Disruption (10 page)

My mouth watered as the delicious aromas wafted around the room, and briefly, very briefly, I wondered if nearly getting blown up had been all that bad. I hadn’t really been hurt, after all. Maybe I was overreacting.

Then my mind switched focus to the faint ringing that still echoed in my ears, and I caught sight of Becca across the room, twisted in a mess of casts, bandages, and bruises, and I shook my head.

Of course I wasn’t overreacting.

This place was beyond messed up.

Chapter 15

I stabbed at the half-eaten pork chop with my fork. It was delicious, but my appetite came in waves. One minute I’d be famished, and the next my stomach would be in knots.

I was vaguely aware of the conversations around me, but I didn’t pay any real attention to them. I just kept my head down and tried to consider my next few moves. When at last I looked up, I found myself staring down at a long line of empty tables and chairs. Only Rylee and Juno remained at the Delta table. There were a few other campers scattered around the room who were still eating, or chatting, or just sitting there daydreaming, but for the most part, the room had emptied.

“When you zone out, you really zone out,” Juno said. “You look worried.”

“I’m not,” I lied.

“You sure?” Rylee asked.

“I told you guys I’m not really into this place. If I didn’t have to be here, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Your scores would seem to indicate something else,” Juno said.

I shook my head and muttered, “Those scores are a joke.”

“As in, not real?” Juno asked. “As in, someone faked your scores?”

My stomach sank. That was exactly right, but hearing Juno say it made me wonder if I hadn’t just revealed something that could hurt me or, more importantly, my dad. Why had he put me in this position? He’d thrown me in a place where
he
had the most to lose? What was he thinking?

“I’m impressed,” Juno said. He sounded genuine. “We saw the roster, remember? We saw the scores. Those were scans of actual documents. That means if they were faked, someone would have had to get close enough to where they were being kept to actually make physical adjustments.” He nodded again. “Not easy to do.”

Unless you’re a janitor.

Rylee looked at Juno and then leaned across the table to me. “I haven’t figured you out yet, Matt Cambridge, but you seem like you’re being straight with us. I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt . . . for now. But the fact that you don’t want to be at the camp doesn’t exactly make you unique. There are a lot of campers who don’t want to be here. You’re not the only one with parents who forced you here.”

Juno raised his hand. “I can vouch for that. My dad says this life is in my blood and sees the training we get here as key to my future success.” He shrugged. “I think I could learn most of this stuff on the job, you know what I mean?” I didn’t have a clue but nodded anyway and he continued. “But honestly, I’m not even sure I want to work in this business.”

Rylee rolled her eyes. “Please. I know you, Juno. I know you’re a fighter, and you’ve probably been trained to be a weapon since you were in diapers. What would you do if not this?”

“Movies,” Juno said without hesitation. He leaned forward. “Action movies. I could totally do all that Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Jet Li stuff. Plus,” he gestured around the room, “it’s not like we don’t get some experience acting when we come to these places.”

Rylee laughed. “You know, Juno, I could actually see you doing that.”

This was good. I needed to get the others to open up too. The more I learned about their backgrounds, the more I might pick up about this place. It was a start.

Juno flicked a fork into the air, caught it with his other hand, and pointed the prongs at me. “I will say this, though. You might be the only one who got sent here as a punishment for
not
killing a gymful of kids.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, “I guess I’m just special.”

Chapter 16

I wasn’t anxious to get back to the cabin, so I spent a few hours wandering the pretty extensive grounds of Camp Friendship. First, I walked along the path that ran parallel to the perimeter, which I quickly realized was in the shape of a pentagon, each section dominated by a different Delta team. The Delta cabin for my team and the one for Team Octopus, Dexter Miller’s team, were the only two that actually backed up to the forest. The others backed up to open sections of the camp. The Delta cabin for Team Squirrel, Chase’s team, looked out over the soccer field. Hyena’s Delta cabin backed up to the archery range, and I wondered if Becca would at least be able to do that sport from her wheelchair. Alexander Bratersky’s team, Arctic Fox, had their Delta cabin backing up to the BMX track.

