by Clint Lowe
With the plan settled, I faced the girl and asked, “What’s your name?”
“Cady.”
I was about to take her hand and say Let’s get out of here, when Tanton stepped in before me and took Cady by the hand and said, “Cady, let’s get off this ship”
That was my moment. “You stole my words!”
Holding Cady’s hand, Tanton took off, yelling over his shoulder, “And your identity shield!” With a huff, I followed.
Passengers scramble for the side rear of the ship, hoping to find an undestroyed pod while we arrowed through the middle of the herd, almost getting trampled in the stampede. The smell of fire and smoke and fuel burning drifted through the ship and added more panic to the already incredibly intense situation. Soon, the dining room also smelled with blood. Upon approaching the exit door, we stumbled upon a group of dead people lying across the floor, skin blistered and burned. Fire licked up the wall in ruthless rage, and as we walked past the bodies, Cady started trembling, and for the first time she reached out and grabbed my hand. It was a strange touch – a little girl searching for comfort, her hands gripping mine in anguish. “Don’t look at them,” I said to her as we began to pass the people. Stepping past lifeless hands and feet there was an irresistible urge to count the people: two, three, four people whose lives were gone. I had seen so many deaths in my life, but these seemed more haunting, as they reflected what could become of us.
I forced that morbid thought away, and my consciousness slipped to the pods again, and all three of us cramming aboard.
We will not die, I told myself, we will live.
Undeterred, we arrived at the end of the dining room where the frosted glass exit door was stuck edged open, but through it we squeezed. We darted by the central foyer, passed elaborately-carved wooden chairs and tables, and came to the next frosted glass door. Tanton pressed the release button, but the door was jammed shut.
“It’s broken,” he said, thumping the wall.
Time didn’t allow for being frustrated, and so I did what I had done a few times in my early teens robbing jewelry stores in Calexico. I picked up a wooden chair, raised it high over my shoulder, said, “Stand back,” and swung the chair into the glass.
It bounced off, clattering onto the ground, leaving the glass unscratched.
“Laserproof glass,” Tanton said.
“Great,” I said belatedly and kicked the door, now finding the time for frustration. But Tanton gathered the chair, and now he held it aloft, ready to have his own crack at the glass. “Surely you don’t think you can swing harder than me?” I said.
“Nope,” Tanton said, but regardless he swung away.
He swung the chair like a baseball player trying to knock a ball out of the park. But he did not swing the chair into the glass door; instead, he swung the piece of furniture right beside the glass and crashed the wooden legs into the release button. A leg fell off the chair in a single plop, and Tanton dropped the remains of the furniture. Now in front of us sat the release button with its casing dangling loose.
Tanton peered at the broken case, then pulled my identity shield from his pocket.
I scratched my head, bewildered at him.
Tanton ripped the casing completely off, revealing the little operational lasers. Then he stuck my identity shield in the casing, reflecting the laser beams, seemingly knowing an awful lot for a cleaner.
“A cleaner knowing about lasers?” I said.
“Aced laser physics in class,” Tanton said, and then the door buzzed and slid open. Tanton stowed my identity shield back in his pocket, and I said, “I might be needing that,” and he replied, “So might I,” then he smiled at me almost like a young man in love.
Don’t look at me like that, I thought. Do not gaze at me like we’re going to be lovers when we’re likely to die.
Ignoring his smile, I stepped through the doorway with Cady, then Tanton took my trailing hand and came through to meet me. He gazed at me again with those wheat field eyes, seemingly searching for a kiss. He had only known me a few minutes, how quickly fools fall in love. But I leaned away from him in refusal, but then he leaned into me and said, “Funny.”
Idiot. “This situation hardly seems-”
“Funny I opened this door for you, but you were gonna close the door on me in the engine room with the fire.”
But he thought I saved him. “You already thanked me for waiting for you.”
He stared at me, smiling smugly like he caught me out. “I lied so you wouldn’t try to kill me again.”
“Again?”
