Scavenger Hunt

by Michaelbrent Collings

  Clint was nodding now, and Noelle flashed a quick smile, then let go of Black. Clint groaned a bit as the weight fell onto him, and flicked a look Chong’s way.

  Chong crossed his arms. The motion made his side hurt more, but he wanted Clint to get the message: I got my own problems, bub.

  Noelle felt at Dee-Dee’s neck. “She’s alive,” she said.

  Clint nodded like this was good news. “Okay, so what now?”

  The question had no answer. Chong’s mind, usually such a fertile field, lay silent and fallow. “Dammit!” he shouted. “I’m so sick of this!” He kicked the couch, the only thing in reach. The room was small, so the kick moved it enough that it hit the TV stand, sending both it and the TV into a rickety wobble.

  Everything in here was on the verge of breaking, he realized. Even him. Maybe especially him.

  “Easy,” Elena said, trying to soothe him – which only made him angrier. “We –”

  A sound slashed her words, killing them in her throat. It was a scream, but high-pitched and airy. Chong thought for a moment that it must be someone dying in the back room. But again, someone else – someone less – guessed what it was before him.

  “That’s a baby,” breathed Noelle. Her face was white, and she had her hands shoved so far in her pockets that Chong thought she might very well break through them and keep going, her whole body folding into her pockets and then disappearing into a singularity with nothing but a comic blip sound to mark her departure.

  Clint eased Black to the floor. “Guys, Solomon’s not doing well.”

  “Who gives a shit?” demanded Chong.

  Elena began walking toward the back of the house, where a small hallway obviously led to the place’s bedrooms and bathroom. She halted mid-stride when everyone’s watches beeped.

  Chong didn’t want to look. None of them did, he knew. But they looked anyway. The night still belonged to Do-Good, and perhaps it was Chong’s imagination, but Do-Good’s voice seemed to reflect that now. He sounded almost hysterical; mad with the power of life and death.

  “Do-Good says, GREAT JOB! Your next challenge is to find out who’s in the back room. An easy one, so you only get thirty seconds.”

  Chong stared at the watch, mind teetering on total numbness as he saw Do-Good’s words mirrored there. Clint sighed almost comically, then began levering Black back to his feet – or his shins, since the guy still didn’t have even enough strength to support his own weight. Black screamed, but even the scream was weak.

  Noelle stepped forward. “I got it,” said Clint. Noelle nodded and fell back.

  “How chivalrous,” muttered Chong. Then he followed as they trailed Elena down the hall.

  Noelle moved slowly, obviously working off mental fumes. The thought made Chong happy, even as it enraged him. Maybe he was doing better than she was. But what did that make him, really?

  Second dumbest in the room. Not top one percent of one percent… just barely ahead of some trashy chick who probably faked a GED to get a job at the worst bar in the worst part of town.

  It made him mad enough that he shouldered her aside so hard she gasped in pain. He liked it.

  Elena was already at the end of the hall, Clint lurching along after her, dragging Black with him. Stumpy must have found a bit of a second wind, because he was actually trying to step forward on his own. He wasn’t that great at it – he looked like someone who’d just suffered a serious stroke and been roofied at the same time – but maybe he wouldn’t slow them down so far enough that he’d get them all killed.

  Elena went into the room at the end of the hall. So did the Clint/Black dynamic duo, and Chong heard Clint mutter something under his breath as he followed them into the room.

  The baby’s cries had faded a bit, but as Chong entered the room they dialed back up to full force. “Same to you, kid,” Chong muttered. A giggle escaped his lips.

  Don’t start laughing.

  Or do. Just laugh and smile and maybe you can have a Do-Good face right before that madman blows off your head or your hand or both.

  The bedroom he found himself in was just as crappy and dirty as the rest of the place. A bed that leaned hard to one side and looked like it had only heard of clean sheets as a rumor on par with Bigfoot. Another TV, which didn’t surprise Chong; his experience was that the most impoverished person would rather part with food than their intake of media.

  As in the front room, drug paraphernalia littered the floor, along with clothing and food wrappers. The stench of the place had an almost physical weight to it.

