He picked up two full bottles that the toppling wall had exposed. After stuffing them into pockets, he rushed down the hill.
“He’s right,” Viv said. “We need to get to the next coordinates.”
Viv stooped toward the rocks and took two bottles. Derrick did the same. When Amanda reached down, she discovered that only one bottle remained.
Furious, she ran after the others. The red needle on her GPS receiver pointed toward the narrow end of the lake, before which lay the remnants of Avalon. Trying not to lose her balance running down the hill, she felt a shadow to her left and looked toward the west. Clouds gathered over the mountains.
“Storm’s coming,” Derrick said. “A couple of hours.”
“Amanda,” the Game Master said, “You didn’t mention that Dorothy L. Sayers translated Dante’s Inferno.”
“Will you shut up?” Ray yelled below them.
“I’m trying to make things easier for all of you,” the voice said. “I’m trying to help you understand the game. Sayers wrote The Mind of the Maker. Have you ever read it, Amanda?”
“No!” Amanda breathed hard. Reaching the bottom, she chased Derrick, Viv, and Ray toward the ghost town.
“That disappoints me.”
“It isn’t a huge bookstore, damn it!”
“But you have an M.A. in English from Columbia University.”
Racing, Viv turned and shot Amanda an angry look.
“We didn’t study mystery writers!” Amanda shouted.
The voice sighed with disappointment. “Sayers was a devout Anglican. But she was troubled by the contradiction between God’s omniscience and the free will humans are supposed to have. If God knows everything, He’s aware when each of us will sin. But that means our future is locked into place, and we don’t have free will.”
“Shut up!” Ray yelled, almost at the ghost town.
“That’s why Sayers wrote The Mind of the Maker,” the Game Master explained. “She decided that God’s like a novelist. God establishes the time and place for the story. He creates characters and knows generally what they’ll do. But as any novelist will tell you, characters often assume a life of their own and refuse to abide by the story. They exist in the novelist’s mind, and yet they’re independent. They’re almost like method actors. ”I don’t think I should do this,“ one says. ”My character would tell the truth in this scene.“ Another says, ”I think I’m more motivated to turn down the promotion rather than work with someone I dislike.“ Sayers realized from personal experience that characters in novels have free will. In that same way, she thought, humans have free will. The plot’s laid out for us, but sometimes we choose not to follow it. Sometimes, we surprise even God. That’s how we gain salvation, Sayers believed. By showing how resourceful we are and surprising God.”
Ahead, Ray lurched to a stop, working to catch his breath as he studied the screen on his GPS receiver. “This is it,” he said. “The coordinates.”
Derrick, Viv, and Amanda caught up to him. Sweat clinging to his beard stubble, Derrick pulled a water bottle from a pocket and gulped from it.
“Make it last as long as you can,” Viv said.
They were in the remnant of a street. Sagebrush grew from the dust, straight lines of collapsed buildings on each side. Unlike the church, which was mostly stone, these buildings were made of wood, their walls and roofs lying in heaps from which weeds sprouted. The boards were gray and splintered with age.
“Look around!” Ray ordered. “These receivers are accurate to within ten feet! Somewhere close, there’s something we’re supposed to find!”
Ray searched the ruins on the left while Derrick kicked under sagebrush and Viv checked the ruins on the right.
The immense sky made Amanda feel dwarfed. Dizzy, she stared up. “Are you telling us you think you’re God?”
Derrick stopped and frowned.
“I told you I’m the Game Master,” the voice said.
“Are you telling us you think we’re characters in your mind?”
Viv, too, stopped and frowned.
“We’re not in your mind!” Amanda shouted. Desperate, she remembered Frank telling her that criminals were more inclined to abuse their victims if they considered them objects instead of people. At all costs, she had to make the Game Master relate to her as an individual, a personality, a human being.
Frank. The thought of him sent a shudder through her. Grief welled through her with the renewed apprehension that Frank was dead. She knew with all her heart that if Frank were alive, he’d be here, helping her.
“I’m twenty-six! My favorite food is spaghetti and meatballs, even though the carbohydrates put on weight! I like Brad Pitt movies! I like to watch the History Channel! I like to play with my father’s Irish setter! I like to jog through Prospect Park. I like to—”
“Stop wasting your breath!” Ray shouted. “Help find whatever the bastard hid at these coordinates!”
“I imagined Bethany would run,” the Game Master explained. “That was all right because I needed someone to make an example of. The thing is, it could have turned out another way. She could be there with you right now. Honestly, all she needed to do was surprise me.”
“Like God wants to be surprised?”
“Damn it,” Ray said, “help us search!”
In the ruins on the right, Viv yelled, “I found something!”
“What?” Derrick scrambled toward her.
“Part of a sign.”
“Let me see.” Ray charged over and grabbed the fragment. The letters on it were faint: RAL STOR. “That could mean anything.”
“General store,” Derrick blurted. “I bet that’s what it means. The store would have sold a little of everything, including food.”
“Food?” Ray looked hopeful only for a moment. “But after all these years, there wouldn’t be anything left of it.”
“Those water bottles at the church were put there recently. Maybe food was put here.”
Ray pointed at Derrick. “You’re supposed to be such a big-deal outdoor-survival expert. Can’t you show us how to scrounge for stuff like nuts and berries? I’ll eat anything.”
“Scrounging expends more energy than you get from whatever nuts and berries you manage to find. Eventually, you’d starve.”
“Yeah, I figured you’d have an excuse.” Ray yanked up an old board and searched under it. He grabbed another board, which broke in his hands. He hurled the chunks away. “Come on! Dig!”
Amanda joined him. Splinters stung her hands.
“I found a can!” Derrick yelled. He held it up, showing a label marked PEACHES.
“Another one!” Viv shouted in triumph. The can she held up was marked PEARS.
Amanda and Ray hurled more boards away.
“Where are the others?” Ray dug down to a rotted wooden floor. “Keep searching! Where are the others?”
Fingers raw, Amanda tossed another board into the street.
“I’ll use a sharp rock and bang the tops open,” Derrick said.
“You’re not doing anything until we find the other cans!” Ray fumbled through the wreckage.
“I’m afraid there aren’t any others,” Amanda said.
Derrick turned toward the street. “I kicked up a rock over there.” He hurried to it. “Yes! It doesn’t have a sharp end, but we can pound with it!”
“You’re not pounding anything,” Ray emphasized, “until we figure how to guarantee we each get our share.”
“Like how you drank the first bottle of water we found?”
“It won’t happen again.”