Survive or Die

by Catherine Dilts

  “But the raccoon wasn’t part of the game,” Bender said. “It doesn’t count.”

  “Lots of unexpected things happen during Survive or Die,” Rowdy said. “The Stockton cowgirls handled the raccoon like a challenge.”

  “So if Stewart had gotten to his medicine in time,” Lavelle asked, “he would have won a treasure chest key?”

  “Lavelle,” Ellen scolded, “the man’s barely even cold.”

  “I was just curious.” Lavelle folded her arms over her #1 Grandmother sweatshirt.

  “That’s a similar situation, ma’am,” Rowdy said. “Mr. Neamly would have earned a key.” Rowdy pulled his Stetson off and covered his heart. “May he rest in peace.”

  Silence fell on the campfire circle, broken only by popping pine sap. Bender looked like he wanted to say more, but Candace tugged him back to his seat. Madison met Aubrey’s eyes. She understood. The key was a reward for keeping quiet about Rowdy and Candace.

  “What about Harv?” Ellen asked. “Does he get a key?”

  “He failed his challenge,” Bender said. “He rolled his ATV. That’s what you get for drinking and driving.”

  “That was not very nice, Mr. Bender,” Lavelle said. “We all know Harv had a drinking problem, but he was going to his AA meetings. He was sober.”

  And he’d only had an accident because he rolled the ATV over a trip wire. A booby trap that had been intended for Aubrey. She didn’t speak up. Neither did Sotheara.

  Aubrey’s phone buzzed as she received a text from her daughter Junie. If their middle child deigned to acknowledge her mother’s existence, it must be important. The last Aubrey had heard, they were going target shooting with Grant’s father. She hoped no one had gotten shot. Aubrey ducked to some pines at the edge of the fire circle and checked the message.

  Shane is going 2 the recruiting station 2morrow with g-pa Sommers, but dont worry mom they dont accept couch potatoes in the navy seals

  ROWDY HUNTER’S

  SURVIVAL TIPS

  If you have a topo map and a compass, you won’t wander off track. But supposing you’re one of those greenhorns who couldn’t get the hang of using them? That’s as sorry as a carpenter who can’t use a hammer. You can avoid getting into a survival situation in the first place by learning how to use low tech wilderness tools. Fancy gadgets like a GPS only work as long as their batteries hold out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Too bad there were no Safe Spaces in the Survive or Die camp. Tempers flared nearly to the point of violence as ugly insults flew, more than a few directed at Stockton’s Revenge. That normally would have distressed Sotheara. Instead, she felt detached, as though observing a sociological experiment through a one-way mirror.

  Instead of erupting in fistfights, employees who reached their breaking point stormed to their cabins to pack. The Belle Starrs and Gold Strike each lost three teammates. The look on Jack’s face when one of his heinie-kissing minions bailed was worth the entire trip. Ted and his Wild Cats anticipated victory. The defections just served to thin the already weak competition, Ted told his crew. Then two of their own left.

  Only Wapiti and Stockton’s Revenge remained intact. Sotheara intended to stay until her mission was accomplished. Admittedly, she had yet to make progress, but there was still time. What any of her coworkers could learn, if they bothered to have a conversation with the junior accountant, was that Sotheara was no quitter.

  “Hey, my car is blocked.” Maggie from the Belle Starrs tugged on Sotheara’s sleeve. “Is that your gray Camry in the parking lot?”

  “I didn’t drive here,” Sotheara said. “A friend dropped me off.”

  “You poor thing,” Maggie said. “If you want to escape, you can ride with me. If I can free up my car.” She snapped her fingers. “That must be Harv’s.”

  “No,” Sotheara said. “I drove his car to the hospital in Lodgepole.”

  Sotheara watched as Maggie failed to rouse the Camry’s owner. Several engineers couldn’t resist having a problem to solve. They discovered the car was unlocked. With help from a couple sturdy factory floor workers, they managed to push the Camry out of Maggie’s way.

  The car had to belong to someone. While the engineers were obsessed with fixing things, Sotheara’s accountant mind demanded life remain balanced. The extra car, or missing owner who was not missed, would bug her.

