Scavenger

  “Why? I don’t understand. What are you doing?”

  When the voice didn’t reply, Amanda felt another premonition. “Stop!” she yelled to the group.

  Either her voice didn’t carry, or else they were too fixated on the water to pay attention to anything else.

  “No! Stay away from the lake!” Amanda charged down the slope, dodging rocks and sagebrush. “Wait!”

  Viv turned, frowning in Amanda’s direction.

  “Stop!”

  Viv called something to Derrick and Ray, who paused and looked back. Thank God, Amanda thought. The group waited as she ran to them.

  “What’s wrong?” Derrick asked.

  Amanda heard him through her ear phones now. The two-way radio was operating normally again. “He can isolate our conversations. He told me the coordinates he gave us don’t correspond with this lake.”

  Ray glanced at the needle on his GPS receiver. “That’s true. They match something on the slope.”

  “A ruined building,” Amanda explained.

  “But why didn’t he tell the rest of us?”

  “Screwing with our minds,” Derrick said in disgust.

  “Fine.” Ray drew his tongue along his dry lips. “We’ll investigate the building. But the water’s closer. I’m not walking away without a drink.”

  3

  A breeze rippled the lake, creating white caps.

  “Is it safe?” Ray wondered.

  Amanda gazed along the shore. “I don’t see any skeletons or dead animals.”

  “Look how clear the lake is.” Viv pointed. “Fish.”

  “If the water was poisoned, it would kill them,” Ray said.

  “Not necessarily,” Derrick objected. “Think about the mercury and other toxins in some lakes. Fish somehow live in them, but that doesn’t mean the water’s safe. On Everest, even melted snow has toxins. We treat everything we drink with iodine tablets.”

  “Yeah, well, in case you haven’t noticed, we don’t have any way to purify the water.” Ray took out his lighter, snapping it open and shut as he debated with himself. “When I was in Iraq, running from insurgents, I drank some awfully dirty water. It gave me a fever. But I survived.” He put away his lighter and knelt, his reflection rippling in the water. “My mouth’s so dry, my tongue feels swollen.”

  He cupped his hands together and lowered them into the lake.

  “No,” Amanda said.

  Ray splashed water over his face. “Man, that feels good.” He splashed more water, rubbing his wet hands over his cheeks and the back of his neck. “Makes me want to soak my feet.” He started to unlace a boot.

  “Do not remove your boots,” the voice said.

  “Ah,” Ray said. “Welcome back. I thought you might have fallen asleep.”

  “For the forty hours, I do not sleep.”

  “Right. You want to share our pain. The boots. Is that where the explosives are?”

  The voice did not reply.

  “If not, maybe you won’t care if I put my feet in the water, even though my boots are on.”

  “I don’t advise it.”

  “Then I’ll just rinse my face again.”

  Ray lowered his hands toward the water. A snake’s fangs darted from the surface, streaking toward one of Ray’s fingers. He screamed and lurched back, falling. “Mygodmygod,” he blurted, scurrying from the water.

  Amanda felt numbness spread through her. Some of the ripples, she saw now, weren’t caused by the breeze. Snakes. The lake was infested by snakes. All of a sudden, the water churned with them.

  Ray’s eyes were wild. He jerked his hands toward his face, staring at them. “Did it bite me? Did it bite me?”

  “Snakes. I can’t bear…” Viv bent over, retching.

  “You son of a bitch,” Derrick shouted toward the sky. “Those look like water moccasins! They don’t belong in the mountains! You put them here!”

  “The obstacle race and the scavenger hunt,” the voice said.

  “The scavenger hunt?”

  “In winter, when the lake froze, the townspeople used to cut blocks of ice and store them in the mine. In summer, the ice kept the town’s meat from spoiling.”

  “Mine? Townspeople? Ice? What are you talking about?” Ray shouted. “I nearly got bit by a snake, for God’s sake, and you’re babbling about ice?”

  “Wait a minute,” Amanda insisted. “What town?”

  “Avalon. But you’ll learn that soon enough.”

  Viv wiped vomit from her lips. “The ruined building Amanda mentioned. You want us to go there.”

