“Okay,” Sam said. He was surprised—old Marty had actually said something interesting. Why hadn’t his history teacher ever talked about snakes? If she had, Sam might actually have paid attention in that class.
“I have no idea what it would be doing here though,” she said, shaking her head. “Nevada wasn’t even part of the United States at the time of the Revolution.”
Ha, that dope, Sam thought, chuckling to himself. She doesn’t even remember that we’re supposed to be looking for clues out here. “So maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with the Revolutionary War,” Sam hinted. “Maybe it’s—”
“A clue!” Martina beamed with realization. “The one about the next place we’re going!”
“Ding, ding, ding!” Sam said. “But what does it mean? A clue isn’t any good if you don’t know what it means.”
The two of them studied the carving. Theo gazed at it above their heads. Seconds ticked into minutes, until something caught Sam’s attention.
“The tongue!” he said. Martina and Theo both turned to stare at him.
“The tongue?” Martina squinted as she peered closer. “What about it?”
“Snakes have forked tongues, right?” Sam said. “But look—it’s not a fork. It’s an arrow.”
Martina’s eyes widened. “You’re right.”
“And there are two letters up there,” Sam pointed. “See? An N and an E, right above the snake’s head.”
“Yeah, ‘New England,’” Martina said. “At least, that’s what it stood for in the original cartoon.”
Sam thought for a second. Then he asked Martina a stupid question. “Do you have a compass in that backpack of yours?”
“Of course I do. Why?”
“What if N.E. stands for northeast?”
“There’s a path to the northeast,” Theo said, startling them both. Sam had been so absorbed in the engraving that he’d forgotten about him. “Right here.”
Martina and Sam looked at each other. “It really could be a clue,” Martina said.
“It’s got to be,” Sam agreed.
“The first clue.”
“You found it,” Sam pointed out reluctantly. But he did want to be fair.
“You noticed the arrow and the letters, though,” Martina said. Maybe she was actually trying to be fair too.
They turned down the new path with Theo in the lead. “A scavenger hunt in Death Valley!” Sam exclaimed. “Awesome!” This trip was looking up, he thought—or it was until he heard a voice from behind them.
“Hey, kids! Wait a second!”
All of them turned to see the tourist in the Hawaiian shirt coming down the path after them. “You guys down here all by yourselves?” the guy panted once he reached them. He wiped sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief. His pale, doughy face was flushed red with exertion, and his bulgy blue eyes squinted against the sun. The guy looked about as well suited to the rough terrain as a balloon in a nest of porcupines. “Shouldn’t go off so far on your own,” the guy said. “It could be dangerous, you know.”
“We know,” Martina said. “But I’ve got everything we might need in my backpack. I’m an experienced traveler. You can tell the tour guide we’ll be back in—”
“What’s this about another path?” the man said, ignoring Martina’s not-too-subtle attempt to get him to go away. “I heard you talking about that rock carving up there. Sounds fascinating! Lead the way, young lady! I’m sure we’ll get some great pictures!” He brandished his smartphone.
Sam and Martina shared a glance. She was exasperated, and he was annoyed—but for the first time since this trip started, it wasn’t with each other. This guy was one of those grown-ups who just couldn’t take a hint. Shrugging in defeat, Sam said, “Sure, why not?” and followed Theo down the northeast path. Martina came after him, and the man in the Hawaiian shirt brought up the rear, snapping pictures and pointing at things.
Sam wanted to talk more about the rock carving and what kind of a clue it might be, but not with Aloha-Shirt Guy back there listening. He trudged on in silence as the canyon wound through the earth. Now that it was late morning, the sun was beating down on them full force. Sam could feel the heat prickling across his face. After wiping the sweat from his brow, he stared at the mountains ahead of them and stopped dead in his tracks.
“Hey!” Martina complained as she bumped into him from behind. “Why did you stop?”
“Because of that.” Sam pointed.
Martina followed Sam’s finger with her eyes. “I don’t see anything but rocks.”