  Jeremiah dusted his hands together, ready to follow the engineers back to the fire circle after helping move a car. Then he noticed Sotheara glancing around. He ducked behind Bender’s Humvee and watched her pull on a pair of blue nitrile gloves. She opened the door to the gray Camry and slid onto the passenger’s seat, then popped open the glove box.

  Sotheara didn’t strike Jeremiah as the thieving type. Curious, he opened the driver’s side door. The girl jerked, uttered a startled phrase he surmised was Khmer, and dropped the papers she’d found. Jeremiah moved the seat back a foot and eased behind the wheel.

  “Wild guess,” Jeremiah said. “This is Wilson Dudley’s car.”

  Sotheara gathered together the scattered insurance and registration papers, her glove-covered hands shaking.

  “I’m not gonna hurt you,” Jeremiah said.

  “Just like you didn’t hurt that squirrel?”

  “Hey, I didn’t shoot the racoon.”

  “Only because I was there to defend it.”

  Jeremiah bit back what he really wanted to say. The situation called for compromise.

  “I could never be a vegetarian, but I respect your attitude way more than people who say they hate hunters, then buy their cellophane wrapped meat from the grocery store.”

  The girl studied Jeremiah for a moment. “I’m not sure I agree that looking your victims in the eye before blasting them is a noble thing, but at least you’re not a hypocrite.” Sotheara seemed to declare some mental truce with Jeremiah. She eased the death grip she had on the papers, glancing at them. “So how did you figure out the car is Wilson Dudley’s?”

  “Process of elimination. This Dudley guy’s the only person unaccounted for, and no one claimed the car. The police asked about him.”

  “Whoa. That’s creepy. Where do you think he is?”

  “I haven’t figured out that part yet. What’s disturbing is I found a single shoe in the bushes near the parking lot.”

  “The first day here.” Sotheara stuffed the papers into the glove box. She tugged off the gloves. “I saw you pick up the shoe. It’s still in the lost and found box in the infirmary.”

  “No one is gonna claim it. Or the car.”

  “How sad is that? And the police are looking for him.” Sotheara pulled her cell phone out of her denim shorts pocket. “This is too weird. We have to let the police know his car is here.”

  Jeremiah joined Sotheara on the speaker as they explained what they knew to the police. He wasn’t surprised when they didn’t send a detective or forensics examiner immediately, as Sothera demanded. An abandoned car and a lost shoe didn’t amount to much.

  Although it did seem mighty odd.

  Aubrey wasn’t sure what made her angrier. Shane joining the Navy or Junie’s deliberate abuse of grammar. She knew Aubrey hated text-speech. She shot back.

  Tell Shane to call me immediately.

  Aubrey waited for a minute, then sent her daughter another text. Call me.

  Still no answer, so she called Junie’s cell phone, then Shane’s, then Grant’s parents’ home phone. She opted against leaving her in-laws a voice mail. No need to stir up the grandparents until she had all the facts. By the time Aubrey returned to the campfire circle, eight people were in various stages of leaving.

  “What’s going on?” she asked Madison.

  “Some people got torqued about the rules, and Harv, and us getting a key for the raccoon incident. Every team lost people except for ours and Wapiti.”r />
  “What does that do to their jobs?”

  “I’m sure they’ll be on a special list. Someone mentioned the Labor Board, but Bender doesn’t scare easy.”

  “So you’re leaving us,” Berdie said to Madison, a glum expression deepening her wrinkles.

  “After the competition just thinned out?” Madison asked. “No way.”

  “Excuse me.” Aubrey turned. “I’ve got to talk to Grant.”

  “You’re leaving.” Berdie certainly was in a pessimistic mood.

  “Kid trouble,” Aubrey said, refusing to commit to a course of action.

  She worked her way past angry campers to Wapiti, and tugged on Grant’s sleeve.

  “We have to talk.”

  “I’m in the middle of—”

  Aubrey jerked on his arm. “Now.”

  She dragged him far enough from the campfire that only the bats flitting overhead would hear their conversation. When Aubrey showed Grant Junie’s text message, he laughed.

  “You think that’s funny?”

  “First, I doubt he’ll go through with it. My father can be persuasive, but Shane is a stubborn kid. Second, if Shane does join the Navy, it might do him some good.”

