Escape, a New Life (10 page)

“I did what had to be done,” Eric said.  “He was the easy one.  This guy was one tough son
of a bitch, though,” he said, gesturing toward the huge man lying on the ground in front of them.  “Where are the girls?”

“They’re taken care of,” she said.

“What did you do back there?”

“I did what had to be done,” Abby said
, smiling.  “There is one other thing we have to do, though.”

“What’s that?”

“Get the hell out of here.  I’m not quite as ruthless as you, I guess.  The girls are still alive.  They’re not coming after us anytime soon, but Tom and Sara are going to figure out soon enough that you’re not back at camp.  When they come back here and see this mess, I don’t think we should be here.”

“Where do we go?  This island is not that big.”  The sun was
just beginning to crest over the trees behind them.  If they did not leave the area soon, they would never avoid Tom and Sara, and they would not benefit from the darkness.  “I think we need to go back to Robert and hide out with him for awhile.”

“No,” she
said.  “They’ll just be waiting to find us when we leave.  Right now, we just have to deal with Tom and Sara.  Let’s finish this.”

He asked, “What do you want to do?”

“You finished the raft yesterday, right?”

“I did.  I don’t think we know that it floats yet, but I did the best I could.”

“We go then.  We find out now.  If it floats, we do not come back.”

“I like a woman with a plan.”

Abby laughed. “I’m just flying by the seat of my pants.”  She brought him close and kissed him one more time.

“Well that’s fine
, too,” he said with a smile.

OLIVIA THOMAS SAT on her plush
, brown leather couch in her large office in Los Angeles, staring at a giant screen.  She was in the process of reviewing the final cut for this evening’s broadcast.  They never actually showed a death on network television, but she still cringed when she saw Eric’s makeshift wooden stake slice through the air toward the big man’s neck.  The camera cut away a split second before it sunk into his neck, where, as they knew now, it hit an artery, causing him to bleed out within minutes.  There was nothing the team on the ground could have done. 

The audio, however, did not cut out.  The sounds that were produced left nothing to the imagination.  Just in case there had been any doubt in the viewers
’ minds that he was dead, the camera then cut to a shot of him lying in a shallow, half-dug grave in an absurdly large pool of blood. 

She flipped off the picture and decided that she needed a little break.  She never got used to the violence.  She was an executive producer now, having worked her way up over the past decade
, since the show’s inception.  Still, she never got used to it.  It amazed her.  If you put people in a corner, there would never be a shortage of ways they would find to hate and kill each other.

Just because t
hey never showed an actual death on the airwaves, that didn’t mean there was not a public demand to see such a thing.  They would make an astounding amount of money on paid subscriptions, where the viewer could see the carnage in every gruesome, super high-definition detail. 

The show was absolutely never intended to be a violent one; however, some seasons did lend themselves to violence and killing.  Admittedly this was not bad for ratings.  In fact, the ratings were always higher in seasons with violence than in years without.  Conflict made good drama, and good drama made great ratings.  Fortunately, for the networks coffers, war was far more common than peace.

The windows across the west side of her office went floor to ceiling.  Standing there, she watched the city skyline, thankful that the windows did not open.  The air was fresher in her building than it was outside.  It had been that way for twenty years, at least.  She remembered the fresh air at her grandfather’s strawberry farm up north, when she spent the summers up there as a little girl.  Part of her missed those days.

Taking a step back, she was caught in the light and could see her reflection in the window.  Her grandfather would be proud to see her today.  Pretty, thin, dark features and pin
-straight black hair.  She was beautiful.  Even in this city that continually redefined beauty, she was very comfortable in her body.  But she wondered if he would be proud of who she was.  She could almost hear his heavily accented voice, and it made her laugh.  Of course he would be.  There was one thing that impressed the man more than anything – money. 

Olivia
was the executive producer of
Trial Island
, undoubtedly the most successful show in the history of network television.  In one year, she made tenfold what her poor immigrant grandfather made in his entire life, and that was being generous. No television show had ever perfected the revenue stream like they had.  Sure, some came close.  The football league was raking in a huge sum, for the time, on their biggest game of the year.  But that was one show, once a year. 

