by Jude Hardin
“What should we do with him?” Greg said.
“Up to you,” the other guy said. I decided the other guy sounded like a Jim. “Of course we’re a man short now, so we could—”
“He’s too old. We’ll have to find someone else.”
“Just a thought.”
We were on a highway now, the tires humming at cruising speed. I’d noticed the height of the vehicle when I’d climbed in, and with the way it handled and the leather seats and everything I figured it to be a Cadillac Escalade or one of the other expensive brands of four-wheel-drive sports utility vehicles that normally never go anywhere more adventurous than the mall. They hadn’t forced me to lie on the floorboard or anything, so I guessed the windows were tinted darkly enough that a cop or a trucker or an ordinary concerned citizen wouldn’t notice the blindfolded prisoner in the backseat.
Greg had said I was too old for something. I wondered what.
“I’m only forty-nine,” I said. “You guys need someone for your softball team or something? I’m an excellent pitcher. No kidding.”
“Can I just shoot him now?” Jim said.
“I don’t want to mess the car up. We’ll wait and see what Freeze wants to do.”
Damn. My fate was in the hands of a video game character. For some reason I didn’t find much comfort in that.
The car stopped and the door opened and Greg said, “Get out.”
I didn’t move.
We’d been on the road for an hour or so, and during that time I kept thinking about Rule #16 in Nicholas Colt’s Philosophy of Life: Never go down without a fight.
The when, where, and why of this situation were still a mystery, but there was no doubt in my mind about the who and the what. Greg and Jim were going to kill me. They’d killed Nathan Broadway, and they were going to kill me. It was only a matter of time. Maybe it would be in ten seconds, or ten minutes, or ten hours, but it was going to happen. I still had the use of my legs at the moment, so I figured now would be the best time to at least take one of them with me.
When Greg reached in and impatiently grabbed my leash, I reared and swiveled and kicked both his kneecaps with both my heels. I only grazed the right one, but I connected solidly with the left. I felt it give and heard the ligament snap. It snapped like a dry twig. While Greg was falling to the ground and shouting motherfucker, I quickly rolled onto my back and wriggled my legs through the loop of my cuffed hands. Now the cuffs were in front. I pulled the blindfold off. Jim was reaching for the glove compartment, and he had it open and had his hand on my .38, but before he got his finger on the trigger, I got the handcuff chain around his neck and gave it a quick jerk. His face turned blue, and he fell toward the console wheezing and clutching his throat.
I stretched between the front bucket seats and grabbed the revolver. I looked back in the cargo area and saw their weapons, a deer rifle and a shotgun. It would have been nice to have had the firepower, but there was no way for me to handle either of the big guns with my hands cuffed. I figured I could handle the big SUV with no problem. It wasn’t a Cadillac Escalade. It was a Mercedes-Benz G-Class. Silver with a black leather interior. It had tinted windows. I’d gotten that part right. I scooted to my left and exited the door Greg had opened for me. We were parked in a horseshoe-shaped driveway in front of a very large house. It was a mansion, a sprawling estate you would expect a movie star or pop singer to live in. Greg was lying on his back with a cell phone to his ear, tears streaming down his face from the excruciating pain I’d inflicted on what used to be his left knee.
I pointed the .38 at his head and said, “Give me the keys, bitch.”
“You’re dead, motherfucker.”
I cocked the hammer back. “Reach into your pocket, slowly, and pull the keys out and toss them to your right.”
He reached into his pocket, slowly, pulled out a can of Mace, and sprayed it directly into my eyes.
I squeezed the trigger, but nothing happened. I squeezed it again and again and again, but the gun did not fire. Greg must have dumped the bullets back at the swamp. The world was a blur and my eyes felt like someone had jammed acid-dipped razor blades into them. A few seconds later someone grabbed my leash and I felt two sets of hands grip both my arms. I was being led toward the house, and I had no choice but to follow.
