“Yeah, neat. It even has that rocky island in the middle,” Jared said.
Billy squatted and tied some line onto the end of one of the poles, then a hook, and handed it Jared, who moved a few steps away. He set the soil with the worms in it down in a pile. “I wish we had some place to keep the worms,” he said as he pulled out a worm, threaded it onto the hook, and dropped it into the water.
The water was so clear, Billy could see the grass waving on the bottom, and the fish swimming around. He watched his hook sink. After a while he jerked the rod up. “Yeah,” he yelled. “It’s at least a pound. We’ll eat tonight.” The sun glinted off the fish’s scales.
“I could cook that and eat it now, right here,” Andy said. “I don’t know about you dudes but my stomach is growling I’m so hungry. And thirsty.” He dragged the flint from his pocket and held it up. “There’s plenty of wood around and I have flint for a fire.”
“You don’t have to be thirsty,” Billy said. “But seriously, we have to take whatever we catch back. I mean, if we were playing and we were in our own team that would be one thing.”
“I know. It was just a thought,” Andy said.
“So Kelli and you . . .” Billy couldn’t help throwing a glance at Jared to see if he was listening. He was.
“Kelli. Yeah, she’s a nice girl.”
“I thought you two had done it last night. I saw you moving around like you were doing it, and I heard her moaning. She was trying to be quiet but you must have been good.”
Surprise showed on Andy’s face. “Dude. Don’t you ever sleep?”
“So you scored with her last night?” Jared asked. “On the first night? How did you do it?”
Andy grinned. “It’s my handsome features and charm. She couldn’t resist me.”
“Fuck, man. That’s not fair,” Jared said. “And what about that ring on your finger?”
Andy looked away. “Don’t go there, man. There’s a lot of stuff you don’t know about me.”
“Yeah?” Jared said.
“Lexie’s also hot,” Andy pointed out, obviously changing the subject.
“Hey. Leave her out of it,” Billy said.
“Oh, it’s like that. Okay, Jared, how about Lela? Easy the way she sleeps with just those skimpy little lace scraps. She brought condoms, too. I reckon she’d like it enough to take it further. Oh! Check it out.” He also had a fish on the end of his line.
What had Andy said? It’s like that. Was it like that? Billy thought about it for a few moments. He hardly knew Lexie, and yet he probably wouldn’t like it if Jared tried to hit on her. Had he been wrong?
“We need something to put these in,” Andy said as he yanked the hook from the fish’s mouth.
“Where’s the trash when you need it?” Jared said. “In most places you can always find an old can or a plastic bag laying around if you search hard enough.” He stared at the ground all around them as if to make his point.
“No humans, no trash,” Billy said.
“Seriously, though, where are we gonna put these fish?” Andy asked.
“I have a spare couple of hooks and we’ll cut a little line off and thread them onto it. We’ll tie it onto something and keep them in the water.” As he spoke, Billy hooked another fish.
Lexie arrived with the camera up on her shoulder. Jake ran up to Billy and licked his face.
“Hey, Lex,” Billy said with a smile, “you’re just in time to record me catching this,” He stood and lifted his rod. “With a worm.” She sure got his hormones going. Just having her nearby. It was hard to believe he actually had slept beside her and they had only cuddled together. He didn’t know if he would be able to keep his hands off her again. Sleeping with her was gonna be even tougher tonight.
“Where’s Eve?” Jared asked.
“She was too tired to walk. She’s sitting on the grass guarding the water, back the way we came.”
“That’s not good,” Andy said. “We shouldn’t let anyone be totally alone here. Anything could happen to them. I’ll go check on her.”
Andy trudged back toward the copse of trees he had seen on the way here.
“Hey,” he said to Eve. She was sitting in the ground beside the bulging cargo bag, chewing on a piece of grass. “Just going to get some firewood. Don’t you want to join the others?”
“No.” She lay back. “I like being alone sometimes.”
He had tried. If she didn’t want to join the others it wasn’t his problem. She didn’t seem to be afraid of wild animals or a monster or anything like that. He would never admit it to anyone but he couldn’t help being a little nervous about the possibility of coming face to face with a lion or something. He glanced back as he headed deeper into the trees until he was sure she couldn’t see him.
His hand was shaking when he stuck it into his pants pocket and came out with the pills. He almost dropped the cap into the grass but managed to hold onto it at the last minute. He tapped two out onto his hand, breathing fast, and threw them back into his mouth and swallowed them. He stood there for a few minutes waiting for the feeling to wash over him. God, it was good when it came. He wished he didn’t have to go back. He wanted to savor the moment.
He bent to pick up a log, and another, then headed back toward the others. He felt good and he whistled a tune as he walked.
Chapter 16
“Dude,” Jared says. “I don’t trust that Andy. I bet he’s gonna try and get his end away with Eve. Didn’t you see his eyes? They were kind of shifty, like he was jonesing for something. And I bet that’s what it is. Last night with the hottest pussy out here wasn’t enough for him.”
