Scavenger

1

The wind died. Amanda no longer felt it trying to yank the door away. In the night, the rain continued, but it now fell straight down, drumming on the boards above them. She allowed herself to relax, only to become tense again when Viv murmured, “A Master’s degree in English? From Columbia? I hear that’s an awfully fancy school.”

Was Viv trying to grasp at small talk and distract herself from what happened to Derrick? Amanda wondered. Or was the remark confrontational? She remembered the angry look Viv had directed toward her when the Game Master mentioned her education.

“I wanted to go to college, but I couldn’t pay the tuition,” Viv said.

Amanda worried that another fight was about to start. Was that how Viv would handle her grief, by lashing out at whoever was close?

“Hell, I don’t know why I got angry at you.” Viv’s unexpected comment made Amanda less uneasy. “I’d probably have flunked. What I really wanted was to climb mountains with Derrick.”

A raindrop fell through the roof.

“Cold,” Viv said. She wearily opened a water bottle. “We used a lot of energy. Make sure you drink.”

Amanda raised the single bottle she had, savoring each swallow. “That’s the end of it.”

“Leave the cap off, and set it outside. Some of the rain’ll collect in it. Meanwhile, we’ll share my other bottle. If we’re going to get out of this, we need to help each other.”

The thought was encouraging until Amanda thought of Ray. Then she thought of something else, although she hesitated to raise the subject. “There’s another source of water.”

“Where?”

“It’s difficult to talk about.”

“Tell me.”

“Derrick has two water bottles.”

“Oh.” The word was faint.

“He finished most of one, but he has a full bottle in a pocket of his jumpsuit.”

Viv didn’t respond.

“We need it,” Amanda said.

“Yes.” Viv sounded hoarse. “We need it.” Her throat made a choking sound. “And the shirt under his jumpsuit. And his socks. And his boot laces. Anything we can use. If another storm hits…”

She stifled a sob.

“The most ill-fated video game of all time is the first home version of E.T.,” the Game Master said without warning.

“Shut up!” Amanda yelled.

“The cute little extraterrestrial falls into a pit. The idea was to manipulate the controls so he could climb out. But no matter what players did, they couldn’t get him out of that damned pit. Pretty soon, the players felt they were in a pit. Millions of copies were returned or remained on shelves. The first home version of Pac-Man didn’t fare much better. It functioned so poorly that twelve million of those went back to the warehouse. The manufacturer got so disgusted that it dug a huge pit in the New Mexico desert. Ironic, given that the E.T. game’s problems involved a pit. The company dumped all those games, packed them down with a steamroller, and poured concrete over them. How’s that for a time capsule? One day in the future, maybe after a nuclear war or a catastrophic weather change exposes that concrete lid, somebody’ll find those millions of video games and wonder what was so important about them that they were saved for posterity. Pac-Man. Did you ever stop to consider that the game always ends in Pac-Man’s death? The smiley guy gets eaten and shrivels. In fact, a lot of games end in death. But players keep trying again, doing their hardest to postpone the inevitable. The SAVE button allowed a form of immortality. Players work their way through obstacles in a game until a threatening decision is required. They save what they’ve accomplished. Then they move forward in the game. If their avatar dies, they return to the saved position and try another decision and another. Or else, they pay for cheat codes, which allow them to avoid threats and get a new life in the game. Either way, the avatar is capable of constant rebirth. Players achieve in a game what they can’t in life. Immortality.”

“You bastard, you think you can hit a SAVE button or use a cheat code to bring my husband back to life?” Viv screamed.

“Or Bethany!” Amanda shouted. “You think you can bring her back?”

“I never allowed cheat codes in my games. North by Northwest,” the voice said.

“What?” The sudden change of topic made Amanda’s mind spin.

“When you spoke about Mount Rushmore earlier, I meant to tell you about the Hall of Records.”

At once, Amanda realized that her mind spun not just because the Game Master kept shifting topics. Her breathing was labored. The air in the small enclosure was becoming stale, accumulating carbon dioxide.

“The Rushmore monument was started in the 1930s during the Great Depression,” the Game Master explained. “The carved faces of the four presidents were intended to represent the solidity of the United States at a time when the country and the world seemed to be falling apart.”

Amanda noticed that Viv’s breathing, too, was forced. “We need to get fresh air in here.”

They tilted the door outward. Amanda took deep breaths of cold, sweet air. Then rain poured in, and they covered the entrance.

“Some Rushmore organizers were so fearful about the nation’s survival that they designed a chamber called the Hall of Records. The plan was to build the chamber under the monument and use it to store the Declaration of Independence and other important American documents. If rioting destroyed the nation, those treasures would be protected.”

Amanda lowered her head. Fear, cold, and fatigue drained her. She couldn’t keep her eyes open.

“But as the economy improved and social unrest waned, the project was abandoned.”

Dozing, Amanda barely noticed that the isolated drops of water stopped falling through the roof. The sound of the rain became fainter.

“Finally, in 1998, a historical group sealed documents about Mount Rushmore into the small portion of the Hall of Records that was completed a half century earlier.”

The noise of the rain stopped altogether.

“Another time capsule,” the Game Master whispered.

2

Hunt Field Airport, Lander, Wyoming, ten minutes after midnight.

As the Lear jet touched down, Balenger stared out a window toward the lights on the runway, which glistened from recent rain. He waited impatiently to get into motion again. Before leaving Teterboro Airport, he’d made several phone calls and now prayed for the results he’d been promised.

The jet’s engines slowed, their muffled whine stopping. After the hatch was opened, he went down steps, saw a lighted window, and walked through puddles toward a door.

