Scavenger Hunt

by Michaelbrent Collings

  Another slap sent her reeling, screaming. “Where is she?” demanded Two-Teeth. “That baby’s mine!”

  “She’s… she’s back there. Two-Teeth, I swear, I –”

  Two-Teeth forewent the subtlety of a slap, opting instead for a closed fist that turned Dee-Dee’s right cheek from convex to concave.

  Just like Erin Westmoreland’s head.

  “She ain’t there!” screamed Two-Teeth. “I got no money, I got no product for what the man paid for, Dee!” He hit her again. “Where is she?” Dee-Dee cried out, but before she had any chance to answer, Two-Teeth began screaming, punctuating every few words with a punch. “Where is she?” (punch) “What…” (punch) “… happened to…” (punch) “… the baby?”

  Chong didn’t know how Dee-Dee could have answered, even if she knew what to say. Her mouth had dissolved under Two-Teeth’s fist. Her lower jaw sagged, obviously dislocated, probably shattered. She made a few nnn, nnng, nnn sounds.

  Two-Teeth dropped her. She slid below the level of the couch, but there was no mystery about what was happening down there. Two-Teeth began kicking, then the kicks turned to stomps. The sounds changed, too, from muffled thumps to sharp cracks to moist, sucking noises.

  Two-Teeth stomped down one last time. Chong heard a sickening splut.

  “What happened to the kid?” Two-Teeth demanded. But the words were spoken in an offhand way that neither demanded nor expected a reply.

  Chong wondered what he would see if he could be a fly on the wall. He suspected that there would now be two headless corpses in the room: one whose skull had been squashed under the weight of circa-1980 electronics, the other whose head had been flattened under size-sixteen Nikes.

  Movement caught his attention. Chong looked down, seeing Noelle. She was quivering, one hand dug into her pocket, the other clamped over her mouth as she stifled the screams that so obviously wanted to come.

  Chong’s eyes narrowed. He put a finger over his lips, then moved it ninety degrees to slide it across his throat, putting every remaining shred of confidence and threat into his expression as he wordlessly let the silly little girl know that if she made a sound, Two-Teeth wouldn’t even have a chance to come after her.

  If you blow us… if that guy comes after us… we might be in trouble, but I promise promise promise you that you will be the first person to pay.

  Noelle nodded. She looked like she was gagging back vomit, but no sound came.

  Clint, white-faced and terrified as well, reached out and grabbed her arm. He squeezed it reassuringly, and that seemed to help.

  A moment later, though, any reassurance was lost again as a new sound tore through the night.

  Sirens.

  Police.

  And then, in between the rise and fall sound of the sirens, a beep that Chong felt as a physical blow. He tensed, not even looking at his watch for a moment, sure that Two-Teeth must have heard it.

  Maybe he did. But whether he did nor not, apparently he decided that he didn’t want to be found inside a house full of dead bodies – at least one of which likely had his footprints etched into what remained of her.

  Two-Teeth started cursing under his breath, a low roll of obscenities that could have killed small animals, but at least the curses started to move away from the window.

  Chong released a breath he hadn’t known he was holding and looked at his watch. Words scrolled across, and Do-Good whispered, in an almost pained voice, “Do-Good says, DON’T GET CAUGHT.”

  Chong abruptly realized that he was alone. The others had deduced what the message meant before he did: that the cops were coming here, that it was part of Do-Good’s plan, and that they had to abandon ship fast.

  Noelle was the farthest away, dragging Clint behind her as she ran around the side of the house, keeping low in case Two-Teeth looked out any of the windows. Elena was fast on their heels.

  Chong cursed.

  Not second-dumbest in the pack. The dumbest now.

  His collar beeped, warning him that he had to catch up with the rest of the scavenger hunt’s contestants.

  He ran for the corner of the house, wanting to call out to the others to slow down but not daring to do so. He wanted to call out, to ask what they thought would happen if they came around the front of the house at the same time Two-Teeth came out of it. But yelling would just hasten any meeting between the group and the homicidal maniac in the house.

