The Last One (21 page)

Lesson of the day: Contour lines can be deceptive when elevation gain occurs in the form of a cliff at the end of a wooded plateau.

“How do we get up
that
?” asks Carpenter Chick.

“An elaborate system of pulleys?” replies Engineer.

Carpenter Chick is silent for a second, then adds, “And maybe a lever.”

Suddenly they’re both doubled over laughing. Carpenter Chick hiccups and says, “Next time let’s take the trail.”

On the trail, Air Force is grimacing. The incline is agony on his ankle. He is moving by force of will and a drummed-in sense of teamwork—he cannot let his partner down.

“The trail looks different up here,” says Biology.

“You’re right,” Air Force replies. They pause, standing together nine feet before the trigger point. What Biology and Air Force are noticing is subtle: disturbed earth and upturned stones still shaded with the ground’s moisture. In their place, many others would have kept walking, oblivious.

“Look at that,” says Biology. She walks a few steps forward, pointing at the Styrofoam boulder that menaced Zoo and Tracker. It’s lodged between two pine trees just below the trail.

“You think that’s what fell?” asks Air Force. “A rock that size should have made a lot more noise. And caused more damage.”

Biology glances uphill, then approaches the boulder. “I guess,” she says. She’s uneasy, but experience has taught her to breathe through unease and channel fear into motivation. By any measure she’s a remarkable woman, yet other than this moment and a plethora of dehumanizing shots featuring her physique, she won’t get much airtime. Too quiet, the editor will say. She was more outgoing in her interviews, where she didn’t need to breathe through unease or channel fear. But even she knows she wasn’t cast for her personality.

Biology’s foot breaks the plane between a stump and a tree with a fake beehive dangling from an upper branch, and their cameraman sends his signal. Biology peers at the boulder. The painted Styrofoam has been chipped and dented in places, revealing white, pebbly patches. “I don’t think it’s real,” she says, just as the warning rustle comes. When Biology hears this she has no trouble imagining what’s coming. “Hurry!” she says, taking Air Force’s arm. He dashes along as best he can.

The producers don’t intend to actually hit anyone with the fake boulders, no matter the waivers signed. There’s plenty of warning, warning enough for even slow-moving Air Force and Biology to clear the perilous area. They are almost fifty feet ahead when the boulder careens across the trail; they don’t see it, though they hear it. Their cameraman records the boulder’s passing. It makes it farther than the first, past the previous curve of the switchback, before getting stuck against the upended roots of a long-fallen tree.

Well out of earshot, their laughing fit concluded, Carpenter Chick and Engineer work together to solve their forty-foot problem. The answer is simple if arduous: They pull themselves up a steep slope littered with leaves, fallen branches, and downed trees. Engineer slips and slides downslope, kicking up a dark trail in the leaf litter. Carpenter Chick helps him and they clamber slowly uphill. They are nearly to the summit.

But they are not the first to finish the final leg of this Challenge. Tracker and Zoo crest a slope and see the host ahead, waiting on an exposed rock slick, green mountains spread behind him. There are signs of civilization in the background: roads, cars turned by perspective into toys zipping soundlessly along, clusters of buildings. The contestants will see these, but the viewer will not—each shot will be either cut to exclude them or blurred to obscure them.

The host welcomes Tracker and Zoo imperiously. “You are the first to arrive,” he says. “Congratulations.”

“What now?” asks Zoo. She’s looking past the host, admiring the view.

The host’s voice turns conversational. “We wait for the others. You can relax.”

Zoo sits by the host. Tracker gives her a little wave, then disappears into the woods.

“He’s not tired?” asks the host.

“I don’t think he gets tired,” says Zoo.

Twelve minutes later, Black Doctor and Banker emerge from the trees to the west of the trail. They have leaves and prickers stuck in their hair. They accept their overbearing greeting, then sit beside Zoo, who is lying in the sun with her eyes closed. Out of sight, Tracker is being shooed away from the production camp. Air Force and Biology appear moments later to accept third place. It’s another forty-five minutes before Engineer and Carpenter Chick slink into the mountaintop clearing from the east—they’ve been wandering the wooded mountaintop for the last half hour, but they ran into Tracker moments earlier and he pointed them in the right direction.

Below, the trio lurches disconnectedly up the trail.

