Wicked Games (3 page)

Dean looked chagrined as I wobbled my way over to stand next to him, and Heidi moved to the Old Biker Guy's side, looking equally confused that her hotness had been passed up for the lump of humanity known as myself.

“Welcome to Endurance Island,” Chip shouted again, a phrase I was already getting tired of hearing. “Your maps to your camps are tied to your flags. Head there and we'll see you at the next challenge!”

Dean turned and glanced back at me, giving me his lopsided white smile, no doubt carefully calculated to make hearts flutter and panties descend. “Looks like it's just you and me for the next few days.”

“Great,” I said in a tone of voice that was anything but. “Now do you want to tell me why you picked me instead of Heidi?”

He glanced over at her once, then flicked a dismissive gaze back to me. “She can't swim for shit.”

Huh. I have to admit that made me speechless, just a little.

“And besides,” he said as he picked up our tribe flag (lucky number eleven). “You're the one with the peanut butter. And now it's
our
peanut butter.”

Obviously the peanut butter was a bigger asset camp than I was.

You know, it's funny. All the other girls on this island look like they'd love to spend a few days alone with me. Abby looks at me as if she'd like to take my axe and gut me like a fish. Weirdest chick I've ever met. Decent swimmer, though. Let's hope she doesn't totally blow it during challenges. -- Dean Woodall, Day 2.

~*~

We didn't speak as we hiked along the island. Myself, I couldn't come up with anything civil (and I suspected he had the same problem) so we trekked through the sand and brush in silence. We'd passed by a few other camps – ours was on the far side of the island thanks to our poor number selection. The castaways that had chosen even numbers were hauled off by boat to another nearby island.

Camera-men fluttered in and out of the woods, following us. Since we'd already been instructed to ignore them, I'd done my best to do so. Even now, they were starting to blend in with the scenery, despite the fact that they were constantly jumping a few yards in front of us and filming.

“I see the camp up ahead,” Dean said eventually, and I lifted my head to look where he was pointing. Sure enough, a red flag with a bright 11 fluttered near the beach. As we came upon the flag, I frowned. Endurance island was truly going to be an endurance, all right. The flag was planted in the sand in the middle of nowhere, and the only thing that told us that this was our camp was a small cast-iron cook pot and a tiny bag of rice next to it.

Dean paused at the sight of it as well. “Home sweet home, I suppose.” He glanced backward at me.

I bit my lip. It was either that, or start screaming.

“I guess the budget must have been cut for this season,” I joked. “No four-star resort for us.”

“This is about endurance and surviving against the elements,” Dean replied in a scathing voice. “What did you expect?”

I glared at the back of his head as he tromped off through the bushes. “Asshole.” This was going to be the longest two months of my life, easily.

Despite the jerkoff that was my partner, they couldn't have picked a lovelier location for the filming. Gentle waves lapped against the shore, and the sand that edged the water was smooth and pale and seamless. Palm trees rustled overhead, swishing in the wind coming off of the water, and all around me was the green of vegetation and the blue of the ocean. It was lovely.

Dean was nowhere to be found. Our cameraman had run down the beach to try and find him – it was just me.

Paradise. I smiled and drank in the air.

Of course, the whole 'paradise' realization left me when, after admiring the setting sun for a few minutes, I noticed rain clouds in the distance. And realized that as pretty as our small cove was, there was also zero shelter to be found. My stomach started to growl.

We had no fire. No shelter. My small bag of clothing was soaked, my shoes were squishing on my feet, and I was terribly thirsty. Time to set up camp, I supposed. I picked a somewhat-protected spot with a few overhanging trees and used a fallen branch to rake the sand, trying to clean out a wide enough spot clear of debris for a fire and a shelter. By the time that was done, I was sweating and dirty and gross, and had managed to clear off a decent-sized spot.

Dean sauntered back at some point, and stood in the distance, watching me. He held a crude bucket in his hands. “I found the water well.” He held it out to me. “Brought you a drink.”

I eyed him uneasily. That was almost too nice of him to be believed. “Thanks,” I said in a cool voice, and took the bucket from him. “Is it safe to drink?”