“Do you have some binoculars?”
“Obviously. So do you still think my backpack’s full of ‘junk’ now, hmm?”
“Oh, stuff it and hand me the binoculars,” Sam said.
Martina smirked and put a small but heavy pair of binoculars into Sam’s hand.
Sam brought the binoculars up to his eyes and focused them. “That’s it! It’s the next clue! Here, look!”
Martina took the binoculars and surveyed the area. “Let’s see . . . rocks, rocks, aaand more rocks.”
“Ugh,” Sam groaned and took a step toward her. “How could you miss it? It’s right—”
Sam stumbled as his foot came down on an uneven edge, and he looked down to see what he had tripped over. He had been standing on a smooth, white stone—almost perfectly circular in shape. That’s weird. It doesn’t look natural, so why is it here? Curious, he looked back up at the rocks in the distance, hopping on the rock, and then off again. On and off. Then he grinned.
Whoever planned this puzzle sure was clever.
“Okay, you have to stand right here to see it. Here.” Sam reached back and grabbed Martina’s arm, pulling her forward until she stood on the white rock where his feet had just been. “Good. Now turn your head that way.” He grabbed her on both sides of her head and twisted her face into position.
“Ow! What do you think you’re— Oh!”
She’d seen it too. Those three rocks, just visible above the canyon’s rim. At first they’d looked like any of the other rocks scattered over the landscape, until Sam’s eye had fallen on them as he passed over that white rock.
From that angle, the three rocks seemed to join together, to line up perfectly and look like one long, solid rock. A rock that looked like a writhing snake.
“Another snake,” Martina whispered.
“Yeah,” Sam agreed. “Just like the first one. Different pieces joining up to make one great big snake. See the head?”
Theo had backtracked and now took a turn standing on the white rock too. He stared through the binoculars for a few moments in silence. Sam thought he saw his eyebrows go up—as if something had actually gotten him excited—but only for a second. “I see it too,” he said, his voice level.
“We’ve got to get over there!” Sam cried. This was a puzzle, and the rock formation was the next clue. A current of electric excitement was pulsing inside him, the kind he always got when all the elements of a puzzle were falling into place. “It’s just like the head of the carving. I bet you both twenty bucks that there’ll be a tongue—and that tongue will be an arrow. It’ll show us where to go next!”
“Wait. Wait!” Martina had his arm. “Sam, hold on! That’s miles away. We can’t just run across the desert like this.”
“Why not? It’s part of the contest, right? This is what we’re supposed to do! And anyway, you’ve got half a supermarket in that pack, and we’ve got enough water.”
“But I don’t have a good map—we could get lost. And how can we be certain these are the clues we were meant to find? It seems so strange that they would expect us to march out in the middle of the desert like this, after the tour guide told us to be back in forty-five minutes. We should at least ask Evangeline if we’re on the right track.”
“Okay, okay.” It was easy to act annoyed, but the truth was, she was right. Sam was getting ahead of himself. The desert could be dangerous—hadn’t they already seen that when Martina got u
p close and personal with that rattler? They needed to be sure. “Fine. We’ll go back.”
The three of them turned to retrace their steps down the path.
The man in the Hawaiian shirt stood in their way, his mouth pressed into a hard, thin line. His goofy, excited demeanor had dropped off him like a mask, exposing something much more sinister underneath.
It took Sam a few seconds to register that the small black thing in the man’s hand wasn’t his smartphone. It was a gun.
“Sorry, kids,” the man said. “Change of plans. You’re coming with me.”
CHAPTER FIVE
It must have been more than a hundred degrees out in that desert, but somehow, Sam still felt a chill run down his back. He’d never even seen a real gun before—much less had one pointed at him.
“Hey, l-look,” he stammered, putting his hands up in front of him. “I get it. You’re really serious about vacation photography. If you want a picture on top of that rock, I’m your guy, okay? Just put away the—”
Aloha-Shirt Guy cut him off. “I’m not here to snap pictures. I’m here for you.”
