Eventually, inevitably, the now detestable sight of the crossing dirt paths came back into view. Hiss did stop this time and waited silently for direction from Shoo. Shoo, in turn, seemed to defer to Leon.
“We, left again, try?” she asked him. “Or you, another way, think?”
Leon hated that the weight of figuring a way out was falling on his shoulders. He didn’t have a magic key or secret map tucked away that would eventually lead everyone to freedom. He was guessing like the rest of them. He didn’t want the responsibility. If he couldn’t figure out this puzzle, he didn’t want to be the reason they stayed trapped here. He almost said as much, but then he remembered something his father had said when Leon was only about ten years old.
“Sometimes the best leaders are the ones that don’t want the job,” he recalled his dad commenting one evening. “The people that do want the job usually want it for the wrong reasons. We deserve leaders that are honestly trying to do the right thing, not just reminding everyone that they’re in charge. We want someone that can make a tough decision and stick to it. It doesn’t matter if you make a mistake; people can forgive a mistake if you make it honestly. But if you’re too afraid of being wrong to ever make a decision, you’re useless to everybody.”
His dad had been complaining to his mom about a new lieutenant at the time, and Leon had not fully understood everything they talked about, but he remembered the discussion all the same. Today, he thought he better understood what his father had been trying to say. It applied to the position he found himself in now. The others in the group were looking at him to lead because, so far, he seemed to be the only one with a plan. As long as he could continue to come up with possible options, it meant they weren’t permanently stuck in this maze.
These people were looking to him to be a leader. They wanted him to decide on where to go next, not make excuses about why he might be wrong. They needed hope that they were somehow making progress through this ridiculous challenge, and right now, like it or not, Leon was the source of that hope.
“There’s still one direction, we haven’t gone,” he told Shoo. “I think we need to try it at least once before we can figure out this puzzle. It might get us nowhere, but we should give it a shot.”
Shoo pointed in the direction from which they had come. “You, back, the direction refer.”
Leon nodded. “It’s the only way we’ve never attempted.”
Shoo tapped Hiss on the arm and gestured at the road in the desired direction. It looked to Leon like a mother reprimanding a child and telling him to go to his room. Hiss dutifully led the march back down the path from which they had arrived.
Leon felt a small glow of pride in his chest at the way he had handled the situation. The group looked to him to make a decision and he had done it. He hadn’t complained, made excuses, or tried to pass the responsibility on to someone else. He had stepped up to the plate and taken a full swing. If his dad had been here to see it, Leon hoped he would have been proud of his son’s ability to accept such a heavy burden. And who knew? Maybe this direction would succeed, and they would finally get out of this miserable forest.
All at once, the hope and the pride leaked away like the air out of a pricked balloon. Dread and the weight of unfulfilled responsibility settled crushingly back onto his shoulders. This was not the time to celebrate victory. Nothing had been won, and nothing had been settled.
They were going the wrong way.
The shadows cast by the trees across the forest floor began to shift and move once again.
CHAPTER 10
Leon kicked at the dead remains of their campfire. They had left this spot four times, choosing a different direction each time, and they knew nothing more now than when they had first arrived.
“We, left again, go?” asked Shoo, exactly as she had the last time they were here.
“No. I think we can say with some certainty that there isn’t a particular road out of here. Repeating what we already did isn’t going to do anything except waste time and whatever strength we have left.” Leon kicked another charred branch into the underbrush at the side of the path. “No single direction will get us out, we aren’t in a jar, and we aren’t in a maze. Unless there’s something obvious I’m missing, that leaves only a repeating pattern. There’s a system we have to figure out and I have no idea where to start.”
“We got out of the grasslands,” Sofia said, laying a calming hand on Leon’s shoulder. “We can get out of here, too. What did we do when we escaped the first time?”
“Straight, straight, right, left,” recited Shoo. “We, on left, exited.”
“If that pattern worked once, shouldn’t it work again?” asked Sofia.
