by Jude Hardin
“Everybody has a cell phone. Tell me where the fuck it is.”
“It’s on the dresser, man. But it won’t do you any good. There’s no signal out here.”
I felt around on the dresser, picked up the phone, and turned it on. He was telling the truth. There was no signal, not one bar.
“How do I get to the mansion?” I said.
“Who are you?”
I pulled my knife and raised it like a hatchet and came down hard on his right leg just above the foot. I felt the blade sink into his shinbone. I had to yank on it pretty hard to dislodge it. He screamed and let go of the pillow and held his knee to his chest with his hands wrapped around the wound.
“You think I’m fucking playing?” I said. “Tell me what I want to know, or I’m going to start chopping shit off.”
“I can’t tell you that. I can’t. I just can’t. Oh god. You cut me, motherfucker. You cut me really bad.”
He was whining like a kid who’d scraped his knee. Boo fucking hoo. I put the knife away and pulled out the butane lighter.
“You know what this is?” I said. “Maybe you can’t see it. It’s kind of dark in here, and maybe your vision is a little blurred from the tears and the gasoline fumes. Maybe you can’t see what I’m holding, so allow me to describe it for you. It’s red and shiny and about three inches long. No, it’s not your dick. But hey, it rhymes with dick. It’s a Bic! That’s right. A disposable cigarette lighter. I think they’ve been around since sometime in the early seventies. I’m sure you’ve seen one before. There’s a plastic oval-shaped fuel reservoir and a flint wheel and a little lever you hold down with your thumb when you want the spark to ignite the butane. It makes a nice one-inch flame, blue at the bottom and orange at the top.”
I was being dramatic as hell, enjoying watching him squirm.
“You won’t light that,” he said. “If you light that, this whole fucking house will go up in flames. It’ll go up like the goddamn Hindenburg. If you light that lighter, you’ll burn right along with me.”
I flicked the flint wheel with my thumb. We didn’t blow up. The fumes must not have been as heavy as they seemed. He saw the spark and cowered back against the headboard.
“You must have me confused with someone who’s afraid to die,” I said. “I’m going to ask you one more time. How do I get to Freeze’s house? Tell me now, or the next time I flick my Bic we both get roasted like marshmallows.”
I held the lighter to the gasoline-soaked sheets while he thought it over.
Juliet took the elevator with Wade to the first floor, put her hand on his shoulder, and followed him outside. It was warm, but it didn’t feel as though the sun had risen yet. They walked forty-three steps to a vehicle with the engine running.
“This is the transport van,” Wade said. “I’m going to guide you into the backseat. Don’t worry, I’ll be riding with you all the way to the game site.”
“OK,” Juliet said.
Wade guided her into the backseat, sat beside her, slid the door shut.
“Good morning, Jon,” Wade said.
“Morning,” the driver said.
Juliet felt the transmission shift into gear. The van lurched forward. She kept hoping that this was all part of some bizarre nightmare, that she would wake up in her bed at home and smell Nicholas’s bad coffee brewing.
Nicholas.
She wondered if he was even still alive. She hoped that he was. She wanted to tell him that all was forgiven, that he could come home now and they could be a family again. She’d longed for his touch for so long. She’d deprived herself of the best love she’d ever known, all because of pride. She’d blamed it on the tradition of her family’s culture, but it really boiled down to the useless emotions of pride and jealousy. How she wished she could have those months back, all those months she’d spent alone crying in her pillow at night. How she wished it was all just a bad dream.
But it wasn’t a dream. This was really happening. She was riding in a van to an undisclosed location where she would play a game of kill or be killed.
Snuff Tag 9.
Wasn’t that originally some sort of video game? She thought she remembered seeing it behind one of the glass cases at Walmart one time when she and Brittney were browsing the electronics department. Yes, she was sure of it. It was a game for PlayStation or Xbox or one of those systems the kids liked, and apparently this monster who called himself Freeze had become obsessed with it and had turned it into a contest among real live people. Insane. There was no other word for it. Snuff Tag 9 was utterly insane.
