The War Game (21 page)

             
As we exited, walked into the hallway and down the stairs, we could hear a fire truck siren in the distance. “Damn, they’re quick,” Elizabeth laughed.

             
I saw the red truck and the firemen climbing down the ladder. But they weren’t wearing their protective gear. Maybe they put it on when they got to a more serious fire? Hopefully whatever was burning wasn’t scorched too badly.

             
“Our heroes came to rescue us,” Elizabeth laughed again.

             
And then the people ahead of us fell down like paper dolls. Just like those paper dolls that I made for Ricky, where you could see the guts inside of them.

             
Then Elizabeth was one of them. She fell and took me down with her. 

             
I tried to tell myself that they were just paper dolls smothered in ketchup. But I wasn’t that good of a liar to convince myself of that.

             
I fainted right after that, I think. Or knocked my head on something and blacked out. Good thing I was down on the floor already.

             
Sometimes I pretended that I was in a movie. The lights turned dark and I was in another world.

CAMP Z
(John)

             
I had been living in a tree for five days. My feet had not touched the ground in a solid twenty-four hours.

             
I also hadn’t seen a human in four days. I hadn’t heard screaming in three. And that concerned me considering that there were at least a couple dozen of us at the starting line.

             
I saw some human bones in some horse or elephant shit or some other type of shit. Maybe even bull shit. I couldn’t tell you which specific bones they were though. Pearl could. While I'm not as morbid as Pearl when it came to that stuff, I’d seen enough dead people to know that those bones were, indeed, human.

             
They gave us a two-hour head start. Most of them took off running as far as they could in a frenzied state. But it didn’t matter how far or how fast you ran. It mattered how well you hid.

             
And that is why I was in a tree right now.

             
I might have made fun of the creature from the amusement park enough to reserve a spot for myself in hell but she did have one great idea.

             
Hide high. Some people found it easier to dig a hole and stay. Certainly, staying in one place and not moving an inch wouldn’t have caused any wars. Wouldn’t have done anything at all.

             
Not that it was up to me.

             
But I did have hundreds of trees to jump to and fro, five big rocks in my pockets (there’s more I wedged into the crooks of trees) and one rainfall. I collected and drank water from the leaves. I felt like a fuckin’ fairy, like Puck or something, but it kept me alive.

             
Poachers couldn’t see me because they were too stupid to look up high.

             
They came around once every hour or two. On their stupid golf carts.

             
It wasn’t the big animals that have caused the most trouble, it’s been the smaller ones. Such as the snow monkeys. They’re smart. Smart little bastards.

             
Last time I was here, I climbed up a tree because running in any direction will only lead to another animal. Some animals stopped by, sniffed out the area because they smelled meat, but were too dumb to realize that I’m up in a tree.

             
Except the snow monkeys.

             
They were the most dangerous when they were hungry, the thieves. They’d punch you in the stomach, rip it open, and take the food right out of you, if they had their way.

             
Animals ate their own vomit and crap, you know. They didn’t care.

             
I’d been keeping a stash of berries known to be poisonous to humans; hopefully they were poisonous to primates as well. After all, it was just a two percent or so difference between man and ape. I’m counting and praying on that two percent.

             
And there was about a fifty-seven percent difference between man and soldier so they didn’t actually find me and Pearl until we came down from the roller coaster.

             
But the monkeys, man, the monkeys knew. They knew I was here but for the most part but they would leave me alone when they were hungry. 

             
But they needed to stay a little bit hungry for me because hunger was the strongest need out here. It was hard to focus on anything except that, I know. If they focused on just their hunger alone, then other needs of theirs wouldn’t need to get fulfilled. I’m talking about being passed around like a rag doll in a back alley, in a gang bang sort of way. I don’t think I need to make that any clearer.

             
Some people from last time made that mistake. They thought if they kept the animals, especially the snow monkeys, well fed and satisfied, then they would leave them alone.

             
Wrong. So very wrong.

             
That’s what the rocks are for. Knock them on their heads if I had to. Also, drop rocks on any unsuspecting poachers if they ever dared to walk through these woods.

             
I wished I could see the stars. Maybe if they poked a hole through the smog, I could see it. With the huge holes in the ozone layers, you ought to see the stars better. But maybe it doesn’t work like that.

             
I got a little crazy out here. I replayed every event in my head, over and over again. And each time, it became more magnified. All the should-have-dones, should-have-saids did a little two steps forward, one jump back for me.  Although, those same memories were the fuel that kept me hanging around.

             
All I could really ask for was that Pearl was relatively safe, hopefully in a bed, even a cardboard one. Maybe she escaped. Maybe she found a guy, someone better than me.

