by Clint Lowe
Up above, a square vent rattled.
Shimmied.
The vent fell from the ceiling to the floor in a quick clump.
The vent left a dark hole in the ceiling.
Moments later a group of fingers gripped the opening’s edges and then Dante’s head slowly lowered upside down through the hole, his black hair hanging wildly untamed. Although hair draped his face, his sinister eyes were visible, spotlighted by a flickering red light of a gaming machine.
He was traveling through the air vents, and that was the earlier sound from the kitchen.
Rattled as what to do, we all ducked behind the roulette table. Quickly I motioned again for Cady not to make a sound, and I prayed this time if Dante made any sudden noises, she would not scream. But with Cady appearing to be as calm and ready as could be expected of a young girl fleeing from two life-threatening dangers – the exploding ship and Dante – me and Tanton gave each other a nod, understanding that we were gonna have to do something about my former fiancé.
Slowly, as a team, Tanton and I edged our heads above the table, eyes poking over the wooden trim.
Still hanging upside down, Dante inspected the little casino room. One of his hands slipped away from the hole and soon returned holding the laser gun. He pointed it around the room in all directions, eye following the sight. It wasn’t clear who he was aiming at, either searching for us to take a shot, or maybe he presumed we were watching him from some dark corner, and perhaps he thought Cady might gasp in terror over the sight of the laser or that we could make a sudden dash for the door.
Gladly, he didn’t scare any of us into rash action.
But unfortunately the door was across the other side of the room: a mad dash through a crowd of tables of blackjack and roulette and craps baccarat and various forms of poker to content the most avid gambler. And so the run was out of the question for we would be an easy target for Dante to laser us down.
Hidden in the shadows, me and Tanton watched on. What was Tanton thinking? Did he want to make the run? Maybe, because time was running out on three accounts: the ship would either explode or burn all the way to us, and the oxygen was locked down in our room, but you could sense it seeping out, thinning, becoming a little harder to breathe and soon all oxygen would evaporate.
We cannot stay here forever, I thought. We must do something.
Dante snuck his head back in the hole, completely gone, vanished. But it brought no respite because quickly his black boots started wriggling out of the hole, feet appearing like he was dancing to music. His black leather pants stretched down until his black, shiny belt was visible. He was lowering himself into the room.
In one swift motion his torso came down with his red tee shirt caught on the vent opening, exposing his dark, chiseled stomach. He hung onto the ceiling with his hands, then fully lowered himself until he released the sides of the opening and dropped right on top of a small poker table. It tilted and Dante spilled over onto the floor, engulfed by a whirlwind of playing cards.
Laughter tried mercilessly to burst its way up from the deepest parts of my stomach and out of my mouth, and surely Tanton felt the same, but both of us held our nerve and held in our chuckles. Quickly, most likely to regain his pride as much as his vision of the room, Dante bounced back to his feet and with a quick tug of his jacket and shirt and a rake of a hand through his hair, he was ready to hunt.
“Surprise attack blown,” he said, looking around the room for a glimpse of us.
None of us said a thing or moved a muscle. Cady huddled quietly into her hands and knees as if playing hide and seek – I guess she was.
Dante breathed air in through his nostrils, deep and long. “I smell your perfume, Evita,” he said. “Come out and we’ll negotiate.” He held the laser beside the trimmings of his beard, ready to shoot, appearing like a spy. He slowly began creeping toward the back of the casino, past the table he toppled. “Fitting I’m searching for you in the casino,” Dante said. “You know I always win.”
His words struck me like a gambler who threw all his money on red and lost.
Dante was insane over winning. I’d once seen him cut a Cuban man’s hand off for a Rolex that he wouldn’t hand over after losing poker. There was no way Dante was going to negotiate anything other than another shot into Tanton and one or two into me and leave Cady to die aboard the ship. I quickly hatched a makeshift escape plan inside my head: crawl beneath the muddled tables toward the doorway without being seen. As for what could go wrong, pretty much everything.
