The Rules (13 page)

“Hey!” he bellowed.

Robin and Thea were with August. Mick the bassist was there. And Praveen. They all looked at him as he staggered to a halt, dripping seawater on the floor, shaking and trembling, wiping his hand over and over on his jeans.

Larson pointed at Thea and Robin. “I saw it,” he said to them. His voice shook. “I saw the hand.” He wiped his face with his arm. “That was Cage’s hand!”

Robin paled and Thea whirled on August. “I
told
you!” she bellowed at him.

“And I told
you,
” August said, his attention fixed on Larson as he staggered over to the wall and leaned against it, panting. “I didn’t plant a fake hand in the zombie graveyard. Someone else did. Probably Cage.” He looked around as if he expected Cage to make a grand entrance.

“Where’s Beth?” Robin asked.

Larson felt a flash of guilt. “I kind of bailed on her. I freaked out. She’ll be here in a sec.”

“You left her out there?”
Robin said incredulously. She ran across the floor and leaned out through the doorway. “Beth!”

“You left her out there, too, Robin,” Larson said.

“Oh my God, people. It’s not a real hand.” August rolled his eyes. “Please.”

“It looked real,” Larson said. “And if you didn’t put it there, how can you know anything about it?”

“Yeah.” Mick gave his guitar a strum. He looked massively unimpressed.

“Have you seen Cage since the hunt began?” Praveen asked.

“No, I’m sure he and Morgan found a nice quiet spot and are doing…their own thing,” August said with a smirk.

“Maybe they’re both dead,” said Thea.

“And maybe someone’s pranking you. People
are
allowed to do that,” August rejoined.

“What’s going on?” Kyle said from the doorway. He was carrying a big red metal can with
GAS
written on the side in yellow letters. As he set it down in front of his coffin, he grinned at Robin and then smoothed back his hair. His cheeks were flushed.

August huffed. “Someone planted a fake hand and scared the newbies.”

“Are you all
insane
?” Thea cried. “Aren’t you listening? It was a hand! A real hand!”

Kyle chuckled. “Guys, really? This is how these hunts go.”

From the doorway, Robin gave her head a shake. “Beth isn’t answering me,” she said. “Something’s wrong.”

“I’m sure she’s
fine,
” said the Maximum Volume lead guitarist, Mick, who had been strumming some melody onstage.

“We don’t know that! We don’t know
anything
!” Thea shrieked.

She was right, except Larson did know one thing: that really had been Cage’s hand.

“I’m done! I want my phone and I want to leave!” Thea cried.

She spied the tarps bunched up in the corners and ran to the nearest one. “I want my phone
now
!” she yelled, ripping the tarp away. Two cardboard boxes were stacked onto a wooden crate.

“Thea,
stop,
” August said, starting to sound irritated. “You need to talk this over with Beth. She drove. And she’s your partner. Really, it’s just for fun.”

“Where did you hide the phones?”

Thea ran over to the coffin that said
PENALTY BABES
and started rooting through the black wrappings of the “corpse” August placed inside it. “I put my purse here. Where the hell is my purse?”

“Hey,” August began, and then he let out a horrible scream.

Praveen and Robin shrieked. Thea, too.

The figure in the coffin was not a robot corpse that could writhe on command. Cage Preston was swathed in black velvet, his face a pulpy, bruised mess. His nose was broken, his skin the color of eggplant and cold ashes. His swollen lips were purple, white, and blue.

As Thea backed away, she dragged the black velvet with her, exposing Cage’s body.

Where his left hand should have been was nothing but a bloody, mangled stump.

In the frenzy, Kyle dashed toward Cage’s body and collided with Larson, hard. The force spun him half around.

“Hold on, man! Hold on!” Larson yelled, grabbing Kyle, righting him.

Together, Larson and Kyle pried Cage out of the coffin and laid him on his back on the concrete floor. Larson kept shouting Cage’s name and pounding on his shoulder. Cage was completely limp and the back of his head was bashed in. Cage’s face was a mess. Kyle leaned down and snaked his hand against Cage’s neck to look for a pulse. His skin was clammy and cold, and his artery was not pumping blood.

There was no air blowing from his ruined nose.

Someone was tugging on Kyle’s sleeve. It was Robin; he didn’t want her to see, so he jumped up and threw his arms around her, dragging her away. Robin jerked around in his arms and pounded his chest. He kept her shielded as she socked him, hard; it finally registered that she wanted him to let go but he couldn’t make himself do it. She wasn’t even supposed to be here. She hadn’t been invited.

“Kyle! We have to find Beth!” she yelled.

“No, I will,” he said. “I’ll look for her. You get out of here. Go for help.
Now.
”

August and Mick were wildly pawing through the boxes that had been concealed under the other tarp. As Kyle watched, Thea ran to the pile of clues for
PENALTY BABES
and grabbed a wicked-looking knife with a long, bloody blade. She raced back toward August, and Kyle sprinted to intercept her.

