by Ryan Harding
He’s saving her for last. He’ll probably take a day to kill her.
He hesitated when he was close enough to grab her at the lake house. Could Annette be right? Could Gin expect an excruciating, lingering death?
With a shiver, she crossed her arms. She squatted in the doorway to make herself less of a target for his arrows if he spotted her first. From her new angle she could see the tops of the distant trees swaying in the wind. She couldn’t help glancing at the shadowy faces on the stakes, but she quickly looked from the repugnant, dehumanizing sight to the woods again. Still…the heads remained in the foreground.
“Maybe check the bathroom for old toilet paper rolls if the light reaches,” Patrick said. “They might keep spares near the front.”
Adam hurried over and pushed in one of the doors, momentarily vanishing. He bounced back out a second later like the floor was on fire, gagging. “Oh, God!’
“I meant the ladies’ room,” Patrick said wryly. “Keep your head in the game.”
She turned back to the parking lot. What would her parents think of her disappearance? Earlier with Adam she callously joked they wouldn’t notice but they would, they definitely would, and she hated how Hoon had come between them. They loved him instantly, probably because he’d been in America for less than a year and it was their firm, non-negotiable desire she marry a Korean or a Korean with Korean parents (Korean adoptees of Caucasians ended up “too American,” according to them). For them, it was all about culture. They hadn’t understood why she rejected Hoon and refused to listen when she’d told them of his domineering side, which included a lot of wrist-grabbing like he thought he was the star of a K-Drama. The parents who’d never allowed her a serious boyfriend until giving their fickle approval were too obstinate to admit after years of careful deliberation they had made a bad choice. In their eyes the restraining order took things too far and suddenly everything she had ever done had been thrown in her face, including her use of the nickname “Gin” instead of her given name Ja-in—alas, to her parents “Gin” could be mistaken as Japanese (and apparently Vietnamese, too), something they found absolutely scandalous. Thanks to Hoon they’d barely spoken in the weeks leading up to her abduction.
Why me? Why couldn’t they have chosen Hoon?
Despite the fact Hoon was a grade-A dickhead, she felt guilty for wishing him in here. This shouldn’t be happening to anyone.
Her fingers were dirty so she wiped her eyes with the back of her hands and quickly parried the tears. At least her parents weren’t in here. It was easy to play the level head with Adam, but she would have been prone to the same rash mistakes with her parents. And he’d have stopped her, too.
A loud clatter behind her made her jump. Patrick and Adam had inserted the sofa between the elevator doors, which knocked the chair into the shaft. The sofa had a plethora of flammable items on it, including an old phone book that would fetch hundreds of dollars for someone who managed to smuggle it out of the Kill Zone.
“Don’t set me on fire,” Patrick warned, and Gin instinctively looked for the bottle of napalm. It was several yards away.
When the phone book caught fire, Patrick shifted its angle so it spread upwards. “Back away,” he told Adam. He knelt beside the sofa and used the flaming phone book to light one of the cushions. Gin could now smell the smoke from the burning paper. Gingerly, Patrick propped the burning phone book on the sofa where the missing seat cushion would have been. He pointed to the shattered coffee table. Adam fetched the scraps of wood.
Smoke rolled from the old sofa and rose to the ceiling. Patrick pushed the sofa halfway into the shaft and Adam tossed the kindling on top. The dark shaft now glowed with flickering red-orange light. Patrick crouched at the edge to observe its progress.
Adam joined Gin at the doorway. With a crooked smile, he proffered a cracked coffee mug with the words “Morgan Falls Lodge” written on the side. When Gin nodded toward the elevator shaft, he shrugged with no explanation for Patrick’s act of vandalism.
The noxious smell of the smoke filled the lobby.
Patrick grabbed the bottle of napalm and hurried over to them. “That’s what I like to call ‘fucking with the contractors.’” He pointed across the parking lot to the forest. “Okay, one by one, five second intervals, we’re going to take up station just inside the woods there.”
“What if he’s watching?” Adam asked.