  All he could do was run, staying low as well as he passed under a window. Around the corner. Passing the side door –

  – and in the instant he did, the door seemed to explode.

  Two-Teeth was coming out.

  Two-Teeth was here, now.

  Even as he realized it, Chong felt the solid thud of someone barreling into him. Actually, it was more like being hit by a car. He felt no give the way he would have expected to when flesh hit flesh. He just felt a solid block as Two-Teeth knocked into him, then fell on top of him.

  Chong would have guessed the gangster weighed in at upward of three hundred pounds. When he hit the hard ground and felt the other man’s full weight on him, he upped that to at least three-fifty. He looked up, reeling from the twin impact of the ground and the man on top of him, not sure which was harder or less forgiving.

  Two-Teeth stared down at him. Anger settled into his features, replaced by a burning rage as he glanced to his left. Chong followed his gaze, realized what the gangster was looking at, and suddenly knew without a doubt that he was in the last moments of his life.

  Two-Teeth saw Elena. Saw the backpack she wore. The backpack they had taken from Two-Teeth’s own room.

  “YOU STOLE FROM ME!” he roared. Absently, almost idly, he put one of his big hands around Chong’s throat. The world immediately began to spin around him, and Chong wondered if he was about to have done to him what he had done to Jerrod Hall.

  He’s going to kill me. Kill me, then kill the others.

  Who gives a shit what comes after? He’s going… to… kill… me… and…

  Chong’s thoughts began to drift. He was losing consciousness.

  No. You’re a winner… always… winning…

  Two-Teeth didn’t stop choking him, but apparently wasn’t content with simply crushing his enemy’s throat. He pulled, and Chong felt his head lifted away from the ground, then Two-Teeth shoved violently, bouncing Chong’s skull off the ground.

  “You stole!” screamed Two-Teeth. He slammed Chong’s head against the ground again. Again. “Stole from me!”

  Chong heard something break. It sounded like it happened in the middle of his brain, the sound an explosion that ricocheted through his body and mind.

  Something broken. Broken…

  Dancing. I’m dancing. Two-Teeth is killing me like I tried to kill that pecker Black and now I’m dancing like Erin Westmoreland.

  That was the thing that made him act. The lizard brain part of himself knew he was dying, knew it was over… but knew, also, that it didn’t want to go out alone.

  Chong barely registered what he was doing. The world had stopped swimming and was now dark. His hands felt far away and he could no longer feel his feet or legs at all.

  Paralyzed.

  (Then how will I dance with Erin Westmoreland?)

  His thoughts fell apart, but that lizard part of him still managed to do what it wanted. Still reached to his side, still pulled the sharp piece of clay from inside him. He felt the blood gout, felt warmth on his hands – again, only unlike when he felt it after Elena dropped a TV on Black’s head, this time the blood seemed not just warm but burning and Chong knew it was because it was his blood not some nobody’s it was his and there was no way that it could be his blood he was dying but he couldn’t be dying and…

  His thoughts fell away. But not before he curled his hand tightly around the clay and punched up and to the side with it.

  For a moment. Two-Teeth’s hands slackened. For a moment, Chong’s vision returned – at least enough to see the huge man’s hand cla
mped to the side of his throat, trying hopelessly to staunch the flood of red spurting around the rough edges of a clay shard.

  “What about… my money?” Two-Teeth managed, even though the blood burbled out of his mouth, too, making him sound as though he was drowning.

  He sagged.

  Chong grinned.

  Killed you, Erin Westmoreland. No one gonna call me Chong unless I want them to. You don’t get to. Not you or Jerrod Hall or Mommy or Daddy or David Tomlinson and the spoon full of sugar that I hate so much playing in the background and… and…

  Chong’s thoughts went away. The lizard closed its eyes and did not open them again.

  Interlude

  1

  Hope opened her eyes, then closed them, then opened them again.

