Normally, whenever the climactic chapter of a book ends in a cliffhanger, the author will then construct an expertly crafted escape route- a deus ex machina that saves the protagonist in a mind-blowing explosion of literary competence.

Now, that’s giving me as the author way too much credit, so instead of writing the above, I have decided to go with the easier option: Highly fortunate and not at all artificial coincidences, accompanied by very little explanation.

***

Cruz K. Flores was a happy man as he pulled the trigger of his tiny pistol for the final time.

It was a shot few could have missed- even with the ever-present dust storm that had forced its way inside the building, Domini was only two feet away, staring blankly at the barrel of Flores’ gun. The drug-lord savored every moment as metal slowly slid across metal. Victory felt better than he had imagined it would, and he wanted to make the feeling last.

“It won’t kill you, I suppose,” gloated Flores, a smug grin plastered across his chubby face, “but it ought to be enough for now, eh?”

“Please,” muttered Hector.

“Please what?” Flores paused, raising one greasy black eyebrow. He didn’t release his grip on the trigger of his gun, but he didn’t fire- not quite yet.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” said Hector.

“I-” Flores’ eyes narrowed. “Talking to God, eh? Saying your prayers?”

“Good idea, but no.”

Flores was stunned. Hector was actually half-smiling. It was hard to tell in the dusty air, but he looked… hopeful.

“Then who-”

A skeletal, incredibly withered hand closed around Flores’ fat wrist at the same time as another slid around his throat. The gun was yanked out of his grasp and thrown to the floor, clattering somewhere behind him. Flores’ yell of indignant fear was transformed into a sort of gargling noise, which quickly stopped.

“Hector, I really am disappointed in you,” said a wheezy voice behind Flores. “I would’ve thought you were capable enough to avoid this kind of situation. Rookie move, letting yourself be held at gunpoint.”

Hector burst out laughing- an uncontrollable, hysterical laugh. He tried to speak, and failed. Flores struggled, limbs flailing wildly.

Arch-Shaman Goonda stooped to retrieve Flores’ pistol, placed it against the drug-lord’s head, and jerked the trigger.

BANG.

Hector’s laugh went away as quickly as his smile. He sat bolt upright, staring incredulously at the withered Mayan. The wall to the right of the Arch-Shaman was splattered with a gruesome coating of red, which Hector distinctly avoided looking at.

“Did you just-”

“Shoot him? Yeah. Remember, it won’t do much. He’ll wake up without a scratch in a few hours.” Goonda peered around the room. “Look, Hector, we’re inside a compound rife with armed drug-dealers who hate our guts. We need to leave. Flores has to come with us. And the snake.” He glanced behind him. “And… Yogwo.”

“He’s… dead.” Hector’s voice sounded dead as he said it.

“He may be. We’re still bringing him.” Goonda sighed heavily. “That distraction I created out there, well, it tired me out. A lot. Most of the time you guys were fighting Flores here, I was huddled in a corner, half-unconscious. When I finally recovered, I started looking for you. I couldn’t find you for a while, but it seems I did just in time.” He looked down at the limp form of Yogwo, who was bleeding from a gaping wound in his collarbone. “Or… maybe too late. But as for Yogwo, only time will tell.” He paused, and for the first time that Hector had seen, Goonda looked truly sad.

“We must act quickly,” muttered Goonda, more to himself than to Hector. Without another word, he tried to hoist the body of Yogwo onto his shoulders, but the attempt was hardly successful. The old man groaned under Yogwo’s weight, and set him back down. Blood stained Goonda’s already filthy shirt.

“We need a bandage,” Hector said.

“We need a car,” responded Flores. “There’s no way I can carry Yogwo. And Flores probably weighs three times as much.”

Hector blinked, and suddenly, a plan snapped into place inside of his head. It would be risky, he knew, but they had no other choice.

“You know…” he began, meeting Goonda’s inquisitive gaze, “there are plenty of cars around here.”

“How would we start one? We don’t have a key.”

“Good point,” muttered Hector. “Or do we?”

Goonda sent him a skeptical look, but held his tongue.

“Okay,” Hector said. “I think this could work. We don’t have much time. But I have a plan.”

“What do we need to do?”

***

The plan was simple, really. Hector had been wondering how they could get into a car, and start it, when the answer hit him like a quarter-ton of bricks. The details soon snapped into place inside of his mind. It was risky, but then again, so was anything else they could do.