“I'll find out in about a half hour,” he said with a half-grimace.

Fair enough. I took a few cautious sips, then returned it to him. “We should try and boil the rest, just to be on the safe side.”

“And what are we going to boil it with?” he asked, taking the bucket back from me. “Our hands? Magic?”

“How about that nasty temper of yours?” I snapped back. “It seems to be boiling over a lot lately.”

“Well, can you blame me?” He gave me a disgusted look and gestured at our pathetic camp. “I was gone for over an hour and I come back and you haven't even attempted to start a fire of any kind. What exactly have you been doing?”

“Setting up camp!”

He took an over-exaggerated look around and spread his arms wide. “Wow, it looks amazing. I especially like the lodge you've set up. That's incredible.”

“Don't be sarcastic, you ass. I was clearing off the sand so we'd have someplace decent to actually set up. If you want to sleep on a bunch of rocks and branches, you're more than welcome to! I, however, am going to finish making a decent shelter.”

“Finish! You haven't even started, sweetheart.”

“And I never will if you don't leave me alone!” By this time, I was shouting, gesturing in his face as much as he was gesturing in mine. “Why don't you go do something manly and go kill something for dinner?”

That seemed to surprise him. “Why don't we just eat your peanut butter?”

I shook my head. “Absolutely not. That's mine. You got an axe, I got peanut butter.”

His mouth curled into a sneer that still made him sexier than he should have been. “Is that how we're going to do it then? What's yours is yours and what's mine is mine?”

“If that's how you want to be, fine! That is exactly how we can do it,” I huffed. Fuck him if he thought I was going to share my peanut butter with him, when all he did was yell in my face. “You keep to your side of the camp and I'll keep to mine, and we'll see who's better off, won't we?”

“Works for me.” Dean stomped off to the middle of the small area that I'd cleared and dug his heel down in the center. “We'll build our firepit here. You can stay on that side, and I'll stay on the other.”

“That's fine with me,” I said in my iciest voice. “And are you going to make a fire?”

“Why, no I'm not,” he said with a drawl. “I'm going to go see if I can find myself something to eat.”

“Fine then!”

“Fine!”

We glared at each other for a minute longer, and then he stormed off again, tearing through the brushy leaves at the outskirts of camp and spraying sand with each furious step he took. As he left, I caught a glimpse of the cameraman, a delighted look on his face as he filmed me standing in camp.

Hell, he'd just caught everything. How embarrassing. My cheeks flushed with color, I turned away and began to head into the brushy jungle to see what I could find.

Dean had taken the axe with him, so I was forced to do everything by hand. I'd managed to find a few fallen tree branches that would be large enough and straight enough to serve as base-boards for the bed I was going to create. I used some more equally long wood that I placed crosswise, forming a really sorry, hard, and uncomfortable bed two feet off the ground. But at least it was off the sand (which I suspected would be crawling with sand fleas and crabs as soon as the sun went down).

To make up for the discomfort of my bed, I grabbed as much loose greenery and palm fronds as I could, stacking them all into a makeshift bed. When I had several feet of padding on the bed, I climbed onto it and tested it out. Just as I had predicted, the palm fronds flattened within an inch or two, and I was left with a moderately fluffy bed. It'd do for now.

By the time the sun had set entirely, I had gathered enough wood for a fire and dug out the fire pit, but I was too tired to even attempt fire on my own. I lay on my narrow bed (just wide enough to fit my body) and stared up at the intensely beautiful stars overhead, using my bag – hard can of peanut butter and all – as a pillow.

It was unnerving to lay in the darkness, all alone, with things inching and creeping and rustling as things on a deserted island were wont to do. I tried not to think about how I didn't have a roof over my head, or any real protection from anything. I supposed I could drag a palm leaf over my head if it rained, but if anything tried to attack? I was pretty much laid out to snack on, a human pu pu platter.

