by Lily Sparks
“WHAT’S the last step?! What are you doing?”
Dave yanks my wrists together, ties them, and then uses another cable tie to attach me to the bunk bed post across the room from Nobody. I’m not resisting, but he still slams me into the bunk, cracking my head against the wood frame. There’s a snapping behind me, I twist my head enough to get Kate in my peripheral vision, pulling on thick rubber gloves as Dave hands her a nightmare object of surgical steel and plastic tubing out of the black case.
An injection gun? What are they injecting us with?
Nobody kicks out, she howls, but Dave is too strong. Kate jerks up the back of Nobody’s mask as Dave holds her scarred, twitching shoulders in place, and she sobs uncontrollably. I never imagined she could cry.
“You have to hold still,” Kate is so calm. “It won’t damage you if you hold still.”
“Please,” I plead. “Why don’t you just tell us what this is first?! We have rights, YOU CAN’T JUST—”
Before I finish the sentence, Kate presses the surgical gun to the back of Nobody’s neck and pulls the trigger.
Chapter Four
The Teen Killers Club
Nobody falls in a pile on the floor.
“You’re all right.” Kate’s voice is directly behind me, Dave’s hands wrenching my shoulders, my own voice screaming in my ears:
“Just tell me what it is first! I won’t struggle if I just know! Just tell me what it is!”
“Stop talking.” Dave flattens me against the bunk like he wants to leave bruises. Gloved hands scrape my hair from the back of my neck and a cold circle presses above where my shoulder blades meet, and then comes the unreal sound of metal punching through my skin.
Hot, mindless pain radiates up my neck and through my jaw and all the way down my spine, snowballing larger and larger as it spreads until it’s the only thing that exists. My teeth grind, my jaw locks, my vision blurs, my body bucks, wanting free of itself. And then I go limp, hanging from my wrists, and then I’m somehow face down on the floor, curled up beside Nobody. I try to get up and the floor dips and rolls below me and the green bean casserole comes up, sour with stomach acid.
Kate’s voice breaks through: “Girls? Girls? See this, girls?”
In sharp focus: an oblong chrome pill, right above my face.
“This is what I just injected you with. It’s in your neck right now, along with a mild disinfectant and muscle stimulant to keep your body from rejecting it. It’s a kill switch. There are three ways to set it off.”
I’m going to be sick again. I’m going to be sick.
“We have an electronic perimeter around camp that’s programmed to trigger your kill switch if you’re on the wrong side of it. Think of it as an invisible fence. The fence extends a mile out from the far shore, across the sign road, and up the far side of the east creek. If you cross the fence, your kill switch will go off instantly.
“Once it’s armed, the kill switch has an internal sensor that will self-activate if the blood around it suddenly oxygenates: in other words, if you try to cut it out, it will go off.”
“Also, try not to get stabbed in the neck,” Dave adds.
Kate clears her throat. “Finally, Dave and I have these clickers. They work kind of like remote controls.” She extends her arm, so the pill is hovering well away from her, and nods to Dave.
He holds up his fob and clicks, and the air fills with the smell of melting rubber as whatever chemical is inside the chrome pill releases and starts melting Kate’s gloves.
“Your switch has been placed between several rather crucial arteries,” Kate says, ripping off her gloves as they start dribbling from her fingers. “If we see you threaten another camper, or act out in a harmful way, or you attempt to escape, we will click our remotes, and your kill switch will release this substance into your bloodstream.”
And turn us off. Like we’re a TV.
Kate’s gloves are now a puddle on the floor. “Any questions? Concerns?”
“You can’t just kill us.” My voice comes out broken.
“Believe me, we don’t want to,” Kate says gently. “We are trying to give you as much freedom as we can.”
I should have gotten in the stupid canoe. I should have bolted when Erik jeered at me to run. Now it’s too late.
Kate wipes up the melted latex and, matter-of-factly, my vomit, as Nobody and I lie clammy and shivering on the ground.