  “As quickly as possible. You wasted time and skipped a step.”

  “In the obstacle race and the scavenger hunt.” Amanda stared toward the rippling snakes in the water.

  4

  They hiked from the lake. Climbing the slope, passing sagebrush and rocks, they conserved energy and followed the zig-zag pattern they’d used earlier.

  “You need to have a name for me,” the voice said. “From now on, refer to me as the Game Master.”

  To Amanda, the name had the sound of doom.

  They reached a plateau halfway up the rise and faced the ruins of a building. Its walls were stone. The left side had collapsed. The roof was made of wood, the beams of which had fallen. The wood was gray with age.

  “All by itself up here. Long. Narrow. Feels like it might have been a church,” Amanda said.

  “Definitely was.” Viv pointed to the left, where a large wooden cross lay among a chaos of stones.

  The group cautiously approached what seemed to have been the entrance.

  “Look. The altar’s still intact,” Derrick marveled.

  Peering deeply within the toppled structure, Amanda saw a horizontal slab of rock propped on two vertical ones.

  “Where did the slabs come from?” Viv asked. “These walls of rock…”

  “The mine,” Ray said. “The voice referred to…” Ray paused and corrected himself. “The Game Master referred to a mine.”

  “And a town called Avalon.” Derrick turned toward the valley. “There. Look. Below us. Before the narrow end of the lake.”

  Despite the brim of Amanda’s cap, her eyes were pained by the stark sun. Squinting down, she saw collapsed buildings partially obscured by sagebrush. The ruins were arranged in rectangular grids. The long spaces between them were once streets, she guessed.

  “Avalon. Sounds familiar,” Derrick said.

  “I once woke up in a resort in New Jersey called Avalon,” Ray told him. “I had a terrible hangover and none of the five grand I won playing blackjack in Atlantic City.”

  “King Arthur,” Amanda said.

  They stared at her.

  “The Knights of the Round Table?” Viv sounded baffled. “What’s that Disney movie? The Sword in the Stone? Camelot?”

  “After Arthur was killed in his final battle, a group of women took his body to a place called Avalon. According to legend, he remains alive there, in a trance, waiting to return when the world needs him.”

  “Coming back from the dead.” Viv entered the church, stepping on piles of rocks.

  “Careful.” Derrick went next. “After what happened at the lake, I get the feeling traps are part of the game.”

  Amanda studied the rubble, saw nothing that made her suspicious, and followed.

  Ahead, a board creaked when Viv cautiously pulled it away. “What if there are snakes?”

  “They wouldn’t be water moccasins. They’d be rattlers,” Derrick said. “They’d be making noise to warn us away.”

  “I know that in my head. The trouble is, I need to convince myself to believe it.” Viv climbed behind the stone slab that formed the altar. She peered down at her companions. “I bet I’m the first woman who ever stood up here.”

  “See anything that might help?” Derrick asked.

  “There’s something engraved on the altar.” Viv blew dust from the slab. “It’s hard to read.” She concentrated. “The Sepulcher of Worldly Desir
es.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Ray asked.

  The Sepulcher of Worldly Desires. Amanda felt something stir in her memory, a phrase that reminded her of the words on the altar. But before she could remember, Viv studied the screen on her GPS receiver and distracted her.

  “According to this, we’re at the coordinates the voice…” Viv corrected herself. “…the Game Master gave us. The receiver’s accurate to within ten feet. So, what are we supposed to notice?”

  Derrick looked around. “Remember what he said about geocaching. Objects can be disguised until it’s almost impossible to find them. He mentioned something that looked like a grasshopper but wasn’t.”

  “He also mentioned a rock that turned out to have something inside.” Ray’s voice rose with excitement. He surveyed the countless rocks around them, then hesitated, asking Derrick, “No snakes?”

  “We’re making so much noise, they’d be rattling.”

  “You keep saying that. But how many rattlesnakes did you come across on Mount Everest?” Before Derrick could respond to the sarcasm, Ray gingerly picked up a rock and shook it. “Doesn’t feel hollow.” He shook another. “Not this one, either.”

  Amanda stooped, mustered courage, and picked up a rock. No threat was under it. “This one’s real.”

