by Jude Hardin
“You’re funny, Number Eight. I’ll be sorry to see you go. I doubt you’ll last another day. But really, how were you planning to cook the fish?”
“I don’t know. I guess I would have tried to start a fire somehow. And if I hadn’t been able to start a fire, I guess I would have eaten it raw. That’s how hungry I am. What difference does it make? I’m sure as hell not going to be cooking anything now.”
“Are you hungry enough to go out in the night and try to get your catch back?”
The question caught me by surprise. I hadn’t even considered doing that.
“I don’t have any idea where those punks are,” I said. “I wouldn’t know where to begin looking for their houses.”
“I could lead you to them.”
“You want me to navigate the swamp in the dark? It would be a suicide mission. No thanks.”
He paused. “I could force you to go, but I won’t. I’ll leave it up to you this time. If you want to go, I’ll have a flashlight brought to you and I’ll lead you every step of the way. If you’re successful, you can even keep the flashlight. And, as a bonus, I’ll supply you with a butane cigarette lighter for the rest of the week. You’ll be able to start a fire and cook your fish tonight, and you’ll be able to start fires and cook all your meals for the duration of the game. For as long as you keep winning, that is. Think about it, Number Eight.”
I thought about it. Freeze wanted some more drama for the day. He wasn’t satisfied with the two deaths. He wanted more action. He was a junkie for it. He knew how angry I was about losing the fish, and he wanted to capitalize on that emotion. He wanted to catch it on camera. Another scene for his depraved film. I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, but I wanted my fish back. And I wanted that cigarette lighter. And the flashlight. Having the lighter and the flashlight would improve my chances of survival. Still, I would have to go up against Number One and Number Three. Two of them against one of me. I would have to go up against them on their own turf, in the dark. I didn’t stand a chance in hell. It was a suicide mission, like I’d said before.
“All right,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
Half an hour later, someone knocked. I got up off my cot and answered the door. It was a man wearing blue coveralls and a red ball cap. He looked very young. He looked like he should have been bagging groceries somewhere.
“I brought you this,” he said.
He handed me a black metal flashlight. I switched it on. It worked.
“What about the butane lighter?” I said.
“This is all I have.”
“All right. Thanks.”
He turned and disappeared into the darkness. I shut the door and sat back down on the cot. Freeze had told me to wait for instructions. I waited. I got up and washed my boots off in the sink and cleaned the scratches on my hands with peroxide. I waited some more. I was lying on the bed and was about to doze off when Freeze’s voice came over the G-29.
“I want you to leave your house and walk northeast,” he said.
“What about the lighter?” I said. “Some kid brought me a flashlight, but no lighter. That was part of the deal.”
“You’ll get it after. Leave your house and walk northeast. Now, please.”
I got up and walked outside. Switched the flashlight on, looked at my compass, headed northeast.
The sky was overcast. No moon, no stars. I turned the flashlight off for a second, just to see how dark it was without it. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. It would have been impossible to navigate without a light source. I didn’t know how far I was going to have to go, but I hoped the batteries would last. If the batteries died, I would be stuck in the swamp until morning.
I looked at my compass again and continued northeast. I continued at a steady pace for twenty minutes or so.
“How much farther?” I said.
No response.
The rules stated that play usually began at sunrise and ended at sunset. Usually. But it was becoming increasingly obvious that Freeze modified the rules ad lib as the game progressed. The rules were whatever struck his fancy at the moment. Right now play was supposedly suspended for the night. But here I was on my way to another player’s house. Number One’s or Number Three’s. Wherever they’d taken the fish. I had to expect play to resume at some point.
