by Paul Draker
Camilla turned to Jordan. “Should we go search the other one?”
“Come on in, people,” Lauren’s voice commanded from deep inside the Victorian. “This is just gross. But it’s definitely where we’re supposed to be right now.”
With no breeze to disperse it, the smell of feces and ammonia was far worse inside. Camilla waited until her eyes adjusted to the dimness, then followed Lauren’s voice. Soon they all stood in the large central sitting room of the Victorian. Dim light filtered in through the doorways and the open windows of adjoining rooms. Abandoned nests—feather-studded piles of mud, dung, and coyote brush—lay mounded on the floor. The seals had coated the floorboards in a thick layer of droppings and mud from outside. Shuffling away from the contestants, they huddled in the corners of the central room, making restless, disturbed motions.
“Disgusting.” Veronica brushed at the sleeves of her sweater. “This is absolutely revolting.”
Sea lions moved up and down a stairwell leading to the second floor. The stairs were so thick with filth that Camilla couldn’t see individual steps, just a muddy ramp. But she could see that Lauren was right.
Someone else had been in the building quite recently to prepare for their arrival.
CHAPTER 26
A large flat-screen video monitor loomed from the wall above the nest-choked fireplace. Once they were all in the room, the screen lit up and a familiar face appeared. Julian wore a different suit—black this time, and judging from its cut and sheen, another two- or three-thousand dollar outfit. It looked strange, juxtaposed with the dirty wood and pockmarked concrete of the wall they could see behind him.
“Congratulations,” he said, “and welcome to the playground where our adventure will unfold. And what a playground, huh? This is a unique location, a rare biodiversity hot spot where dozens of species congregate each year to procreate and ensure their continued survival.
“You may have already met some of our larger seasonal residents.” He chuckled. “I suggest you stay out of their way. It’s mating season, and they can be a little touchy this time of year.”
“No shit,” JT muttered.
“So, again, I welcome all of you to Año Nuevo Island. We’re in a restricted area not open to the general public. It’s quite a privilege. We have the opportunity to witness, at close range, the natural drama that plays out here every winter.”
Julian leaned back against the wall and looked at them all. “But this year, Año Nuevo will fulfill another function, too. It will provide the dramatic stage for our series of six challenges, the first of which is about to begin.”
He paused, as if to ensure their attention. An expectant silence descended over the room.
Camilla looked at the eager anticipation on the faces of her fellow contestants. She knew that her own looked the same. Her legs tensed with nervous readiness.
“The Victorian-style house we are standing in was built in 1906.” Julian pushed off the wall, speaking faster now. “It’s the former residence of the lighthouse keeper. The lighthouse on Año Nuevo was active from 1890 to 1948—you may have spotted the wreckage of the tower. The assistant lighthouse keeper’s residence is the adjoining house, right through that archway there.” He pointed past the contestants.
“Both houses would frequently get overrun by the native wildlife. It was a constant battle for the island’s full-time residents: the lighthouse keepers and their families.
“After the lighthouse was decommissioned, the houses were abandoned to the elements. Nature has spent the last sixty years taking them over.” He grinned and pointed both index fingers at the contestants. “Now you are going to take them back.”
Veronica shook her head. “Meaning what, exactly?”
“The rules of this first challenge are simple,” he continued, ignoring her interruption. “It’s a team challenge, so you’ll divide into two equal-size teams. We need to make these buildings habitable again, but first we need to evict the current tenants. One team will focus on clearing this house, while the other team clears the house next door. For every seal or sea lion you usher out, you add a point to your individual score. Be firm but gentle; harming the wildlife is not allowed.”
He paused. “Your scores are all-important. You start with zero points. In each challenge, you can win points. In some, you can also lose points. At the end of all six challenges, the player with the highest score wins the grand prize—five million dollars. So guard your points well.
“And here’s how team dynamics come into play,” he said. “The team that finishes clearing its building first wins today’s challenge. Each person on the winning team will have twenty points added to their score.”
