Page 43 of Consume
“I’ll get us back to Mayvel,” Crispin and Mase said, their voices solemn. They shared a look, but Mase’s was much more menacing as he jabbed his finger toward Crispin.
“I’m the pilot.I’lldo it,” he said and stood.
Crispin raised his hands in surrender.
Low chatter rippled around the table. This was it. The final calm before the storm that could either spell the end for all of us or a new beginning. I rose on shaky legs to tell them I couldn’t go, my nerves thrumming like livewires. A frosty chill iced up my backbone, triggering a shiver up my scalp. It was freezing in here. A ghostly cold combined with winter. A puff of tobacco-laced breath puffed from my mouth and caught in the air.
“Red?” I whispered.
She was warning me about something, but surely she knew they had to do this without me. Trembling, I gazed around the table at the paired-off conversations—Mase and Poh just inside the door, Franco and Moon by the Mind-I screen, Captain Glenn and Josh, Ellison and Crispin, Randolph catching crickets for Jezebel, and Pop, all alone. No one else breathed fog or reacted to the arctic temperature.
Ellison caught my eye and gasped, likely reading that something was wrong, but my gaze skipped past her to Jezebel in the corner. She was staring at the hallway door with her teeth bared.
“Meet by Parker’s exit in five, everyone,” Captain Glenn announced.
Mase started to move past Poh to the door.
The next few seconds slowed to almost a dead stop. Everyone stilled. Turned toward me.
Jezebel leaped up onto the table, her body a blue blur. She shrieked.
The hallway door burst open. Parker. Parker and two men at his sides.
Parker with his alabaster bald head and cracked, glass-like eyes stood there. He lifted his gun and fired.
Chapter Twelve
The dining room eruptedinto chaos.
My hearing muted with the deafening shock of gunfire. On instinct, I threw myself to the floor, tears welling in my eyes as I scrambled to make sense of what was happening.
More shots fired, so loud in the confined space, it felt like I’d stuck my head inside a drum.
The gurney tipped over as a rush of legs funneled through the door and into the hallway. My gaze zipped right, toward Josh pushing Ellison into the safety of the kitchen. Ellison fought him off to get to Crispin, who slumped in his chair, a red stain blooming bright across his chest. Ellison hooked his arm around her neck and dragged him toward the double doors into the kitchen. Pop held the door and ushered them inside.
Parker had shot his old pilot. Maybe others too. Blood had sprayed the wall near the door, and more had spattered all over Esmerelda the Space Vixen’s tattered poster. Gunshots sounded from somewhere else on the ship.