Number One and Number Three wouldn’t be expecting me. I had the element of surprise on my side. Unless Freeze had told them I was on the way. That was a possibility. Maybe the whole thing was a setup. Maybe Number One and Number Three would be lying in wait and the alarm would sound and play would resume and Number Three would zap me with that stun baton and that would be it. Freeze had made it sound like he was on my side, like he wanted me to get the fish back. But maybe he had led Number One and Number Three to me in the first place. Maybe that whole scene at the pond had been orchestrated as well. Now I wished I hadn’t agreed to going out. I wished I’d stayed in my house where it was safe. I’d allowed pride to get the best of me. I wasn’t even very hungry anymore. The hunger pains had subsided. They’d faded to a dull ache just below my left rib cage.
This whole thing was pointless. I’d been seduced by the carrot Freeze had dangled, by the flashlight and butane lighter. And I’d been seduced by my own past. I was chasing the ghosts of Calvin and Kenny. That’s what was really going on here, and it was stupid.
“I’ve changed my mind,” I said. “You hear me, Freeze? I’ve decided not to do this. Fuck that fish. I’ll catch another one tomorrow.”
I looked at my compass, turned, and headed back in the direction of my house.
“Not so fast,” Freeze said. “We made a deal, and you have to keep your end of it. You can’t just bail on a whim. We have a contract. There’s no turning back now.”
“You said it was up to me.”
“Originally it was. You could have said no, and that would have been that. You could have turned your light off and gone to sleep and waited for play to resume in the morning. You could have done that, but you said yes to my proposal. Now you’re going to stick to it.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Are you forgetting about the defibrillator wired to your heart? I could snap my fingers and have you executed in a nanosecond.”
“But you won’t,” I said. “It’s day one, and you’re already down to six players. You need me to stick around for at least another day or two. You need me for the game.”
I continued walking toward my house. I was testing him, trying to see exactly how much I could get away with.
“So you’re calling my bluff?” Freeze said.
“Yeah. I’m calling your bluff. Go ahead and kill me if you want to. I’m going home.”
There was a brief pause, and then Freeze said, “You’re right, Number Eight. I was bluffing. I do need you around for a bit longer. But guess what? I can give you things, like the flashlight and the lighter, but I can also take things away. How would you like it if I shut the water off in your house? I think I’ll start with that. Then, if you fail to cooperate again, I’ll take one of your weapons away. Then—”
“I get the point,” I said. “All right. You win.”
Of course he won. He always won.
Freeze was not only an action junkie, he also had some sort of god complex. He enjoyed having total control over people. You could feel it in the way he spoke, in his attitude. He was a billionaire. He had everything money could buy, but it wasn’t enough for him to own things. He had to own people. He was like a third-world dictator to the nth degree. Freeze giveth, and Freeze taketh away. With the Snuff Tag 9 game, it was like he was buying his way to the status of deity. The players basically had no choice but to obey. If we didn’t obey, he would make us suffer. Or he would make our loved ones suffer. Any resistance was an exercise in futility. In this massive theater of depravity he’d created, Freeze was omnipotent. He was in total control.
I looked at the compass again and turned back northeast.
�
��Glad you decided to see it my way,” he said. “I want you to turn due east now. You’re almost there.”
I did as instructed and turned due east. I cupped my left hand over the flashlight to muffle its brightness. Freeze said I was almost there. I didn’t want Number One and Number Three to see me coming. Unshielded, the flashlight would have been like a beacon. I cupped my left hand over it and saw the hardware holding my bones together. Six surgeries in two years. Six surgeries, and the range of motion in my hand still wasn’t anywhere near what it was before a piece of shit hillbilly dishwasher in Tennessee named Lester stomped it with the heel of his boot. I could grip things all right, but I couldn’t flatten my palm out all the way. And trying to press a guitar string against a fret sent white-hot jolts of pain from my fingertips to my jawbone. Lester had made sure my hand was never going to work right again. Lester was six feet under now, but in a way he’d beaten me. He’d robbed me of ever playing music again. I thought about Lester sometimes, and every time I did I hoped the son of a bitch was rotting in hell.
