All Against All

by Nathan Allen

  WILL OF ALICE OLIVIA KATO

  30 August, 2067

  I, Alice Olivia Kato, of 1204/550 Hickory Crescent, Rivercliff (Citizen Identification Number: 41-946-162-915), hereby make this will and revoke any and all prior wills and codicils.

  I declare that I am of legal age to make this will, and that I am of sound mind. This last will expresses my wishes without undue influence or duress.

  I am not married and have never been married.

  I have zero (0) living children.

  Beneficiaries – I give my property to the following person(s):

  To my brother, Lachlan Abel Jeremiah Reese, I bequeath one hundred percent (100%) of whatever crap I have remaining in and around my place of residence at the time of my death, should he survive me. If he does not survive me, I request that every one of my remaining possessions be destroyed.

  In the unlikely event that my bank accounts are not depleted or overdrawn, the total value is to be withdrawn as cash and bequeathed to the first homeless person encountered whose Christian name begins with a vowel.

  I direct that on my death my remains are to be cremated. Under no circumstance is there to be any maudlin symbolic scattering of my ashes, such as from a mountaintop or in a field of daffodils. Instead, the remains are to be disposed of in the method deemed to be the most convenient and least sentimental (e.g. deposited into the trash).

  In accordance with the Removed From History Act of 2039, I hereby request that my name, image and likeness be expunged from all public records.

  I direct my executors, without appointment against any beneficiary or other person, to pay all estate, inheritance and succession taxes (including any interest and penalties thereon) payable by reason of my death.

  I request that no funeral or memorial service be held in my honor.

  NICOLA ROCHE (2030-2067) Died 2 September. Witnesses reported seeing her car lose control as it traveled around a bend and crashed head-on into a power pole. An investigation later revealed that her brakes had been tampered with. To date, no arrests have been made.

  The Remaining Contestants

  REID CHATHAM (2031-)

  MORGAN COMPSTON (2036-)

  FRASER DUNN (2029-)

  HARRISON ESTER (2017-)

  CHRISTOPHER GIBSON (2025-)

  ALICE KATO (2040-)

  BOURKE NATION (2028-)

  MELISSA SIEBEL (2038-)

  Chapter 23

  Everything happened so quickly.

  The speeding car seemed to materialize out of thin air. It drove straight at Alice, on the wrong side of the road with its headlights switched off.

  She was on her nightly walk home from the station to her building, a journey of less than two blocks, but often felt closer to two miles, when she heard the unmistakable high-pitched whine of a vehicle accelerating toward her at great speed.

  She knew it was coming, but her feet wouldn’t move. Her entire body locked up. It was as if she had unknowingly waded into rapidly-drying cement. The cliché about traumatic events playing out in slow motion proved to be terrifyingly true.

  She snapped out of her trance and dived out of the way, a split-second before the car was due to smash into her from behind. She felt the rush of displaced wind against her face as it missed by millimeters.

  The car mounted the sidewalk and clipped a bollard, before coming to an abrupt stop when it rammed a shopfront. The sound of the shop’s shrieking alarm drowned out all other noise in the area.

  Alice had no trouble getting her body moving this time. She scampered to her feet and ran for her life, escaping down a darkened alleyway.

  She crawled into a secluded spot between two putrid dumpsters and waited. Blood pumped through her veins at such an accelerated rate that she worried her heart was about to give out.

  Even though she had been living in a constant state of fear for the past year, this was different. This wasn’t her imagination getting the better of her. This was an unequivocal attempt on her life.

  She could just make out the sound of the car reversing onto the road and taking off over the incessant screech of the alarm.

  The alarm was shut off a short time later, and an empty silence took its place. Minutes passed.

  She felt safer now, but was she really? The street lights in the alley were all busted, creating one elongated stretch of complete darkness. It would be all too easy for someone to hide in the shadows and pounce when she least expected it.

  She knew she couldn’t just sit there and wait for her attacker to come after her. They were probably on their way now. She was a sitting duck if she stayed where she was.

  She crawled out from behind the dumpsters and crept down to the end of the alley. She peeked tentatively out into the street.

  A few cars passed, but not the one that had tried to run her down. At least, she didn’t think they were; she didn’t really get a good look at it. She didn’t know the make or the model. She wasn’t even sure of the color, other than to say it was a dark color.

  A diner was open on the opposite side of the road, a few doors down. A dozen patrons were inside. She would be much safer in there than out on the street.

  She triple-checked to make sure the coast was clear, then stepped out onto the road.

  She was less than halfway across when the car tore around the corner without warning. It sped towards her and screeched to a stop, inches away from her toes.

  The front door flew open.

  “Get in!” the driver shouted at her.

  Alice turned to stone. This was like being trapped in sleep paralysis. She was scared out of her mind, but unable to do anything about it.

  It took her a moment to realize that this was not the same car that had tried to run her down minutes earlier. This was a much older model, a battered station wagon.

  “Alice, it’s me!” the driver said. “Morgan.”

  Alice drew a blank. She didn’t know anyone called Morgan, and she had never seen this man before in her life.

  And then it hit her – Morgan Compston, from the lottery.

