The War Game (5 page)

             
There was nothing in the store. Well, not much. Key chains, stuffed animals with missing eyes, and fanny packs.

             
But it appeared that people were stocking the shelves instead of looting.

             
A skinny man wearing dorky khaki shorts and glasses came into the store with a twelve-pack of lemonade in cans.

             
Micah saw it. “All edibles will go to the Rock N’ Roll Diner, past the tree house.”

             
The ginger kid from the bus ride before was in the store with his “adopted” dad. “The tree house,” he whined. “Can I go in there?” he pleaded with big eyes.

             
But the man shuddered, “Never. I don’t want you going in there.”

             
He must have stumbled upon the creature as well.

             
“Nor should anyone go to the haunted house. It’s best that everyone, especially children, stay clear of those areas. We are not alone; this was not an empty park when we arrived.” He lifted a box of something from behind the counter. He opened it and held up an utterly useless key chain.

             
He rolled his eyes and flung it onto the floor.

             
The child raced over to it, picked it up, and started twirling it around in his finger. I moved back, out of the store, for I did not care to get smacked in the face by a plastic timber wolf.

             
I ran into the guy again. He acknowledged me and walked over.

             
“What’s your name?” I asked him.

             
“You can call me Calvin.” He did not look like a Calvin. Not with his long hair and everything. He looked like the type that would mosh at metal festivals. Actually, he looked like the type that would shred on stage at metal festivals.

             
“Is that your real name?”

             
“No, but you can call me that if you want.”

             
“Well, I’m Pearl.”

             
“People risk their lives for pearls, you know. That’s a fantastic fake name, by the way.” He took my hand and shook it. His hands were twice the size of mine, and divine. They looked like they belonged on the wrists of someone much older.

             
“It’s my real name.”

             
He stopped shaking my hand, “I’m not surprised.” He stared straight at me, smiling. Then he burst out laughing. “You’re a hard one to tease.”

             
“I don’t like being teased.”

             
“Yeah, well. In my experience, it’s mostly the girl doing the teasing.”

             
Um, wow. So did this mean he had been with a girl before or is this another joke? Or half a joke?

             
“Just kidding! Glad to meet you, Pearl.”

             
“So what’s your real name?”

             
“I told you my real name, it’s Calvin,” he cracked up.

             
I folded my arms. This was just getting annoying now. I turned my back and started to walk away when I felt his hand touch my shoulder.

             
“Okay, it’s John. Dumbass is my nickname. Whichever, I answer to both.”

             
“Glad to meet you too, dumbass,” I said.

             
So his name is John. What an unusual name. Well, at least for someone my age.

             
He smiled a quiet smile, probably pleased to find a girl willing to play his game.

             
An awkward silence passed. I tried hard to find something to say, something to ask.

             
Finding nothing at all, another awkward silence passed.

             
“So, um...do you know anything about cards?” I asked, not just for the sake of asking but trying to poke a hole in the great unknown.

             
“Like card games?”

             
“Not much. I heard some men talking about cards every once and a while. But I didn’t get a chance to ask them what they meant. I thought maybe you’d know.”

             
“No, sorry, I don’t know. Well, from what little I’ve heard of them, it’s best not to have them. I haven’t really heard much about cards. Do you wanna see this thing that I found?” He leaned against a fiberglass trashcan shaped like a clown. Its mouth was actually a hole where people would discard their food wrappings once upon a time. Was this supposed to be a metaphor for something? It was kind of creepy.

             
Cautiously, I considered what this “thing” might be or what it could reference. It took me half a moment to say, “Sure.”

             
He smiled and simply said, “Follow me.”

             
We walked through the park to the end. Once we were almost to the point where people used to line up to get on Something Wicked, he started crouching behind bushes, rolling over to a nearby garbage can, and crawling up a hill on his elbows.

             
I didn’t follow suit.

             
“Hey, get down, so they don’t see you!”

             
I looked around and saw no one. Nothing but empty space with the occasional remains of a ride.

             
“I don’t see anyone.”

             
“Chances are that they can see you.”
             

             
Finally taking my delayed cue, I got down on my elbows and knees and looked over the hill.

             
“Let’s get closer.”

             
We did a combination of crawling and running and then hid behind a pillar of a building that people must have used to eat hotdogs and onion rings with their families.

             
He stood stiffly, nodding towards the waterless water park. “Check it out.”

             
I looked and saw nothing, at first. Then I saw some movement in the waterless cement ditch, the one where on the brochures you’d see parents lounging lazily on inflated inner tubes.

             
“I see people,” I replied. In fact, there were several handfuls of people, maybe a couple dozen.

