I focused and stopped time right in the middle of Screamer’s sixth step.
Patty took a couple of deep breaths.
“You all right?”
“I am,” she said. “But it takes focus for me to tell when the power is starting to slip.”
“I understand that,” I said. “But now comes the part I’ve been worrying about since we came up with this idea. Can your power work now that time is stopped so I can let go?”
“Let’s find out,” she said. “Ready?”
“Ready,” I said.
“Now,” she said.
I let go and let time come back to normal, but time wasn’t normal. Screamer was still moving in his slow motion way. I watched as he took his last two steps and then stopped as Johnny’s thumb slowly clicked his watch.
“Slipping,” Patty said.
“Let it go,” I said.
She did and everything came back to normal pace as the group turned to face where we had moved.
“That is so weird,” Samantha said again, shaking her head.
“Well,” Johnny said.
“I think we can make this work,” I said. “We need a little more practice. But one thing we can’t test is if we’ll be able to pull people out of the chair and maintain our focus on holding time at bay.”
Patty nodded. “I don’t think I can safely do that.”
“I’m afraid I’ll get distracted,” I said.
“So you’re going to need some help,” Screamer said. He turned to Johnny. “Think you can sit in that chair without touching that machine?”
Screamer pointed to the ghost slot machine that had everyone and the wooden chair attached to it.
Johnny nodded, took a deep breath and moved to the slot machine.
Screamer took up a position right behind him. “I’m thinking you are touching me, doing your time thing and including me. When someone shows I shove them out of the chair sideways like this.
Fairly gently he pushed Johnny sideways and away from the face of the ghost slots. Johnny managed to stumble but not fall to the concrete.
I nodded and glanced at Patty as both Johnny and Screamer moved a few more paces away from the slot machines. She was nodding also, as if it just might work.
“Tech,” I said, turning to the stunned kid standing out of the way to one side next to Samantha. “That machine’s lowest payout is three, right?”
Tech nodded.
“How is it triggered?” I asked. I was afraid one of us was going to have to pull the handle and I didn’t much like that idea at all.
“Harry can trigger it to pay out from in there,” Tech said.
Johnny nodded. “Geneva just asked him and he agreed.”
“Can he space the payouts two minutes apart?” Patty asked, slightly ahead of where I was going with my questions. She and I were both thinking we were going to need rest between each use of our powers.
“He can,” Tech said.
“He can,” Johnny said a moment later.
I looked into Patty’s deep brown eyes. I could see worry there, but also a lot of confidence and power. I wouldn’t want to try to do this alone, but with her holding my hand, I felt we just might have a chance.
“Okay then,” I said, glancing at everyone. “Let’s get ready. Johnny, I need you to get some ambulances and police here to help with those coming out. How much longer do we have before these monsters jump again?”
Johnny pulled the sheet of paper we got from The Bookkeeper out of his pocket and stared at it. “Six in the morning.”
“Let’s hope these things are long dead by then,” I said.
I also hoped we didn’t have a bunch of dead people at that point as well. It was all a matter of time. And how well Patty and I worked together controlling it.
Chapter Eighteen
THE DRAINING OF A MACHINE
I MADE PATTY and me and Screamer practice just enough to be sure we had the routine down, yet not enough to get us tired. I didn’t feel too drained from using my newest-found superpower, but that didn’t mean that I wouldn’t get tired an hour from now. With two-minute breaks, three people at a time, over one hundred people in the machine, an hour still wouldn’t be enough time to have everyone out.
Finally, it seemed as if there was nothing left for us to practice, nothing left for us to do but start the process. I could tell Patty was nervous, and there was no doubt I was scared to death. I was trusting a strange superpower I didn’t know I had twenty-four hours ago to save hundreds of people.
I kept thinking I should just call a halt and go get Stan or one of the other gods to help us. Yet another part of me knew that Stan and the gambling gods were watching, and if they didn’t think we could do this, they would step in and help. There was a lot at stake for their world as well. That thought gave me a little more confidence.
Not much, but a little.
I did one more quick check of everything we had done to get ready. Johnny and Tech had gone around the warehouse and gotten a number of tarps off of old slot machines. Using those tarps, they had built up a “landing pad” on the concrete floor where people were going to hit when Screamer pushed them out of the chair. I figured it was better than having people sprawl out face-first on concrete.
Johnny had given the police orders to not come into the warehouse. I had asked him to do that because I didn’t want to take any chances of a lot of people coming in over the next hour and distracting Patty’s and my concentration.
Johnny and Samantha and Tech would help the rescued people to the door of the warehouse. And as Johnny pointed out, Ben and Geneva would soon be with them to help as well.
I hoped he was right. There were so many things that could go wrong.
Ghost slots had taken a lot of people over the years. No one had ever escaped from one before, and we didn’t even know if it was going to be possible for that to happen. The people in that machine were just energy in wires. Could they even be reformed into human bodies?