“Whoa,” Kyle said as he planted himself between her and the two guys. “Hey, Thea, stop.”

“Get out of my way!” She tried to get around him but he stuck to her like a guard in basketball. “August! He bashed in Cage’s face and he cut—”

Her eyes widened; she dropped the knife and brought her hand against her chest. She stared down at the floor and then at August and Mick. Kyle made the connection that she just had: maybe that was the knife that had been used to hack off Cage’s hand.

Yellowed papers seesawed to the floor from the boxes Mick and August were tipping upside down, shaking them as hard as they could, and discarding them on the floor. Larson was still kneeling beside Cage, completely losing his mind.

“Damn it, Thea, help us,” August yelled at her. He looked at Kyle. “The phones are missing.”

“Even yours?” Thea flung at him. “You didn’t put your own phone in that basket, you bastard! You should have yours!”

“I set it down right here,” August shouted, moving to the coffin-shaped table where his headset and clipboard rested beside the two purple skulls. He turned them upside down. Black envelopes slid to the floor like oversized playing cards. “And it’s gone!”

“Hell with this. I’m getting out of here.” Mick threw the box down and ran toward the door.

“I’m going with you,” Thea cried.

“We have to get a phone. Cage needs an ambulance,” Larson said from his position beside Cage, and Kyle winced.

“No, man, no, he doesn’t,” Kyle said softly. He looked at Robin, who hadn’t left. “Go with Mick and Thea,” he said to her. “Go. I’ll find Beth.” He looked around the room. “And…everybody else.”

Her face was ashen. “Morgan. Stacy. Hiro. Drew.” Her eyes widened. “Where’s Praveen? She was just here!”

“Maybe
she
did it!” Thea trotted back toward the knife, but Larson threw himself across the floor and grabbed it. “Hey, that’s mine.”

Larson cradled it against his chest. “No, it’s not.”

Thea opened and closed her mouth. Then she glommed on to Mick, and together they crossed the room. August hurried after them but Kyle reached out and grabbed his forearm.

“Hey, we have to find the others,” Kyle said. “We can’t just bail on them.”

August shook him off. “Cage is
dead.
Someone
killed
him.” He started to catch up to Thea and Mick.

“Don’t you take one step near me,” she said, baring her teeth at him like a wild animal. “Don’t try
anything.
My boyfriend will
kill
you, August. He’ll effing kill you!”

“I didn’t do this!” August yelled.

“You sent us to the zombie graveyard to find his hand!” She whirled on her heel and she was out the door. Mick bounded after her.

Kyle heard Larson throwing up. He turned back to him as Larson straightened, wiping his mouth.

“Let’s go,” Larson said. “I left Beth down at the beach. Tide was coming in.”

“I’m going, too,” Robin said. She looked close to fainting, but she stayed on her feet.

“Okay.” Larson quickly looked around. “Hey, Heather’s not here, either. She’s been gone
forever.
”

Robin sucked in her breath. Kyle grimaced. “Heather. Right.”

“Okay”—Robin began counting on her trembling fingers—“Heather, Praveen, Morgan, Beth, Hiro, Drew, Stacy. We have seven people to find.”

Larson nodded. “And one of them might be the killer. So we go armed.” He gestured with the knife.

August ran to where the band had been playing and picked up his head mike. He tapped it to make sure it was on.

“Beth, Stacy, Hiro, Drew, Praveen, Heather, Morgan, this is an emergency. Go to the parking lot. Immediately. I repeat, go to the parking lot. Don’t screw around.”

He found the volume control and turned it as high as it would go. He repeated what he’d said. He kept saying the words over and over as Kyle, Robin, and Larson walked toward the door. “What are we going to do if we can’t find anybody?” Larson asked.

“We’re going to find them,” Robin retorted.

Or die trying,
Kyle almost said.

But he kept that thought to himself.

ROBIN’S RULE #5:
Be brave when it counts.

Kyle, Larson, and Robin headed back toward the path leading down to the water. Kyle held a large, police-style flashlight high so that the light would create a pie shape before them in the murk.

Robin froze and stared down as she watched the sea rush over the beach and smash against the bluffs. The shore had become fully submerged.

“I went down the other side of the dock,” Kyle said. “There’s a road with an old traffic barrier. That’s where I found my crowbar.”

“That’ll be underwater, too,” Robin said. “Oh my God. Beth…”

Kyle squeezed her against his hip and she wrapped both of her hands around his forearm. She remembered one of her mother’s sayings:
We are strong.
But someone was stronger. He—or she—had beaten a boy to death and cut off his hand. And Robin may have abandoned Beth to him.

“There’s an alternate way to the beach.” Larson was panting. He leaned forward on his thighs to catch his breath. “You have to go through a cave across the parking lot. I went in that way and I wound up down there. It’s really gross….”