  That was how it went for hours and days and weeks and… forever. That was how it seemed, anyway: a forever time where she opened her eyes and saw/sensed something, then closed them, and when they reopened there was a new sight, a new feel.

  Blink, blink, blink, and times and places passed by with a strangeness she had never known and could never hope to understand.

  She did know this, though: she hurt.

  First the hurt was deep inside her, curled in her heart and her stomach. It felt like there was a heavy weight, a piano or an elephant that sat directly upon her.

  Then the pain moved. It flashed like lightning, pulsing through her arms and hands, then her legs and feet. Each burst of electric pain made her scream, even though the screams went no farther than the outer edges of her mind. She made no sound.

  Blink, blink, blink; pain, pain, pain.

  She opened her eyes and saw Daddy looking at her, his kind eyes kinder than she had ever seen them before. “… all right, sweetie,” he was saying. He smiled, and she knew that he saw her open her eyes. Then the smile faded, and the world faded with it –

  (blink)

  – and when she opened her eyes again, she saw gray with a bright spot. A ceiling? She heard the wah-wah-wah of a siren, but it sounded far away. She heard people murmuring, but could not tell what they were saying. Then –

  (blink)

  – she opened her eyes once more, and the gray was gone. Instead she saw only blue, blue sky. She heard a sound, too, a whop-whop-whop that she knew she had heard before, but did not know where or when. She heard a voice she didn’t know, partially drowned-out by that strange whop-whop-whop.

  “… be nice being rich… nything happen, can’t….”

  (blink)

  The darkness this time was longer. There were vague sensations inside it, but none pierced the blackness. She felt things pulling, pushing. Hands all over her, rubbing parts of her. She felt the pain grow stronger, then fall away to nothing. Then the pain came back, but it didn’t hurt, exactly. More like she was floating over it, as though the pain were a river and she was floating down it on a raft the way she did that one time with Daddy when they both went to Hawaii.

  The darkness wavered. Colors sparked behind her eyes, and when she opened them she stared once more at a bright spot on gray. Different than before, though: the gray she saw was darker, the light brighter. She stared at it for a long time, then did something she felt like she had not done in a million years: she moved her head.

  She saw white now, instead of the gray. She didn’t understand what the white was, though – not until it moved. She heard the low swish of fabric, and smelled a dry, acidic smell as the person wearing the white coat moved past her.

  Another person took the place of the first. Another white coat. A pair of hands dropped into her sight, and she felt something touch her arm.

  (blink)

  She woke again, and again turned her head. She saw white, but not a coat. She saw a bed. Someone was in the bed, but she could not see who it was. No one she knew, she thought. A man? Probably. Probably old, because his arms were thin and gray and covered in fine white hairs.

  She closed her eyes.

  This time, the blink was different. This time she saw something in the darkness: a face. Small like hers, and strangely familiar. The face’s eyes were closed. Then they opened, and again Hope screamed inside herself. She screamed and screamed and screamed, because the face had no eyes. There was just a dark field, a blackness so complete that Hope knew it wasn’t just blackness, it was nothing at all.

  She was looking at infinity, though she did not understand the term as such. She knew only that she was looking at something so dark and so perfect that she could not understand it beyond knowing that it was unnatural. It was wrong.

  She tried to close her eyes, to shut herself away from the dreadful sight of the two dark pits that stared at her with nothing behind them, nothing inside them. But of course, she could not shut her eyes, because they were already shut. She floated in a dream, then drowned in a nightmare.

  Then she woke up, one last time. She stayed awake.

  And the real nightmare began in earnest.

  2

  FBI REPORT FILE FA2017R2

  Appendix C

  Reproduction of comments on partial videos recovered from designate Portobello Road – see Appendix AC for list of videos recovered from Portobello Road, and report sections 21 through 22 in re actions taken to recover videos and reconstruct corrupted files where applicable.

  See also Appendix AD list of possible Portobello Road users who may have commented on applicable videos

  For list of known homicides possibly attributable to Portobello Road users, please see report for File FA 2018R2.