The more I wandered, the more this place looked like a typical camp. It was certainly nicer-looking than the ones I’d heard my friends talk about, and it was obviously not a military camp. Still, it was so
normal
that it seemed entirely abnormal. It freaked me out, but it held some strange kind of appeal for me at the same time. This camp was dangerous, and I kind of liked that. I wondered what kinds of things they taught campers here. I wondered what kind of organization
the Agency
was. I also wondered why I was the only one who seemed lost.

“You lost, Grizzly?”

I spun around and found myself staring back at Chase’s smirking face.

“Shut up, Chase,” I said.

He laughed, and as he did, a dozen other campers, each wearing a T-shirt with the shadowy image of a squirrel on it, wandered out from the surrounding cabins and lined up beside Chase. I would have been nervous, scared even, if it hadn’t been for Mr. Smith’s reprimand on the bus and his warning about unauthorized violence. I straightened and sneered at Chase. Then I shook my head and turned to leave. Another line of campers had formed behind me, and they, too, wore Squirrel team shirts.

“You’re in my section,” Chase began, “and what reason would you have to be here? To spy?”

I forced a laugh. “Spy?” More and more Squirrel members joined the group. I cleared my throat and turned back to Chase. “On you? Why would I want to spy on you?”

“I don’t know,” Chase said. “Maybe you just like to peep in windows.” Everyone laughed, and then Chase added, “Perv.” And they all laughed more.

“Hilarious,” I said. “You should go on tour.” I turned again and tried to walk around the group of campers blocking my path, but they moved like a human wall. I tried to shove my way through, and they shoved back, hard, almost knocking me to the ground.

Fear twisted my gut into knots.

I turned back to Chase, who was now only half a dozen steps away from me, and asked him, “What do you want?”

“What do I want?” Chase repeated. “You’re the one who wandered into my section. I don’t think you’re stupid enough to just step off the camp path accidentally. So that means you did it on purpose, and if you’re not a peeping pervert”—he pointed mockingly at me—“and I still think you might be.” He gave his campers time to laugh. “But if you’re not,” he continued, “then you must be here to finish what we started on the bus.” He rubbed his hands together. “And if that’s the case, my birthday came early this year.”

Mr. Smith had been very clear on the bus, and I distinctly remembered the look on Chase’s face when the threat of getting kicked from the program had been levied. He wasn’t going to hit me. No way. He clenched his fist and started toward me. I stood my ground and smiled.

“Are you forgetting something?” I asked as he drew back his fist. “No unauthorized vi—”

He swung, and it wasn’t until his fist was a few inches from my face that I realized he wasn’t going to follow the rules. By then it was too late to move.

Pain exploded in the side of my face. I hit the ground with a thud, and the now-familiar taste of blood filled my mouth. I stared up at a blurry image of Chase.

“Unauthorized violence?” Chase asked. “Is that what you were going to say?”

I rubbed the side of my face and propped myself up on my elbow and waited for my vision to clear.

Chase and everyone around me laughed. “You need to work on your English. The key word was
unauthorized
. We’re
authorized
to defend our section from hostiles.” He pointed at me. “You look hostile. Plus, you’re the one who wandered off the path.”

“W-what are you talking about?” I asked.

He flashed an evil grin, shuffled his feet, and then booted me in the stomach. I rolled at least twice, and my dinner surged and blasted out my mouth in a stream that must’ve sprayed ten feet. I don’t know exactly how many people I hit, but the members of Team Squirrel who had had me surrounded scattered. I pushed myself to my knees and forced my focus away from the pain in my face and ribs and took off at a sprint.

Someone clamped hold of my shoulder after only a dozen steps, and I spun around with a raised arm. My elbow smashed into the kid’s face, and he dropped to the ground. I let momentum spin me the rest of the way around and kept running.

There were shouts behind me, but none so clear that I could make out the words. I was reasonably certain their shouts had something to do with killing me or tying me to a tree or something along those lines. I dodged around cabins and through shrubs. My heart pounded, and the muscles in my legs burned. I paused behind another cabin. I wasn’t there ten seconds before someone charged up behind me and tackled me. We rolled across the grass, and when we stopped, they were on top of me, smashing a fist into my face.

“I got ’im! Over here!”

It was only then I realized a girl had me pinned. “Are you kidding me?” I said. I bucked, but she drove her fist into my face again, and I thought I heard my nose crack.