“I saw that cave. It’s the one over there, right?” Kyle pointed toward the upper cliff, where the highway led to the gate with
ZUL
written in wrought-iron letters, and Larson nodded.

“We found it, but we didn’t go inside,” Robin said. “Let’s go.”

“Grab your crowbar first,” Larson said.

“It’s too heavy. Let’s just go,” said Kyle.

They broke into a run. Kyle had her hand in his but she had gone numb. She couldn’t feel his fingers or the ground beneath her boots. Her heart was pounding so hard it was scaring her.

About thirty feet to her right, August was raising the hood of his Porsche. She didn’t know what was up but she didn’t stop to ask.

They reached the cave and barreled inside. She smelled the blood. Kyle panned his flashlight over the vast landscape of discarded odds and ends as he, Robin, and Larson slowed to a halt.

“Dude,” Larson blurted, grabbing the flashlight and lowering it. At least two feet tall, the letters
AEDY
had been painted on the floor in what appeared to be dark brown paint.

“Holy shit, that wasn’t there before,” Larson said. He bent over the graffiti. “This could be a gang tag. I told Beth I thought a drug cartel might be using the cannery as a drop point.”

“What?”
Robin cried.

An owl hooted and she flinched, half expecting some guy with a machine gun to attack them. She thought about her family, who had no idea where she was or what had happened. The owl hooted again, almost as if it were trying to warn them.

“I’ll go on alone,” Kyle said. He took a step forward but Robin clamped on to his wrist, shaking her head.

“No way,” she said. “We’ll all go.”

His face softened and he reached up, running his fingers through her hair. They didn’t say anything. But Robin knew they had both said a lot:

We’re going to get through this. Together.

Footsteps crunched on the shell gravel just outside the mouth of the cave and the three of them whirled around, Larson raising his knife over his head. It was August, huffing and puffing. Robin had no idea how anyone could look even more freaked out, but August did.

“Guys,” August said, “we found Hiro, Drew, Stacy, and Praveen. They’re in the Maximum Volume van.” He got the funniest look on his face. “Our batteries have been stolen.”

“Batteries?” Robin said slowly, not understanding.

“Out of our cars. Our cars won’t start.”

There was a beat, and Larson moved past Kyle to stand nose to nose with August. He pushed August’s shoulder.

“What the hell, August?”

“Me?” August said.

Larson pushed him again. “Did your ‘spies’ take the batteries? Before or after they killed Cage for you?”

“Hey.” August hunched his shoulders and took a step away from Larson. The pale-faced guy glanced over at Robin, who glared back at him, and then he tried to stare Larson down. “I didn’t do any of this. And I
don’t
have any spies. I made that up, okay? So I could try to get you guys to follow the rules for once.”

“Game’s over, asshat!” Kyle yelled.

August took a deep, ragged breath and his bravado blew out of him like the last bit of air out of a party balloon. Then he looked at the letters on the floor and pointed.

“Who did that?” he asked in a flat, nervous voice.

“You didn’t?” Robin asked. He shook his head. “Does it mean anything to you?”

He nodded. “Those are my sister’s initials. Alexa Emily DeYoung.”

“Oh? More of your
I know that you screwed my sister last summer
crap?” Larson said. “Is that what this is about? Some revenge trip?”

“What are you talking about?” Robin said. She looked at August, who was shaking his head.

“I swear it. I didn’t do any of this,” August said.

Robin didn’t understand what Larson was driving at, but she didn’t have time to care. She turned to Kyle. “I’m going to look for Beth.
Now.
”

“With you,” he said.

“Give me your keys. I’ll check your cars,” August insisted.

“I came with Beth,” Robin reminded him.

“I’ll check my own car after we find the other guys,” Larson said while Kyle handed over his keys.

“But—”

“Don’t touch my car. Don’t touch any of my stuff, or I’ll kill you,” Larson snapped at August.

“Larson,” Robin said. “Easy.”

He narrowed his eyes at her. “Stay out of this, Robin. You really don’t want to piss me off.”

Her brows rose as she tried to stare him down. But he was scaring her, and she broke contact first.

“Fine,” she murmured. “I’m backing off.”

Larson huffed. “Hey, sorry, it’s just—”

“Backing off and staying well away,” she said emphatically.

Then hand in hand, she and Kyle jogged into the cave, Larson trailing after.

THEA’S RULE #3:
No one ever comes to save you.

Since Thea didn’t have Beth’s keys, she had bolted for the Maximum Volume van with Mick. It turned out that Hiro, Drew, Stacy, and Praveen were huddled inside. When they heard August on the mike, they did exactly what he said and stayed there.

That meant four of the people Robin and Kyle were looking for didn’t need to be found. Someone should tell them, but Thea totally wanted it to be someone
else.
They had to get out of there
now.
Stacy had a huge goose egg on her head from falling on the dock, and she was sick to her stomach.