  “So are these.” Derrick warily picked up one rock after another. “They’re all real.”

  “Keep searching!” Ray told him.

  Their thirst overwhelmed their apprehension. All around Amanda, rocks flew, clattering.

  “Too many. This could take all day.” Amanda tried to keep despair from her voice. “We don’t have time. If he hid something in a rock, why would he use that as an example when he described the game? Too obvious. He wanted to mislead us.”

  “I’m too thirsty to think straight.” Ray looked around desperately. “If it isn’t a hollow rock, what else would seem ordinary and yet hide something?”

  “The wooden beams from the roof,” Viv said quickly.

  “Yes!” Ray grabbed a fractured section of a beam. “Too heavy.” He grabbed another. “Not hollow.” He grabbed a third one. “The same bullshit as the rocks. We’re not going to…Wait.” He raised a fourth chunk from a fallen beam. “This feels like plastic.”

  Amanda watched Ray pull at the two sides of the fake wood. They parted, revealing a plastic bottle of water. Ray howled in victory and twisted the cap from the bottle. He raised the opening to his mouth.

  Amanda tried to say, “Stop!” But her dry tongue felt paralyzed. She saw water pouring from the bottle into Ray’s mouth. His throat moved rapidly, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed greedily.

  Viv did manage to shout, “No!” But the upturned bottle kept pouring water into Ray’s mouth, some of it trickling from his lips and down his chin. He made gulping noises. Red-faced from holding his breath, he exhaled and lowered the empty bottle. His chest heaved. He seemed transported with satisfaction until he noticed Amanda, Derrick, and Viv watching him in shock.

  It took him a moment before he understood their emotions. “Sorry.”

  Amanda felt the start of hopelessness.

  “I didn’t think. Really, I’m sorry.”

  Viv moaned.

  “I just wasn’t thinking straight.”

  Derrick sank onto a pile of rocks, his head on his knees.

  “Hey, there must be others. I’ll help you look for them.” Ray picked up a chunk of wood. He tried another and another. “It doesn’t make sense that he’d hide only one bottle for all of us.”

  “Unless he wanted to see how we’d react,” Amanda said.

  Ray hurled the empty bottle against the wall. Its plastic thumped hollowly. “Well, what did you expect? I told you I’m no damned hero.”

  “Okay, okay.” Viv raised her hands. “Arguing isn’t going to help. It’s done. We can’t change what happened.”

  Derrick stood, telling Ray, “But if we find another bottle, stay the hell away from it.”

  “Whatever you say, boss.” Ray took out his lighter, snapping it open and shut.

  “Quit making that noise!”

  “Right, boss.”

  Amanda interrupted, trying to break the tension. “Let’s see if we can find more water.”

  5

  The bottle was in another fake chunk of wood, this one partially covered by rocks near the altar. Amanda’s pulse surged when she found it. Her dry mouth made her want desperately to gulp from it as Ray had. But she merely told the group, “Here.”

  She, Derrick, and Viv took turns drinking from it. Like the others, she watched to make sure that no one took a longer swallow than anyone else. Ray frowned in the background.

  Amanda was the last to drink. Savoring the moisture on her tongue, she considered the empty bottle. “Where’s the recycling bin?”

  No one smiled at the joke.

  “On mountains, we always collect our trash and carry it back down,” Derrick said.

  “Did anyone ever tell you what a terrific guy you are?” Ray asked.

  “I was about to add that worrying about our trash isn’t high on my priorities right now.”

  “It’s a piece of equipment we didn’t have before,” Amanda said. “I’ll hang on to it.” She started to lower it toward a pocket in her coveralls, but something caught her attention. “Numbers.”

  “Where?” Viv stepped close.

  “On the label. At the bottom. Someone wrote three sets of numbers.”

  “Let me see.” Derrick took the bottle. “The numbers have ‘LG’ in front of them.”

  Ray joined them. “Longitude?”

  “They sure seem like longitude numbers. Hours, minutes, and seconds.”

  “Where’s that bottle Ray threw?” Amanda made her way over the rocks, approaching the wall. She found the bottle next to the remnants of a bench. “Three sets of numbers. This time, the letters ahead of them are ‘LT.’”