“Hey, Jared,” Billy says. “Watch your language.” He throws a glance at me.
I slide down onto the grass and stare at the water, thinking about what Jared said. I hadn’t noticed anything strange about Andy’s eyes.
“No, Jake,” I say as he pokes his nose into the shallow water where the fish they’ve caught are being kept. He obediently moves away and crouches to drink a short distance away.
“So, do you want to fish?” Billy asks me. “Provided you don’t have to touch the worms.” He grins. “I’ll put the worms on your hook.”
“No, thanks.”
Jared moves further away and drops his line into the water.
Billy slides down beside me on the grass. “You’re a real city slicker, ain’t you?” He squints at me.
“I guess. I like the country, but I’ve always lived in L.A. with my aunt. I was a little kid when my parents died in a car wreck and she took me in.”
“Whoa. That’s not cool. Both parents.” A shadow crosses his eyes and is gone as quickly as it came.
“I didn’t really understand what was going on, except suddenly I was living with Aunt Jess. She said my parents had to go away. I was mad at them for a long time for just leaving me like that and not even saying goodbye. She was my mom’s only sister. My grandparents had died long ago.”
“So how’d you get to be a camera operator? You said you were at college, but then you left.”
The bad memories rush into my head and my heart gets that sinking feeling. I don’t want to talk about it any longer but I don’t want to be rude. Luckily, I’m saved.
“Yeah,” Jared yells and jerks his rod upward. A good-sized fish is hanging on the end. He stands and unhooks it, and adds it to the bunch of fish they’ve already caught.
“The worms are almost all gone,” he says. “I think they’re burrowing back into the ground.”
We hear a shrill whistle, followed by a yell.
“Hey, where’d everyone go?” It’s Andy.
“Yo,” Billy shouts. “We’re still here.” He stands up and lifts his fishing pole.
Andy comes into sight with an armful of f
irewood.
“Where’s the Chinese chick?” he asks.
Billy looks at me with raised eyebrows and I stare at him, then Jared, and shrug.
“I left her sitting right there where we first came down to the creek,” I say. “Didn’t you see her? I thought you went to check up on her.”
“Yeah,” Andy says. “I spotted some good firewood, so I left her sitting there.” He throws the wood on the ground and turns around and heads back the way he came. “I’ll go see where she is.”
We all watch him go.
“Maybe you were wrong,” Billy says to Jared. “About him.”
“Maybe. But he was there long enough to do her, and what’s with the firewood? Is he still angling to cook the fish here and not share them with the others? Now someone has to carry it back to camp, and it won’t be me.”
A few minutes later, Andy returns. “She’s not there. She’s not any place nearby. Do you think she would have gone back to camp?” He directs this question at me.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “She would have told us. She knows where we are.” My stomach clenches. I can’t believe she’s just disappeared.
“We’d better all search for her, then.” Billy lifts the bundle of fish from the water. “I’d like to gut the fish here, but she has the knife—Sam said we could use it—and Eve was holding on to it. I asked her to leave it with us, but no dice.”
We all head back the way we came, yelling her name.
“Eve, where are you? Come on, Eve, this isn’t funny.”
Trip and his entourage had been walking for about twenty minutes without finding anything. He was a little irritated with the way both of the women were vying for his attention all the time. It was nice that both of them thought he was hot, even though he was so much older than them, but the game was the important thing. If they had any brains they would know that. And food. They all needed protein.
“Here.” He stopped and bent to touch a broad-leaved plant. “Cassava.” He had seen signs of prior occupation in the general area and this must be what the former occupants had grown.
“Is it good to eat?” Lela rested an arm on his shoulder.
“Of course it is, dummy,” Samantha spat on the ground.
“It’s full of carbs and protein, and add vitamins and minerals. There’s just one problem with it. Don’t ever try to eat it raw.”
“It doesn’t taste good?” Lela was still leaning on his shoulder.
“Not that. It’s poisonous. You’ve heard of cyanide, I’m sure,” Trip said.
“You’re not really saying this plant that we’re gathering to eat could kill us all?” Samantha wrinkled her nose.
“Only if you don’t know how to handle it. Millions of people all over the world manage to eat it without dying.”
“I didn’t know it, cyanide, came from plants.” Samantha scratched her head and scowled at Lela.
“It doesn’t always. It can be made in a laboratory, but a lot of plants have traces of cyanide in them,” Trip said. He lifted the shovel he was carrying and started digging the plants. He wondered if he should really have shown these two women where to find such a great source of just about everything they needed to survive. Samantha opened Rodriguez’s black trash bag and held it so Lela could drop the plants into it.
“The leaves are good to eat, too,” Trip said.
“Well, if the cowboy gets some fish we could make a fish stew,” Samantha said.
“How would you poison someone with Cassava?” Lela asked.
Trip frowned and stared at her for a few seconds before turning back to his digging. “There are two kinds of Cassava,” he said. “The sweet kind is not toxic enough to harm anyone permanently.”