“It might,” Leon agreed. “It’s certainly the best option we have. I don’t know if we need to go straight twice before we go right. We could just go straight, right, left. Or maybe only right and left. But, since we don’t know anything with any certainty, we probably shouldn’t take any chances. I vote we do exactly what we did to get out of the grasslands. Straight, straight, right, left.”
“Straight, straight, right, left,” repeated Shoo.
“I’m with Leon,” said Sofia, raising a hand as though casting a vote.
Annie and Michael, having nothing to add to the conversation, simply nodded their agreement.
“Walking around in circles,” muttered Malcolm. “This fucking cunt is going to get us all killed.”
“What was that?” asked Michael. “You have a better plan?”
Malcolm glowered at Michael. “Not yet, mate. But when I do, you can bet you’re going to be a part of it.”
“That sounds like a threat.”
“Does it? Now, why would I threaten you when you’ve been nothing but a fucking gentleman to me this whole time?”
Michael met Malcolm’s angry stare. “Try something or start walking. Your choice.”
Malcolm forced an ingratiating smile. “I’m ready to walk. I’m just waitin’ on the bug to lead the party.”
Malcolm’s smile faded to a sneer as he followed behind the Many. The rest of the group took up their positions behind him with Leon and Sofia at the rear of the line. From habit, Leon pulled out his phone to check the time. It would be almost 5:30 in the evening at home. Except for the half bar of trail mix and a few sips of energy drink, he had not eaten anything since a hastily consumed bowl of cold cereal that morning. His stomach growled and complained at being ignored for so long. The noise was loud enough that Sofia glanced in his direction when she heard it.
He mouthed the word, “sorry,” and she grinned, nodded, and patted her own stomach. They were all hungry.
As they wandered down the path, Leon’s heart sank when he saw the shadows shifting along the ground. He took it as a sign that they were moving in the wrong direction again, but they knew that when they started. They were on the first leg of a four-step pattern to leave the forest, so it shouldn’t be surprising when the first three brought them back to their starting point.
Except, it was a surprise. After a moment’s thought, Leon realized why the movement of the shadows had caught him so off guard. They were going straight. The sun should remain in the same location this entire part of the trek, not adjusting its position in the sky.
The shadows weren’t simply moving, Leon saw they were growing longer. The sunlight faded from the dark violet of early twilight and dimmed further into the blackness of night. Before long, an almost total darkness enveloped them. Fortunately, the path they followed was clearly marked, and any time they began to wander from its clear-cut lines, they felt their feet kicking at brush and leaves on the forest floor allowing them to readjust their direction.
The darkness, though inconvenient, only lasted a few minutes. The sun abruptly broke the skyline on their left, opposite from where it had set. As it climbed higher in the sky at visible speed, the day brightened until their forward progress was once again fully illuminated.
Just as quickly as the daylight
appeared, their path brought them out of the forest and onto a barren stretch of sand and wind scrubbed rock. No life of any kind, plant or animal, marred the empty landscape. Behind them, the forest that had sheltered them for so many hours receded, appearing to race away from them at the rate of a hundred yards for every step they took. In only a few seconds it had dwindled to a dark blur on the horizon. In less than a minute it disappeared completely.
The sun stabilized in the sky two palm widths shy of high noon. With the forest canopy gone, nothing sheltered the company from the fierce glare overhead, and Leon found himself squinting against the light as he assessed their new surroundings. The temperature rose as they hiked, climbing to somewhere in the high 90’s Fahrenheit, perhaps even the low 100’s. No clouds drifted overhead that might offer even temporary shade, and no breeze moved over the terrain to give the travelers any relief from the heat. Leon felt the first prickling beads of sweat form on his forehead and upper lip.
“I don’t think I need this anymore,” said Annie, handing back Leon’s jacket. He accepted it and stuffed it into his pack. He had no desire to put it on, not even to simply tie it around his waist. “Thanks for the loan, Idaho.”
