Amanda started after him. Her legs ached from crouching to pull at the rocks, but urgency told her that if Game Master wasn’t lying, she needed to do everything possible to help Frank.
She reached the slope and climbed in a zigzag pattern, conserving energy as Viv had taught her. Viv. The shock of her death struck Amanda even harder. Keep moving, Amanda told herself. Get what Viv wanted. Get even.
Near the top, she came to the water bottles that she, Ray, and Viv had filled with melting snow. Their frenzy to breach the dam had made them so thirsty that they drank nearly all the water. A few swallows remained in one bottle. Amanda emptied it into her mouth, the water unpleasantly warm from the sun, and continued on.
She found Ray studying the reservoir’s muddy basin. Despite the force of the escaping flood, some objects remained embedded in the muck. Rotted tree trunks. The remains of a blackboard wagon. The skeleton of a cow. Something that might have once been a rowboat.
The basin was a hundred yards long, ten yards wide at its narrow end, and forty yards wide at the embankment, where she stood. Fish flopped in the puddles. A few snakes followed the meager flow of water across the mud.
“I don’t see any human bones,” Ray said.
“They might be under the mud.”
“But that cow skeleton isn’t. There’s nothing to prove this is where the townspeople disappeared. I don’t see anything that looks like a container, either, if that’s what we’re looking for.”
“Looks forty feet deep. A lot of area. Whatever we’re searching for could be anywhere.” Amanda looked across the mud toward the northern mountains, again wondering what the shots had been about. Frank, are you coming? she wondered, desperately hoping. Then she realized how wrong it was for her to look in that direction. She didn’t want the Game Master to think about Frank. She wanted him to concentrate on how she and Ray played the game.
Ray pulled out his GPS receiver and accessed the coordinates they’d found in the graveyard. The red arrow pointed across the basin. “We need to triangulate. Go along the bank. See where the needle on your receiver points.”
Amanda walked thirty feet and paused, looking at her receiver. The needle aimed beyond the horns of the cow skeleton toward something that protruded a few inches from the mud.
“What is it?” Ray asked.
“Not sure. It looks like it’s metal,” Amanda answered. “A rim of something.”
The object, whatever it was, seemed to be about four feet long by three feet wide.
“Worldly vanities,” Ray said. “That’s what the Sepulcher is supposed to contain. But that doesn’t look like it can hold much.”
“Reminds me of something, but I can’t remember where I saw it.” Nagged by the memory, Amanda stepped onto the reservoir’s slope. The ground was spongy but supportive. After she took a half-dozen steps, it became mucky, but its base was solid. A further half-dozen steps, and the mud rose over the toe of her boots.
“I don’t know how much farther I can go.”
The object was still thirty feet ahead of her. She waited until a snake wriggled a safe distance away, then took another step down the slope. Her right boot went into the mud.
She kept going. Gasping, Amanda watched as the boot sank completely, mud enveloping the ankle. It sank farther, throwing her off balance. In panic, she planted her left boot to steady herself, but the mud was like a mouth, sucking at her right leg, threatening to tug her forward. It was almost to her knee. She turned, landing on her left elbow. Mud flew. A snake hissed. She tried to crawl sideways, but her hands and elbow went into the muck and she had trouble pulling them out. The mass of her body kept the rest of her from sinking, but she was trapped.
Helpless, she peered at Ray, who watched from the basin’s rim. His lean, beard-stubbled face revealed no emotion, making her realize that his earlier effort to pull her and Viv off the collapsing embankment was the limit of his heroics for the day.
The angle at which her imprisoned leg was twisted caused such pain that Amanda worried about dislocating her knee or popping a tendon. Her lungs felt empty. She put weight on her shoulder and used it as a support to try to tug her right hand from the mud. Like a living thing, the mud resisted. She pulled harder, feeling the heat of adrenaline when the hand came free. She took several deep breaths, found herself staring at the cow’s skeleton, and understood why the animal hadn’t been able to escape the water. Its skull pointed toward her. She stretched her right arm, straining her shoulder. Her fingers grazed a horn. She groped farther, wincing from the pain in her wrist and elbow, managing to clutch the horn. She needed something solid to tug against and pull herself free, but the skull broke loose from the skeleton, and she jerked back.
