by Jude Hardin
After my heart stopped racing, I smiled.
I smiled because now I knew.
I knew who he was, the guy in the blue coveralls and red ball cap. The guy I’d seen adjusting one of the cameras when I was squirrel hunting. He knew he had made a mistake, and he ran off when he noticed me. At the time, I tried to think when and where we’d met previously, but I couldn’t remember.
Now I remembered. I finally remembered where I’d seen him before.
You watched me die, he’d said in my dream.
And I had.
I had seen him the night I was abducted, when I was still naked in the wire cage.
Freeze had shown me a video of a guy from a previous game, a guy wearing a number 6 jersey. He was outside, somewhere in the thick brush in the swamp, and it was daytime. He was walking along a row of trees connected by lengths of the red barrier tape that marked the boundaries of the playing field. He looked around, ducked under the tape, and ran into the woods on the other side. He sprinted twenty feet or so, stopped, and gasped and clutched his chest and fell to the ground and died.
That’s what will happen if you try to escape, Freeze had said.
But Freeze was full of shit. The video was a fake. Oh, it was a great acting job. Had me fooled all the way. The guy wearing the red number 6 jersey could have won an Oscar. But I saw him in blue coveralls and a red ball cap weeks later, messing with a camera while I was hunting squirrels. He never really died.
Since the video was fake, maybe some other things were fake too.
When I was watching Number Four and Number Seven battle on the TV monitor, Number Four pulled his stun baton and used it during a period when weapons weren’t allowed. He broke a cardinal rule, and punishment for that was supposed to be immediate termination. Freeze was supposed to push a button and activate the internal defibrillator and cook Number Four’s heart like a piece of toast.
But it didn’t happen.
Did Freeze let the game go on for drama’s sake? Or did he simply not have the power to activate the defibrillators after all? And if he didn’t have the power to activate the defibrillators, why go to all the trouble of having them surgically inserted in the first place?
The chains on the elephants.
After Joe Crawford and I became friends in sixth grade, his parents took us to the circus one Saturday night. They paid my way in and bought me peanuts and cotton candy and an orange soda. It was a hell of a nice thing for them to do. They knew my mother was dead. They knew my stepfather was a drunk and wouldn’t fork over the money for me to go. So they paid my way, and that night at the circus became one of my fondest childhood memories. We got there early, and on our way to the big top we just happened to walk past the stalls where they housed the elephants.
“How do they keep them from running away?” I asked.
Mr. Crawford, Joe’s dad, was a knowledgeable guy. He was like a walking encyclopedia. He seemed to have an answer for any question you asked.
“See the chains on the elephants’ rear legs?” he said.
I nodded. “But the elephants are big and strong, strong enough to break loose from those chains. So why don’t they?”
“They’re big and strong enough now,” Mr. Crawford said, “but they weren’t when they were babies. That’s when the trainers put the chains on their legs. When elephants are babies, they try to break loose but they can’t. Eventually they realize it’s futile. They give up. It’s a psychological thing. They don’t try to break loose from the chains because they think they can’t.”
I had a hunch the subdermal lump under my left collar bone wasn’t really a defibrillator at all. I had a hunch it was just a useless hunk of metal, a dummy. It kept us under Freeze’s thumb because we thought it could instantly kill us. It was a psychological thing, just like the chains on the elephants.
The more I thought about it, the more I was convinced. A remotely controlled killing device, like the defibrillator was supposed to be, didn’t really even make much sense. With cell phones and satellite televisions and global positioning systems bouncing frequencies all over the planet twenty-four/seven, it seemed like stray signals might accidentally set such a device off. Whoops! There goes another player. Freeze couldn’t afford to let that happen. He needed the players to die in battle, not accidentally. He needed them to feed his sadistic cravings, his addiction to drama and blood and pain.
