A Hollow Dream of Summer's End (5 page)

THE RULES WERE SIMPLE.

It was a straightforward death-match, every man for himself. The bounds were set at the edge of the woods and the preserve below. Anything further than the old road a mile downhill was too far, and since there was only three of them they kept it simple: no house, no lawn, and the fort was off-limits.

"That's our safe point," Brian said. "Our base."

Thirty minutes later Aiden was crashing over sticks and deadfall, sliding past a log, and dropping into a prone position by a large rock.

There, on the damp ground, he waited. Brian was somewhere behind him, a few hundred feet perhaps. Maybe more. They’d bumped into each other near the trail. Brian had been ducking beneath the horse fence; Aiden was following the footpath.

It was a genuine “Oh Shit” moment, a real high noon showdown; two sworn enemies finding themselves fifty feet from each other. They said nothing, only studied each other for what felt like an eternity.

Then they both drew and fired.

Aiden got off half a clip before he found cover in the leaves.

Brian squeezed off a few shots, then his chest lit up from a grazing hit and his gun screamed with damage. Aiden used that time to run and reload, cocking the barrel and watching his ammo bounce back up to twelve. Brian’s health was at 80%, his own a perfect 100%. Four more glancing hits, or two critical strikes dead center, and Brian would be out of the game.

Pop out of cover and fire as fast as you can, he told himself. Just like
Gears of War
. He’d done this a countless times with the controller. This wasn’t that different.

Only it was, and when he popped out ready to blast he found himself scanning the empty woods. Brian was nowhere to be seen.

He studied the area, waiting. The big boy had to be there, somewhere...

Zap!

His chest rattled and shook as his gun lit up. 80%.

“Oh shi—” was all he had time to say as he threw himself behind a tree and stuck his head out. Brian was somewhere nearby, yet he didn’t see any shadow or shape. No footprints or rustling branches or—

Zap!
Another glancing hit shook his vest, sent his heart racing. His gun lit up, belched out warnings. 60%!

And there Brian was, emerging from behind an oak in the opposite direction Aiden had been looking. Unbelievable! The big guy had flanked him. Aiden was totally exposed, didn't even have time to return fire. A turn, a stumble, and off he ran. Somewhere behind him, he heard Brian squeeze off three blasts in succession.

He didn't look back as he ran. It would only expose him, only slow him. This was The Suck, as the space marines said. And he was knee deep in it.

It wasn’t real, this game they played, but it sure felt real. The adrenaline and fear of fighting one of his best friends in the woods while being hunted by another made the game as close to war as he had experienced. It wasn't hard to imagine some doomsday situation; a North Korean nuke sailing overhead, obliterating L.A. and San Francisco and half the western seaboard in the pre-dawn hours. Red and blue parachutes with gold sickles and stars filling the sky in the hours after the fallout settled. The three of them taking Freddie's dad's collection of rifles, heading to the foothills to wage a guerrilla campaign against the invaders. Rebels, coming in to the lowlands to ambush convoys and sabotage power stations. Freedom fighters.

Yet that was a fictional future, a fantasy he trained for, and the present was real. This was The Suck and in this moment his friends were his enemies and the woods behind his dad’s ranch was their battlefield.

Somewhere behind him Freddie shouted. Somewhere, not far off, branches broke. A curse word, several, and the sounds of shots fired, faint and electric. The woods were alive with imaginary blasts.

He ran deeper. Leapt over a log, turned at a mushroom-covered stump, and pressed on. It was not a retreat, he told himself: it was a strategic rearrangement. Brian had gotten the upper hand, could have fragged him in five shots, but Aiden was too fast. That was his secret, after all. The twitch reflex never failed. Not in
Mortal Kombat
, not on his bike, and not at LaserQuest when they'd played this game for his birthday. He wasn't retreating. No, he was flanking the big kid. He was gaining the upper ground. And when he found Brian he’d be the one firing down.

Another distant shout as he pushed on. The ground sloped down, angled on damp leaves and loose dirt. The change was abrupt, sudden, and jarring. He was running too fast, legs carrying him down too steep an incline at a speed too quick to control. He had no traction, nothing to stop him, and nothing to grab on to.

This shouldn’t be happening, he thought. I’m the quick one.

And then the world went sideways and the stony creek bed rushed up to catch him.

This shouldn’t be—

11.

HE DIDN’T FEEL THE impact. Only the fall.

Then the slow cascade of dirt and leaves, pouring over the lip of the crevice like a filthy waterfall. Down it poured onto him, and for a moment he thought he might be buried alive.

Alive, if that's indeed what I am, he thought.

He spent a silent moment there among the rocks and sand of the dry creek, wondering what he'd broken. His arm perhaps. His leg for sure. The fall was a good ten feet, maybe more. He was probably in shock right now, mangled or worse, and at any second the pain would jar him to his senses.

He had landed sideways on the dry creek bed, among stones big and small, sharp and smooth. Yet none were under him. Lucky, he thought. A few feet further and his brains might have been all over those rocks.

Hwock! Tick-tick-tick-tick...

That sound—he recognized it. It was close, closer than it had been earlier. For some reason not entirely clear to him that sound served as an anchor, a great chain that pulled him back to the present, clarifying all. And the present situation was serious. He had slid, rolled, and fallen down the sharp incline of a hill and into a creek bed fifteen feet deep. He had fallen, hard. And if something was broken, he needed to know whether to scream for help or not.