I lowered myself behind the table and caught eyes with Tanton and Cady. Trying to communicate the escape with no speech, I nodded toward the route below the tables that led to the doorway. Hopefully Tanton and Cady understood. Cady, anxious to leave, went to creep away, but I grabbed her arm and shook my head no. It was not time yet. We had to wait until Dante moved away from the line of vision that led to the door.
Me and Tanton peeped over our turned-over table again and watched Dante. Ever so slowly he crept on a veering angle toward our exit.
Damn him, I thought. Walk another way.
We couldn’t move yet. Well, not in the direction toward the front. Instead, we had to move back around. Dante crept closer to our line of vision, and I nodded for us to creep behind the other side of our table, and as quietly as possible, us three crept on all fours around the table until we were out of Dante’s sight. The only thing that could see us was a gaming machine in arms reach, lying on its side and blinking its little lights as if in distress.
I poked my head around the side of the table, and there was Dante, standing amidst a dizzying array of gaming machine light, a hand with a taut grip on the laser. “Evita?” he said, voice tense. “Evita, negotiate!” Veins bulged from the side of his neck after his outburst, then his anger got the better of him, and he fired random shots around the room pow pow pow, the laser firing multiple blue strips of light, spanking tables and crashing into a gaming machine, decorating the dark with an array of yellow sparks.
Then spank! one shot punctured the table just ahead of ours, and Cady gasped.
Dante stopped firing.
A silence followed where only the dying buzz of the shot-up gaming machines could be heard fading and waning into an agonizing death.
“Come out, little girl,” Dante hollered. “I’ll bring you aboard the maintenance pod with me.” The brute of a man was using the girl to get to us. My anger for him quickly gave judgment to myself, as only a few minutes earlier I had tried the same, holding Cady up to try use her to board a pod. But time for disciplinary self-talk could wait; it was now time to ensure Cady did not trust Dante. I met eyes with the child and shook my head No, no. Do not run to Dante. Cady’s wide gaze seemed to trust me still. I hoped.
“Don’t trust them, little girl,” Dante said. “The pod can only hold two, and neither of those cheating, conniving, adults want you cramping their love affair. They will fly off without you.” Cady had heard us say the pod could only fit two, so it was a half-convincing argument, still again I shook my head no at my new small friend.
Dante stopped talking, waiting for a response but none came.
My breath started getting tighter, squeezing my lungs. At first I blamed it on the moment’s tension but soon remembered oxygen slowly leaked from the ship, making it pertinent that we quickly move to the maintenance pods.
Dante or not.
Laser or not.
Dante got on the prowl again and his steps traveled down the casino, slowly, deliberately creeping toward us, his eyes scouring the room. We were gonna have to move because eventually he would walk right into us, and we’d be an easy shot on all fours. The row of tables stretched ahead, almost reaching the exit door. The dark gave the slightest possibility that we could crawl out beneath them unseen. But what about the noise? Our hands and feet and knees clumping away? Surely he’d hear us. If only we could play some loud music.
Then I saw the only thing that could make a decent racket, ly
ing on its side before me spewing out a range of technicolored images: the working gaming machine. I motioned with my hand to Tanton and Cady to ready themselves, then pointed down the row of tables, then gave them a flat hand to indicate Wait a second – I hoped they understood my uncoordinated directions.
With quietness that would make any thief proud, I wriggled my hands into my pants pocket and pulled out Dante’s money card. All that was required was to simply swipe it past the machine and it would start, and hopefully be noisy. I reached for the machine, but Dante took a few steps to his left and came directly into my line of sight, and I pulled my hand back.
Wait, wait.
Us three stayed on all fours, lingering, delaying, a taut silence gripping the room.
The air grew thinner.
Dante coughed, obviously noticing he had to suck in the air.
