The Call of the Mild p-3 Read online

  The Triton Players, for reasons Gus couldn’t begin to figure out, had gone back into character. The four servers marched in formation, rifles slung across their shoulders, behind Bron Helstrom. It would have been a more convincing performance without their leader, who did his best approximation of a military stride for as many as five steps at a time, then sank to his knees gasping for breath. In the spirit of improvisation, his troops would surround him, weapons at the ready, every time he stopped for air, but Gus could see why Helstrom hadn’t accompanied them on the earlier hike.

  At least Shawn was in a much better mood. His shoulders were loose and relaxed, and the spring was back in his step. His step was so springy, in fact, that Gus practically had to run to keep up with him.

  “So who was it?” Gus said.

  “Kristin,” Shawn said.

  “Who’s Kristin?” Gus said.

  “J.R.’s devious sister-in-law and mistress,” Shawn said. “Or did you mean who shot Mr. Burns? Because that was just stupid.”

  “I meant who was the one who knew the safe word all along and didn’t use it?” Gus said.

  “Oh, that,” Shawn said. “It’s got to be Mathis. He had to know that as soon as the play was revealed, the rest of them would refuse to stay in the mountains any longer, and he was the only one who had any reason to keep us all here.”

  “Oh, good,” Gus said. “We’re trapped a zillion miles away from civilization with a mad killer and an insane FBI agent who now has two reasons to want us dead.”

  “Yup,” Shawn said. He didn’t seem to be troubled by Gus’ assessment of the situation. He didn’t seem to be troubled by anything at all.

  “What are you so cheerful about?” Gus said.

  “What’s not to be?” Shawn said. “We defeated an armed band of terrorists and freed all the hostages-including ourselves.”

  “Except they weren’t terrorists and we weren’t really hostages,” Gus pointed out.

  “Which makes it even better,” Shawn said. “It had all the sense of doom and incipient panic of a real kidnapping with none of the actual danger. Which means it’s like riding the roller coasters at Magic Mountain, only with less danger of being hit by a stray bullet.”

  “We’re still stuck in the mountains,” Gus said.

  “Not for long,” Shawn corrected him. “Because as soon as we get back to the original campsite, you’re going to see seven emergency beacons going off at once.”

  It was more than two hours before they made it back to the meadow, but as soon as they stepped off the trail Gus was delighted to see that the tents were still standing, along with the entire kitchen setup. Suddenly he realized they hadn’t eaten since last night’s dinner, and he was starving. Even the sight of the “dead bodies” lying in the middle of the camp-in the bright daylight, now clearly pillows dressed as waiters, with burst ketchup cans for heads-couldn’t dampen his appetite.

  But food was far from the first thing the lawyers were thinking of. They exploded across the meadow like sprinters at the gun, each one racing to grab one of the emergency beacons that dangled off the line of backpacks sitting next to the supply tent.

  All of them except Mathis. He ran, too, and he got to the packs before the rest of them, trying to position himself in such a way that the others couldn’t get around him. It might have worked, too, if he’d been three times as wide as he was tall. Or if his gun hadn’t been lying at the bottom of a sylvan spring.

  “Don’t do this,” Mathis implored the others as they grabbed for the packs. “Let’s complete the retreat.”

  “I have finished,” Savage said. He reached for a pack, but Mathis pushed him away.

  “We’ve all finished,” Gwendolyn said, grabbing for a pack on the other side of the line. Mathis made it down in time to block her. But as he did so, Balowsky sidled in behind him and yanked one of the yellow plastic cylinders off a pack.

  “I’m warning you,” Mathis said. “Do not open that beacon.”

  “Why are you so interested in keeping us in the mountains, Mathis?” Savage said.

  “It was our assignment,” Mathis said. “We made a contract with Rushton.”

  “Under duress,” Jade said. “And that contract said nothing about fake kidnappings. If anyone violated the agreement it was Rushton. And since we can’t launch our suits until we get back to town, it’s time to go.”