  And there, in the corner: a crib. Movement inside as the baby who was now howling his or her little brains out grappled with a thin blue blanket.

  8

  “We can’t possibly….” Chong didn’t turn to look at the speaker, knowing that he would see only Noelle, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched up around her ears. He wanted to kill her, too, he realized.

  All of them.

  Chong looked at Elena as she lifted the baby from the crib.

  “What, are you going to burp it?” demanded Chong. “Play patty-cake?”

  Elena shifted the baby expertly to her arms, and Chong saw that it was definitely a girl. Easy enough to deduce when the baby was naked.

  He looked away. He didn’t care that the baby was naked, but she was also filthy, and Chong felt suddenly nauseous.

  He flinched as Do-Good spoke, the voice cutting into his discomfort and turning it to near-panic. “Do-Good says, KEEP IT UP! Your next challenge is to take one baby out of the house, and leave one dead body behind! Two minutes, chop-chop!”

  That made the vomit come hurtling upward. Chong clenched his jaw and forced it down, the acid burning all the way to his stomach. “Dammit!” he shrieked. He knew he didn’t have time for this, but it was either let off some steam or start giggling and puking and crying all at once. He looked around as though he might spot Do-Good, right there in the room with them all. “I will kick your ass!” he shrieked. “You hear me? I know people!”

  Movement as Noelle flinched away from him, hands in her pockets. Chong reached for her, suddenly sure that he could do this task easily. Just take the baby out, and leave the quivering, cowardly bitch behind with a broken neck and her hands shoved up her own ass instead of her pockets.

  Beeeep.

  “Do-Good says, TAKE IT EASY! Eyes on the prize, guys.”

  Chong flinched. He remembered speaking the words, right before he heard a buzzing noise and woke up in the white room.

  How long has he been watching all of us? Watching me?

  Before that moment, Chong would have guessed such surveillance was impossible. He was too smart not to notice someone tailing him, and though he knew it was possible to take over others’ computers and watch them out of their own webcams, such a thing could never happen to him. Not to one of the world’s greatest hackers, on a par with lucky12345, petr0vich, the Shadow Brokers, M0rningGl0ry, UCry2… Chong would have bet that no one but maybe the entirety of Bureau 121, North Korea’s elite team of hackers, could possibly spy on him.

  But someone had.

  Someone had heard him.

  The prospect of getting his head or hand blown off had terrified him. But this… he had to concentrate to literally keep from pissing himself.

  Elena had the baby securely in her arms now, and she hurried past. Noelle took the opportunity to shrink away from Chong, hurrying after her.

  “Wait!” shouted Clint. “We can’t! I mean, we just –”

  Elena turned. The baby’s cries had dwindled as she expertly bounced the child in her arms. “I’m good with kids,” she said quietly, as though that were an answer to Clint’s protestations. Then she turned and left the room. Noelle did, too, and Chong followed.

  They all waited in the front room, none of them daring to go far from Clint as he lurched his way down the hall, still dragging Black.

  Chong figured Black was the body they’d have to leave. Only what if he didn’t die in time?
Would the rules be broken if they killed someone on the “team”?

  He didn’t know.

  Maybe he wouldn’t have to, either. Elena was staring at Dee-Dee, who was still splayed across the couch and floor. Her eyes were open now, but whatever she had taken had not let go of her beyond that. She breathed shallowly, her body a pale shadow – almost a mockery – of life.

  “We have to leave a body behind,” murmured Elena, still bouncing the baby in her arms, sounding as calm as though she were going through a grocery list at the store.

  Carrots, check. Bread, check. Body? Isn’t that in aisle five, where they keep the junkies?

  Chong giggled again, while Noelle squeaked a horrified, “No!” and Clint said, “You can’t be serious!”

  “Eyes on the prize, guys,” Chong managed, the words coming out between the gasping giggles that still held him.

  But he wasn’t giggling as he turned and kicked, putting even more oomph behind it than when he’d kicked in the door to the house.

