Recoil

by Joanne Macgregor

  I took a deep breath, blew it out and went back into observation mode. With my rifle resting on the bagel on top of my knee and braced against my shoulder, I studied the alley systematically through my scope. Side to side, near to far. The goggles were a nuisance, but at least I was used to playing The Game wearing virtual reality eyewear. The gloves were plain horrible. I never wore gloves at home so I wasn’t used to shooting with them on, and was frustrated that I couldn’t feel the trigger properly beneath my index finger. The layer of latex separated me from my weapon, stopped my being one with it.

  Then I saw it. A rat as big as a lapdog scuttled in short, tentative bursts away from the rubble. By my earlier calculations, the rubble pile was about halfway down the alley, which would put it at approximately 260 meters. Quickly, I adjusted my scope and took aim, leading the target fractionally to the right to compensate for its movement. Then I gently pulled the trigger.

  It was a direct hit. Through the scope I could see the splatter of blue paint directly between the horrible creature’s eyes.

  “Pity — so close,” Leya whispered across the alley to me.

  It wasn’t close, it was exactly on target. I’d hit the rat right where I’d been aiming and was indignant that she counted it a miss. If I’d been shooting with live ammunition, it would have been a kill shot.

  I frowned at her but she wasn’t looking at me. Both she and Bruce had taken a bead on the rat which now sat still, momentarily stunned by the blow. They both pulled off shots simultaneously.

  “Yes!” Bruce said quietly, bumping gloved fists with Leya.

  I peered through my scope. He’d shot the rat right through one of its eyes. It was an impressive shot, but I felt sorry for the creature lying on the ground. Paintballs probably wouldn’t do more than bruise us, but they had enough force behind them that a direct hit into a rat’s eyeball would do some serious damage. And it had. The rat writhed and twitched on the ground. Blood and some thick goo oozed from the red, paint-rimmed eye socket. Nausea threatened as I witnessed its suffering.

  Beside me, Graham knelt with his head between his knees, making dry retching noises. Sure that his head must be protruding beyond the edge of the dumpster, I stretched out an arm and thrust him back, a fraction of a second before a movement of air past us and a thud behind us indicated that a bullet had just missed him.

  He sat back, leaning against the wall, holding a hand over his mouth. He was as pale as paper, and a fine sheen of sweat covered his face. He was losing it.

  “If you freak out, you’ll get taken out. Just breathe, okay, Graham? Breathe. Slowly.”

  I inched back along the side of the dumpster, squeezed myself into the narrow gap between it and the alley wall, and crawled along. Graham followed me until we emerged from its cover. I crept down the alley, carefully hugging the wall, keeping my rifle up against my chest. At the end of the first block, I crouched down on my haunches and peered around the corner — scanning the road, the buildings, and windows for something that didn’t fit in its surrounds. The thumping rap music was coming from down this cross-road.

  A volley of shots from behind me made me spin my head around.

  “Man down! That’s a kill-shot.”

  Chapter 6

  A Small Square Inch of Flesh

  Juan emerged from behind a dark doorway down the street perpendicular to Bruce and Leya’s corner of the alley. He had a green paint smear on the right side of his chest. Bruce had a black splatter on his left thigh.

  “Good shot,” Bruce said grudgingly to Leya, as the “dead” instructor walked past us down the alley, back in the direction of the entrance.

  I used the moment of distraction to cross the gap of the road and pressed up against the alley wall again. Graham trailed behind me, tripping noisily over a cola can and sending it spinning down the cross-street. A round coming from straight ahead hit the spinning can and sent it bouncing down the alley. Sarge?

  We edged up alongside the brick wall for another block, all the while scanning the buildings and alley for possible hides, and came to the small pile of rubble where the rat had been shot. It had stopped jerking now. It lay on its side, the red hollow of its oozing eye turned to the deepening pink of the false sky. Beyond it, just behind the oilcan, was something far worse. A dead rat, split open along its middle as though by a knife, lay decomposing on top of a couple of broken bricks and cement chunks, its stiff feet sticking into the air. Flies buzzed around the corpse, and the putrefying flesh seemed to be moving. I looked closer and saw that it was riddled with stirring maggots. The disgusting smell — horribly sweet with an acrid sharpness — caught at the back of my throat.