They rode in silence for a while, and then Wade quizzed her on some of the rules.
“What happens if you’re caught using a weapon during a period when they’ve been prohibited?” he said.
“Immediate termination,” Juliet said. “No warning.”
Being a registered nurse, Juliet knew a little about automatic internal defibrillators. Cardiologists implanted them in patients with histories of deadly abhorrent heart rhythms, specifically ventricular fibrillation. The electronic device would detect the abnormality and then correct it with a mild shock to the cardiac muscle. That was how it was supposed to work. But the one that had been sewn into Juliet’s chest was not a lifesaving device. Just the opposite. It was there to make her heart abruptly stop beating if she didn’t do what she was told to do.
She had to hand it to Freeze. It was actually a very clever way to force compliance. Nobody wanted to die, which made it practically failsafe. The only way to escape the game was through certain death.
Not that it mattered much. She was going to die soon anyway. Freeze had shown her pictures of the players still in the game and had told her their backgrounds. They were all men, all intelligent and athletic. She would fight. She would give it her all, but she doubted she stood a chance.
Freeze had refused to give her any information about Nicholas. When she had asked, all he would say was something about not spoiling the surprise. Juliet hoped with all her heart Nicholas was still alive and that he would somehow come to her rescue. And if he could not, she prayed that he would be the one to win the game.
I flicked the flint wheel again. We didn’t blow up again.
We didn’t blow up, but the unmistakable tang of urine somehow cut through the gasoline vapors and briefly assaulted my olfactory nerve. Leather Pants had pissed himself.
“All right,” he whimpered. “You win, man. Please, I don’t want to burn. I don’t want to die. Please don’t strike that fucking lighter again. I’ll tell you whatever you want.”
He started bawling.
“Talk to me, douche bag,” I said.
He told me, in great detail, how to get to Freeze’s estate. It wasn’t far. If I hurried, I could still make it there before daybreak.
I pulled my knife from its sheath and came down hard on his left leg, same as I’d done to his right. He screamed, but I wasn’t listening. I was numb to it. He was totally crippled now. He was helpless, crying and screaming and pleading for mercy. I heard it, but none of it registered as coming from a human being. It was coming from a demon, and I was going to send its worthless ass back to hell where it belonged.
I walked out of the bedroom and drizzled the remaining gasoline on the carpet as I backed down the hallway. I flicked the lighter, depressing the little pedal that opened the fuel valve this time, but nothing happened. No flame. I tried again. Nothing. I stood there flicking and cursing, but the damn thing wouldn’t light. Freeze must have been wrong about how much fuel there was, or maybe I’d used too much sterilizing the knife for Number Three’s surgery.
I tossed the lighter aside and trotted into the kitchen. Switched the flashlight on and set it against the backsplash on the countertop. I didn’t want a lot of light, worried it might activate my cam-collar. I opened a bunch of drawers and cabinets and flung a bunch of pots and pans and cooking utensils and Tupperware and canned goods out to the floor. Finally I found what I was looking for in the drawer by the t
oaster: Diamond brand strike-on-box large kitchen matches. Two hundred fifty count.
All I needed was one.
I went back to the edge of the hallway. Struck a match against the side of the box. It flared and lit the dark and narrow path orange, tinting the air with the acrid scent of sulfur. Leather Pants had rolled out of bed and was crawling toward me on his elbows. Coughing, wheezing, drooling. He looked up at me. Looked me straight in the eye. Pleading. I tossed the match on the floor, and a trail of blue fire sped toward him, and in less than a second he was engulfed in a roaring inferno. He shrieked in agony. I watched him roll around and try to put himself out, but it was no use. His skin and nightclothes were saturated with gasoline. It would have taken a fire hose to extinguish him. His face bubbled and then blackened and then melted away like candle wax.