The first thing the two men did was bandage Yogwo’s shoulder, using a sleeve off of Hector’s shirt as well as they could. The second part was simple, if slow- they had to move. It took some effort, but after an agonizing minute or two, Hector and Goonda had half-carried, half-dragged their unconscious companions deeper into the building.

So far, the halls had been empty of life- no doubt Flores’ minions were recovering their wits outside- but Hector feared an accidental run-in with some straggler. They had Flores’ tiny pistol- which was very low on ammo, if not completely empty- and the carbine Yogwo had “borrowed” earlier, but Hector’s shotgun was laying somewhere outside, abandoned in his wild run for Flores.

The third part of the plan was where things really got nerve-wracking. Leaving a vigilant Goonda to stand watch over the pale bodies of Flores and Yogwo, Hector dashed up a flight of stairs to Flores’ private rooms, praying that there was no one inside. As he had expected, his long-lost backpack sat open on a small desk in Flores’ bedroom. Next to it sat an empty syringe, and a very, very small potted fern.

The fern was blue.

Hector barely spared it a look before stuffing it into the backpack, which he slung over one shoulder. Then he ran back down the stairs.

“You were right,” stated Goonda as Hector reentered the sparsely furnished room where the Mayan stood guard. “They were in his pocket.” He held up a jingling pair of car keys.

“Now, the hard part,” muttered Hector. “We need to get to Flores’ car, with these two.” He eyed the limp pair of bodies on the floor. Flores was looking slightly less flushed, and had stopped bleeding. Yogwo, on the other hand, was startlingly pale.

Goonda nodded wearily. “I’ll-”

A door opened and then slammed shut, somewhere in the building. A low murmur of voices emanated from somewhere in the building.

“Go,” whispered Hector. “Now.” He pointed down a hallway, indicating the nearest exit.

Goonda grabbed Yogwo’s wrists and started to drag him towards the hall. It was a painfully slow process- Goonda was visibly tired- and Hector wasn’t sure how long it would be before they were found. Nevertheless, there was only one thing to do. Grimacing, he wrapped his hands around Flores’ arms and heaved the huge man along.

They were three-quarters of the way to the exit, when Hector remembered.

Dante.

He had to rescue his friend.

“Goonda, go as far as you can without me. Get to the car, get in the car, and stay there. If you’re spotted, drive away. They’ll think I’m with you. Hopefully.”

Goonda’s eyebrows shot up. “What are you talking about?!” he hissed in a half-whisper. “You’ll be taken! And then what’s the point?”

“My friend is trapped in here. I have to get him out.”

“Yogwo is your friend!” snapped Goonda. “You have to get him out of here! And if you get caught, or if I get caught, then what? What happens if Flores wakes up while you’re gone?”

“That won’t happen,” retorted Hector. He glanced at the fat man’s hulking body. “Why don’t you kill him now? We have Ike-” the snake now wound contemplatively around Goonda’s shoulders- “and you can whistle to him- her- it?– as well as Yogwo. Can’t you just… whistle the snake into biting Flores, or something?”

Goonda snorted derisively. “My whistling, combined with Flores’ screams of incredible agony, would bring the whole bunch of druggies down on us in seconds.”

“Oh,” said Hector.

“Well, are you going to rescue this Dante guy or not?”

“Oh,” said Hector, “right.”

Quickly, Hector located the stairwell descending into the building’s basement- taking care to make no noise. Once down there, it didn’t take long before he came across a long row of cells, sparsely lit with flickering fluorescent bulbs. The cells contained a cow (dead or alive, it was hard to tell), two dead finches, several sleeping cats, Dante Fernandez, and- Hector was astounded to see- Dog. Both Dante and Dog looked much the worse for wear.

“Dante!”

His friend sat in a blank, empty square room, staring into space. At Hector’s words, he snapped into full focus, staring incredulously at his old friend.

“H-Hector?! Y-you- you-” Dante seemed at a loss for words.

“No time to explain,” whispered Hector. “I’m going to get you out of here.” The words seemed to return Dante to some level of mental vigor, and he quickly roused himself.

“Okay. Okay. Do you have the key to the door?”