Through the trees I saw a faint glimmer of light ahead. As I got closer, I could see that the glow was coming from the window of a house identical to mine. I switched off the flashlight and crept to within a hundred feet of the place. Number One and Number Three were outside. I could see their silhouettes in front of the shack. They were on their knees beside a pile of twigs. One of them appeared to be feverishly twirling a stick against something on the ground.
“I thought you said you knew how to do this,” Number One said. “I’m about to eat that damn catfish raw.”
“Fuck you. I’m not eating a raw fish. I’ll throw it in the woods for the raccoons before that happens.” He paused. “This shit worked when I was a Boy Scout, so I don’t know what the fuck is up. Maybe it’s the wrong kind of wood, or it’s not dry enough or something. You want to give it a try?”
Number Three offered the stick to Number One.
“I have a better idea,” Number One said. “Let’s use your stun gun.”
“Huh?”
“Sure, man. Aim it at the pile of sticks and let’er rip. The spark from the electrical discharge should get the fire going.”
“I don’t know. That’s one shot. Then it’ll take at least three hours to charge back up. That’s three hours I’ll be without my weapon. And it might not even work.”
“Play’s suspended for the day anyway. You don’t need your weapon right now. I’m telling you, it’s our best chance at starting a fire.”
“I don’t know. I’d feel better about trying it if we had some sort of accelerant. A pill bottle full of gasoline or something.”
Number One stood up. “Hell yeah!” he said. “You just gave me another idea. A great idea. My brother’s a cop, so I know a little about pepper spray. That shit’s alcohol based, man. Flammable as hell. I’ll just tear a little piece from the sheet on my bed and you can douse it with pepper spray and tuck it under the kindling and zap it with the stun gun. That should get some flames going for sure.”
“You want me to use both my weapons?” Number Three said.
“You don’t have to use all the pepper spray. One squirt should do the trick. Then you can just charge the stun baton while we sleep and it’ll be a hundred percent ready for tomorrow. So really you’re not losing anything except a little Mace, and we’ll be able to eat a nice hot supper. Trust me. This is going to work.”
Number Three stood. He threw the stick he’d been twirling onto the pile of kindling on the ground and said, “All right. Let’s give it a try.”
Number One walked into the house and came back out holding a white piece of fabric, a corner torn from one of his bedsheets. I wondered if his idea would work. It sounded feasible in theory. I stood there quietly and watched.
Number One tucked the piece of fabric under some of the kindling on the ground. “Now shoot it with some of that pepper spray,” he said.
Number Three pulled the canister from one of the flap pockets on his pants. He backed up several feet, aimed, and shot. The sparkling liquid ejected in a steady stream.
Number Three squirted the fabric for a second or two and then returned the canister to his pocket.
“You think that’s enough?” he said.
“Should be,” Number One said. “Go ahead and hit it with the stun gun and see what happens.”
Number Three pulled the stun baton from his waistband. “I’ve never used one of these things before.”
“My brother had to get zapped by one as part of his training at the police academy. Said it hurts like a bitch. Said there’s no way a guy’s going to take a shot from that and get up and run away. Even works on those crazy motherfuckers jacked up on crystal meth and shit.”
“All right. Here goes nothing.”
Number Three leaned over and shot the piece of bedsheet with the stun baton. A blue bolt of electrical current arced from the tip, and a bright orange flame danced up from the fabric immediately. Number One and Number Three quickly started scooting the pile of twigs over the flame and then tossed some larger branches over the kindling from a stack off to the side. A few seconds later the wood started crackling and a white plume of smoke rose skyward.
“Success!” Number One shouted. He danced a little celebratory jig.
“I have to hand it to you,” Number Three said. “It was a good idea. Worked like a charm. I’m just going to go in and put this thing on the charger.”
“All right. I’ll get supper going.”
They both walked into the house. While they were inside, I took the opportunity to move a little closer. I got to within fifty feet of the house before they came back outside. Number One was holding a stainless steel skillet identical to the one at my place, and Number Three was holding a roll of toilet paper.
