Mud Run Murder

by Leslie Langtry

"Alright then." She sounded disappointed. "Good luck."

  "Don't worry about a thing. We've totally got this."

  "No cheating. I mean it."

  "I heard you the first time. It'll be fine."

  Oh, after the week I'd been having, cheating was totally on the table.

  We hung up, and I stretched out on the bed. It would've been nice if Rex stopped by my room to make sure I was okay. He didn't. Neither did my cats. They must have gone to bed with him. Again. The little traitors. That was one reason why moving in together wouldn't be a good idea. I'd never get my cats to myself again.

  Most people wouldn't be able to sleep with the possibility of prison hanging over their heads. I didn't have that problem. You took your sleep when you could as a spy. Falling asleep was no problem.

  Besides, tomorrow I had bigger fish to fry in the form of Brian Miller and his Boy Scout troop. Soo Jin and I would need all the help we could get.

  I hadn't really told Kelly we wouldn't cheat…

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  The camp was packed when we arrived and checked in. As the driver of the first car filled with giggling and screaming little girls, I picked up the packet with our numbers and the safety pins to attach them to our clothes.

  To my relief, the girls were tricked out in tactical clothing. Cargo shorts, T-shirts, running shoes, and baseball hats that all said My Leader Can Beat Up Your Leader.

  I wasn't too sure about these, but Lauren's mom had them made, so I didn't think I should say no. Besides, secretly, I liked them. And I was pretty sure, should it all disintegrate into a melee between leaders, I could take each and every one of them.

  We parked the vans and got out. Soo Jin and I helped pin the tags on everyone. She'd brought old-fashioned stick candy to "sugar the girls up." She said that was all the gas station had. Only in a small town did gas stations have stick candy. We looked ready. I pushed all thoughts of prison and espionage aside and threw myself into preparations.

  "I'd better go see which heat we're in," I told Soo Jin. She winked. She knew that I already had the heat sheets.

  I was really going to scope out the competition. There were three heats with one final winner, based on time, and we were in the last one, alongside Brian Miller's team and two others I didn't know—a high school volleyball team and some group of adults who worked for a nonprofit or something.

  Why were my little girls up against all older teams? Oh, we were so going to cheat. I just had to figure out how. And I would. We would get to watch two races before ours and see how things worked. It was a small advantage, but I was more than willing to take it.

  The volleyball team looked pretty hard-core at second glance. These girls were serious athletes and not afraid of diving to the ground, as was evidenced by the fact that they were running through some drill that required them to dive onto the ground. The group of adults was even more unsettling.

  "Who are they again?" I asked Soo Jin, who'd just joined me.

  She pulled the schedule out of her pocket and frowned. "A last-minute entry, I guess. Says they're from Coats for Cats, some nonprofit in Des Moines."

  Cats needed coats?

  I sized up the adults dressed in military boots and camouflage clothing—a few of them had ski masks on. I'd never heard of the nonprofit, but that didn't necessarily mean anything.

  "I think I'll say hello," I said.

  The only one not doing stretches that looked like they were out of a 1950s calisthenics playbook was a severe-looking woman with very short, black hair and a grimace. I almost thought she was a man until I noticed no Adam's apple.

  "Hi!" I said with my bubbliest grin. "I'm Merry. My troop of third-graders is running against your team." I stuck out my hand for good measure.

  The woman glared at me, and then my hand, before turning and walking away.

  Oh. So that was how it was going to be. Fine.

  "How do they look?" Soo Jin asked when I'd returned.

  "Like they want to kill us for sport," I answered.

  "Don't you think the ski masks are a bit much?" Soo Jin bit her lip.

  "Intimidation factor." I couldn't take my eyes off them. "I don't think it will affect our girls."

  I looked over and saw Betty shouting as she walked up and down a row of our girls, who were standing at attention. They'd put camo face paint on, and Betty was smacking a riding crop against her hand.

  "Is she speaking German?" Dr. Body looked a little horrified.

  "I think she's just using an accent." We moved closer to hear what I assumed was supposed to be a pep talk to the troop.