Sam swallowed hard, his mind spinning. “But why?” he asked. “We’re just kids.”
The man chuckled humorlessly. “I know who you are,” he said. “I can tell by the company you’ve been keeping. And I know why you’re here in Death Valley.”
“For the sightseeing?” Sam suggested hopefully.
“Sam!” Martina whispered. “Shut up!”
“That’s right. Enough talking,” Aloha agreed. “Now take out your phones and drop ’em.”
Sam groped in his pocket, looking around at Martina and Theo as he did. Martina’s face was pale under her baseball cap, and her phone slipped from her trembling hands and clattered to the ground. Theo, on the other hand, looked as calm as ever. Just like after the plane, Sam thought. This kid is definitely hiding something.
Sam tossed his phone down with the others, and a moment later the man’s heavy hiking boot came down hard on top of them, one at a time. Sam winced as the sound of shattering glass filled the silence. There goes my high score on Hamster Maze . . .
“Good,” said Aloha, kicking the phone fragments into a sun-scorched bush. “Now get going. We need to get to those rocks you saw.”
Sam turned and looked out across the wide-open desert—miles of dirt and rocks and not much else. He could have shouted for help, but there was no one to hear him.
This was bad.
Really bad.
Swallowing hard, Sam scrambled up a ravine in the canyon wall and then set off with Martina and Theo toward the group of three rocks he had seen just before their vacation turned into the plot of a Bruce Willis movie.
There was no path. Aloha didn’t seem to think they needed one. They walked in a straight line toward the three rocks, trudging over baked earth, climbing up little hills, slipping down into gullies choked with dust. Even through his hat, Sam could feel the heat of the sun beating down on him, impossibly hot. If he had been a pizza, he would have been done half an hour ago.
Sam’s stomach growled.
Okay, he thought. Not the best time to think about pizza.
Theo was striding at the front of the group, his steps almost hypnotically steady. Sam watched him in awe—it had to be seven hundred degrees out here, and except for a few beads of sweat glistening on Theo’s face, the kid looked like he was just taking a quick walk in the park. Did anything faze this guy? Maybe he was some kind of government agent posing as a kid. Right now, anything seemed possible.
Behind Theo, Martina seemed to be struggling under the weight of her enormous backpack, which made her look like an unhappy turtle. She kept glancing back over her shoulder to steal a look at Aloha. As if she were checking to make sure he wasn’t just a mirage.
Sam knew how she felt. Any moment now, he was expecting to wake up in a camping tent in the woods, his mom and dad right outside.
Sam pinched himself.
No such luck.
Sam caught up to Martina and walked next to her. “I don’t get it,” he muttered, low enough so Aloha wouldn’t hear. “What could this guy possibly want with us? And why does he care so much about these clues for the contest?”
Martina rolled her eyes. “Think, genius,” she mumbled back. “Have you considered that maybe those clues aren’t part of the contest? That maybe we stumbled onto something . . . else?”
Sam furrowed his brows in thought. The clues had been more complex than he’d imagined—he thought they’d just find a flyer nailed to a rock or something. The snake engraving, the rock formation—it did seem like a lot of work for one silly contest. But if it wasn’t put there for them to find, what were these clues leading to? Sam’s desire to solve that mystery was strong, but his desire to survive was stronger.
They had to get away from this guy. And fast—before they ventured so far into the desert that they’d have no idea how to get back.
Okay. Think, Sam, think.
The tour guide had said that the group was supposed to gather again in forty-five minutes. How long had it been? Twenty minutes? More? Soon somebody was going to notice that they were gone. Evangeline would be looking for them.
But it would still take them a long time to organize a search party and to figure out which way they went. Sam glanced back, and Aloha met his gaze with a menacing, narrow-eyed look. But that quick glance had told Sam what he needed to know—they weren’t leaving any visible footprints.
This is a Hansel and Gretel situation, he thought—they needed to leave breadcrumbs.
