As we cross the small field and make our way to the first RV, the cries of the Kenneh’wah hunters grows deafeningly loud. Still, we march forward. My shotgun is raised and ready.
“Rodney, look!” Kylie points to the woods.
Once more, a wall of warriors lines up shoulder to shoulder along the edge of the forest, stopping short of the perimeter of the camp as if there’s some invisible barrier holding them back. They’re yelling, making faces, and pumping fists and weapons in the air. Their bodies sway from left to right, seemingly drunk on the primordial passions of their unresolved loathing.
At the center of the group—Damien. He’s ripped off the flap of flesh from his scalp, giving us a clean view of the pale, milky gray of the top of his skull. “Aaaaaand where do you all think you’re going?” he asks, folding his arms.
“As far away from here as possible!” Kylie shouts back.
“You naive bitch.” Damien’s shoulders bounce as he laughs. “Do you really think there’s a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow?”
I tug Kylie by the arm, gesturing that we need to keep moving. To not pay Damien the attention he’s goading for.
He wants to feed our fears.
To remind us that they’re tracking us like a pack of wolves.
Damien then asks Kylie, “Are you that stupid to think that those flares are leading you to freedom?”
“Guess we’ll find out!” Kylie yells.
Damien exchanges glances with his fellow undead.
“Come on. Let’s go,” I tell Kylie. “He’s just pissed because he can’t get us.”
“That’s right, you pussies. Run!” Damien sneers. “You’ll be back soon enough! And I’ll be waiting. Especially for you, Rodney boy!”
“You won’t have the pleasure!” I shout back.
“Oh really?” Damien says, with one eyebrow raised. “Uh oh.” His eyes suddenly widen as he points at me . . . or rather past me. “Better look behind you.”
A shiver of nerves runs down my body as I turn around . . . and I’m cracked across the face with something fast and hard.
Vaguely, I hear Kylie shouting as my body hits the grou—
***
I awaken to the pungent smell of cigarette smoke and find myself inside a trailer. My first thought is that I’m somehow back in Mac’s RV. But as things come into focus, instead of Mac, I see a heavyset man in a wheelchair. He’s balding with a few white strands neatly combed over the crown of his head. He’s got a massively round and swollen nose, marred with gin blossoms, no doubt from seeing the bottom of too many bottles over the years. To his left stands Jim Grimm, indifferent and expressionless, with a shotgun in hand.
“My name’s Baxter Neeley,” the heavyset man says as he fires up a cigarette. “I’m sure that name should ring somewhat of a bell, Rodney.”
“How do you know my name?”
“Oh, a little old magic man told me.”
The throbbing in my head is quickly evolving into a migraine, it’s so severe I feel nauseous. I try to bring my hands to my head, but can’t because they’re handcuffed to my chair.
“Sorry about that,” Baxter says, eyeing my cuffs. “I’ve never had anyone make it this far . . . without me allowing it. So that tells me you’re either lucky or somewhat of a fighter. Neither of which I want to take a chance on.”
I scan the room. It’s just the three of us.
“Where’s Kylie?” I ask.
“Your friend’s fine.” He nods toward one of the doors in the room. “She’s . . . resting.”
“Resting?” I try to jump up, but the handcuffs restrain me. Jim takes a step forward with the shotgun, but Baxter gestures for him to back down.
“Trust me. She’s OK,” Baxter says as the cigarette flops up and down in his mouth.
“Trust you?” I repeat. “You’re a murderer.”
“I just don’t understand.” Baxter leans back in his wheelchair and takes a deep breath. Shakes his head in confusion. “I thought you people wanted to end your lives. Now suddenly, you all want to live? Why? Because the choice was taken out of your hands?”
I’m racking my brain for a way out of this. How to get out of these stupid handcuffs? Still, even if I did, Jim would blow me away before I could get my butt off this chair.