             
“It’s them,” he whispered.

             
“Who?” I asked.

             
“Them. The Nomads. They were here before us. They conglomerate here into one massive swarm.”

             
“I imagine the creature is one of them.”

             
“Who,” he asked, clearly half-listening to me.

             
“The ‘artist’ back from the tree house,” I halfheartedly teased.

             
“Oh, yeah,” he was too fixated on what was happening before him than to catch the humor in my comment.

             
“I don’t ever see anyone of them during the day, except for that one chick we stumbled upon. I wonder if the others back at the theater even know about them yet,” he added.

             
“The theater?” I asked.

             
“Yeah, that’s where everyone slept. Hey, where were you last night?”

             
“I guess I missed that memo. I slept at top that one water slide, near that baby roller coaster.”

             
“Do you want to head back?” he asked.

             
“Sure.” I followed him back, retracing our steps, minus the militaryesque maneuvers. We started to walk like normal humans once we get back to the sidewalk. We stopped at the theater. On the red and gold shimmering marquee, it said in black block letters, “SUM ER SPECTA ULAR NOON 2:30 & 7:30.”

             
He turned back to look at me as I followed him into the theater. “The men are working on some of the rides, hoping to get them up and running again. Do you think they can do it?”

             
“I don’t care for rides. I have never been on any, I mean. Wouldn’t want to.”

             
“Not even Something Wicked?”

             
“Especially not Something Wicked.”

~~~

             
“So what’s on the agenda?” John stopped to ask a man with a big nose and graying hair.

             
He shrugs his shoulders, “People are starting to eat lunch. Most are apt to explore today.”

             
John turned to me, the big nosed man was already gone. “Hey, how about you and me go on an adventure?”

             
“An adventure?” No idea what that could entail.

             
“Yes, let’s go,” he tugged on my arm. My heart skipped a beat, I thought he was going to take my hand in his.

             
“Say, it just occurred to me,” he started, “that you don’t have your bag with you. Did it get stolen?”

             
I thought about lying and almost started to say that it was stolen just so he wouldn’t bug me about it. But I'm so honest, it can be sickening, “No, I found a place to stash it.”

             
He took a careful pause to consider something before saying, “And may I ask where?”

             
“I could show you later but it would be better if it were dark. There’s too many people in that particular area right now.”

             
“Sounds like a great spot. So where were you before you got here?” He handed me a glass of lemonade. Some women had found a powder mix in a vendor cart. We mixed it with water from the Splash ride. It was tart, had rock-hard clumps in it, and tasted of dirty people.

             
I took a generous sip and handed it back to him. “It was the university, in Minneapolis.”

             
He brought the bottle to his mouth but he stopped. He drops his arm down, “I was at Camp Z.”

             
I wanted to ask a million questions about it but he didn’t seem like he wanted to talk about it much, even though he was the one who brought it up. I carefully ran through the questions I wanted to ask, thinking of ways to carefully word it. I finally decided on one to ask. “Was it as awful as people make it out to be?”

             
“Yes. They hunt people.” He looked at me, finally. “Like we were animals. Game.”

             
So we sat. Drinking and passing the lemonade back and forth.

             
“You hesitate too long when you’re about to lie, you know,” John said. “You can’t let people see the wheels and gears moving around in your head when you’re thinking of a lie. You give yourself away.”

             
“What did I try to lie about?”

             
“Your bag and where it is. I don’t blame you, as I’ve seen a woman take a fork to this one guy’s eye when he was holding out on some supplies. You need an alias.”

             
“A what?”

             
“You know, a made-up name and the story that comes along with it. It’s easier in the beginning to have just one alias to keep the story straight. Some of the soldiers hide in the camps. Sometimes it’s too easy to spot them, they’re too friendly. They ask too many questions. And with strangers you will figure you’ll never see them again so why not tell them everything? That’s what the soldiers are counting on. You think you’re just talking but you’re really confessing. That’s how I ended up in Camp Z. It was this guy, younger than me. I could have easily taken him out if I had known what he was.”

             
There was a terribly long, awkward silence. Well, awkward for me. It looked like John was thinking about some things and I let him have those thoughts uninterrupted.

             
“Well, that’s long enough to think of depressing shit. It’s about time we started our adventure.”

             
He started to run and leaves me with no choice but to run after him. I trotted, actually. I didn’t feel like running much.

             
We arrived near the front of the park, where the miniature golf was located. There were a few guards that occasionally walked around the outside perimeter of the park but I didn’t think they would give us any problems.

             
“Ever play golf before?”

             
“No,” I admitted. Then after a thought, I added, “This is the adventure?”