“How much farther is it?” whines Waitress. She feels sick. Despite the dryness of her mouth, she hasn’t taken a sip of water in more than an hour. Her calorie-deprived body is too tired for her to want to lift the bottle, and she’s shuffling her steps. Instead of leaving footprints on the trail, she leaves scuffs.

Rancher is right behind her, stealing quasi-accidental glances at her rear end. “Can’t be far now. You can do it.”

“I need a break,” she replies, bending over and placing her hands on her knees. Her jacket hem slips up past her waist. Rancher catches himself staring and jerks his gaze out to the trees. Exorcist is ahead, tromping noisily, but staying within sight of his teammates. He notices that they’ve stopped and doubles back.

“You hurt?” he barks.

“I just need a second,” Waitress replies.

“Drink some water,” suggests Rancher, before taking a sip of his own. Waitress nods and takes one of her bottles from her pack. She holds the water in her mouth for a moment before swallowing, enjoying the sensation of the liquid against her dry tongue and the inside of her mouth. This is a nothing moment, but it will be manipulated into great sensuality as the camera pans up from her slick, pulsing chest to pursed lips and eyes narrowed in pleasure. And then she swallows and the narrative segues clumsily to the future—they’re a mile farther up the trail and the sun has passed its peak. They pass the second faux boulder, the one that rolled farther. None of the three notice it, or the first. Their cameraman hangs back. Exorcist is in the midst of a ranting, circuitous monologue that will be played only in snippets: “His blood was blue—blue!—and tasted kind of metallic,” “My mother had warned me against girls like her, but I liked the way she smelled, so I married her anyway,” “And that was the first time I ate lizard meat!”

The cameraman thumbs the trigger.

Neither Exorcist nor his teammates hear the warning rumbles over his chatter, and they’re moving slowly. A pebble rolls into Waitress’s foot. She glances to the side, but is too worn out to actually process what’s happening.

It’s Rancher who figures it out first, but he does so far later than the previous teams. There is barely time for him to shout, “Watch out!” before the Styrofoam boulder bounces down onto the trail between him and Waitress. He jumps backward, out of the boulder’s path, and Waitress turns, confused. Exorcist turns too, a safe distance ahead; he is a background figure as the cameraman films the boulder striking a thick trunk and ricocheting up, back onto the trail, where it catches the upper bank and then begins to bounce and roll downward. Rancher turns to run away, and then rational thought strikes and instead of running down the trail, he leaps off it, pulling himself by slender trunks up and out of the boulder’s path. The boulder smacks his foot as it passes. Rancher’s expectant brain screams that his foot is broken before sensation settles in: the blow barely hurt. He clings to the slope, befuddled.

This leaves the cameraman filming the boulder as it rolls straight at him. This man is so accustomed to being invisible that he spends several seconds just watching the gray-brown sphere grow larger in his view screen. And then Rancher shouts, “Move!” and the cameraman finally recognizes the danger. He panics, dropping his camera. Fight and flight fall to a third option: freeze. Scared and dumb, he watches the boulder, and only when it’s about to strike does he react, scrambling away. But it’s too late. The boulder smashes into him, full on, knocking him to the ground then teetering to the side of the trail to roll to a rest. Rancher pushes past the boulder, coming to help. Waitress is right behind him, her mouth gaping. Exorcist is motionless in the background.

The cameraman is swearing and biting his bottom lip. “I think I broke my tailbone,” he says. He pinches his eyelids shut as Rancher helps him to his feet. When he reaches for his radio, he notices pain in his wrist too.

“Here, let me,” says Waitress, taking the radio. She presses down the button and speaks, “Hey, hello? Our cameraman is hurt. He got hit by a rock. We need help.” She pauses, then adds, “Over.” She takes her thumb off the button.

A moment later, a response comes, “How badly is he injured?”

“I don’t know,” says Waitress. Behind her, Exorcist creeps closer. “He can stand and talk and he’s not really bleeding, but—”

“My tailbone,” says the cameraman. “Tell him I broke my tailbone and maybe my wrist.”

“He says he broke his tailbone and his wrist.”

“We’ll send help. Wait there.”

“Wait here?” asks Exorcist in a contrary tone.

Waitress whirls to face him. “He’s hurt!”

“He’s fine,” retorts Exorcist, with a waved dismissal at the cameraman. “Sorry, friend, but it’s not like you’re dying.”

“We’re already in last place,” says Rancher. “Waiting isn’t going to hurt.”

