by Cameron Jace
“Since you have spoken, Orin…” I can’t help myself. I have to express my anger. “I want to tell you that you could have saved me today. You killed the Bully next to the Breathing Booth I was trapped inside, and I was dying. I was screaming for you, and you didn’t save me. You didn’t even look at me. I can’t imagine you didn’t hear me. You were so close.”
“I heard you,” says Orin bluntly. “It’s just I am not here to save anybody. I am not in the military anymore. This is me taking care of me.”
If Orin had said such things to me this morning, I would have protested, jumping up and down and called him all the bad names I know of. But as selfish as his statement sounds, I understand. To be fair, this is what I have been trying to program into my system all day long. I only saved Bellona because she saved me first, I tell myself.
There are two or three minutes of silence, except for the sound of flickering fire and me gulping water to clear my soul. The eleven of us are still. What Orin said needs a little comprehension. Are we going to be there for each other or is every one of us on their own? Is this going to be a fight within a fight or should we stand united?
Orin is a soldier. His mind is more tuned to the situation than most of ours. He is practical.
“Hey,” Leo interrupts the tension, talking to Roger This. “I didn’t get your name, fellow gamer.” Leo has his chin up, not smiling.
“I am Vern,” Roger This says, looking at all of us, suddenly remembering he never introduced himself — and none of us asked. “Don’t worry. I know all of your names from the Breathing Dome.”
“What’s your nickname in Zeragon 5?” Leo says. It still boggles my brains how and when Leo had time to play computer games.
“I am RogerThis.” Vern points proudly to his clean t-shirt with two fingers. He looks flattered when Leo asks him. “RogerThis007, actually, since Roger This was taken—”
“I get it,” says Leo, chewing on a match. “If we survive the Monster Show, I’ll nudge ya.”
Chapter 16
La Roche
“So why did you dedicate your song to the Monsters?” Pepper asks Leo, dropping the real question no one dared to ask until now. “You know, you being a Nine, coming from an all-Nines family. It doesn’t make sense.” Pepper is just cruel. I like her.
Leo looks like he has a sudden lump in his throat. Since I met him, I haven’t seen him hesitant and embarrassed like now. “You’ll be surprised to know that I am no hero,” says Leo. “I did it because I wanted to make myself look like a rebel. I was sixteen, you know. Talking about Bad Kidz was prohibited. So I, in my rock star mode, wanted to do something outrageous, to sell more records and win the Burning Idol. But I have to admit I am glad I did. My life took such a crazy turn since then, especially when Xitler and the Summit banned me. I understood then what kind of a dictatorship we were living in. I turned against the Summit and went searching for the Breakfast Club everywhere, wanting to join them, but like Bellona, I never found them.”
“So you’re just like every one of us,” says Bellona.
“If Leo is just as hopeless as we are, what’s the point of playing the game?” Pepper says. “We are going to die.”
“Especially if none of us has a reason to form an alliance with anyone else.” It’s the first time I agree with Pepper, not that I feel like giving in, but I need to see where this is going.
“The more we try to live — and eventually die — the more the audience is entertained,” explains Pepper. “Like in a horror movie, you can’t kill all the actors in the first scene.”
“In a horror movie, the hero never dies.” I beg to differ. I don’t know what kind of horror movies Pepper watches.
“The Monster never dies,” says Vern with his knees pulled up to his chest, and his head buried between his legs. He thinks we didn’t hear him, then raises his head, surprised we’re all staring at him. “What? It’s a Stephen Zing quote.”
“King,” Leo sighs. “Stephen King, not Zing. Zing sounds as if he were a Samurai or something.”
“What’s a Samurai?” I ask.
Leo rolls his eyes. He is not going to answer me. Mr. I-come-from-outer-space.
“I am just messing with you. We killed the Bullies with Samurai swords, remember?”
“I agree with Vern,” says Bellona. “The Monster never dies. Not that I like them calling us Monsters. But since they do, let’s show them how strong-willed us Monsters can be. Let’s bond together and show them that this year, at least one of us will survive. We have to teach them that the Monster never dies.”