  They had met just the one time previously, following Naomi’s funeral. He was the guy in sweats with glasses and a ponytail. The unemployed computer programmer.

  She quickly dived into the front seat, and Morgan planted his foot to the floor. The car sped away before Alice could pull the door closed.

  “Are you okay?” Morgan said.

  “I’m fine,” Alice responded, more of a polite reflex than an accurate summation of her wellbeing.

  Morgan checked the rear view mirror. “Is he following us?”

  Alice twisted her body to look behind her. A few cars were out on the road, but none that were exhibiting suspicious behavior.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. She took a moment to catch her breath. “Jesus, who was that?”

  “You shouldn’t be walking the streets alone,” Morgan said. “Especially not at this time of night. Where’s your car?”

  “I, um, it’s ...” Alice paused for a moment to rearrange her thoughts. “Wait, how did you know I had a car?”

  “That first night I saw you, at the meeting. You were parked next to me.”

  The fact that Morgan had remembered this came as a surprise to Alice, especially as she had no memory of him from that night. She only had a very vague recollection of talking to him after the funeral. Morgan had the kind of face you forgot seconds after meeting him.

  “I sold my car,” she said. “It’s a long story.”

  Morgan slowed down as he neared a red light, and the chaos of the moment slowly dissipated from view.

  It wasn’t until another few minutes had passed, when Alice’s adrenaline levels returned to a more manageable level, that her brain alerted her to the peculiarity of Morgan’s abrupt reappearance in her life at the exact moment she required his help.

  Her eyes moved slowly around the car.

  Morgan had a tire iron and a can of mace, both within arm’s reach.

  Screens d
isplaying digital maps and feeds from surveillance crafts were mounted on the dash.

  A pair of handcuffs and a small sledgehammer lay ominously on the back seat.

  It was enough to trigger the warning bells inside Alice’s head.

  “What’s going on here?” she asked warily. “How did you know someone was after me?”

  Morgan let out a protracted sigh. “That,” he said, “is a much longer story.”

  Chapter 24

  “The car that tried to run you down tonight is registered to Bourke Nation. I think he’s responsible for the deaths of at least two contestants. Maybe more, I don’t know. But there are at least two that I can pin on him so far.”

  This revelation created a vacuum of silence.

  The mere mention of Bourke Nation’s name was enough to make the hairs on the back of Alice’s neck stand up. She thought there was something going on when she saw him out the front of The Daily Ink building a couple of weeks back. Now her suspicions had been validated.

  “Do you have any proof?” she asked.

  Morgan shook his head. “I’m still working on that part. I’ve been following him for the past few months. I can place him in the general vicinity of two contestants shortly before they died, but nothing concrete yet. He’s pretty skilled at covering his tracks.”

  “You’ve been following him?”

  “I’ve attached tracking devices to all his cars.”

  Alice looked up. “All his cars? How many does he own?”

  “Four, at last count. He switches between vehicles and alters his routine to avoid drawing attention to himself. He seems to know what he’s doing.”

  Morgan fell silent when a waitress came by with their order. He thanked her with a polite smile, then waited until she was out of earshot before continuing.

  “I’ve been trailing him every time he goes out,” he said. “Tonight wasn’t the first night he’s stalked you, by the way. He’s followed you at least five or six times already.”

  Alice’s eyes widened. “Five or six?”

  Morgan nodded. “Tonight was just the first time he’s tried anything.”

  Alice wasn’t quite sure how to feel about this. Part of her wished that Morgan had let her know earlier that she was in danger. Another part of her thought that maybe this was something she was better off not knowing.

  “Does he know you’ve been following him?”

  “Not until tonight. Maybe he does now. Who knows, maybe we got away without him noticing.”

  Alice sipped her tea. It was a bit too tart for her tastes, but she drank it anyway for the calming effect it had on her.

  “How long has all this been going on?” she said.

  “I first suspected something when I ran into him a few months back. It was a completely random encounter. I just happened to be walking past when I saw Bourke parked by the side of the road. I thought it looked a bit suspicious, since he was just sitting there doing nothing, and I knew he didn’t live in the area. But I didn’t think anything of it at the time.”

  Morgan was silent for a moment. He stared into his coffee.

  “Three days later, there was a fire at Mia Gordon’s place. When I saw the address, that’s when everything clicked into place. That was the house Bourke was parked out the front of.”

  Alice recalled the Mia Gordon incident clearly. She had died from smoke inhalation after a fire broke out in her home. Firefighters had difficulty gaining access to the house because all entry points had been blocked, with beds and bookshelves pushed in front of the doors and windows.

  An investigation later traced the source of the fire to a faulty power board.

  “For the longest time after Mia died, I blamed myself.” Morgan’s eyes remained low as he spoke. “I could have warned her. Or I could have done something to scare him off.”

  He took a minute to gather himself. The only sound now was the cheesy muzak the diner had playing unobtrusively in the background.

  “Anyway, that’s what I’m hoping to do now. I want to stop him before he gets to anyone else. You know, I just found out he’s remortgaged his house. He’s taken out a five hundred thousand dollar loan.”

