Scavenger Page 23

  “You’re confident you’ll win?”

  “Anybody who plays a game and doesn’t intend to win has already lost. I have a question for you. How did you know where the headset was?”

  Noticing what he searched for, Balenger pulled out his ear buds and inserted the wads of Kleenex. He raised his rifle.

  “What are you doing?” Ray asked in alarm. He and Amanda stepped quickly to the side.

  The camera was concealed in a jumble of boards. Balenger imposed the holographic red dot on the camera’s lens and squeezed the trigger. Crack. Absorbing the recoil, he was vaguely aware of the empty shell flipping through the air. Amid the smell of burned gunpowder, he lowered the rifle and regarded with satisfaction the catastrophic damage that his bullet had inflicted on the camera.

  He took the wads of Kleenex from his ears. “That’s another Peeping Tom we don’t need to worry about.”

  “Now listen to me carefully,” the Game Master said. “That’s the last time you destroy an essential part of the game.”

  “Oh?”

  “If you do it again, I’ll detonate the explosive in Miss Evert’s GPS receiver.”

  I’m right, Balenger thought. That’s where the bombs are. “Even at the expense of ending the game?”

  “Without the cameras, there isn’t a game. Do you believe I’ll do it?”

  Balenger turned toward Amanda, who looked terrified. “Yes.”

  “Then leave the cameras alone and play the damned game.”

  “Okay, we’ll play the damned game.”

  The tension in Amanda’s body subsided.

  “Any other restrictions?” Balenger asked. “You claim you want us to be resourceful, but when we are, you complain. If we don’t have a chance, tell us now, and save us a lot of trouble.”

  “Scavenger can be won. I don’t create unfair games.”

  “Right,” Balenger said. “I’m late to this level. Somebody bring me up to speed.”

  “We found map coordinates engraved on whatever that thing is buried in the reservoir.” Ray indicated his GPS receiver, which he handled with considerable misgiving. “The needle points that way. West.”

  “Toward those mountains,” Balenger said.

  “Or whatever’s between the mountains and us,” Amanda said. “I also found rocks in that thing in the mud.”

  “Rocks?”

  “I threw one onto the bank.”

  Balenger touched her shoulder in a way that he hoped communicated reassurance. “Show me where.”

  7

  They passed the pile of boards from which the smell of death rose in the afternoon sun. Amanda stared at Ray. Again, Balenger didn’t comment.

  “The Doomsday Vault,” he said to the microphone. “You still haven’t told me about it.”

  “The ultimate time capsule,” the Game Master replied. “It’s a chamber in a mountain on an island in the Arctic Circle. The island is called Spitsbergen. Norway owns it.”

  They reached the outskirts of the wreckage of Avalon, from which King Arthur would never rise, Balenger thought, recalling the myth.

  “What makes it the ultimate time capsule?” Ahead, Balenger saw the rim of the breached reservoir.

  “Because it literally contains a form of time. The chamber is immense: the size of half a football field.”

  “A form of time? What’s inside: an atomic clock? Whatever it is, it must be gigantic.”

  “Actually, the reverse. Most of the objects are very small.”

  Balenger paused on the rim of the drained reservoir. “Small?”

  “Millions of them.”

  Balenger peered toward the metal rim of the rectangular object hidden in the mud. “What makes them a form of time?”

  “They’re seeds.”

  “I don’t understand.” Balenger felt a rising apprehension.

  “For every type of edible plant on Earth,” the Game Master said. “Those seeds contain ten thousand years of experimental breeding. When humans started practicing agriculture, the process was trial and error. They took wild plants and tried to domesticate them. Many of the grains and vegetables were small and didn’t hold anywhere near the nutrition we now take for granted. Maize, for example—what we call corn—was a wild grass with ears only a couple of inches long and just a few rows of kernels. Several millennia of careful breeding resulted in the large plants we have today.”

  “Why are these seeds being put in a chamber in a mountain in the Arctic Circle?”

