Surviving the Swamp (Survivalist Reality Show Book 1)

by Grace Hamilton

  Regan shook her head. “Don’t worry about your husband. He’ll be fine. The man is a machine,” she added, not without some admiration.

  Tabitha giggled. “Yes, he is, and it’s only partly why I love him,” she said, winking at Regan as they set off.

  Regan rolled her eyes. “Spare me the details. We better get going. No way am I letting us come in last.”

  Tabitha laughed, and as they pushed through the foliage leading away from the rockface she’d surmounted, Regan looked at the woman who was barely over five feet tall and probably weighed a hundred pounds, if that. When they had first met, Regan had known right away that Tabitha would be one of the biggest competitors on the show.

  She was small, but intelligent. What’s more, everyone seemed to like her right away—she was pretty and had that easy-going nature about her that people were always drawn to. Regan thought the vibe she gave off could also have something to do with her job. She was a paramedic, which meant she spent every day working with strangers who were having the worst days of their lives. Her natural empathy and ability to soothe people had drawn Regan to her from the beginning, even if she couldn’t bring herself to commit to trusting her. She was a good ally, and Regan was all about winning this little game they had all signed up for.

  “I guess we’ll find out what’s going on soon,” Tabitha said as she held a branch aside to let Regan pass, and then wiped some mud from her hands by running them over the khaki-colored cargo pants she was wearing. Seeing it reminded Regan of what a mess she herself was, but there wasn’t anything to be done about it. In terms of mud and sweat and clothing, they were a perfect pairing.

  When the group had shown up on the first day, they’d all had a good laugh over their similar outfits. Almost all of the contestants wore cargo pants, hiking boots, and cotton t-shirts over long-sleeved hiking shirts that were supposed to be breathable while protecting their arms from the branches and bugs. The wear had actually been recommended in the stack of paperwork they had received prior to their arrival.

  Recommended clothing had been described as breathable but durable. That had resulted in an all-out search for the right outfit, something Regan had found a little ridiculous considering that the master goal was to survive. Her first day in the swamp had made it clear why the clothing mattered. The pants were somewhat waterproof and didn’t tear easily. That protected the skin on her legs from getting scratched up. Scratches could lead to a deadly infection in the swamp.

  Focused on the immediate moment once again, the women made their way through the dense trees intermingled with vines and ferns, on toward the area that had been designated as the set. It was where they did their weekly recaps and their interviews about how a task went, or gossiped in general. Regan couldn’t stand that part. She detested talking about her fellow contestants and hated being in front of the camera. Only the thought of the money at the end of all this made it bearable.

  “So, is this what you thought it would be?” Tabitha asked as they walked.

  Regan scoffed. “Yes and no. I thought we would be spending more time with Wolf Henderson, learning. Instead, I feel like he pops in and out long enough to lecture us about what we did wrong. Do you think he was even out here this week? I bet he was kicked back in some fancy hotel while we busted our asses out here with no communication all week.”

  Tabitha’s soft laughter echoed around them. “Me, too. I was mostly looking for a challenge. I think I got it and I hope it’s worth it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Tabitha shrugged a shoulder. “Geno and I both had to quit our jobs to come on the show. Neither of our bosses would give us the time off. Once we’re finished here, we have to start all over.”

  “I’m sure you’ll be able to find a job pretty quick. Aren’t they always looking for paramedics?” Regan asked.

  “I suppose. The trick is finding a job in a city we love and making sure Geno can get work as a mechanic. Wanting to be in a new place was what made the decision for us—we knew we wanted to quit our jobs and relocate already, so it was only a matter of when. He wants to buy a house with some land, maybe somewhere on the west coast. His dream is to have a hobby shop where he can fix up old cars on the side, while having a huge garden,” she explained.

  “Wow. I never imagined Geno would be the farmer type.”

  Tabitha laughed again. “He is, and he’s really good at it, too. What about you? What are you going to do once we’re done here?”