  That response left Aubrey speechless.

  “Shane’s an adult,” Grant added. “We have to let him leave the nest in whatever way he chooses.”

  “I don’t mind if Shane moves out, but I assumed it would be by going to college.”

  She wiped away a tear. Grant pulled her into a hug. Aubrey resisted at first, then melted into Grant’s shoulder.

  “Just imagine,” he said. “Some day we’ll have an empty nest, and it will be just me and you, all alone in that house.”

  “All alone so we can do things like this?” Aubrey pushed away from Grant far enough to shake her bandaged hands in his face. “That’s not an enticing vision.”

  “If we’ve got any hope of putting three kids through college, we both need to keep our jobs. And this is what I have to do to keep mine.”

  “I’d rather take my chances living under a bridge than see you working for Bender.”

  “Do you want to leave?”

  Aubrey remembered his earlier offer to take her home and return to camp by himself.

  “Not if it means leaving you here alone.”

  “No. I mean both of us. If you want to leave, I will, too.”

  Aubrey had to bite her lower lip to keep from blurting out her desire to escape, right that moment. He needed all the information behind her decision, though.

  “Grant, I’m certain now. Someone murdered Stewart.”

  He started to reply, but Aubrey held up a gauze-wrapped hand to stop his words.

  “There have been developments.”

  Aubrey reminded Grant about the death threat note, then told him about catching Candace and Rowdy making out, and the camera shutter clicking. Candace’s fury, and Stewart’s unlikely death. She confessed to breaking into Bender’s cabin, finding the epinephrine injector where it should not have been, cutting her hand on the shattered canning jar, and how, so far, Bender hadn’t revealed to anyone that he had found what might be Stewart’s missing injector.

  “Sotheara believed the cable in the mud pit was meant for me, not Harv. If Jack realized I was hiding under the Neamly’s bed, he might have tried to eliminate me.”

  Grant’s face was as white as the crescent sliver of moon by the end of her tale.

  “I assumed the police officer was here to retrieve some of Nel and Stewart’s belongings,” he said. “But he was here to investigate.”

  “The canning jar was gone,” Aubrey said. “Someone removed the evidence. Madison, Berdie and I are convinced there’s a murderer in the camp.”

  “Then, does that mean—” Grant paused. “You want to leave. Of course. What am I thinking?”

  Aubrey had just unraveled three days’ worth of clues and suspicions, and still Grant wanted to stay at Survive or Die camp. A knot formed in the pit of Aubrey’s stomach as she realized how desperate her husband was to keep playing Bender’s game.

  Jeremiah studied the scoreboard. Bud scrawled a dramatic slash through the names of departing campers. In addition to the loss of Stewart and Nel before the teams had formed, and Harv due to his accident, eight more campers had left Survive or Die. Althea remained in the mix, but she hadn’t returned to camp yet. They’d gone from the original fifty-three to forty-two.

  Buckaroo Crews

  Wild Cats – 9 keys 13 keys (Archery, Canoe)

  Ted, Kimberly, Yuri, Larry, Belinda, Gwen, Justin, Lani

  Bender’s Defenders – 1 key

  Doug, Jack, Candace, Warren, Mason, Roberto, Irena, Nigel

  Wapiti – 1 key 10 keys (ATV)

  Frank, Grant, Omari, Arianna, Luis, Sam, Veronica, Damon, Habika, (Althea)

  Belle Stars – 1 key

  Jessie, Shirley, Yvette, Kenzie, Shawn, Della, Edna, Felicia, Maggie, Pam

  Gold Strike – 1 key

  Ellen, Tweet, Lavelle, Fawn, Harv, Jeremiah, Ziggy, Kyle, Naila, Alex

  Stockton’s Revenge – 1 key 6 keys (raccoon)

  Rankin, Berdie, Madison, Sotheara, Aubrey

  The campers who stayed were in a party mood. Jeremiah stuck with soda pop. Alcohol would fog up his powers of observation. He sat near the Stockton’s Revenge log, whittling another wolf for one of Lavelle’s grandkids.

