by Jude Hardin
I decided to take a few minutes to go through the car, thinking there might be something of use stowed in the glove box or under one of the seats. The first thing I saw when I opened the driver’s-side door was a bottle of Zephyrhills spring water in the center console drink caddy. I grabbed it and screwed the cap off and chugged it like no tomorrow. The bottle was over half full, and I drank every bit of it. It was like finding a magic elixir. Manna from heaven. It immediately kicked my energy level up a notch. I drank every drop and then tossed the empty plastic bottle to the backseat.
I rummaged through the glove compartment. There was an owner’s manual and a vehicle registration and a couple of receipts from oil changes and three peppermint disks wrapped in cellophane. I snatched the candy and unwrapped one and popped it in my mouth and stuffed the other two in a pocket.
I reached under the bucket seat on the driver’s side, pulled out a Dr Pepper bottle cap and a petrified french fry. I looked at the fry, thought about it, flicked it into the grass. I reached under the seat on the passenger’s side and right away felt the unmistakable shape and texture and beautiful coldness of something way too good to be true.
I pulled it out and looked at it with the flashlight. It was a Walther 9mm semiautomatic. I prefer revolvers, but the Walther was a very nice pistol. I checked the magazine. It held eight rounds, and it was full. The gun fit easily into my front pocket.
I gently closed the car door and started walking north. I had three weapons again, the nunchucks, the knife, and now the 9mm. I had in essence traded the stun baton for the pistol. It was a good trade. The stun baton was one of the best weapons given out in Snuff Tag 9, but of course a handgun was far superior in almost any situation. And I wasn’t out to stun anybody at this point. I was out to kill them dead. I was out to kill them while expending as little energy as possible. The pistol was a godsend. After all the bad luck I’d had, it seemed like things were finally turning around.
But I still had no idea where I was going.
I didn’t walk on the road itself. I stayed off to the side, near the tree line. If a vehicle came from either direction, I would have time to duck into the woods before I was spotted.
4:32.
I popped another peppermint, hoping the sugar would help sustain the energy boost I’d gotten from the big drink of water. I felt OK. I was limping a little from where the maintenance man had stomped my foot, and my hand hurt from where I’d knocked Number Three’s teeth out, but otherwise I felt like a million bucks. I felt like I could walk a hundred miles if I needed to.
I felt OK, but the clock was my worst enemy now. I had weapons and I felt good, but time was running out. Less than an hour and a half till sunrise. I started walking a little faster, just because it seemed like the thing to do.
I heard something rustling in the brush, swept the area with the flashlight, and saw a fox creeping stealthily through the woods. He stopped and stared into the light for a few seconds and then darted away. I wondered what else was lurking about. Every few minutes I shone the light into the woods, hoping the next creature I encountered wasn’t a panther or a bear or something. Some sort of predator that might look at me and see prime rib. The experience with the alligators had me a little paranoid about wildlife in the swamp.
I felt the collar on my neck, thought about trying to cut it off. Frederick had said it was rigged with an alarm, but that might have been as big a bluff as the defibrillators. I decided not to risk it just yet. Maybe closer to sunrise. Alarm or not, Freeze—or whoever was monitoring the cameras at the moment—would know something was up, but at least they wouldn’t have a video feed to my exact location.
The narrow strip of blacktop seemed to snake on to infinity. I walked at a brisk pace for twenty more minutes and then slowed down a bit. Finally I stopped completely. I just stood there. Shone the flashlight up the road to nowhere. I was getting tired again. And thirsty. I wanted to just lie down and fall asleep. Five minutes, I thought. Five minutes of sleep and I would be a new man. I wished I hadn’t guzzled all the water at once. I wished I had sipped it a little at a time. If I had been more sparing with it, I would still have some.
Another mistake.
It seemed all I was capable of anymore was fucking up. I figured I was going to die in a little while. It was almost a certainty now. The road was too long and time was too short. I thought about what my obituary might say: Nicholas Colt, once a world-class musician, then an ace private detective, and finally a first-rate fuck-up, died today of utter stupidity...
Of course I probably wouldn’t even get an obituary, not for years anyway, because they would probably never find my body. Juliet and I would be buried somewhere on Freeze’s property, never to be heard from again. Juliet and I would spend eternity rotting in unmarked graves, and Freeze would start the selection process for next year’s round of Snuff Tag 9. Somehow it just didn’t seem fair.
I was on the verge of falling asleep standing up. I took a deep breath. I heard a rustling sound in the woods again, and again I swept the area with the flashlight. I didn’t see any animals this time, but I saw something else, something in the distance.
I ducked under the border tape and walked a few feet into the woods to check it out.
The pain in my right hand had gotten worse, so I switched the flashlight to my left. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but they weren’t. A structure about the size of a lawn mower shed stood fifty yards or so from the boundary. It was a house for one of the players. One of the dead ones, I hoped. If the place was vacant, I could get some water and maybe even something to eat.