Julian’s on-screen gaze moved purposefully around the room, from person to person. “Choose your teams. Clear the buildings. Go!” The monitor went blank.
Camilla grinned at the blank screen. She already had her team—they were standing all around her. She nudged Jordan. “Come on, what are we waiting for?”
On the other side of the room, Lauren grabbed JT and Juan by the arm. “You guys are with me… and you, too, Travis, and…” She looked at Camilla’s group, then at Natalie, standing against the wall alone.
Lauren’s eyes slitted. “No, I don’t think so…”
Jordan laughed—her usual giggle of can-you-believe-this amusement—but under the circumstances, it seemed a little cruel.
A digital scoreboard appeared on the screen: a grid of ten square cells, each labeled with a contestant’s name, the five squares across the top and bottom outlined in different colors. Lauren’s red team ran across the top, and Jordan’s blue team across the bottom.
Natalie had been assigned to the red team.
“Shit.” Lauren turned away.
Travis stared at Camilla across the room. “Looks like us blue-collar folks against you white-collar types. Guess y’all are most comfortable with your own kind.”
Let’s go, guys.” Jordan pointed through the archway. “Next door.”
Camilla hustled after Jordan and crossed into the Greek Revival house next door, followed by Mason, Veronica, and Brent. Her feet slid in the muck that coated the floorboards.
Through the doorway behind them, Lauren shouted instructions. “JT, Juan, head upstairs and send ‘em down. Travis and I’ll shoo ‘em out.”
A goose-size black bird with an iridescent blue eye flapped up from the floor in a loud whir of wings and struck the side of Camilla’s face, brushing her lips. She coughed and spat out a feather, tasting fishy, oily nastiness. Then she started laughing. She couldn’t help herself.
Her teammates looked crazy, waving their arms and yelling, trying to shoo seals toward the open doorways. The seals seemed to be getting into the spirit of it, too. They leaped and yelped around the contestants, like eager dogs begging their owners to play. Camilla chased a seal out and went after another.
“There’s another monitor in here!” Veronica yelled from deeper inside the house. “Another scoreboard.” Her voice turned harsh. “The red team is beating us.”
Camilla ran to find Veronica and the monitor in the second house’s large living room. Jordan burst in through another doorway, a juvenile seal cradled gently in her arms.
“That’s not smart,” Veronica said. “It’s got diseases. You don’t want to get bitten.”
“You wouldn’t do that, would you?” Jordan stroked the seal’s soft back. It looked up at her with round, curious eyes.
She stepped out of the room for a moment to set the seal gently on the ground outside. On the monitor, her score changed from 4 to 5. Then she was back. “Okay, guys, we are not going to lose. We need ideas, quickly. Camilla?”
“Think of this like soccer.” Camilla looked at her teammates. “We’re only covering half the field. We need to play some defense, too.”
Mason laughed. “Brilliant. And sneaky. Let’s do it.”
Brent stood with his hands in his vest pockets, not saying anything. Did he disapprove of her
idea?
Veronica shook her head. “I certainly don’t think—”
“I like it!” Jordan said, clapping her hands with glee. She pointed at Mason and Veronica. “You guys, go. You know what to do. With my shoe situation, I’d be useless.”
The two of them nodded and pelted out the door.
Camilla watched them go. Now that Jordan liked the idea, Veronica was a big fan, too, all of a sudden? But then, this was why Camilla had wanted Jordan as the team leader. She had seen the way Jordan could take over just by walking into a room.
Jordan wobbled on a broken shoe and grabbed the wall, smiling at Camilla. “You and Brent head upstairs,” she said. “I’ll clear the rest down here.”
Nodding, Camilla thought of Avery and how despondent he had sounded yesterday. She had left him to come here so she could help all her kids. But even if she could outsmart the other contestants, how could she possibly beat Jordan?
CHAPTER 27
Lauren windmilled her arms and chased another seal out the door. Passing through the central room, she glanced at the scoreboard.