“Have you ever taken the time to think past your own selfishness?” Baxter asks me. “Taken a chance to think of all those folks who have died in car accidents, robberies, random shootings, plane crashes, and hospital beds? You think they got a choice? How selfish of any of you to believe you’re any different.” Baxter wheels himself over to a bottle of gin awaiting him on a weathered poker table.
“And who says you get to play God?” I ask. “Who says you get to decide who lives or dies?”
Baxter cocks his head to the side, takes a drag from his cigarette, and blows smoke straight up in the air like a chimney. He sighs, closes his eyes, and then reopens them, shifting his gaze to me with the look of a man who’s tired of explaining himself. “I get to play God because I can do whatever I want.” He smacks his thigh. “God took use of my legs. Allowed a drunk driver to crash into me while I was stopped at a red light.” Anger flashes in his eyes. His mouth curls into a snarl as he recounts his story. “That drunk driver was looking to end his life. Well, he did—at my expense. And when he died, he took use of my legs and half of my body with him. Left me impotent. Less of a man.” He looks down at the floor. “Didn’t take long for my bitch of a wife to leave me for someone else.” He pounds the poker table, and the bottle of gin does a little hop. “So I figure now God owes me one. He has to take a backseat while I get a little payback.”
“And killing innocent people is going to bring back the use of your dick?”
“Innocent?” Baxter laughs. “Who’s innocent?” He leans forward. “Last I checked, suicide is a ticket straight to Hell.”
“You’re the last person in the world who gets to preach about what’s right and what’s wrong.”
“The way I see it, I saved you. I saved you all.” Baxter takes another drag and then crushes out his cigarette. “If it weren't for me, you’d all be in Heaven’s basement. Souls permanently set to broil in the Devil’s oven.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about being your savior. You think it was pure chance that you escaped killing yourself? I am in touch with potent magic, or rather a magician of sorts. A shaman. And he is the one who saved you from an eternal afterlife in Hell and gave you a chance to be reborn into an army of purity.”
I shake my head. “I find it hard to believe a monster like you has a concept of Heaven and Hell. Of right and wrong.”
“Everyone gets their jollies off somehow.” Baxter pours himself a drink. “Alcohol. Drugs. Porn. Gambling.” He downs the shot. “Me? I just like watching people die.” He waves his index finger in the air. “That’s why I have hundreds of Wi-Fi cameras strung up in the trees.”
“You sick bastard!” If only I could break out of these restraints, I’d beat the shit out of this monster and his sidekick.
Baxter takes a drag of his cigarette, blows a puffy gray cloud in my direction. Studies me for a moment, then says to Jim, “Send this asshole back out there.” He unlocks my cuffs, then spins his wheelchair around to face Jim. “He’s not done playing the game.”
“Gladly.” Jim brings the shotgun up to my face. “You heard the man.” He nods toward the door. “Get off your ass, keep those hands up, and move!”
As anger ferments in my gut, I ask Baxter, “This isn’t a game, is it?”
With an inquisitive look, he asks, “What exactly do you mean by that?”
“By definition, a game would imply that there’s a chance one of the players might win.” With a scoff, I say, “But we’re not meant to win this, are we?”
Baxter freezes in place. On his face, first a look of contempt, and then curiosity. “Actually, somebody always wins.” He takes one last puff of his cigarette and s
erves himself another shot. “And that somebody is me.”
“You know what I’d like to know?”
“Indeed . . .” Baxter is about to down the shot, but pauses. He lowers the glass. “I would.”
“Just how long you’d last out there.” I gesture toward the woods.
“Guess you’ll never know.” Baxter pounds the shot and slams the glass on the table. “Now get out of my face!”
Jim jabs me in the ribs with the shotgun, and I nearly keel over. “Move it, chief!” He escorts me toward the door, but I stop short.
Through gritted teeth, clutching my side, I mutter, “This game’s about to change. I promise.”
With a huff, Baxter says, “You shouldn’t make promises you know you can’t keep.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I don’t.”
Jim prods me again with the shotgun.
I take a pained breath, grunting as the air fills my lungs and swells my ribcage. As I push open the door, I mumble to Jim, “You’re part of this game, too.”