Trial Island
commercial time was like having the big game once a week, thirty-eight weeks a year.  The few million dollars in prize money that the contestants could win was a paltry sum compared to the influx of cash the show brought in.  There were two things about the public that were unquestionably true, and were the keys to the success of the program.  First, in a gamble, everyone thinks they are going to be the winner. Second, the viewing public has an unquenchable thirst to see their idols torn down.

             
The show cannot go on indefinitely, though.  Olivia, and really the entire executive team, knew that the current season, their tenth, was quickly approaching a tipping point.  They might be able to squeeze another two, maybe three seasons out.  That was if they were lucky.  They were up against a technological block that had no good fix.  She had spent the bulk of the morning trying to explain this to the network executives, who just could not grasp it. 

The basis of the show they could understand.  A
drawing is held for contestants to enter.  They need to be fit, and they need to be between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five.  Most important, they must be willing to receive the chip implant that allows them to have their memory wiped out back to a specific date. 

That specific date was always the day before the show had been announced
ten years ago.  Before that happened, they would undergo intense physical fitness and survival training.  Any skills that could help them survive on the island, such as swimming or CPR, were drilled into them until the tasks could be completed on sheer muscle memory.  The producers had found that this was the most effective way to ensure that they would retain useful skills after their memories were wiped out.

After their memories were
wiped so that they never heard of
Trial Island
, they were drugged and dropped off on the island to fend for themselves.  The rules of the game were simple.  They had to be.  If they survive a year, they win.  If they escape, they win.  However, no one had ever escaped the island, and very few survived a year. Just enough to keep people interested in entering the contest and becoming millionaires.

An ideal contestant
was approximately thirty-two years old.  They had found that the younger ones tend to take too many risks, and often wind up dying on the island, usually drowning or falling to their deaths.  Older contestants often had started developing physical problems and could not make it through the training period. 

The memory wipe
was the key to the show.  However, they did not have the technology to just erase the contestant’s knowledge of the show.  They had to wipe everything clean back to before the show was first announced.  Due to the memory wipe of the last ten years, a contestant in their early thirties would believe they are in their early twenties.  In the current season, the contestants are all thirty-two.  Physically and mentally they believe they are twenty-two.  In another five years, they would be wiping fifteen years from a thirty-two-year old’s memory, back to when they were seventeen.  Their psychologists have confirmed that the shock of waking up in such a substantially older body would not process well enough to produce a viable contestant for the show.

They
could continue to up the ages of the contestants for a few more years, but wiping a thirty-five-year old’s memory back to the age of twenty was as far as any doctor or psychologist believed feasible.  All the network executives heard, however, was that the most successful television franchise of all time was going away.  Their vision was clouded by dollar signs. 

Olivia would
, of course, be fine.  She was young, beautiful, rich, and running the biggest show on television.  When
Trial Island
finally wrapped in the next few years, she would have her pick of jobs.  Not that she would ever have to work again, but she loved the game too much to hang it up at this point in her life.  She had considered what her next project would be.  She was in the enviable position that she could choose to do whatever she wanted; sci-fi thriller, heart-wrenching drama, quirky comedy, she could choose anything.  In her heart though, she knew that she would stick with reality television, there was just too much easy money to be made for her to ignore.

Her daydream was interrupted by a knock on the door.

Her assistant, Seth, poked his head in. “Olivia?”

“Come in.”

Seth entered with a flourish.  He did very little without a flourish.  Occasionally, Olivia found this annoying.  However, he was the most fantastically organized individual she had ever met, so it was an annoyance she was willing to live with.

He stood in front of her holding his tablet
. “You’re not going to believe this.”  He paused.

“Well
, don’t keep me in suspense.  What is it?”

“Abby’s husband has an attorney.  He claims he never signed off on her participation in the show, and he’s preparing to file a lawsuit.”

Olivia stood, mouth open, dumbstruck for a moment.  “How did this get past legal?”