My heart wasn’t going to be zapped if I tried to escape or if someone surgically removed the device. The defibrillator was a fake, just like the video I’d watched that first night at Freeze’s house. That was my hunch. That was my theory, but I needed to test it somehow. If I crossed the boundary and my hypothesis was wrong, I wouldn’t get a second chance. My heart would go into ventricular fibrillation and I would collapse and die.
I needed to verify my hunch, but I didn’t want to die doing it. I needed a guinea pig. I needed to test my theory on another player, and the only player it made any sense to try to test it on was Number Three. I knew where he lived, and I knew he didn’t have any weapons.
I knew where Number Three’s house was, but it was going to be a problem navigating the woods and finding it at night.
I walked outside. It was overcast. No moon, no stars. Darker than dark. The only thing I could see were the embers glowing red from my fire pit. I thought about trying to make some kind of torch, but then I realized I needed to work under the cloak of darkness anyway. I needed to be invisible to the cameras between my house and Number Three’s. If I was found roaming around at night, it wouldn’t matter if the defibrillator was a fake or not. They would hunt me down and execute me.
I went inside and stuffed some things in my backpack. I looked at my watch. It was almost midnight. Six hours or so before sunrise. Six hours to do everything I needed to do, and I needed to do a lot of things. There was no time to waste, no time to formulate any sort of detailed plan. I would have to improvise as I went, play it ad lib.
Just the way I liked it.
I knew the general direction to Number Three’s house, but I figured I would need to consult my compass at least a couple of times along the way. My only light source was the butane cigarette lighter, and according to Freeze, I only had enough fuel left for six more three-second ignitions.
But maybe I wouldn’t need an actual flame.
I switched the lamp off, held the compass in my left hand and the lighter in my right. I flicked the flint wheel with my thumb, but I didn’t depress the little gas pedal that opened the fuel valve. My idea worked. There was a spark, but no fire, and the spark provided enough light for me to see the compass for a brief second. Success.
I grabbed my backpack and headed out. I had my nunchucks in one pocket and the stun baton in another and my knife in its sheath. I carried the spear I’d made for squirrel hunting, using it the way a blind person uses a cane. It kept me from tripping over vines and from running into trees, and I figured it might come in handy as an extra weapon.
I crept through the woods as quietly as possible, knowing the cameras picked up audio as well as video. I probably wasn’t making any more noise than a fox or a possum or a raccoon. Freeze, or whoever was keeping watch overnight, thought I was home in bed, and that’s what they needed to keep thinking. Getting caught would mean certain death. An hour earlier I would have welcomed it, but not now. Now I had hope. I wanted to live, and I wanted Juliet to live, and I was going to do everything in my power to see that we did.
I flicked the flint wheel and looked at the compass and adjusted my course. If my calculations were correct, Number Three’s house was only about a quarter mile from my current position. I walked on, hoping I didn’t step in a hole and break a leg or run into a tree branch and poke out an eyeball.
Suddenly the woods ran out, and I knew I was in the clearing of Number Three’s house. I got on my hands and knees and crawled through the dry grass. I couldn’t actually see the shack, but I knew its approximate position from memory. I stayed low. I didn’t
want to be an easy target if a light came on.
I crawled until I felt the wooden planks on the porch. I was exhausted. Sweat was dripping from every pore. I took a few minutes to catch my breath and try to devise a plan of attack. I figured Number Three was asleep in bed. All was dark and quiet. You could have heard a mouse fart. I remembered the electrocution device he had constructed from his bed frame and lamp cord, so I didn’t think it would be prudent to bust in through the front door. The device might be standing guard, and if so that would be it for me. Curtains. Crispy critters. The window was the only other way in, but you can’t just dive through glass like they do in the movies. If you dive through glass like they do in the movies, you get cut to ribbons and bleed to death.
I could have broken the window with the butt of my knife and cleared the glass enough to crawl through safely, but that would have been noisy and it would have taken too much time. I didn’t want to alert the cameras. That was one thing. And by the time I got in, Number Three would be awake and aware of my presence and ready to defend himself. He didn’t have any weapons, unless he had some homemade ones, so I probably could have taken him out easily enough. But I didn’t want to take him out. I needed him alive to test my theory.