Inside, he found a mustached man in a cowboy hat sitting behind a counter watching a World War Two movie on a small television. “You Frank Balenger?” the man asked.

“That’s right.”

“Your rental car’s outside. The guy who brought it from town said to remind you there’s a surcharge for after-hours service.”

“That was the agreement.”

“Sign these papers. Show me your credit card and driver’s license.”

Balenger went out the front of the building and found a dark, water-dotted Jeep Cherokee. As promised, maps lay on the passenger seat. He studied them with the help of the overhead light.

“Can you give us a ride into town?” one of the pilots asked.

“It’s on my way.”

“You wouldn’t think an airport this small would be busy this time of night,” the other pilot said.

Balenger almost let the remark pass. A warning thought made him ask, “What do you mean?”

“The fellow inside told us a Gulfstream flew in five minutes before we did. Just like you, only one passenger. Funny thing, that flight also came from Teterboro.”

“What?” Balenger dropped the maps on the seat and went back inside the building. “Someone flew in on a Gulfstream from Teterboro?” he asked the man in the cowboy hat.

“Five minutes ago. A woman. She just drove off.”

“What did she look like?”

“Didn’t pay attention.”

“In her forties? Hair pulled back in a bun?”

“Now that you mention it.”

3

On Lander’s main street, Balenger let the pilots out at the Wind River Motel, then continued. The Jeep’s tires whispered on wet pavement as he studied the sprawl of low buildings. He stopped in a parking lot of a bar, familiarized himself with a map of local businesses, and drove to a sporting-goods store. By then, it was after midnight. The windows were dark, the place closed. But at least, he knew its location and could find it quickly the next morning. He drove to a truck stop, got a strong cup of coffee to go, returned to the Jeep, set the mileage indicator, and headed north along Highway 287. He passed a sign that warned ELK CROSSING. To his left, snow capped the hulking shadows of the mountains. Only occasional headlights came in his direction. Most belonged to pickup trucks and SUVs. One was a police car.

“Fifty miles,” Professor Graham had said. When the Jeep’s distance indicator reached 40, Balenger started looking for roads that led off the highway toward the mountains. He lowered his speed and studied the first one. It was primitive and blocked by a gate. The lights from the Jeep showed that there weren’t any tire tracks in the mud. The next side road didn’t have a gate, but there, too, Balenger didn’t see any tracks. He drove all the way to mile 60. Of the remaining four side roads, only two had tire tracks. He checked a map. Neither road was marked on it. The map didn’t have topographical features, so he couldn’t tell if either road led to a mountain valley. But the road at mile 58 was in line with lights in a building, whereas the road at mile 48 had only dark mountains beyond it.

The time was 1:52 a.m. When Balenger returned to Lander, the dashboard clock showed 2:48. Exhausted, he checked into a motel, lay on the covers of the bed, and might even have slept a little. The motel’s desk clerk phoned to wake him at eight as requested. He showered and used a razor and toothbrush that he’d bought from the truck stop the night before. He almost didn’t take the time to clean up, but he remembered an old movie, The Hustler, in which Paul Newman plays an epic pool game with Jackie Gleason. Newman’s character doesn’t shave and looks increasingly disheveled while Gleason washes his hands and face, gets his jacket brushed, and puts a fresh flower in his jacket’s lapel. Gleason wins.

Balenger drove to a McDonalds and got take-out orange juice, coffee, hash browns, and two Egg McMuffins. He ate them in his car while waiting for the sporting-goods store to open, as its sign promised, at nine.

The store sold firearms. He walked along a counter on the left and paused at the semiautomatic rifles.

“Anything special you’re looking for?” The clerk was hefty, wearing jeans, a denim shirt, and a belt buckle shaped like a saddle.

“Got any Bushmasters.” Balenger referred to a civilian version of the M-16 he’d carried in Iraq.

“Fresh out.”

“Let me look at that Ruger Mini-14.”

“The ranch gun? Sure.”

The clerk took it from a group of rifles in a vertical rack. He pulled out its magazine and tugged back its bolt, showing Balenger that it was empty.

Balenger inspected the weapon. As its name implied, it was a cut-down version of the military’s M-14, the precursor to the M-16. But unlike the harsh, distinctly military look of most assault rifles, the Mini-14’s blue steel and wooden stock made it resemble a standard hunting rifle. Indeed, its comparatively benign appearance caused it to be exempted from a 1994–2004 law that made it illegal to sell semiautomatic assault weapons in the United States, even though the Mini-14 fired the same .223 caliber and could deliver as much firepower as the civilian version of the M-16. When Balenger was in law enforcement, he’d known police officers who carried Mini-14s in their cars, choosing that model because it was compact.

“Good for varmint hunting,” the clerk said.

“Got any Winchester 55-grain Ballistic Silvertips?”

“Long-range accurate. Nice fragmentation. You know your ammo. How many boxes?”

Balenger knew there were twenty rounds per box. “Ten.”

“You must have a lot of varmints.”

“New rifle. Need to sight it in. Better make it fifteen.”

“All it comes with is that five-round magazine,” the clerk said apologetically.

“Got any for twenty rounds?”

“A couple.”

“I’ll take them. How about a red-dot sight?”

“This Bushnell HOLOsight.”