“Funny thing,” Seth turned his tablet so Olivia could flip through the mountains of waivers and signatures that the contestants and their spouses
had to sign off on.

“He signed off on everything here.  What’s his problem?”

“He claims that his signatures were forged, and he didn’t sign off on anything.  Why do we need the spouse to sign off on this stuff anyway?  As long as Abby is over eighteen, I don’t see what the problem would be.”

“It’s mostly for our protection.  There is such a high possibility of death, even if Abby wants to sign off on it, the great State of California requires her spouse does as well, or it opens us up to all sorts of possibilities for litigation.”

“Well, the attorney said this guy didn’t even know where his wife had been for the past couple of months until she turned up on television.  Crazy, huh?”

“Unbelievable.  What does he want?
”

“They want to talk to you.  I’m just the messenger boy,” he
said with a smile.

“They want money, that’s what they want.  That’s what they always want.  Set up a teleconference with them this afternoon.  Get in touch with legal.  Have Mike come down so we can figure this out.”

Seth cleared his throat. “Actually, they’re in the city.  They want to meet in person.  Today, if possible.”

“Well
, what did you tell them?”

“I told them I would check your calendar and get back to them.”

Olivia was in the fortunate position that her calendar was usually clear.  This was the only project she was working on at the moment, and once the show was up and in season, it basically ran itself.

“Alright, have them come in after lunch.  Let me spend some time with Mike and figure out how much this is going to cost us.”

********************

When Mike
entered the room, heads turned. It did not matter who was in the room, their heads turned. With his broad, confident shoulders, his short-cropped, light brown hair, and his well-defined cleft chin, he had been mistaken more than once for a famous quarterback turned fashion model.  Why he was an attorney behind the scenes, instead of in front of a camera, was anyone’s guess.  If asked, he often told people that the money was just as good, the hours were better, and the women where no less plentiful.  In truth, it was his opinion that actors were by and large people who had been blessed with good looks but not much in the way of brains.  He was in this position because he had both.

Life was not bad for the tall, handsome, sometimes lover of Ms. Thomas. 
Olivia mused that some women might find it difficult to work with a man in this situation, but she found that it made things easier.  She knew what buttons to push to get what she wanted when she needed to.  She did not have to do any of that today, though.  Still, she greeted him with a kiss on the cheek before they settled in to discuss the suit before them.

After the usual pleasantries, she started in, “We don’t have anyone witness this stuff when it’s being signed?”

“We actually do.  I was in the room with a half dozen of the network attorneys while we went through all the paperwork with them.  Abby had a man with her.  He had an I.D. that said Bryce Haydenson.  That is really about as far as we go when it comes to verifying that they are who they say they are.”

“Why go through all that trouble to hide this from your husband?  She’s going on the biggest program in the country.  Did she really think he wouldn’t find out?”

“I stopped trying to understand people’s motivations a long time ago.  Especially women,” he added with a wink, which Olivia ignored.

“
She never talked about her marriage even once.  It never came up in any of her back-story interviews.  Why is she trying to hide this guy?”

Mike speculated, “Must be a real prize.”

“So how much do you think it will cost us to make him go away?”

“That’s what you want to do?”

“Of course it is, Mike.  The last thing we need is for this to become a story.  Abby is one of the most well liked contestants we’ve had in years.  She’s not available to defend herself, and who knows what this guy is going to come out with.  If we make him go away, we don’t have to worry about any of that.”

“Makes sense.”  Mike thought
for a few minutes.  “Well, our best bet is to just pay him off, and quick.  If Abby is a winner in all of this, then maybe the payoff will be all for naught.  Even if she divorces him, he’s going to get half of what she wins, thanks to our antiquated laws.  But if she dies out there, that’s when this would turn into a shit-show real fast.  Just the fact that he didn’t get to sign off on liability, and she gets killed… well, that would probably be the end of the show.  Not to mention it would be a huge hit to the network.  It goes without saying that they will go after the big man hard.  When you have that many billions in assets, you might as well have a target painted on your back.”