New Year Island

by Paul Draker

  “Can’t you see what the purpose of this game is?” Brent said. “He wants us all—”

  “—to split up.” Camilla nodded. “Yes, I get that. Julian wants us all moving around the island on our own… running into each other alone.”

  Brent took his hands out of his vest pockets and stared at her. “And you don’t think that’s a bad idea?”

  Jordan’s voice was cold. “Go do your drugs, Brent. No one cares what you have to say anymore.”

  “If you do this,” Brent said, “it’s probable that someone else will die here. Today. Are you ready to face that, Camilla?”

  She took a deep breath.

  “Julian chose us because we were survivors,” she said. “Let’s find out if he was right.”

  PART IV

  SEMIFINAL ROUND

  CHAPTER 124

  “So where’s this mandatory eye protection?” Mason asked.

  Camilla scanned the back wall of the storage shed. The real back wall, revealed now that the plywood panels covering it had been pulled loose and laid aside. Veronica and Natalie had done that a few minutes ago, she knew.

  When Camilla had led the others outside, she saw the two women leaving the shed. Each held a paintball gun and a blue envelope. Natalie slunk past them, head down, like a teenager caught smoking. But Veronica held her head high. As the two groups passed each other, her contemptuous silver glare cut across the space between, spearing Camilla. If Veronica felt sorry for what she had done, Camilla couldn’t see it. Veronica carried the paintball gun with the same practiced ease she had demonstrated holding JT’s gun yesterday. She had been a police wife for ten years, Camilla remembered—once she had a target in her sights, she wouldn’t miss. Veronica’s eyes were bright with hate. Was Camilla’s name in the envelope she held? Surrounded by the others, she had held Veronica’s gaze, refusing to be afraid, until Veronica and Natalie disappeared into the houses.

  On the wall of the storage shed, seven paintball guns hung on hooks. Taped to the wall above each was a blue envelope and a spare ammunition cartridge. Camilla could see two empty hooks. She spotted her name on one of the envelopes. But Mason was right: no eye protection at all.

  “I guess they forgot the safety glasses,” she said.

  He laughed. “It’s all fun and games until…”

  JT’s head whipped toward him, and Camilla was surprised to see Mason shut up. Maybe he did have a survival instinct after all.

  The muscular ex-Marine reached for his paintball gun and the envelope beneath it, never taking his eye off Mason. He tapped the envelope. “Could be it’s your name in here.”

  Camilla noticed that JT never looked at Juan. And that Juan was careful never to end up within JT’s reach. Juan still held the real gun down at his side. The thought of those two coming face to face with no one else around filled her with dread. She was the one who had pushed for this. But was Brent right?

  Before her group left the Victorian house, he had looked at her with stony eyes, and then settled himself on the stairs.

  “Do what you like. I refuse to be his puppet.”

  “The game doesn’t work unless everyone plays.”

  “Bring me the envelope, then,” Brent said, “but leave that stupid toy behind. I don’t have any use for it.”

  He patted the steps beside him. “I’ll be waiting right here for whoever shows up. I’ll give the envelope to them.”

  Camilla’s heart went out to the big man. He looked defeated. Broken. Were his hands shaking?

  “Brent, I want you to know—”

  “Just go.” He looked away. “Please leave.”

  Jordan thrust her face toward him. “Enjoy your fix.”

  Brent wouldn’t meet Camilla’s eye as she led the others outside. She knew there was a possibility that she might not see him alive again. But she tried not to think about it.

  In the storage shed, she lifted her paintball gun off the hook and looked it over. A Tippman TPX according to the markings on the side, it was heavy and awkward. She fumbled with the gun until she found the button that released the magazine, and pressed it. A boxlike ammunition cartridge slid out of the grip, and she barely caught it with her other hand before it fell. A green ball the size of a large marble was visible at the top of the cartridge. Camilla pushed it back into place and looked at the others.

  “Let’s make sure these things really shoot paint and not something else.”