Apparently Number Three needed to take a shit.
“I’ll be right back,” he said.
“All right.”
Number One walked to the fire and held the skillet over it. Neither of them had a knife, so I wondered how they had cleaned the catfish. Then I saw it in the pan. The head was still on it, and so was the tail, but the belly had been split open and butterflied. I reckoned one of them had slit it with a sharp rock or something and had scooped its guts out by hand. That’s what I would have done, if I hadn’t had a knife.
The catfish sizzled in its own juices, and in a couple of minutes the air was filled with its aroma. It smelled heavenly. I could have eaten the entire thing by myself with no problem. But I didn’t really care that much about the fish anymore. I wanted something else. I wanted the stun baton. It was in the house on the charger, unguarded at the moment. The rules stated you couldn’t take a weapon from a dead player. When a player dies, his weapons die with him. But the rules didn’t say anything about taking a weapon from a living player. The rules didn’t say anything about it, and I didn’t feel compelled to follow a rule that wasn’t there.
I wanted that stun baton.
Play was still suspended, so I couldn’t charge in and fight my way inside the house. I didn’t want to do that anyway. Even if play were to resume, and even if the alarm sounded to allow knives and nunchucks and bullwhips and nightsticks and chains and pepper spray and stun guns and slingshots and brass knuckles and fifty-caliber blowguns with three darts, the odds were against me. Even with Number Three’s best weapon temporarily out of commission. I couldn’t fight my way in. I needed to do it the stealthy way. I needed to sneak in and take the stun baton and escape unnoticed.
Number Three returned from his trip to the woods. He took the toilet paper inside, clomped back off the porch, and stood beside Number One. He peered into the skillet.
“You think it’s done?” he said.
“I don’t know,” Number One said. “I ain’t no Emeril Lagasse.”
He pronounced Emeril’s last name La-gassy.
“It smells done,” Number Three said. “Let’s eat.”
“All right. You want to take it inside?”
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br /> “Kind of stuffy in there. I say we sit outside on the deck.”
“All right.”
Number One carried the steaming skillet to the porch. Number Three followed. They sat across from each other Indian-style with the skillet between them. They let the fish cool for a few minutes and then started pinching off pieces of the white flesh with their fingers.
“This is good,” Number Three said. “Lots of bones, but it’s good.”
“Yeah. Did you see the look on Number Eight’s face when I snatched it away from him with the bullwhip? Priceless.”
“That was some trick, all right. Where did you learn to use a whip like that?”
Before Number One answered, I switched the flashlight on and off a few times in quick succession, as if trying to signal with it.
Number One rose abruptly. “Did you see that?”
“What?” Number Three said.
“I saw a flash of light out of the corner of my eye. Out there in the woods.”
“I didn’t see anything. Maybe it was one of the cameras or something.”
“Maybe. I’m going to go check it out.”
Number Three continued eating. “Chill out. I’m sure it was nothing. Might have been your imagination playing tricks on you. You said you didn’t get any sleep last night. Sleep deprivation can cause minor hallucinations like that sometimes. I had a patient who—”
“Bullshit. There it is again. Someone’s out there. Someone’s fucking with us.”
Number Three stood. “Yeah. I saw it that time.”
“Who’s out there?” Number One shouted.
I didn’t respond. I picked up a rock and threw it into the woods on the other side of the house.
“What was that?” Number Three said. “It came from over there.”
“Must be more than one of them. Another couple of players must have teamed up. We need to run them off or they’ll be fucking with us all night.” He paused. “How in the hell did they find your house, anyway?”
“How in the hell should I know?”
“Maybe you told someone before you hooked up with me. Maybe you’re in cahoots with them. Maybe they’re going to wait in the woods till morning and then y’all are going to gang up and kill my ass. Well, fuck you. I’m going home, ace. I’m going back to my own house.”