  Majorly squicked out, I pulled back instinctively. Not Graham, though. He leaned forward, tearing at his mask. For one crazy moment I thought he wanted to study the rat up close, but then he was bent over and puking, adding to the stomach-churning sights and smells. I heard a crack at the same moment as a black splat appeared in the dead center of Graham’s helmet-top.

  Swinging my rifle up in the direction of the rifle report and bullet trajectory, I focused in on a movement in a window in the main cross-street, and took one shot. Then another.

  “It’s a kill. I’m out,” came Fiona’s shout. “Hold your fire while we clear the field.”

  She emerged, a few moments later, from one of the buildings in the main street at the end of the alley. I was pleased to see, as she came closer, that the blue splash of my paintball had hit squarely in the middle of her protective vest, directly above her heart.

  “Nice shot,” Fiona told me. “Come on, Graham, you’re out, too.” She marched up to where Graham still stood, bent over and retching, grabbed him under an arm and hauled him off down the alley. As they reached the exit, she called out, “Resume play.”

  “We’ve only got to get Sarge now, and maybe there’ll be a few more rats. Let’s split up and go in three different directions to maximize our chances,” said Leya.

  “Yeah, I’d like to get him,” said Bruce.

  I nodded and slipped off down the side street to the right. Leya took the left, leaving Bruce to continue down the alley toward the main cross street. I moved faster now that I was without Graham, slipping between the cover of parked cars and doorways, carefully studying darkened windows, doors, and small holes in walls behind which a sniper might lurk. My eye was caught by a fluttering curtain, and a low movement which might have been another rat, but I saw nothing that could be Sarge. Of course, that didn’t mean he wasn’t well-hidden somewhere with the crosshairs of his scope trained on me even at this moment. My back itched as if sensing an incoming hit, but I made it to the end of the block unscathed, only to scare myself stupid by bumping straight into Bruce as I turned the corner.

  “Hey, if you want me to hold you, you only have to ask me, Blue,” he said, opening his bulky arms wide as if to embrace me.

  “Don’t call me that.” I righted my balance and stepped back from him.

  “So, it’s just the two of us at last.”

  “It’s not just the two of us. Sarge is out there somewhere, probably taking aim at us right now. And so is Leya.”

  No sooner had I said her name than I heard her scream.

  “Help! Help me!” The yell came from behind us, down the main street.

  Bruce swore. “Are we supposed to help each other?”

  “I guess. We’re supposed to be a team of soldiers on the same side.”

  I stepped around him and made my way along the main avenue, in the direction from which Bruce had come. He was quieter than Graham and stuck close to my shoulder as we ducked behind parked cars, trash cans, tall trees and whatever other cover we could find until we saw them.

  At the end of the avenue, about sixty or seventy meters away, was a traffic circle with a statue of a cavalryman astride a rearing horse in the center of it. Easing himself around the base of the statue was Sarge. With one arm, he held Leya tight up against his body as a human shield, with the other, he aimed h
is rifle in our direction. We didn’t need our scopes to see that much.

  “I have taken your comrade hostage. I know you’re out there, so lay down your weapons and step out slowly, hands behind your heads,” he shouted at us.

  Now what? I glanced at Bruce. He shrugged. Neither of us responded to Sarge. I hadn’t expected this to be part of the game.

  “Surrender or she gets it!”

  Crap. I had no choice. I would have to put my rifle down on the ground, kick it out into the street, and step out from behind my cover to stand beside it. If this was real, no way would I risk Leya’s life, and we were playing this game as if it was real, weren’t we? I began bending to lay my rifle down, already feeling the sharp disappointment of how the game had ended.

  “No effing way!” Bruce whispered fiercely. “She got herself into that position, she can get herself out. I’m not losing because she was stupid enough to get herself taken hostage, no way.”

  “But —”

  “You’re too soft-hearted, Blue. You win the game by surviving, not surrendering.”

  “But if we don’t surrender, he’ll shoot her.”

