The Rules

by Nancy Holder

  His curly chestnut hair was silky and she inhaled the smell of tobacco. It was so Larson. She just couldn’t believe this was happening. This was the beginning of something wonderful. She just knew it.

  He straightened his knees as a larger wave crashed against the beach and lapped at his shins. The water was rising.

  “Tide’s coming in fast,” he said. “You guys must have forgotten about that.”

  I wouldn’t have, she thought, but she didn’t say anything. She spared one more moment to wonder why doing this was better than going through the tunnels—the water was cold—but she didn’t figure he would have carried her if they’d gone that route, so she forgot about it.

  “Look out for the zom-bots,” she said, giving them a name, an implication that she had had a hand in putting them in the hunt. “They might float back to shore.”

  “And since they don’t have to breathe, they won’t drown, wahahaha,” he said. “Okay. Here goes.”

  Seagulls wheeled and called to the moon as he slogged down the beach. Larson was walking like a zombie himself, and she didn’t know if it was on purpose or because she was too heavy for him. The idea mortified her.

  She monitored the light and looked up the hill for the two cowards Robin and Thea. She wouldn’t put it past Thea to abandon her, but Robin was a different story. Robin was the goody-goody. The nice girl. It surprised her that Robin hadn’t doubled back to check on her.

  “Hey, I think…,” Larson said. “Is that the hand you’re talking about?”

  She tried to look around his shoulder but couldn’t see. He rocked forward, staggering a little under her weight, and she was suddenly very anxious.

  “Don’t,” she said, but he was already fishing around in the water.

  “Got it.” There was a beat as he lifted it up and she could see it. “Oh God.”

  Everything in her froze. Her heartbeat blared like a siren in her head. The hand was fleshy and bloody, with bones and tendons trailing out of the wrist.

  It is real.

  LARSON’S RULE #2: Know who your friends are.

  “Beth,” Larson ground out. “Beth.”

  Larson knew Cage Preston well. Knew that he had given himself a homemade tattoo of the letter U at the base of his middle finger. Most people missed it, but Larson had been at his house the night Cage had done it.

  This hand bore the same tattoo.

  He dropped it and began to lurch sideways. Beth was bellowing in his ear and the lantern splashed into the water. He backed away. Beth kept howling. With no light but the moon, he looked everywhere. For whoever had done this.

  For more of Cage.

  It’s just a joke. A joke. He staggered around. Pick it up. Take it with you.

  Shrieking, Beth leaped off his back and sloshed past him. He caught up to her and they ran together for a couple of steps before he passed her easily. He saw a path and angled for it as she screeched at him to wait for her. But he couldn’t slow down. He was on autopilot as he charged up, reaching the top of the cliff and barreling over crushed shell as he threw himself at the warehouse door and flung it open.

  “Hey!” he bellowed.

  Robin and Thea were with August. Mick the bassist was there. And Praveen. They all looked at him as he staggered to a halt, dripping seawater on the floor, shaking and trembling, wiping his hand over and over on his jeans.

  Larson pointed at Thea and Robin. “I saw it,” he said to them. His voice shook. “I saw the hand.” He wiped his face with his arm. “That was Cage’s hand!”

  Robin paled and Thea whirled on August. “I told you!” she bellowed at him.

  “And I told you,” August said, his attention fixed on Larson as he staggered over to the wall and leaned against it, panting. “I didn’t plant a fake hand in the zombie graveyard. Someone else did. Probably Cage.” He looked around as if he expected Cage to make a grand entrance.

  “Where’s Beth?” Robin asked.

  Larson felt a flash of guilt. “I kind of bailed on her. I freaked out. She’ll be here in a sec.”

  “You left her out there?” Robin said incredulously. She ran across the floor and leaned out through the doorway. “Beth!”

  “You left her out there, too, Robin,” Larson said.

  “Oh my God, people. It’s not a real hand.” August rolled his eyes. “Please.”

  “It looked real,” Larson said. “And if you didn’t put it there, how can you know anything about it?”

  “Yeah.” Mick gave his guitar a strum. He looked massively unimpressed.