  Balowsky took the body of the cylinder in one hand and grabbed the cap at its bottom with the other. Then he gave the cap a savage twist.

  Gus realized he didn’t have any idea what would happen. If he’d tried to picture it in his mind, the image would have been the cylinder Klaatu pulls out in the original The Day the Earth Stood Still, the one that erupts into spiny blades before an overeager soldier shoots it out of his hand, thus preventing the president from seeing what life is like on other planets.

  The last thing Gus expected to happen was what did. When Balowsky screwed off the bottom of the cylinder, three tiny pink objects, each about the size of the nail on Gus’ pinkie, dropped to the grass.

  “What the hell is that?” Gwendolyn demanded as Balowsky turned the cylinder over and peered in, looking for any signs of advanced electronics.

  Shawn and Gus walked over and looked down at the three objects on the ground. At first Gus thought they might be pebbles, or some kind of pellet. But as he looked closer, he realized they weren’t round. They were heart-shaped. He knew what these were-and they weren’t about to send an electronic signal anywhere.

  “I believe they’re called Sweethearts,” Shawn said, bending down and scooping them into his hand. “Sort of like a nineteenth-century version of the Kindle, only they never really caught on as a reading device because each piece of candy can fit only one word, so if you wanted to take Moby Dick on the train, you’d need something like ten thousand pounds of the things. But they’re very good for delivering shorter messages, like I LOVE YOU or BE MINE.”

  Gus stared down at the three candy hearts in Shawn’s hand. He read the words over and over again, arranging them in every possible combination, hoping against hope that there was a second way to read the message that Rushton had sent to his employees. There wasn’t. There was only one way to order the hearts so that they made any sense at all.

  “Or,” Gus said finally, “YOU’RE FIRED, LOSER.”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  It took only seconds for the other lawyers to tear open the rest of the “beacons” and discover that each one contained nothing but the same three candy hearts.

  “There were no beacons,” Balowsky said.

  “No wonder you were first in your class at Moron State Law School,” Gwendolyn said. “Thank you for pointing out what is agonizingly obvious to everyone.”

  “What’s happening?” Jade wailed. “Did Rushton send us out here to die?”

  “Almost everyone,” Gwendolyn said. “I almost forgot our remedial student.”

  “Nobody’s going to die,” Mathis barked, his hand flicking out of habit to pull out the gun that hadn’t been there in close to twenty-four hours. He moved towards Helstrom with the kind of menace only an FBI lifer can muster. “What was the plan?”

  “The plan?” Helstrom said, taking a step back. “We weren’t exactly going to take this show to Broadway, if that’s what you mean.”

  “How were you getting out of here?” Mathis barked. “How were you supposed to signal Rushton when your little skit was over so he could have you picked up?”

  Helstrom dug in his pocket and pulled out a yellow plastic cylinder. He twisted open the bottom and let three candy hearts fall into his open palm.

  “Mine say, HAVE FUN WALKING,” Helstrom said.

  Mathis looked like he was wanted to throttle someone. “This is not acceptable,” he said. “I am going to get us out of here.”

  “What are you going to do, flap your arms really hard and fly us all down the mountain?” Gwendolyn said.

  “I’m an FBI agent,” Mathis said. He pulled
out his wallet and flashed his badge at them.

  The lawyers looked at him, stunned.

  “Did Rushton know?” Savage said.

  “He was cooperating in an ongoing investigation,” Mathis said.

  “Apparently we’ve found the limits to his cooperation,” Balowsky said.

  “So what’s the FBI going to do for us?” Gwendolyn said. “Can you contact your field office and have them send a chopper?”

  “I could-if I had a cell phone,” Mathis said.

  “That’s great,” Balowsky said. “An FBI agent with no gun, no cell phone, and no backup. That’s almost as useless as a psychic.”

  “Excuse me?” Shawn said. “Are you talking about me?”

  “I do believe he is talking about you,” Gus said.

  “And he’s calling me useless?”

  “He is calling you useless. And not for the first time, I believe.”