  See also Appendix AD and files referred therein to list of Portobello Road videos, comments, and homicides. N.B.: Hard copies of the files must be relied upon, as all electronic files are subject to corruption by parties unknown. See Internal Report FA 2019R43.

  ---

  Comments to Portobello Road video designated PR9

  ---

  5 COMMENTS - SORT BY

  Name: XXXXXXXXXX

  Comment: I checked the names. Legit. This happened. IS happening.

  Name: XXXXXXXXXX

  Comment: Bullshit. Stinks of a sting.

  Name: XXXXXXXXXX

  Comment: Can’t be. Would be entrapment.

  Name: XXXXXXXXXX

  Comment: Not worth it.

  Name: XXXXXXXXXX

  Comment: I DID IT. NOT THE VIDEO, I DID WHAT THE VIDS SAID AND IT WORKED GUYS HOLY SHIT DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS WE CAN MAKE IT RIGHT WE CAN STOP IT ALL AND MAKE IT RIGHT

  FOUR

  1

  Elena heard nothing but ringing at first. Then she became aware – slowly – that the ringing had dissolved to a series of short, sharp tones. Beep-beep-beep…

  She looked down. Tried to find the communicator on her wrist, but for some reason couldn’t see it. She couldn’t see much of anything, for that matter; the world had dissolved into a white so bright the memory alone made her eyes water anew.

  The tears helped, though. She blinked them away, trying to find the source of the beeping, to find out what Mr. Do-Good wanted before he got fed up and –

  Sight and understanding rushed into her mind.

  Chong. Chong he died. Then…

  Then he’d exploded. Nothing small like when Solomon had his hand blown off, not even the larger blasts from when Mr. Do-Good demonstrated the punishment for refusing to play by blasting the heads off the mannequins in the white room. The explosion this time started with the collar, no doubt, but whatever was packed into the devices around their necks must be much more powerful than Mr. Do-Good had let on. A bright flash, then a shockwave knocked Elena right off her feet, and when she managed to sit up –

  (beep-beep-beep)

  – there was nothing left of Chong or the gangster who had attacked him but a dark patch on the ground, and a larger ring of red and gray.

  She blinked again. Looked at her wrist, trying to find the communicator. She still couldn’t see it, and had to blink more until she realized why, and wiped away the thick layer of soot and soft matter th
at covered it.

  Bits of Chong. This is all that’s left of him, just a sludge to be wiped away.

  She tried not to think of that. It wasn’t hard, because a moment later she read the words on Mr. Do-Good’s communicator and realized she had been hearing another sound for a few minutes. Sirens. Getting louder, coming closer.

  Not good.

  Worse than not good, in fact. The cops were coming, and Mr. Do-Good did not like that fact. Or at least, he didn’t want any of the remaining players of his game to meet up with the newcomers. That was the message she saw on the communicator, and heard Do-Good saying.

  “Do-Good says, DON’T GET CAUGHT! Run, run, RUN!”

  A moment later, Elena felt something grab her. She screamed and tried to hit it, but the swing was unpracticed and wild and she felt only air.

  Whoever was holding her grunted and said, “Elena, we have to go.”

  She punched again, her mind still fighting the shock of the explosion that had knocked her off her feet. This time she connected with something, and was rewarded by the ooof of someone in pain.

  Oddly, she placed the tone and timbre of the sound and matched it to a face and name even though she had not been able to do so with the actual words of the speaker only a moment before.

  “Clint?” said Elena, and barely recognized her own voice. High-pitched, pinched with terror and confusion and pain. She sounded like a little girl version of herself. Like the children she saw every day, coming in and out of her office in a never-ending train of misery.

  “Time to go, Elena,” said Clint, and she felt herself lifted to her feet. She wobbled for a moment, and another set of hands steadied her.

  “Easy,” said Noelle.

  The world finally focused – or came as close to focusing as anything could on a night where madness ruled.

  “What…?” managed Elena.