“Good job, Leon,” congratulated Sofia. “You got us to the next step. Can you do it again? Get us out of this desert?”
“I don’t think I did anything,” he admitted, as surprised as any of them. “I didn’t expect to get out of the forest on this attempt, so I really don’t know how it happened.”
Sofia looked at him. The level of trust in her gaze disconcerted Leon. He did not deserve it. He also realized that he liked that she seemed to have such faith in him, and he did not want to disappoint her.
“But do you think you can do it again?” she asked him a second time. “I don’t think we will last very long in this setting if we don’t find a quick way out.”
He shook his head, unsure how to answer.
Even in the rock, dust and sand of the desert, the clay path they followed remained level and pristine. Rolling dunes of sand were carved in neat, razor-edged lines wherever the path cut through, unable to spill over past the boundaries of the road. When they first entered this arid wasteland, Leon feared they might lose the path, but that concern had been quickly allayed. The next intersection they reached was as deliberate and obvious as if they were still in the forest.
“We, where next, go?” asked Shoo as the group shuffled to a halt.
“We didn’t finish the pattern we wanted to try,” said Leon. “I still don’t believe this is completely random. That simply makes no sense to me. What are the Apex looking for if there is no logical way out? If they’re playing with us, that means there’s no way to get home and we’re all going to die here. I can’t think like that. I have to believe this is still a test of our intelligence and ingenuity. So, with that in mind, we must have stumbled across the correct pattern without realizing it. The problem is I have no idea what we did. Shoo, can you repeat all the steps we’ve taken so far?”
“We, in the grasslands, travelled straight, straight, right, left. We, in the forest, travelled left, straight, right, back, straight. This, helpful, is?”
Annie drew her knife and squatted down, one knee braced on the ground. She carved two rows of small arrows matching Shoo’s directions, one for the grasslands and one for the forest. Most of the group stood in a partial ring around her, staring at the symbols she scratched into the clay and musing over what they might imply. Only Malcolm kept a conspicuous distance from the gathering.
“Straight, right, left got us out of the prairie, but I don’t see how we duplicated that in the forest. Not even by accident. If it isn’t directional, could it be an orientation kind of thing?”
“Relative to us, the movements? Not relative to direction?” asked Shoo, understanding immediately what Leon was suggesting.
“Right! Direction might be completely irrelevant.”
“We went backwards,” said Annie, softly.
“But we only did that once, and it didn’t get us out,” corrected Leon.
“No, stupid,” Annie told him, louder this time. “Didn’t you just get through saying not to look at direction? Well, I’m not talking about the backward path. I mean that we went backwards. Look at the last two arrows from both locations. Right then left in the grass place. Back then forward in the forest. We went backwards! We went one direction and then followed it by going in the complete opposite direction.”
Leon understood what she meant, then mentally berated himself for not spotting it sooner. Annie was absolutely right. They had escaped whatever landscape they were in when they travelled in one direction then doubled back the other way on the next attempt. It made perfect sense from a testing standpoint. Going one way and then reversing course in a normal situation would leave a person exactly where they started. This was not a normal situation. The Apex wanted to know if human beings were intelligent enough to recognize a successful pattern even if it didn’t match common expectation. Annie had figured the way out.
He hoped.
The only way to be certain was to test the new hypothesis. Leon wiped sweat from his face with his shirt tail and squinted up at the sun blazing brightly overhead.
“We aren’t going to get many chances at this,” he warned. “It’s hot and we’re all probably a little dehydrated already.”
“I haven’t gotten a sunburn,” Annie said, holding out one pale, freckled arm in front of him. “Silver linings. Right, Idaho?”
“Right,” Leon agreed, with a weak chuckle. “Shoo, your call this time. Where do you want to start?”
“Forward,” Shoo told the group, holding up a large hand and pointing at the forward path. She dropped the hand and lifted the opposite appendage. “We, back, then go.”