She smirked—she was killing them. Thumping noises came from upstairs, along with cursing and the barks of distressed seals. Juan and JT had chased five or six of the slippery, stinky animals down the stairs for her to shoo out, but they didn’t seem to be having much luck with the last few.
“What are you clowns doing up there?” she shouted. She was eager to finish and wipe that smile off Jordan’s face. Would the losing team have to pick someone to send home? Julian hadn’t said anything about that.
Juan skidded down the stairs behind his last seal. “You need to let JT and me up front now,” he said, pointing at the scoreboard. “So far, we’ve been taking one for the team while you rack up points.”
“You’ll get your twenty when our team wins.”
“What?” JT slid down the stairs to stare at her. “Fuck that, Lauren. We need to start scoring now.”
“Fine. Be my guest.” She looked around. Hadn’t she cleared this room already? For some reason, it seemed to be full of seals again.
She chased one toward a doorway and bumped into JT, who was driving his seal the same direction. Both their seals escaped back into the house.
“God damn it, girl,” JT said, “you need to back the fuck off.”
She stepped up and pushed JT. “Listen, cowboy, nobody—”
“Hey!” Travis’s shout echoed from the other side of the building. “Get over here. These sons-a-bitches are cheating.”
Lauren plunged through the house to find Travis, silhouetted in an open doorway to the outside. He had his arms braced against the jambs and his knees wide to block access, but the room was already full of seals.
“Where the hell were you?” he shouted. “Not much use now.”
From over his shoulder, Lauren spotted Mason and Veronica outside, herding a big crowd of seals in front of them. Waddling across the open ground and waving their arms, they drove the seals toward the doorways Travis wasn’t covering. A riot of slippery black and gray shapes spilled into the room.
“You gotta be shitting me,” Lauren said, and rushed to intercept. Through the empty frame of a window, Mason laughed at her.
Juan jammed a jagged hunk of plywood across a doorway, and JT tried to cover the other side, but there were too many openings.
Lauren couldn’t see the scoreboard. Was the blue team catching up?
“You two!” she yelled. “Go do the same thing to their house.”
“Hell with that.” JT nudged a seal back out with his knee. “I need points.”
“God damn it.” She slapped the doorframe. “Where the hell’s Natalie?”
Cheering erupted outside, and her chest tightened.
She looked at Juan. He slowly shook his head at her. How could he act so calm about it? They had just lost. She slammed a fist into the wall and stepped outside. Her team joined her to stand in silence, watching the other team celebrate.
“Awesome! Go, blue team!” Jordan jumped around outside the other building like an excited schoolgirl. She hugged Mason and Veronica, welcoming them back. “My heroes! You guys won it for us.”
Lauren’s hands balled into fists. Beaten by a fucking cheerleader. She had to look away. To her surprise, she saw Natalie shoo a seal out of their building. And another.
“Real nice,” Lauren said. “Scoring yourself some points?” She crossed her arms. “You’re pretty useless, you know that, Natalie? You let us down big-time.”
Juan shook his head again. “She’s not why we lost.”
Natalie give him a grateful glance, and Lauren turned away in disgust.
Mason waved at the red team from fifty feet away, surrounded by his own happy blue teammates.
“Look at that,” JT’s jaw clenched. “Motherfucker’s laughing at us.”
“Let him enjoy it.” Travis stared at Mason with cold eyes, rubbing the triangle of beard under his lip. “Payback’s a bitch.”
CHAPTER 28
“You look ridiculous.” Veronica laughed—that unexpected sexy purr again.
Camilla looked down at herself. Her white shirt was now mostly brown, with smears of gray she didn’t want to think too hard about. Her jeans were so caked with mud and seal crap, she couldn’t tell they were once blue. She smelled like a zoo.
Jordan put an arm around her. “We all look ridiculous,” she said. “But we won.”
