Scavenger (9 page)

Moaning, he reached stone steps, charged up, and crashed against a wooden door. It trembled. He crashed into it again. The door was so old it broke off its hinges. But even then it didn’t open. Something blocked it on the other side. Ortega joined him, the two of them slamming against it, and suddenly, it tilted, objects clattering beyond it.

Amid choking dust, Balenger saw lights beyond the door. When he and Ortega gave the door a final desperate thrust, it toppled, knocking more objects over. Fighting to clear his lungs, Balenger crawled over the door and found himself in a basement filled with old furniture. On wooden steps, a spectacled man in a suit gaped at them.

12

Balenger lurched past him. At the top of the stairs, he encountered more old furniture, a roomful of it, and continued to feel squeezed. Sunlight through a front window prompted him to hurry toward a door. Outside, he almost bumped into someone rushing along the sidewalk. He bent over, coughing. Only after the spasms passed and he raised his head did he notice a sign on the door: GREENWICH ANTIQUE FURNITURE.

Ortega came out, holding a handkerchief to his mouth. He lowered it and pointed toward the store’s interior. “The owner says he likes to take his customers down to the sub-basement. Evidently, that touch of history makes his furniture seem extra old and valuable.”

Balenger slumped against a light pole. “Thank God for antiques.”

“Yeah, well, he claims we ruined about thirty-thousand dollars worth of those antiques when we knocked them over, breaking down the door.”

“Now we know the price of our lives.” Balenger glanced at the store’s entrance, where the spectacled man frowned. “Will you take a check?”

“For thirty-thousand dollars? I don’t think he’s the type to appreciate a joke,” Ortega murmured.

“I’m serious. Sometime, I’ll tell you about a coin I found.” Balenger turned toward the owner. “Whatever your insurance doesn’t cover, I’ll pay for.”

Balenger heard sirens. Smoke drifted over the rooftops. People ran along the sidewalk toward the blaze.

“We need to get over there and tell the fire investigators what we know,” Ortega said.

“But it’ll take hours before they finish with us! You know as much as I do. Tell them I couldn’t stay.”

“Couldn’t stay? What are you talking about?”

“There’s too much to do. Report for both of us. I’ll talk to them later if they still have questions.”

“When you were in law enforcement, is that how you handled things? You let your witnesses tell you to report for them?”

“All right, all right, I hear you.” Balenger struggled to catch his breath. “Did you manage to keep that piece of paper?”

“In my pocket.”

“Can we use your photocopy machine?” Balenger asked the owner.

The man seemed to think this was the most reasonable question in the world. He nodded.

Balenger swatted dirt from his jeans and sport coat. They smelled of smoke. “We’ve got a piece of paper we need to photocopy so we can read what’s on it without leaving fingerprints.”

Ortega studied him. “You look exhausted. Talking to the fire investigators will at least give you a chance to rest.”

“When I find Amanda,
that’s
when I’ll rest.”

It took barely a minute to make photocopies and return to the street, but in that brief time, the crowd increased dramatically. Balenger folded one of the photocopies and stuck it into his jacket pocket. He and Ortega struggled through noisy spectators. Ahead, more sirens wailed.

“Police,” Ortega said. “Let us through.”

A few onlookers made space, but three steps later, others blocked the way. Balenger felt squeezed.
There’s no time for this
, he thought.

“Police!” Ortega yelled as more people jostled him.

No time
, Balenger decided. A determined man shoved in front of him, allowing him to hang back. When three others elbowed past, Balenger used them for cover and ducked away through the crowd.

“Frank, where
are
you?” he heard Ortega shouting.

LEVEL THREE

HIDE AND HUNT

1

Legs unsteady, Amanda obeyed the voice’s instructions and climbed the staircase. As Ray, Bethany, Derrick, and Viv entered their bedrooms, she went into hers. She’d been told to go to the closet and put on the clothes she found there, but first she went into the bathroom and relieved herself. She didn’t care if there were cameras. Urgency cancelled modesty. Suspecting that it would be a long time before she saw another bathroom, she pulled toilet paper off the roll and crammed it into her pocket.

Now that the fog of whatever drug she’d been given was dissipating along with her nausea, Amanda realized how empty her stomach felt. Her mouth was dry. After flushing the toilet, she went to the sink, then paused, frowning toward the toilet. The water swirled down. But the tank didn’t make the sound of water refilling it. She had a fearful suspicion of what would happen when she turned the knobs on the sink—or rather what
wouldn’t
happen—but she tried it anyhow. No water flowed from the taps.

Amanda’s mouth felt even more parched as she went to the closet and opened it. Blue coveralls hung on a hanger, a many-pocketed garment that reminded her of flight suits she’d seen in movies about military pilots. Waffle-soled hiking boots were on the floor. They, too, were blue, as were the wool socks and baseball cap next to them. Now she did feel modest. Trying to avoid the cameras, she stepped into the closet and hurriedly took off her jeans. In a rush, she stepped into the coveralls and zipped them over her white blouse. The coveralls were sturdy nylon on the outside with an insulating fabric. Briefly, the material chilled her legs. After transferring the toilet paper to the coveralls, she carried the socks and hiking boots to the bed and put them on. Everything fit her.

She glanced around the room, looking for anything she might be able to use to escape.

“Nothing here will help you,” the voice said from the ceiling.

It made her flinch. She heard footsteps in the corridor and left the bedroom, seeing Ray, Bethany, Derrick, and Viv come out of their rooms. All wore caps, coveralls, wool socks, and hiking shoes. Ray’s were green, Bethany’s gray, Derrick’s red, and Viv’s brown. Because of Ray’s pilot background, he was the only one who looked at ease in the jumpsuit.

“Well, at least I can tell the rest of you apart,” Derrick, the only black person in the group, tried to joke.

