It’s him.
Branches had been sheared. Debris was tossed and spread across the snow. It was hard to estimate the size of the rack that had done this damage—trees were stripped all around the clearing—but it was large enough and strong enough to tear through major branches like dry kindling, powered by rage and the instinct to protect.
He won’t leave. At least not until Christmas.
“No one enters the clearing until the analysis is complete.” He looked at Figgy. When the big furry Newfoundland didn’t look back, he checked the phone in his pocket. The battery was low. He opened an app and repeated what he said. Figgy stared back. “Circle around and find a scent. Come back once you have it.”
Figgy trotted off with her nose sweeping the ground. She would not enter the clearing. No one had. That was why they were waiting on the perimeter. They were made for this very moment.
They were good boys and girls.
Fifteen years of planning had led to this. Game this size couldn’t walk through the forest. The trees grew too close together, the branches too low. But a creature like this didn’t need to walk in order to escape.
Billy Big Game looked up.
A weepy sensation quivered beneath his beard. His eyes were steamy and wet. They called him crazy, all these years. No one would believe him. He told the world that all the Christmas legends were true and they laughed.
The irrefutable proof is here.
He walked away and wiped his eyes. The nicies followed him silently. He found Kraig kneeling on his four-wheeler and squeezed the boy’s shoulder.
“Well done.”
Kraig was steely-eyed and grim. He’d played his part. They all had. Billy Big Game didn’t want to harm the boy, just wanted to put him in danger. The boy didn’t realize an imminent threat to his well-being was like shooting a flare for help. A flare someone would answer.
And we’re ready.
“We have three weeks,” Billy Big Game announced. “Go about your day as usual; be ready for further instructions. And boys and girls, thank you. The day of discovery is near.”
He was all weepy again.
It was embarrassing, but sometimes he couldn’t control his emotions. They seemed to flow from somewhere deep inside, from the same place his thoughts were born.
We’re almost there, my boy.
“It’s time to open the game room,” he said.
The good boys and girls nodded. They understood what that meant. Time was short. They needed everyone to be on board before Christmas.
No more naughties.
The nicies rode back to the resort, allowing him to process his feelings. John and Jane stayed by his side. They had plenty of time, but this might be their only chance. The trap he’d set fifteen years ago was finally home, a carrot that was finally old enough to dangle. The hook was ready. The game he would capture—the biggest game of all—would not be mounted on the wall. Not this time.
“We’ll find him, Father,” John said.
Billy Big Game hugged his two favorites of all the favorites then ordered them to return. He would savor this moment alone. The biggest and baddest creature was near. They had three weeks.
It will be the merriest Christmas of all.
6
Don’t be nice.
Ryder stared at the bottom of the bunk. His teeth were still loose. Arf was sound asleep—the entire naughty wing was still asleep—but Ryder wasn’t hearing snores.
Why was the howl so familiar?
He’d heard it before but thought he’d only imagined it. It was during those times when living was too much—it was bad people and bad situations. He was alone and helpless.
And then I heard it.
BG had heard it before too. Or had he been expecting it? They’d raced after it like a dinner bell. The game had been cancelled for the first time ever. Even the naughties had been surprised it was over. The game was a stream favorite.
Bradley Cooper clicked off the ceiling. The green eye watched him sit on the edge of his bed. It was still dark outside. It was almost five o’clock. He was waking earlier and earlier.
The green eye winked off as he got dressed. He stood in the middle of the room, rubbing his cheek. He didn’t like lying in bed. That was when his thoughts took control. Inevitably, they would carry him down rabbit holes with troubling stories at the bottom. It was better to get up, do something. Even if it was just walking around. He grabbed things for a shower.
Somebody was outside.
Cloaked in darkness, he pried the blinds open. Bradley Cooper washed his face in green light. The floodlight on the barn lit the figure from behind. At this time, it was usually someone wearing a cowboy hat and walking with a limp. This wasn’t him. This person was smaller than that. Quicker, leaner.