  She pointed the gun at the back wall and pulled the trigger. There was a snick of compressed gas, louder than she had expected, and the gun bucked in her hand. A bright starburst of neon-green paint splattered against the wall. She raised her eyebrows.

  “I don’t know much about paintball, but that seemed a little overpowered.”

  “Nah,” JT said. “It’s about right. That’s why the eye protection.”

  Which they didn’t have. She looked at his eye patch and cringed inside.

  JT stepped up to the wall and sniffed the green paint. Then he touched it with a finger. Watching them one-eyed, he held his finger up as if feeling for something. Then he dabbed it to his tongue. After a few seconds, he spat on the ground.

  “Just paint.”

  The others took their paintball markers, spare ammunition, and envelopes. One gun was left on the wall. The envelope beneath it read “Travis.”

  “What do we do about that?” Mason asked.

  Camilla considered. “I think it’s a forfeit. Whoever has Travis as a target, come and take his envelope.”

  “Better get some paint on him first,” Mason said. “Or else it may not count as a kill.”

  Camilla nodded, and thought of the two scientists guarding Travis. What would they make of this? They would probably think the contestants were crazy, doing this. She wasn’t so sure they were wrong, either.

  But the alternatives were worse. She had no idea who Julian and his people—Vita Brevis’s producers—were, but they were definitely not any kind of legitimate studio. Veronica’s idea, the Hollywood hubris scenario, was flat wrong—had to be. What was happening here had progressed far beyond any possibility of legality. People were dead.

  The room was suddenly noisy with the barks of paintball markers. A rainbow of different-colored splats appeared on the wall. Yellow, pink, orange, and black starbursts joined Camilla’s green mark. Each contestant had been assigned a distinct color of paint.

  “Looks like they all work,” JT said.

  Camilla took Brent’s gun off the hook with her other hand. She fired a purple starburst onto the wall next to the others, then tossed the gun aside—he didn’t want it. She tucked his envelope into her pocket to give to him.

  “Aim low,” she said. “Let’s shoot for the legs whenever possible. And all of us need to stay in tight control of our emotions. No fights, no violence, no matter what happens. No matter who wins or how they do it. Even if the money’s real—ten million is a lot, but it isn’t worth dying for.”

  Camilla took a deep breath, looking from eye to eye. The terrified voice in her mind screamed at her to stop this madness before it was too late. It told her she needed to convince them all to put the guns down before someone else got hurt—or killed. It told her to gather everyone together and not let anyone out of sight until help arrived, because, surely, someone had to come and save them before they succumbed to thirst. Julian couldn’t possibly leave them here to die.

  It was the voice that said that this couldn’t really be happening. The voice that, in situations like these, led 90 percent of people to their deaths.

  She knew better than to listen to that voice.

  Camilla was a survivor.

  “I suggest we all split up and open the envelopes when we’re alone,” she said. “And, Juan?” She dropped a hand to his wrist, which held the real gun—the Glock—aimed at the floorboards. Next to him, Jordan stiffened. Camilla ignored her and looked Juan in the eye. “Don’t get confused about which gun is which.”

  Juan held her gaze for a
moment.

  Then he nodded.

  “Let’s roll.”

  CHAPTER 125

  “Poetic justice. Do you think I’m wrong?”

  Jordan wouldn’t meet Juan’s eyes. They stood in the blockhouse, facing each other, looking down at the envelopes they held, putting off the moment.

  Juan knew she was right. He nodded. “Julian wouldn’t pass this opportunity up. Either your name is in this envelope, or my name is in yours.”

  “I never cared about the money,” she said. “It doesn’t matter to me. And I don’t even care about winning. Not anymore.”

  He looked up, surprised. Because if there was one thing about this fascinating, extraordinary, incomprehensible woman that he had been certain of, it was that to Jordan, winning was everything.

  “I just don’t want anything to happen between us, Juan. To change what we have. To ruin it.”

  She said it plainly, softly. Her usually expressive face was still. Juan was pretty sure he was seeing a Jordan that few ever saw—perhaps a Jordan no one else had ever seen.