  "We are the destroyer of hopes and dreams!" Betty shouted. "The devourer of men's souls!"

  "Devourer?" Soo Jin asked.

  "I'm impressed she knows that word," I replied.

  "They…" Betty aimed her riding crop at the other teams. "…think we're pushovers! They think we're just a bunch of little girls! That is our advantage and their downfall!"

  "Where did she get this speech?" Soo Jin asked.

  I was transfixed.

  "This is where we fight and they die!"

  "Is that from the movie 300?" Dr. Body whispered.

  "When you put your hand in a puddle of goo that used to be your best friend's face…" Betty's face was inflamed.

  "That's from Patton," I said.

  "We few, we happy few, we band of Girl Scouts…" the girl continued.

  "Henry V," Dr. Body mused.

  Apparently, Betty had googled war speeches the previous night. And the girls loved it.

  "Should we stop her?" Soo Jin asked.

  "Nah," I said. "She's on a roll. Let's go ask who's in charge. I want to know more about our adversaries."

  "Dr. Body!" A young woman ran up to us as if she could read minds. "We're so glad you're here!"

  "Is someone hurt?" Soo Jin asked.

  The woman looked confused. "Um, no…we're just glad you're here."

  Soo Jin introduced me to Allie Maddox.

  "Miss Maddox?" I asked. "Who are the adults in ski masks?"

  "Allie, please," the woman said as she looked around. "Who? Oh!"

  "Yes, them."

  Now they all had ski masks on and were stretching and cracking their knuckles.

  Allie frowned as she looked at her clipboard. "Well, it says they're from Coats for Cats. But those ski masks…"

  I nodded. "Not appropriate."

  "It'll intimidate the girls," Soo Jin added. "Isn't this all supposed to be for fun?"

  "You should go over there and ask them to tone it down a bit," I suggested.

  Allie looked like she'd rather set fire to her own hair and put it out with a cheese grater than approach the group. "Um, okay, I'll talk to them."

  We watched as she joined the team from Coats for Cats. The volleyball team was now doing a group chant—something about bathing in the blood of their opponents. And the Boy Scouts, still in uniform, all had Mohawks and blue faces. It was like a bizarre version of Braveheart.

  Allie approached someone and started talking. Whoever it was refused to remove his ski mask, and a very shaken young woman rejoined us.

  "They said it's because a couple of them are disfigured and they're all wearing masks out of solidarity or something." She trembled a little.

  "Do you want me to go over there?" I asked. I would. And I'd get them to take off those masks. They didn't scare me.

  "N-no." Allie didn't seem convinced. "And they requested the lane next to yours."

  I spun around to look at the group. My spy-dey senses were tingling. Something was off here, but what? I couldn't remember pissing off anybody in Des Moines since I'd moved here. Maybe they were mad that I didn't have coats on my cats.

  "So I'm putting you in the middle, between the Boy Scout troop and them." Allie gave us a frail smile before darting off on a make-believe emergency.

  "This doesn't seem like a good idea," I said.

  "Maybe we should drop out." Soo Jin looked nervous. "I don't want
the girls to get hurt, and between Brian Miller's troop and these psychos, I think we might be in trouble."

  I nodded. "You might be right. Let's talk to the girls."

  Our troop had divided itself into two groups and were slapping each other on the bellies like sumo wrestlers preparing for battle. Their little faces wore expressions of utmost seriousness. These kids were not going to like the idea of quitting.

  "Ladies!" Soo Jin stepped in their midst, and they stopped slapping and turned to listen. "The other teams in our heat are a lot older than us. I was thinking that we…"

  "Change heats?" Inez asked.

  Dr. Body looked at me as if to ask why we hadn't thought of that. "That might be a good idea."

  The Kaitlyns stepped forward as a group. One of them had a necklace made of doll heads and two others had a necklace of what I assumed were those same dolls' fingers. The fourth Kaitlyn was wearing Barbie shoes on a necklace. Apparently, she'd misunderstood what these girls had decided to do.

  "Not a chance," said the one I thought was Brian's sister. "We do this the right way, or we don't do it at all!"