“He’s too filthy to take inside,” one of the guys said. “Let’s hose him down.”
“Fuck that. Let’s throw him in the goddamn pool, see if he can swim with the cuffs on.”
“Freeze wants him alive.”
Freeze wanted me alive. At least I had that going for me. I still couldn’t see. I heard the click of a knife blade lock into place, and one of them started cutting my shirt while another undid my pants. They forced me to the ground and yanked my shoes and socks and jeans and underwear off, and the next thing I felt was the stinging cold spray of a garden hose.
“Stand him up.”
They stood me up and rinsed me off some more with the icy water. My eyes had started to clear some and I could see the guy with the hose. He looked to be about the same age as Greg and Jim and was dressed in the same kind of durable outdoor clothing. He wore dark-rimmed glasses and a gold watch, and his blond hair was parted neatly in the middle.
“That’s enough,” a voice from behind me said.
Two of them patted me down with towels and then they led me naked through a set of French doors on the side of the house. The doors led to what looked to be a very large and fancy gardening shed, with rakes and shovels and wheelbarrows and weed eaters and every other tool you could think of hanging immaculately on pegboard walls. There was a workbench and a vise against one wall and a wire dog kennel against another. The kennel was empty. It was huge, meant for a Saint Bernard or a Great Pyrenees or one of the other giant breeds.
It didn’t take me long to realize it was meant for me.
They forced me into the cage and secured the door with a padlock. Someone had bolted wheels onto the corners, which raised the kennel several inches from the floor and allowed it to be moved easily with an occupant inside. The steel wire was very uncomfortable against my naked skin. There was a plastic jug full of water and one that was empty. I assumed the empty one was for me to pee in. The cage smelled like bleach, as though it had recently been disinfected.
The guy who’d been operating the hose reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. He put it to his ear and said, “Hey.” He listened for a few seconds and then responded with, “All right.”
“What’s up?” one of the other guys said.
“Freeze wants him in the theater in five minutes.”
“Should we put some clothes on him?”
“Fuck it.”
They wheeled me through an interior set of French doors and down a short hallway to an elevator. One of the guys pushed the button, and the elevator went up and we got out on the first floor, which looked more like the lobby of a fancy hotel than someone’s house. There were tall plants and paintings and leather armchairs and a fish tank. “You’ve Got a Friend” played softly from invisible speakers. The Carole King version.
We turned a couple of corners and entered a large auditorium with a raised platform on the end farthest from the door. There were multicolored lights attached to overhead steel trusses, and at the center of the platform there was a man sitting in a high-back chair. He was sitting there like it was his throne. I assumed the man in the chair was the one they called Freeze. The lighting was such that I couldn’t make out the features on his face, but he looked to be bald and tall and enormously fat. Behind him were two large video screens.
“Leave us alone,” the fat man on the stage said. His voice was high-pitched and effeminate. It didn’t match his size.
The guys who had wheeled me in left and closed the doors behind them.
“Nice place you got here,” I said. “But I really should be going now.”
“Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Freeze.”
“Is it
Mister Freeze, like on Batman?”
“It’s just Freeze. Like Prince is just Prince and Madonna is just Madonna. And you’re not going anywhere. You’re here because you fucked up my game.”
“Sorry about that, bubba. So tell me, are the gorillas who threw me into this cage The Sexy Bastards? Because to tell you the truth, I didn’t find them all that attractive.”
“You’ll never know who The Sexy Bastards are. Nobody will ever know.”
Big fucking deal, I thought. But it did make me curious.
“People are going to be looking for me, Freeze. When they find me—”
“They’ll never find you. The life you had before you were contacted by Nathan Broadway is over now, Mr. Colt. I just haven’t quite decided what to do with you yet.”
“How do you know my name?”
“I’ll show you in a little while. It didn’t take a lot of research to find out all about you once I had a name. There’s a nice Wikipedia article. Did you know that? I know all about you and your band and the plane crash back in the eighties, and I know you’ve been working as a private investigator for the past fifteen years or so. What I don’t know about are those scars on your left hand. Maybe you could fill me in.”
