Scavenger Hunt

by John R. Little

  Michael slipped and crashed to the ice. He hit his head and felt dazed.

  “Joe, can you hear me?” His call was pathetic and he knew it. He tried to stand and realized he didn’t know which way he was facing. The wind seemed to be coming from all around.

  “Joe!”

  He wondered if he’d broken a bone in his skull. It hurt enough, but he was afraid to touch it.

  Finally, he remembered the GPS device and he lifted his arm. The green arrow was gone. He only saw the flat gray surface it usually showed.

  He couldn’t stay there. He’d freeze if the storm kept up.

  The wind seemed strongest in one particular direction and it seemed likely the way they’d been walking. He turned to face the exact opposite direction, but it all looked the same.

  He wondered if Susan was okay.

  One step. Two. His head hurt so badly. He could barely concentrate on walking.

  More steps. The wind laughed at him and the ice pellets beat into his face, piercing his cheek with bloody icicles.

  He walked and walked, a zombie searching for prey.

  And then he took a step that didn’t find ground. His foot only lowered into empty air, and he found himself falling. The next few seconds seemed like forever until his head hit solid ice again and he lay in a crumpled heap at the bottom of a ten-foot-deep crevice. Almost immediately, the ice storm started to bury him.

  Susan - Queen Maud Land

  The inside of the plane wasn’t much warmer than the desolate landscape outside. Susan sat in the back seat, huddled alone, still dressed in her heavy coat. The winds had rocked them for the past hour.

  Bea and Joe somehow had managed to pull her back to where the plane had dropped them off, and they thanked God that the plane had come back at the first sign of the storm and waited for them.

  Susan didn’t want to thank God for anything. Michael wasn’t with them. He was out in the storm, and there was no way to find out where he was or what condition he was in.

  For the first time in years, she felt alone. Michael had been her protector, the outgoing side of her personality, allowing her to be the follower. That’s the role she wanted. Following Michael. She had followed him to the ends of the Earth.

  She kept her eyes closed. She wanted to see him in her mind. See his beautiful brown face that she loved to caress, see his amazing smile, hear his laugh in her memory.

  Susan and Michael weren’t engaged, at least not officially. They both knew where they were headed though, if not the exact timing of when she’d take that long walk down the aisle to meet him.

  Soon, she hoped. So far he’d avoided the question of time. One day, he’d be ready.

  They’d talked about the house they wanted, how they’d merge bank accounts right away, how they’d have two children…

  She felt her ring finger. She didn’t have an engagement ring, but that didn’t matter. Michael wasn’t a jewelry type of person. He didn’t even want wedding rings. Instead, he wanted them both to have a ring tattooed on their fingers. The tattoo would be their true bond, a bond that would last forever.

  Sitting there huddled in the seat of the plane, thinking of Michael, she would never have imagined falling asleep. Until Joe nudged her.

  “The storm’s over. We can go now.”

  Susan blinked, not sure where he was talking about. And why’d he wake her instead of —

  Oh.

  She stood and followed Joe and Bea. The back of the plane was being lowered so they could walk out onto the ice again. The coldness beat into her.

  Susan didn’t care. She only cared about retrieving Michael’s body.

  They walked in silence. Joe tried to talk to her and Bea wanted an interview but she just ignored them. It took all her willpower to just walk. Walk to where he was.

  The landscape was stark, desolate, dead. It wasn’t anything like the first time they’d been out. Then, the ice packs had been an adventure. She was joining Michael on his dream journey.

  Bea dropped back and said to her, “We have a Medevac copter on the way. It should arrive about the same time we do. We’ve got a lock on Michael’s GPS signal, so we won’t have any trouble finding him.”

  Susan nodded.

  After an hour, the signal was stronger. Susan couldn’t recognize the area, but she assumed the channels and valleys they walked through were the same ones they had been in before.