  “Because a number of scientists and countries are worried about the ability of human beings to survive,” the Game Master answered. “It’s not only global warming that frightens them. A nuclear holocaust poses an increasing risk. Or suppose a virus makes unprotected seeds sterile? Or what if an asteroid strikes the earth? There are near hits that we’ve never been told about. These days, though, it’s not nature but ourselves that we need to fear. If clusters of humans manage to survive global devastation, the Doomsday Vault will provide them with the seeds necessary to grow food.”

  “First, people would need to know where it is,” Balenger said. “This vault isn’t exactly common knowledge.”

  “Its location needs to be kept secret to protect it. Barriers and vacuum-locked doors prevent its contents from being stolen.”

  “So even if I knew where to find this thing, I couldn’t get in.”

  “Those in authority know where it is and how to unseal the doors.”

  “Suppose they’re killed in the disaster they’re afraid of.”

  “You’d better hope they aren’t. Without the Doomsday Vault, a global catastrophe would force humans to regress ten thousand years to the dawn of agriculture and begin the process of selectively breeding seeds all over again. That’s why it’s a time capsule. Preserved in the cold sleep of the Arctic, it sends ten thousand years to an uncertain future.”

  “Cold sleep?” Balenger frowned. “If global warming’s a fact, the Arctic Circle will melt, the temperature in the vault will rise, and the seeds won’t be preserved.”

  “If global warming’s a fact? Nothing’s a fact.”

  “This game is a fact. The dog bite on my knee is a fact. Amanda’s cut hands are a fact.” Balenger looked at her. “Where’s the rock you took from whatever that thing is in the reservoir? Where did you throw it?”

  “Over here.” Amanda picked it up. Caked with dried mud, the rock was the size of a fist, its surface uneven.

  Balenger felt its heaviness. He returned to the stream and rinsed it. The rock was gray.

  “There’s another color,” Amanda said.

  “Worldly desires, worldly vanities.” Balenger’s voice was hushed.

  “My God, is that…” Ray took the rock from him and turned it over. “Gold! Holy…A vein of gold straight through it.”

  The gold’s yellow was pale and dirty. But it had a primordial allure, all the same. Balenger’s gaze lingered on it. Then he looked across the valley, in the direction that Ray’s GPS needle had pointed, toward the mountains to the north.

  “The mine,” Ray said.

  Amanda indicated the object buried in the reservoir’s mud. “Finally I think I know what that thing is. It’s a mining car.”

  “With ore in it,” Balenger added.

  Ray murmured. “The Hall of Records.”

  “What?” Balenger was troubled by the sudden change of topic.

  “The Game Master gave us the clue, but we didn’t recognize what it was. Mount Rushmore. The Hall of Records.”

  “I still don’t get it.”

  Amanda explained, “The Game Master told us that when they started to carve the presidents on Mount Rushmore, the Great Depression was at its worst. The monument’s designers got so worried that riots would destroy the country, they built a chamber under the monument. The idea was that crucial documents such as the Declaration of Independence would be protected there. But then the Depression ended, the risk of social chaos disappeared, and the only documents eventually sealed there d
escribed the history of the monument.”

  “Under the mountain.” Ray’s voice strengthened. “Damn it, he gave us the answer, but we didn’t know it. The Sepulcher’s in one of those mountains! In the mine!” Ray looked frantically at his watch. “It’s almost three-thirty.” He studied the needle on his GPS receiver, splashed across the stream, and hurried through the scrub grass toward the mountains.

  Balenger waited until Ray was out of earshot. Then he took off his cap, wiped his brow, and removed the headset. He took off Amanda’s headset as well and tapped the microphones against his leg so Ray wouldn’t hear their conversation.

  “What didn’t you want to tell me?”

  “That pile of boards,” Amanda answered.

  “What about it?”

  “There’s a body underneath.”

  “I smelled it.”

  “I mentioned a man named Derrick. Ray beat him to death.”

  “Beat him to…?” Balenger felt choked by the unstated word.