“Maybe you could kiss my ass.”
He laughed. “You’re a tough guy. I like that. You really did a number on my guys who drove you here. Impressive. That’s why I think I’m going to give you a chance.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m going to put you in the game. I’m going to let you play Snuff Tag Nine. You’ll be taking Mr. Broadway’s spot.”
“You motherfuckers hosed me down and put me in a cage like an animal. What makes you think I’m going to play any crazy goddamn video game?”
“Oh, you’ll play. You’ll play, or you’ll die. Those are the only two choices in Snuff Tag Nine. You see, I’ve taken the premise of the video game, only I’m playing with real people. It’s much more fun that way. Allow me to explain. Tomorrow morning, an AICD, an automatic implantable cardioverter defibrillator, will be surgically implanted into your chest, just below the left collarbone. These devices are typically used for people with bad hearts, to convert life-threatening rhythms back to normal. The device you’ll be getting, however, has been somewhat modified. The device you’ll be getting will, on remote-controlled command, convert your normal cardiac rhythm to a deadly one called ventricular fibrillation. That’s V-fib for short. If at any point you refuse to play the game, your heart will be forced into V-fib and you will collapse and die. If at any point you break any of the rules of Snuff Tag Nine, your heart will be forced into V-fib and you will collapse and die. If at any point you attempt to go beyond the boundaries of the playing field—”
“OK, I get the picture.” I couldn’t believe my ears. This son of a bitch was insane. Literally off his fucking rocker. “So what happens if I agree to play your little game?” I said.
“You’ll probably die anyway, but you’ll at least have a chance. Here’s how it works: you and seven other contestants will be taken to what we call the field. The field is actually an undeveloped area in the Okefenokee, several miles from where you were earlier. It’s all private property and all fenced in. You’ll be given some survival gear, some food and water, and two weapons. The object of the game is to kill all the other players. It’s very simple. The last man standing wins.”
“I thought the playing field was supposed to be an island,” I said.
“On the video game it’s an island, and I could have bought one easily enough, but it just wasn’t practical. For one thing, there’s really no such thing as an uncharted island anymore. They’re all marked on maps, and I was afraid activity on one might show up in some satellite photos or a passing ship might see smoke from a fire or something. The risk was too high. Plus, electric power was going to be a big problem. My land in the swamp is much more practical than an island, and it’s too far from anything we would call civilization to worry about anyone bothering us out there. It’s the perfect place to play the game. It takes place over five days and, like I said, the last man standing wins.”
“And then what?”
“And then you’re set for life. I’m a billionaire, Mr. Colt. I treat my winners like kings. Of course I can’t allow them to go back to their former lives, but they’re treated like kings nonetheless. They’re taken overseas and given new identities. They’re given everything they want.”
“Sounds great. How do you keep them quiet?”
“The AICD you’ll be getting in the morning will be permanent. If you win, you’ll be monitored closely for the rest of your life. If you ever mention the game to another living soul, your heart will be forced into V-fib and you will collapse and die.”
“What about deathbed confessions? Sooner or later—”
“That’ll never happen. Over forty-five thousand people in the United States disappear every year. Without a trace, as they say. Nine of those people play Snuff Tag Nine. Some of the others are family members of Snuff Tag Nine players, players who decided not to cooperate in one way or another. Do the names Juliet and Brittney mean anything to you?”
He had me. The son of a bitch had me, and he knew it.
The video screen on Freeze’s left blinked to life. “I’m going to introduce you to the other players,” he said. “But first, I want to show you this.”
The stage lights went down, making the video screen seem brighter. The guy whose knee I’d broken, the guy I called Greg, was walking to the front door of a nice-looking brick house. He knocked on the door, and Nathan Broadway answered.
“Mr. Broadway?”
“Yes.”
