best,” she said. “But when the girls on stage look like that…”
She flashed me a smile.
Together, the two of us stepped into the events hall. Everyone was out of their seats, and the place seemed more like a club than anything else. Music pounded, colored lights cut through the air, and men and women danced while the girls stripped on stage.
Kelly and I kept on, doing our best to blend in through the crowd. Slowly but surely, we made our way towards one of the doors that had been abandoned by the guards. Before too long, we were only a dozen or so feet away.
Almost there, I thought as we drew closer and closer.
A blinding light filled my vision, so bright that I stopped in my tracks and covered my eyes for a brief moment. The music went silent.
“What the hell?” asked Kelly behind me.
My eyes adjusted and I looked around, realizing that the light was a spotlight that shone down on both me and Kelly.
Oh, shit. We’d been spotted.
But before I had too long to think about it, the light moved slowly over the crowd, stopping right in the center of the stage. The girls on stage stopped their dancing, moving into two separate lines on both sides of the circle of light.
Out from backstage stepped the MC, the crew following him from behind with the wheel.
“Ladies and gentleman!” he called out. “So sorry to interrupt the show!”
He turned to the girls with a smile.
“Ladies, my apologies.”
The girls offered smiles and coquettish waves in response, huge feather fans concealing their dignity.
“But we have one more bonus round of the wheel tonight—and a very special guest to give it a spin!”
Kelly and I looked at one another anxiously.
“Everyone, please welcome the owner and operator of this fine establishment, Mr. Oleg Azarof himself!”
The crowd was silent as a man stepped out from behind the stage. He was tall and trim, but moved with both a heaviness and grace that struck me as some combination of a prizefighter and a gymnast. He was dressed in a dark suit, perfectly tailored for his body. His hair was a bright blond, so blond it was almost white, and slicked back behind his ears. And he was strikingly handsome on top of it all.
He stepped to the front center of the stage and looked out over the crowd. No one seemed to know how to react to him.
“Come on now,” he said with a charismatic smile. “I know I’m not as stunning as the Troika girls, but at least give me a little something.”
The crowd burst out into wild applause, so deafening that I could hardly tolerate it. Kelly covered her ears as it filled the space.
The man on stage, Oleg, smiled out over the crowd. After a short time, he raised his palms and the applause died down.
“Now,” he said. “Just as our amazing MC said, we have one last contestant for the wheel tonight—one that might look a touch familiar. Boys? Can we bring him out?”
The sounds of a struggle came from backstage as four figures appeared, three of them fighting to bring a fourth out.
Moments later they emerged from the shadows, and I gasped when I realized who the special “contestant” was.
Carlos.
Chapter 5
“Carlos!”
I clamped my hands down over my mouth as I uttered the name. Luckily, the noise was so intense in the hall that there was no chance anyone would’ve heard me.
Aside from Kelly, that is.
“You know that guy?” she asked.
“Yeah!” I said. “Remember—the guy who had his hand smashed? The guy who was supposed to help me with Steve?”
I pointed to Carlos on stage as the three men strapped him down into a large, ornate chair that looked something like a throne.
“Oh no, Justin,” Kelly breathed. “This is bad. This is really, really bad.”
I didn’t need her to tell me that. Carlos screamed and thrashed, his hand bound up in what appeared to be a professionally done cast.
“Let me go!” he cried, his voice cracking. “Let me out of here, you psychos!”
But his cries only made the crowd wilder.
Oleg watched the crowd, then he watched Carlos struggle. The smile on his face seemed to suggest that he was taking some definite pleasure from what was happening.
“Carlos, Carlos,” he said, stepping over to Carlos and patting him on the head. “Imagine my shock when I saw you enter the Troika. You were a regular here, always welcome under my roof. And then you had to go and spoil it.”
He stepped away from Carlos and moved closer to the crowd.
“Now,” he said. “I understand that our good friend Carlos already had a chance at the wheel today.”
The crowd cheered.
“Typically, rule breakers who luck out on the wheel learn to behave themselves, to maybe take some time to think about how fortunate they are. However, some of them aren’t content with this. Some of them insist on pushing their luck.”
Oleg clasped his hands together.
“So, everyone, what’s the rule or when someone ends up on the wheel a second time?”