“Yeah, but I’m on the winning team. Now move your ass!”
Chapter 21—The Long Walk
Outside, Jim ushers me back toward the woods, toward the edge of the camp. Surprisingly the Kenneh’wah have all vanished. Although I’m sure they’re somewhere. Waiting and watching from the shadows. Damien right alongside them. Gushing for the chance to kill me. But before we get very far, I hear Baxter call out, “Jim! Wait!”
Jim frowns, then mumbles to me, “Stay put, chief.” This is followed by another painful jab at my backside with his shotgun. To Baxter, he says a very annoyed, “Yeah…? What’s up?”
“You know . . . Rodney’s right!”
“About?” Jim answers, the word sounding more like a groan than a response.
“Well, it’s not a game unless one side has the chance to win.”
“So what? That’s never mattered before.”
“Correct, but then no one’s ever gotten this far before either, James.”
“It’s Jim, goddammit. You know I hate when you call me that.”
Baxter laughs. “Yeah. I know.” Then he says, “So, Rodney…”
I say nothing. Keeping my eyes on the glowing forest ahead.
“Come on, Rodney. Turn around and face me! Don’t be rude.”
Reluctantly I do as asked and find Baxter parked on the porch of his trailer, gin bottle in one hand, ever-present shot glass in the other.
“Now since you made it this far, I’m willing to reward your survival skills,” Baxter says. “Your newfound will to live.”
“Reward me?” And now I feel like I’m talking to Satan himself. What kind of bargaining does the Devil do?
“Let’s be honest. You and the woman have shown some miraculous resilience. Frankly, I’m in awe that you’re both still alive. Be a shame to kill you so quickly. That’d be no fun after all.” He pours himself another shot. “I rather enjoy the challenge. Your survival has proven very refreshing after too many years of folks easily being slaughtered like cattle to my native friends here. Don’t quite think they had the same will to live as you two have shown.”
The more I hear him talk, the more I grow to hate this man. “Get to your point.”
“The point is, I’m willing to let one of you go as a reward for making it to the finish line.” He throws back his head and gulps down the gin.
“It’s not a finish line if one of us is still in the game.”
“Let’s clarify things, Rodney. It’s my game. I can do whatever I want!” he says, slamming down the shot glass. “Take it or leave it. Your choice. You leave, or the woman leaves.”
The psychotic entertainment never ends in Baxter’s world. He’s the Goldilocks of dungeon masters. Seems he doesn’t want his “players” to die so quickly, but at the same time, refuses to let them win outright.
He wants everything to be just right.
To be perfectly balanced in his twisted, little mind.
Baxter continues. “And Jim here will personally take whomever you choose out of here and straight to Miami. Isn’t that right?”
“I . . . will?” Jim asks with a bit of surprise in his voice.
“Yes, you certainly will.”
“And what happens to the other person?” I ask. “To the one who remains.”
“Well, what do you think?” Baxter pours another shot and then brings the glass to his lips as he says, “It’s back to the playing field.” He downs the shot.
Back to the playing field?
To an untamed woodland full of undead monsters?
No, I can’t let Kylie go back. A dozen vicious Kenneh’wah with anger issues against one, albeit tough, woman are lousy odds. Not to mention I’m sure that Damien would love to have his way with her.
Yeah, no way. I’d rather go in her place. Even if I don’t make it out of those woods alive, I’d still rather take the fall than let her. Besides . . .
I almost took a bullet from my own gun and died for the wrong woman.
I’m more than happy to take an arrow and die for the right one.
“So you or her?” Baxter’s raspy voice snaps me out of thought.
“I’ll stay. Kylie can go free.”
“If I may ask . . . why?”
“A hundred reasons. For starters, I’m not leaving her here for you guys to have fun with.”
Baxter raises an eyebrow. “What makes you so sure we won’t have fun with her . . . after you’re dead?”