In a final tortured spasm, his upper body rose at an impossible angle. Like a cobra being charmed out of a basket. His mouth opened in a silent scream, and his eyeballs exploded and splattered the wall with viscous bloody goo. He fell facedown and sizzled like bacon in a skillet.
The flames quickly climbed the doorjamb to the master bedroom and then got sucked in by the gasoline vapors. There was a bright orange flash and the sound of glass shattering, and I knew I needed to get out fast. If I didn’t get out fast, I was going to be crispy dead just like old Leather Pants.
Before I reached the front door, a pair of smoke alarms started wailing in unison. I hoped there weren’t any cameras in the area that might pick up the squeal before I had time to get away. I didn’t think so. The house was at least half a mile from the perimeter of the playing field. It was at least half a mile from the field, but Leather Pants had been correct in his assessment. The whole place was going to go up like the goddamn Hindenburg. It wouldn’t take long for someone to notice the flames and the smoke.
And that’s what I was counting on.
I darted outside, fumbled with the keys, finally found the right one. I opened the padlock, yanked the cable loose and tossed it aside, climbed onto the bicycle, and started pedaling like my ass was on fire. Which it would have been if I hadn’t gotten out of there when I did. When I got to the gate, I dismounted and found the key to open that lock, walked the bike to the other side, closed the gate and secured it, and climbed back on and rode away.
I followed the rutted path to the road. I figured it was about a ten-minute ride to Freeze’s mansion if I pedaled fast.
I pedaled fast.
The faintest hint of orange had started to peek over the horizon. It didn’t matter now. I was going to make it. I would be on the lot of the big house before anyone knew what was happening. I would be there before they found out I’d left my cabin, before they knew I had discovered the defibrillators were fake, before they were privy to the fact I had escaped the perimeter of the playing field. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I got there, but I was going to make it. Somehow I was going to get them before they got me. I only hoped I could bring them down before they forced Juliet into the game.
“Good morning, Number Eight.”
Fuck. It was Freeze’s voice on the G-29.
“Good morning,” I said, trying not to betray the fact I was huffing down the road on a ten-speed mountain bike. I was on a slight downward incline, so I stopped pedaling and coasted awhile.
“Why are you breathing so hard?” Freeze said.
“I just woke up from a bad dream. I seem to be having a lot of those lately.”
“So sorry to hear that. Anyway, I wanted to give you an idea of what’s in store for you today. It’s going to be busy, so I want you to go ahead and get up now and get ready.”
I gently braked the bike to a stop. I didn’t want him to catch wind of the tires humming on the pavement.
“I’m listening,” I said.
“There will be three battles today. The first two will be you against Number Six, and Number Seven against Number Three. Number Seven should win easily, and since you have a stun baton now I’m predicting you will win against Number Six. If that’s the way it happens, you’ll be facing Number Seven in the third battle of the day. Whoever wins that one will face Number Nine tomorrow.”
Trying to hide my relief that Juliet wasn’t going to have to play today, I said, “Number Nine is my wife, Freeze. Even if I win both matches today, do you really think I’m going to kill her tomorrow?”
“You will battle her as you would any other player. If you refuse, I’ll make you watch her die a very slow and painful death. If you commit suicide, which I’m sure has crossed your mind, your wife will still die a very slow and painful death. And your daughter will join her.”
Nobody’s going to die a slow and painful death but you, motherfucker, I thought.
Silence for a few seconds.
“I guess I’ll do what I have to do,” I said.
“That’s what I wanted to hear. Now—”
In the background I heard someone say, “Freeze! There’s smoke coming from section seven. A lot of it. Looks like the house over there might be on fire.”
“What the fuck?” Freeze said.
I heard some shoes clomping on hardwood and some other general commotion, and then the G-29 went dead. I started pedaling again, rode about half a mile, and veered off onto a hilly dirt path that snaked through the woods. The mountain bike was at home on the terrain, but my legs weren’t. The tops of my thighs felt like they were on fire. I didn’t have much off-road experience, and I couldn’t find the right gears to make the ride tolerable. I finally had to stop and climb off and abandon the bike.