  “That way,” Joe said. He pointed to a wide crevice nearby — a deep tear in the ice, ragged and about ten feet wide.

  He stood on the edge and looked down. Susan joined him. It was dark there but at the bottom she could see a human form.

  “Oh my God…”

  She tried not to collapse, but she couldn’t help starting to cry.

  Crystals covered Michael. He was buried in a veneer of ice. His face was white and so was everything else.

  Except for his leg. That was red.

  His calf had a bone sticking out, several inches long, about halfway between the knee and ankle. The bottom of his leg was bent like a rag doll.

  It must have been terribly painful.

  Michael was about fifteen feet below them. There was no way to get to him.

  They waited for the Medevac copter. It arrived about twenty minutes later and a paramedic was lowered from the chopper into the ravine. He checked Michael for what seemed like an eternity.

  The rotor blades of the copter made talking impossible and it was hard to see as they blew the snow all around. It felt like they were back in the blizzard.

  The paramedic stood and looked up to Susan, Joe, and Bea.

  Susan felt her heart swell when he held up his hand: thumbs up.

  “Oh, God, he’s alive,” she whispered.

  She watched as the chopper lowered a stretcher.

  Six hours later, Susan and her team sat around Michael in a hospital in Ushuaia. He was in a room with five other patients and was heavily sedated.

  Susan kissed him and hugged him carefully, not wanting to hurt him. She just wanted to be with him. Always and forever.

  That’s what he said to her every night before they fell asleep. “Always and forever.”

  Michael squeezed her hand. “You got to finish the race, doll.”

  “I’m staying with you. We’re out of the race.”

  “You need to finish. Don’t make this mean nothing.”

  She looked at his face and saw that he was serious. He really wanted her and Joe to finish the race without him.

  “We can’t. We didn’t get the meteorite.”

  Michael glanced at Joe.

  Bea just watched and made sure she was getting the best footage on her forecam.

  Joe reached into his pocket and pulled out a burned black rock. “Yes, we did.”

  Chapter 8: Team Hollywood

  Fernando - Copper Canyon, Mexico

  Fernando stood first. He, Carlos, and Brittany were tired after walking through the canyons for the past four hours.

  He looked at Steve, the cameraman, who hadn’t bothered to sit down. He just leaned against one of the canyon walls and was checking e-mail on his tablet. Each of the team members had their own tablet computer that also had a satellite hookup to the Internet, but they hadn’t brought them along on the hike. The only connection to the outside world they had was Steve’s.

  They’d been resting about fifteen minutes when Fernando stood up. It was just after 2:00 in the afternoon. His legs were sore from walking. This amount of exercise wasn’t in his day-to-day life. Dentists had strong upper bodies from leaning over patients all day but he rarely walked far.

  He stretched his legs and walked toward Brittany. She offered her hand and he helped her up. He glanced over at Carlos, who was also getting up.

  “How far?” Fernando walked over to Steve.

  “We’re almost there. I can give you the rest of your instructions now.”

  Fernando stood beside his brother. Carlos was still covered in sweat, even after the break.
He was two years older than Fernando at 58, with thinning hair and a moustache that was starting to gray a bit. He wondered if he was looking at his own future. Maybe not in just two years . . but five?

  Carlos was looking to retire if they won the race. He hated working at the butcher store and would do anything to give it up and walk away. The store had been handed down from their father, but none of his own kids were interested in the trade. Every year that passed now seemed to be a year wasted. Carlos was growing old right before his eyes.

  “What’s the scoop?” Carlos asked. They all looked at Steve.

  In return, Steve looked at all three for a few seconds. They’d gotten used to this weird kind of staring, knowing that Steve was trying to get footage and reaction shots through his forecam.

  “We’re there,” he said. “Close enough, anyway. You’ve got those sticks and the twine. You need to build a cage and capture a rattlesnake. There’s lots of them around here.”

  “Shit,” whispered Carlos.