I move forward like I’m going to take his head off, but Jim promptly raises the shotgun. “Easy there, chief,” he says. “Save that fight for them natives.”
Baxter waves, smiling wide. “Don’t worry . . . I won’t touch her.”
Jim chuckles. Then gestures for me to turn back toward the trees.
Baxter shouts, “If it’s any consolation, you’ve been a real treat to watch.”
Oh, the things I would do to Baxter if given half a chance.
But that won’t be happening anytime soon.
In just a few minutes, I’ll be back in the Kenneh’wah theme park. Weaponless. Tired. And the only target of Damien’s loathing.
“Keep those hands up and keep walking,” Jim says.
The closer we get to the edge of camp, toward the enveloping quiet darkness of the trees where the hunters are waiting for me, the more I feel like a prisoner marching down a hallway toward death row.
I can’t help but ask, “Why are you doing this?”
“Doing what?” Jim snaps, my question catching him off guard.
“Why are you helping that asshole?”
“Because that asshole pays me well.”
“That really it?”
Jim says nothing and my ears are filled with only the soft sounds of our feet crushing dried grass. We’re almost to the edge of camp and the closer we get, the brighter the red glow emanating from the woods gets. It’s as if Baxter’s cursed playing field senses my presence as I approach—
Perhaps that’s it.
Perhaps the ground is alive—or, rather, dead.
Jim breaks the silence. “Baxter saved my life.”
“You mean he spared you from the Kenneh’wah?” I ask. “Spared you from getting ripped to shreds.”
“Now what makes you say that?”
“Back on the bus, you showed us your scars, suggesting that you had survived,” I say. “You implied that you had made it through the night.”
“So?”
“Baxter said Kylie and I were the first to make it as far as we did.”
Jim lets out a throaty laugh followed by a sigh. “You’re a hell of a good listener, chief.”
“You’re a lousy liar.”
“So I lied about surviving the game,” he says. “So what? But I didn’t make that up about Baxter saving my life. I was one click away from blowing off the top of my head with this very shotgun. Thankfully that shaman picked up on my vibe, directed me toward Baxter’s game.”
“How exactly did h
e do that?” I ask.
“I had dreams about a bus, a bus that took me to freedom,” he says. “There was an old man in the dream. He had long gray hair. Tan, wrinkled skin. He spoke in a language I’d never heard, yet I could understand him completely. Told me the bus would take me to a man in a wheelchair. This man would give me a new life. A new purpose.”
As we make our way closer to the edge of camp, I glance up to see several clouds blocking out the moon. For the moment, the only thing illuminating our path is the glowing red forest ahead and the dim yellow light casting down from the light poles outlining the perimeter of Baxter’s camp.
Jim continues. “That man—who I would later come to know as Baxter—felt my desperation. My desire to kill myself for failing at life. Baxter took me in. Gave me a fresh start.”
“And made you his errand boy.” I stop walking abruptly. “He gave you another direction in which to point that shotgun, instead of at yourself.”
Jim snorts and spits on me. “Fuck you, man.”
I feel the warmth of his saliva slide down my neck. I reach up to wipe it off.
“Keep moving! I didn’t tell you to stop!” he says with a shove. “Just a few more feet to go, cowboy.”
The crickets go silent as we continue walking.
“You ever think that you’re being used not saved?” I ask.
“Shut up!”
“Maybe Baxter realized that he needed help to run his game. Maybe the game has gotten bigger because his lust for death has grown. More bodies to the slaughterhouse, right? Or slaughter-field—”
“Shut up!”
“And here you come. A suicidal ‘loser’ like the rest of us, with our problems and our self-justified self-loathing. And he sees an opportunity to have someone to help him out—”
“I said, shut the fuck up!”
“Wake up, Jim. Baxter’s using you. He’s just a troll who gets profit and pleasure out of luring innocent people to their death. Perverse retribution for being paraplegic.” I pause. “Better yet, his disability is just a way to justify the morbid desires that were always there. His physical condition is his excuse—”
The Death Wish Game Page 12