She moaned. In desperation, she dragged the skull toward her. The horns gave her an idea. She turned the skull upside down and exhaled forcibly when she drove the horns into the mud. With a jolt, they touched something solid. Shoving her right hand against the skull’s bottom, she gained the purchase she needed and kept pushing against it, raising her elbow. The mud made a sucking sound as her left hand came free. Instantly, she propped that hand on the bottom of the skull, pushed, and with effort sat up, the mud clinging to her.
The pressure on her right knee became less painful. She used her hands to scoop the mud from around her right leg, throwing handful after handful away. A lot poured back in to the hole she fought to make, but she kept digging. One more tug, and her leg was free. But if she tried to stand, she knew she would sink into the muck again. Turning, she grabbed the bottom of the embedded skull and pulled herself on her stomach across the mud. She tugged the skull free and plunged it into the muck closer to the basin’s rim. She dragged her body higher, touched ground that was spongy, and managed to stand.
Ray kept watching. “There was no point in both of us getting trapped,” he said.
“Sure.”
“If I thought I could help, I would have. But I’m heavier. My boots would have sunk in deeper than yours.”
“Of course.”
“I want you to understand.”
“Believe me, I do.”
“Not that it matters,” Ray said. “We’re as good as dead anyhow. There’s no way to reach that thing down there, whatever it is, and learn about the Sepulcher.”
“Wrong.” Amanda hoped that her next statement, combined with her crisis in the muck, would distract the Game Master from Frank. “I know how to get down there.”
2
Balenger stared at the gully. Water flowed along its bottom. It was five feet deep and ten feet wide—too far for him to jump across.
He glanced to the right and left, noting that the streambed extended to each end of the valley. He would take too long trying to find a way around it, he decided. But all his instincts warned him not to step into it.
Maybe it’s just what it seems, he tried to assure himself.
But he couldn’t take the chance. He needed to assume it was a trap. Were explosives hidden in it? If so, they couldn’t be pressure activated. Animals drinking at the stream would set them off. The only alternative was for the Game Master to detonate them electronically when the cameras revealed that Balenger was in the stream bed.
Another good reason to destroy the cameras, Balenger thought.
Time, he thought. Forced to make a decision, he concluded that hiding mines all along the streambed would require an enormous amount of explosives. Not easy to acquire. There was too great a risk that law enforcement agencies would notice the shipments. Would the Game Master take that gamble?
So if not explosives, what’s down there? Balenger thought. What else is equally deadly but easily hidden in the gully?
Something about the words “detonate them electronically” nagged at him. As a suspicion formed, he glanced toward the forest a half-mile behind him. He wondered if it was possible to drag a dead tree to the gully and use it as a bridge, but he decided that, even if he managed to do so, it would exhaust him and take too long. Midnight was r
ushing toward him.
He noticed rocks on the ground, picked one up, and tossed it into the gully. He did this again and again, building a footbridge across the water. He needed to work quickly because the rocks formed what amounted to a dam, and as the water rose, it spilled over the rocks. He couldn’t allow his boots to touch the water because he increasingly believed there was an electrical cable underneath. Most of the time, the Game Master would leave the power off, preventing animals from dying when they came to drink. But as soon as cameras told the Game Master that Balenger was in the valley, the electricity would have been activated.
Balenger worked fast, dropping more rocks into the water. But the water kept rising, flowing over the barrier. He wasn’t accomplishing anything.
Amanda, he thought.
He saw a much larger rock and shoved it. Not used to the altitude, he grunted with effort. Hurry! he thought. He gave a final push and watched the rock tumble into the gully, where it rolled to a stop in the shallow water below the dam he’d unintentionally built.