  “Latitude,” Ray said. “We’ll find out where we’re supposed to go next.”

  “Wait. Something’s wrong.” Amanda tensed.

  “Sure. This whole damned game is wrong, but—”

  “No. Don’t you feel it.” The rocks Amanda stood on vibrated. The chunks of wood trembled.

  Viv stumbled back. “My God, what’s happening?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think we’d better—” Alarmed by the increasing vibrations, Derrick blurted, “Get out of here!”

  The wall swayed.

  “Go! Go!” Viv shouted.

  As they scrambled over the rocks, Amanda lost her balance. The wall tilted. With no time to run, she dove to the vibrating rocks, wincing from the impact. Desperate, she pressed herself against the base of the wall and put her arms over her head. With a roar, the wall collapsed, rocks cascading. Impacts made her groan.

  The rumble diminished. The vibration lessened. Soon everything was still, except for the pounding of Amanda’s heart. Dust made her choke. Can’t breathe, she thought, struggling to clear her nostrils and get air down her throat. The bulk of the rocks had fallen toward the middle of the church. Only the ones immediately above had landed on her, the higher ones following the trajectory of the wall and gaining distance when they plummeted. Even so, she felt crushed.

  She heard shouts and charging footsteps, rocks being shoved aside.

  “Are you hurt?” Derrick yelled.

  “Sore.”

  “I bet.”

  “But I managed to protect my head.”

  Viv and Derrick helped her up.

  “And I kept this.” Wincing, Amanda gave Viv the empty bottle with the coordinates printed on it.

  She couldn’t help noticing that Ray stood apart from them. He hadn’t made an effort to help dig her out. We can’t survive if there’s a split in the group, she thought. But then she saw Ray pointing down.

  “More water bottles!” he said.

  Derrick and Viv spun.

  “The impact of the rocks broke open some of these fake tim
bers.”

  As if attracted by a magnet, the group headed in Ray’s direction. The bottles glinted in the sun, their contents beckoning.

  “There’s enough to go around,” Ray said. “Hey, Derrick, mind if I pick one up?”

  Derrick considered him for a long moment. “Go ahead.”

  “Thanks, boss. As long as I have your permission.”

  Yeah, a split in the group, Amanda thought. She picked up a bottle, untwisted the cap, and drank, the wonderful liquid clearing the dust in her mouth. She was so thirsty she wanted to guzzle the water as Ray had, to flood it down her throat, but she feared that would make her sick.

  Meanwhile, Ray drank from a bottle and continued to look angry.

  Viv’s stomach growled. “If we don’t get some food soon…”

  “Always complaining,” Ray told her. “In Iraq, I lived on bugs.”

  “Go easy on her, man,” Derrick said. “All of us are hungry.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  “This is more entertaining than I anticipated,” the voice said.

  The sound in Amanda’s ears made her cringe.

  Derrick scowled at the sky. “Is this part of the game? Hoping we’ll fight each other?”

  “Gold was found here in 1885.”

  “Gold?”

  “Thousands of miners flocked to the valley. A town was born almost overnight. An English real-estate speculator bought the land from a rancher who figured that the valley would be overrun no matter what, so why not take the generous payment he was offered and let someone else deal with the chaos he saw coming? As it turned out, the rancher was shrewd.”

  “Gold?” Ray scoffed. “A while ago, you were talking about ice!”

  “The Englishman who developed the town had a fondness for King Arthur stories. As you’ve already guessed, he named the place after the spot where Arthur lies in a death-like slumber, waiting for destiny to summon him. But after eight years, the last of the gold was taken from the valley. Most of the miners drifted on. That was in 1893, the year of a financial depression that spread through America and became known as the Panic. The people in town decided that there wasn’t much opportunity anywhere else in the country, so they stayed. The Englishman was forced to sell the valley back to the rancher, whose payroll kept the town in business. But that didn’t help the Englishman. Having counted on the boom to last longer, he was so financially overextended that, facing ruin, he trudged into the first blizzard of the winter. Months later, a crew cutting blocks of ice from the lake discovered his frozen body.”