The panic scared him senseless. For a while literally; he hadn’t even been able to talk when he woke. The older gal woke him, which was a shame given that he’d much rather have opened his eyes to see the other chick’s face. Noelle was low-rent, trashy – and that would have put her squarely in a category that Chong dug on.
But no… just his luck.
The older woman – Elena – had spoken to him for a while, but the words were just a continuous wa-wa-wa that Chong could not understand.
Eventually his pain- and panic-fogged mind cleared enough to hear her. But he didn’t care what she was saying. When she asked his name, he used the name he’d adopted all those years back as a vengeful reminder that sticks and stones might break his bones, but call Chong a name and that name will be the last thing you think of as a brick pounds through your skull.
So Chong spoke little.
Mr. Do-Good, though… that dude said a lot. Not just with his strange, jerky, disjointed words, but with the way he said them. Odd stutters in his speech, breaks in the middle of sentences like he had lost the track of his sentence and had to look at cue cards to figure out where he was again.
Crazier than a bag of schizophrenic cats.
Chong did what the dude said, though. He followed to the house that looked like the set of a gangsta rap video. He ran from a dude that looked like he’d been tossed off a gangsta rap video for looking too tough for that kind of music.
He ran, and ran, and ran.
The panic pulsed inside him. But still there was also that sensation.
What a rush.
What a rush.
WHAT. A. RUSH.
The rush sharpened when that idiot Black –
(What a name! If there’s anything worse than a Chinese guy called Chong, it has to be a black dude actually named Black.)
– almost got them killed while they waited at Two-Teeth’s place. Chong didn’t even think about attacking him on the roof. It just happened. They rolled off, fell. Chong on top in an instant, just like always, and that fought the panic back. He was winning, just like always. He’d killed a lot of people, but not by strangling them. No one but Jerrod Hall had ever had their throat crushed by Chong’s big hands.
Grabbing Black like that felt like a replay of a favorite memory.
Rush, a rush, what a rush-rush-RUSH!
Then the bastard stabbed him. Shoved a goddam piece of a goddam gnome into him, and every time Chong moved the thing sent shocks of pain running up and down his entire frame.
They had to run, and the piece was still in him. Chong knew it might well be cutting him to pieces inside, but at least as long as the bit of clay or ceramic or whatever it was remained there, no blood gouted. He knew it was only a matter of time, but what else could he do?
He ran with others – literally and figuratively – for the first time in his entire life. They were bound to him, and he to them.
He hated it.
Hated it more when he saw the idiot Black –
– running toward what turned out to be an off-duty cop. Chong didn’t give two farts in a bottle that the dude got his hand blown off, though he was more than a little irritated when something stung him an instant later and he pried it out of his cheek and realized he was looking at one of the cop’s teeth.
What a rush became, Is this really happening?
And he knew the answer. The horrible answer.
Now, more running. Holding Black’s nearly-dead weight, dragging the man along as they ran to Do-Good’s next assignment. Clint was under Black’s other arm – the one that ended in an oozing stump, thank Heaven; Chong figured he’d rather actually die than have to be holding that thing.
“We gotta ditch him,” he panted.
“You know we can’t,” Clint answered, his voice also coming in gasps.
And there it was. The biggest panic in this whole thing: Chong wasn’t in charge. Do-Good was, and that was no big news. But worse than that, Chong sensed he wasn’t even the most important person among the strangers who had found themselves in a deranged scavenger hunt.
Even Solomon Black was more important than him right now. Because Black was the only one who knew where they had to be in only…
Chong glanced at the smartwatch/explosive on his wrist. A tiny corner of his brain noted what it looked like. When he got out of this, he’d start something new. Something grand. He’d key off what he’d seen of Do-Good’s operation, hunting through the dark web until he found the stuff. No way was it legal, so the only way it could be here was via a place like Portobello Road. Chong would hack everything he could find. He’d tear apart the base code of the entire world to find Do-Good. And then he’d make him pay.