But water splashed the top of the rock. If Balenger was right about the electrical cable, he didn’t dare step on the wet rock. He needed to wait until it dried. Noting that the stark sun had dried the bank after last’s night rain, he eased down the slope, careful to press his weight against it so he wouldn’t lose his balance and fall into the water. The rock’s top started drying. The water smelled deceptively pleasant.
To occupy the frustrating minutes, he studied the walls of the gully and tensed when he noticed a box built into the wall. About fifty feet away, it was carefully placed so that it wouldn’t be noticed from above. In the box was a video camera. No doubt, there were others positioned at regular intervals along the gully.
Balenger put the Kleenex back in his ears. He raised his rifle, superimposed the red dot over the target, and blew the camera to hell. In his pants pocket, the BlackBerry vibrated. He didn’t bother answering it.
The rock was sufficiently dry now. He slung his rifle over his shoulder, took a long step, and braced his right boot on the rock. He gasped when he felt a shock. Even without water to conduct it, the electricity remained powerful enough to come through the rock. It wasn’t enough to kill him, but it was so painful that he almost lost his balance and fell into the water, where he certainly would have died. He jerked his left boot off the bank, stretched that leg over the water, and jumped to the other side. When he pushed from the rock, it shifted beneath his boot, almost dumping him into the water, but he threw his arms forward, the weight of his knapsack giving him momentum, and he landed on the bank. But he almost rolled back into the water. Chest cramping, he dug his fingers into the earth and stopped.
Carefully, he came to his feet, reached for the gully’s top, and pulled himself up, kneeing against the dirt. As he raised his head over the edge, teeth snapped, saliva spraying his face. Gasping, he let go and slid down the bank.
A dog was up there. At once, it leapt.
Balenger rolled to the side, feeling the rush of air when the dog struck his right knee and hurtled down. It landed on the bank, avoided the water, snarled, and charged. On his back, weighed down by the knapsack, Balenger kicked, banging the animal’s nose. He didn’t have time to unsling his rifle. Even if he’d managed, the fight was too close for him to be able to aim. Kicking again, he grabbed the knife clipped to his right pants pocket, flipped the blade open, and worked to raise himself so he could swing.
Another snarl came from behind him, a second dog stretching its head from the top of the bank, snapping at him. Simultaneously, the first dog lunged past Balenger’s boots, teeth aimed toward his groin. Balenger slashed, catching the snout above the nose. As blood flew, the dog lurched back in shock, hit the water, and wailed, its body contorting from the force of the electricity. It jumped from the water, but damage to its nerves took away its strength. Hitting the water again, it thrashed in a death convulsion. Its wail became frenzied grunts that turned to silence, the dog lying still.
The second dog, too, became silent, startled by what had happened. Balenger turned and slashed upward, cutting under its jaw. With a yelp, the dog skittered backward, retreating out of sight beyond the top of the bank.
Balenger surged to his feet and ran to the left along the bank, in the opposite direction from where the dog on top seemed to have gone. Feeling a sharp pain in his right knee, he glanced down and saw blood. The damned thing bit me! he thought. My God, was it rabid?
He reached a spot that looked easy to climb but jerked his hands back when teeth snapped at them. Two dogs lunged into view, foam dripping from their jaws. One had a cut under its jaw. The other was bigger, the size of a German shepherd.
Balenger dropped his knife, unslung the rifle, and risked a quick look to make sure that dirt didn’t plug the barrel. Both dogs darted back. He aimed, ready if they showed themselves. Even with the Kleenex in his ears, he heard growling beyond the top of the bank.
He eased to the left along the stream, staring toward the top, hoping to outflank the dogs. A snarl above him warned that they kept pace with him.
Maybe I can scare them off, he thought. He fired, hoping the sharp noise would drive them away.
For a moment, there was silence.
Then the growls resumed.