“How are we going to do that?” I ask. I am not here to win. I am here to find my friend.
“Military style,” answers Bellona, looking at the skaters.
“You sure you want to do it that way?” the skater boy asks.
“Yes,” Bellona says. “But no one else can know about this but us.”
“What’s going on? What does military style mean?” asks Pepper.
“First, I want your iAms turned off now.”
Pepper nods. She seems convinced, or playing along. We all nod too. How is a Monster never going to die?
“What I am going to ask of you is a technique we use in the army,” explains Bellona. “It is called La Roche: a tactic for survival in extreme situations.”
“Yes?” I prompt her.
“We will have to create an internal ranking that no one knows about but us. A ranking from one to ten. One is the one we sacrifice first, ten is the one we sacrifice last.”
“What does that mean?” Pepper asks with a furrowed brow. She only has one eyebrow; the other is missing.
“When we go back to the Battlefieldz tomorrow, the Summit will try to turn us against each other with all the psychological tricks they have. They will push us as much as they need to so we lose the games.”
“Okay?” I say.
“If we want at least one of us to win the games, here is what we will do. We will give each other numbers that will tell us who sacrifices themselves for the rest. It’s going to be our secret code.”
“This is awful.” I can’t believe my ears.
“We are likely to die anyway,” says Pepper. “And don’t worry. I’m ready to be number one. I was raised with the idea that I am going to die to save others for sixteen years. It’s going to be easier for me.”
“It is going to be our internal rank to know who is worth the risk to save, and who is the one to die for the rest of us at any given moment,” Bellona repeats.
“How are we going to choose?” Orin asks.
“We vote,” Leo answers. He likes the idea.
“No,” Vern says, raising his hand. “We toss. If we vote, I will be number two.”
“And Decca will be number three.” Orin grins. This guy hates me.
“I saved all of you in the dome today,” I yell at him.
“Hah.” He shakes his head.
“Okay. We toss,” Bellona says. “But leave Leo out of it.”
“Why?” Vern asks.
“He is the strongest and most experienced,” says Bellona. “If he dies, I don’t see how we can make it.”
“And if I don’t like my result?” Orin asks.
“Then you are not one of us. You leave and play on your own, like you did with Decca in the dome,” Leo explains firmly.
None of us asks Leo to participate. We all know that with him around, as silent and obnoxious as he is, we feel a little safer.
We all agree. Leo takes the lead and carves our names on big leaves with his sword. He collects them in his bag. We start picking our numbers.
Vern is number one, the first to be sacrificed. Pepper is two. I think she is okay with that. Orin is three. I would have wanted him to be one. Four, five, six, seven, and eight are skaters. Bellona is number nine.
I am number ten.
I wonder.
Did Leo cheat in my favor?
Chapter 17
Choices and Priorities
The nex
t morning, we pack the water caterpillars we need and bury the rest under a tree in the forest. Leo marks the tree with a letter D using his knife. He says D stands for Decca which is the number ten in Greek.
"Are you saying my name is a number in some old language?” I raise an eyebrow.
“Not exactly. The number is written as Deka in Greek, pronounced as Theka, but the resemblance is very close.”
When I ask him who those Greek people really are, he says, “Interesting people with too many gods.”
“Ah,” I muse. “You mean like the Burning Man?” I am just teasing, knowing that the Burning Man isn’t a god.
I don’t suppose my parents knew about that. They weren’t that godly educated to know about Pre-Amerikaz languages.
“Burning Man isn’t a god,” he sighs. “He is just a man who… got burned.”
“Call me D from now on,” I say to Leo, swooshing my sword in the air and posing like a warrior.
Leo shakes his head. Sometimes, he looks insulted by my existence.
“Call me D, or I will call you Thor,” I insist, poking him with the sword. He doesn’t flinch.
“Okay,” he mumbles. “Thank God he is still called Thor. Not Zor.”