But not now. Because that death-switch on his arm showed they had only a bit over five minutes left to get where they were going. 1089 Heart Street. They’d had twenty minutes to get there, but dealing with Black’s stupidity had cost them more minutes than they could afford.
And Do-Good knew it would happen.
That was obvious. Why else would he give them twenty minutes to take a walk that Black had told them all would be much shorter than that?
He knew. Knew.
Again the panic surged. The danger-radar was still sounding its long, flatline tone in his mind. Chong worried that soon it would be an actual flatline. Because when he was up against someone as prepared as Do-Good, what could he do but die?
No. I can survive. Then… something worse than Jerrod Hall, worse than Erin Westmoreland. Do-Good’s gonna die, and it’s gonna take a good long time. Then who’s gonna be wearing the smile, huh?
He said none of it. He just ran. Stopped a moment when they got to another intersection. Just like every time it had happened since Black got himself exploded, Clint jostled the sagging man and pointed at the green cross-panels that showed the names of the intersecting streets.
Each time, Black took a bit longer to respond. This time was the longest yet. His voice slurred. “It’sh… it’sh….” Clint jostled him again as his voice faded. Black jerked upright, pain obviously chasing away some of the cloud of darkness that must be enveloping his mind.
Why does everything bad always happen to me?
“Uhhh… right… righ….”
Black faded again. Clint started pulling them to the right, Elena and Noelle already heading that way. Chong resisted. “We don’t know that’s the right way.”
“He said it was,” murmured Clint.
“He’s out of it. We gotta leave him.”
“We stay together or we die.”
“How do you know? Maybe we don’t. Mine was the only one that lit up when I tried to run off. Maybe it’s just the person who leaves the group – or gets left behind. Or maybe….” Chong licked his lips. They were dry, parched with the dehydration caused by all the running and all the panic. He wished for a moment he’d drunk more water back at the white room. “Maybe we just kill him. Then we’re not leaving a player behind. We’re just leaving a body.”
“No,” said Clint. His eyes were suddenly hard. Harder than Chong’s, even when he was killing people with his bare hands. Chong wondered what the kid’s story was.
Nothing good.
“We’re taking him. We’re taking everyone,” said Clint.
Beyond them, Elena and Noelle had stopped. They were tethered to the group, just as Chong was. “Come on,” shouted Noelle, her voice shrill with terror.
Chong sighed. He started dragging Black’s dead weight. Another glance at his watch.
Two minutes left. Two minutes, and who knew how far left to run?
6
A bad moment where they ran into a bum who looked like he wanted to chat with them about the benefits of tinfoil hats, another when they had to run past a fire station and Chong’s heart began to pound, fearful someone would come in or out of the place and spot the suspicious group running along in the middle of the night. But they ran past the bum, and no one came out of the fire station.
Still,
they weren’t going very fast, and every step shaved precious seconds from their time, and Chong felt every one of those seconds like a knife, hacking away at the edges of the only life that really mattered in all this: his.
They stopped at another intersection. “Which way?” said Clint.
Black didn’t answer, so Chong hollered, “Which way, asshole?” in Black’s ear.
Black mumbled something Chong couldn’t make out. Partly because it was low and muddled, partly because at the same time, Clint said, “Right. We go right.”
“How do you –” snarled Chong, cutting off when he realized that Clint’s eyes had gone from the street signs to a house across the deserted street. It finally registered that one of the street signs said the most beautiful set of words he’d ever seen: Heart St. And just across, kitty-corner from them, stood 1089.
They slogged across the street, and as they did Chong’s confidence returned. They’d be all right. They’d make it through the scavenger hunt, and then Chong would be the one to make the rules of the game. A game only Do-Good would play, and only Do-Good would lose.
The confidence fell away while he and Clint were still in the street. The mind-beep, solid and sustained, was replaced by the beep-beep-beep of the collars around Chong’s, Clint’s, and Black’s collars.