Finally, Dante broke direction and turned the other way. In a flash, I swiped the card over the machine. It blinged on in a blaze of noise, sounding like an energetic robot. Having passed hours on these machines in Calexico, I pressed the buttons that sent it to automatic, and away it went, rattling, banging, gurgling, making all sorts of chaotic sounds as it gobbled Dante’s money. It’d keep spinning through the cards until it got a winner, if ever.
Now, time to move.
Tanton and Cady understood my plan, and I led our crawl under the row of tables that led toward the door. I had never crawled so fast in my life. Never really had a need for it until now. How often does one need to crawl to save their life?
It was a haze under the tables. Air was drawing thin, table legs obstructed the path, darkness pervaded except the occasional flash of color from machines, and it all made it impossible to see Dante’s feet, to spot his location. I kept peering left where he was last positioned but couldn’t locate him. My breath tightened further. Did he see us take off and is now waiting at the end of the row of tables, ready to shoot us one by one as we emerge? Anything was possible, and there was no telling but also no stalling, and so we crawled on. Shadows drifted all around the casino, accompanied by the noise of the running machine, bling, bling, blinging it’s little heart out. We came to the end of the row of tables to where a ten-yard dash awaited to reach the door. But another timber table sat to our left, turned on its side, impossible to see behind. Knowing conniving Dante, it could a perfect place for him to prepare an ambush.
I flashed my hand back and stopped Cady and Tanton at the table’s edge.
What to do? And then the pow of the laser gun as Dante shot the noisy gaming machine at the end of the room. He’d been lured to the far end, and that gave us a chance. Me and Tanton took Cady’s hand, and we crawled out from the table, scurrying on all fours like cockroaches.
Upon reaching the door, the rod in my pouch jutted free from the bumpy crawling. Thankfully, the impact to the floor was minimal and the rod didn’t explode. Tanton stood and pressed the door button. The glass slid back, and I grabbed the rod and snuck through the door. I turned to see Dante standing at the far end. He stared at the rod in my hand, eyes emboldened and quivering, and said, “That rod will be worth a fortune on Cerulean.”
One thing that Dante could be more than a killer, was greedy. Now that he’d seen the rod, there was no chance he’d let anyone have it other than himself.
He raised his laser, but I ducked behind the wall, evading harm’s way. But Tanton, standing on the other side of the doorway with Cady, was not yet behind cover. Quickly he shielded his body over Cady as another shot zapped the air, and after the sound of the blast, a flash of red blood splashed from Tanton’s thigh. He stumbled into the room, bringing Cady with him. I pressed the door button, sliding it shut.
Dante wasn’t done. Blue laser shots zapped through the doorway, zooming by our heads. Other lasers struck the glass, leaving scorched marks of black. When the door closed, once again, Tanton smashed open the button casing with a chair and disabled the door with my identity shield and kept Dante locked out. Dante arrived just in time to thump the closed glass, breathing a heavy fog over the already frosted door.
Slowly I slipped the rod into my pouch while Dante’s eyes followed it like a heat-seeking laser. Surely he would say something, vent some morbid threat of death. But he stayed silent, watching, thinking, then he turned and walked away with his image vanishing.
It seemed he would be back.
A Final Breath
Tanton stood breathing heavily, signs the Welkin was losing its supply of breathable air and of the our escape from Dante. There was also the added burden of his wounds: the laser shot to his triceps and now the wound upon his thigh, his unfashionable pants torn into even less fashion. Despite his lack of style, he needed care. I quickly ripped his shirt open, popping buttons and pulling the shirt off, leaving his body bare.
“Not in front of the child,” he said, jokingly implying I was searching for romance.
“Settle down,” I told him, then quickly inspected the laser shot on his leg. Not deadly. I wrapped his shirt around his thigh, pulling the knot tight. “Another flesh wound,” I told him, and then leaving the bandage, I stood to meet eyes. A part of me wanted to hug and kiss him. Kiss him because he had kissed me the first time, and this occasion I wanted to be the instigator. The craving burned within me because he shielded Cady with his own body. Never had I seen a man defend others with their own flesh. But it’s hard to kiss when you’re running out of time, running out of air, running away from a gangster, and I refrained from doing so. “You’re a lucky man.”