“The wrench to the head trick.”
Oh, right. I raked a hand through my hair, awkwardly. “Well, it would have been your fault if I slammed the door in your face. You moved too slow.”
“Here’s a move that ain’t slow,” he said and, despite my shuffling backward, managed to somewhat awkwardly put his arms around my neck and lean in and kiss me.
I did not kiss him back. But I did not try to stop him, and I certainly wasn’t about to slam a door in his face. His subtle beard tickled softly, and his lips were soft and warm. A warmness that touched a side of me that always felt unreachable. I had been kissed, too many times. But not this way. It felt as if he actually cared. I shut my eyes and for the moment I could have stood there and let him kiss me until the flames ended us, because this was a rare moment of peace and there was little chance we’d even reach the maintenance pods.
I crept my eyes open and touched his cheek, and through the kiss, teased, “That’s barely a beard.”
He broke away, gently, gazed at me. “Man growth.”
Then our moment was disturbed. “Evita?” a voice said in a surprised but vicious tone. The voice was clearly recognizable. I looked past Tanton to the door that was edged open at the dining room.
At the doorway stood Dante, my fiancé.
A Ship Burns, A Jealousy Burns
Dante’s dark eyes boiled like black lava, shrouded by his long, dark hair. His rough beard bordered his lips, which were quivering from the intensity of his anger. “I’ve been searching for you,” he said. “But it seems you’ve already been found.”
Tanton’s face brushed against mine as he turned to look upon my betrothed. There wasn’t much room to see Dante between the wall and the jammed door, but it was enough to show him pull a black laser gun from beneath his red leather jacket, stick it through the frosted glass door, and take aim.
With barely time to react, Tanton yelled, “Down!” and dove over me as a shot fired out. The pow of the laser, although not near as loud as the explosions, scared me more, as I did not hear a laser spank into the wall nor did I feel it enter my body, and so there was the chance Tanton was struck. He lay over the top of me as we lay on the floor, his eyes looking into my eyes, and I tried to read them for a moment to see if they held the shock of being shot, of having a laser tear through your body.
There was none of that with Tanton. No terror, nor alarm. His eyes showed relief.
But there was no enjoying the comfort of the hard floor; Dante would be coming.
“Close the door!” I shouted, and before Tanton could climb off me, Cady who stood behind the wall, smacked the button and the door started to slide shut.
A pow pow followed as Dante fired two shots, but both punched into the glass door, leaving a scorched flame. I rolled out from underneath Tanton as the door was closing and caught a glimpse of the hatred in Dante’s eyes as his laser pointed front and center for my head. It wasn’t the first time the barrel of a laser gun had stared at me. That had happened twice before. But they were empty threats from weak mobsters who had no stranglehold in Calexico and feared the repercussions of pulling the trigger.
With Dante it was different.
There were no consequences.
Fortunately the door slammed shut as another laser spanked the glass.
Tanton jumped up and quickly grabbed yet another chair, and in a mad hurry, swung it into the door buzzer. The cap
busted off, and as quick as a lion on a meal, he tore out my identity shield and reflected the lasers around the casing. Lasers danced in blue and red and yellow followed by a puff of smoke.
“The door’s now jammed shut,” Tanton said.
Tanton, Cady, and I stood staring at the frosted glass door, the only thing between us and Dante. The sound of his footsteps paced along the floor until his blurred image met the door. The outline of his red jacket showed his arms straight down by his side. The anger that would be raging inside his head would almost match the rage of the fire tearing through the back of the ship.
Me, Tanton, and Cady huddled into one another.