  The girls let out what sounded like a Native American war whoop before Caterina pulled out a set of bagpipes and started playing a war song. That was new…

  "Maybe we shouldn't do it at all," Dr. Body answered.

  The girls fell silent. I was afraid they were going to eat her.

  "Freeeeeeeedooooooom!" the Hannahs cried out.

  I shrugged to Dr. Body and decided that when this was over we were going to have a chat with the girls about mixing their war metaphors.

  "Fine," I said. "Let's go watch the first heat. During the second, we will come up with a game plan."

  The girls nodded and marched two-by-two toward the start of the race, whistling the theme song from The Bridge on the River Kwai. As they passed me, I saw that they all had bloody skulls, drawn in crayon, taped to the back of their shirts.

  "Well," I said to Soo Jin, "at least they're taking this seriously…"

  I was just glad Kelly wasn't with us. She'd blame me for…whatever it was that was happening here.

  We stood at the edge of the first obstacle. Four teams, all with kids our age, stood poised and ready to run. The other troops wore their hair in ponytails and had colorful matching T-shirts with nice things like birds and horses on them.

  Betty was picking her teeth with a rubber bayonet, which I immediately confiscated, while Emily and Lauren had licked their candy sticks into shivs. The two Hannahs were smacking fists into their palms, and Ava was muttering something about "the lamentations of their parents" under her breath.

  Allie stepped forward and explained the course to everyone. Her previous chipper attitude was gone, and she looked a little nervous. Who were the Coats for Cats people? And why cats? Why not children? Sure the winters were brutal here, but did we need a whole organization to clothe the cat population in the middle of Iowa?

  Someone blew a whistle, and the four teams were off.

  Everyone ran through the first mud pit, some getting stuck and a few moving onward without shoes. They hit the ropes and swung across with ease. That was good. I had been worried about that. All four teams got through the element quickly, and we followed them to the archery range.

  At this point, things began to fall apart a bit as the teams struggled to put their snowshoes on. I gave a silent thanks that we had gone snowshoeing the previous winter. That should give us an edge.

  The first two girls approached their team's balance beam. One held back to watch the other girl go first. Very carefully, she stepped up onto the beam.

  "At least they're low to the ground," Dr. Body whispered.

  She was right—there wasn't much of a fall. To my surprise, the first girl made it across with no problems.

  My girls were absorbed. They watched as the bulk of the four teams now struggled to make it across a two- or three-inch beam while wearing snowshoes. Several fell and had to go back and do it again. It appeared that the trick was to shuffle sideways across the beam. Trying to walk heel to toe with the added length of the snowshoes was impossible.

  I had to admit, it did look like fun. The girls were laughing and teasing each other as they ran to the next element. All four teams lined up at this point. It was slow going. You had to crawl through deep mud, underneath four planks. Touching the boards meant you had to start over. What was our advantage here? The fact that our girls were smaller than the Boy Scouts, the high school volleyball team, and the Coats for Cats people?

  Whatever edge we could score was going to be tough. I spotted all three of our opposing teams on the sidelines, watching. In fact, I could've sworn that one of the ski mask guys was staring at me. But ski masks are tricky—like those paintings that look like the eyes are following you everywhere.

  That's one thing that, as a spy, I'd never seen. Like in those Scooby Doo movies where someone is really looking at you through holes in the eyes of a portrait. It just doesn't happen in the real world—probably because it's too obvious.

  The third element was taking longer than the other two combined. These kids were my troop's age. And creeping on their hands and knees through two feet of muck wasn't working for them.

  "I think we need a flamethrower," Lauren said quietly. "You know, to dry the mud?"

  I ignored that—mainly because there was no way I could get one on such short notice, and I couldn't see how we could "accidentally" activate a flamethrower and just sit around while it dried the mud. My mind was focused on the next task—the canoes.

  The eight aluminum canoes looked like the ones the camp owned. If so, they wouldn't be too much trouble. At that point we'd have to break into two teams of five. I figured that Dr. Body and I could each pull. The smallest girls would go inside the two canoes with two larger girls pushing from behind. Soo Jin and I would shoulder the majority of the weight, and I was fairly sure we could pull it off.