  He reached out and brushed the hair away from her face, and she took a quick, sharp breath. Her eyes—so wide, so green—stared into his own. She looked afraid.

  His throat felt tight. He wanted to wrap his arms around her to chase away the fear. Hold her close, bury his face in her hair, and not let go. But he couldn’t yet, because there was something he needed to do first. What Camilla had said after they found Veronica’s pager: time to get all their secrets out in the open before it was too late. She had been looking right at him when she said it.

  What he had hidden from Jordan, beneath the cabinet just an arm’s reach away, was like a wall between the two of them. The longer he waited, the worse it would be when she found out. She would understand his reasons, he thought—she was the same as he in so many ways. Besides, he had done what he’d done days ago. The situation had changed since then—on the island, and between them. A lot had changed.

  Jordan looked down at her bare feet. They were bleeding again, from the walk across the island. Seeing them made Juan feel even guiltier.

  She was rubbing her badly healed broken pinky again. She looked so vulnerable, so fragile to him now. Her voice was a whisper he could barely hear.

  “This isn’t easy for me to say.”

  Juan’s heart sped up. He was afraid, too. Very afraid of what was coming.

  “Jordan…”

  “I don’t use these words lightly… anymore.” She took a deep breath, looked up into his face.

  “Juan, I—”

  He stopped her, placing a finger on her lips. Heart pounding, he knelt and opened the cabinet, pried up the floorboards, and reached underneath.

  Scooping up an armful of the things he had hidden, he deposited them on the counter. Then he walked over to the doorway of the blockhouse, knowing that his words wouldn’t make a difference right now. He was afraid to look at her, to see the hurt that he knew would be spreading across her beautiful face. He put a hand on the door frame, closed his eyes, and hung his head, hoping—praying—that she would understand.

  “You utter bastard.”

  It was a hiss—unexpected, grating, filled with hate. He had never heard Jordan sound like this before. He whipped around, and the pair of black neoprene scuba booties smacked into his chest, sending him staggering back. Jordan had thrown them hard, and the thick rubber soles hurt.

  “You had these the whole time.” She hefted a metal can in one hand, reading the label. She picked up another and looked up at Juan, her green eyes slits, incandescent with fury.

  “Tuna? Beans? Peaches?”

  He ducked as heavy cans thudded against the door frame around him. Jordan threw with force and accuracy. A can hit him in the midsection, knocking the wind out of him. Juan sat down hard. Another can spanged off the concrete wall next to his head. He crabbed along the wall to get away, but Jordan was out of cans.

  “You worthless son of a bitch.” She grabbed the speargun.

  Juan’s eyes widened. She thought he was with Julian? Reflexively, his hand crept behind him, where the Glock was a hard lump under his belt. “No, you don’t understand…”

  “I actually thought…” Her whole body shook, at the edge of control. “I actually thought you and I, we—”

  “It’s not what you think.” Juan raised a hand, fingers spread in supplication. “I found the food and the booties on the first night. I’m not Julian’s spy.”

  She spotted his other hand moving toward his belt, and her lips spread in a horrible rictus, baring teeth. The speargun came up, and he froze.

  Jordan’s beautiful features were unrecognizable now, distorted with hate. She spoke very slowly, each word a sibilant hiss.

  “Spy? You really think I care about that? You just don’t get it, do you, Juan?” She leveled the speargun at him. “Good-bye.”

  Staring at the spear point aimed at his face, he realized she was about to kill him.

  But Jordan spun away, scooping up her paintball marker and blue envelope with her free hand. In the doorway, she paused one last time, looked at the envelope she held, and then back at Juan with a depth of hatred that chilled his spine.

  Then she was gone.

  CHAPTER 126

  “I know where Heather is. She’s fine. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Jacob’s comment caught Dmitry by surprise. He looked up from the reports he was tying into a bundle, wrapping them in both directions with a length of twine, the way he had carried his books to school as a boy. But instead of relief, he felt a deepening concern at Jacob’s words.