The underbrush rustled in an alarming way and I glanced up from my bed to see Dean returning to camp, flipping the axe in his hands in an almost-frustrated fashion. I couldn't see his face, but his shoulders seemed tense, and I was a little more gleeful than I should have been. He hadn't found anything to eat either. I patted the jar of peanut butter under my ear. I was hungry right now, but not so hungry that I'd break into my stash. It could wait until tomorrow.

He fumbled around in the darkness. “No fire, I see.”

“Nope.”

I'm sure he wanted to say more, but he didn't. In the distance I saw the small red dots signifying that our camera-man was still there, filming, and I glanced over at Dean again. He was shaking out something long and thick and it rustled like fabric...a blanket? I sat upright on my hard, rustling bed. “Where did you get that?”

In the thick darkness, I could just about make out that he was laying it on the ground underneath him, and then curled up in it to sleep. “It's my prize. You know, like the peanut butter is yours. And just like that, it's not for sharing.”

Bastard. I rubbed my arms, covered in goosebumps. At least he had more than a few pink bikinis to wear, and it was getting chilly. Everything else I had was laying out flat, though, as I tried to dry them off for tomorrow. Shoes, pants, everything still had a damp cast to them. “I don't need your blanket,” I retorted. “It's not that cold.”

“Not yet,” he agreed in a too-amiable voice. “Good night.”

Irritated, I flopped back down on my palm leaves and tried to get comfortable.

It was the longest, most miserable night of my life. Dean was right – it did get cold. Extremely cold – to the point that I'd put back on all my damp clothing in the hopes that it would help protect me from the elements – not so much. It got even worse somewhere in the middle of the night when the weather broke and it began to sprinkle. My teeth chattered as I shivered on top of the palm leaves.

At least Dean wasn't much better. All night, I could hear him rustling and itching, and I knew that the sand fleas and the crabs and other creepy-crawly things were driving him insane. I doubted he slept much either. Of course, I wasn't about to invite him up on my bed. Screw him. There wasn't enough room anyhow, and I wasn't about to hug my enemy close all night, even if he did have a lot of body heat.

Morning crawled around an infinite amount of hours later, and with it, a slight warming to the air. Just enough that my teeth stopped chattering, but not enough to revive me. I felt wrung out and exhausted, and dirty. I glanced over at Dean on the far side of our small camp, and his short hair stuck up at weird angles, and he looked equally as wrung out as I was.

Good. At least I wasn't alone in my misery. He nodded over at something in the distance. “What's that?”

I looked behind me to where he was pointing. Sometime in the middle of the night, someone in the production crew had stolen into our camp. A small red box had shown up on a stump at the edge of camp. I wandered over to it, peeling a damp palm leaf off the back of my leg. “Tribal Summons” the lid read. “Challenge today.”

I groaned and threw it back down. “Bad news.”

Something's got to give. Either Abby and I need to start working together, or I'm going to have to kill her and eat her. That's a joke, by the way. -- Dean Woodall, Day 2 Interview

~*~

A small boat came by to pick us up and take us to the Challenge Island. I wore my tankini and my still water-swollen sneakers (thanks to the rain) and kept my bag between my feet, since the message had instructed for us to bring our possessions.

“Elimination Round,” Dean had said, and I didn’t bother to let him know that I thought he was right.

We arrived just as the other teams did. Twelve tables were set up at the far end of the beach, each one a different color. Each team walked up to their table and planted their flag, then turned to the host, awaiting instructions.

“Hey everyone! Did we all sleep well?” Chip flashed us a cheerful smile. “How was your first night on the beach?”

“It was marvelous,” Shanna drawled on the end. “Leon is a great partner.”

“Everyone having a good time with their partners, then?” Chip’s gaze swung down the line and focused on me.

“Just peachy,” I said in a flat voice.

“Partnership,” Chip rang out in a condescending voice. “It’s so important in a survival situation, and it is what today’s challenge is about! Each team is going to paint a series of pictures on a series of flags that you see before you. These pictures will be items that pertain to the history of the Cook Islands and to the native people. You will have five minutes to complete as many flags as possible, as accurately as possible. A judge will then be brought around, and will determine which two groups have the worst flags. Those two groups will go to Judgment tonight, where the other teams will decide which one to vote out. Understood?”