  “You mean once I win the fifty thousand?” Regan teased.

  “Ha! I’m going to win the money and buy Geno his farm,” Tabitha shot back.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do. Probably travel.”

  “Fifty grand isn’t that much. You’ll be out of money in under a year,” Tabitha pointed out.

  “I can work from anywhere. I have my laptop, and that’s all I need. I’m a freelance IT specialist. I don’t have to live anywhere,” Regan said with a great deal of pride.

  “Do you like that? The nomad lifestyle?”

  Regan pushed a branch out of the way, holding it while Tabitha walked by. “I do like it. I don’t like being tied down.”

  Tabitha made a noise that suggested she disagreed, but she didn’t come right out and say it. Regan was familiar with that reaction. People always gave her the same type of look or said the same thing when they found out she was such a loner.

  “I think we’re close,” Tabitha whispered.

  Regan nodded her head. “Why are you whispering?”

  Tabitha stopped, looked at her and smiled. “I have no idea.”

  Both women laughed and entered the clearing where the show’s set was situated in a V-shape. The wide part of the V was the stage where they all sat in a row of chairs and talked about the week. There were various tents around the area that housed the camera crew while the contestants were in the jungle—when the crew was there, anyway. If they weren’t on set, as had been the case for the past week, the tents stood empty. And time was relative, too. What Wolf and the crew called a week was more like eight or nine days; each challenge took up six or seven days, the way the show had been laid out, with another day or two in between for interviews, lectures from Wolf, and eliminations. The whole thing had already begun to feel tedious, and they were only heading into the end of the second week. They’d been meant to finish this challenge that night, and do interviews tomorrow.

  Regan stopped near the stage and took stock of things. The rest of the cast looked to have already made it back, which frustrated Regan. She was one of the strongest people on the show. She had to win. If not for the air horn, she felt sure that she and Tabitha would have checked in sooner than some of the others with their goals completed, despite having been separated.

  She didn’t have time to think about what it meant for them to be the last team to arrive now.

  “Welcome back, everyone!” Wolf Henderson said from the makeshift stage. “Hello! I need everyone’s attention!” the host of the reality show shouted.

  Regan turned her focus to him immediately. She couldn’t deny the attraction to him that she felt. Maybe it was the long hair. It was a little bit of a rocker, bad boy thing happening, but she knew his long black hair wasn’t a gimmick to promote his celebrity status. It was his Native American heritage. The defined cheekbones and strong jaw were alone testament to his ancestry. While the man was certainly attractive by society’s standards, it was his eyes that had first captured her attention.

  The group quieted down and everyone looked at the man who had created Skin of Your Teeth Survival. The guy was supposed to be some survival expert, but Regan wasn’t convinced—yet. He’d provided them with little training before sending the contestants out on their own for a week at a time. Two weeks in, and five people had already left the show. Only one had actually been eliminated. One had been injured and three others had given up and quit during the first week, saying it was too difficult.

  So while they had started out with
fourteen, they were down to nine, and someone else was clearly about to get booted. They were wrapping up a week where they’d been completely alone—no camera crews or ways to communicate. No lifelines but each other. Regan wondered if some of the other contestants had announced they were quitting. That would be a good thing for her and get her one step closer to winning. They had two more weeks in the swamp. The contestants hadn’t been told how many people would be going home at the end of that week, but Regan knew the cuts were going to have to be heavy in order to get to one lone survivor at the end of the season.

  The criteria for elimination included Wolf’s judgment of their skills. They were each supposed to be doing video diaries that the producers would edit into the show before it aired. Regan hadn’t been a fan of doing the selfie thing and had taken very little video so far. This also meant Wolf would have little to judge her on, beyond his own opinion. She only hoped she hadn’t hurt her chances of winning by being a little camera shy.

  Wolf raised his hand as everyone gathered closer, snapping her back to the present. “We have a bit of a situation,” he commented.