Dante leaned forward until his forehead pressed against the glass, revealing his dark eyes. He stared at me, then slowly peered at Tanton. In a sudden, swift outburst he slammed a fist into the glass. “No one betrays me,” he said, voice briefly adding a touch of fog to the frosted glass. “If I’m dying on this ship, first I’m gonna kill . . .” then his voice trailed off and fell into silence as he gazed blankly into space. A light had ignited in his mind, and it was obvious he had discovered why we were scrambling to the front of the ship – they were his friend’s pods, after all. “You’re going for a maintenance pod,” he said, and we didn’t answer him. Instead, I took Tanton’s hand in one of mine and took Cady’s in the other, and begin to walk away, heading for the front of the ship. As our feet trod over the polished floor in a determined yet nervous march, we heard the threatening scream of Dante, “That’s my pod!”
His voice shook Cady, and I said to the little girl, “Ignore his screams.”
“So he’s the husband,” Tanton said.
“Fiancé,” I said. “Former one, too.”
We entered the ship's kitchen where cutlery and plates and pots and vegetables for this evening’s meal were spread around the shelves and floor, as if a category five hurricane had swept through. Then while walking with the two, I felt something warm trickle onto the hand that held Tanton’s, and it wasn’t a warm fuzzy feeling. Interlacing between our clasped hands dripped a thin rill of blood. The crimson brook ran up Tanton’s arm to where his rolled-up sleeves stopped at his bicep. A patch of red stained his shirt about half a palm in width. I stopped us under another flickering light. “You’re shot,” I said to Tanton.
He stepped forward, trying to move us on. “Only in the arm.”
But I stopped him from moving with a swift jerk of his arm, which as you would guess, made him yell, “Ouch! That’s my shot arm!”
That was an accident, but with good intentions. “I’ve seen laser wounds,” I said, then took a steak knife from off the floor and quickly cut a hole in his sleeve near the blood. A quick tug with my hands saw the sleeve torn apart, revealing the bloody wound.
Although it appeared nasty, blood and flesh exposed from the edge of his upper arm, a wave of relief swept through me. “No vital arteries severed,” I said. “The laser only tore a piece from your triceps. You’re lucky.”
He winced. “Don’t feel lucky.”
But something perplexed me: his earlier expression. “Why did you looked relieved after you were shot?” I said, “When you dove on me?”
“Because we were alive.”
That gave me the warm fuzzy feeling, and I stood a little dazed. Someone was happy to take a shot for me, just to keep me safe. As I stood caught in reflection, Cady stood staring at Tanton’s bloody arm, clutching her hands to her heart. “Is he going to die?”
“No,” I said, facing her. “None of us are.” I paused for a moment, realizing I’d uttered the complete opposite of my first words to her. “The wound needs cauterizing, but a strip of material will suffice for now.” After a quick search, I took a blue-checkered tea towel off a bench, cut it in half with the steak knife and, to the groans and painful grunts of Tanton and complaints of “Arh” and “Careful,” I fastened the strip of cloth around his arm, secure with a double knot.
I tapped Tanton’s shoulder and said, “All better.” Sort of.
We made eye contact, and our connection felt stronger than even at the kiss, because in gaining the wound, he had acted to protect me, and I sort of helped him with his arm, and Cady stared at both of us and she had pressed the button to close the door on Dante, and so, in a way, we had all saved one another.
Standing in that mess of a kitchen surrounded by celery and tomatoes and beetroot and fresh chicken spread all over with the pots and pans and the light flickering above, glistening over the unblinking eyes of Tanton, it gave me a thought: Escaping with these two will be a better life than escaping on my own. Perhaps, for the first time since Mother past, I could have a real family.
A warm smile started to creep to my lips when footsteps sounded on the other side of the wall. We all stopped and listened. The footsteps were not stampeding for an exit, so it was not a scared passenger, nor the captain skipping around in panic ready to go down with the ship. No, rather, the footsteps trod ever so slowly, creeping, prowling.
Steps of a stalker.
“Dante,” I whispered, and I faced Cady and touched my finger to my lips, indicating quiet.
The footsteps edged a little farther away until they stopped. For a moment I hoped he had left us, heading to the back of the ship for a chance at a remaining pod. But then came the sound of a tremendous clanging, as if a waiter had dropped an entire tray of plates and cutlery. Cady released a scream before muffling it with her hands.