  The kick caught Clint square in the stomach. Chong expected that would be it for him, but the kid surprised him. He exhaled hard, the kick driving all the air from his lungs, and fell – that was to be expected – but instead of just laying on the floor, he dropped into a weird half-roll that ended with him in a crouch, ready to take whatever Chong might bring his way.

  Chong couldn’t have cared less. He wasn’t going to take on Clint. Not with a piece of clay jutting from his side, not when there was easier fruit to pick.

  Unlike Clint, Black had fallen and stayed down. He had fallen backward, somehow twisting as he did so that he splayed out parallel to the couch. Dee-Dee’s feet were only a foot from Black’s head. Not that he cared. He was staring sightlessly at the ceiling. But as far gone as he was, he seemed to know what was coming, at least on an animal level, for his legs kicked weakly, his feet driving as much as they could against the refuse-littered floor. He actually managed to push himself an extra, useless inch away from Chong.

  Too little, too late. Not that there was ever a possibility of any other outcome.

  Chong fell onto the guy. He wrapped his hands around Black’s neck. Black choked, and for a moment Chong thought the guy’s face wavered. Melted. It was Jerrod Hall, dying beneath him in an alley where no one watched and no one cared. It was Erin Westmoreland, feet beating a jitterbug dance against the floor as his crushed brain tried for a few last instructions before it gave in to the darkness.

  Something hit Chong from behind. It drove him face-forward, almost laying him flat against Black. He let go of the man’s throat with one hand, his own hand flattening against the floor to keep him from falling to the side.

  “Don’t, don’t, don’t!” shouted Noelle. She was what had hit him, jumping on his back to keep him from killing Black.

  Chong’s free hand lashed backward. He caught her with the back of his hand across her jaw. The angle was bad, but it punched her back all the same. “It has to be done, you dumb bitch!” he screamed. Then he put his hands back around Black’s throat and stared into the man’s face as he squeezed and said, “And you were always gonna die anyway, right?”

  Black made no sound. The fingers of his remaining hand scrabbled weakly against Chong’s arm. Chong felt like laughing – and finally for a good reason.

  The laughter never came, though. Instead there was a dull, meaty splut! and Black’s eyes no longer stared up at him in dread. Chong’s hands still clasped the man’s throat, but now they were drenched in gore. Splashback.

  He looked at the huge tube TV. No longer on its stand, now it was on the floor, taking up the space where Black’s head had been. A spray of red – some of which was what had wetted Chong’s own hands and arms – dyed the carpet around Black’s body in a near-perfect triangle.

  The TV had fallen. And Black’s head had just popped.

  Chong looked to the side. Elena still bounced the baby girl in one hand, the other still extended after pushing the TV over onto Black’s upraised face.

  “Shit, lady!” Chong wanted to shout. It came out as a muddled croak.

  Elena turned her gaze on Chong, and now it was not just calm, it was cold. “You were taking too long,” she said.

  9

  Chong should have said something. Wanted to. Couldn ‘t.

  Clint muttered, “Why would you…?”

  Elena walked past Clint, who stared, stunned, at Black – or at least, at Black from mid-neck down. Then past Noelle, who shrank away from her.

  Elena sighed. “We didn’t need him anymore, and he was dying anyway. Would you rather have killed her?” she asked, pointing at Dee-Dee. “A choice had to be made, and I made it.” Then she was out the door.

  Chong stood, rubbing his hands absently on his shorts as he followed her out. He barely registered that Noelle and Clint followed as well.

  Outside, Clint looked slowly from Chong to Elena to the house. “We coulda figured something out. Coulda –”

  “Maybe they were right,” interrupted Noelle.

  Clint turned to her, face showing disbelief. She leaned away from him, hands in pockets, face showing shame… but also agreement with what Chong had started and Elena had so ruthlessly finished.

  “We killed –” began Clint, then checked himself. He turned to Elena. “You killed a man. And we just kidnapped a baby!”

  Elena shrugged. “Whoever that woman is, she isn’t exactly a great mother. Social services would have taken the little girl away if we didn’t,” she said. Then she stared at the baby in her arms with eyes that were cold as long-banked coals. “Trust me, I know.”