“For meeting you?” he said. “Or escaping death.”
“Both.” Although obviously referring to his life.
“Well,” Tanton said, eyes glancing at his arm and leg, the stains of red branding the bandages. “I haven’t escaped death yet.” He gazed at me again, this time there was no cockiness that had been ever present over these last hectic moments, but a look of concern, a frightening expression in his eyes that said he might not make this. But also an earnest look. “But you will,” he said, then he touched Cady’s hair. “You and Cady.”
No, I thought. You’re not dying on me.
I grabbed him by his shoulders, and he winced because I knocked his triceps wound, then I said, “Sorry, but we are all making it off this ship. All of us.” Cady smiled unconvincingly at me, and Tanton nodded. It was doubtful either of them believed me. But the air drawing thin left no more time for convincing arguments, and I pointed forward. “Just a dash through the corridor past the rooms, and we’re there.”
Together we left the casino and charged by a bar where bottles of alcohol were spilled and broken, leaving splashes of liquor over the floor, and we quickly tore down the hall. Soon, the corridor started losing more air, leaking out through the ship’s ventilation system, and it felt like an eternity heading through the passageway.
“Hurts my chest,” Cady said.
Me and Tanton shared a worried glance. If we didn’t find the pods, then we were facing our final moments. An image of Cady running out of breath and lying dead on the ground with Tanton and me soon collapsing with her barraged into my mind. It was horrid, perhaps the most gut-wrenching feeling of my life.
I ran to keep them alive.
Our route mazed through twisting corridors, their walls adorned with paintings and gold-rimmed mirrors, until we went through another doorway and faced the sweetest sight, the extension that housed the pods: a narrow glass passage that stretched forward over the ship, about twenty yards long with an arched top. At the end of the passage, under the glow of a light rested two pods, one either side. We stepped onto the solid floor and walked the short passage to the pods. All around us the incredibly strong glass gave a breathtaking view of the uncountable array of stars freckling the cosmos in an eternity of peace. I pressed my hands to the glass and looked back: the remains of the ship smoked and burned in wafts of fire and fury while pieces and chunks of the Welkin floated off into the universe. Men and women who had been blown from the ship floated lif
elessly in the cold eternal abyss.
“Lungs hurting,” Cady said, looking up at me, gasping for air.
I gasped along with her, feeling the same pain in my chest.
“Let’s leave this ship,” I said.
Tanton nodded, and I kept fast hold of Cady’s hand and faced a pod. The pods were small, egg-shaped vessels no bigger than a tall man. One half solid glass for seeing where you’re going while the small engines sat neatly on the back. The pods were joined to the passage by the glass half, a half-egged shaped shield of glass before them.
I pressed the door button to open the glass shield. My fingers edgily tapped beside the pod’s automatic release button as the door slowly opened toward us.
“Hurry up, door,” I grumbled. But the door opened painstakingly slowly as if an army of snails pulled it with rope tied to their shells. “Maybe it’s damaged,” I said. “Let’s try the other one.”
We stepped across the passage to the other pod. I snuck in front of Tanton and Cady and went to press the next door button. Then, pow, a blue laser flashed above our heads, crashing into the light and igniting a small fire.
“Where’s the rod,” Dante’s voice traveled toward us like a laser itself.
He crept out the side of the passage entry, eyes beading through his mussed hair. Slowly he stepped forward, holding the laser steady on us, all the while his bearded face smeared with a sick smile. It was clear the only reason we were still alive was that he didn’t know where the rod was on me, and a shot could ignite it, and I stood in front of Tanton and Cady. But surely with the ship about to blow apart and the air failing, he had some sanity. “We can take a pod each and escape,” I said, right as the slow door on the other side completed opening.
The fire above reflected in Dante’s squinted eye that lowered right behind the laser gun’s sights. “One inch toward the pod, and I’ll shoot holes in you all. Girl included.”