“Why would he reconnoiter? He’d just come straight at us.”
“Traps?” Gin asked.
“He can’t have the entire woods trapped. Stay at the edge. We’ll get situated once we’re all there. And don’t drop that mug if you want water.” Patrick tapped Adam’s shoulder. “Go.”
Adam ran for all he was worth. For a moment Gin worried this was all a ploy to separate from Adam. The fear escalated to horror as the seconds rolled on and nothing happened. Then she felt the tap and heard “Go!” and she was off. They hadn’t seen Agent Orange since the lake house but Gin ran like he was on her heels.
Adam looked back at her several times to make sure she was behind him. Gin looked toward the lake road, half-expecting to see Orange materialize like some otherworldly specter. As Adam neared the woods, she was gripped by the fear she would hear the crack of a toe-popper or see him lifted into the air by a rope and swung against a tree trunk hard enough to shatter bones. None of this happened and he beckoned her from the spot. Gin hopped over the curb, through the tall weeds, nerves on edge that each step would put her on the ground like Nathan. In moments she joined Adam in the trees, panting. It took Patrick another eight seconds to reach them and as soon as he did she smelled the gasoline.
Wisps of smoke curled from the front of the lobby, but by now Gin expected to see it billowing. No flames were visible. The lobby seemed unbelievably dark, as if the trip from there had taken a half hour instead of a minute.
“So what next?” Adam whispered, his breathing slowly returning to normal. He squatted so close to Gin the hair of his leg tickled the back of her hand.
“We stay put for a moment and make sure this works.” He pointed to the hotel. “Next we go to Morgan to find a safe place to stay for the night.”
“That’s it?” Gin asked. Stay would not have been part of any plan she considered on her own.
“I didn’t want to say this in there because they’ve probably got the place bugged,” Patrick answered, “but there is no scenario where one of us escapes to tell the tale of some secret agency providing Agent Orange with kills. It’s never happened and it won’t happen. If we get rescued at the wall we’re certain to meet with a nasty fate soon afterward.” He shrugged. “Or we end up back in here, perhaps hobbled so we don’t stand a chance of making it to the wall a second time.”
If Adam made the connection Patrick tried to trade him to the other group and share their inevitable fate, he didn’t let on. Patrick would probably have some clever way to justify it to Adam’s satisfaction if confronted. It irritated Gin she had almost been a party to the separation. No, it flat-out pissed her off. Patrick had miscalculated her feelings. If Adam went with the others and Patrick imparted this “No Way Out” theory, she would have gone back for him.
“So we…have to fight Agent Orange?” Adam asked.
“What’s it matter if we kill him?” Gin asked. “He comes back—or maybe he never dies in the first place. You’re saying we die here or they’ll kill us if we get out of here, but no matter what, we’ll die?”
“I know this is upsetting but use your inside the KZ voice, please; that smoke should be the extent of the distraction we provide for the others.” Patrick took his own voice to a whisper and added, “The powers that be gave us a death sentence, but we also have a certain amount of freedom. We just have to use our brains.”
“But we’re stuck here in the Kill Zone?” Gin asked.
“For a few weeks at least, yes.”
“Why a few weeks?”
“By then they’ll assume we’re dead.”
And we probably will be.
“What about surveillance?” Adam asked. “Can’t they see us with satellites and high powered cameras?”
“Little known secret: electronic surveillance doesn’t work very well with the Kill Zone. Bizarre variations in the electromagnetic spectrum around here cause distortions, which is about the only advantage we have,” Patrick said.
“Advantage? With the government, maybe, but Orange is the more pressing matter, don’t you think?” Gin sighed. “So what happens once two or three weeks have passed?”
“First, we have to find a safe exit that doesn’t go through a military post. Those guys who sneak in and out of here…” Patrick paused to look at Adam.
“Stalkers?”
“Right, Stalkers.”