Sam casually stripped his baseball cap off his head and mopped at his sweaty face. And then he let the hand holding the hat dangle for a moment by his side.
Without stopping, he dropped the cap.
A second later, the loudest sound he’d ever heard nearly split his eardrums open. He yelped, and Martina jumped about a foot. Theo whirled around, his hands balled into fists.
Aloha was standing behind them with his gun pointed at Sam’s hat, which lay on the ground with a smoking hole through the brim.
“Pick it up,” Aloha growled. “The next shot won’t be a warning one.”
Sam’s shoulders slumped. He stepped back a few paces to pick up his hat, fingering the hole’s frayed edges.
“Now, let’s keep going,” Aloha said.
They kept going.
Sam pulled the hat back onto his head. Aloha was watching them too carefully for Sam to drop anything else. And making a run for it was out of the question. Just like he did in chess, Sam went through every possible move they could make, but there were no good options.
In this game, he was nothing more than a pawn.
The ground got a little rougher. Scrawny plants snagged the cuffs of Sam’s jeans, and clumps of thorny bushes crackled under his sneakers. Martina gasped as a black scorpion skittered across her path before disappearing into a deep crack in the earth.
After a while—Sam wasn’t sure how long—they reached the base of a hill. On top were the three twisted rocks they had been heading for.
Sam stopped to catch his breath, hands on his knees. Man, and I thought gym class was bad, he thought.
“Up,” Aloha ordered.
Glumly, he started to climb.
Sam hadn’t thought that this little hike could get any worse, but it did. The slope was steep, and soon Sam was gasping for air, his shirt plastered to his chest with sweat. Even Theo seemed to be slowing down, and next to him, Martina stumbled and almost slid back down the hill more than once.
Behind him, Sam heard the slosh of liquid, and he glanced back to see Aloha guzzling from a huge black canteen, rivulets of water spilling down the sides of his mouth and onto his Hawaiian shirt. Sam stared at him and made a promise then and there that he would never buy a Hawaiian shirt as long as he lived. Never.
Martina stopped. “We need some water too,” she said, turning back to face Aloha. Her chin was up, and Sam was impressed by how steadily she spoke. Aloha d
idn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no either. He just stood there, holding his canteen and waiting as Martina dug a water bottle out of her backpack.
She handed it to Sam. He tipped his head back, ready to swallow half the contents.
“We might need it more later,” Theo warned. Sam hesitated, the bottle inches from his lips. What if they did get a chance to run? What if Aloha got what he wanted—whatever that was—and decided to leave them here in the desert? He imagined himself wandering for miles, sunburned and parched with thirst. Licking his lips, he handed the water bottle back to Martina, still full.
She looked at it longingly but put it away. They started climbing again.
At last they stumbled, panting and sweating, over a lip of stone onto a flattened area the size of a large patio. A lizard as long as Sam’s forearm skittered up the rock face as they arrived. On the far edge of the flat area, a rock wall rose up, the three writhing snake-stones on its top. And below the snake-stones—
“A door?” Martina croaked. “Is that a door?”
Three dark cracks in the dusty stone joined to make a rectangle. No way that shape is natural, Sam thought. Someone put it there.
Now Sam was certain—there was no way this was the work of the American Dream Contest. This was something much bigger than that, and from the looks of it, much older.
“Hey, Marty,” he wheezed. “I don’t suppose this is in your guidebook, is it?”
Martina’s eyes were wide as she stared at the mysterious door in the middle of the wilderness. “No,” she said, not taking her eyes from it. “I don’t think it is.”
“You three, move away,” Aloha ordered, pointing with his gun. Without taking his eyes off them, Aloha laid one hand on the door and pushed. He leaned his shoulder against the rock and shoved. Nothing moved. If that thing really was a door, it was sealed tight.
From high up on the hill, Sam could see for miles around. With Aloha distracted with the door, Sam scanned the landscape, searching for any sign of a rescue party. But there was nothing to see but some vultures wheeling through the air above them and the curious black lizard studying them from a rock a few feet away.