by Jeff Strand
“It’s a game. Nothing personal.”
“You shot me in the back. That’s not cool. You didn’t even play with honor.”
“Hey, if they’d said that it was against the rules to shoot you in the back, I wouldn’t have done it. But it’s not, so I did. You’re dead. Head back to camp.”
“You’re a fratchet,” said Henry. It was a completely made-up word, but Henry hoped it sounded filthy and venomous.
“Nobody likes a sore loser.”
Henry sighed. Erik was right. There was no reason to be a big pouty baby about this, even though he’d never felt a stronger desire to be a big pouty baby in his life.
“Victory!” Erik shouted, running off deeper into the woods, waving his gun.
Henry sat down against a tree. He couldn’t believe this. Only minutes into the game and he was out. If Monica heard about this, she’d laugh in his face—directly into his face and not in a romantic way or anything.
So now what? Did he just have to hang out with Max until they crowned a winner? Joy.
Maybe he’d propose a new rule: the zombie rule. That would get him back into the game. They wouldn’t have to be fast zombies. He’d be okay with just staggering around the woods, hoping somebody came close enough to bite.
He sat there for a while, moping.
Then he got up, brushed himself off, and slowly headed back to camp, resigned to his fate.
***
Max sat in his cramped office, munching on a stale power bar. He wished that they really could afford to install cameras in the woods so that he could see what was happening, at least one or two in a central location, but no, Larry refused to buy extra stuff for a camp that was doomed to close after this session.
Oh, well. After he finished up some paperwork, he’d hike out into the woods and try to catch a glimpse of the action. Maybe one of the kids would stun him with some amazing feat of combat dexterity. More likely, one of those fools would accidentally shoot himself in the face, but you never knew—
He looked up from his desk as he heard a car approach. What kind of jackass would show up now just as the Survival Games started? He wasn’t expecting any visitors. Maybe it was one of the mothers, deciding that her precious baby couldn’t handle the big scary woods after all.
He pushed back his chair, tossed the wrapper of his power bar into the garbage bin, and went outside.
The car parked outside clearly belonged to some rich jerk. Why would you drive a luxury car like that on these kinds of roads? Get a jeep for crying out loud.
He didn’t recognize the men who got out; however, they were wearing dark suits and sunglasses, and they clearly believed that they were a very intimidating trio of gentlemen.
They were big guys but not as big as Max.
“May I help you?” he asked as they got out of the car.
“Are you Max?” asked the one who’d been sitting in the back seat. He was the biggest of the three, with a face that looked like he was in his forties but a thick head of black hair, clearly a dye job to hide the gray. Max immediately disliked the creep.
“Yes. And you are?”
“I’m Mr. Grand.”
“Do you have a first name?”
“Not to you.”
“I’m sorry, but if you’re not a superior officer, a judge, or royalty, I prefer to be on a first-name basis with other adults.”
Mr. Grand smiled. He had little perfect-white teeth. “All right. It’s Peter.”
“Please to meet you, Peter. What can I do for you?”
“Is there somewhere we can talk?”
“Sure. Come on in.”
He led them into the building. His office was too small to accommodate four people, so he sat down on one of the cafeteria benches. “Have a seat,” he said.
“We’ll stand,” said Mr. Grand.
“Fine,” said Max.
“Do you know why we’re here?”
“Not a clue.”
“I believe you owe us some money.”
“I believe you’re incorrect. I don’t owe you a cent.”
Mr. Grand smiled. “Is that so?”
“Unless you’re from MasterCard—and I’m not aware of them sending people deep into the woods to collect debts in person—I don’t owe you a thing. You’ve got the wrong guy. Sorry to waste your time.”
“Are you not Lester Dexter’s partner?”
“Larry Dexter owns this camp. I run it. We’re not business partners. I’m his employee.” The second these morons left, Max was going to call Larry and give him an explosive earful. He’d had no idea that the camp’s financial difficulties were of the “hired goons coming over to collect” variety and it infuriated him that Larry might have misrepresented their relationship apparently to get the heat off himself.
“Hmmmm. That’s not how he presented it.”
“Again, sorry to waste your time. But not really. You guys look like you’ve got plenty of time to waste. How long does it take you each morning to fix your hair?”
“Where are the campers?” This was said in a vaguely threatening tone. If Max had any hair on his head, it would have bristled.
“Gone. Camp ended yesterday.”
“That’s good. So Maxwell—that’s your name, right? Maxwell?”
“Call me Maxwell again and see what happens.”
Mr. Grand reached inside his suit and took out a gun. A Ruger LCR .38 Special revolver.
“That’s a girl gun,” said Max as Mr. Grand pointed it at his chest. His bravery was mostly fake now. He did have a knife strapped to his leg, but his nearest gun was locked in his desk drawer. He’d feel much braver if he were wearing his Mylar vest.
“Is it?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, then, maybe it will shoot girl bullets that bounce off your chest. I’m a reasonable man, Maxwell. But I need my money—at least a down payment—or this is going to be an unpleasant morning for you.”