The dogs were big but scrawny. Balenger wondered if they were crazy with hunger. He slipped out of his knapsack. Holding his gun with one hand, he opened the flap and pulled out two energy bars. He hurled them to his left over the bank. When he heard movement, he grabbed his knapsack and ran to the right, picking up his knife and clipping it into his pocket as he hurried. He passed the dead dog in the stream and kept running.
He climbed a gentle part of the slope, peered over the top, didn’t see a threat, and scrambled up. The two dogs were a distance away, snarling at each other, fighting over the energy bars. The bigger dog grabbed a bar, swallowed it whole, wrapper and all, and attacked the other dog before it could get to the remaining bar.
The BlackBerry vibrated in Balenger’s pocket. Ignoring it, he stalked toward the reservoir.
3
“Stack them on!” Amanda urged. In the ruins, she held out her arms while Ray set board after board onto them.
“Too many!” he said.
“Give me more!” The strain made her wince. “Okay, that’s enough!”
Amanda headed toward the drained reservoir. She heard another gunshot. It, too, came from the north, but it sounded closer. Frank? she thought. Is that really you? What are you shooting? At once, she feared that Frank was the one being shot at. Don’t think that way! she warned herself. Frank’s coming! I’ve got to believe that!
The weight of the boards hurting her arms, she staggered onward, finally reaching the basin. With a clatter, she dropped them. Her mouth felt dry, as if it had been swabbed with cotton.
Ray plodded to her and dropped what he carried. He squinted at his watch. “Twenty to two.”
“The time goes fast when you’re having fun,” Amanda said. She grabbed two boards and set them next to each other on the muddy slope.
“Or slower,” the Game Master said through her headset. “Time is relative in video games. It all depends how it’s divided.”
“Go to hell!” Amanda told him. She and Ray hurried to place more boards in the mud.
“Many games have time counters, but in games that deal with the development of virtual civilizations, the counters indicate months and years instead of seconds or minutes. Indeed, a month might last only a minute. Conversely, some games pretend to measure conventional time, but a minute on their timers might actually last two minutes in so-called real time. The player exits the game and discovers that twice as much conventional time elapsed than the game indicated. The effect can be disorienting.”
Amanda continued making a walkway, trying to shut out the voice.
“Then, too, as you discovered, a game’s subjective time can be different from clock time. A friend who’s dying from cancer learned that the inte
nse speed of multiple decisions many games require gives a fullness to each instant and makes time appear to go slowly. For some players, the forty hours that the average game takes can be the equivalent of a lifetime.”
Another shot echoed from beyond the drained reservoir. Amanda stared toward the mountains to the north.
“You can bet Frank feels it’s been a lifetime,” the Game Master said.
“Don’t believe him. He’s jerking your chain,” Ray said. “Those shots are probably from hunters. If we’re lucky, maybe they’ll find us.”
But what could they do to help us? Amanda wondered. We’re walking bombs. For that matter, what can Frank do to help us?
“I never lie,” the Game Master said. “If I tell you those shots indicate Frank is coming, you can take my word for it.”
“You never lie? Hard for me to know.” Ray glared toward the sky. “But sure as sin, you never told the complete truth.”
Don’t think that way! Amanda warned herself. Frank’s coming. He’s got to be. Just keep trying to distract the Game Master. She put the last board into the mud and hurried to get more.
4
Balenger reached a solitary pine tree, the only elevated object around, and found, as he anticipated, a video camera mounted on its trunk. He aimed his rifle, steadied the red dot, and blew the camera to pieces.
Lights out, he thought.
He put a fresh magazine into the gun and reloaded the partially empty one. All the while, he glanced to his right, where the two dogs watched him, maintaining a distance of thirty yards. He resumed walking. So did they. He paused again. They did also.
The pain in his knee made him look down. His camouflaged pant leg was stained with blood. The dog’s teeth had torn the fabric. He saw puncture wounds and worried about the saliva he’d seen at the dog’s mouth.