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 intense 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.
What’s the time limit for getting anti-rabies shots? he wondered.