I mentioned that worry to Patty while we had time stopped in one of our practice sessions. She just squeezed my hand in that wonderful way she had of squeezing and said, “There are a lot of things in this world we don’t understand and need to just trust. Let’s trust this one to work.”
“Think Stan and the rest of the gods would show up here and stop us if this was a bad idea?” I asked her.
“I’m betting on it,” she had said, smiling that wonderful smile of hers that reached and filled her brown eyes. Then before my mind could drift to my holding a bar of raspberry-smelling soap and her naked in a shower, she had directed me to get focused on practicing again.
I actually managed to stay focused and not think of her. That’s how important this was.
“Ambulance and police are here and ready and standing by outside,” Johnny said, coming down the aisle from the direction of the entrance.
Tech held up Johnny’s watch. “Timer ready.”
I nodded. I had had Johnny give him the watch because I had a hunch that when Geneva came out it was going to be painful to Johnny again. Keeping exact timing on this was going to be critical.
Samantha was standing beside the pile of tarps where we hoped people would land after Screamer pushed them out of the chair. She was ready to help, and looking just about as scared and nervous as a person could look. I didn’t blame her. Her husband’s life was at stake. If this didn’t work, he was going to die an ugly death right in front of her.
Screamer moved over and stood behind the old wooden chair that people were going to materialize in. His job actually was going to be the hardest. He needed to push each person out of the way after they had materialized, but before the next person showed up. That was going to be a very physical and rough thing to do, and he was going to have to do it with exact timing.
I moved over to stand beside Screamer facing the colorful slot machines. The image of Saturn dominated everything, demanding that I sit down and just play. The blinking colors, the bright ligh
ts were very, very strong draws.
Patty moved up to my left and took my hand. The feel of her wonderful skin against mine allowed me to push the attraction of the machines back into a corner of my mind and away from any bother. Now, instead of looming over me, they were just old machines with a nice design. The feel of Patty’s skin against mine was the focus for me.
I reached out with my right hand and grabbed the thin black belt that Screamer was wearing, holding on squarely in the middle of his back. It was the best way to keep in contract with him without restricting his movements in any way.
“Ready?” I asked Patty.
“Ready,” she said, squeezing my hand.
“Ready Screamer?”
“As I’ll ever be,” he said.
“Johnny, tell Geneva we’re set to go.”
Johnny nodded. Then a moment later he said, “Now.”
“Clock started!” Tech said.
I focused on my power as Patty slowed time around us. I needed to be ready to stop time completely if Patty signaled her power was slipping in any fashion.
The next three seconds slid by very, very slowly in Patty’s control. Tech and Samantha and Johnny were all outside Patty’s influence and moving like a bad slow-motion video.
Slowly Johnny’s hands went to his head, as if he had felt a very sharp pain.
Then, in front of Screamer the air started to shimmer.
A vague outline of Geneva started to form, filling in moment by moment in what seemed a very quick time in our slowed-down universe.
Then she was there, fully. Her back was to Screamer, sitting just as she had been when she had gone into the machine.
Screamer, reacting as fast as he could, took her by the shoulders and tipped her out of the chair and onto the tarps. She fell slowly, just as another shimmering started in the chair.
That was close.
Very, very close.
If Screamer had hesitated at all the next person would have started to form where Geneva sat.
I glanced at Patty. She wasn’t watching, but instead had her head tipped back and her eyes closed. Her grasp on my hand was firm and solid.
A middle-aged woman shimmered into shape and the instant it was clear that she was all there, Screamer shoved her sideways and out of the chair.
She was barely out of the way and hadn’t yet landed on Geneva when the shimmering started again.
Three people in less than one second was almost too fast for even Patty’s slowed time. It was very lucky for us that Screamer was reacting as quickly as he was.
Ben, the man Patty and I had watched disappear on the Horseshoe surveillance tapes shimmered into place. Screamer took no chances and shoved him instantly out of the chair and onto the pile of tarps with the two women.
“Slipping,” Patty said, squeezing my hand.
I froze time and then said, “Clear.”
Patty took a deep breath and looked around at me, then at Screamer and the three people twisted and frozen in place on the pile of tarps. They looked like a twister game gone terribly wrong.
“We got them?” she asked.
“We got them,” I said. “But I wanted to have us stay in control of time to make sure no one else was coming.”
Screamer nodded. “Make sure the three-payout setting was right. Good thinking.”
“Good work on your part,” I said to Screamer. “Even with time slowed they appeared faster than I expected them to.
“Me too,” Screamer said.
Patty took another couple of deep breaths, then said, “I’m ready.”
I wanted us to go another five or so seconds to make sure no one else was coming, so when Patty nodded, tipped her head back and closed her eyes, I slipped us out of between time.
On the mat the three people there were still moving and reacting to being shoved and tangled together, just very, very slowly. It would have made a really funny home video on one of those stupid television programs that made money out of people making fools of themselves.