How could a guy know top secret government information but not know the name for the men and women who stole Kill Zone artifacts for private collections and snuck people in on private tours? Even Gin knew that much. She also knew that contrary to popular belief, the name wasn’t based on a video game series but a Russian movie. Patrick must have known but prompted Adam anyway. It seemed like a cheap way to make him feel part of the “team” again.
Patrick continued, “They have ways in and out that go around the military blockades. Those fuckers would be harder to track than Agent Orange but we’ll manage.”
“And then?” Gin prompted.
“I’ve got some offshore accounts. Nest eggs even the NSA doesn’t know about. It’s all up here.” He tapped his skull.
“Does us a lot of good if something happens to you,” Gin said with a light smirk so he wouldn’t think she was too serious. In fact, she wasn’t serious at all. Even if this wasn’t a bunch of bullshit it was a long way from here to cashing in a secret stash of money that wouldn’t get her any closer to reuniting with her family and living her old life again. NSA? It was getting real deep around here.
“I’ll write down the information when we get to Morgan.”
“What happens if you’re killed before you can give us this retirement plan?”
“You’re better off staying in here. You need resources for the outside. The spooks even found me in Chiapas. Your only chance would be to blow the lid off this and hope instant celebrity provides you with protection. But neither of you are the Julian Assange or Edward Snowden type so stick with the devil you know.”
Adam gave Gin the kind of perplexed look that said he knew the devil, but not the other two, which underlined Patrick’s point.
Addressing her somberly, Patrick said, “You’ll want to talk to your parents, which will get you killed within one hour of the call. Them, too, if you mention what happened.” He looked at Adam. “You’ll be dead if you’re with her. Do yourselves a favor: Stay here. Find a way to survive. Maybe you can even barter with the Stalkers—not everything of value has been looted. You trap, garden, live off the land.”
Because she could smell the smoke she glanced at the lodge and now saw a faint, flickering glow in the lobby. Had it been Patrick’s intention to burn the place down? She imagined his “secret agent men” would activate the sprinkler system to neutralize an inferno.
“How do we live long enough to harvest a head of cabbage when he’s looking to chop off our heads?” Gin asked.
“I take it home schooling was strictly for the religious angle? Your parents didn’t have a survivalist bent?”
Adam shook his head. “I do know gardening and canning, but…what she said. We won’t have time to do anything but survive.”
The glow in the lodge was much brighter now. The wall around the elevator doors was on fire. It would draw Orange soon.
“His death will provide a reset of sorts. You’ll have anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. When he comes back he may not remember about us, though granted, that won’t matter if he sees us again.”
In their last encounter Agent Orange knocked Patrick silly and Gin had no reason to think the next time would be any different. None of them were armed well enough. Patrick increasingly appeared like a kid with big plans for the future, a kid who ultimately couldn’t even get his lemonade stand up and running.
“How do we kill him without getting messed up?” Adam asked.
“We’re very careful.”
Elbows on knees, Gin grabbed her head with her hands and wanted to scream at all this unfair bullshit. What did I do wrong? Why am I here? I never hurt anyone! I’ve been a good daughter and a super-awesome person to all of my friends! Why? Why? Why?
A shriek echoed from the hollow behind the lodge. The long, plaintive wail pulled her back from a complete meltdown.
“Probably Annette.” Patrick sighed.
Now there’s a tragedy. She waited to feel bad for thinking it. She kept waiting.
“Either Orange found them or she’s just being herself. Fuck it. Our work here is done. Let’s pay Morgan a visit. We need a way to take him out and we’ll find it there.”
Patrick stood and led them from the woods toward what would probably be their deaths. Adam and Gin looked at each other and his “What the hell have we gotten ourselves into?” face was a mirror of her own feelings on the matter.
“We’ll stop by the creek first to rehydrate. I assume that’s where the mud on your jeans originated. Guess it wasn’t trapped after all.”
“We neutralized it,” Gin said.
Adam smiled weakly.