  “Have you seen Cage since the hunt began?” Praveen asked.

  “No, I’m sure he and Morgan found a nice quiet spot and are doing…their own thing,” August said with a smirk.

  “Maybe they’re both dead,” said Thea.

  “And maybe someone’s pranking you. People are allowed to do that,” August rejoined.

  “What’s going on?” Kyle said from the doorway. He was carrying a big red metal can with GAS written on the side in yellow letters. As he set it down in front of his coffin, he grinned at Robin and then smoothed back his hair. His cheeks were flushed.

  August huffed. “Someone planted a fake hand and scared the newbies.”

  “Are you all insane?” Thea cried. “Aren’t you listening? It was a hand! A real hand!”

  Kyle chuckled. “Guys, really? This is how these hunts go.”

  From the doorway, Robin gave her head a shake. “Beth isn’t answering me,” she said. “Something’s wrong.”

  “I’m sure she’s fine,” said the Maximum Volume lead guitarist, Mick, who had been strumming some melody onstage.

  “We don’t know that! We don’t know anything!” Thea shrieked.

  She was right, except Larson did know one thing: that really had been Cage’s hand.

  “I’m done! I want my phone and I want to leave!” Thea cried.

  She spied the tarps bunched up in the corners and ran to the nearest one. “I want my phone now!” she yelled, ripping the tarp away. Two cardboard boxes were stacked onto a wooden crate.

  “Thea, stop,” August said, starting to sound irritated. “You need to talk this over with Beth. She drove. And she’s your partner. Really, it’s just for fun.”

  “Where did you hide the phones?”

  Thea ran over to the coffin that said PENALTY BABES and started rooting through the black wrappings of the “corpse” August placed inside it. “I put my purse here. Where the hell is my purse?”

  “Hey,” August began, and then he let out a horrible scream.

  Praveen and Robin shrieked. Thea, too.

  The figure in the coffin was not a robot corpse that could writhe on command. Cage Preston was swathed in black velvet, his face a pulpy, bruised mess. His nose was broken, his skin the color of eggplant and cold ashes. His swollen lips were purple, white, and blue.

  As Thea backed away, she dragged the black velvet with her, exposing Cage’s body.

  Where his left hand should have been was nothing but a bloody, mangled stump.

  REST IN PIECES

  KYLE’S RULE #2: Always follow the rules.

  In the frenzy, Kyle dashed toward Cage’s body and collided with Larson, hard. The force spun him half around.

  “Hold on, man! Hold on!” Larson yelled, grabbing Kyle, righting him.

  Together, Larson and Kyle pried Cage out of the coffin and laid him on his back on the concrete floor. Larson kept shouting Cage’s name and pounding on his shoulder. Cage was completely limp and the back of his head was bashed in. Cage’s face was a mess. Kyle leaned down and snaked his hand against Cage’s neck to look for a pulse. His skin was clammy and cold, and his artery was not pumping blood.

  There was no air blowing from his ruined nose.

  Someone was tugging on Kyle’s sleeve. It was Robin; he didn’t want her to see, so he jumped up and threw his arms around her, dragging her away. Robin jerked around in his arms and pounded his chest. He kept her shielded as she socked him, hard
; it finally registered that she wanted him to let go but he couldn’t make himself do it. She wasn’t even supposed to be here. She hadn’t been invited.

  “Kyle! We have to find Beth!” she yelled.

  “No, I will,” he said. “I’ll look for her. You get out of here. Go for help. Now.”

  August and Mick were wildly pawing through the boxes that had been concealed under the other tarp. As Kyle watched, Thea ran to the pile of clues for PENALTY BABES and grabbed a wicked-looking knife with a long, bloody blade. She raced back toward August, and Kyle sprinted to intercept her.

  “Whoa,” Kyle said as he planted himself between her and the two guys. “Hey, Thea, stop.”

  “Get out of my way!” She tried to get around him but he stuck to her like a guard in basketball. “August! He bashed in Cage’s face and he cut—”

  Her eyes widened; she dropped the knife and brought her hand against her chest. She stared down at the floor and then at August and Mick. Kyle made the connection that she just had: maybe that was the knife that had been used to hack off Cage’s hand.

