A captivating new short story from Hugo Award winner Will McIntosh. An unlikely crew has met up in Las Vegas to pull off the ultimate robbery. The target? Life itself.
Release date:
September 17, 2013
Publisher:
Orbit
Print pages:
54
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“Nobody gets hurt. If anybody gets hurt, I’m out,” Frank said under his breath.
“Frank, how the hell are we gonna hurt anyone?” Marty slowed, held out his empty hands. “We’re old, we’re unarmed. What are we gonna do, bite someone?” He grunted. “I can’t even chew through a bagel.”
“I’m just saying. I spent my life on the right side of the law, and I’m not changing now.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re a saint,” Marty muttered. He lifted his head to take in the casino. It was a thing of beauty—shining chrome, flashing lights, whooping alarms to signal that some poor rube just won a week’s worth of the good stuff, and never mind that the suction cups attached to his arm had siphoned off a month before he made the big score.
A year ago Marty would have as soon vomited up his spleen as step inside one of these leech traps, but now it represented everything to him—hope, life, vigor. Fewer trips to the fucking doctor.
Thelma and Bill were in the bar, at the table closest to the slots, right where they were supposed to be. Thelma glanced Marty’s way, but didn’t wave or acknowledge him. Good—she was on the ball. He was uneasy about pulling this off with someone he didn’t know. It was a long shot as it was, even if everything went as planned. There were so many blank spots and question marks in the plan.
“Why don’t we play some of the five-minute slots?” Marty said to Frank, nice and loud, pointing at the machines closest to the security door that led into their Shangri-la, the inner workings of the casino.
Marty attached the five cool, sticky cups at the end of the payout line to the underside of his left forearm, like most people did. Theoretically you could attach them to any part of your body—your ass, under your armpit—but the point here was to be invisible, so Marty resisted the temptation. He pulled the lever, watched the electronic wheels spin and click into place one by one.
He lost.
He felt nothing as the payout line sucked out the equivalent of five minutes of his life. They called it a payout line, but the sunken eyes of hard-core gamblers roaming the casino, dreaming of striking a thousand-year jackpot, told you it did more drawing in than paying out.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Thelma strain to stand, rising in slow motion. She was clutching an oversized purse that looked like a burlap grocery bag. Bill stood as well, muttered to himself just like they’d practiced. So far it looked, blessedly, to be one of Bill’s good days. Hopefully it would stay that way. Thelma took Bill’s elbow, led him toward the glassed-in security desk that sat beside the door to Shangri-la.
The seat of Bill’s white pants sported a big, wet, brown stain. Marty bit his cheek to keep from grinning.
“Excuse me, sir,” Thelma said in a sheepish stage whisper. The guy in the security cage looked up from a computer screen. Thelma sighed in exasperation. She was good—better under pressure than she’d been during rehearsals. “My husband had an accident.” She hissed the last word; by now the security guy could no doubt smell what kind of accident he’d had. Bill was doing a nice job of acting like he was two years farther down Alzheimer’s Road than he was. “I desperately need to take him to a bathroom, but they’re for gentlemen or ladies only, and I need privacy to take care of this. Can you please help me?”
Marty couldn’t hear th. . .
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