  “With a paintball, Blue. Just a paintball,” he said. “You do what you like, I’m out of here.”

  And with that, he melted away into the lengthening shadows of the avenue, leaving me alone, crouched down behind a rusty, old-model Ford.

  Should I follow him? That was the smart course, probably what we were supposed to do. But it didn’t feel right to leave Leya behind. It would be like leaving a friend in danger, or a fellow-soldier behind on the battle-field. A betrayal of sorts.

  I should surrender. Maybe as Sarge released Leya, Bruce would be able to take a shot. It meant I would lose the game, of course, and Bruce would win, but at least we’d have gotten Sarge.

  But there was no guarantee that Bruce would get Sarge. No guarantee, even, that Sarge would release Leya if I surrendered. I could just as easily see him shooting me as soon as I laid down my weapon, then taking out Leya at short range, grinning maniacally all the while. Maybe he’d only captured her to lure us in. What had he said about the rules before we started playing? Drop us before we drop you … the aim of the exercise is to take as many of our lives as you can, while keeping your own. Oh yeah, he would drop us both, alright.

  “I’m going to count to ten,” Sarge called from behind Leya. “If you haven’t surrendered by the time I get to ten, I’m going to add another kill to my count.”

  And if I did surrender, he’d add two kills to his count.

  I lifted my rifle, rested it on a spare tire leaning up against the Ford, and studied him through the scope. I found myself running calculations through my head, even though there was no possible way to take him down without hitting Leya.

  “One … two …”

  He held her so that her body covered the whole of his, with his head tucked behind hers. The hand holding the rifle was the only part of him not protected, but a shot to his hand wouldn’t be a kill-shot. Even if I could hit him there, he’d just take out Leya immediately.

  “… three. You’re beginning to make me ma-ad!” he called, in a sing-song voice.

  The hand was exposed. And a small area of skin where the side of his neck protruded beyond the edge of hers. Damn these goggles — they did more to obscure my vision than protect my eyes. I yanked them up onto my helmet, locked my cheek against the stock, aligned my right eye with the eyepiece, and found that spot again.

  “Four … five … six …”

  It was a scant square inch of flesh, the tiniest target I would ever have aimed for. An impossible shot. And if I missed, I would either hit bare air and give away my position to Sarge, or I’d hit Leya and be instantly disqualified.

  “Seven …”

  But if I hit? If I hit that nickel-sized target directly above his jugular, it would be a kill-shot for sure. We’d have taken out all the instructors, while we three would have survived. And I would win the game.

  “Eight,” Sarge called, his voice rising high. “Poor little girl, she’s running out of time.”

  So was I. I needed to make a decision. But it seemed my body had already made it for me. My breathing had slowed down, my shoulders moved down into their relaxed position, the pad of my forefinger was on the trigger, and a freckle in the exposed patch of my target’s neck was at the dead center of my cross-hairs. My finger tightened on the trigger until I reached the point of resistance. I breathed in, held it, breathed out slowly.

  “Nine …”

  As gently as though I was touching a raw wound, I squeezed back on the trigger.

  The recoiling rifle stock slammed into my shoulder. A vicious expletive from down the avenue told me I’d hit something. Quickly, I lifted the scope. An arm in a green jump-suit. Up. Leya’s stunned eyes and open mouth. Down a bit. Her neck, a small splash of blue on the side. To the right. A neck above a black jump-suit — a neck splattered with blue paint. A hand moving to touch it. Up. Eyes above a mask, looking down at the hand. Then lifting to look down the avenue in my direction. Eyes livid with anger.

  Uncertainly, I lowered my rifle and stood up behind the Ford.

  “Uhm … Man down?” I called out.

  Sarge cursed again, violently. Then the game-over siren sounded loudly through the arena.

  Holding my rifle at my side, I walked toward the pair in front of the statue. The sound of running feet behind me on the road meant Bruce must be jogging to catch up with us, but I kept my face neutral and my eyes on Sarge, not sure of how he was planning to react to me. He didn’t look too sure, either, as he nodded silently at me, then shook his head as if in disbelief, then nodded again. I shot a glance at Leya as I drew near. She was grinning from ear to ear and had both thumbs raised in the air to me, but she stood to the side and behind Sarge where he wouldn’t be able to see the congratulatory gesture. Bruce caught up to me.