And coming toward the naughty wing.
Ryder threw a towel over Bradley Cooper. There was no doubt he’d get in trouble for that, but the snitch was blowing his cover. And he didn’t want to see himself on the stream spying on someone, or someone seeing him spying on them. While his drone struggled to free itself, Ryder threw a blanket over his head.
A light appeared in the person’s hands.
It was a quick splash of white light, a square of illumination that was unmistakable. A phone. Someone out there had a phone. And something else. There’s no green eye! Whoever it was didn’t have a drone. Even BG had an eye on him. Everybody belonged to the stream. Except for the old man with the cowboy hat.
And whoever that is.
Bradley Cooper dropped on the floor and slid out from the towel. The green eye was flashing in his face. Ryder dropped the blanket and watched the figure sneak around the end of the building. He threw the blanket, but Bradley Cooper was ready for it this time and followed Ryder into the hall.
It was silent and dark.
There was no music whispering behind doors, not a creature stirring. The job board was illuminated with the day’s schedule. Soup and Arf were on snow shovels in the morning and study hours in the afternoon. Ryder’s name was near the bottom.
Introspection.
The hallway suddenly felt cold, the hard floor beneath his feet falling away. His stomach dropped. He didn’t know what introspection was, just how Arf had looked. It felt like those moments in the doctor’s waiting room.
Something metallic snapped.
It was in Cherry’s room. Objects shuffled around and slid across the floor. It was quiet for a few minutes; then music began. It didn’t sound like she was crawling out of bed. More like she was rearranging the room.
The door handle turned. Ryder jumped back, heart hammering. Spicy incense wafted out of the widening crack, music spilling out. He was staring.
They were both startled.
Cherry leaped back. She was fully dressed—jeans and a sweatshirt and stocking cap with a towel over her shoulder. Her socks wagged on the ends of her feet, with icy snow crystals stuck to them.
It was her. And she has a phone!
Ryder peeked inside her room. The window was closed. Her coat was on the floor along with rubber boots. Snow was packed on the soles.
“What are you doing?” Ryder whispered.
Momentary panic transformed into irritability. “Meditating.”
She was lying, it was obvious. Her drone dipped through the doorway and floated next to Bradley Cooper. Hers was identical—the eye green and body round—except for the stain on the belly. It was an ink blot. She crossed her arms and shifted her weight.
“Why?” he said.
“Clarity.”
He shook his head. That wasn’t what he was asking and she knew it.
“I meditate to clear my mind.” She widened her eyes. Get it?
She knew he knew. He couldn’t flat out ask why she was outside or why she had a phone or why her drone wasn’t with her. They were on the stream now. He wasn’t going to ruin whatever she was doing, so all he could ask was why. She answered him with her eyes and flicked a glance at the job board.
>
“Good luck.”
Ryder watched her walk to the bathroom with her drone in tow. It waited for her in the hall while she showered. Cold panic collared him again.
Introspection.
***
Arf was awake.
Ryder returned from the shower to find his oversized roommate slumped on his bed. His hair—spread in a bedhead cowlick—brushed the underside of the top bunk, where Soup was curled up. His thick lips hung loose and open.
“You’re too small to fight,” he said.
Ryder finished putting on socks and boots, drying his hair with a towel before covering his head with a stocking cap. Arf’s eyes were heavy and slow, his cheeks splotchy.
“You all right?” Ryder asked.
They sat across from each other. Ryder was trying to decide if he’d looked that sullen and spacy before introspection.
“What’d they do to you?” Ryder asked.
He shrugged and looked off. He wasn’t focusing on anything, wandering through the fog of sleep, where thoughts weaved a comforting spell. If Ryder nudged him, he would probably fall over and begin snoring. Arf never woke up before the sun.
“I had a dog,” he muttered distantly.