We stood silent. Did Dante hear Cady?
“Evita?” Dante’s voice rattled from behind the wall. As soon as he spoke, I shifted my eyes toward the kitchen exit door, and all three of us crept toward it. “I hear you, Evita!” Dante cried. “Give up. I’ll beat you to the pods, and I’ll release one unmanned and leave the other just for me. But if you hand yourself over, I won’t shoot your friends. And we can escape to Cerulean together.”
His voice made me sick to the point of vomiting. There was no way I was leaving Jack and Cady for a life with him. With a quick push of the door button, the kitchen door slid open and we walked through, coming to an elaborately decorated corridor that housed the rich guest rooms. We kept moving through the passage, distancing ourselves from Dante, heading toward another glass door where behind it bright lights streamed, reminiscent of a circus.
Opening the door, we entered the gaming room. Ranged along the walls was a vast array of gaming machines, popping lights in all colors. Some machines stood straight like soldiers awaiting orders while others were turned over, toppled from the shakings of the ship. Roulette tables were spread around the room, and one wheel had been flung from the explosion and rested on the floor only a few strides away. Amazingly, the metal ball rested in its trap, stopped at the number one.
The number triggered the idea that only one of us would escape this ship. There was no way I was going to let that one be Dante, and less of a chance that I was going to escape on my own and be that one, leaving my two new-found friends behind. No, three were gonna leave this ship.
If we could beat Dante to the pods
I stood for a moment, wondering if Dante was taking a shortcut to the pods. And if he found us on the way, what would he do? Well, he had the laser gun. Then from the kitchen behind us came another boom! Big and loud and mean. The corridor shook and trembled, and sharp bits of metal and glass and lights rained from the ceiling. Then the alarms sounded a horrid Beeeeeeeppp! Beeeeeeeppp! and I knew what it meant, for we had been prepared for it before boarding the ship, although we were told we would only hear it once in testing, never again. It meant:
“The ship’s losing oxygen,” I said.
The Welkin had most likely been blown apart at its rear, and the oxygen would soon drain away, bleed out like a killed rabbit strung up. The door to the gaming room started to slide shut automatically, safety mechanisms to lock in the remaining places of air.
Moments later the flickering lights above winked out.
Not happening not happening not happening.
It was so dark and cramped and crowded with tables and gaming machines, it felt like we were rats in a scrambled maze. The only lights were of some live machines, dazzling the area with blues, yellows, and reds like some hi-tech nightclub.
We started to make our way through the jumble. “The maintenance pods aren’t much farther,” I said.
“Hope they have a bed,” Cady said, as her body drooped.
“The pods are too small,” I said.
Tanton slowed his walk until he came to a complete stop. A glimmer came over him, as if he detected something wrong, amiss. “How many people do the pods hold?” Tanton asked.
The pod’s size never occurred to me. “Two,” I said.
Cady stared up at us, the terror in her eyes already compounded by the loss of her parents. Tanton swallowed, shifting glances between me and the girl. “When we get to the pod, if we can’t all fit,” he said, “I’ll travel on my own.”
It was an honorable suggestion to fly solo for it would be lonely.
Cady shook her head, having none of it. “All of us together, or none of us.”
Her voice was so innocent in this burning ship, and there was plenty I wanted to say to her, tell her all the cool things we could do once we made our new home in Cerulean, like riding horses and planting trees, and that her parents would be happy she was safe. All that had happened to us during these intense moments had seemed to bring us together and melt us into a single unit. But there was little time to release my feelings, and so looking down at her, I simply smiled and said, “We’ll make it fit.”
Cady gazed at me and Tanton, with a certain joy and hope, her eyes saying I trust you.
The moment of solace ended quickly.
Another rattling came from above.
We stopped beside a turned-over roulette table and looked around, trying to decipher where the noise emanated from. And then, “There,” Tanton whispered in my ear and pointed his arm across my line of vision. He led my eyes to the ceiling in the corner of the casino.