Greg reached into his pocket, pulled out a leather badge case, and flipped it open. “I’m Detective Krebs, Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office. We’re investigating some threatening letters that were sent out a few days ago regarding a game called Snuff Tag Nine. We have reason to believe that some of those letters were delivered to this neighborhood.”
“Actually, yes, I got one of those letters,” Nathan said.
“May I see it, please?”
Nathan took another look at the badge. “I guess so. Would you like to come in?”
“Well, it would be better if we could talk down at the station. If you wouldn’t mind.”
“Am I in some kind of trouble?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. My partner and I just need to ask you some questions, and we’d like to use a tape recorder for future reference. If you don’t mind, that is.”
“I guess that’ll be all right. Let me just grab a jacket.”
The video cut to a harshly lit interior. There was a concrete floor with oil stains on it and a lawn mower draped with clear plastic and a Ping-Pong table folded up and rolled to the side. It was the inside of a residential garage. Nathan Broadway was sitting in the middle of it, strapped to a wooden chair with duct tape. There was a Japanese samurai sword mounted on the wall several feet behind him. Greg was smoking a cigar. I assumed the other guy, Jim, the guy who had sprayed Mace into my eyes, was doing the camera work.
“Who did you show the letter to?” Greg said.
Nathan was panting. “Nobody,” he said.
Greg slapped him hard with the palm of his hand. “Yes, you did, Nathan. You showed the letter to someone. You went to the Holiday Inn at the beach Sunday afternoon, and you had the letter with you. Now think, real hard. What was the person’s name you showed the letter to?”
“I didn’t show it to anybody.”
Greg touched the lit end of the cigar against Nathan’s right earlobe. You could hear the sizzle of the fat cooking. Nathan screamed out in agony.
“Give me a name,” Greg said.
Nathan was on the verge of passing out. His pulse pounded in his neck. “I swear I didn’t show it to anybody.”
I figured Nathan was trying to protect himself as much as he was trying to protect me. The letter clearly stated that he would die if he showed it to a
nother living soul. Maybe he thought he still stood a chance if he didn’t confess.
Greg grabbed Nathan by the hair and yanked his head back. He held the cigar like a pencil and guided it to within an inch of his left eyeball.
“Give me a fucking name!” he shouted.
Nathan lurched and coughed. It looked like he needed to vomit but couldn’t because of the position he was in. “Oh god,” he cried. “Not my eye. All right. All right. His name is Colt. Nicholas Colt. He’s a private investigator. Please. Oh god! Please, I don’t want to die. Please don’t kill me.”
Nathan started bawling like a baby. Greg walked behind him and lifted the sword from its mount. I knew what was coming next. I didn’t want to watch, but for some reason I couldn’t turn away. Greg gripped the handle of the sword tightly with both hands and stood with it cocked over his shoulder like a baseball bat. He swung hard and fast, and Nathan Broadway’s head toppled off his shoulders and rolled across the wooden floor. Broadway’s heart was still pumping, even with no signals coming from his brain, and bright red blood from his carotid arteries sprayed and splattered on the low ceiling.
Someone had done some amateurish editing to the film, and the footage of the head rolling across the floor kept playing over and over. They’d added some effects, making the scene look and sound like some kind of perverted bowling alley where Nathan’s freshly liberated noggin was the ball.
Finally the screen faded to black.
“Well?” Freeze said. “What did you think?”
“I think you’re a sick motherfucker.”
“I thought it was great. In fact, I’d like to see it again. Maybe I’ll make some popcorn this time. Do you like popcorn, Mr. Colt?”
“Why do you get your jollies watching other people die? What did Nathan Broadway ever do to you? What did I ever do to you?”
“Everyone needs a hobby, eh? Mine is Snuff Tag Nine. I invented it. I took the idea from the video game, but I invented the version for real people. Not too many people can say they invented their own sport. And it’s much more interesting than football or hockey or anything you can find on ESPN. My players literally fight for their lives.”