  Brittany looked at Fernando. “There’s snakes here? Rattlesnakes? Aren’t they dangerous?”

  Fernando just stared at her and wondered what he ever saw in her. His heart sank as he realized she’d never been the woman he thought she was.

  “Yes, they’re dangerous. They can kill you if they bite you and you don’t get anti-venom quickly.”

  Carlos said, “They’d evacuate us if we got bit.”

  They all looked to Steve.

  “You know that evacuation is always on a best efforts basis. There’s no guarantee. We’re a long way from a hospital. And don’t forget that the costs of any evacuation come out of your budget.”

  Fernando picked up the first stick. “Let’s just not get bit.”

  He and Carlos worked on building a cage, tying pairs of sticks into crosses and then interlacing the crosses and tying them together to create sides. Once they had the idea worked out, the cage came together quickly. They made sure there were no really large holes that a snake could escape through.

  Brittany was off to the side talking to Steve. As usual. Fernando wondered how the producers would edit the show. They must have tons of footage of Brit doing sweet dick all, talking and smiling and taking credit for everything. Probably bad-mouthing him and Carlos.

  The cage was done. They just needed a snake.

  It came about eleven o’clock that night. Carlos thought he heard something and turned his lamp on, shining it over the desert floor.

  The snake sat coiled about ten feet away. Carlos moved over in the darkness and kicked Fernando’s thigh. “Hey!”

  “Jesus, what…”

  “Shhh. Don’t wake that bitch. She’ll fuck things up.”

  Fernando backed away from Brittany. She was snoring and he stared at her. He knew the forecam had an infrared ability. Maybe America would see her in her finest hour, drooling and snoring.

  Steve slept, but that wouldn’t stop this from being on the show. Both the brothers stared at the snake.

  “That a rattler?” asked Carlos.

  “We’ll find out soon enough. Grab the other end of the trap.”

  They each held one end of the cage and slowly moved toward the snake. Carlos kept spraying his light over the snake.

  Then they heard the rattle. It started quietly but as the snake lifted its head and stared at them, the rattle grew louder and more insistent.

  Carlos hesitated. Fernando stopped walking to wait for him.

  “They can’t get a helicopter here now, can they? If we get bit?”

  “We’re not going to be bit.”

  “Sure we shouldn’t wake Steve?”

  “He can’t help us. We have to do this on our own. Only she can help, and you know that’s a silly thought. It’s you and me, brother to brother. Mano a mano.”

  Carlos still didn’t move.

  “Hey, brother.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Podemos hacer esto.” We can do this. “Dios esta con nosotros.” God is with us.

  Carlos nodded. “Si.”

  “Ready?”

  In the dark, he could see Carlos struggling. The snake was coiled around at least a half dozen times and it seemed so thick. He wondered how long it could be and if the cage would be strong enough to hold it.

  “Si.”

  They inched forward, closing the gap between them and the snake. Its head was about a foot above the ground swaying back and forth. The rattle was louder and sounded like death.

  “Give me the flashlight.”

  Carlos didn’t question the order. He passed the flashlight to Fernando, who promptly turned it off.

  “What the fuck!”

  “Shh.”

  “We can’t see it,” whispered Carlos.

  “I’m going to turn it back on in a second. I’m hoping it surprises the snake. As soon as I turn it on, we grab it.”

  “Mi dios. We’re really going to do this?”

  “Three. Two. One.”

  He turned the light on and as soon as they saw the snake lift its head, they brought the cage down on top of it, slamming the snake down. It was covered and the rattle was louder than ever.

  The snake bucked at the cage and banged it. It was mad and tried to bite, but it just kept hitting the wooden parts of the cage. The brothers pressed the cage down with their fingertips safely on pieces of wood. The snake banged hard and could lift the cage off the ground for a second or two but it wasn’t getting anywhere.

  Fernando placed his foot on top of the cage. He figured the shoe would protect him and that way he could hold the cage down easily by pressing his weight down.