Balenger knew that the battery-powered sight used holographic technology to impose a red dot over its target. But the dot wasn’t projected in the manner of a laser beam, thus giving away the shooter’s position. Rather, the dot was projected only within the sight. Lining it up with the target was remarkably easy, virtually assuring an accurate shot. “You’ll attach it for me? Good. I’ll take that Emerson CQC-7 knife. A sling for the rifle. A knapsack. Tan camping boots and clothes. A first-aid kit. A canteen. Rain gear. Gloves. Wool socks. A flashlight. That wide-brimmed tan hat. Sunglasses. Sunscreen. A box of energy bars. And binoculars that convert to night vision.”

“It’s nice to have a customer who knows what he wants.”

Balenger gave him a credit card.

“Sign here for the ammo,” the clerk said.

Recalling his Ranger training, Balenger added, “I also need a compass and a topographic map of the eastern Wind River Range.”

“Which section?”

Balenger went to a map on the wall and pointed.

He put his purchases in the back of the Jeep, then drove to a truck stop on Highway 287, where he filled the canteen and bought a case of water along with a packet of Kleenex. The latter was a substitute for something he’d forgotten in the sporting-goods store and was as crucial as the water. He also bought a roll of duct tape from a shelf next to radiator hoses.

Back in the Jeep, he studied the topographic map. The valley wasn’t difficult to locate. As Professor Graham had told him, it was the only valley in the area that had a lake. Most of the roads he’d checked the previous night were also indicated on the map, but not the one where he’d seen the unexplained tire tracks, even though he believed that road did lead to the valley, just as he believed that Karen Bailey was in the vehicle that made the tracks. She presumably went to meet her brother. But if Balenger followed that road, the Game Master… Why don’t I want to call him Jonathan Creed? Balenger wondered… the Game Master was virtually certain to notice him. Virtually certain. The words struck Balenger as morbidly apt. The Game Master’s world was virtual. Studying the map, he noticed that a little farther north, a road ran in the general direction of the valley but then stopped where the foothills blocked the way.

He drove.

For the first time since flying from Teterboro, he activated the BlackBerry. Almost immediately, it rang. He picked it up.

“You exposed a flaw in the game,” the deep voice said. “Because I’m testing the prototype, I suppose I ought to be grateful.”

Again, Balenger wanted to shout in rage, but he managed to resist the temptation. To hide his emotions, he said nothing.

“You can’t be my avatar if I can’t follow your progress at all times,” the Game Master said.

“If you identified with me, you’d give Amanda back.”

“Tell me where you are. Maybe you’re going in the wrong direction.”

“I doubt it. Think positively. The game just reached a new level.”

“How?”

“You’re a player now instead of an observer. Try to anticipate my moves.”

“Do you ever watch Survivor?”

“All I watch is the History Channel.”

“Attractive people from different backgrounds are brought together in a hostile environment — a jungle, for example.”

Balenger stared ahead, impatient for the side road to come into view.

“The program attempts to create the illusion that the group is marooned, forced to survive by whatever means possible,” the Game Master continued. “But any thoughtful viewer sees through the illusion by realizing that the cameras, most of them handheld, need to be controlled by operators and that the hidden microphones are linked to audio technicians, and that behind the scenes there are crew members and producers, who aren’t in danger even though the contestants are supposedly struggling to survive.”

A police car went past. For a moment, Balenger was tempted to stop the cruiser and ask for help, but he kept remembering the BlackBerry image of the woman exploding in a red mist. Even if the police could somehow invade the valley without revealing their presence, it didn’t seem possible that they could get organized by midnight, and Balenger had no doubt that if he didn’t save Amanda by midnight, she would die.

“What if a show like Survivor had a fatal accident?” the Game Master asked. “What if, despite every precaution, someone fell off a waterfall, for example, and died? Would the producers cut the accident from the broadcast? Would they say, ”This is a tragedy, and we can’t let you see it?“ Or would they say, ”We need to include the accident to pay tribute to the brave contestant who risked his life for the program?“ Including it would prove that the show is indeed dangerous. Thereafter, viewers would tune in with the understanding that lethal accidents might occur at any time. People wouldn’t miss an episode.”

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.”

“Can’t.”

“Final chance,” the voice said.

“Viv, listen to him. Go back.”

Hands grabbed Viv, pulling her toward town. They belonged to Ray, who gripped her tightly, forcing her up the street.

“Get away from me!”

“Make me.” Ray tugged her farther up the street. “Try to hit me. Go ahead. It won’t matter. You can’t hurt me.”

Viv twisted an arm free and swung, punching his shoulder.

“Is that the best you can do?” Ray mocked.

She swung at his jaw.

He dodged it, moving backward.

She pounded his chest. He shifted deeper into town. She punched him again, striking his mouth, his nose. Blood flew. With each blow, he stepped backward. They reached the middle of town and neared the shelter where Amanda and Viv had survived the night. The next time Viv swung, Ray grabbed her arm. When she swung with the other arm, he grabbed that, also. She writhed, trying to get away. Slowly, she lost strength and sank to her knees. Her chest heaved. Her sobs seemed to come from the depth of her soul.

“I’m sorry,” Ray said.

Amanda pulled Viv to her feet. “Come on. You need to lie down.” She helped Viv to the shelter and eased her into it. The snow she’d stuffed into a bottle was now melted. “Here. Drink some water.”

When Viv didn’t respond, Amanda tilted the bottle to her mouth. Water dribbled down Viv’s chin, but Amanda was relieved to see that Viv swallowed most of it.

Need to fill the bottles before the snow’s completely gone, Amanda thought. She put a bottle in each hand and held it under boards from which water trickled. Ray was suddenly next to her, doing the same thing.