The sun had risen completely, and there was plenty of light now to see by. There was also plenty of light to activate the cam-collar, and I heard it come to life with its telltale electronic microbeep. Fuck it. I pulled my knife from its sheath and worked it under the collar and sliced through the plastic housing and the wiring and tossed the whole ruined shebang into the woods. Maybe an alarm would sound. Maybe they would know I’d taken the collar off, but at least they wouldn’t be able to look at the monitor and see my exact location. If indeed anyone was even watching the monitors or listening for alarms. I was hoping every available hand was rushing to section seven to put out the fire I’d started. The amount of smoke it was producing would draw the kind of attention Freeze definitely didn’t want, so I was counting on most of his staff leaving the big house and tending to the blaze before it spread and got totally out of hand.
Sweat trickled down my neck and stung the sore spots where the collar had been. I kept walking and walking. I thought I should have been there by now, and it suddenly occurred to me that Leather Pants could have purposely given me bad directions. What did he have to lose, after all? Surely he didn’t think I was actually going to let him live. He could have given me directions that led to a trap or to nowhere at all. I thought about turning back and getting the bicycle and riding the thirteen miles or whatever it was to the interstate. Now that I knew Juliet was off the hook for the day, and now that the fire was providing a distraction for a good portion of Freeze’s staff, I thought I might have time to do that. Then again, all the cameras were active now, and it would only take one person to realize I wasn’t wearing the collar anymore. Once they realized that, they would discover I was out of my house and they would start looking for me. And they might do something to Juliet in retaliation.
I walked on slowly, trying to decide whether or not to go back for the bike and try for the interstate.
Then I climbed a small hill and saw Freeze’s house in the distance. That vile and ruthless son of a bitch Leather Pants had come through for me after all.
I was about to start toward the house when a pair of hands grabbed me from behind and threw me to the ground.
Juliet felt the van slow down. It made a series of turns and then hissed to a stop.
“We’re here,” Wade said. “I want you to put your hand on my shoulder, same as you did when we left your room. I’m going to lead you to your house, where you’ll
be staying for the duration of the game.”
“OK,” Juliet said.
They disembarked and she kept her hand on Wade’s shoulder. They started out on pavement, moved to what felt like a trail lined with pine needles, and finally walked into some fairly heavy underbrush. They trudged through the thickets and thistles at a lazy pace for maybe ten minutes. In and out of the shadows. Juliet figured they traveled half a mile or so east of the beaten path. She knew it was east because the sun was directly in front of them.
“You can take your blindfold off now,” Wade said.
Juliet took her blindfold off, saw a tiny wood-frame structure with a brass 9 tacked to the porch.
Wade showed her around, told her best of luck. They shook hands, and she stood on the porch and watched him cross the clearing and disappear into the woods.
She went back into the house, tossed her backpack on the floor, sat on the cot, and waited. A few minutes later the audio on the G-29 earpiece buzzed to life and a voice said, “Hello, Number Nine.”
“Hello,” Juliet said. “Who’s this?”
“You can call me Ray. There’s been a change of plans. You’re going to have to battle another player today after all.”
Juliet’s heart skipped a beat. “But why?”
“Because Freeze said so.”
“But I don’t want to. I’m not ready.”
“Sorry, but that’s the way it is. There are two boxes under your cot. I want you to pull out the one on your left.”
“OK.”
This was all happening too fast, but what could she do? If she disobeyed, they would fry her heart with the internal defibrillator.
Juliet did what she had to do. She knelt down and reached under the cot.
I’d been captured. There were two of them. One of them had a shotgun. They frisked me and took my weapons and handcuffed me and dragged me down the hill to the house. I heard the click of a knife blade lock into place, and one of them started cutting my shirt while another undid my pants. They forced me to the ground and yanked my boots and socks and pants and underwear off, and the next thing I felt was the stinging cold spray of a garden hose.