“I think that’s the idea,” Ray said, pointing toward the ceiling. “For
him
to tell us apart, especially at a distance.”

Glancing nervously around, they descended the staircase to the large open area in front of the door. Ray pulled out his lighter, opening and snapping it shut. Amanda tried not to let the sound get on her nerves.

“Now what?” Viv asked the voice.

“Go into the dining room,” the voice commanded. “Put on your radio headsets. Turn them on.”

“Wait a minute.” Bethany’s eyes looked fierce. “The sink in my bathroom didn’t work! I’m thirsty!”

“I’m hungry,” Ray said. “God knows how long it’s been since—”

“This is Monday,” the voice said.

“Monday?” Bethany’s voice dropped.

“But the last thing I remember ...” Derrick shook his head. “My God, I lost . . . ”

“Two days.” Viv looked stunned.

“So, of course, you’re hungry and thirsty. The fact that you weren’t active during the interval prevented you from expending energy. You still have strength. As I noted when telling you about Bethany’s experience on the ocean, you can survive for as long as three weeks without food.”

Amanda felt her lightheadedness return.

“Contrary to popular opinion, going two or three days without food is hardly life-threatening,” the voice assured them. “People have been known to hike great distances during that time.”

Obeying instructions, Viv went into the dining room. But she kept going into the kitchen.

Understanding, Amanda and the others followed, watching Viv put on the rubber gloves she used earlier. She opened the refrigerator. It was empty. She opened all the cupboards, but they too were empty. She tried the tap on the sink. It no longer worked.

She moaned.

“Fasting purifies,” the voice said. “Now go into the dining room and put on the headsets. Otherwise, I won’t let you outside.”

With no other choice, they did what they were told.

Amanda adjusted the headset, then put her cap back on. As she pulled her blond hair through the back of the hat, the sonorous voice through the ear buds was disturbingly intimate. “Put your GPS receiver into a pocket. Be careful to protect it. You’re going to need it.”

Again, the group obeyed.

“Now I’ll tell you about
Scavenger
,” the voice said. “In 2000, President Clinton signed legislation that allowed global positioning satellite receivers available to the public to receive signals that were accurate within ten feet, almost as accurate as military GPS receivers. Prior to that time, the public could receive GPS signals that were accurate only within twenty-five feet, reserving greater accuracy exclusively for the military. Almost immediately, someone in Oregon posted map coordinates on an Internet site, explaining that anyone who used a GPS receiver to search that area had a chance to find a hidden treasure. The treasure was only a metal box of dime-store novelties. That wasn’t the point. The objective wasn’t what was in the box but rather the pleasure of the hunt. Even with coordinates as accurate as ten feet, the box was difficult to locate.”

Amanda was so accustomed to hearing the voice come from the ceiling that she felt disoriented now that it sounded inside her head.

“From Oregon, this version of a scavenger hunt spread rapidly around the world. It bore similarities to a similar scavenger hunt called letterboxing, but the GPS version is called ‘geocaching.’ Players use an Internet site to learn the coordinates of something hidden—a cache—in an area they want to explore. They program these coordinates into their GPS receiver, then let the receiver guide them to the spot they need to search. Often, within a ten-foot-square area of trees or rocks, the object is so small or so disguised that it’s almost impossible to find. A cache might look like an insect, such as a grasshopper, for example. It takes a careful eye to notice that the grasshopper is made of rubber. Or the object might look like a rock, but when examined, it turns out to be plastic, containing a cheap ring or some other type of nominal treasure. The player who finds the object leaves something comparable in return, or sometimes just a note, and then reports the victory to a website like geocaching-dot-com. Players gain stature for the number of caches they discover. Only a few years after President Clinton signed that GPS legislation, there were a quarter of a million caches in two hundred and nineteen countries.”

Ray interrupted angrily. “Grasshoppers? Cheap rings? What the hell do you want with us?”

“No need to shout, Ray. The microphone next to your cheek will supply the proper sound level. What do I want? Step to the front door.”

Amanda tensed as she heard an electronic beep from the door. The lock made a clunking sound, the bolt sliding free.

“You can open it now,” the voice instructed.

“Not until I know I won’t get electrocuted.” Viv tapped a rubber glove against the door’s handle. Getting no reaction, she pushed down and pulled.

Sunlight streamed in, accompanied by a pleasant breeze.

“Damn, that feels good,” Derrick said. He went outside, as did Viv and Ray.

Hesitant, Amanda and Bethany followed.

2

The sun was warm. The grassy, sagebrush-dotted field was more open space than Amanda had ever seen. All her life she’d lived in cities, where the buildings permitted a view of only a portion of the sky. The trees in parks created a similar limitation. But here, the view was immense. Snow-capped mountains rose in the distance, but they made no impression on the sky. The canopy of blue was vast.

“As you see, you’re in a valley surrounded by mountains,” the voice explained in Amanda’s ears. She noticed everyone else concentrating to listen. “On your right, far off, there’s a break in the mountains. That’s the only exit. I don’t advise you to go in that direction.”

Amanda stared at it longingly.

The group walked farther from the building, which reminded Amanda of a log-walled hunting lodge she’d once seen in a magazine. She noticed Viv put the rubber gloves in a pocket of her coveralls. Good, Amanda thought. Save whatever resources we can get our hands on. But the farther she went from the building, the more insignificant she felt in the vastness around her.

“Please, take out your GPS receivers and turn them on,” the voice said.

Everyone complied.

Except Amanda, who was baffled by the unfamiliar object she removed from her pocket. “Where ...”

“On the right side,” Derrick said. “Two buttons. The bottom one. It’s got a symbol of a light bulb.”

Amanda pressed the button and heard a beeping sound. The unit’s screen glowed, revealing a cartoon of a globe with satellite icons over it.