She was troubled by his changed behavior. Did he feel guilty? Was he trying to make amends for killing Derrick? But somehow, guilt didn’t seem part of Ray’s nature. The only explanation that made sense to her was that Ray’s alpha-male personality compelled him to challenge any man he encountered, but when his only companions were women, he needed to try to make them like him. If I’m right, I can use that, she thought.

With Ray’s help, she filled seven bottles and retrieved the rubber gloves.

“I need to talk to you,” she said. As Viv lay staring at the roof of the shelter, they avoided Derrick’s body and walked toward the fire. “I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but…” She had trouble saying it. “We need to bury him. If those dogs come back…”

“I found just the place for it.” Ray wiped blood from his mouth and indicated the area outside town where he’d gone the day before.

“What’s over there?”

“Use your GPS receiver and find out. Maybe that’s not the right spot. Check to see if I made a mistake.”

“You know more about these units than I do.”

“Check anyhow.”

She pulled her receiver from her jumpsuit. She turned it on and accessed the coordinates that had been written on the cans of fruit. A red arrow pointed toward the area beyond town.

“It appears to indicate the same place yours does,” Amanda said.

She and Ray walked to a connecting street and headed past more wreckage. As they neared the area, Amanda saw objects the wreckage had concealed.

“They look like…”

“Grave markers,” Ray said.

Fifty yards from town, a collapsed wooden fence marked the boundaries of a cemetery. Scrub grass and sagebrush grew among wooden crosses, gray and cracked, some broken.

The names and dates on the crosses were carved into the decaying wood. Amanda went from grave to grave, managing to decipher the words. “More women and children than men.”

“Because a lot of women died in childbirth back then,” Ray said. “And a lot of kids died from diseases we now treat easily.”

Amanda heard a clatter and spun. Back in town, Viv was dragging boards from the wreckage and stacking them over Derrick’s body.

“She’s tough,” Ray said.

“That’s why the bastard chose us,” Amanda said. “Yesterday, when you found this place, something bothered you. What is it?”

“That line of crosses.”

Amanda read what was carved in the wood. “Peter Bethune. Died June 20, 1899.” She moved along the crosses. “Margaret Logan. June 21, 1899. Edward Baker. June 30, 1899. All in June.”

“Jennifer Morse. July 4, 1899,” Ray said. “Arnold Ryan. July 12, 1899. There are seventeen in a row. Each of them died between June and October of 1899.”

“Seventeen? Dear God,” Amanda said.

“After that, the ground would have frozen. Maybe there were even more deaths that year, but the earth was so hard that the people in town couldn’t dig graves.”

“A place this size. That many deaths so close together. The community must have been in shock.”

“They were indeed,” the voice said through Amanda’s headset.

She tensed.

“Ray guessed correctly,” the Game Master continued. “There were even more deaths before the end of the year. Eight. In those days, when people died after the earth was frozen, they were put in coffins and stored in someone’s barn. In the spring of 1900, when a search party arrived from a town called Cottonwood about a hundred miles away, they found the coffins and the bodies inside them. But that was the only sign of anyone. Over the winter, perhaps on New Year’s Eve, the people of Avalon disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” Ray asked.

“Several later search parties were organized, but they didn’t learn anything, either. The townspeople vanished from the face of the earth. Nor did the search parties find the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires. Some religious extremists theorized that on the eve of the new century, the people of Avalon were assumed into heaven.”

“But that’s crazy,” Amanda said.

“Not in context. Focus on the cluster of deaths that began in June. Peter Bethune was killed when lightning struck him as he ran from his wagon to his store. The townspeople were stunned. But after the long drought, the rain was so welcome that their emotions were divided. They treated it almost as a price that needed to be paid. That’s how Reverend Owen Pentecost spoke of it. But then Margaret Logan, age twelve, drowned in a flash flood. She was playing near a swollen creek. The ground collapsed. She was swept away. Then Edward Baker and his wife and two sons died when their home caught fire. A farmer was trampled by his horse. Another child drowned, this time in the lake. A woman was bitten by a rattlesnake. A family mistakenly ate poisonous mushrooms. The litany of disasters seemed endless. The shadow of death hovered over the valley.”

Amanda scanned the line of graves, awed by the suffering they represented.

“Reverend Pentecost told the townspeople that God blessed those who served Him, and God punished those who did not. Something in the hearts and souls of the town was turning God against them. They needed to look inward and examine their consciences. They needed to eradicate the stain of whatever secret sins had earned them God’s disfavor. With each mounting death, the town prayed harder and longer.”

“The pressure would have been almost unbearable,” Amanda said.

Ray peered toward the sky, the direction in which they instinctively addressed the Game Master. “And they just assumed God was responsible? Didn’t it occur to them there might be another explanation?”

“Like what?” the Game Master asked. “Unrelenting bad luck isn’t any better an explanation than God’s disfavor.”

“Like maybe this Reverend Pentecost was somehow involved. The town changed when he arrived.”

“You’re suggesting Reverend Pentecost killed some of those people?”

“How hard would it be to push someone from a hayloft or substitute poisoned mushrooms for safe ones? All Pentecost needed to do was look for an opportunity.”

“Based on yesterday’s events, we know how easily you could have done it,” the voice said.

“Derrick attacked me! I was defending myself!”

“Certainly. Why don’t we save this conversation for another time? Right now, pay attention to the clues. Reverend Pentecost finally warned the townspeople to rid themselves of all vanity and avarice, to take every object they cherished and place it within something he called the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires. He told them that the Sepulcher would be an example to the future.”

“Example?” Amanda asked.