  The voice of the bad man—the criminal—came from the room next door.

  “I told all of ‘em I didn’t touch your friend.” Chains rattled. “Now, let me loose before I get mad!”

  Dmitry’s eyes flicked to the keys on the counter. But he ignored the criminal’s voice and focused on Jacob.

  “Slava bogu,” he said. “We are very worried, with all these crazy people here. Why you didn’t say before where she is?”

  “I just figured it out myself,” Jacob said. “It’s where I’m headed, too, just as soon as we finish packing up.”

  “But where is Heather? Where she is gone?”

  “San Diego.” Jacob smiled, and Dmitry felt a spike of fear shoot through him.

  “No, Jacob, listen to me.” Dmitry tried to read his eyes but couldn’t. “Heather is not in San Diego. She was here on island yesterday. With us.”

  Jacob patted him on the shoulder and gave him one of the patronizing looks he disliked so much. “That’s just what she wanted us to think, Dima. But she left for San Diego already. She doesn’t like the way Karen sold us out any more than I do.”

  Dmitry grabbed both of Jacob’s upper arms.

  “You are confuse,” he said. “Nobody is in San Diego. We don’t know where Heather is, but I am thinking maybe she is dead. We are in bad trouble here, Jacob. Bad trouble.”

  Jacob blinked, and an expression of mild frustration crossed his face. “Have you not been listening to what I’ve been saying, Dima? Heather made the right decision. I don’t blame her for leaving. Karen compromised our work here with sloppy protocols. She brought in all these other scientists from God knows where—no integrity at all.”

  He pulled loose from Dmitry’s grip and barked a laugh, waving a hand toward the room where the criminal was chained.

  “Did you see these people? I mean, really? No proper scientific discipline—worse than first-year grad students. I’ve never heard of any of them before. This is who the Institute is hiring now? Jesus, Dima, the blonde one didn’t even have shoes on.”

  Dmitry shook his head.

  “No. You have to think, Jacob. Remember. These people making reality show. Not scientists. Yesterday, boat is broken.” His voice was rising, and he fought to control it. “People are hurt, people are dead!”

  “See, that’s exactly the kind of talk we don’t need.” Jacob walked over
to the window of the science station and looked out. “You have to face reality sometime, Dima. The tracking study is ruined now. There’s no further reason to stay.”

  He pointed in the direction of the breakwater and the dock beyond.

  “The San Diego director’s sending a boat. They’re damn glad to have serious researchers like us. We need to hurry to the dock, before we miss them.”

  Dark wings of fear unfolded in Dmitry’s belly. He looked closely at Jacob’s face, trying to make sense of what he was saying. He could see a sheen of sweat glistening on Jacob’s forehead. It didn’t match the unconcern in his expression and voice.

  “Jacob, please try to understand,” Dmitry said. “I am your friend telling you this. You are upset, thinking wrong. Nobody is coming. We need Coast Guard, politziu.”

  Jacob shook his head. “Well, then, that’s your choice. You can come or you can stay, but I’m going to the dock.” He picked up an armful of binders and bound reports and tucked them under his arm. In the doorway, he turned to face Dmitry.

  “I don’t think I can convince them to wait long. So if you want to come, you better hurry.”

  CHAPTER 127

  “Who’s your target, Natalie?” Veronica looked out the window, cradling the paintball gun in her hands. Her back was to the large foyer of the Greek Revival house, where she and Natalie had returned to prepare. She scanned the open ground outside, watchful for movement. But most of her attention was focused on the sounds behind her. The slow, careful tear of paper. She tilted her head, aligning her ear to catch the slight intake of breath. It came from farther to the right. Natalie had moved a few steps in that direction.

  “Maybe we should split up now,” Natalie said.

  Veronica spun, snapped her arms up, and pulled the trigger. The snick of compressed air was loud in the room.

  Natalie staggered back, a splatter of red paint dead-center on the chest of her hoodie. She drew a couple of gasping breaths and stared in shock at Veronica.