Schism (18 page)

Standing now on the southwest side of the stadium, thirteen rows up from the fifteen-yard line, Ben had a good vantage point of the field and the opponent. He arrived in time to see the fifth competitor become yet another victim as several bullets entered the boy’s torso. Flinching, he turned to a bystander as the body was dragged off the field. “How many so far?”

“Five,” the bystander replied as the noise of the crowd began to die down.

“All boys?”

“Yeah, but I heard there’s supposed to be a girl tonight. I think she’s the last one, so she’s probably next.”

Suddenly, the crowd began to make noise as the next and final competitor stepped onto the field. Though she was more than a hundred yards away, Ben could tell instantly by her stature and gait that it was Andy.

Chapter XV

A
fter passing through the end of the dark and dingy tunnel, Andy emerged onto the field and was greeted by the jeering crowd. In the distance, the latest victim of “One Shot” was being dragged off by two of the referees. As she crossed the field, she passed her opponent who was waiting for her to get into position. Tall and broad-shouldered, he gave her a cold look of indifference before reloading his weapon.

Her heart was pounding so fast that she could feel the blood pulse through her head, her neck, and even the arteries in her wrists. The noise of the crowd behind her was thunderous. Her eardrums were not accustomed to the onslaught, and a sudden flash of her discussion with Morgan months earlier in New Mexico resurfaced.

Where could everyone be?

Everyone was in Los Angeles, where more than fifty thousand people had flocked to the Coliseum and were now cheering in anticipation of her death.

Daylight was long gone, but the lights of the stadium kept the field well lit. As she approached midfield, Andy swore she heard someone calling out her name. Her eyes darted all around, but there were too many people. Or her nerves had tricked her hearing. In her right hand still handcuffed to her left, she held the pistol. A referee approached her and snatched it out of her hands. As he placed one round in the chamber, her eyes narrowed on him with a mixture of contempt and disbelief.

“You like watching people die? Haven’t you seen enough death?”

The referee smirked as he handed her back her pistol and quickly returned to the sidelines.

Alone amongst thousands, Andy looked up at the scoreboard. It still read “00:58” from the end of the previous round. She moved slowly past midfield, her heart pumping two hundred beats a minute.

This is how I die…

Her palms were sweating profusely, and she switched the pistol from her right hand to her left to dry her trigger hand on the jeans she’d been wearing for four days.

I will die in these clothes…these dirty jeans, this filthy shirt…my hands bound together like an animal…

As her palm pressed firmly against the right front pocket, she felt something small and hard by the outer seam. As she continued her death march to the ten-yard line, she reached inside and retrieved a small object. When she looked to see what it was, she stopped. It was a single bullet. She had shoved it into her pocket during her last hunting trip in Colorado, where it had remained hidden.

The tiny object created such an intense spark of hope as an idea formed in her mind. Careful not to be seen by one of the referees, she stuck the bullet inside her mouth underneath her tongue. Then she marched, more quickly now, to her position on the ten-yard line.

Before turning to face her opponent and the surrounding crowd, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened her eyes and saw the scoreboard, it read “02:00.”

***

As Andy crossed the fifty-yard line, the noise of the crowd swelled. Ben cried out her name three times before giving up. His view of the field was blocked as people’s arms started flailing about. Frantic, he shoved his way between the spectators to get closer to the field, but the first four rows were packed so tightly that it was impossible to go any further.

With time running out, Ben made a split-second decision and scrambled toward the aisle and up the staircase to a less crowded row. He shot a quick look at the press box above him and saw that there were people inside. Probably the unseen controllers of the game. While crossing from Section 9 to 8, he saw Andy approach the ten-yard line. There wasn’t enough time. He weaved through the crowd to Section 7, cursing at people who refused to move.

The scoreboard flickered “02:00.”

He escaped to the outer edge of the crowd at midfield. As he turned and bounded down the stairs dividing Section 7 in half, he heard the first shot of gunfire, then many more in rapid succession. A riotous roar exploded from the crowd. Panicking, he looked up and saw Andy lying on the ground, unmoving.

Collapsing to the ground as his rifle fell beside him, Ben’s shoulders slumped and began to quiver.

***

When the first shot went off, Andy bolted to the right, immediately aimed at the opponent, and released her single round. She continued to sprint as a burst of fire flew at her. A bullet grazed her back, but adrenaline masked any pain. She fell to the ground, rolled over once in the overgrown grass, and came to a stop on her right side.

As the crowd roared, she maneuvered the bullet inside her mouth and spat it out. With the pistol still in her right hand, she retrieved the bullet with her left. She discreetly exposed the gun’s chamber and inserted the bullet.

She sensed someone approaching but forced her eyes to stare straight ahead into a dead-man’s gaze. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw feet approaching. It had to be the opponent, the large, husky young man. He was within yards of her now.

Not yet…

Two more steps…

Wait…wait…

Then like a jack-in-the-box, she sprung upright and faced her opponent squarely and so quickly that he didn’t react. Her arms were already outstretched with the front sight of the pistol aimed directly at his forehead. She pulled the trigger.

The sound of the bullet shattered the drone of the crowd.

The opponent flew violently backward and fell to the ground with an audible thud. The shot had struck right between the eyes.

A strange silence fell over the stadium. Even she sat frozen for a long moment, her arms still holding the pistol in the same position she’d fired it. A voice inside her head urged her to move. She scrambled to her feet, awkwardly tucked the pistol into the side of her jeans, and grabbed the rifle lying next to the dead man.