“When you two are feeling better you can go ahead and shower up, and go meet the others ’round the fire,” Dave says as they duck out the door. “Congratulations. You’re officially campers now.”
The idea of getting up off the floor is unimaginable. It’s not until several long cold minutes pass that the haze of pain starts narrowing to a small persistent burning at the base of my neck, like a venomous spider bite.
Nobody and I silently pull ourselves to our feet and retreat to the bathroom, showering in opposite end stalls under ice-cold water. I hear her crying, a soft, hoarse sound, and wish I could cry too, but it’s like everything inside me has been wrung out.
We dress in silence and walk side by side through the dark toward the main cabin. There’s a glow around the side porch and the sharp smell of campfire smoke.
“There they are!” a male voice calls, and Jada yells: “We’re making s’mores!”
Four long logs circle the wide iron fire pit, which breathes plumes of white sparks and radiates crackling red heat. I drop onto the opposite end of the log Javier sits on. Nobody settles between us, leaning back from the fire.
One of the twins strums a guitar on the log across from us. He looks up and says,
“‘Yo quiero Taco Bell!’”
“… What?”
“Your sweatshirt.”
I look down and see the phrase emblazoned on my chest in bright purple letters.
“Oh I … didn’t see it before.”
He nods. Then: “Did you puke?”
I’m unsure how to answer him.
“’Cause if you haven’t yet you probably will. I puked when they put mine in,” he adds. “Troy did too.”
“Troy did too what? What are you saying about me to the new girls?” The other twin walks into the shifting circle of firelight from the main cabin with a paper plate stacked with graham crackers and broken chocolate bars.
“That you were sick after kill switches.”
“Nah, I was fine.”
“Dude, you puked!”
I quickly wipe the corners of my mouth.
“It hollows you out.” The hushed, low voice comes from Javier. The firelight brushes the long line of his cheek with amber and sets tiny gold sparks in the center of his eyes.
“I was wondering why you were all so well behaved.” My voice is still scratchy. “Now I know.”
“Yeah, but don’t stress about it too much,” Kurt, the twin with the guitar, says. “As long as you don’t try to escape or kill another camper, you’re perfectly safe.”
“Safe? The way they manhandled us back there, no guard would’ve gotten away with that at my prison—”
“It’s strategic. Not personal. They need to establish physical authority up front,” Erik’s voice cuts in. There’s a crazy elevator sensation low in my stomach as he emerges from the dark and sits heavily beside Kurt. I don’t make eye contact but am all too aware of him as he snatches a bag of marshmallows from beside the log and spears one on a stripped branch. “They’re two middle-aged weirdos in charge of the first-ever elite force of teenaged assassins. How did you think they were keeping us in line? Merit badges?”
I can feel him staring me down, so I force myself to meet his gaze through the leaping fire, and he laughs. “Awww, someone doesn’t like getting treated like one of the bad kids!” I turn my head, bracing myself for when he starts taunting me about being innocent in front of the others.
But instead he says, sarcastically: “Guess you should’ve thought about that before you tested as a Class A.”
�
��But why use Class As?!” I ask wearily. “Aren’t there special forces and spies and stuff who volunteer and train professionally for this kind of thing?”
“The people we’re going to be killing are U.S. citizens.” Kurt places his fingers along the frets in a series of chords without strumming. “So they need a crime scene that’s, uh, unprofessional.”
“And then if we get caught they can be like ‘More senseless Class A violence!’” Troy does a voice like a stern newscaster: “‘How fast can we round these monsters up and shoot them directly into the sun? NASA experts weigh in!’”
“So what, they expect us to get caught?”
“Hopefully not. That’s what our training is for.”
“But why not train older Class A types and give us a chance to …” I’m about to say appeal when I remember that’s not an option anymore.
“Um, have you met an older Class A?” Jada shudders theatrically. “I had two locked up on my block. They could barely get through a room inspection with three bosses and a taser.”
“Yeah, most Class As are a little too far gone down the bones-as-wind-chimes road after twenty-five.” I can hear the smile in Erik’s voice, though I don’t look over at him.