“Pentecost fixated on the looming new century and concluded that the continuing deaths were a sign of a coming apocalypse. ”All is vanity,“ he told them. ”As the new century begins, material things will no longer matter.“ But those outside the valley might not see the truth. When the Sepulcher was eventually found and opened… perhaps in a hundred years when another apocalypse occurred… it would show the path of salvation to those left behind.”

“A time capsule,” Amanda realized. “A damned time capsule. That’s why you drugged Frank and me during the time-capsule lecture.” The memory came as a shock. Thinking of Frank, she struggled not to let grief weaken her. I’m going to survive, she thought. I’m going to find a way to get out of here and pay him back for whatever he did to Frank.

In a frenzy, she yanked a board from the fallen fence and plunged it into the mud. “The logical place to put a sepulcher is a graveyard. We’re probably standing on it. The townspeople buried it here.”

“Be careful of your time,” the voice said.

Using the board as a shovel, Amanda hurled wet earth. “Help me!” she told Ray. Again, she drove the board into the mud, but this time, the board broke. “Damn it, help me!”

“Fifteen hours remain,” the voice said.

As Ray picked up a board from the collapsed fence, a grave marker at the end of the row caught his attention.

“Why aren’t you helping?” Amanda shouted.

“This cross. The numbers on it are different.”

Amanda took a moment to react to his puzzled tone. She dropped the broken board and joined him at the cross.

“The month isn’t spelled.” Ray pointed. “Instead, there are only numbers.”

“But those numbers aren’t for a month, day, and year,” Amanda said.

“No. Two sets of them. LT in front of one. LG in front of the other. They’re map coordinates.” Ray programmed them into his GPS unit.

“They’ll take us to the lake,” an unexpected voice said through Amanda’s headset. It belonged to Viv and made Amanda swing in her direction. Viv had finished stacking the boards over Derrick’s corpse and now stared across the ruins toward them. “Whatever this Sepulcher is, they couldn’t have buried it, for the same reason they couldn’t bury coffins. The ground was frozen. What other place is there? The Sepulcher’s in the water.”

“But the lake would have been frozen also,” Ray said.

“That’s the point,” Amanda suddenly understood. “The townspeople could have walked onto the lake, stopped in the middle, and cut a hole through the ice. Then maybe they dropped the Sepulcher, whatever it looks like, through the hole.”

“It must have been huge if it contained everything they cherished. A hell of a big hole,” Ray said.

“Maybe the Sepulcher was big enough that more than it went through the hole.” Viv marched past wreckage toward them. “Maybe the ice cracked. Maybe the entire town went into the water.”

“But in the spring, the search party would have looked for them in the water, in case somehow they’d all drowned,” Ray objected.

“How would the search party have checked the water?” Viv came nearer. “The middle looks deep. It’s not like the searchers had scuba divers or grappling hooks.”

“In the spring, the bodies would have bobbed to the surface,” Ray insisted. Immediately, he paused. “Unless…”

“Unless what?” Amanda asked.

“Maybe it wasn’t an accident.” He looked disturbed. “Could it have been a mass suicide? If the bodies were weighted, they wouldn’t have risen to the surface after the ice melted. They’d never have been found unless the lake was drained.”

It seemed as if a breeze died. The valley became silent.

“The lake.” Ray frowned at the needle on his GPS unit, then stared toward where it pointed. “That’s where the coordinates seem to be.”

“Yes, the lake.” Amanda felt excitement growing in her. “That’s why the snakes are in it. To keep us from searching there.” She looked at Ray. “You said ‘unless the lake was drained.” I don’t see how it’s possible to do that.“

“It’s possible when you realize it’s not really a lake,” Viv said, reaching them.

“What are you talking about?” Ray demanded.

“When this is over, I’ll make you pay for what you did to my husband. I swear to you, I’ll get even.”

Ray met her gaze. “You can try.”

“But I’m not going to die here because I let you distract me. Right now, all that matters is winning.”

“Sure. Later,” Ray said. “We need to get out of here alive. Then you can try to get even.”

Amanda felt the latent violence between them. She interrupted. “Viv, what do you mean it’s not a lake?”

“Did you notice its shape?”

“It’s got water. That’s what I noticed,” Ray told her. “It’s rectangular.”

“No. It’s shaped like a wedge. The tip points toward the western mountains, where the stream comes from. The blunt end has rocks that slope below it. The shape’s symmetrical. Too symmetrical. It’s not a lake. It’s a reservoir.”

Ray needed only a moment to think about it. “Jesus.” He started running.

5

The sun baked the mud. As Balenger guided the Jeep along the narrow dirt road, he heard the crust braking. On either side were sagebrush and scrub grass. Ahead, foothills rose toward snow-capped mountains. The road showed no sign of recent use. He didn’t see any buildings. He permitted himself to hope.

The road descended into a stream. The high chassis on the Jeep allowed him to drive through it, the four-wheel-drive gripping the slippery surface on the other side. Bumps jostled him, preventing him from going faster than twenty miles an hour. Time, he kept thinking. Near the foothills, he reached cattle drinking from a water trough next to a windmill.

The road did not continue. He drove past the windmill and steered between bushes, aiming toward whatever open area presented itself. Rocks and holes forced him to zigzag. The ground began to rise. He avoided more rocks and sagebrush. The incline became steeper. When he crested a ridge, he faced a steep drop on the other side, so he followed the ridge, passing aspen trees. Then he reached another slope, too rocky and steep for him to drive farther. He backed the Jeep to the aspens and stopped where they screened the car.