I’d been to Number Three’s house, and I’d left him tied up on the ground outside of it. He was there resting quietly, recovering from his little surgical procedure, so I knew this place wasn’t his. The only other players still alive were Number Six and Number Seven. If the house belonged to either of them, the trek through the woods would be a waste of precious time. I couldn’t very well just politely knock on one of their doors, like a neighbor asking for a cup of sugar. I couldn’t confront them in any way, because doing that would alert Freeze and the boys that I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. No, if the house belonged to Number Six or Number Seven, I would have to backtrack to where I was now. It would be a waste of time, but even so I figured the entire mission wouldn’t take more than ten minutes. It was worth the risk, especially since I didn’t know what to expect on the road ahead anyway. It was worth the risk just for a chance at a drink of water.
All I could hope for was that the house belonged to one of the players who had already been killed.
I crept deeper into the woods. When I got close enough, I switched off the flashlight and belly-crawled the rest of the way to the front porch. It was too dark to see, and I didn’t want to use the light, so I stood and felt the brass number tacked to the left support post.
The house didn’t belong to Number Six, and it didn’t belong to Number Seven.
And it didn’t belong to any of the dead players.
The house belonged to Number Nine.
It was Juliet’s house.
I cupped my hands and peeked into the window, saw only blackness. I switched on the flashlight for a brief second and shone it inside. The bed was empty. The house was still vacant. They hadn’t brought her here yet. Probably later this morning, blindfolded, the same way they’d delivered the rest of us.
I opened the door and walked in. My first stop was the faucet. I turned it on, bent down, and slurped from the stream. I rinsed my face and my hair and then slurped some more. When I’d had enough, I uncapped the hydrogen peroxide bottle and rinsed it out and filled it. I wished I’d kept the Zephyrhills bottle from the maintenance man’s car, but back then I’d doubted I was going to live long enough to need it anyway. Maybe it was better that I hadn’t kept it. Less weight in my backpack.
I thought about what to do next. I thought about waiting there for Juliet to come and then killing her escort, but that was no good. The
sun would come up before then, and the cameras would spot me and alert Freeze to my location. I would die, and Juliet would die. I couldn’t stick around. I had to get back to the road and keep heading north. I didn’t know where it would take me, but I knew it would take me somewhere. Maybe it would take me to Juliet, and maybe I could rescue her before they even brought her out here.
But if the road didn’t take me to Juliet, if I wasn’t able to rescue her before they brought her to this house, she would soon be forced to battle either Number Six or Number Seven. In either case, she would surely be killed.
I sat on the bed for a few minutes and thought about everything, about all the potential outcomes. At that moment, it was all still a mystery. At that moment, everything was still uncertain. But days later I would learn about everything that had happened. All the horrible details. Days later, I would learn that at the exact moment I was sitting there on the bed in the shack thinking about how we might possibly make it out of this nightmare alive, the lights in Juliet’s room at Freeze’s house came on. The lights came on, and a voice came over the intercom.
“Good morning, dear,” Freeze said. “I trust you slept well.”
“Fuck you,” Juliet said. “I didn’t sleep much at all. But you probably already know that, don’t you. You fucking prick. You probably have hidden cameras here in my room, and you probably saw me tossing and turning all night.”
“Such a mouth on you. So feisty, just like your husband. Did he teach you those bad words?”
“Fuck you.”
“Yes, well, at any rate, you need to get up and get ready now. Your escort will be there soon.”
Juliet got up and got ready. She knew she didn’t have a choice. If she refused to obey, Freeze would zap her heart with the defibrillator. Her only chance was to do what she was told, to play the game and hope for the best.
She brushed her teeth and put on the black fatigue pants and the boots and the red number 9 jersey. She stowed her weapons—a can of pepper spray and a set of brass knuckles—into the side flap pockets on her pants. She looked in the mirror. With the G-29 transceiver attached to her ear and the cam-collar wrapped around her neck, she looked like some sort of futuristic soccer mom.
A few minutes after she got dressed, Wade came in and led her blindfolded to the elevator.
I walked back out to the tree line and continued following the road north.
5:16.
I unwrapped the last peppermint and popped it in my mouth. The long drink at Juliet’s house had revived me somewhat, but I was still very fatigued. On my last leg. Rode hard and put up wet. Tired as a motherfucker.
I walked for almost twenty minutes, and then the road ran out. It just stopped, as if the construction budget had been exhausted. I walked to the edge, noticed a rutted path that led into a heavily forested area. I followed the path for about a quarter of a mile and came to a steel gate secured with a padlock. A sign said WARNING: NO TRESPASSING. I ignored it and climbed over the gate. What were they going to do, arrest me? I should be so lucky.
The goat path continued on the other side of the gate and eventually turned into the concrete driveway of a house. Single level with an attached garage. There was a ten-speed bicycle chained to the porch railing but no cars parked outside.
I crept to the garage door and gently lifted the handle. It was wet with dew and locked. I needed to get inside. If there was a vehicle in there, I needed to find the keys and steal it. I needed to steal it and put the pedal to the metal. With a car, there was still enough time to make it to the interstate before daylight. With a car, there was still hope. And even if there wasn’t a car in the garage, maybe there was a telephone in there or in the house. A landline. One phone call and the cavalry would be on the way. Adrenaline flooded my brain. I could feel my pulse in my face. This was it. I could feel it. One way or another, this house was going to provide what I needed to save my wife and myself. One way or another, we were going to be out of this mess soon.