“It’s really not a bad deal, considering,” Troy says cheerfully. “In ancient times they would have just strapped us to stakes and burned us for demons or something,”
“They’re trying to do basically that now,” Kurt sighs. “Congress is majority Protectionist.”
“Majority what?” I ask.
“Protectionist? Hello?” Jada snaps. “Protectionists, the people who think everyone should be forced to take the Wylie-Stanton? And anyone who tests as Class A should be like, killed or something? ‘Prevention Is the Best Protection,’ those people?”
“Oh, they would never kill us,” Erik says. “That would be inhumane. They’ll just drug us to the point where all we can do is watch TV and piss our pants.”
“Luckily we don’t have to worry about that,” Javier says quietly. “Since we’re in the Teen Killers Club.”
“Yeah. Now you’ve gotten your kill switch, you’re officially a member!” Troy says, with ta-da jazz hands.
“Is she, though?” Jada picks at a graham cracker, her almond-shaped nails glinting in the firelight. “She hasn’t even told anyone her number yet. She could be a zero like Dennis, for all we—”
“One.” Nobody’s gravelly voice startles me. Jada sucks her teeth and Troy stifles a laugh, but then Nobody adds, “A decapitation.” And there’s a small, appreciative silence.
I don’t want their approval, but I need it. For this crowd, scary is good, crazy even better.
“So not eleven?” Erik blinks at me innocently, and I bite my lip.
So he’s decided to play dumb about my case with the group. But the cost of that might be endless teasing. Which, fine. Teasing I can handle.
Javier leans forward past Nobody so his eyes connect with mine.
“One way to look at camp is, like, as a chance to do good,” he begins.
“Good?” Erik’s laugh cuts across the fire. “‘A chance to do good’? Did you actually just say that?”
Kurt’s strumming slows.
“Did I stutter?” Javier keeps his tone light, but the rebuke is there. “Yeah, that’s what I said. Our targets are seriously bad people. Domestic terrorists. Cult leaders. Corrupt politicians—”
“Putting aside your naive acceptance that Kate and Dave would only have us kill ‘bad people,’” Erik interrupts, “you know there’s no such thing as good and bad, right? There’s strong and weak. That’s it. That’s the only binary that exists. When the strong kill each other in the name of the weak they call it being good. When the strong kill in their own name, it’s called evil.”
“There’s also the view that killing anyone is evil,” Dennis says. I’d almost forgotten he was here, he’s been sitting so quietly on the log to my left this whole time.
“That’s classic, coming from a zero!” Troy laughs, and everyone else joins in.
“FROM ZERO TO HERO!”
“Dennis the Non-Menace!”
“How are you a zero?” I ask him as the others continue laughing. “How did you end up here if you never killed anyone?”
“Dennis kept having murder fantasies,” Erik answers for him. I didn’t realize he was listening. “He was afraid he’d act on them, so he asked his computer teacher to give him the Wylie-Stanton and tested off the charts. He also ran a little dark net site called … what was it called again?”
“Skullsex dot com,” Dennis says flatly.
“How could I forget!” Erik laughs.
“We didn’t have any actual threads on copulating with skulls.” Dennis adjusts his oversized glasses. “Cannibalism, torture, decapitation—” He gives me a gentlemanly nod. “But no skull fetishists. Still, it got the tone across.”
My stomach turns over as everybody else chuckles.
“Dennis is the highest Class A out of all of us,” Erik adds, “despite being a zero.”
“I’m more of a programmer than a killer, per se,” Dennis says modestly. “But of course, everybody here has their own method.”
The rest of the group has gone back to talking amongst themselves. Dennis’s even voice is so low I have to lean in to hear him.
“What methods?” I ask, unsure I even want to know.
“Jada draws victims in and strikes when they least expect it. The twins are hedonistic process killers. Erik is an apex manipulator—”
“He’s a what now?”
“He kills people by getting in their heads. He doesn’t need to touch you, though he’s happy to do it that way too. But most of his victims he broke down psychologically.”