"Please..." he said, lifting himself up and waiting for the scream of pain, the crack of shattered bone, the blinding shock. Nothing hurt, not yet, but that didn't mean nothing was hurt. There had to be something. Yet as he pulled himself up he found his wounds were superficial. A scrape here and there, a bruise perhaps, but nothing worth worrying about. Nothing worth fighting back tears over.

Hwock! Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick-tick...

His gun, he suddenly thought, realizing it wasn’t in his hand. The fall had sent it flying from his grip. A somersault, and then it had been wrenched from his fingers. The gun itself probably cost a hundred bucks, perhaps more. Sure, his dad had money now, but they’d spent a decade eating cheap and saving coupons. Somehow he knew his dad would give him an earful if he’d lost it or broken it in the first hour.

Hwock! Tick-tick-tick-tick...

He pulled himself together, scoured the dry creek bed for the green and orange blaster. The sunset shadows were long, the light in the ravine sparse, dabbled, deceptive.

Please, he thought. Please be around here, somewhere. That's not too much to ask, is it?

A glimmer. Something flickering. There it was, his gun! It lay on the ground near the edge of the ravine where the two banks came together in a V. At the meeting of those two embankments a strange structure poked out from the earth like a half-buried ruin. It was a confusing sight, ancient and absurd, and for a moment he wondered if he hadn't stumbled upon the ruin of a forgotten civilization a thousand years old.

No, he realized. It was a drain. It was a large tunnel that formed the outlet of a great drainage channel. It was built of concrete, though the years had turned it to an almost muddy ruin. Iron bars that had once blocked it off were now little more than bones in the concrete, eaten by time and rust. Moss and mushrooms sprouted along the cracks. A few wet webs clung to the dark spots and the shadows. Even the mouth of the drain was slanted, more of an oval than a perfect circle, as if the weight of the hills above had compressed it over the years.

He walked over, bent down, and picked up his gun. It worked, and when he squeezed the trigger an electric blast went off. Lucky, he thought. He had dodged two bullets (or lasers) and didn't want to press his luck any further. Now he just needed to get out of the creek.

Somewhere, not too far off, that bird clicked and called out.
Hwack! Tick-tick-tick-tick...

He studied the drain, that large hole disappearing into the wet earth; a diseased orifice. Dark, ill boding. In the winter and spring showers the creeks ran a dozen feet high, but it was the end of summer and Aiden couldn’t remember a single wet day after early May. The drain hadn’t seen a drink in months. Yet there was a dampness to it, a wetness. All around it were brambles and branches, leaves and runoff from some forgotten spring shower. Detritus and decay, as if swallowed.

Hwock! Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick... Hwooock!

And a jacket, he realized. A mud-covered jacket lay nearby the drain, its color long ago washed away. Not just one jacket, but several. A few were buried, torn, reclaimed by the earth and the elements. Others made of hardier fabrics, jeans and synthetics that had yet to decay. They lay at the base of the drain, as if they'd been carried by some long gone current.

Funny, he thought, the water should have pushed the old clothes away from the drain. Not toward it. Funny too, that such a thing would even exist out here, now that he thought of it. There was something old about the drain, ancient and terrible. Perhaps even older than the earth and the trees that surrounded it.

Something stirred in the darkness. A rattle, a glisten, and the feeling that something had been displaced. That something had changed.

Hwock! Tick-tick-tick... Hwoooock!

That sound. That congested clearing and clattering, as if from some parched throat, it had not come from the trees. It had not come from some bird. It came from the shifting darkness deep inside that drain.

No, something hadn't changed about the shadows, he realized. Something had moved.

Run, his mind whispered. Run.

Hwock!

But from what?

Tick-tick-tick...

Doesn’t matter, his mind said. Run and don't look back.

Hwock!

A faint clattering, rattling, as if a thousand buttons were dragged across metal deep inside the drain. Louder. Closer. The shadow glistened.

He turned and ran as fast as he could.

Trees passed in a blur. Branches snapped beneath his feet. Leaves slid.

He ran faster than he ever had before. Up that damp hill, the sun a sideways glow through the trees. His heart banged like a drum, pushing him forward, upward, ascending. Moss slapped at his face. He ran through a spiderweb, the silk glistening at the last second, and he would have screamed if it weren't for the feeling in the pit of his stomach that something far worse than a spider was behind him. A thousand teeth and a dozen eyes, wretched limbs and fingers all clattering, rattling, and reaching out for him.

Up the hill, faster. His feed pounded, his heart raced. He could feel it, on his back, closer, reaching out for him and—

His chest vibrated, his heart leapt into his throat. Sounds exploded and a gasp flew from his lips.

Zap!

He spun, went sideways, and his ankles buckled. His gun let out a synthesized warning: "HEALTH CRITICAL!"

Zap! Zap!

His chest shook violently, the vest pulsating with the impact of the blasts. That electric voice warned: "PLAYER TERMINATED! WEAPONS NOW OFFLINE!"

And then he saw them. Freddie was on his left, fifty feet and still firing at him. Brian was on his right, his vest flashing, signaling that he'd been fragged as well.

"And then there was one!" Freddie shouted, pumping a fist in triumph. "G G, losers."

G.G., Aiden realized. Good Game, indeed. He had run right into Freddie.

"I... I thought..." Aiden said, taking a knee and panting as his vest vibrated, lit up, and dimmed. In the dying light of the day he looked like some jogger who'd just finished a midnight marathon.