He changed clothes, putting on the tan boots and hunting outfit, which blended with the terrain. Feeling the strength of the sun, he covered his face with sunscreen, put on the sunglasses and the hat, and drank from one of the water bottles he’d purchased at the truck stop. After clipping the Emerson knife inside a pocket, he loaded the magazines and shoved one into the Mini-14. He buttoned the compass and the packet of Kleenex into his shirt pocket, hooked the canteen to his belt, and stuffed the knapsack with the remaining equipment. He had a memory of packing his gear to go to Iraq, an apt comparison, he thought, because he was about to enter a war zone.

When he put on the knapsack, he estimated that it weighed around forty pounds. I’ve carried worse, he thought. He pulled the bolt back on the Mini-14, arming it, engaged the safety catch, and slung the rifle over his shoulder. What else do I need to do? he thought. There’s always something.

The BlackBerry, he realized. He took it from a pocket and set it to vibrate mode so a noise from it wouldn’t give away his position. Then he started up the slope. He was relieved that he didn’t feel any of the jitters, sweaty palms, and nervous breathing of the post-traumatic stress disorder he’d suffered for so long. After Amanda disappeared, he’d expected that his weakness would come back to torture him. Instead, his determination to save her so filled him that there wasn’t room for conflicting emotions.

He climbed past more aspen trees, but despite their shade, sweat slicked his forehead and stuck his shirt to his skin. Finally, he crested a ridge and came to a shelf of rock that protruded from the aspens. After taking off his knapsack and rifle, he sank onto the shelf, did his best to conceal himself, and studied the valley below. Morning sunlight reflected off a lake, making its ripples glisten. The lake was wider at one end, reminding him of a long triangle.

He removed his binoculars from his knapsack. Using his hat as a shield to prevent the sun from reflecting off the lenses, he focused on the water. An embankment of rocks resembled a dam. At once, he understood it was a reservoir, not a lake. Movement caught his attention.

Redirecting the binoculars, he saw tiny figures on the embankment and wondered excitedly if Amanda was one of them. They were doing something to the embankment. Throwing rocks away, he realized. That didn’t make sense. What were they trying to do, breach the dam? Why?

He put on his hat and shoved the binoculars into the knapsack. After he crawled back into the aspens, he hefted the knapsack onto his back and reslung the rifle over his shoulder. To his left, the ridge descended until it reached the narrow entrance to the valley. That was the obvious route the Game Master would expect him to use. But he couldn’t convince himself that the Game Master would rely on the obvious. In Iraq, he remembered, he couldn’t take anything for granted. Any street could provide an ambush. Any object along the road might be a bomb.

It’s the same here, he thought. Nothing’s what it seems.

Making sure that his boots were solidly placed, he started down the uneven slope toward the valley, scanning the trees and rocks for signs of a trap.

6

Amanda threw another rock to the side. It was as big as a football. She ignored the cuts on her hands and grabbed yet another. It seemed she’d been doing this forever. She, Ray, and Viv were fifteen feet below the top of the spillway. Last night’s storm had flooded the reservoir. Water cascaded over the edge, pouring down the rocks, throwing up spray that chilled her face. To see what was in the reservoir, they needed to breach the dam and drain the water.

“Be careful!” Viv yelled amid the water’s roar. “Remember to watch for the snakes!”

Amanda didn’t need reminding. Twice already, she’d seen water moccasins slide past her, the force of the water carrying them over the rim and down the slope.

“This rock’s too heavy!” Ray shouted. “Help me tug it free!”

Amanda stumbled to him and gripped the rock. The blood on her hands made them slippery, but she squeezed as hard as she could and tugged. The rock came free, throwing her and Ray off-balance while it rumbled to the bottom of the spillway. She fell, banging her right arm.

“Are you all right?” Ray asked.

Amanda ignored the pain and reached for another rock.

“I finally see dirt,” Viv told them. “Four layers of rocks until I got to it.”

Amanda studied the embankment. “A lot more to do.” She stooped and pulled and threw. Her chest heaved. “This is taking too long. We need to reach into the water. If we expose the dirt there, the current’ll wash it away and undermine the other rocks.”

“The snakes,” Viv warned.

“No choice.”

Spray washed grit from Amanda’s face as she put her hands in the water and pulled at a rock. The force of the current helped tug it free. She yanked at another rock, and it, too, went with the current. She reached again and suddenly jerked her hands back. Something that looked like a piece of rope sped past her.

For a moment, she couldn’t move. She stared at the water, feeling as if the snake was inside her, writhing. When she mustered resolve and reached for another rock, the current pushed at her hands. She needed to brace herself to keep her footing. Then the rock came loose, and the roaring water carried it down.

Ray followed her example, but Viv concentrated on rocks away from the water, too phobic about the snakes.

The cascade sucked dirt from under a rock. It spread in the current.

“Yes!” Ray shouted.

Amanda found the energy to work harder. The icy water numbed her fingers. She pulled another rock. A moment later, another snake sped past.

Ray shouted, “More dirt’s flowing!”

A large plume of earth spread into the current.

“If we can make the hole deeper and wider…” Ray tugged.

Amanda helped him, pulling out another rock. And another. The plume of dirt widened. A rock moved on its own. The current became earth-colored, more rocks shifting.

“Get back!” Amanda shouted.

The old embankment hadn’t been maintained in more than a hundred years. Amanda realized that she was standing on the site of what amounted to a chain reaction. A half-dozen rocks toppled free. Earth washed away behind them, dropping more rocks, which in turn freed more earth. The force of the current was relentless. The top of the dam settled, opening a channel, more water roaring down the slope, taking away more earth. As the rocks beneath Amanda threatened to give way, she turned and tried to hurry across the uneven surface. But the slope moved as though something alive was under it, and she needed to struggle for balance, working toward the embankment’s edge. Ray was ahead of her, Viv behind.