Suddenly, gunfire erupted off to her left, disrupting her tunnel vision. Her head spun wildly around.

“Andy!”

The sound of her name was jarring until she realized it was Ben heading toward her after he mortally wounded two referees to reach her. He grabbed her left arm and pulled her toward the end zone behind her, but the sight of him paralyzed her.

“Ben! What…?” she stammered.

But there was no time. He yanked at her arm again more forcefully. “Run, Andy! Run!”

Regaining her senses, her feet began to move, and she followed closely behind him as he ran under the goal post and up the steps leading to the center arch beneath the Olympic Rings.

The remaining referees ran after them as the unruly crowd began spilling over the sides of the barrier and onto the field. They scrambled up the steps as the referees began firing after them with their own weapons, each widely missing his mark. At the top of the steps, Ben continued to sprint beyond the outer gate with Andy only mere strides behind. He looked back once to check that she was keeping up with him.

At the top of the steps was a locked gate with a single padlock. Ben took aim and fired at it twice, but it remained intact. “Dammit!” he growled before firing once more. The lock broke and he shoved the gate open.

Andy looked back and saw the shadows of people reaching the top of the steps. “Go!” she yelled. More shots were fired as they ran through a cluster of trees off to their left, concealing them briefly in the darkness.

They sprinted nearly a mile, weaving through the streets of the campus until they reached Ben’s truck. Minutes later, they were heading north on I-110 and exiting onto the San Bernardino Freeway. Finally safe, the city passed by them in the dark. Neither spoke for many miles. They turned north onto I-15 and left the City of Angels behind.

***

“Are you hurt?” Ben asked.

“No…no, I’m fine,” said Andy.

Her voice was flat and barely above a whisper. She was staring down at her hands as an uncontrollable barrage of visions began to fill her head, and when she closed her eyes, she saw herself pulling the trigger, her opponent flying backward. She heard the boy’s voice saying to her,
I’ll see you soon
.

“I thought you got shot.”

At the sound of Ben’s voice, Andy opened her eyes and stared straight ahead as the truck’s high beams illuminated the darkness of the highway just before it enveloped them.

“No. Faked it.”

But as she said this, Ben turned to her and saw in the dim light a bloodstain on her back near her shoulder. “Are you sure?”

He glanced once at the road before taking a closer look. A nearly four-inch square section of her T-shirt was soaked with blood. He reached for it with his right hand, but she jerked away the moment he touched her.

“Sorry, sorry,” he repeated, pulling his hand away.

Shaking now, she looked over her left shoulder. She couldn’t see anything, so she reached behind with both hands, as they were still cuffed, and winced as her finger hit the wound.

“Let me stop so I can get a better look,” he said as he began to slow down.

“No, keep going. It’s nothing.”

But he was already applying the brakes. He didn’t bother pulling onto the shoulder. No one else was on the road.

“I said it’s nothing,” she insisted.

“You don’t know that, you can’t see it.”

Andy sighed with annoyance but kept quiet as Ben put the truck into park and turned on the overhead light. Then he carefully pulled downward at the collar of her T-shirt, but this only caused further pain.

“Here, lift up your shirt in the back.”

She gave him a look.

“C’mon, I just want to make sure there’s not a bullet lodged in your shoulder.”

Agitated, she pulled her T-shirt completely over her head so that she was wearing only her bra. She groaned.

“You didn’t have to pull it over your head.”

“Just look at it already!”

With one hand, Ben brushed her long hair away from the wound and gently felt around her shoulder with the other. Andy tensed beneath his hands from the pain, but she remained still and didn’t make a sound.

“It’s just a graze. A deep graze, but that’s all. You’ll have a scar.”

She heard the relief in his voice, but he still insisted on treating the wound right then. She made no objection and even began to relax as he used the contents of the first aid kit he kept behind the seat to clean out the gash and cover it with gauze.

“That’ll do for now. We’ll change it when we get to Santa Rosa.”

“Santa Rosa?” Andy repeated as she put her shirt back on.

Ben got the truck moving again before answering. “We left Aspen after you got taken. No one could stay once we found out that Mikhail and Garrett had traded you for drugs.”

“Drugs? They traded me for drugs?”

He nodded and then turned to his left and muttered, “Everyone wants drugs.”

“So Morgan and Charlie are in New Mexico?”

“By now, yeah. Jim, too. They’re meeting up with Maria.”

“What about Brian and Susan?”

“They’re staying in Aspen through the winter. They’ll join us in the spring.”

“What about their farm? They’ll just leave it behind?”

“Yes. They’ll leave it behind.”

“Poor Brian. That farm means so much to him,” she murmured.

With this remark, Ben slammed on the brakes until the truck came to an abrupt stop once again on the dark, lonely stretch of I-15. Andy let out a yelp as her body flew forward, straining the seat belt across her chest.

“Poor Brian? Poor
Brian
? Are you
kidding
me?”

“What the hell…?” she snapped back as she steadied herself.

He turned off the engine before squaring his body to hers. He grabbed the shoulder of her seat, leaned forward, and stared into her eyes. “Andy, I just spent the last two days and nights running after you. Do you have any idea how difficult it was to find you? Do you know what kind of people I had to beg information from?”

“So what? You want a gold star or something? I just spent the last
four
days in a tiny room while being drugged just so that I could end up shot to death like a wild animal in front of thousands of crazy people!” Her voice had become hysterical, but she didn’t stop. “And now you expect me to
thank
you? For what? For saving me? Well, guess what, Ben!
I
saved me…
I
did!
I
shot that guy right between the eyes!
I
killed him!”