“How much?”
“Thirty-five thousand.”
Max let out a snort of laughter. “Thirty-five grand? You think I’ve got thirty-five grand lying around here? I don’t even have thirty-five bucks.”
“That’s very unfortunate.”
“I’m telling you, Peter, you’ve been hoodwinked. Larry’s probably on his way to the Bahamas right now. You shouldn’t have let him out of your sight.”
Mr. Grand shrugged. “I’m not worried. Last night, Larry thought he could run away from his debt. He was unsuccessful. So are you saying that I have to kill you too?”
“No, I’m saying that you have to get back in your shiny car and harass somebody who actually owes you money. I’m not part of your criminal underworld or whatever it is. I’ll be missed.”
“You do have a point,” said Mr. Grand. But he didn’t put the gun away.
***
Stupid Erik. Would it really have been such a big deal to let Henry go? Couldn’t he have just let him play the game for an hour at least?
Stupid Erik. Stupid, physically adept Erik.
He wondered how Randy was doing. Maybe Randy was walking back to camp too, three orange spots on his torso, head hung in shame. This whole camp was the worst thing they’d ever done and he was never going to let his friend talk him into anything ever again.
Stupid Erik.
What was that?
Something protruded from behind a tree. Henry walked over to check it out and saw that it was a small wooden box. A care package.
Since he was out of the game, it would be against the rules for him to take what was in there, but he could open it just to see what was inside, right?
He crouched down beside the box. It was too small to be a paint-spewing machine gun that could have won him the game, but maybe it was one of those knives. He lifted the lid.
Inside was a comic
book. Spider-Man.
Henry smiled. It was entertainment in case they had to hide out for a while. Maybe Max wasn’t such a bad guy after all.
***
“We have a problem here,” said Mr. Grand. “I don’t think you’re a liar. If nothing else, you’re more honest than Lester. And looking at the condition of this place, I don’t think there’s any chance I’m going to collect any money from you.”
“I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a liar,” said Max, scratching his knee and then inching a bit lower—
“Put your hands in the air please,” said Mr. Grand.
“Why?”
“Because I have a gun pointed at you and that is what I’d like you to do.”
Max reluctantly put his hands in the air.
“I don’t dislike you,” said Mr. Grand. “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t even ask my men to beat you within an inch of your life before I left. The problem is that whether it’s your fault or not, you’ve become a loose end. And I don’t like loose ends.”
***
Henry, comic book in hand, could see the two buildings up ahead. So at least he wasn’t lost. The only thing worse than losing so quickly would be to wander around the woods for a few hours, trying to find his way back to camp.
Would Max shout at him for being such a loser or would he shake his head sadly at him for being such a loser? Henry thought that the odds were sixty-forty in favor of the sad headshake.
Oh, well, he thought. Might as well get it over with.
There was a black car parked outside. Henry wondered who that could be. Maybe Max had a secret girlfriend who’d quickly driven there to meet him, thinking that the survivalists would be gone for a while.
Could it be somebody’s parents? What if there was some sort of emergency with one of their families?
It was probably no big deal, but Henry jogged toward the building just in case.
***
“There are cameras everywhere,” said Max.
Mr. Grand shook his head. “No, there aren’t.”
“You can’t get away with just shooting me like this.”
“Unfortunately for you, Maxwell, I think that we can. Nice isolated area. Nobody around for miles. I hate to say it, but this is the perfect environment in which I could get away with shooting somebody. But I think I can say something that might cheer you up a bit.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m going to make it quick.” He glanced over at the man who stood to his right, a short but bulky guy with a neatly trimmed mustache and beard. “Ethan, if it were your choice, would you make it quick?”
“Not at all.”
He glanced at the man to his left, who was a fraction of an inch taller than him. He was clean-shaven, with a deep scar above his right eye. “Chad, would you make it quick?”
“Not a chance.”
“So you see, Maxwell, you would be in much worse shape if I left you in the hands of Chad and Ethan. Count your blessings. And now say good-bye.”
***
Henry reached for the doorknob and then flinched at the sound of a gunshot. That had come from inside the building!
Erik’s paint gun hadn’t been anywhere near that loud. Had Max lost his already-weak grip on sanity and gone on a shooting spree?
With a sense of intense horror, Henry wondered if their ineptitude had finally been too much for Max to bear. What if he’d seen Henry walking toward the building, already out of the game, and decided to end it all? He and the other boys should have seen this coming and kept Max on twenty-four-hour surveillance.
Three more gunshots, one after the other.
If Max was trying to kill himself, he was very bad at it.
Henry decided that opening the door and strolling into the building would not be the best plan he’d ever formulated. Instead, he hurried over to the window to get a quick peek before he shamelessly fled with his arms flapping in the air. Maybe the car belonged to a friend of Max’s and they were shooting up the refrigerator for kicks.
He glanced through the window.
A man lowered a smoking gun as Max dropped to the floor.