He drifted into his thoughts again. Maybe he was sleeptalking, had been ever since Ryder got back from the showers. Their drones hovered off to the side. He never should’ve dressed. It was easier to be half naked with the guarantee of not being on the stream.
“Arf—”
“Her name was Happy. She would chase us around the backyard and sometimes bite. It didn’t hurt, though. It was just... what she did. It was how we played.”
He smacked his lips. They were dry and gummy. He swallowed a couple of times, breathing through his mouth.
“The mom had one bike for all of us. We would take turns riding around the block. That was all we could do, ride around the block and switch off. Happy would follow and nip at my shoe when I got too close to the road.”
He wiped his face and sniffed.
“I didn’t mean it. It was an accident. I-I-I...”
“It’s all right.” Ryder stood up. The drones swerved around him, so he threw the blanket over them and twisted the bottom. They began beeping. Soup rolled over.
“What are you doing?” he said. “I’m sleeping.”
“Can we turn these things off?”
“What? No. Take your clothes off before they explode.”
“Turn off your ears.”
Soup slammed the pillow over his head and sighed. Ryder let the drones loose. They fired out like hornets, eyes blinking red. They spun around until they were green and aimed at Arf. He was still sitting up but wilting.
The sun was coming up. The morning light was bleached and dim, casting gray bars through the blinds.
Ryder lay down and closed his eyes.
He wasn’t tired, but he stayed like that until the room began to quake. Arf had dripped onto his mattress and was ripping air. Whatever he was talking about had come from introspection. Something had happened to the dog. Whatever it was, he didn’t want it on the stream.
Neither did Ryder.
He threw on his winter gear and looked through the blinds. No one was outside. It would be hours before they were awake, and he didn’t want to spend that much time with his thoughts. The bedroom was too small for that.
He stopped outside Cherry’s room and listened. It smelled like incense, but there was no music. If he knocked, she wouldn’t answer.
He went outside.
Bradley Cooper felt less oppressive with the big sky over him. There were no planes streaking overhead. There wasn’t supposed to be. His footsteps broke through a thin crust of snow. Soft powder fell in his boots. There were a few lights in the nicy wing. Vague shadows moved inside.
Tiny green lights were in the distance.
They looked out from the trees like one-eyed creatures, hovering in and out of the forest. They were never out this early or that far from Kringletown.
There were still fresh footsteps in the field. The prints left behind zigzagging bars from the bottoms of rubber boots that went around the naughty wing. Ryder kept walking, not paying any attention to them. If he followed them, they would end at Cherry’s window. And Bradley Cooper would see them.
Then the rest of the world.
Instead, he followed them to the barn. The horses were in the paddock. A few were lingering at the fence, snorting humid breath through flared nostrils, bobbing their heads as Ryder neared. Cherry’s tracks puddled next to the fence, where she must have pet them.
All-terrain vehicle tracks lined the snow. They had emerged from the side of the barn when the game was interrupted. Their knobby tires had beaten down the snow. None of them were fresh, though. This was yesterday’s marauding.
He stopped in the breezeway.
The concrete was slick. He almost went down, waving his arms to keep his balance. Horses were in the stalls to his right, heads out and staring. They looked expectant, hungry. There were no horses on the left side of the breezeway. Those doors were closed. One set was big enough to accommodate a big rig truck. It wasn’t secured with a padlock. There wasn’t even a handle.
He didn’t know how it opened.
Light flooded out of the last door down the breezeway. The room was open. The horses whinnied as Ryder peeked inside. Barrels of feed were open. Shelves were full of spray bottles and books. Saddles and tack hung next to an empty rack. It looked like a gun cabinet.
One weapon was inside it.
The stock was short and the barrel wide. Ryder had never seen a shotgun before, but he’d played enough video games to identify every weapon used in warfare.
That was not one of them.
It looked more like something from the future than it did from modern warfare, the kind that shot lasers and went pew-pew.
“What’re you doing?”