  “What the hell did you do, Blue?” he said. His voice was a mixture of amazement and accusation.

  “I took the shot,” I said, closing the distance of the last few meters to Sarge and Leya.

  “Well, damn me if that isn’t a first,” said Sarge, rubbing a hand over his gleaming head. “I don’t know whether to shake your hand, Blue, or kick your ass into next week.”

  “That was an ace shot!” said Leya, coming to my defense.

  “It was if it wasn’t dumb luck,” said Bruce.

  “I could never have made that shot,” said Leya, “I would have retreated.”

  “That’s what you’re supposed to do in this game. You’re supposed to be smart enough not to be lured in, and tough enough to walk away. Keep yourself safe and hope for another chance. Like Bruce here did,” said Sarge.

  Beside me, I could just about feel Bruce preening under this endorsement of his actions. But Sarge didn’t spare him a glance. He was too busy studying me. He pulled his mask down, looped it back under his chin and flashed that sudden grin that was more intimidating grimace than reassuring smile.

  “But you, Blue, you are one cool customer. Detachment under pressure — that’s an asset in the battlefield. No surrendering for you.”

  I’d very nearly surrendered; it had been my first instinct. And I hadn’t taken the shot because I’d been cool or detached, I’d taken it as a last resort. It was something I’d never have dreamt of doing if we were in a real battlefield with live rounds. But I didn’t correct his misapprehension. Already he looked like he was walking a fine line between admiration and severe pissed-offness. That shot must be stinging like a mother, right now.

  The two other instructors jogged up then, with Graham trotting behind. He had a fraction more color in his face, but he looked deeply embarrassed. Sarge ignored him as if he wasn’t there.

  “Well done,” Graham said to me.

  “Thanks.”

  Juan and Fiona were staring at the side of Sarge’s neck in amazement.

  “Yeah, yeah. I got hit. By a dirty-faced little Blondie. Learn from this, so
ldiers! There’s a weak spot, an exposed bit of flesh on every target. You just have to find it and hit it.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bruce and I said.

  “We got ourselves a winner, here.” There was grudging respect in Sarge’s voice, but something else, too. “So what are we going to do with you, Blue?”

  “Give her 15K?” suggested Leya, her brown eyes full of mischief.

  “Give her a congratulatory hug,” said Bruce, grabbing me and squeezing me tight. I swear his hands brushed against my ass.

  “Or something,” Sarge muttered.

  Part Two

  Chapter 7

  A Little Death

  The picture on the T.V. in my bedroom flared and flashed as I scrolled through hundreds of channels. A soap opera with a rat-fevered hero, infomercials for ozone sterilizers and homeschooling supplies, reality shows featuring Doomsday preppers with we-told-you-so smugness written all over their faces, and endless reruns of unfunny sitcoms. I tossed the remote aside — four hundred and forty-two channels, and nothing interested me.

  I could always spend some time on guitar practice. I’d been wrestling with a piece called Andante in my music classes — online tutorials, of course, no way would Mom allow a tutor in, or me out, for real lessons — but that day I wasn’t in the mood for the slow, melancholy piece. Maybe I should go online and do some shopping, spend some of my sweet prize money.

  I’d been feeling like this — bored and unsettled and unsure what to do with my time — ever since I’d won The Game. For so long, I’d been playing toward that one goal, and suddenly I’d achieved it. Now what? There didn’t seem much point in starting from scratch and playing essentially the same game again merely to take out the new enemy leader. There ought to be another level or a different challenge for once you’d won, though I suspected that nothing would come close to being as exciting as shooting Sarge in the neck.

  I was still so proud of that shot. Robin had threatened to tell Mom I had a headache and fever if I didn’t stop bragging. Since that would have brought a busload of fussing, I quit bragging about it, but in bed at night, in the minutes before I fell asleep, I relived those moments in all their exhilarating detail.