He took the mic he held in his h
ands and pointed it out towards the crowd.
“All together now!” he yelled.
“No third chances!” the crowd screamed in unison.
“That’s right,” said Oleg as he returned the mic to his mouth and began striding across the stage with long, swinging steps. “The first time a client abuses our guest privilege we like to give them a fair shot. And with Carlos here…that was quite the generous offer.”
He went on.
“After all, he ran up a hell of a bill with us. But I like to play fair, especially with such loyal guests. But no sooner did our friend here step over the threshold of our humble casino did he get right back into his old habits.”
My gut seized up, knowing that the clothes I was wearing and the drinks I’d had played a small role in what was happening to Carlos. Sure, he more or less forced them on me, but that didn’t make me feel any better in the moment.
“So,” said Oleg. “Carlos is up on stage ready to do it all again. But because we don’t believe in third chances here at the Troika, things are going to be a little rougher for our friend.”
He stepped over to the roulette wheel and placed one of his fingers on one of the pieces that offered some kind of prize, this one being a ten-thousand-dollar credit.
“That means no cash and prizes for poor Carlos,” said Oleg. “We spin the wheel again and again until a suitable punishment is meted out.”
“You prick!” shouted Carlos, still struggling with all he had against his restraints. “Hijo de puta!”
“Such colorful language,” said Oleg. “Too bad it’s not going to do you a damn bit of good.”
The energy from the crowd built and built. They were drunk and rowdy and craving blood. And Oleg looked ready to give it to them.
“So!” he said. “Are we ready to spin the wheel?”
The crowd let out a roar. Kelly grabbed my sleeved and pulled me close.
“We have to do something,” she said. “They’ll…”
“Kelly,” I said, my voice stern. “Unless you want to rush the stage and end up in the same place as him, there’s nothing we can do.”
She let go of my sleeve, her expression flattening into one of defeat as she realized the gravity of what was going on.
I wanted to help just as much as she did. No one deserved to be put through what Carlos was in the middle of. He may have screwed up by getting on the bad side of some evil men, but this was beyond the pale.
Oleg stepped up to the side of the wheel and placed his hand on the side.
“All right,” he said. “Count me down!”
The crowd jumped right in.
“Three, two, one!” it shouted.
Oleg gave the wheel a spin. The reds and blacks went into yet another wild blur, Carlos’s screams and curses carrying over the roar of the crowd.
Then the wheel slowed and slowed, finally coming to a stop on “VIP suite.”
The crowd let out disappointed “oohs” once they realized where the wheel had landed.
“An all-expenses-paid weekend in our best suite,” said Oleg, stepping out in front of the wheel towards Carlos, squatting down in front of him. “Damn, that’s about the best prize on there. You’d have had money, food, booze, women—everything you could’ve wanted. You’d have been a king for a weekend.”
Carlos glared at him with hateful eyes, as if he could somehow tear Oleg apart through sheer force of will.
Oleg wasn’t bothered in the slightest. In fact, it looked to me like he got off on Carlos’s suffering. With a smile plastered across his face, he turned back towards the crowd.
“But what’s the rule of the second spin on the wheel?” he asked.
“No third chances!” shouted back the crowd.
“That’s right!” responded Oleg once the noise of the crowd died down to a low roar. “No third chances. So let’s give the wheel another spin!”
The crowd cheered in anticipation, Carlos still spitting out a litany of curses in both English and Spanish.
My gut tightened as the wheel slowed back down, the ticker curving and snapping back with each notch it passed. Finally, it came to a stop.
“No,” I said, seeing where the wheel had stopped. “No way.”
“Oh my God,” said Kelly. “They can’t be serious.”
It was the skull.
The crowd went wild. The color drained from Carlos’s face.
Everyone in that room knew what the skull meant.
“Oh, wow,” said Oleg. “Talk about going from a high to a low, huh? VIP suite all the way up, to a different sort of suite all the way down below. Six feet below, to be exact!”
I wanted to rush the stage and kill the fucker. But I kept myself in check.
Oleg reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a chrome pistol with an ivory handle. From as close as I was I could see that there was some sort of ornate design down the barrel, but what it was I couldn’t exactly make out. The gun gleamed under the stage lights, and the fear in Carlos’s eyes reached a crescendo.