At this moment, one of the worst things Henry could do was scream. He instantly realized this and slammed his hands over his mouth to muffle the noise.
It didn’t matter, though, because there were two other men in the room and they were both looking right at him.
Chapter Sixteen and a Half
“Rad Rad Roger?”
“Oh, hi, Henry.”
“I was refilling my popcorn and I saw you sitting there. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Why are you crying?”
“I’m not.”
“Yes, you are.”
“I was just reading more of the book, and, you know—”
“What?”
“Max died!”
“Oh, yeah. He did. I’m sorry.”
“He was the best character! He had all the best lines! Without him, the rest of the book is going to be crap!”
“It’s not going to be crap.”
“It is! I loved that guy! Who am I supposed to care about now? Stu?”
“Do you need a hug?”
“No.”
“Okay. Well, I’m going back into the movie now.”
“All right.”
“See ya.”
“Oh, Henry—”
“Yes?”
“I do need that hug.”
“Here you go.”
“Thanks. I don’t know what came over me.”
Chapter Seventeen
The men pulled out guns of their own, moving as quickly as a magician making a playing card appear between his fingers. Henry dove to the ground as two more gunshots rang out. The window shattered, raining glass down upon his legs.
Henry decided that it was okay to scream now.
He scooted along the ground until he was away from the window and then got to his feet. Prior to the whole “bullets shattering glass” moment, he’d been willing to believe that this might be a setup by Max to test their abilities to react under pressure, but now he kind of thought that it probably wasn’t.
What should he do? What should he do? What should he do? What should he do? What should he do? What should he do?
Had there been a studio audience present (which there wasn’t, to the best of his knowledge, though he hadn’t quite ruled out the possibility that this was a reality TV show, which would be awesome, way better than people trying to kill him), they would have offered up “Run!!!” as a pretty reasonable option. But Henry was a terrible runner. If he fled into the woods, being chased by three physically fit men with guns, he’d be dead. That was simply the natural order of things. Maybe a couple of bullets would miss if they got excited and started shooting before they had a completely clear shot, but still, he had about thirty seconds to live in that scenario.
He had to hide.
There was no place to hide except the barracks, and the barracks were an awful place to hide from gun-toting killers. But what choice did he have? It wasn’t as if he could lie in a hammock and casually browse through a brochure promoting the best hiding places of central Strongwoods, weighing the pros and cons of each.
He dashed behind the building, desperately hoping not to trip. This would be a very bad time to trip. If he tripped, he wouldn’t even feel sorry for himself. He’d just lie there, getting shot, thinking, “Oh well, that’s what I deserve.”
Max was dead! He couldn’t believe it! Henry had never known anybody who was now dead. Even his ancient cat, Tinkles, was still hanging in there.
Why would anybody want to kill Max? There were plenty of reasons to think that he was an obnoxious jerk, but to kill him? That was way, way excessive.
To be honest, Henry would
have expected Max to catch the bullets between his teeth and then spit them back at the shooters. Okay, not honestly. He didn’t really believe that. It was time to stop thinking about this kind of stuff and focus on not tripping.
“Hey!” one of the men shouted. It sounded like he was still on the other side of the building and “Hey!” was much better than bang! Henry ran across the space between the two buildings, expecting a volley of gunfire to shred him into dog food at some point during those couple of seconds, but thankfully, it didn’t happen. He ran behind the barracks and then looped around the building, stopping quickly to peek out front.
No sign of the maniacs.
He hurriedly opened the door to the barracks, slipped inside, and closed the door behind him.
He breathed a deep sigh of relief. He was safe.
No, he was anything but safe. With a whole vast, expansive, tree-filled forest at his disposal, he’d shut himself in the barracks! He’d done exactly what he sat on the couch and yelled at people in movies for doing. This was worse than if he’d tripped. Where was he going to hide? Under a cot? What kind of conversation did he think they would have?
SCARY GUN MAN #1: Gosh, I have no idea where that rascal might’ve gone! He’s outwitted us but good!
SCARY GUN MAN #2: I’m so tired of these clever folks making us look like common dullards! Maybe we should check that building right there.
SCARY GUN MAN #1: You haven’t got the sense that the Lord gave a headless donkey. Do you think he’s just sitting in there, eating a bowl of grits? I should knock you on your fool head for saying that.
SCARY GUN MAN #2: Why do you always ridicule me so? I was just thinking that it would take maybe nine or ten seconds—eleven at the most—to take a look in there. I wasn’t suggesting that it become the focal point of our pursuit, just that—
SCARY GUN MAN #1: Hush your mouth before more ignorance spews forth from it. He isn’t in that building and we aren’t wasting nine to eleven seconds proving a theory that we already know to be incorrect. Give me your head so I can whup it.
SCARY GUN MAN #2: Ow! It wasn’t necessary to whup me that hard! That hurt more than the corn on my little toe!
SCARY GUN MAN #1: Shush it. Now let’s go find that rapscallion and don’t let me hear your flapping lips speak any more stuff that doesn’t have any smarts in it.