  “Get the lid.”

  Carlos went back to where they’d camped and found the lid of the cage. They’d left a slot for the lid to slide into, and he pushed it through the slot, just above the ground. He kept hitting pieces of the snake, but he pushed harder, raising the snake’s body so the top could slide farther. Eventually, the lid was in place. The snake was trapped.

  Fernando moved his foot. The snake still struggled but there wasn’t anything it could do. After another five minutes, it stopped.

  He stared at the rattler and then hugged his brother.

  “We did it. Fuck, we did it!”

  Carlos nodded and then laughed. “Without getting bit.”

  “We should have brought beer to celebrate.” He took a long deep breath. “I guess now we can wake the others.”

  Fernando walked back to look at Brittany, still sound asleep. He didn’t really want to wake her. Sometimes it felt like he never even knew her, the stranger he was married to. Sometimes he wondered what made her so uncaring and so calculating, but she never talked about her past. It was like she wanted to be thought of as having formed as an adult: no past, no memories, no secrets, no life prior to the day they’d met.

  Brittany - Sixteen Years Old

  Brittany Manning was average height for her school, average build, average everything. Being so ordinary, it was hard for her to be shunned and laughed at so much. Every day was the same. She’d hang her head low as she walked down the hall to her locker and picked out the books for the day.

  Invariably, one of the cool girls, the popular girls, would start the snickering. Soon they’d all be staring at her and laughing and of course the boys all joined in, too.

  Today, she wore her dusty gray sweater over a pink blouse. She had to wear the sweater because the blouse had a hole in the back. The sweater wasn’t much better, though. There were sections that were so worn, it looked like something a homeless person would wear.

  She wore a jean skirt that covered her knees. The jeans were old and frayed.

  The giggles followed her all day. It seemed that none of the other kids at Lincoln Park High School had to wear hand-me-downs. Or if they did, they weren’t so well-worn that they were obviously second hand. Her older sister had had to wear them until they were almost rags. Then they got stored away for Brit.

  Her mom and dad didn’t give a shit. They were dru
nk more often than not, and she knew not to say anything that involved spending money. The last time she’d complained about her clothes, she was fourteen. Her father slapped her so hard she fell and sprained her wrist when she landed. She lay in a heap, crying, for about ten minutes before she was able to pull herself together and go to her room. Her three older brothers and her sister were all far from the house at the time.

  It was the last straw. Someone had painted “Pig Girl” on her school locker in bright orange paint. Brittany felt her cheeks turn red with both embarrassment and anger. Somewhere nearby, someone laughed.

  The gray sweater she wore was clean. She’d washed it herself, along with all her other clothes. She never wore anything that was dirty. They were just old and a little tattered in places.

  A second voice joined the snickering and then a third and fourth.

  Brittany turned and ran. Kids watched her as she ran down the hall. They laughed even louder when she bumped into Mrs. Karmonson and knocked two books from her arms. The English teacher called after Brit, but she didn’t care. She didn’t slow down or turn back. She found the closest stairway and kept running down them. Later she realized she was lucky she hadn’t fallen.

  The old wooden doors leading to the school yard creaked as she pushed them. She ran and didn’t care a bit that she was being soaked by rain, her umbrella abandoned near her locker.

  She never came back to school again.

  Brittany sprinted at her fastest speed, not having a clue where she was going. After a while, she found herself under a broad oak tree and she just sat at the base of the tree and cried. She was cold and wet and ashamed and never wanted to see anybody again. Especially her parents.

  She cried for a long time. Tears mixed with raindrops, both spilling down her cheeks, racing to her chin.

  It was sometime in the middle of the morning when the skies cleared and sunshine broke through the October skies. She’d stopped crying but she didn’t remember when. It felt like she’d fallen asleep but she knew that wasn’t possible. Brittany opened her eyes and rubbed her hands over her cheeks. She knew her face would be a mess.