I had also gotten just a glimpse inside each of their heads as Screamer pushed them aside, but I ignored that.
But the good thing was that all three were awake and alive and moving. And slowly Johnny and Samantha were bending down to help them.
The look on both Johnny and Samantha’s faces was something else. Now I can honestly say I have seen pure joy.
Slow motion joy, but still pure.
No one else was materializing into the chair, so I finally squeezed Patty’s hand. “We’re clear.”
She let us slip back into real time.
“Tech, watch that time closely,” I said.
Screamer, Patty, and I stayed in positions as Johnny picked up Geneva and hugged her like I had never seen anyone hug before. She was going to be lucky to not have a few cracked ribs.
Samantha seemed to do the same for Ben, holding him and crying.
The other woman, clearly the tourist Geneva had seen being taken from the Mirage, sort of sat there on the tarps watching the scene around her, then glanced up at the Saturn Slot Machines with a look of horror. “Was I in there?”
“You were,” Screamer said. “But you’re safe now.”
The woman scrambled off the tarps and away from the machine.
“Welcome back, Geneva,” I said after letting them hug for a few more seconds. “How are you feeling?”
“Headache will pass,” she said. “And I know what to do to help.”
Samantha let go of her husband and turned to us. “Everyone, this is Ben.”
The poor man sort of nodded, then glanced at the machines and stepped back in horror, just as the woman on the tarps had done when she moved away from the machines. I was betting that the people who had been taken were never going to sit down at a slot machine again.
“How long?” Patty asked Tech.
“Seventy seconds,” he said.
“Johnny, get this woman out to the ambulances to be checked and then get back here,” I said. “Samantha, you want to take Ben out as well?”
“I’m fine,” Ben said, “What can I do to help?”
Samantha gave her husband a hug and a huge smile.
“Help Samantha and Johnny and Geneva get the people who are coming out of the machine to the ambulances and police.”
“Understood,” he said.
Johnny took the frightened tourist by the arm and headed her away from the ghost slots toward the door to the warehouse, introducing himself as he went.
Geneva, Samantha, and Ben stayed.
“Thirty seconds,” Tech said.
I turned to face Patty, who was smiling all the way through her eyes. That smile of hers melted me every time, and it started to do it again when Tech said, “Fifteen seconds.”
The melt of my very soul froze and I asked her, “You ready for another three?”
Patty took a deep breath and nodded.
“Ten seconds,” Tech said.”
Patty squeezed my hand, took a deep breath, and tilted her head back and closed her eyes.
“Five seconds,” Tech said. Then as we had practiced, he started counting down.
At three seconds Patty slowed time again.
What seemed like a long three seconds later a shimmering started in the chair, right on time.
Three out, almost a hundred left to rescue. It was going to be a long, long grind, and we didn’t dare slip even for an instant. If we did, someone would die.
Chapter Nineteen
NO GOING DOWN WITH THE SLOT
I DON’T REMEMBER ever being so tired.
Over one hour of real time had passed, but with my stopping time on a half dozen different occasions, and Patty’s slow time, I wagered Patty and I and Screamer had been at this for almost three or four hours.
So far so good.
The closest call we had was when a very large man showed up in the chair first in a group of three. Screamer had to almost throw himself with the big guy to the mat to get the man’s bulk out of the
chair. I somehow managed to hold on to Screamer’s belt with one hand and Patty’s hand with the other, but for an instant I thought the problem would make Patty lose control.
Somehow I froze time far faster than I ever thought I could, almost like a reaction to the situation. Good to know I could do it that fast, but I hoped to not test it again.
With time frozen all three of us moved around, together, never losing touch of each other, and got the big man’s legs out of the way.
Then we got back into position and Patty took over control again and the next two people in that group made it out just fine.
From there the process just went on, two minutes of break followed by slowed time and a feeling of near panic as three people appeared very quickly.
About ten groups ago the man getting off the tarp had told us that Harry was now all alone in the main room. He had been the last one in there helping the old guy stay on his feet.
That worried us all, especially after Geneva had told us how tired and worn out Harry had been. But the next group, and then the next had appeared on time, so it looked like old Harry was hanging on.
Over the last few groups, Patty was having more and more problems, and I had had to stop time twice in both groups to give her a rest. She was getting tired, and I was getting very worried at both of our abilities to keep using our superpower in such a sustained way.
“How many left in there?” I asked Geneva as Tech gave us the sixty second warning.
“If our count is right,” Geneva said, “And Harry’s count was right, Harry should be the second one out on this next group and that should be it.”
“You’re kidding?” Patty said. I could hear the relief in her voice.
“We’re close,” I said, squeezing her hand slightly.
She straightened her back and nodded. “Let’s do this.”
Tech counted us down just as he had done every time before and Patty slowed time just as she had done so much over the entire rescue operation. Screamer stood ready to push just two more people out of that chair.
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