  Yellowed papers seesawed to the floor from the boxes Mick and August were tipping upside down, shaking them as hard as they could, and discarding them on the floor. Larson was still kneeling beside Cage, completely losing his mind.

  “Damn it, Thea, help us,” August yelled at her. He looked at Kyle. “The phones are missing.”

  “Even yours?” Thea flung at him. “You didn’t put your own phone in that basket, you bastard! You should have yours!”

  “I set it down right here,” August shouted, moving to the coffin-shaped table where his headset and clipboard rested beside the two purple skulls. He turned them upside down. Black envelopes slid to the floor like oversized playing cards. “And it’s gone!”

  “Hell with this. I’m getting out of here.” Mick threw the box down and ran toward the door.

  “I’m going with you,” Thea cried.

  “We have to get a phone. Cage needs an ambulance,” Larson said from his position beside Cage, and Kyle winced.

  “No, man, no, he doesn’t,” Kyle said softly. He looked at Robin, who hadn’t left. “Go with Mick and Thea,” he said to her. “Go. I’ll find Beth.” He looked around the room. “And…everybody else.”

  Her face was ashen. “Morgan. Stacy. Hiro. Drew.” Her eyes widened. “Where’s Praveen? She was just here!”

  “Maybe she did it!” Thea trotted back toward the knife, but Larson threw himself across the floor and grabbed it. “Hey, that’s mine.”

  Larson cradled it against his chest. “No, it’s not.”

  Thea opened and closed her mouth. Then she glommed on to Mick, and together they crossed the room. August hurried after them but Kyle reached out and grabbed his forearm.

  “Hey, we have to find the others,” Kyle said. “We can’t just bail on them.”

  August shook him off. “Cage is dead. Someone killed him.” He started to catch up to Thea and Mick.

  “Don’t you take one step near me,” she said, baring her teeth at him like a wild animal. “Don’t try anything. My boyfriend will kill you, August. He’ll effing kill you!”

  “I didn’t do this!” August yelled.

  “You sent us to the zombie graveyard to find his hand!” She whirled on her heel and she was out the door. Mick bounded after her.

  Kyle heard Larson throwing up. He turned back to him as Larson straightened, wiping his mouth.

  “Let’s go,” Larson said. “I left Beth down at the beach. Tide was coming in.”

  “I’m going, too,” Robin said. She looked close to fainting, but she stayed on her feet.

  “Okay.” Larson quickly looked around. “Hey, Heather’s not here, either. She’s been gone forever.”

  Robin sucked in her breath. Kyle grimaced. “Heather. Right.”

  “Okay”—Robin began counting on her trembling fingers—“Heather, Praveen, Morgan, Beth, Hiro, Drew, Stacy. We have seven people to find.”

  Larson nodded. “And one of them might be the killer. So we go armed.” He gestured with the knife.

  August ran to where the band had been playing and picked up his head mike. He tapped it to make sure it was on.

  “Beth, Stacy, Hiro, Drew, Praveen, Heather, Morgan, this is an emergency. Go to the parking lot. Immediately. I repeat, go to the parking lot. Don’t screw around.”

  He found the volume control and turned it as high as it would go. He repeated what he’d said. He kept saying the words over and over as Kyle, Robin, and Larson walked toward the door. “What are we going to do if we can’t find anybody?” Larson asked.

  “We’re going to find them,” Robin retorted.

  Or die trying, Kyle almost said.

  But he kept that thought to himself.

  ROBIN’S RULE #5: Be brave when it counts.

  Kyle, Larson, and Robin headed back toward the path leading down to the water. Kyle held a large, police-style flashlight high so that the light would create a pie shape before them in the murk.

  Robin froze and stared down as she watched the sea rush over the beach and smash against the bluffs. The shore had become fully submerged.

  “I went down the other side of the dock,” Kyle said. “There’s a road with an old traffic barrier. That’s where I found my crowbar.”