Crap, thought Hector. A heavy padlock secured the door to Dante’s cell. “No, I don’t. I-” I can’t stop now. Not after getting this far. “Hold on,” he told Dante. “I’ll figure something out.” Scanning the room for keys, crowbars, or plastic explosives, Hector berated himself for overlooking such an obvious part of the plan. “We need some way to destroy the lock.”

Dante nodded. “Destroy the lock,” he repeated. “Good idea.”

After a quick search of the hallway, Hector was at a loss. There was nothing useful- no keyring, no weapons, not even a screwdriver. In the long room were several tables full of lab equipment- familiar to Hector as drug-making apparatus, but practically useless in a breakout attempt.

“There’s nothing.” Hector searched the room a second time, checking every corner. Goonda is waiting. Or maybe he’s been found already. Maybe Flores has recovered.

Dante stared at Hector through the barred window of his cell. “There’s always a solution. Just think about it.”

Hector nodded dumbly.

Just think about it.

“Wait,” he said. “You’re right.”

Taking the padlock in his hands, Hector focused his mind on the steel components inside of it. He closed his eyes, pictured molecules breaking apart. Then, with a reflex he had honed after a week of training with Goonda, his mind sucked something out of the lock.

Hector opened his eyes, and there was no padlock to be found. It was simply gone- dissolved into nothingness.

“All right,” he breathed, and tension flew out of him. “That’s over with.”

After freeing Dante, as well as Dog (the cells holding animals were unlocked)- Hector and his companions returned stealthily to the main floor of the building.

Goonda himself, as well as Yogwo, were nowhere to be seen. Flores lay sprawled on the concrete floor.

Readying himself for anything, Hector crossed the hall to the door opposite, and peeked outside.

There was the parking lot at the entrance of the compound. There was Flores’ huge, decked-out SUV. The tinted windows made it difficult to glimpse anyone inside.

“Come on,” he whispered to Dante. “I don’t see Goonda or Yogwo anywhere, which means they’re probably in the ca-”

“What was that?” said a low voice, much too close for comfort.

Footsteps thudded nearer from another room.

Hector grabbed Flores’ wrists and readied himself.

“Run,” said Hector, and kicked the door open.

Dante didn’t reply. Hector saw him race towards the car, Dog at his heels. Hector himself surged forward a second later.

He hardly moved.

It was then that Hector realized pulling the unconscious Flores all the way to the car was not going to be easy.

Someone was coming nearer behind him, each step echoing ominously in the hall. The telltale scrape of steel warned Hector that a gun had been cocked.

Every muscle in his body straining, Hector heaved on the huge man’s incapacitated arms. One foot at a time, he progressed nearer and nearer. He was to the door. He was through the door. Flores was stuck in the doorway.

Crap, thought Hector.

A drug dealer that he didn’t know rounded the corner of the hallway, cursed in Spanish, and fired wildly with his gun. Before the echoes of the shot had died away, Hector leapt forwards in a desperate attempt to escape.

With a pop, he was through the door, frantically dragging Flores’ bulk across the dirt that comprised the compound’s parking lot. It felt like trying to sprint through shallow water.

There was yelling behind him, a commotion that Hector didn’t bother to pay attention to. Flores’ black SUV was running now. The back door was flung open, and Dante leaned out, hands steady on the stock of a hunting rifle. The gun boomed a single shot and the commotion behind Hector turned into screaming.

“STOP THEM!” someone yelled to the right, answered by more cries of rage coming from behind and to their left. Hector swore under his breath. Surrounded, again.

“Come on, Hector!” shouted Dante. He fired again. Hector’s ears decided that this was enough, and stopped working. He was only ten feet away from the SUV. Eight feet. Six feet. Four feet. He would-

Two more guns fired simultaneously. Hector dove to the ground just in time to see a bullet smash through the back door of the car where it hung open, just inches away from Dante’s shocked face.

With a last burst of speed, Hector leapt to his feet and heaved Flores the last few feet. Bullets whizzed by him, but he hardly cared anymore.

They would make it.

Dante grabbed at Flores’ shoulder, and with Hector’s help, they squeezed him into the SUV. Hector leapt in a second later.

Arch-Shaman Goonda, who was perched in the driver’s seat, slammed his foot on the gas pedal of the car. The gunfire outside of the car rose to a crescendo as the SUV jolted into motion.

And then, in what seemed like an eternity, the car pulled out of the parking lot, raced down the driveway, and left the crumbling Occidental compound for the final time.