Elena and Noelle were already across the street, already standing in front of the house. Chong could see the question in their eyes: should they go, and risk being blown up with Chong and the others, or should they stay where they were in the hopes that Do-Good let them keep playing?
Neither woman spoke, but both appeared to come to the same decision at once. They hurried back to Chong and the others. Which was stupid, because it wasn’t like they could help him or Clint drag Black any faster.
Beep-beep-bee –
The sound cut off.
Made it.
But of course there was no celebration, no cheering, and definitely no rush. Even if anyone had been inclined to shout in joy or do a cartwheel, there was no time. The collars stopped making noise, but the watches all blinked. They all looked at their watches even as Do-Good spoke.
All but Black. Bruthah gots no watch to look at, yo!
The thought, ridiculous as it was, made Chong want to giggle. He didn’t. If he started, he thought he probably wouldn’t stop.
He focused on the watch, on Do-Good’s voice, his hysteria gradually swallowed in anger and confusion.
“Do-Good says, WAY TO GO! But no rest for the wicked. Next challenge: get inside the house. Time: sixty seconds!”
The countdown started. Before “60” had shifted to “59,” Elena was already moving. She walked toward the house that Do-Good had directed them to. Like most of the others in the neighborhoods they had passed through, the place was a shitheap. Sagging eaves, scrub-ridden dirt all around it. Graffiti on a few of the walls, one “window” broken out and replaced with a haphazardly-bolted patchwork of plywood sheets, the others covered by black iron bars.
“P… please…,” murmured Black.
Elena was on the porch now, the backpack full of all the money they’d taken from Two-Teeth’s crib bouncing on her shoulders as she leaped toward the front door.
She knocked. Chong felt like panic no longer just gripped him. Now it was squeezing the life out of him. He wouldn’t have been surprised to feel his head pop like an overripe zit.
“Hey!” shouted Noelle. “That’s not allowed! We –”
“We’re allowed to talk if they talk first. We just have to wait until they say, ‘Hello.’” Elena’s response came out crisp and calm, and Chong couldn’t help but admire her poise. She was someone he’d like to work with, to face on opposite ends of a Portobello Road deal.
She was also likely to get them killed, which dampened a lot of his admiration of her.
“Noelle’s right,” Chong said. “We don’t know –”
Elena cut him off with a gesture, then pointed at Black. “Mr. Do-Good helped us with this one.”
“Helped!” barked Clint.
Elena kept talking, still cool as ice. “They’ll let us in when they see him. They say, ‘What happened?’ and we respond and ask to come in and they let us.” She pointed at her watch. “Mission accomplished.”
“They might not let us in,” Noelle said. Her hands wrung together, then shoved into her pockets. “Not in this neighborhood.”
At the same time Clint, his voice laden with disgust, said, “Is that all you see here? An opportunity to game the system? Damn, lady, this guy’s dying and all you can see is –”
Before he could finish, Noelle pulled one hand out of her pocket and glanced at her watch. She suddenly bounded to the door herself and knocked again.
Chong laughed quietly. Elena had already done that. What more did Noelle expect.
And sure enough, nothing happened.
“Come on,” Noelle muttered, knocking harder. “Come on!”
“Hold him,” Chong said, letting Black’s arm slide off his shoulder. Clint grunted as he suddenly took the full weight of the other man.
“What –”
Chong ignored him. He hurried to the porch, looking at his watch as he did. Twenty-five seconds.
As he ran to the door, he glanced automatically into the room. A light was on inside, a bulb that hung naked from the ceiling, flickering due to a loose filament or just crappy wiring in the entire house. The dim glow it cast allowed Chong to see a view he suspected was typical for this area: junky chair, couch with stuffing leaking from several tears, all oriented toward a large tube-style TV that hunkered on a stand at least two sizes too small for it.
