“Take him to the infirmary. There’s bound to be some sort of anti-venom first-aid kit. Compass should know.”
Sporkboy turned to me and woozily smiled, his freckled cheeks swallowing his eyes. “Just like old times, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said, out of breath. “We should do this again.”
I could still taste the venom in my mouth, burning at the back of my throat.
I really have to get out of here.
Yardstick hoisted Sporkboy up by his arms. “You saved his life.”
“Hee woodve wone wuh wame fo mee.” I managed to maneuver my mealy mouth to enunciate the words, my tongue nearly numb from scorpion poison.
“No.” Yardstick shook his head. “He wouldn’t.”
“Yooo pwobawbwee wight.”
DAY TWO: 1500 HOURS
ood afternoon, cannibals.” Peashooter’s voice boomed from the PA system. “Homesickness is weakness leaving the body. For anyone feeling homesick, know this—it passes. Like a bad cold. And once it’s gone, you will realize that this is your home now. With us.”
George’s cabin must have become the Tribe’s central command. Whenever Peashooter wanted to address his minions, all he had to do was flip the switch.
Let the brainwashing begin….
“Everyone meet in the amphitheater in five minutes.”
ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO CAMP HERE
The banner hung from the pines for all to see as they entered the amphitheater.
Cannibals were greeted by the sight of a timber skeleton towering up from the fire pit, its wooden bones ready to be ignited.
Firefly had been dragging every loose bit of lumber from around camp that he could find. A mess hall table. Chairs. A wooden canoe.
Even our suitcases.
“Hey,” Charles cried. “That’s mine! And those are my clothes in it!”
“You heard Peashooter’s orders,” Firefly said as he emptied a rusted can of gasoline onto the kindling wicker man. “Anything that burns.”
Peashooter promenaded in wearing George’s whistle around his neck.
I noticed each of the original Tribesmen had their own lanyard now. They must have yanked them off the counselors.
He who wears the whistle possesses the power.
Nobody had seen George or the others since the takeover. Were the counselors still strung up in the woods? Rumors spread that they were all at the bottom of Lake Wendigo. Or chopped up and fed to the Piranhas for breakfast.
“Firefly,” Peashooter said. “I have a gift for you.”
Peashooter presented a box of strike-anywhere matches to Firefly.
Firefly shook the tiny box next to his ear. The thin wooden rattle seemed to soothe him. An eerie calm washed over as he pulled out a match and struck it against the flint.
A flame blossomed only inches away from his face. He inhaled the bouquet of sulfur through his nose.
Klepto piped up. “Maybe you should step back—”
Too late. Firefly flicked the match into the timber skeleton’s rib cage.
WHOOSH!
Firefly was knocked to the ground by the fireball. Klepto rushed over and picked up his smoldering comrade.
“Your eyebrows! They’re…” Klepto glared at Firefly’s face. “Gone.”
Sure enough, where Firefly’s eyebrows had been was nothing more than singed skin.
“Who needs eyebrows?” Firefly just shrugged before rushing out of the amphitheater. He nearly ran into Yardstick carrying a scarecrow tucked under his arm, the dummy sporting a New Leaf T-shirt with the maple-leafed moose head. He had made a whole scare-family from the looks of it, hefting five more into the amphitheater, all stuffed with straw from the archery range’s hay bales.
Capone took one look and guffawed. “Who’re they supposed to be? Our counselors?”
Yardstick strung up his scarecrows from the tree branches extending over the amphitheater. Peashooter stood next to one holding a quarterstaff made from a sawed-off broom handle.
“We must protect our home,” he said as Sporkboy—still looking a little puffy from his scorpion sting—distributed quarterstaffs. “We begin today with some simple drills from The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. Any of you read it?”
No one responded.
Peashooter had his work cut out for him. He patiently inhaled through his nose, then recited—“Robin Hood hid in Sherwood Forest for the next year, during which he gathered around him many other outcasts….Sherwood became a refuge for those who had been wronged or were on the run…They vowed to treat their oppressors as they had been treated.”
“I liked the movie better,” Capone muttered, elbowing Klepto in his ribs. Klepto snickered.
Peashooter thrust the end of the quarterstaff into the scarecrow’s chest and the grin faded from Klepto’s lips.
“Stand with your left foot forward and your right foot back,” Peashooter instructed. “Keep your right foot turned outward at ninety degrees.”
The cannibals did their best to mirror Peashooter’s battle stance.
“On my mark, thrust. One, two, three—strike!”
Klepto’s jabbing was a little off-center due to his eye.
“Again!”
Klepto recalibrated his aim and hit his target directly in the heart.
“Again!”
Capone lunged forward and took the head off of his scarecrow. “Hiyaw!” Loose bits of straw puffed out from the perforation and scattered across the ground.
“Again!” Peashooter called out. “Feel the fog lift from your minds! You can think for yourselves now! You are alive once more!”