  “I have thousands of uses,” Shawn said. “I slice, I dice, I chop. I can cut a tomato so thin it has only one side. And I get rid of the slimy egg whites in your scrambled egg.”

  “But wait, there’s more,” Gus said. Then he whispered to Shawn, “There is more, isn’t there?”

  “There’s always more,” Shawn said. “I can speak to the spirits of the mountain.”

  “As long as we don’t have to listen,” Mathis said. “We’ve got grown-up work to do.”

  “You go ahead and do what you need to,” Shawn said. “We’ll be quiet.”

  “Fine,” Mathis said. “First thing we need is-”

  Shawn let out a low moan that quickly ascended to a piercing shriek. “What’s that, spirit of the mountains?” he howled. “You can show us the way out of here? You can send me a vision?”

  “Now our lives are supposed to depend on his visions?” Balowsky said. “Can anyone picture a scenario in which we’re not all dead?”

  “What’s that?” Shawn said loudly, cupping a hand to his ear. “You say you already sent me a vision of the way out of here? And all I need to do is reach out and touch it?”

  Shawn stretched his hands out in front of him and took one staggering step forward.

  “You might want to step out of his way,” Gus said. “When he’s possessed by a vision, he might as well be a zombie.”

  But the lawyers were in a huddle and barely glanced up from their conversation. Only Gwendolyn could be bothered to expend the necessary energy to express her contempt with a sneer. Until Shawn lurched forward and started to run towards them, his eyes still squeezed shut, arms waving furiously in front of him.

  Gus cleared his throat loudly. “A zombie in an old George Romero movie,” he said. “The ones that stagger along slowly. Because the zombies in newer movies go so fast they might run right off a cliff.”

  Shawn slowed down immediately, sneaking a quick peek through squinted eyelids to make sure he wasn’t about to plummet to his doom. He wasn’t, although he was close to a fatal impaling on the daggers Gwendolyn was shooting out of her eyes.

  Shawn corrected his course and staggered towards the packs. His body jerked left and right, then fell forwards onto the one bright green pack in the line. He shoved his hand under the top flap, dug around in the freeze-dried food and the clothes, and came out clutching a fan-folded piece of paper.

  “Thank you, spirit of the mountains,” Shawn said to the sky, then looked at the topographical map he was holding. “As I said, I have a vision of the way to get out of here.”

  “That’s mine!” Jade squealed. “Oliver Rushton entrusted it to me. No one else is supposed to look at it, or even know I have it.”

  “I stopped caring about what Rushton wants a while back,” Balowsky said. “Something about seeing my life about to end gave me a new perspective on things.”

  “Give me the map,” Mathis commanded.

  “So you can destroy it?” Gwendolyn said. “We haven’t forgotten you were the one who didn’t want us to use the beacons.”

  “I’ve changed my mind,” Mathis said. “You can use them all you want. But I need that map.”

  “We all need the map,” Savage said. “Don’t you understand? We’re all in this together. There’s no reason to bicker here. We are stronger together than we are divided. We’ll all go down the mountain together, and we’ll live as a group. If we bicker, we’ll all die.”

  “That sounds familiar,” Gwendolyn said. “Oh, wait, it’s the same crap Rushton was spewing when he sent us up here. Makes me wonder whose side you’re on.”

  “I’m on my side,” Savage said. “Which means I’m on all our sides. Because we have only one side. What other agenda could there possibly be?”

  The lawyers all cast furtive looks at one another, as if trying to ascertain their colleagues’ motives. Until Shawn let out another moan.

  “O, spirit of the mountain,” he cried, waving the map up at the sky. “Do not tell me about these other agendas. Don’t say that one of us refused to use the safe word to free us from the terrorizing acting troupe, proving that his or her loyalty remains with Rushton. Don’t insist another one of us wants us to stay here until he’s caught his suspect. And please, please don’t whisper in my ear that there are people among us who would be happy to let the majority get lost in the mountains if they thought it would advance their own position to arrive far in advance of the others.”