  Jeremiah wasn’t sure what the Dudley guy’s disappearance meant, but combined with all the other peculiar goings on, he wanted to make sure Madison was safe. Rankin was too busy kissing up to Jack Bender to remember which team he was on, much less defend the ladies.

  Stockton’s Revenge returned from the fake saloon. Madison carried a strawberry margarita, Sotheara fancy sparkling water, Berdie a whiskey over ice, and Aubrey red wine.

  While the ladies congratulated themselves for keeping their jobs, Jeremiah observed the other clusters of campers. He was so busy watching his coworkers, he almost missed the odd interaction between Millie and Bud. The cook was cranky about something. Bud stood his ground, a sneer twisting his weathered face. Maybe it was about the meat. The elk stew for tonight’s dinner had a texture more like veal than wild game. The cook might have busted the old wrangler for substituting grocery store meat for elk. Maybe the lock on the meat shed wasn’t to keep campers out, but to keep his boss from realizing he was pilfering the wild game.

  “Anyone ready for a refill?” Madison waved her glass in the air with happy abandon.

  “No, thanks,” Aubrey said.

  Good choice. A person shouldn’t drink themselves stupid. There might be a killer in camp, waiting to strike again.

  Aubrey had a lot on her mind. Her husband’s fear of losing his job, her son joining the Navy, Stewart’s demise, and the possibility that someone was out to get her. She hadn’t noticed Madison getting toasted.

  “Anyone need to hike to the bathhouse?” Sotheara asked.

  Madison waved her hand. “Oh, me. I’ve gotta go. My daddy used to say you don’t buy beer, you rent it. Must apply to strawberry margaritas, too!” She erupted in laughter out of proportion to her lame quip. She wrapped one arm through Sotheara’s, and one through Aubrey’s, leaning heavily on the smaller women. “Let’s go!”

  “How many margaritas have you had?” Aubrey asked.

  Madison scrunched her face in concentration. “Two.”

  Considering her body mass, the fact that she had a full stomach, and the stinginess of the handsome barkeep, Aubrey couldn’t see two drinks affecting Madison like this.

  A dim yellow light illuminated a couple standing in front of the bathhouse. For a moment Aubrey feared they were walking up on another romantic tryst, but it was only Shirley and Doug.

  “You can’t squeeze blood from a turnip,” Shirley said.

 
Aubrey might have heard more, but Madison broke into Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats from the musical Cats. Shirley headed one way, Doug the other. Sotheara and Aubrey wrestled the bathhouse door open and escorted Madison inside. While she sang behind her stall door, Sotheara conferred with Aubrey by the cracked ceramic sinks.

  “She’s wasted.”

  “Someone spiked her drink,” Aubrey said.

  “Probably Squirrel Boy,” Sotheara said. “He’s been making moon eyes at Madison ever since the raccoon incident.”

  “You might disagree with hunting,” Aubrey said, “but Jeremiah’s not a bad guy.”

  Sotheara shrugged. “He’s not as terrible as I thought. He backed me up about the car.”

  Aubrey raised one eyebrow. “Details, please?”

  Sotheara rattled off a quick story about a gray Camry in the parking lot, and how she and Jeremiah discovered its owner was the missing Wilson Dudley.

  Aubrey’s heart jumped. “Who is this guy? And where did he go, if he’s not in camp?”

  “No one knows,” Sotheara said. “There’s a shoe in lost and found that might be his, too.”

  Aubrey wanted to continue the conversation, but Madison banged open the stall door.

  They managed the trip back to the campfire circle, with Madison singing to the bats and skipping along the gravel path. Once they had her settled on their team’s log bench with Berdie standing guard, Sotheara and Aubrey approached Lavelle.

  “Madison’s acting like she drank a barrel of margaritas,” Aubrey said. “Do you have anything in your bag that could do that to a person?”

  “I noticed she got herself ripped,” Lavelle said. “I suppose there’s lots of things in my bag that could do that. Most of the bottles say don’t mix with alcohol. But I didn’t give her anything.”

  “Where is your bag?” Sotheara asked.

  Lavelle looked around, as though expecting it to be at her side.

  “Now where did that get to?” she muttered. “Oh, there it is.” She pointed toward the next bench. Her purse sat on the ground, the top gaped open. “Somebody must have needed a pill.”