Rather than me go in, I needed him to come out.
I thought about setting the place on fire. That would have rousted him out sure enough, but it also would have lit the entire area like a football stadium. If I started a fire, I would be visible to the cameras and Freeze would send someone to punch my ticket. A fire was out of the question.
I flicked the butane lighter and looked at my watch with the spark. 12:47. I needed to hurry. If I didn’t take care of everything before daylight, I was going to die. And if I died, Juliet would die. She would have to battle Number Three or Number Six or Number Seven, and she would be no match for any of them. Juliet was five two and weighed a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet. She was feisty and had taken some kung fu training from a Chinese master in the Philippines, but she was still no match for any of those guys. Any one of them would break her like a twig. And Freeze knew it. He’d put her in the game for no other reason than to fuck with my head. So I needed to hurry.
I needed to get Number Three out of the house without torching the place and without making much noise, and I needed to do it quickly. A roaring fire was out of the question, but maybe a little smoke would do the trick. Maybe I could fill Number Three’s shack with some thick smoke, and he would come out coughing and still half asleep. Then I could jump him and subdue him and do what I needed to do. It was worth a try.
I set my spear to the side and stuffed several handfuls of scrub grass into a pocket and scooted across the porch to the door. Freeze referred to these structures as houses, but they were built more like lawnmower sheds. Unlike the tight seal of a properly constructed home, there was a tiny gap between the threshold and the bottom of the door. When I thought about it, it was really the only ventilation in these places with the windows closed. That’s probably why the builders had left the space. To allow air in and out. I crammed some of the dry grass into the gap and used one of my last six lighter ignitions to get it going. I lit one end and then stoked it by gently blowing on it. It seemed to be working. The grass started burning like tobacco in a pipe, glowing red but with no flame, and most of the smoke was being drawn into the cabin.
I was patting myself on the back, feeling pretty much like a genius, until someone from behind said, “Looking for something?”
It was Number Three. I recognized the voice. He scared the piss out of me. I literally wet my pants a little bit. A hot jolt of adrenaline flooded my nervous system and I rose and dived toward where the voice had come from and we collided with a thud and went rolling off the porch into the grass. Number Three was six five and weighed two ten. I didn’t want to get into a wrestling match with him. He was way bigger than me, and I knew if he pinned me down I wouldn’t stand a chance. But he didn’t pin me down. The impact must have knocked the wind out of him. We rolled into the grass, and I managed to end up on top and I slammed the butt of my hand into his face hoping to break his nose. I missed. I missed completely, and I felt the edges of his front teeth dig into the skin of my palm. They sliced into the fleshy area up toward my thumb. It was going to hurt like a bitch later, but at the moment I didn’t feel much of anything. Before he could shout from the pain of his incisors caving in, I covered his bloody mouth with one hand and drew my knife with the other.
I pressed the razor-sharp blade across his throat and whispered into his ear: “If you make a sound, I’m going to cut your fucking head off. Understand?”
He nodded.
“If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead right now,” I said. “I’m going to have to tie you up, but I’m going to let you live as long as you keep quiet. As long as you’re quiet and don’t try to resist, you get to keep breathing. OK?”
He nodded again.
I took my hand away from his mouth. “Take your shirt off,” I said.
He sat up and peeled off the red jersey, and I used the knife to cut it into strips. I stuffed a piece into his mouth and tied a gag to secure it tightly and used the rest of the material to tie his wrists and ankles. I hoped the bonds would bear some thrashing. I hoped they would hold, because what I planned to do next wasn’t going to be very pleasant for old Number Three. Not very pleasant at all.
I flicked my Bic and briefly ran the sharp edge of the knife along the flame.
Dr. Colt to the operating room, stat.
Dr. Colt to the operating room...