Gin preferred to believe they would make it to Morgan, find a nice, safe place to hide for the night and maybe Patrick would formulate some brilliant plan to succeed where no one else had, but she’d begun to fear him another Nathan—a middle-aged guy unwilling to believe he’d passed his prime and well-read enough to think his knowledge gave him an edge against an unstoppable foe. He’d probably set off a trap playing Daniel Boone, his last thought This wouldn’t have happened to Liam Neeson!
“Come on,” Patrick said. “Eyes and ears open. We need to hurry. We’re losing sunlight fast.”
“We could get to Morgan through the woods if you’re not worried about traps,” Adam pointed out.
“Not all of us could.”
Gin figured that was a shot at them. The great white hunter would walk between the raindrops while they fried in a lightning blitzkrieg.
“He’s had years to trap his environment,” Patrick said. “He was digging punji stick pits while you were still putting teeth under your pillow for the Tooth Fairy. Now everyone be quiet, please. I need to concentrate.”
He walked in a crouch through the network of trees and bushes, head up, down, and around to ID any trip wires or log projectiles. Gin stepped right into his footprints when visible and gestured Adam to do the same behind her.
“Would have been better to stop by the creek before you set the lodge on fire,” Gin said in her best inside-the-KZ quiet voice.
Patrick turned to look at her, obviously annoyed. He put a finger over his nose for silence and resumed his trap patrol, Elmer Fudd in wabbit season. It spared him from having to answer why he created a distraction and then marched them parallel to the road where Agent Orange could hear or see them if he came to investigate any smoke signals.
Long as you got to “fuck with the contractors,” that’s the important thing, right?
The cover of leaves made a prism of sun rays, and the spots of light danced around them as a breeze ruffled the branches overhead. The magic hour was coming fast. They would never get to Morgan before dark. She’d scream if he proposed the lake house.
He’ll never think to look for us there again! I’ll write down all my Cayman Island bank account numbers on a scrap of paper. We can even stay upstairs so Adam doesn’t see his parents stacked up like cord wood.
It took ten minutes of Patrick’s maneuvers to get them to the creek. He spotted the tree trunk pincushion and shook his head at them. “That was really careless, guys. He’s going to leave surprises near all the fresh water sources.”
“He won’t need them if we pass out from
dehydration,” Gin said. The blacksmith in her skull pounded away again despite the water earlier.
Patrick held up two fingers like a peace symbol and angled them toward his eyes. “You’ve got to look, at all times. There could be another trap, maybe two or three. This is what he does. He’s not taking a break to watch Silly Jackson reruns. He doesn’t sleep or eat. He traps and kills in an endless hunting season.”
Gin waited for him to come even closer to quoting The Terminator, but he proffered a hand to Adam. “Cup?”
Adam passed him the mug.
“Me first since you had a trip to the buffet already. Fire-starting is thirsty work.” He stooped to the bank, still obsessively watching for anything amiss. She felt tense watching him despite drinking from the same place without incident (mostly), but nothing happened other than finding out Patrick was a bit of a slurper. He gulped down three cupfuls in rapid succession and poured a fourth on his face and head.
“That’s damn good,” he reported at almost normal volume, rather lax on the KZ voice protocol.
He held the cup to Gin and Adam. Adam predictably beckoned Gin to go next, and she didn’t disappoint his chivalry. She rinsed it in the water first before she’d drink after Patrick. She thought it tasted metallic, as if the blood of all kills in Morgan Falls overran it in a mini-Apocalypse, but it was cold and refreshing. The blacksmith in her skull decided to take five and the malaise lifted.
She passed the cup to Adam and found Patrick watching her when she looked his way again. He held her stare a moment, then swiveled back toward the road. It could have been nothing, but it didn’t seem like nothing.
Trust me, he’d mouthed.
Oh, sure thing, guy. Tried to send a trusting Adam off on his own Bataan Death March to keep me with you, but no, nothing weird about that at all.
It would have been a relief if he merely fancied her, but it seemed more like a plan for survival where he alienated the group and kept her to use as a pawn. A basket case like Annette knew the score on Orange’s special attraction to Gin, so a would-be strategist like Patrick had no doubt factored it into his blueprints probably before they left the lake house.