Ryder spun around with his heart in his throat. A silhouette was in the breezeway. Ryder shaded his eyes from the tack room’s light. The figure started toward him. Ryder couldn’t make out the details, but he recognized the gait.
Kraig with a K was wearing sweatpants under his coat.
“You got permission to be out here?” he said.
Bradley Cooper hovered over Ryder’s shoulder. They both watched the stout nicy. There was no drone behind him. Ryder, for once, was grateful Bradley Cooper was there. He balled a fist at his side.
“What are you doing out here?” he said.
“Checking on the horses.” Kraig stopped short of the tack room and held out his hand. “And to apologize. Yesterday got out of hand. No one likes to lose. We all get a little jacked up during the big game. You’re new, so now you know. Just want to say sorry.”
Ryder hesitated. It seemed like a bad idea to shake his hand, but the drone was watching. He reached out and immediately regretted it. Kraig’s grip ground his knuckles like marbles. His smile grew as his grip tightened. When Ryder tried to let go, he yanked him closer. A white film was in the corners of his mouth.
“I don’t care how fast you can run,” he whispered, “you’re still one of them.”
Still grinning, he flicked a glance over Ryder’s shoulder. Bradley Cooper was hovering near his ear, but something was missing.
The green light is off.
“You’re a misfit,” Kraig said.
His white smile opened up. The white film stretched between his lips.
The horses were getting noisy, stamping their hooves. Ryder grabbed his wrist and tried to pry it out of the bear trap. Pain knifed across his hand. Instinctively, he reached back to throw a punch at Kraig’s square jaw—
“Pops!” Kraig shouted. “At it early this morning?”
Ryder’s hand came free, and he nearly went down on the slick concrete. The old man was in the breezeway. His coat was thick and dusted with snow. The cowboy hat was frayed on the rim. The old man’s ears were as red as the knob of his nose. He sniffed hard and spit a glob of
tobacco in the snow.
“Got a naughty here who would love to help shovel a stall,” Kraig said. “Nothing like the smell of horse crap in the morning.”
He swatted Ryder between the shoulder blades and laughed. Pops carried two empty buckets into the tack room without even a grunt. He smelled like old leather, his eyes as gray as the sky.
Kraig winked before hustling back the way he had come. The snow was packed around his slippers.
The old man came out of the tack room with four stainless steel buckets hooked over his arms. The horses whinnied. Without looking at Ryder, he took them out to the paddock, where the rest of the herd was waiting. A squirt of dark spit shot out from beneath his hat.
Ryder decided not to hang around.
His hand was throbbing. He followed the smooth prints of Kraig’s slippers out of the breezeway. Head down, he slowed as he passed the giant hangar doors that didn’t have handles. Kraig had stomped through another set of tracks. It was two prints aimed at the locked doors. One was going inside, the other was coming out. He’d seen the prints of these soles already.
And the boots they belonged to.
7
Cherry was assigned to kitchen chores. At least, that was what was on the board. She wasn’t in the kitchen, though. Ryder went to her room and knocked.
She didn’t answer.
What was she doing in the breezeway? How did she get a phone? Why was her drone turned off? Ryder had so many questions, but oddly enough wondered, Why doesn’t she have roommates?
Ryder went back to his bedroom and stared at the ceiling. There wasn’t a time scheduled for the introspection. They come for you, was all Soup said. Butterflies nibbled holes in his stomach. It was almost lunch, but he wasn’t going to eat until this was over.
Music bumped from down the hall, and engines roared in the horseshoe. The doors on the barn were open. Four-wheelers filed out one after another. The nicies, dressed in matching winter gear, started for the mountains, snow rooster-tailing off the back tires.
He flipped open his laptop and clicked the stream. He had been avoiding it, but felt himself more entangled with the drama. I am the drama. The stream started with a close-up on the trophy and all the hype. The nicies were practicing, and the naughties were throwing snowballs. Cut to Soup leading them in a chorus line with leg kicks.
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