  The BlackBerry vibrated in his pocket. Emotions swirling, he answered it.

  “Put the headsets back on, or I’ll set off the detonator,” the voice ordered.

  Balenger directed his answer toward the sky. “Jonathan, did you enjoy that part of the game?”

  “Don’t call me ‘Jonathan.’ I’m the Game Master.”

  Amanda looked amazed that Balenger knew the Game Master’s name.

  “Did you enjoy watching someone get beaten to death?” Balenger asked.

  “Nothing in the game is planned. No one could have predicted that the beating would occur.”

  Balenger pressed the BlackBerry to his ear. “But did you enjoy watching it happen?”

  Silence lengthened.

  “Yes,” the Game Master said. “I enjoyed it. Put on the headsets.”

  “I’m standing so close to Amanda, you’ll kill both of us if you detonate the explosives. You’re cheering for me, remember. I’m your avatar. It’d be like killing yourself.”

  “Killing myself? Are you an analyst now? Because you went to all those psychiatrists, do you think that qualifies you as one?”

  “You have an interesting concept of human character. I wonder if you ever went to an analyst.”

  “One last time. Put on the headsets.” The voice was tight with anger.

  Balenger quit tapping the microphones against his pants. He gave Amanda her headset, then put on his own.

  Ray’s voice instantly intruded. “What were you talking about that you didn’t want me to hear?” He stood a hundred yards away in the grassland, staring at them.

  “We were just discussing some finer points of the game,” Balenger said.

  “Like what?”

  “Actually, it was private, some guy-girl stuff we didn’t want to embarrass you with.”

  “Bull. She told you what was under that stack of boards.”

  “Hey, we’re all in this together. There’s no point in keeping secrets,” Balenger said.

  Ray didn’t reply. Even from a distance, his anger was obvious. He turned and continued to the west in the direction that the needle on his GPS receiver indicated.

  8

  As they followed Ray, Amanda ate another energy bar. She told Balenger what had happened since she’d wakened in the bedroom. The concern Balenger felt was matched by hers when he described what had happened since he’d wakened in the ruins of the Paragon Hotel. Throughout, he kept glancing to his right, where the two dogs, having returned, moved parallel to him about fifty yards away. He raised his rifle. They scurried off.

  Ahead, Ray peered down at something in the grass. Whatever he found excited him enough to make him walk faster toward the mountains. When Balenger reached that area, he stepped into the deep furrows of an old wagon road.

  “For the mine,” Amanda said.

  They started along it, noting how the furrows stretched toward the mountains. Balenger could almost hear the rattle of wheels and plod of hooves from the countless wagons that came and went, bringing supplies to the mine and carrying away gold. The road seemed to lead toward a middle mountain. After an hour’s walking, the peak loomed. The dogs came back but kept a wary distance.

  Ray stopped and waited for them. He pulled his lighter from his jumpsuit, clicking it open and shut. “Why are you staying back? Does your knee hurt?”

  “Nothing I can’t deal with.”

  “If it’s giving you trouble, I need to know. I can’t waste time waiting for you to catch up.”

  “I can manage.”

  “I mean if you can’t keep pace with me, maybe I should take the rifle so it doesn’t weigh you down.”

  “The rifle’s not heavy.”

  “I could use more water.”

  Balenger gave him a bottle. “Only five left.”

  “Not enough.”

  “We can make it last till midnight. The main thing is, keep a positive attitude.”

  “I heard enough about a positive attitude when I was in the Marines.” Ray opened and shut the lighter again. “Amanda gave you the wrong idea.”

  “Wrong idea?”

  “What happened back there was self-defense.”

  “I wouldn’t know. I didn’t see it.”

  “He came at me with a rock.”

  Ray didn’t give the corpse a name, Balenger noted. “A man needs to defend himself.”

  “Damned straight.” Ray put the lighter away.

  They followed the old wagon road toward the mountains. Balenger felt a premonition, wondering why the town hadn’t been built close to its principal customers.