“Goooood morning, Burning Man!” Timmy cheers aloud in our iAms. He is posing theatrically with arms outstretched, and plastering that innocently devilish look on his face. “With four million viewers yesterday, this was the best opening day in ten years!” he announces proudly.
Right now one million viewers are watching. People need to wake up, eat breakfast, wash their hands, check their iAms, and then go watch some kids fighting for their lives, you know. Life is so hard for them. Duh.
“While me, Timmy the lemony, the joker who wins at poker, and the trickster that is a k-k-kickstar, was thinking yesterday, all night long, thinking, researching, bringing out those little crazy ideas out of my unstable head, I found you s-so-summ—” He starts stuttering again in front of the camera, waving his pointed fingers next to his ears. I can’t believe people like this loon. “Something,” he finally manages to say before he puts a finger to his lips, looking sideways as if trying to conceal a secret.
He looks to the left; the camera pans to the left. He looks to the right; the camera shakes to the right. He signals for the camera to close in, and the camera zooms in. “It is a secret,” he whispers to the audience. “I don’t want the Monsters to hear it,” he says, eating cookies. “Because they want to eat my cookies.”
We gather and sit by the edges of the forest, closer to the main street, waiting for today’s game. Leo looks irritated, pointing his rifle at Timmy on the big screen.
“Don’t shoot that screen, please,” Bellona pleads to Leo. “Screen crasher.”
I think the time Leo and Timmy meet will be Timmy’s last chance to meet anyone.
“Yesterday in the woods,” Timmy says to the camera, “the Monsters awarded themselves numbers.” He is wearing a Burning Man diamond ring. I hear such rings are very expensive and are given exclusively to Prophet Xitler’s friends. Timmy must’ve been rewarded for yesterday’s show.
Wait. How did he know about the numbers? We shot all cameras and had the iAms turned off.
“Numbers like ours,” Timmy starts mocking us. The audience is making jokes about us wanting to be cool like them. “You know like seven, eight, and nine.” Timmy counts on his fingers.
“Booooooo.” The audience is insulted. How dare we Monsters call ourselves by numbers?
“They have even given one of them the number ten.” Timmy cries bubble tears that look like as if they’re causing him great pain coming out of his eyes. The tears are boiling and roll down his cheek then float in the thin air, turning into shampoo-like bubbles. “A ten,” he repeats dramatically. He sounds as if torn apart by the appalling news, slamming two fists against the floor, bending his body dramatically. “Aahhhhhh!”
Suspiciously, Leo and Bellona stare at us. We have a traitor, a rat, a snitch among our team. Who sold us out to Timmy? I can’t think of how this could hurt us, him knowing about the numbers, but it will make us start to distrust each other.
Bellona’s idea about numbering ourselves in a sacrificial order seems to have been the right thing to do. They have already started to push us to doubt each other by revealing that there is a traitor among us, telling Timmy about yesterday’s conversation in the forest.
It amazes me why the audience is offended by our actions. They are just numbers.
“There is no ten,” cries Timmy. “Giving someone the number ten is so insulting. Even Prophet Xitler is no Ten.”
“Yeah,” the audience whines.
“Eliza Day is no Ten.” Timmy cries out pink tears that splash against the studio walls behind him and smear it in the shape of pink frogs.
“Yeah.”
“Never did the iAm grant anyone a Ten. How could they do this to us?” Timmy doesn’t stop.
Leo is signaling for us to move toward to the main street. He whispers that we need to go out into the open in case something crazy happens after Timmy’s speech. Although we don’t know who sold us out yet, Leo is scanning everyone with sharp eyes. I grit my teeth, feeling his anger. When he figures out who sold us out, he is going to do something crazy.
Who is it? The only one Leo doesn’t look sharply at is me. I am surprised that Leo doesn’t consider me among the suspects.
Timmy dries his tears and sips green tea in the garden with legs crossed. He calms the audience down. Within two minutes of nonsense and dramatic crying, we have one million and three hundred thousand viewers watching us.