“And what kind is this?” Lela asked.
“I don’t know. We’ll have to soak it for at least twenty four hours to be sure it’s okay. I’m talking about the roots, now. The leaves are okay to eat and we need vegetables.”
“And if we don’t soak it?”
“It could poison us.”
“And we would die?” Lela persisted.
Trip was getting pissed off at the way Lela was interrogating him, and he was pretty sure Samantha felt the same way. He squinted at her again. “We would die.”
Chapter 17
Rodriguez stood back to survey his work. “It’s gonna be pretty good when it’s done,” he said to anyone who was listening.
Stretch stopped chopping with the machete and walked across to see what Rafael had made. “That’s real good, brother. You’re pretty smart with construction.”
“Yeah. If my leg wasn’t so painful I would be a lot better,” Rodriguez said. He was worried about his ankle. He hadn’t told Maria how much it still hurt, or she would want to examine it, and he was determined not to be evacuated from the game. Until Dockery showed up he was okay and he had to hope it would be healing by the time they had to start competing against one another. He glanced across at Stretch, who had gone back to the construction of the other latrine. He seemed a decent sort, but he would be hard to beat in a physical contest. The dude had played for the NBA. He might be old now but he was big and athletic.
Maria was a hard worker. He hadn’t counted the number of times she had come past with an armful of wood, and the pile was getting quite high. The redhead had hobbled around and helped pour water into the canvas water bottles for a while, but she was passed out on the bed now.
He turned his gaze to the fire, where the tall thin woman, Faith, was sitting feeding wood into it and fussing over the cooking pot. He didn’t mind, as long as she did the cooking. He hoped there would be something more than rice to eat that evening.
Jared picks up the bag with the water-filled condoms. I tell him to be careful because they burst easily. I don’t think he believes me.
We all shout for Eve at first, but after a while we stop and nobody says much. We’re probably all thinking about Eve. I can’t believe she would just leave without telling us. So where is she then? I’ve been worried about wild animals the whole time we’ve been here and no one else seems to care about them. What if a lion or a crocodile ate her? I glance around me. It’s weird the way there are so few animals in sight, but they’re here.
Jared walks close behind me and says quietly, “That Chinese chick is desperate to win this. She lost her job and her apartment was foreclosed.”
“What?”
“So I figure she’s either living with a friend or relative or out of her car. That hasn’t been repossessed yet. Her parents still live in China.”
“How do you know that? Did she tell you?” I say.
“Nah. I did some background checks. Got all their names when we were at the party, and there was plenty of time during the stopovers in the airports on our way here from the States. I wanted to know all about the others, you know, all of their weaknesses, so I can use them if I need to.”
“I can’t believe you had time to do that. Anyhow, weren’t you supposed to leave your cell phones at home?”
“Nobody searched us.”
“You only found out their names that night, when you were all introduced. How did you even remember them?”
Jared grins. “I texted the names to myself in-between greeting them.”
I shake my head. “That’s crazy. I can’t believe you could get all that information so easily.” I pat Jake and I wonder if Jared checked my background.
“The first person I checked into was Dockery. Long before the party. He needs this reality show to be a success big time. It’s like this is his last chance. Every other show he’s tried to produce in the past three years has gone splat and been pulled from the networks. That dude must have an endless source of cash. If he doesn’t, he’s in deep shit.”
My stomach clenches. Could the O
ld Man really be so short of cash? Is that why he left us here with no backup or crew members? I’ve heard some talk around the studios that he’s struggling financially, but what does that really mean? If he was down to his last million he would probably think it was a disaster.
“The only one I couldn’t find anywhere in the system is Trip,” Jared continues. “I know you knew him before the game, so what can you tell me about him? He must be using a false identity.”
“I don’t want to talk about him,” I say. “So did you check on me and Mark?”
Jared laughs. “Nah. You’re not competing. But you should be careful of the cowboy, of Billy.”
I check to see if Billy is anywhere nearby. He’s behind us chatting to Andy. “Why? He seems pretty normal to me.”
“If I tell you, will you tell me Trip’s real name?”
“No. I told you I don’t want to talk about him. Anyhow, you can’t do any background checks here.”
“Billy was in Juvie for more than a year,” Jared says with a smirk.
“What?”
“Juvie, kids’ jail.”
“I know what Juvie is. What did he do?”
“Don’t know. Records are sealed. Just be careful of him, though. He’s not who you think he is.”
Who do I think he is? Jared drops back and starts chatting with Andy and Billy and I am left with my thoughts. Is anyone who I think they are? What does Jared know about Andy that made him make that comment about him jonesing for something?
It takes us over an hour to get back to camp.
There Eve is.
Just sitting by the fire.
Hard to believe.
“Why did you leave without telling us?” Andy almost yells what we all want to say.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know I had to tell you where I am.” She sounds a little angry.
Virgo's Vice Page 10