She heard Viv scream. Pivoting, she saw Viv teeter on a section of collapsing rocks. Amanda lunged for her, caught her left hand, felt the jolt of Viv’s weight, and started to topple with her.

Ray’s arm snared her waist, straining to pull them to safety. The slope kept collapsing, the rush of water sucking at Viv’s boots. Viv twisted, the torque of her hand prying Amanda’s fingers open. As Amanda lurched back, Viv dropped, vanishing into the current.

“No!” Amanda wailed.

The top of the dam collapsed, a wall of water hurtling toward the bottom. Amanda glimpsed Viv’s brown jumpsuit in the plummeting current. A churning pool enveloped her.

“We’ve got to pull her out!”

Amanda raced toward the side of the spillway and charged toward the bottom. Hearing Ray’s urgent steps next to her, she saw Viv struggle to the surface, breathe, and get sucked under again.

“Her boots!” Ray yelled. “She won’t be able to swim!”

But Viv tried. Breaking the surface again, she stretched her arms, clawing at the water. The flood carried her along.

Amanda and Ray hurried along the water’s edge, trying to keep pace with its speed.

“Don’t fight the current!” Amanda shouted. “Let it take you! Where it’s slower downstream, we’ll grab you!”

She dodged sagebrush and rocks, desperate to stay next to Viv. She rounded a curve, lost sight of the brown jumpsuit, moaned, then saw it, and kept running. Viv got her head above the water, breathing frantically.

The flood rushed over the banks of what, until five minutes ago, had been a stream bed. The water made two sounds, one on top of the other, a hiss and a rumble. It picked up debris. It dragged Viv under. Her brown jump suit was hard to distinguish now in the earth-colored water.

As the flood spread over level grassland, Amanda charged into it, only to find that the current almost knocked her over. Ray pulled her to solid ground.

“Viv!” Amanda screamed.

The water kept widening. Amanda saw Viv struggle to keep her head above the surface while the current swept her along. She struck something — a boulder, Amanda realized — and clung to it.

“Yes!” Amanda shouted. “Hang on!”

As the torrent spread, it slowed. It dropped to a foot. Six inches. Viv released her hold on the boulder and slumped behind it.

“Keep your head up!” Amanda yelled. She splashed into the water. Even shallow, the current was powerful. She and Ray needed to hang on to each other to keep from falling. Then the water dropped to three inches, and Amanda hurried through it. Glancing upstream, she saw a massive hole in the embankment, emptiness beyond it, only a trickle coming out. She increased speed and came to the boulder.

Viv lay on her back, her face above water. Amanda reached for her. Ray pulled her hand away.

“Let go of me! We need to help her!”

“We can’t! She’s dead!”

“Like hell! I see her chest moving! Get your damned hands—” The words stuck in Amanda’s throat. A snake emerged from Viv’s jumpsuit, its black body slithering across her shoulder. The tail of another projected from Viv’s left pant leg. The snake made her leg seem to move. A third snake was halfway up her right sleeve.

“The force of the water,” Ray said. “It tore her boots off. It shoved the snakes into her clothes.”

Snakes writhed everywhere, visible now that the water was only a couple of inches deep.

“We need to get out of here,” Ray said, pulling her away.

“But… Viv… Maybe we can still help.”

“No. Look at her eyes.”

Despite the sun’s glare, they didn’t blink.

“Let’s go. Those snakes are awfully angry,” Ray said.

One hissed at them.

He tugged again, and this time, Amanda went with him. Numbed by grief, she kept looking back until the boulder obscured Viv’s body.

They reached dry ground. The snakes remained where the earth was wet. Amanda thought of Viv’s bulging eyes and trembled.

“When Viv saw how the dogs mutilated Derrick’s body, remember what she told us?” Amanda asked.

“She said she couldn’t bear this any longer.”

“Exactly.” Overwhelmed, Amanda sank to the ground. “I can’t bear this any longer.”

7

Balenger worked his way down a slope. His boots almost slipped on wet dead leaves, but he gripped a tree trunk, caught his balance, and continued down. He saw occasional patches of snow where the sun hadn’t reached and realized that here the storm the previous night had brought more than rain.

To his right, the foothills rose to mountains. A mile to his left, the foothills shrank, merging with the valley’s entrance. Knowing the Game Master’s fondness for monitoring devices, he expected that there’d be intrusion detectors. But four deer bounding away from him through the trees made him realize that intrusion detectors would be impractical. Animals would constantly set off alarms triggered by pressure sensors and infrared beams. Under the circumstances, video cameras were more reliable, and for now, the close cover of the aspen trees made this an unlikely area for the Game Master to hide any. The view would be limited. Better to aim cameras at open spaces where a few could accomplish a lot.

Balenger kept descending to the right, wanting to gain more distance from the valley’s entrance. He reached the slope’s bottom. Still encircled by trees, he took out his compass and terrain map. A mountain visible through the tree tops gave him a landmark to orient the map. He calculated that in another mile, he’d be in a north-south line with the reservoir.

He forced himself to drink some water, bit a piece from an energy bar, and continued through the trees, following the rim of the valley. He scanned everything ahead of him, reminding himself to think as if he were in Iraq, watching for any sign of an ambush or a bomb. He decided that buried explosives connected to trip wires or pressure plates weren’t practical in this location. Animals would constantly set them off. More likely, explosives would be radio controlled, triggered by a visual confirmation of the target. Just like the roadside bombs in Iraq. Although he remained convinced that cameras would be aimed toward open spaces, not into the limited viewpoint of the forest, he took the precaution of avoiding obvious routes through the trees — a game trail, for example, or a clearing.