“When’s lunch break?” Capone asked, killing the mood almost immediately.
Peashooter turned to him, unimpressed. “When you get your drills down.”
“Is that when the fun’s supposed to start?”
“This isn’t about fun. This is about protecting what’s ours.”
“Then why don’t I go protect the mess hall?”
“If you don’t like it,” Peashooter said, “you can join the counselors.”
Capone kept his eyes locked on Peashooter, but he stayed quiet.
The natives are getting restless….
The Piranhas weren’t allowed weapons of their own, so they went after their scarecrows with their bare hands.
Firefly returned, rolling a hay bale into the amphitheater’s entrance. He struck a match and tapped the straw with its flame, then let it ride.
“Fire in the hole!”
Several cannibals had to leap out of the way as the burning bale bowled down the amphitheater’s walkway and crashed head-on into the bonfire.
WHOOSH!
A flurry of sparks burst through the air, like a blizzard of orange snow, the stray cinders sprinkling upon our poor scare-counselors. Before long, their straw bodies started to smolder. Thin wisps of smoke rose up from their shoulders.
“The fire’s spreading,” Yardstick shouted as he rushed to control it.
Too late. Flames erupted from their heads, like they had dyed their hair a sweltering yellow. Before long, their entire bodies were consumed by flame. The heat from the fire was so intense, I could feel it reaching for me through my cage.
Yardstick took his quarterstaff and knocked one down, sending the burning scarecounselor to the ground. Several cannibals circled around and beat the flames out with their own staffs, laughing as they went.
Capone knocked another burning straw man from its branch. “Home run!”
Before long, all the campers had joined in, beating the blaze out.
Let me go on record as saying I really didn’t think it was wise to give a group of emotionally disturbed teenagers their own weapons.
But that was just me.
Not that I was complaining. It had
been over twenty-four hours since I had taken my last Chlorofornil tablet. No fog for as far as my mind’s eye could see.
Just clear cerebral skies.
While, all around me, I couldn’t help but hear the neurological time bomb ticking within everybody’s chemically imbalanced brain, now going cold turkey.
Detonation in T-minus a few days of detoxing.
Three…
Two…
One…
•••
Night fell fast. Everyone had shuffled off to their cabins for some shut-eye, exhausted from an endless day of “training.”
The camp remained quiet. I had the amphitheater all to myself, alone in my cage, so I watched the bonfire continue to lick the air. I could almost make out the shapes of our personal belongings still in the blaze—the back of a chair, a scrap of a photograph poking out from the surrounding ashes, a melted toothbrush.
Sleep wasn’t coming for me anytime soon.
I flipped onto my back and stared up at the pines swaying overhead. Their branches rocked back and forth, and I couldn’t help but think of the first time I saw Sully. How her hair hid her face, protecting her from the world just on the other side.
Footsteps.
Someone was walking into the amphitheater. It was dark, but the silhouette had to be at least six feet tall.
Yardstick.
The dim glow from the fire illuminated the athletic pads strapped to his shoulders, making him look like a life-size action figure.
“Time for another cleat crunch?” I asked.
Yardstick only shook his head.
“Then what do you want?”
Yardstick slipped his hand through the cage. It took me a few blinks to focus on the pile in his palm.
Berries. Bulbous and ink-stain black.
I pinched one between my fingers. “Poisonous?”
“See for yourself.”
I popped the berry in my mouth and bit down. A sour jolt coursed through the rest of my body.
I cupped the berries in my hand and downed them all at once.
The tart tang tasted good.
No—not just good. Phenomenal. An entire day had slipped by since I’d eaten anything. I had no idea how hungry I actu-ally was.
“You need to get your energy back,” he said. “You can find them throughout the woods. Stay away from any red berries, though. Those are the poisonous kind.”
“Are you breaking me out?”
“Not yet.”
“So what are you doing here?”
“Keeping you alive.”
I hesitated. “No offense—but I’m having a hard time believing the word of somebody who tried aerating my chest with his soccer cleats.”
“You’re just going to have to trust me.”
“Can you at least give me a weapon? Something to defend myself with?”
Yardstick nodded. He reached into his back pocket and slipped something through the bars.
I took it from him. There were no sharp edges. No blades. No trigger.
Just soft pages.
A paperback.
“This isn’t exactly what I had in mind….”
“It might not be the kind of weapon you want, but it’s the one you’ll need.”
He sounded like a fortune cookie.
“So I’ll just paper-cut anybody who comes at me?”
I brought the cover up to my face, straining to read the title in the dark.
Animal Farm. Written by…
George Somebody.
“Got anything I can read with?”
Yardstick tossed me a penlight. “Don’t let anyone catch you with that.”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” I said. “Why are you helping me? I’m pretty sure associating with known defectors could get you in trouble.”
“I promised a mutual friend.”
“Sully?”
Yardstick didn’t answer.
“What happened to her?”
“She just disappeared. Nobody knows why. Peashooter told us. He said she…”
The words evaporated before he could give them sound.