Their blue team had gathered in the central room of the Victorian house again. Matted hair stuck to Camilla’s cheeks, crusted with mud and stuff she didn’t want to think about. She rubbed her face, and her hand came away coated with brown grime. She needed to get cleaned up—she must look like a cartoon street urchin. She eyed Jordan, who looked like she had just stepped off the pages of a magazine. How had she stayed so clean? Except for her shoes, which were a disaster—pretty much falling apart.
“Julian and the crew are in those other warehouse buildings,” Camilla said. “Hopefully they’ve got some showers over there.”
“And some lunch,” Jordan said. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m hungry.”
“Aren’t you both forgetting something?” Mason said. “One-hundred-percent authenticity, remember?”
“What are you saying?” Veronica stared at him. “You don’t think they plan to feed us? They’ll just leave us rolling around in the mud here like…”—she indicated Camilla with a manicured fingernail—”…dirty animals?”
“I assume the ship will pick us again.” Brent put his hands in his vest pockets and leaned back, scratching his spine against the wall like a big old bear against a tree trunk. “Otherwise, where are we going to sleep?”
Camilla looked up as Lauren’s red team filed in to take their places against the opposite wall. They were quiet. Too quiet, she thought. Their resentful stares cut across the room.
Her eyes sought out Juan. Unlike the others, he didn’t look resentful. Just thoughtful. He slouched against a wall with his hands in his pockets, like a teenage slacker. She smiled, picturing irritated teachers telling a younger Juan to stand up straight and pay attention.
The scoreboard flashed once. Their scores stared out at them:
A pulsing blue frame, labeled “Winning Team,” appeared around the bottom row of the scoreboard. The blue team’s scores spun upward by twenty points.
Jordan let out a whoop and hugged Camilla again.
“Who wants to make a wager?” Mason called across to the other team. “I say we’ll find our grand-prize winner in the bottom row.”
Camilla slapped his shoulder. “Stop it.”
The scores faded, and Julian reappeared.
“My congratulations to the winning team,” he said. “With this win, each of you is starting strong. But remember, this is only the first contest of many, and fortunes can change quickly.
“To members of the other team, I say, don’t take this first defeat too hard. You will have plenty of opportunities to earn points in the com
ing days—more than enough to outscore the current leaders if you rise to the challenge.
“There may be some questions about contest rules, tactics, and such. Let me reassure you about that. If I didn’t specifically disallow something, it’s fair and legal play.” Julian’s face took on a serious look. “I am sorry to say, however, that we did see one transgression against my instructions. For that, there will be a penalty applied to the whole team.”
Veronica’s mouth snapped into a thin line. She grabbed Camilla’s elbow. “Your stupid idea just cost us, young lady,” she hissed.
Camilla pulled free. “Why don’t we see what he says, first?” She stared at the monitor and rubbed her arm, ignoring the chill of Veronica’s icy glare against her cheek.
The room brightened as the monitor changed scenes, showing the front of the Victorian house instead of Julian. On-screen, Lauren chased a seal out of the doorway and disappeared back inside again to a soundtrack of muted barks and shouts. Then Travis appeared in the doorway, pushing a sea lion out with his knee. It turned to duck back in, and he gave it a vicious kick in the side, sending it flying off the porch steps. “And stay out, you dirty son of a bitch!” He dusted off his hands, and ducked back inside as the screen went dark.
See? Camilla wanted to say to Veronica, but she bit her cheek instead.
“Oh, that’s just great,” Lauren said. “We get a penalty?”
Without taking his eyes off the screen, JT grabbed one-handed for the front of Travis’s shirt, but he wasn’t fast enough. Travis scooted out of his reach and backed toward the open archway. His flat gaze shifted rapidly from person to person, and he held his hands at waist level. He didn’t look scared; he looked ready to fight—even if it was many-on-one.
“Ease up, guys,” Lauren said. “Let’s not make things worse.”
The scoreboard reappeared, a pulsing red frame labeled “Penalty” around the top row. The red team’s scores spun through a five-point decrease.