  “What does that prove?”

  “It proves he’s serious about winning this thing. He’s using the money to pay private investigators to keep tabs on the other contestants. He’s paying cash for unregistered second-hand vehicles so he can get around without arousing suspicion, and he sets them on fire when he’s done with them. And I think he might be paying xombies to do his dirty work for him. Remember Jordan Bradley, that guy who was hit by a truck? Witnesses said it was some dirt merchant who came out of nowhere and shoved him in front of the truck. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bourke paid him to do it.”

  Alice wasn’t sure what to make of all this. It was a lot to take in all at once.

  “That’s quite a commitment, borrowing all that money,” she said.

  “Not really,” Morgan shrugged. “Either he wins the lottery, in which case he’ll have no trouble paying the money back, or he gets eliminated, and then it won’t be his problem anymore.”

  Alice shook her head with wonder. She was still having trouble reconciling the man sitting opposite her with the nerdy guy she met at Naomi’s funeral.

  Morgan Compston looked nothing like he did a year ago. The greasy ponytail and pasty complexion were gone, along with the glasses and fleece sweats. His hair was cropped short, and he was dressed in black jeans and t-shirt. He was a lot less doughy, with a physique that could just about pass for athletic. It was almost as if he had discarded his former self and transformed into a completely different person.

  Alice’s appearance had also drastically altered compared to one year ago, but for different reasons.

  “So what do we do from here?” she said.

  “If I haven’t blown our cover, I’ll carry on tracking him. He won’t be able to keep this up forever. Sooner or later, he has to slip up. It’s only a matter of time. He’s clever, but he’s no criminal mastermind.”

  “So we just sit around and wait until he kills again?”

  “I know it’s not ideal, but there’s not a lot more we can do at this stage.”

  “Have you thought about calling the police?”

  “If the police get involved and they don’t have enough evidence, it won’t do us any good. Bourke will just learn to be more cautious. The biggest advantage I’ve had up until now is that he didn’t know I was onto him.”

  Alice tugged nervously on her sleeves. She yanked them down over her fingers.

  She always wore long sleeves these days, mostly out of necessity. She did this to cover her charred fingertips, and to hide the red scratches crisscrossing her arms. Her blackened fingers were the result of her regular Xylox smoking, while the scratches were a side-effect from the chronic itching that plagued her whenever withdrawal pangs became too intense.

  “There is one other thing we could do to stop him,” she said quietly.

  Alice was unsure whether she should expand on that thought any further. But she didn’t have to; Morgan knew what she was getting at.

  “That’s not a good idea,” he said, shaking his head.

  “I know it’s not something we really want to think about. But it would solve a lot of our problems.”

  “Would it? I think all it would do is drag us down to his level. And we’d be doing exactly what the people behind the lottery want us to do. We’re better than that.”

  “I know it’s wrong, morally–”

  “It’s also wrong legally.”

  “But ultimately, isn’t it more wrong if we do nothing?” Alice’s voice had dropped to a whisper. “If Bourke kills again, won’t that make us culpable?”

  Morgan thought long and hard before answering. He lifted his cup to his lips and swallowed down the remainder of his coffee.

  “Don’t think I haven’t considered that option already,” he said. “The truth is, if I had it in me to take the life of anothe
r human being, I would have done so by now. But I don’t.”

  He leaned back in his seat and let out a sigh.

  “And I don’t think you do either.”

  FRANKENCORPSE DISCOVERED IN DUMPSTER

  The Daily Ink

  7 September, 2067

  Police were horrified to learn that a body found in a dumpster yesterday was actually a patchwork corpse, made up of as many as seven deceased people.

  A garbage collector contacted police after making the gruesome discovery early Sunday morning. It wasn’t until the body had been taken away for autopsy that it was revealed it consisted of multiple dismembered parts that had been stitched together.

  Investigators are using DNA and dental records in an effort to identify each of the victims. They may also release images to the public of prominent birthmarks, tattoos, and other distinguishing features, in the hope that someone will recognize them.

  Despite displaying all the hallmarks of a Goliath hit, police are yet to establish any link between the grisly find and the notorious crime figure.

  [Subscribe now to view the full story]

  FRASER DUNN (2029-2067) DNA records proved that parts of Mr. Dunn’s body, including his left foot, right ear and three fingers, were found on the so-called “Frankencorpse” discovered in a dumpster at the rear of a hardware store on 7 September. Investigations are ongoing, but police are yet to make any arrests. The remainder of Mr. Dunn’s body is yet to be recovered.

  The Remaining Contestants

  REID CHATHAM (2031-)

  MORGAN COMPSTON (2036-)

  HARRISON ESTER (2017-)

  CHRISTOPHER GIBSON (2025-)

  ALICE KATO (2040-)

  BOURKE NATION (2028-)

  MELISSA SIEBEL (2038-)

  Chapter 25

  Bourke glanced at his watch. It was creeping up towards eleven p.m., and his target was nowhere to be seen. Where the hell was she?

  The corner of his eye caught the flash of the blue and red lights of a police cruiser. This triggered an intense rush of heart palpitations. A feeling of dread ascended to his throat.