  Regan’s ears perked up. A situation? That couldn’t be good.

  “What do you mean? Are we in danger?” one woman asked, her voice high-pitched, revealing her fear to anyone who bothered to listen.

  Regan rolled her eyes. Duh, Bonnie? Wasn’t that the point of agreeing to do the show? Yeah, there were safety measures in place and, if something did go wrong, the crew would haul them out of the swamp, but danger on some level was part of the deal. But this woman—didn’t she know that advertising her nerves made her a target for elimination?

  Tabitha leaned over and whispered close to Regan’s ear. “Want to guess she’s the next to go?”

  Regan smiled and nodded her head in agreement. “I don’t understand how she got on in the first place.”

  “They had to have a few weak people to test the stronger ones, like you and me,” Tabitha said with a wink. “I heard this season was all regular people,” she said, using her fingers to make air quotes.

  “Listen up!” Wolf said again, pushing back his long black hair. “This is serious. We’ve lost all communication. The camera crew isn’t here, though they should be by now, and I can’t get the producers on the radio. My cell phone isn’t working, either. We’re completely cut off.”

  “Aren’t they supposed to be back tomorrow?” the man named Fred spoke up. He was easily recognizable at six and a half feet tall, and definitely stood out in the crowd.

  Wolf met the man’s eyes, grimacing. “It’s been more than a week since they left. I was supposed to meet them yesterday,” he replied. “This week was going to be a longer one.”

  For the first time since she had been in the swamp, Regan felt some foreboding. This was supposed to be a game. It suddenly all felt very real. Why wouldn’t they be back? Quickly, she counted backward over the days and nights, and realized that they hadn’t seen anyone else for nine days. The week in this partnership had been meant to be a full week in between Wolf’s lectures and the crew interviews. They were supposed to have finished up tomorrow, maybe, but the crew should have been back and prepping already.

  The contestants stared at Wolf, everyone waiting for him to tell them what to do next. For her part, Regan was confident in her ability to read people, and what she saw in the man’s face had her worried. The man who had dragged them all out to the swamp was concerned, for the first time since she’d met him. She could see it in the lines of his face, the set of his jaw, and, most importantly, in those expressive, dark brown eyes.

  Wolf Henderson was uneasy, which meant the situation was serious. This wasn’t a surprise challenge for the cameras. It was the real deal. A shiver of dread ran down her spine as she looked at the people she was stuck in the swamp with. This was not going to end well.

  2

  With everyone talking at once, Regan took a few steps away from the crowd, not wanting to be a part of the panic she could see bubbling up. She scanned the group, listening to tidbits of conversation. Tabitha and her muscle-bound husband, Geno, were huddled together, Geno’s large body acting as a shield for his wife’s much tinier frame. They seemed calm, at least.

  The others mostly seemed restless, their heads darting back and forth as they looked for unseen predators ready to spring. Regan knew they were on the verge of freaking out, and people who panicked and freaked were asking for trouble. They were going to make stupid decisions and get themselves hurt. Worse, their panic could cause problems for the entire group. She angrily shook her head as she took a sip from her canteen, her short hair waving over her face as she did. This was why she hated being stuck with others.

  Off to the side, Regan noticed Wolf and the science guy, Fred, talking as they stared at a generator. She hadn’t really cared for Fred all that much. He was big and slow. Not slow because he was big, but slow because he was always thinking and weighing the odds of every decision. He’d been introduced as some sort of science nerd and he was prone to making some really bad jokes that made everyone groan. How or why he was out in this swamp was anyone’s guess. In Regan’s mind, the inability to make a quick decision could only be dangerous in a survival situation. Sometimes, you had to move quickly—without spending fifteen minutes running through every scenario. She couldn’t entirely blame him for wanting to weigh the odds but he needed to learn to do it faster.

  Nevertheless, not wanting to interrupt Tabitha and her husband or join the panic of the others, Regan made her way toward Wolf and Fred, hoping to overhear what they were talking about. Whatever it was clearly had them both worried.