A rumble made him pause. It sounded like distant thunder. The noise persisted, then faded. An explosion? he wondered. No, it lasted too long. Maybe the people on the embankment succeeded in breaching the dam. Although he couldn’t imagine why they’d work so hard to do that, he kept hoping Amanda was one of them. Worry for her made him want to hurry, but he restrained himself, knowing that he wouldn’t be any use to her if he allowed himself to get careless.

When his compass and map told him he was abreast of the reservoir, he turned left and moved cautiously through the trees. The forest thinned, revealing the extent of the valley and the mountains surrounding it. The passage of time weighed on him. Already, it was almost one p.m. Eleven hours until endgame at midnight. He held his gun at the ready and peered from the trees. Nothing on either side aroused his suspicions.

Wary, he stepped into the open. After the protection of the forest, the vastness before him was unnerving.

The BlackBerry vibrated. He took it from his camouflage suit and pressed its green button.

“Welcome to Scavenger,” the voice said.

Balenger studied the expanse in front of him. Sagebrush, a few pine trees, occasional boulders. Despite the rain the night before, the ground looked parched.

“After I learned about the Sepulcher of Worldly Desires, I bought this valley,” the Game Master said.

“Nice to be able to afford whatever you want.” Balenger turned to the left, and scanned the line of trees behind him, concentrating on the upper branches.

“I walked the valley until I knew it like an old friend.”

“You have friends?” Balenger turned to the right now, scanning the upper branches of the trees in that direction.

“I used a metal detector to search the cemetery in case the Sepulcher was buried there. But the only metal the detector reacted to came from jewelry that some of the townspeople were buried with.”

“You dug them up to find out?”

“I used the detector to scan the town, a painstaking process. As you might expect, the device reacted to all sorts of metal, from nails to hinges to rusted knives and forks. But no reaction was strong enough to indicate that the Sepulcher was buried under Avalon.”

“You assumed the Sepulcher was huge?” Balenger kept studying the trees as he pressed the phone to his ear. “Maybe it’s tiny, just room enough for a Bible and some handwritten prayers.”

“No,” the Game Master said. “It’s huge. I hired a plane and equipped it with an infrared camera, the kind that records variations of heat in landscapes. Soil absorbs heat, for example, while stone reflects it. Soil on top of rock has a different colored image than deep soil or soil with metal under it. Hot spots almost seem to glow on photographs this camera takes.”

Balenger saw what he looked for and nodded in a minor victory.

“The camera took thousands of photographs. It documented the heat signature of every part of the valley. The photography took days. Studying the results took weeks. A few aberrant images gave me hope, but when I had those areas excavated, I found nothing.”

“So maybe the Sepulcher’s a myth. Maybe it never existed. If it can’t be found, there’s another flaw in the game. Call it off.”

“Oh, the Sepulcher exists, all right. I went back to the original documents and finally understood that the clues were there all along. I just hadn’t looked at them in the right way.”

“You found the Sepulcher?”

“Indeed.”

“And it’s here in the valley?”

“Absolutely.”

“Where?”

“That would be too easy. It’s up to you to find it. If you do, you win.”

“And Amanda goes free.”

“Provided she overcomes the remaining obstacles.”

“Then I don’t have time to chat.”

Balenger broke the transmission and put the phone away. He removed the packet of Kleenex from his shirt pocket and took out a piece. He tore it in half, wadded the sections, and shoved them into his ears. Then he raised the Mini-14, peered through its site, and lined up its red dot with what he’d discovered in the upper branches of an aspen tree: a video camera. He hadn’t fired a rifle since he was in Iraq a year and a half earlier. Shooting was a perishable skill. Accuracy depended on practice. Hoping that the holographic gunsight would compensate, he held his breath and pulled the trigger.

Even with Kleenex wadded in his ears, the sound of the shot was palpable. The rifle bucked, an empty shell flipping away. He looked toward the camera in the branches fifty yards away, twenty feet up in the tree. A dark hole in the bark below the camera warned him that he’d jerked the trigger, lowering the barrel.

He aimed again. This time, he squeezed instead of jerking. Crack. The recoil swept through him. Fragments of the camera flew through the air. The rest of it dangled from an electrical wire.

He walked along the trees and saw another camera in the aspens, about fifty yards farther down. The valley was presumably flanked with them. So many cameras, so many corresponding screens. Balenger knew it would be impossible for the Game Master to watch all the monitors. Some kind of motion sensor probably activated individual screens if a human-shaped figure came into view.

Well, here’s another image that won’t take up his time, Balenger thought. He raised the rifle, lined up the red dot, squeezed the trigger, and blew the camera to pieces. The BlackBerry vibrated in his pocket. He ignored it.

He kept walking, scanning the expanse around him. The extent of the sky reminded him of Iraq. Amanda, he thought. Amanda, he kept repeating. Amanda, he inwardly shouted, the mantra giving him strength.

He saw another camera, this one hidden among rocks. He shot it.

Again, the BlackBerry vibrated in his pocket. But he had something more important to occupy his attention — a gully that stopped him from going farther. It was wide and deep. Water from yesterday’s rain flowed at the bottom. It was a seemingly natural stream bed, but all Balenger could think of was that it couldn’t be avoided. Everything was a possible trap.