“Right.” I roll my eyes, and Dennis turns from the fire and looks at me.
“I’m perfectly serious,” he says. “And Javier—”
“You telling her all our numbers?” Javier leans in.
“Dennis, please!” Troy interrupts, “I’d prefer to go through my kills myself, in detail.”
“No, thanks,” I shake my head, unable to handle any more, “I don’t want to know.”
The entire circle goes quiet, staring at me. Everyone is bewildered, because obviously, what could be more exciting to a bunch of killers than reliving their crimes! Erik looks like he’s about to burst out laughing. I take a deep breath and try to cover.
“I mean, sorry, I just don’t want to compare report cards, okay? All the posturing and ‘I’m harder than you’ stuff. We’re not fighting for cafeteria tables in Gen Pop.” I try to sound casually tough. The hoarseness helps. So does the idea I’ve decapitated someone, probably. “Like, everybody here already got accepted into murder Harvard or whatever. So can’t we get to know each other as people instead of rap sheets? Can’t we just … hang out?”
Jada lets out an uncertain, mocking giggle, but Javier nods emphatically, and there’s a note of real emotion in his voice as he says, “Yeah. Yeah, I’d like that a lot.”
“I know I’d appreciate moving the emphasis off our body counts,” Dennis says, and Troy shrugs.
“I can hang out, like bros, like brosefs, just chilling and stuff.” There’s a slight edge in his voice, but he’s smiling.
Erik stares right at me with that awful wolfish smile. Like he’s so onto me.
Then Nobody asks Kurt if he knows any Dolly Parton, and he starts strumming and the atmosphere relaxes.
“Ooooh, we should play truth or dare!” Jada claps her hands delightedly. She’s moved next to Erik. She puts her hand on Erik’s shoulder, but he leans forward to throw little bits of grass into the fire and it slips away.
Troy chimes in:
“Hell yeah! Truth or dare! I dare you to take your top off,” Troy bellows.
“Ew, nasty!” Jada reaches behind Erik to shove Troy, hard. “Kill him, Erik!”
“I thought we were all pretending to be normal, like Signal wanted?” Erik addresses me then: “Trut
h or dare, Signal?”
I consider the choice, the only sounds the crackle of the fire and distant roll of the lake.
“… Truth.”
“Okay.” Erik’s eyes flit to Javier and then back to me. “Are you in a relationship?”
There’s a flurry of comically dramatic gasps. My adrenaline spikes, but I know exactly what to say.
“If you must know, nobody is my girlfriend.” Emphasis on the small n.
Erik immediately catches it, blurting: “Wait, wait let me rephrase!” But everyone drowns him out clapping and making catcalls. Nobody does a collar pop, and Troy loses it. I look to Javier, but his head is down, he’s stripping bark from a stick.
And now it’s my turn to ask.
I look around the circle, then turn to Javier with the biggest smile I can muster.
“Javier, truth or dare?”
He smiles, a small smile, but it changes his face, makes him go from manly to boyish.
“Dare.”
Now I really have no idea what to say.
“But I’m not taking off my shirt,” he adds.
“I dare you …” I swallow, a little overcome by my new power. “To … sing along with the next song Kurt plays.”
Kurt does a drum roll on his guitar and launches into an opening chord, but when it gets to the point Javier should sing he doesn’t. His shy smile becomes a nervous cringe, and I realize I’ve hit a nerve. Big muscly Javier is afraid of singing in public?! Well … that’s actually kind of adorable.
“Wait, what song is this?” I ask with my best confused expression.
“It’s ‘Redemption Song.’ By Bob Marley.”
“Ah ha! So you do know it! Get singing, then!” I reach out as if to poke him in the arm but draw back before I connect, and just like that, his smile is back.
He clears his throat, waits for Kurt to get through the intro again, and then comes in, clear and soft and on key. One after the other we join in with him, until we’re all singing, except Erik. He just stares at me through the fire, but I don’t care. I’d forgotten how good it feels to sing. Like the opposite of crying.
Chapter Five
On Your Mark