All I had to do was get inside.
I walked the perimeter of the house, checking all the windows. I figured the bicycle belonged to somebody, and I figured that somebody was probably in one of the bedrooms asleep. I wanted to get inside without waking him or her up, so I was doing everything as quietly as possible. I was going at it like some kind of cat burglar. I finally found an unsecured window in back. I tapped the flashlight’s button for a second and peered in through a set of sheer curtains. On the other side of the window were a wooden table and four chairs. It was the dining room. Perfect. I only hoped the house didn’t have an alarm system. Or a dog. If a dog started barking, I was screwed. It didn’t matter. I had to go for it.
I cut the screen out with my knife, raised the window on its tracks, climbed inside. So far, so good. No dog and no alarm. I switched the flashlight on and cupped my hand over it to keep the light low. It was an open floor plan, with the dining room leading to the kitchen. There was a closed door on the far side of the kitchen, and from the layout outside I knew it had to lead to the garage. I searched for a set of keys, all the while scanning walls and surfaces for a telephone. I looked on the dining room table and the kitchen countertop and the breakfast bar. If this had been my house, those are the places I might have thrown my car keys when I walked in. No luck. I checked the wall by the door to the garage for hooks or nails where the owner might have hung a key ring, but I struck out there as well. No keys, no phone.
I opened the door to the garage, applying upward pressure on the knob so the hinges wouldn’t squeak. Maybe someone out here in the middle of nowhere wouldn’t even bother taking the keys out of the ignition, I thought. Maybe the keys were still in the car. I was optimistic with the possibility until I swept the garage with the flashlight and saw that there wasn’t even a fucking car in there.
No car, but there were some other things of interest.
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. There was a wooden chair in the middle of the room, with a Japanese samurai sword mounted on the wall several feet behind it.
This was where they had killed Nathan Broadway.
And Joe Crawford.
I stepped into the garage and quietly undraped the lawn mower. As I’d hoped, there was a gasoline can sitting on the floor beside it. It was a one-gallon can. Metal. Red and gold. I picked it up and shook it. It was over half full.
I carried the can of gasoline into the house and crept down the hallway to the bedrooms. There were three. Two on the left side of the hallway and one on the right. The first door on the left was open. I cupped my hand over the flashlight, switched it on, and walked in. There was a mattress on the floor and a wooden orange crate topped with an ashtray full of butts. Someone had tried to mask the smell of dirty linen and cigarette smoke with air freshener and had failed.
I walked back out to the hallway. The other bedroom door on the left was closed, as was the one on the right. I cupped my ear against the one on the left and then the one on the right. Someone was snoring behind the one on the right. I gently opened the door on the left to make sure the room was vacant, and it was.
I unscrewed the cap from the gasoline can and stealthily entered the snoring man’s chamber. I’d switched off the flashlight, but the blue glow from the digital alarm clock on the nightstand illuminated the room well enough to navigate. A pair of pants had been hung on one of the bedposts and a sleeveless white T-shirt on the other. I felt the pants with my fingertips. Leather, as I’d suspected. The man lying in front of me comfortably sawing logs had tortured and killed my oldest and dearest friend in the world. I stared at his sleeping figure for a minute and tried to process that. Tried to wrap my head around the utter senselessness of it all. The absurdity. Joe Crawford hadn’t done anything to warrant that sort of treatment. His only crime was being my friend, and he had paid the ultimate price for it.
Now it was this motherfucker’s turn to pay. Le
ather Pants was fixing to die, and I was prepared to die with him if necessary.
I stood over him and lifted the can and drenched him head-to-toe with gasoline. He sputtered and gasped and started trying to kick the sheets off. He wasn’t quite awake yet. Maybe he thought he was in the middle of a nightmare, which in fact he was.
“Wake up, you piece of shit,” I said.
He opened his eyes and started coughing and grunting. “Who are you?” he said. “What do you want? How dare you—”
“Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up, and take a whiff of Jif. You smell that? What’s it smell like?”
“Oh my god,” he said. “It’s gasoline. You poured gasoline all over me.”
The room was thick with volatile vapors, and old Leather Pants sounded like he was about to start crying.
“Bingo,” I said. “Gasoline. You’re not quite as stupid as you look. There’s still a little in the can, but I poured most of it on you. About half a gallon. Enough to cook your ass good and proper if you don’t tell me what I need to know.”
He was trembling all over. He gripped one of his pillows tight against his chest, as if it might grow legs and run away if he let go. “Whatever you want, man. I have money. I have gold necklaces and bracelets on the dresser over there. Take whatever you want. Really, I—”
“Shut up!” I shouted. “I don’t want any of your goddamn shit. If I wanted it, I would have taken it. Now listen. You’re going to tell me how to get to Freeze’s house, and you’re going to tell me where to find the key to the lock on that bicycle outside.”
“The key’s in my pants pocket. On the bedpost.”
I reached over and transferred the set of keys from his pocket to mine.
“Where’s your cell phone?” I said.
“I don’t have one.”