Annie scuffed away her notes in the dirt, then used her knife to etch one large arrow in the ground to mark their starting point. She glanced at Leon as she sheathed the blade. “I don’t know if it’s necessary this time. Maybe I’m just getting a little superstitious. Fuck it. It felt right.”
The party trudged on through the heat of the surrounding desert. Hiss set a pace slightly slower than before at Leon’s request. It would take longer to find the next intersection, but given the dry, miserable conditions of their forced march, he didn’t see any reason to push too hard and risk heat stroke.
There were only brief conversations again this time. Everyone kept their head forward and watched the unchanging horizon or gazed down at the monotonous right to left pattern of their own footsteps. With nothing else to distract him, Leon fixated on the glacially slow progression of the clock on his phone; that, and the growing discomfort between his legs as his sweat-dampened jeans began to chafe his thighs.
At one point, he pulled desperately at the crotch of his pants, trying to move and dislodge his underwear from where it had bunched unpleasantly against his groin. Sofia noticed the attempt but, other than a small look of sympathy, she thankfully made no comment.
Ahead of Leon, Michael drifted closer to Annie. Although he did not look in her direction, Michael said quietly, “When your brother told you he was gay, did it bother you?”
Annie glanced sideways at Michael, taken aback by the unexpected question.
“I love my brother,” she said. “Why would it bother me?”
“And your mother? Was she the reason he moved away?”
“My mother knew who he was,” Annie said, somewhat defensively. “We both did. A long time before he finally told us. He moved away because he wanted to dance. Neil calls and visits all the time. He can go home anytime he wants to. What the hell kind of question is that?”
“Sorry,” Michael apologized. “I was being rude and nosey. Not my business. I was only curious. A lot of parents wouldn’t be so approving of their child choosing that lifestyle.”
“Choosing that lifestyle?” repeated Annie. “If you have something you want to say to me, why don’t you spit it out? You got a problem with my brother
?”
“No. I’m sorry,” Michael said again. He picked up his pace, moving away from Annie and attempting to end the conversation.
Annie did not let the apology slide and hurried to catch up with Michael on the path.
“I asked you a question,” she said.
They were too far away for Leon to hear Michael’s soft response. The two talked as they walked, and Leon could see Annie’s agitation noticeably fading. She even laughed at one point. After a while, Annie slipped a hand into the bend of Michael’s elbow and leaned her head against his upper arm. They said nothing further to one another. They strode on in this manner in a comfortable silence for several minutes.
Leon was glad they had worked out their differences and were getting along again, but he also felt a slight twinge of jealousy watching them stroll arm in arm. He shook his head ruefully. He was being ridiculous. Leon had known Annie and Michael less than a day. What did he think there was to be jealous of?
When they reached the next crossroads, Hiss turned to face the oncoming queue of weary humans behind him. After a brief pause around Annie’s arrow to turn their line around, he led them all back the way they had come. The trek began again in reverse. Leon hoped they had a complete understanding of the challenge and could exit this landscape faster than the previous two. The continuous walking was difficult in any situation, but the extreme heat here made their exertions dangerous to the point of life threatening.
For all of Annie’s attitude and insistence that she didn’t need anyone’s help, Leon could see that she was beginning to struggle. Fatigue and dehydration were taking their toll, and if the group didn’t escape this hellish landscape in the next hour or so, it might be too late for some of them.
Sofia pointed at the ground at her feet. “Guys, look at our shadows.”
Leon’s shadow, which had extended about two feet to his left when they started this leg of the hike had stretched an addition foot or so. If they were trapped in the same loop as before, he would have expected the shadow to shorten and then extend to his right as the world around him adjusted back to its original orientation. The fact that his shadow was growing meant something different was happening. His heart pounded in his chest with excitement, and he peered hopefully at the horizon, looking for some hint of change in the environment.
Testing Grounds (On Dangerous Grounds Book 1) Page 14