             
I jogged through every single memory I had of Pearl. That way, the memory didn’t decay and I could still have her. So far, I was doing a pretty good job. I still remembered stuff like it happened yesterday although it hadn’t been long. I was keeping track on a tree, scratching out ticks to mark the days but I forgot which tree I had done it on and then lost count. Then I decided not to care about how many days it has been.

             
Though other parts of my memory had started to erode. Like I couldn’t remember that blonde chick’s last name. Couldn’t remember if my birthday was on the twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth of August. I could hardly remember my dad’s face.

             
I remembered her face though. Pearl. Not another one like it. Heart-shaped. But I was starting to forget her voice. I remembered it was rich but soft. Hard to explain but that’s how I remembered it being like.

             
I remembered her. Looking at her weird book of human parts. The wristwatch around her ankle. Asking me constantly if I liked her or not. How her little hand felt in mine.

             
Should have said something.

             
I found myself getting closer and closer to the stars. By the means of the trees or a roller coaster, one day I will get to touch one.

~~~

             
He thought he would sneak up behind me and get me that way. I came up around him. He heard some animal in the distance and thought it was his target. Me. He ended up shooting a penguin instead. I took a piece of broken aquarium glass and stuck it into his neck.

             
I try to console myself that it was self-defense but I could have stepped out then. You know, taken my bow. Called it a night. Kicked the bucket. I could have let him end it all for me. And he would still be alive with a nice home and a fridge full of food and beer. I hear spies make loads of money, much more than gamekeepers.

             
But I ended his life for me, I pushed him out. I was left here.

             
If I were a game piece, I would probably be a little plastic ketchup bottle. That’s all we were. Containers filled with red stuff.

             
Hell could only be relief.

THE FINAL ROUND
{Pearl}

             
The soldier looked at us, walking up and down the line. There were far many more of us than the soldiers, or rather gamekeepers, but we were weak. He saw that we were weathered, with barely enough energy to hold our own bones up, let alone fight or run. We said nothing, did nothing. “Fight or flight, we will not hesitate to shoot you. When you are called, you are to go through that door immediately.” He pointed down the hall at an ornate set of doors.

             
All the people that survived the attack were rounded up like chickens on a farm and loaded onto a bus. Not a school bus this time, but a city bus with the accordion thing in the middle of it and took us here. To the court house.

             
The gamekeeper with the crew cut and big gun snorted, “Y’all like a pack of cards. If I tip one of you over, the rest of you will come tumbling down.”

             
I think he meant to compare us to dominoes but I did not dare correct him. He might give me a bullet to the eye as a token of his appreciation.

             
“Once you go through that door, you will be told what to do. I highly recommend that you do it!”

             
The line moved rather quickly. After sitting in the bus for what seemed to be hours, I wished I was still there.

             
I walked through (well, pushed through) the doors and into what appeared to be a courtroom. The gamekeeper had my hands behind my back like a human handcuff. There were a few rows of wooden benches in the back. There was a jury box to the right. “Get in the back row,” he said, as he pushed me forward. Hard. I think he made my clavicle pop out. 

             
There was the man that was before me, standing in the center of the room, in front of the judge. Next to the judge, where a witness would normally be, was another keeper and yet another took the place of the recorder. There were three keepers placed at each door. Two doors on the opposite sides of the room, and one at the front right corner. I sat and waited, wondering why there were so many keepers in this room.

             
The short man was in the front and a taller man there with him. I didn’t recognize him from the camp. They were facing the front, so I could not read the expressions on their faces. I could not read nor determine what could be the outcome of my fate.

             
Then the door opened.

             
It was John, being trailed by yet another gamekeeper.

             
I think he may have recognized me before I fully realized that it was him who walked through that door.

             
He was taller, much taller. His hair was even longer. I felt a little smug noticing he was bigger than most of the keepers, except the one with the crewcut. He mouthed a “hello” to me. I was too stunned to return it.

             
His hands were in handcuffs; the soldier unlocked them. He was led to the back row, near where I was. He sat down where he was told, rubbing his wrists.

             
“Okay, we may proceed.”

             
The soldier standing next to the tall man turned around and smiled. The other man, the one with a gun, turned around to face both the men.

             
The judge handed the soldier a pack of black playing cards, except these cards were very thick and big.

             
“For those of you who are on deck, this is how the game is played. The player on your right,” the judge waved his hand towards the short man, “picks the top card and holds it up, announces his number. Then the player to your left, picks the next top card and announces it. The cards are numbered one through ten. The player with the lowest numbered card loses. Everything. If there should be an instance that both cards hold the same number, we bring in three more players. Each new player will receive a card. The person last in line turns their card over and the team with the lowest number loses. And then we draw again. It is a fairly simple game to play.”