The glance showed him little else, and nothing at all he cared about. The time was counting down, and whether Elena’s “please help us” theory was right or wrong, they didn’t have time to be subtle.
Chong reared back on one foot, kicking out with the other. He half expected his foot to bounce off a steel core held to a reinforced frame, given the crime-ridden neighborhood they had operated in all night. But the door just crackled, splintered, and opened. Half the frame came off around it, leaning to the side and then falling to the floor inside the room with a dry clatter.
Chong looked back. “Move!” he shouted. They did. Noelle had already run back and now struggled with Clint, the both of them bearing the full weight of Black. The ‘banger’s head lolled from side to side as they lurched inside.
Elena made it before them, of course, and she and Chong counted the seconds on their watches as Noelle and Clint tried to move fast and fast and faster still.
They made it with a full three seconds to spare. Chong stared at his watch as the countdown halted, expecting new instructions. Do-Good’s smiley face avatar spun and winked in the corner, but nothing else appeared.
“Made it,” said Noelle.
“Yeah,” said Chong, turning to take a better look at the room and hopefully figure out what they were going to do here. He would be a good dog for now. He didn’t have a choice.
But sooner or later, me and Do-Good are coming face to face. I won’t strangle him. He’ll just wish for something that easy.
A deeper look at the place revealed little more than Chong had already seen through the window. Only one thing of note, in fact. But that thing caused him to freeze.
They weren’t alone in the room.
7
“Why isn’t she moving?” asked Elena, echoing the question that was ringing through Chong’s mind.
He hadn’t seen the woman on the couch when he looked in the window. Part of that, he knew, was that panic and adrenaline had done a real one-two punch on his mental status. But the other part was that the woman was so thin, so motionless, so…
Gray.
Even in the flickering twilight of the room, Chong could see that her color was off. She slumped on the couch, almost off it. Her legs had jammed up against the chair that was the room’s only other furniture, and Chong suspected that was the only reason she hadn’t slid right on
to the floor.
“What’s wrong with her? Why didn’t she –” began Noelle.
“Drugs,” whispered Black.
Chong jerked, surprised to hear the man’s voice.
Shouldn’t he be dead by now?
Shouldn’t we all be dead by now?
(And in his mind he heard Do-Good’s madly jittering voice saying, “Don’t worry, give it time!”)
The thoughts were unwelcome, and Chong covered them with a kind of intentional disgust. “Shit, man,” he said to Black, not even knowing if the guy could hear him. “You’re jonesing at a time like this? You’re a junkie on top of everything –”
“No,” said Elena. “He meant the girl’s on drugs. Dee-Dee.”
Again, Chong didn’t understand. Again, that fact frightened him. He was a genius. One of the smartest people in the United States, probably.
And he was missing things. He had missed the drug paraphernalia on the floor – a few lighters, some crinkled tinfoil, bent spoons, syringes. He had missed the tube around the arm of the woman on the couch, the needle tracks clustered like a dark nebula around the inner crook of her elbow. The trashy, obviously fake-gold chain around her neck that had the words “Dee-Dee” in ridiculous cursive letters in the middle.
“Dee-Dee,” he said. He sounded empty, but again couldn’t help it. His mind wasn’t doing the right things.
Flatlining. Everything’s flatlining.
(Death is coming, and it’ll be the ultimate rush… and it won’t be fun at all.)
“Is she alive?” asked Clint.
Noelle looked at him, obviously asking if she could let go of Black, which Chong found hilarious. She could probably let him fall and then kick him in the face and he wouldn’t even notice.
But he noticed more than you did. He noticed the drugs.
Chong hated the guy even more at that moment. His side, where the piece of lawn gnome felt like it was chewing its way through not just his body but his very soul, added an extra shard of agony, as though happy to remind Chong that Black had gotten the best of him.
Gonna get him, too. Do-Good, Black, all of them.
Scavenger Hunt Page 14