  But then again, these other troops had probably thought this out too.

  Turned out—not so much. To my complete surprise, the first team to the canoes seemed to not understand how physics worked. I watched incredulously as the adults got into the canoes. As a result, the boats wouldn't budge. Maybe the adults were tired or something, but it seemed to me that they were making a pretty ridiculous mistake.

  The other three teams nailed it, fairly sailing over the grass as they did what I wanted to do. The other troop just sat there, unable to move the canoes. Finally, the girls who'd been trying to pull burst into tears and ran off the field. This team was done.

  As a group, we followed everybody else to the climbing wall. I was kind of excited about this one. My girls were natural monkeys. I took the opportunity to check out what our opposition was up to.

  Brian Miller was standing opposite us, glaring right at us and making a slashing motion across his throat. His reputation had been destroyed by the laser tag game, and he was looking for some payback. The rest of his troop seemed okay, and his goofy dad was making a daisy chain. But I was going to have to watch Brian.

  The volleyball players were shouting rude insults at the teams participating. No doubt these were the mean girls at their school. When a little girl on one of the remaining teams started crying, they badgered her with insults. Their coach seemed oblivious. If I had anything to say about it, these bitches were going down. Hard.

  The problem with them would be their rabid competitiveness. They would do anything to win and had the physical stamina to make it happen. That team was our biggest competitor in these events. The Boy Scouts were out for blood, but even they wouldn't be able to handle these athletes.

  I turned my attention to the ski patrol. It was warm, like it always was in September, and to my immense satisfaction, I watched as they sweat their brains out. A few took off their masks, revealing bright red, sweaty faces. These people were older, maybe in their forties. And most were out of shape.

  Three members of the group, however, didn't remove their mask
s. Allie said something about one or two of them being disfigured. Were they horribly scarred? Because that would be more unsettling than the ski masks were. But I wasn't about to tell them that.

  Someone squeezed in between Soo Jin and me, and I found Allie, holding a tablet.

  "I'm sorry I can't do anything about your heat. But I can do this. The whole competition is being videotaped live. We have cameras all over the camp. Not many in this crowd will want to follow the contestants down to the lake, but you can."

  She tapped an icon, and a checkerboard of screens popped up. Every element was covered in high-definition.

  "Thank you," Soo Jin said. "But isn't this cheating?"

  Allie shook her head. "Considering what your troop is up against? I'd say this was the only decent thing to do." She slipped away before I could say anything.

  "Come on guys," I said softly to the troop. "Let's go strategize."

  We found a shady, isolated area beneath a couple of towering oak trees. I explained that we didn't need to continue watching the race because now we could see it live from the tablet. Soo Jin offered to keep an eye out while the rest of us figured out some sort of plan.

  "Those high school girls are scary." Inez looked at the others. "I'll bet they're really good."

  "What's the lineup?" one of the Kaitlyns asked.

  I took a stick and drew four lines in the dirt. "The first team, on the left and outside lane, is the Ski Mask patrol." (I didn't want to say Coats for Cats because the girls would find that adorable, and adorable wouldn't work today.) "We are next, followed by the Boy Scouts with the volleyball players on the other side."

  "I think I'd rather be next to the scary high school girls," Caterina muttered.

  "This is good!" Emily said. "We can keep an eye on Brian Miller's team. They're the only ones we really have to beat."

  An argument broke out between the girls who wanted to win the whole thing and the girls who just wanted to see Brian Miller's troop eat mud. I let them simmer while I gave the matter some thought.

  "They're over the wall," Soo Jin announced, not looking up from the tablet, "and heading down to the lake."

  Kelly didn't want us to cheat. But she wouldn't want us to go down without a fight either. What kind of strategy would allow us to do both? I thought about our team: me, Soo Jin, Betty, the four Kaitlyns, two Hannahs, Lauren, Inez, Emily, and Caterina. Four of us had to sit out. We all knew that, but who should that be?