  Shawn pressed the map to his forehead, then dropped his hands to his sides and called out to Helstrom, who was inventorying food supplies with his acting troupe. “You guys got a menu figured out yet? Because I’m good with anything that doesn’t require ketchup.”

  He turned back to see the lawyers all staring at him. “What’s up?” he said to them.

  “What did he say?” Gus said.

  “Who?”

  “The spirit of the mountains.”

  “Oh, nothing,” Shawn said. “Apparently I didn’t leave him anything to talk about.”

  The lawyers looked away, disgusted, and went back to arguing among themselves. Except for Mathis, who marched up to Shawn.

  “I am ordering you to surrender that map,” Mathis said.

  “Just as soon as we’re done with it,” Shawn said.

  “You are going to let a murderer escape,” Mathis said. “And I will see that you are charged as an accessory after the fact.”

  “My mother always said don’t be afraid to accessorize,” Shawn said.

  “I think that was Tim Gunn,” Gus said.

  “Really?” Shawn said. “I keep getting those two confused.”

  Mathis’ face, already red with sunburn, crimsoned even more. “You’d better know what you’re doing.”

  “I don’t see why,” Shawn said. “I never have before, and it’s worked for me so far.”

  Across the camp, a bell rang. Bron Helstrom was summoning them to the table. The smell of charbroiled steaks hit them right after the clang of the bell.

  “I think that concludes the conversation part of this evening’s entertainment,” Shawn said. “It’s time for food.”

  Chapter Forty-Five

  “Of course,” Shawn said once he and Gus were back in their tent, safely nestled among the down pillows and feather beds, “when you’re with a bunch of lawyers, the conversation portion of the entertainment is never truly over.”

  Gus couldn’t argue with that-except maybe over the part about entertainment. He hadn’t found anything amusing about the conversation that had taken place at the dinner table. Well, maybe the beginning, when the lawyers were so intent on cramming as much food as possible into their mouths that their cogent legal arguments, witty retorts, and dire personal insults were all reduced to a mess of indecipherable consonants and the occasional projectile of beef lingually launched across the table.

  But once the appetites had been partially sated and etiquette had been restored to the group, the conversation quickly spiraled down into paranoid accusations and angry threats.

  For the most part, Shawn and Gus stayed out of the tabl
e talk. For one thing, this meal, although much more quickly put together than last night’s, was even better than the one from the night before. Neither of them felt compelled to use their mouths for anything less pleasurable than eating.

  And of course Shawn and Gus didn’t have to contribute to a discussion of who would hold on to the map. They would, and there didn’t seem to be any compelling reason to change that situation.

  Even now that everyone had retired to their tents, Shawn and Gus could still hear isolated pockets of bickering coming from across the camp as a killer argument occurred to one of the lawyers just before they all fell asleep.

  Gus waited until several minutes had passed since the last triumphant exclamation, and then he whispered to Shawn, “So what is our plan?”

  “Sleep,” Shawn muttered.

  “Yes, we’ll go to sleep in a minute,” Gus said. He was exhausted, too, but he knew he’d spend a much more pleasant night if he had an idea what to expect in the morning. “But first, what’s our plan?”

  “Sleep is our plan,” Shawn said.

  “How can sleep be a plan?” Gus said.

  “It can’t, if you keep talking,” Shawn said, pulling his pillow around his ears. Within seconds he’d started to snore.

  Gus lay awake trying to work out options for the next day. But even before he could form bullet points in his head, he was snoring, too.

  When he woke up, the sun was streaming through the light nylon of the tent. And he discovered that Shawn’s plan was not bad at all. He felt infinitely better than he had the night before. He rolled over to see that Shawn was already up and dressed.

  “I can’t believe I’ve been using a regular bedroom,” he said, pulling on his shoes. “A tent in the mountains is so much better. In fact, I’m going to have one installed in my own place as soon as we get back home.”

  Gus felt all his good feelings swirling away. It took him a moment to figure out why. And then it hit him. It was that last phrase: as soon as we get back home.