  Amanda pointed. “I think I see the mine.”

  While the slopes on either side were grassy, the one straight ahead was denuded. Only chunks of rock covered the incline. Balenger saw what appeared to be railroad tracks at the bottom, in a line with the road, emerging from the rocks.

  Ruins came into view, a chaos of boards where several large buildings had collapsed. A breeze blew dust.

  “No grass. Not even weeds,” Balenger said.

  “The gold made a wasteland.” After a long absence, the voice was startling. “The ore was sledge-hammered, drilled, and blasted from the tunnels. Exhausted men filled mining cars and pushed them along tracks. Emerging into sunlight, they used the brakes on the cars to keep them from running down the slope. In what was once a building on your left, steam-powered grinders reduced the ore to bits. The result was mixed with liquid poison, a solution of sodium cyanide which separated the gold from the pulverized rock. But cyanide isn’t the only reason for the sterility around you. Sulphuric acid was another ingredient used to separate the gold from the rock.”

  “Is that why the town’s a distance from the mine?” Balenger asked.

  “The fumes from the acid could be smelled for miles,” the Game Master replied. “A lot of the miners died from lung diseases.”

  The sun descended beyond the mountain. A shadow brought a chill.

  “Where’s the entrance?” Amanda wondered. “It’s got to be in a line with the railroad tracks.”

  They walked to where the tracks angled uphill. A landslide had buried the upper part of the tracks.

  With Amanda and Ray on either side of him, Balenger climbed the slope, his boots dislodging rocks. He stopped on a level area and faced a wall of rock.

  “This is where the entrance probably was,” Ray said. “Where we’re standing.”

  “The tunnel must have collapsed,” Balenger said. A suspicion made him add, “Or else it was buried for the game.”

  Amanda peered down at her scraped fingers. “There’s no way we can clear it by hand.”

  The shadow they stood in lengthened, becoming cooler.

  Balenger thought about the possibilities. “The Game Master wouldn’t give us an obstacle unless there’s a way to get around it.”

  “Explosives would do it,” Amanda replied.

  “But where the hell are we going to find them?” Ray gestured in exasperation. “If Mr. Positive Attitude he
re was thinking, he’d have brought the explosives from under the bridge. But now it’s too late to go back for them.”

  “Would you have risked carrying them?” Balenger asked. Ray avoided his gaze. “Anyway, we don’t have a radio or know the frequency that would set off the detonator.”

  Amanda studied him. “You can’t set off explosives without a detonator?”

  “Nitroglycerine’s so unstable you can blow it up simply by dropping it. But explosives that are safe to handle need a jumpstart.”

  “And only a radio signal can set off a detonator?”

  “Or a pressure switch or a fuse attached to a blasting cap. There are several ways, but the Game Master seems to prefer a radio signal. What are you getting at?”

  “What about an impact?” Amanda asked.

  “Impact?”

  “A bullet. Would that set off the detonator?”

  “Yes.” Ray sounded like he spoke to a child. “A bullet would set off a detonator. In Iraq, sometimes unexploded bombs blew up if something banged against them while they were being dug out. But that doesn’t change the fact that the explosives and the detonator are miles behind us, back in town.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of those,” Amanda said.

  “Then, for God’s sake, what are you talking about?”

  Amanda showed them her GPS receiver.

  They stared at it.

  “He’d never let us try it,” Ray said.

  “If we don’t try it, we’ll still be on this slope at midnight, and this is probably what the Game Master will use to destroy us,” Amanda told them.

  They didn’t move. They didn’t even seem to breathe.

  Balenger asked Ray, “Can you think of an alternative?”

  “No.”

  “Game Master, do you truly want us to be resourceful?”

  The Game Master didn’t answer.

  Balenger set down his rifle and started lifting rocks.

  “But we don’t have time to dig our way in!” Ray said.

  “I’m making a hole for the GPS unit. The deeper it is, the more force the explosion will have.”