  “That’ll be underwater, too,” Robin said. “Oh my God. Beth…”

  Kyle squeezed her against his hip and she wrapped both of her hands around his forearm. She remembered one of her mother’s sayings: We are strong. But someone was stronger. He—or she—had beaten a boy to death and cut off his hand. And Robin may have abandoned Beth to him.

  “There’s an alternate way to the beach.” Larson was panting. He leaned forward on his thighs to catch his breath. “You have to go through a cave across the parking lot. I went in that way and I wound up down there. It’s really gross….”

  “I saw that cave. It’s the one over there, right?” Kyle pointed toward the upper cliff, where the highway led to the gate with ZUL written in wrought-iron letters, and Larson nodded.

  “We found it, but we didn’t go inside,” Robin said. “Let’s go.”

  “Grab your crowbar first,” Larson said.

  “It’s too heavy. Let’s just go,” said Kyle.

  They broke into a run. Kyle had her hand in his but she had gone numb. She couldn’t feel his fingers or the ground beneath her boots. Her heart was pounding so hard it was scaring her.

  About thirty feet to her right, August was raising the hood of his Porsche. She didn’t know what was up but she didn’t stop to ask.

  They reached the cave and barreled inside. She smelled the blood. Kyle panned his flashlight over the vast landscape of discarded odds and ends as he, Robin, and Larson slowed to a halt.

  “Dude,” Larson blurted, grabbing the flashlight and lowering it. At least two feet tall, the letters AEDY had been painted on the floor in what appeared to be dark brown paint.

  “Holy shit, that wasn’t there before,” Larson said. He bent over the graffiti. “This could be a gang tag. I told Beth I thought a drug cartel might be using the cannery as a drop point.”

  “What?” Robin cried.

  An owl hooted and she flinched, half expecting some guy with a machine gun to attack them. She thought about her family, who had no idea where she was or what had happened. The owl hooted again, almost as if it were trying to warn them.

  “I’ll go on alone,” Kyle said. He took a step forward but Robin clamped on to his wrist, shaking her head.

  “No way,” she said. “We’ll all go.”

  His face softened and he reached up, running his fingers through her hair. They didn’t say anything. But Robin knew they had both said a lot:

  We’re going to get through this. Together.

  Footsteps crunched on the shell gravel just outside the mouth of the cave and the three of them whirled around, Larson raising his knife over his head. It was August, huffing and puffing. Robin had no idea
how anyone could look even more freaked out, but August did.

  “Guys,” August said, “we found Hiro, Drew, Stacy, and Praveen. They’re in the Maximum Volume van.” He got the funniest look on his face. “Our batteries have been stolen.”

  “Batteries?” Robin said slowly, not understanding.

  “Out of our cars. Our cars won’t start.”

  There was a beat, and Larson moved past Kyle to stand nose to nose with August. He pushed August’s shoulder.

  “What the hell, August?”

  “Me?” August said.

  Larson pushed him again. “Did your ‘spies’ take the batteries? Before or after they killed Cage for you?”

  “Hey.” August hunched his shoulders and took a step away from Larson. The pale-faced guy glanced over at Robin, who glared back at him, and then he tried to stare Larson down. “I didn’t do any of this. And I don’t have any spies. I made that up, okay? So I could try to get you guys to follow the rules for once.”

  “Game’s over, asshat!” Kyle yelled.

  August took a deep, ragged breath and his bravado blew out of him like the last bit of air out of a party balloon. Then he looked at the letters on the floor and pointed.

  “Who did that?” he asked in a flat, nervous voice.

  “You didn’t?” Robin asked. He shook his head. “Does it mean anything to you?”

  He nodded. “Those are my sister’s initials. Alexa Emily DeYoung.”

  “Oh? More of your I know that you screwed my sister last summer crap?” Larson said. “Is that what this is about? Some revenge trip?”

  “What are you talking about?” Robin said. She looked at August, who was shaking his head.

  “I swear it. I didn’t do any of this,” August said.

  Robin didn’t understand what Larson was driving at, but she didn’t have time to care. She turned to Kyle. “I’m going to look for Beth. Now.”