I almost started laughing. I was giddy from exhaustion and nervous as hell. I almost started laughing, but I managed to hold it together. It was certainly no laughing matter. I was about to slice into another human being. I was about to perform what amounted to an unnecessary surgical procedure, and I was doing it with no medical training and no anesthesia. Funny as a crutch, as Joe Crawford and I used to say back in sixth grade.
I walked my fingers across the top of Number Three’s chest and felt for the defibrillator. I found the lump under his left collarbone. Same place as mine. It was as dark as the bottom of the ocean out there, so I had to do everything by feel. I found the lump and doused the entire area with some of the peroxide I’d brought from the first-aid kit and then poured some on my hands. I wanted to reduce the risk of infection, but I knew what I was doing wasn’t really enough. I needed some Betadine and a sterile scalpel and sterile gloves. But it probably didn’t matter anyway. Number Three was probably going to bleed to death or die of shock or blow an aneurysm from the stress and pain I was about to inflict on him. And if my hunch was wrong, he was going to die from the defibrillator automatically discharging into his heart. He probably wasn’t going to live long enough to get an infection.
He was moaning and shaking his head and trying to say something. He’d felt me palpating for the lump, and he’d felt the cold hydrogen peroxide being splashed on his chest. He couldn’t see me, but he knew something was up. He was a doctor. A real one. He’d probably figured out what I was planning to do, and he’d probably figured out the reason. He was being used for a lab rat, and he knew it. He started thrashing and bucking and trying to make some noise, but the nylon strips from his shirt held tight and I straddled him and pressed my hand on his throat to keep his head still as I made a vertical incision along the top of the lump. Soon the metallic scent of fresh blood trumped the odor coming from his body. I fingered the warm and sticky wound and felt the metal disk implant. I felt for wires. The internal defibrillator on the Mexican information video had wires. I felt all around the disk and underneath it, but there weren’t any. I yanked it out, felt again to make sure, and then whizzed it into the blackness.
Number Three was still panting and moaning, which meant he was still breathing. He was still alive. My theory had panned out. The defibrillator was nothing but a bluff. A dummy. It was the chains on the elephants, just as The Potato Man had proclaimed in my dreams. Now I could go
outside the game’s boundaries and not have to worry about my heart getting zapped. One less thing to stress over.
Number Three was obviously in excruciating pain, but the nylon cloth I’d stuffed into his mouth muted his screams. I poured some more of the peroxide on the open wound and dressed it with gauze and tape. It needed stitches, but a needle and thread hadn’t been included in the first-aid kit. I planned to add that to my list of complaints. Not that a needle and thread would have done me or him much good. It was too dark to try to use them anyway.
At that moment, I’m sure Number Three would have killed me given the chance. What he probably didn’t realize at that moment, though, was that I had done him a great favor. If things went my way, both of us would be out of this nightmare by daylight. If things went my way, Number Three would soon be thanking me for saving his life.
I leaned over and whispered into his ear again. “I have to go,” I said. “But you’re going to be all right. I took the defibrillator out of your chest. It was inert, just a metal disk with no wires or anything attached. Harmless. It was a bluff to keep us in line. That’s all the fuck it was. You’re going to be all right. I put a lot of gauze on your incision and I put pressure on it with tape, so you shouldn’t lose much blood. I’m going to leave you here, and with a little luck the next faces you’ll see will be a team of paramedics loading you into an ambulance.”
I used the rest of the peroxide to wash the blood off my hands. I flicked the lighter and looked at my compass and headed toward the woods at a trot.
I’d been blindfolded that first day we got off the bus, when Wade had led me into the swamp with my hand on his shoulder, but it had been morning and we were in and out of the shade and I’d intermittently felt the warmth of the sun on my back the whole way. So I knew the road we’d traveled in on was east of my house, which made it southeast of Number Three’s house. I knew I needed to go southeast, and I guessed it was at least a mile through the woods to the road, maybe a little more.