  Clint was actually shaking. Whether with rage or fear, Chong couldn’t tell, but he worried that the kid was going to break apart, and take the rest of the survivors down by doing something stupid.

  “Oh, okay,” Clint managed through gritted teeth. “You know. Well that makes it all right. So we just – where are you going?”

  Elena had begun walking back to the house. “I’m not an idiot, Clint. And I have no reason to keep the baby, which I would have told you in a moment if you hadn’t started spouting stupidity.” She was back on the porch now, and headed toward the still-open door as she said, “Mr. Do-Good said we had to take the baby. He didn’t say we had to keep her.”

  Of course.

  The thought came not in response to Elena’s words, but to what came after. He looked at his watch before it had stopped beeping, before Do-Good started speaking.

  “Do-Good says, DON’T STOP NOW! Next challenge: leave the baby in the street – at least three blocks away. Two minutes to get ‘er done, so get moving, folks!”

  Noelle murmured what sounded like a prayer. Then, surprisingly, Clint lurched away. He started walking down the street, turning after ten feet to gesture that the others could follow him.

  Apparently Noelle, who had been signed onto Black’s death, now found a line she didn’t want to cross. “We can’t just leave the baby in the –”

  “Yeah we can,” Clint answered tersely. For a moment his eyes were every bit as hard and dark as Elena’s had been. It was only a moment, though; an expression that had come and gone so fast Chong couldn’t really be sure he had seen it at all. Then they softened as Clint added, “Trust me.”

  Chong could see Noelle considering it. Then, slowly, she nodded. Clint turned and started walking again. Noelle hurried until she was walking abreast of him, and Elena did the same a moment later.

  Chong was alone. Not far behind the group, but so alone. Discounted. Unnecessary.

  “You were taking too long,” Elena had said. And the way her eyes looked right then… Chong suspected that if it had been necessary – or even convenient – she would have dropped another TV on his head.

  Who are these people?

  Just one more question he would have to answer later. For now, he hurried after the group. Two minutes to go three blocks. Easy.

  But what was Clint planning to do when they got to wherever he was leading them? No
matter how tough a spirit the kid might be hiding inside himself, Chong doubted he had the balls to drop a baby in the street.

  Elena did, though. So the job would be done, of that he was sure.

  But it turned out Clint did have the balls to drop a baby in the street.

  One minute and thirty seconds into the walk, Clint turned and held out his hands. Elena handed the baby over with a quiet nod of approval, which Chong didn’t understand. What was going on? They were going to be seen, standing here like this. And they weren’t up to answering any questions should anyone come out and ask what they were up to.

  Clint put the baby on the street, next to the curb. He unwrapped the baby’s blanket, and as he did he said, “Give me your lighter.”

  Chong’s brain, still firing at maybe one percent of its normal speed, didn’t cough up the little factoid that Clint was talking to him until the kid glared at him and said, “Now.”

  Chong nodded, stupefied. He handed over the lighter, wondering for a mad moment if Clint planned to set the baby on fire – and an even madder moment where he wondered if it would be beautiful.

  Clint flicked the lighter, then held it to the baby’s blanket. The baby screamed as it started to realize it was on a hard, unyielding patch of asphalt. Chong cringed, not wanting anyone to hear, then – finally – realizing that was exactly what Clint wanted. The fire he had just set was just another bit of insurance.

  Clint tossed the flaming blanket about ten feet away. Flames leaped high, the blanket curling into a black mass on the driveway where Clint had chosen to toss the cloth. Then Clint darted off. Chong followed as Clint and the others ducked behind a car across the street, waiting.

  The baby kept crying.

  Chong looked at his watch. The countdown was gone: they had done what Do-Good asked, and appeared to be safe. As he did, he heard Clint exhale in relief. Chong peeked with the others around the side of the car, watching as a man came out of the building nearest to where they had left the baby.

  “Shit!” he shouted when he saw the fire – no fear at the flames, just annoyance as he stamped them out with his heavy boots. He looked around, and Chong flinched, worried the man might see them.