Balenger drove past the road to the valley, the road on which he’d seen tire tracks in the mud the previous night.
“With that precedent established,” the voice said, “other programs would include similar high-risk contests. It isn’t hard to imagine the inevitable evolution and the implied enticement: ‘Watch tonight’s episode. Someone might die.”“
“As you said earlier, things always get more extreme.” Balenger barely concealed his disgust.
Ahead, the side road beckoned.
“Yes, but that’s merely a television show while Scavenger is a God game combined with a first-person shooter game. Above the players is the Game Master, who can speak to the competitors, provide clues or withhold them, and observe the life lessons that the players acquire.”
“A God game,” Balenger said acidly. “But what kind of God doesn’t allow the participants to win?”
“Who said anything about not winning? Every superior game needs a worthy goal. To survive, all the participants need to do is find the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires.”
4
Amanda raised her head from the boards she lay on. Light struggled through the gaps on each side of the door. She and Viv were huddled against each other, trying to share body heat. Exhausted despite having slept, she worked to open her heavy eyes. Peering through the gap on the right of the door, she frowned. Everything outside was white.
She pushed the door. As it flopped down, the reflection from the bright sky made her squint.
Viv raised her head, blinking. Grief hollowed her features. She needed several moments to focus on what she saw.
“It snowed,” Amanda said, bewildered. “In June.”
Viv hesitated, straining to adjust to the renewed shock of Derrick’s murder. “In the Rockies,” she finally said, sounding numb, “I’ve seen it snow in July. What time is it?” She had trouble focusing on her watch. “The carbon dioxide must have drugged us. It’s almost nine o’clock.”
Fear overcame Viv’s grief. Startled by the time they’d lost, she and Amanda hurried to remove the laces from the door and shove them through the eyelets in their boots.
Amanda picked up the empty bottle she’d set outside. Snow capped the top. A little moisture was inside.
“Stuff snow into it,” Viv said. Another emotion — anger — was in her voice, and the confidence that she knew how to survive in the wilderness. “It won’t hurt us for now. The snow fleas haven’t shown up yet.”
Amanda felt her skin itch. “Snow fleas?”
“In spring, they hatch. They look like dirt on the snow. I don’t see any yet.”
The snow wasn’t deep — only an inch. Amanda studied it, making sure there weren’t specks. Then she skimmed some into a hand and raised it to her mouth.
“No,” Viv warned. “The heat your body uses to melt snow in your mouth saps your energy.”
Amanda found it strange that her thirst was greater than her hunger. Perhaps the fruit juice and pears she’d eaten the day before were of greater benefit than she hoped. Or perhaps my digestive system’s shutting down, she thought. Some kind of protective mechanism. She felt lightheaded.
She filled their lungs with the cool morning air — and something else.
“Smoke,” Viv said.
They turned to the right. About fifty yards away, Ray had managed to get a fire going in the street. The flames crackled. Smoke rose. He stared at them, opening and closing his lighter.
“I see the dogs didn’t get you,” Viv said angrily into the microphone on her headset.
Ray pointed toward a horizontal open space under a pile of boards. It resembled a coffin on its side. A door lay in front of it. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
Viv put a hand over her microphone to prevent Ray from hearing what she said next. With a worried look, she turned toward Amanda. “I haven’t felt the need to urinate. We’re not getting enough water for our kidneys to work.” She drank half her remaining bottle of water and gave it to Amanda. The motive was clear — they couldn’t get revenge if they didn’t survive. “Drink the rest of it. I’m going to try to force my bladder.”
“Here, you’ll want this.” Amanda pulled the toilet paper from her jumpsuit and divided it.
Viv touched the paper as if it were something she’d never seen before and she couldn’t imagine why Amanda would share it. Boots crushing the snow, they walked in the opposite direction from Ray, then separated, each finding wreckage to crouch behind.
As Amanda unzipped her jumpsuit, she said into the microphone on her headset, “Game Master, if you’re watching, maybe you should be looking at porn movies instead.”
“Sex was never important to me,” the voice responded. “I’m not looking.”
“Right.”
“Not even Ray is looking.”
Amanda peered over the rubble and saw that Ray was indeed facing another direction, toward the area the GPS coordinates had led him to the day before. Seen in profile, he appeared to be frowning.
Amanda squeezed the muscles in her abdomen. Urine dribbled, orange, with a strong odor. Not good, she thought. After she covered the toilet paper with boards, she went back to Viv. “We need to get that water bottle from Derrick.”
Pale, Viv nodded. “You. I can’t.”
Amanda walked up the street. As the sun got warmer, the snow made liquid sounds under her boots. She neared Derrick’s body, seeing its contour under the slush.
“Stop,” Ray said.
Amanda thought he was telling her to keep a distance from him. But she didn’t give a damn what he wanted. She needed that water bottle. She stepped closer.
“No!” Ray yelled.
Then she did stop, because the contour didn’t look the same as the last time she’d seen Derrick’s body. It had an odd shape. Melting snow slid off him. If Amanda’s stomach hadn’t been empty, she might have thrown up.
Hearing Viv walk toward her, she whirled, trying to form a shield. “Go back!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Don’t look!”
But Viv did look. What she saw made her eyes widen.
Derrick’s corpse — not just his battered face, but his entire body — was unrecognizable. His guts had been torn out. His arms and legs had been chewed to the bone. His hands were missing.
The dogs, Amanda realized. Last night when we heard them fighting, I thought they’d cornered Ray. But now she understood that it was Derrick’s corpse they’d been fighting over.
“Hey, where’s she going?” Ray asked.
Amanda turned. Viv plodded away from them.
“Viv?”
She staggered on. Her gaze was fixed on the pass through the mountains at the end of the valley.
Amanda hurried to her.
“Too much,” Viv murmured.
“Stop.” Amanda kept pace with her.
“Enough,” Viv mumbled, staring toward the exit from the valley. “I can’t bear this any longer.”
“Remember what happened to Bethany,” the voice said through Amanda’s headset.
How could she not? The roaring explosion, the spreading red mist, and the flying body parts were seared in Amanda’s memory.
“Nobody leaves the game,” the voice warned.
Amanda put an arm around Viv. “You need to stop.”
“No more.” Viv reached the edge of town and trudged across slush-covered grass.
“Step away from her, Amanda,” the voice cautioned.
“Viv, turn around. We’re going back.”