“But it is okay,” says Timmy. “Their misbehaving gave me an idea. Something that has never been done before in the Monster Show. It’ll be such an entertaining game today.”
I imagine the next game will be extra brutal. It’s going to be punishment again.
We are standing at the edge of the forest, waiting for instructions. Wherever I go, I remind myself to look for a clue for the Rabbit Hole, or the girl I saw yesterday. Where could she be? What is the Rabbit Hole? Is it a real hole? A portal? A vehicle? An opening hidden behind something? Is it a hole we have to dig in the earth for? Moreover, where the hell is the rabbit? If there is a rabbit hole, I expect to see a rabbit.
Timmy gives the audience time to text each other on their iAms and spread the word about today’s ‘supertastic show’. Pepper is amusing herself, checking out Monsterpedia.com. She says we’ve become famous, our names shining like stars on the website.
“Today, the name of the game is…” Timmy whispers to the audience, sticking out his fat and bubbly lips. “Choices and Priorities.” He backs away from the camera while someone plays the fake sound of audience clapping. Timmy plays an ancient horn-like trumpet that sounds noisy and awful. He acts being humble and modest. “I know. I know. How genius of me. Life is all about choices and priorities, so let’s see if our Monsters have got what it takes to choose and prioritize.”
The counter shows two million viewers.
One thousand viewers are watching from the Wastelands, where the Breakfast Club members supposedly live. Whether it is true or not that the Breakfast Club occupy the Wastelands, the region has always despised the games. Since it’s not run by the Summit, they can do what they want. It’s strange how they can send their votes living in the desert without iAms. Do they have their own technology? I am beginning to think the Breakfast Club is real, and that they can save this world.
“Monsteropocalypsers!” Timmy is knocking on the microphone. “Pay attention, please. We would like you to walk toward the Monorail station. In the meantime, I have secrets to share with the audience.”
Suddenly, we lose connection with the outer world as our iAms stop broadcasting.
Chapter 18
The Monorail
I feel a soft shudder in my body. The feeling of being disconnected is unpleasant, as if I am grounded for the weekend with no internet or iAm in a dark cellar.
“How can they just disconnect us?” The skater boy freaks out, rubbing his arms with his hands as if he is cold. The sun is scorching.
“Wow,” says Vern. “This is like the game Zombocalypse 8 where your role is to play the last teen on earth.”
“They can do whatever they want,” Pepper answers the skater, ignoring Vern. She steps ahead of us on the asphalt of the main street. This is where we survived the speed exploding buses yesterday. It’s all cleaned up now. The street looks empty, abandoned, and creepy. I remember hearing the military choppers yesterday when they were sent to clean up the place. None of us dared to approach. They have the right to shoot us if we do. “Here we are,” shouts Pepper with open arms, looking at a flying camera above. “What are you waiting for?”
“I have a bad feeling about this,” says Bellona. “It feels like a city of the dead.”
“It is,” I say, looking at the sun shining in the sky.
On any other day this would have been a beautiful day.
There is a silly sign on the left that says, ‘It’s a Nice Day to Die.’ I believe it’s part of the Summit’s mockery toward the Monsters. Cautiously, we follow Pepper crossing the main street. We should be looking for the Monorail station, but we’re distracted by the loneliness the situation imposes upon us. Walking the vast, spacious streets on our own makes us feel lost, as if we’re the last bunch of friends left on earth. Too many choices, directions. None of them feel safe.
Choices and priorities.
To my right, I see the Breathing Dome, clean and shiny as if none of us ever fought for our lives inside. To the left, the street leads to the ramp where the journey first started.
I know what you are thinking. Climbing the ramp is impossible. It’s too steep, twenty feet high, and there is a fence above it. I remember someone getting electrocuted, trying to escape in a previous game. Behind the fence, there are soldiers waiting for us with a license to kill. That’s why the only way out of the Playa is the Rabbit Hole. If I understand correctly, the Rabbit Hole is a way to escape Faya, not get back inside. I am assuming it leads to the Wastelands.