  Fred looked up to meet her eyes and Regan froze, feeling like an interloper.

  “Come on over,” he welcomed her.

  “What are you two talking about?” she asked.

  “Nothing works,” Fred said matter-of-factly.

  Regan looked around at the various cameras and lights and shrugged. “So?”

  “All the electronics are down,” Wolf emphasized.

  Regan nodded her head, understanding the problem but still feeling as if she wasn’t totally getting what they were driving at. Why did that matter if the crew wasn’t there? “Okay, and?”

  “We’re completely cut off,” Wolf said in a low voice. “We can’t call anyone to come get us or ask what the hell is going on.”

  Regan looked around the set once again. “What about this generator? Maybe the batteries in those things are dead and need charging.”

  Fred shook his head. “I can’t get it to run. It’s like it wants to start, but it won’t. There’s no fire,” he explained.

  One of the other contestants had made his way to where the three of them were standing. “We need to check everything,” the grizzled older man known as George said. “Check to see if anything turns on.”

  Wolf and Fred agreed, and Regan didn’t bother to keep asking questions. All nine contestants and their leader spread out, clicking on radios and trying to turn on lights and cameras, only to have the same result. Everything was dead.

  “It’s an EMP,” George said, as they met back in the center of the set, rubbing at his long silver beard.

  Regan had heard the acronym, but wasn’t entirely sure what it meant. The three letters clearly meant something to Fred and Wolf, though. The men were exchanging dark glances, as if they’d come to this conclusion also and were still horrified.

  “You think so?” Wolf asked the old man, who was a self-proclaimed prepper-slash-doomsday-believer.

  “An EMP?” Regan echoed.

  Fred nodded, as if that said everything. “That explains it.”

  “Explains what?” Regan demanded, frustration making her voice tight.

  “Yep. We’re screwed,” George said, sounding almost eager. Regan traded looks with the other cast members gathered around; she wasn’t the only one who was confused.

  Tabitha moved up beside Regan. “What’s going on?”

  She shrugged, scowling.
“I don’t know. This guy says ‘EMP’ and those two look like they just ate glass. I don’t know what it is, but it’s bad,” she said dryly, looking pointedly at all three men. Wolf’s lips were pursed, as if he was reluctant to explain, but Fred spoke up.

  “An EMP is an electromagnetic pulse,” the scientist answered.

  “And that is?” Regan asked pointedly.

  “In a nutshell, it’s a radio wave that short circuits solid-state electronics, including microprocessors. The electrical components in things like the cameras, radios, cars, and anything else that relies on solid-state electronics and microprocessors to run.”

  The old prepper was nodding his head. “There are different kinds of EMPs—it’s hard to say what kind we got hit with.”

  “What do you mean we got hit with one?” Tabitha asked. “Like, this was done on purpose? To us?”

  Fred shrugged, a thoughtful look on his face as he gazed around the area. “Solar flares or lightning could cause it. The detonation of a nuclear bomb is another possibility, but I think we would have noticed that.”

  Regan coughed in surprised disbelief—yeah, they would have noticed that.

  “Terror attack,” George suggested. “Don’t forget to tell them we could have been hit with a massive NNEMP. And you know North Korea has been itching to hit us hard.”

  “What is a NNEMP?” Tabitha asked.

  “A non-nuclear electromagnetic pulse,” Fred explained. “For that to be what happened here, it would have to have been big. I mean, why would they hit here?” he asked, and then paused for a second. “Unless it was a coordinated attack,” he mumbled under his breath. “A coordinated attack that hit several cities across the state, or maybe even the country, would completely disable us. Everything would grind to a halt.”

  Fred had mostly been talking to himself, but there was a collective gasp from the group. Regan was trying to process it all. It was a lot to understand. She looked to Tabitha, whose mouth was hanging open, her eyes wide. Regan imagined she probably had the same expression of shock on her own face.