“How do you know we’re in last?” asks Exorcist. “You two mucked up the first Clue, someone else could have too.”

Rancher still has a supportive arm around the cameraman. Turning to him, he asks, “Are we in last?”

The cameraman is breathing unsteadily. He glances around. He knows there are mounted cameras here; he knows he’s not allowed to tell the contestants anything. But surely, he thinks, this scenario is an exception. “You’re way behind,” he says.

“See!” says Waitress.

“Doesn’t matter,” says Exorcist. “I’m going on. Come with or don’t, it’s all the same to me.” He starts hiking.

“But we’re a team!” Rancher calls after him.

Exorcist yells back, “See you at the top!”

Above, the other contestants watch an EMT and a cameraman walk swiftly out of the woods, across the small clearing, and then down the trail. The cameraman who was assigned to Zoo and Tracker is doubling back; he’s the most physically fit of the crew—a marathon runner.

“I wonder what happened,” says Biology.

“Someone must be hurt,” says Engineer.

They all—save Tracker, who is still off on his own—look to the host, who shrugs. The on-site producer soon comes over and takes the host aside. The contestants watch their conversation, the bobbing heads and thoughtful hand gestures, but are unable to make much sense of it.

“No one seems to be panicking,” says Zoo. “Whatever happened can’t be that bad.”

“I bet it was that rock,” says Biology.

“What rock?” asks Engineer, and they tell him about the Styrofoam boulders. “Wow,” he says, glancing at Zoo. He’s glad she’s not hurt. He thinks he will enjoy watching how she reacted to the boulder, later, once he’s home—his roommate promised to DVR the show for him.

Speculation fades to bored silence. Tracker returns and takes a silent seat next to Zoo. Then Exorcist crests the mountaintop, strutting toward the group. The others wait for Rancher and Waitress to appear. When they don’t—the EMT, the wait, and now this—assumptions are made.

Air Force stands, ready to take action. The others start talking over one another, asking questions. Tracker listens and watches the woods.

Exorcist basks in the attention. “It was wild,” he tells them. “This giant rock came rolling out of nowhere. I jumped out of the way, but it was so fast—” He pauses, shakes his head. Biology puts a kind hand on his shoulder. “It got our cameraman.”

Gasps. Then, “How bad is he hurt?” Air Force is the one to ask it, but they all want to know.

“Bad. Real bad.”

The host walks closer, intrigued.

Unease thrums through the contestants.

“I should go help,” says Black Doctor.

“If you go back down you forfeit second place,” the host tells him.

“This man nearly gets killed and you just
leave
him?” says Carpenter Chick to Exorcist. She turns to the host. “And this is
okay
?”

The host shrugs. “You get ranked by when the last member of your team finishes, and they were in last, so I don’t see that it matters.”

Carpenter Chick stares at him.

And Zoo thinks, It
does
matter. Because if Exorcist could leave them, then Tracker could have left her and now he knows it. She doesn’t look at him, doesn’t want to see him weighing whether finishing first was worth the burden of her. But Tracker is thinking instead about the injured man, about what injured him.

Below, the EMT reaches the cameraman and checks him over. His coccyx isn’t broken, only bruised. He also has a sprained wrist and a few smaller contusions and scrapes; his injuries are light, more the result of his impact with the earth than his impact with the boulder, whose momentum was already largely dissipated by the time they met. The EMT opts to help him to the base of the trailhead; his injuries don’t merit an airlift. The two men slink down the trail as the newly arrived cameraman asks Waitress and Rancher to gather around him.

“They don’t know how they’re going to portray this,” he says. “If at all. So for now don’t talk about it, okay? If they decide to use it, we’ll get your reactions later.”

That night the decision will be passed down from on high: Get the cameraman to sign a waiver. His likeness can’t be used without this explicit permission, a contractual concession to prove he and his brethren weren’t being manipulated. That they were on the in-the-know side of the production. The cameraman won’t sign, though. He doesn’t want to be known for freezing. The producers will grumble, but there’s nothing they can do. In the world of the show, the incident never happens. Nor does its aftermath on the mountaintop. Rancher will be shown scrambling out of the boulder’s path, and then footage of the previous boulder rolling to a stop, followed by a commercial break, after which Rancher and Waitress will join the others. Arrivals are stitched together; if Exorcist finished the Challenge before his teammates, it was only by seconds.