“We like to have fun here at the Troika. That’s what it’s all about, right?”
More cheers.
“So, let’s have another countdown for the main event. From three! One!”
The crowd shouted “one” back, and Oleg stepped over to Carlos.
“Two!”
He placed the end of the gun against Carlos’s head.
“And…three!”
The crowd shouted it back.
Bang.
The gun popped and Carlos’s head jerked back, a spray of red covering the stage behind him. Then his head went limp on his neck. He was dead.
The crowd went wild.
“He never was that good of a gambler,” said Oleg as he slipped his gun back into his suit jacket. “Never knew when to stop pushing his luck.”
The crowd continued to cheer, and Kelly shoved her face into my shoulder.
“And that’s all I have for you tonight, friends,” Oleg cried. “Girls, come on back out!”
The girls complied, coming back onto the stage with the same cheery faces, moving around the blood and gore as though Carlos wasn’t even there. Stagehands hurried around Carlos as the girls went back to dancing, carting his body off the stage and cleaning up the mess.
“They…they killed him,” Kelly said faintly, taking her head from me, total disbelief in her voice.
Carlos disappeared behind the curtains and was gone. I had a feeling that was the last I was going to see of the poor bastard.
“We have to get out of here,” I said.
We didn’t have a moment to waste. And I had a clear idea, picture perfect in my mind, of what was at stake if we failed.
Chapter 6
Kelly was still in a daze as I grabbed her by the hand and hurried her out of the events hall. Once back on the main floor, I led her over to a quiet spot away from all the noise and chaos.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
Kelly stared straight ahead, as if not sure what to say or think.
“They shot him,” she said. “They really just shot him. I knew that they did stuff like that here…but to see it like that…”
She lifted her eyes to mine and went on.
“And the crowd…they loved it. They wanted more and… oh, God.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “There was nothing we could do.”
She seemed to be coming back to her senses by the moment. What she’d seen was horrible, but Kelly had always been the resilient type.
“I know,” she said. “But Justin, they’re killing people here.”
“And they’re killing people out there,” I said. “You saw it yourself.”
“Yeah,” she said. “It was awful to see the guards do what they did to get me here. But seeing someone die on stage like that, someone totally helpless, watching him get killed just for fun…”
She shook her head again.
“We have to leave,” she said. “I don’t care what it’s like out there, but
we can’t stay in here another second with these psychos.”
She was right. Even if it seemed like choosing between a rock and a hard place, Steve was out there and still waiting for me to come back.
Kelly looked around.
“We need to go somewhere else,” she said. “Over in the corner like this—it looks like we’re plotting. What if they see us sitting here and—”
“You need to eat something,” I cut in.
Kelly regarded me with an expression of utter disbelief.
“Are you serious right now?” she asked. “I just watched a man get killed and you want me to eat?”
“We need to sit down and figure out what our next move is,” I said. “And we need to eat when we can. Trust me, Kel, I’ve been out there and an empty stomach is the last thing you want. Eating when we feel like it is a luxury that went away when the power went out.”
Kelly nodded, seeming to see the sense in my words.
“Come on,” I said. “It’ll be better than what we’re doing right now.”
Kelly at my side, the two of us found a restaurant with an open table, some diner that looked like a ’50s interpretation of what the future looked like. Once we were seated I felt a little better. My heart had been racing at a mile a minute, and getting off my feet was exactly what I needed.
“Some water,” said Kelly when the waitress arrived.
“Same for me,” I said.
The waitress nodded and headed off, returning moments later with two glasses of cool, clear water. I pounded it down and held the empty glass to the waitress, which she quickly took to refill.
It was only with my pulse falling, my breathing slowly returning to normal, that the full gravity of our situation hit me.
“Shit,” I said. “Shit, shit, shit.”
“Yeah,” said Kelly. “My sentiments exactly.”
Both of us glanced down at the laminated menus for several long seconds.
“We can’t go out like we thought,” she said. “Sneaking out through one of the entrances when the guards aren’t looking.”
I nodded.
“They catch us trying to leave and they’ll have both of us on stage like Carlos,” I said. “And you’ve already been up on stage once…”