“What…?” I asked. “Died?”
Yardstick nodded.
“You believe him?”
“No way.” He shook his head. “Peashooter’s not the same. He’s worse. Much worse. The longer he’s been alone out here in the woods, the more he blames you.”
“For what?”
“Everything. Sully didn’t want to have anything to do with his master plan if it meant hurting you. She and Peashooter would always argue over it. And then, one day—poof. She was gone. We’d only been out here for a little while, right after we’d left Greenfield, and Sully just vanished. That’s when Peashooter really lost it. He made us swear allegiance to him. Threatened to hang us from the trees by our feet for the bears to eat. Compass and Sporkboy swore right then and there, while I—I just couldn’t make sense of it anymore.” He went quiet for a moment, shaking his head. “This isn’t why I joined the Tribe. This isn’t the Tribe I joined.”
A low rumble ruptured the air. Yardstick cricked his neck back and examined the night sky.
No stars. Nothing but thunderheads.
A thought popped into my head. “Remember when you used to be so shy, back at school? You could barely look me in the eye. What happened to that guy?”
“A lot can change in six months,” he said. “Especially out here.”
Yardstick froze.
“Someone’s coming. Hide the book.”
Yardstick disappeared just as quickly as he had arrived.
Where am I supposed to hide a book? I scrambled to find a spot in the cage that could keep the paperback concealed. Easier said than done.
I could bury the book in my armpit.
I could stuff it down my shirt.
Too late. Whoever was coming, I could hear the soft shuffling of their feet just at the top of the amphitheater.
I opted to sit on it, stuffing the book under my rump.
Somebody cleared his throat. I looked up to find Charles standing at the amphitheater’s entrance. His lips lifted up into a smile, then lowered. “Hey…”
“Hey.”
“Who were you talking to?”
“Just me, myself, and I.”
“Oh.” He slowly shuffled his way up to the front of my cage.
“So what should I call you now?”
“Jaws,” he said, poking out his chin. “Not bad, huh? Don’t worry. I’ll ask Peashooter if he can give you a better nickname than Rat.”
Yeah, like Dead Meat.
“I’ll stick with my real name, thanks.”
He seemed perplexed by this. “But Peashooter says, out here, away from home, we’re all free to be whoever we want to be.”
“I’d rather just be who I am if that’s all right.”
“Whatever floats your boat.”
Rocks your boat is more like it.
Charles burrowed his heel into the dirt, waiting for me to say something.
“Do you really feel like these guys are your friends?” I asked.
Charles mulled it over before nodding. “Peashooter accepts me for who I am.”
“And who’s that?”
Silence. Charles pinched his eyebrows. “Thought you might be hungry, so I brought you these.”
He held up a handful of marshmallows. “They got a little sticky, sorry.”
“How about helping me break out?”
Charles buried his chin into his chest. “I can’t.”
“Sure you can.” I wrapped my hands around the bars. “All you’ve got to do is unlock the lid and…”
“They’ll skin me alive.”
I pressed my forehead against a bar. “Frien
ds don’t let friends die in cages.”
“I should be going.”
“Charles, wait.”
“It’s Jaws.” The vehemence in his voice surprised me.
Charles dropped the wet wad of marshmallows at my feet. He turned and shuffled back up the path without saying another word.
•••
The grumble in my tummy muted itself after I scarfed down the white puffs. The marshmallows expanded within my stomach like I had inflatable intestines.
Time for a little bedtime tale….
I ran my thumb over the pages of the paperback, feeling the breeze against my skin. I cupped the penlight in my hands and leaned in until the words were only inches away from my face.
Somebody had circled sentences. Phrases were underlined. Passages boxed in with pencil. Whoever had read this book before me did a good job of annotating it.
The story was about a group of rebellious animals who take over their farm from their human owner. At first, all animals are treated as equals—until one group, the pigs, become “more equal” than the others.
Before long, their hierarchy is just as bad as that of the humans they ousted.
Thunder rolled over my head. Louder this time.
Closer.
The first drops of rain started to fall, wetting the pages of the paperback. Plump bulbs of water burst across my skin as I stuffed the book under my shirt.
The rain intensified, pouring down thick and steady, pounding my back.
My first bath in days.
DAY THREE: 0800 HOURS
eashooter stood before the wet embers of the bonfire.
Very quietly.
Firefly shifted his weight from one foot to the next, waiting for him to say something. Anything. But Peashooter refused to acknowledge his existence.
The rest sat on their logs and watched Peashooter’s fists continuously clench and release as he stared at the soggy black paste at his feet.
“What happened to my fire?” he asked.
This was a parenting ploy I was pretty familiar with—I’m not mad at you…I’m just disappointed.
But I wouldn’t put it past Peashooter to pop his top at any moment. I must admit, the confines of my cage were feeling pretty cozy right about then. This was the first time I was thankful to have a set of bars between him and me.
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