Panic took hold at that point, and I bucked again. This time she tumbled off. I scrambled to my feet and was mid-sprint when the girl grabbed my foot and screamed again for help. I shook my leg, and I must have hit her pretty hard because she toppled backward, but not before she yanked my shoe off.

I heard other campers coming and cursed. I rushed back to where the girl was lying and pulled my shoe out of her hand. She was dazed, and there was blood on her lip. I spun to start running away, and the crazy girl grabbed my other foot!

I was just going to swing around and pull my foot free. That’s all I wanted to do. She’d been on her back when I’d pulled my shoe out of her hand, and I assumed she was still mostly on the ground but had managed to grab my foot. But when I spun around, she was on her knees. I’d whirled so hard that my arms had gone out like the blades of a helicopter, which wouldn’t have been so bad since I was a couple feet away from her. But I was still holding my shoe, the one she’d pulled off already, the one I’d retrieved but hadn’t put back on yet. I was holding it by the laces, and in my hand, it added an extra foot to my arm, just enough so that when I came around the shoe smashed into the girl’s face. Her nose was like a smooshed cherry, and blood oozed over her face.

That’s when more of her teammates came around the corner. They hesitated, and I realized it must’ve looked like I’d just taken my shoe off and beaten the girl with it. Before I could utter an apology, the girl screamed and grabbed her face, and her teammates charged.

I sprinted across the camp, not looking where I was going, and suddenly, I heard more shouts and saw other campers, these ones wearing Fox T-shirts. I must’ve crossed into Bratersky’s area.

I slowed down long enough to see several of Team Fox attacking Team Squirrel, but I also saw several Team Fox members point at me.

I don’t know how far I ran, but I must’ve crossed each section twice. I couldn’t keep track of who was fighting who. I was pretty sure I’d seen every animal T-shirt, even Grizzlies, but my adrenaline was pumping so hard I didn’t stop even then, just in case I was wrong.

Finally I found myself alone. I sprinted across the archery range and dived for cover behind some trees. I lay there for a few seconds, too tired to run farther but terrified I hadn’t been fast enough and someone had spotted me sprinting into the woods and they’d be scrambling after me any second.

No one came.

A few more seconds passed, then angry shouts filtered through the branches, and I peeked out across the range. Five Squirrel team members were backing slowly away from at least a dozen campers wearing Team Hyena colors. The shouts between the two groups intensified, and then all at once, the Hyena members charged, and Chase’s teammates turned and scampered away.

This place is insane.
I lay there catching my breath while I considered what kind of camp would let their campers protect their sections with that kind of violence. I also thought about that girl I’d hit with my shoe. I felt terrible about that. If my dad found out I’d hit a girl, he’d be furious. “Respect women,” he’d always said. “If you hit a girl, you’re not a man.” But I hadn’t meant to hit her. She’d attacked me first. I hadn’t done anything to her. I’d just wanted to get away.

The forest stretched out behind me, and I knew that just a few short miles away there was a road leading to the highway. I could hitch a ride. I could just flag down a trucker and have him take me as far away from this place as possible.

If I ran away it would serve my dad right. What had he been thinking, putting me in a camp like this? It was Day One, and I’d been beaten up twice and very nearly been
blown
up. I rubbed the side of my chest, wincing at the pain. Now I was hiding in the woods contemplating ditching this place. On the one hand, I felt like such a baby, but on the other, no one in their right mind would stay at a camp like this. It was crazy!

Even as I contemplated my escape, I knew I couldn’t do it. Not because I was afraid of getting caught, or afraid of my father’s disappointment when I got home. No, after watching the violent mayhem that had just swept across the grounds, I simply had to know what was going on. I had to.

I’m not sure how long I stayed there, huddled among the trees, but I didn’t leave until it was dark. I stopped at the showers in my section of the camp and cleaned myself up. A thin line of black was forming under my right eye, and I cursed the fact that Chase would see it in the morning and have another reason to laugh at me. The only good thing was that my nose wasn’t broken. I’d thought for sure that girl had cracked it, but it was still straight and wasn’t really that tender to the touch. Also, there was a good chance several other campers would be as beat up as I was.