“Can we go into the park tonight? Explore?” Ava asks.
“You’ll remember the extensive liability waiver you all signed. The park is abandoned and has been for decades. Some of the structures are unsafe. There are gaps in the walkways, uneven concrete. Lots of places to trip and fall if you don’t have enough light. It’s definitely not ADA compliant.” Her smile is sickly sweet. Ava stiffens. Mack twitches with discomfort at the false concern. She suspects Ava is the most physically capable person here, but she shrinks into herself instead of saying as much.
Linda claps her hands together once, emphatically. “Besides, no one gets an advantage. You’ll all start at the same time. You’ll police each other to make certain no one sneaks off in the night.” She winks. “What an adventure!”
“So let’s go!” Jaden says.
The bus driver’s hands are clenched around the steering wheel. “Sun’s still up.”
“Nah, man, it’s—”
“I will not open the gates until the sun is down.”
“That’s okay,” Brandon says, trying to cut the odd tension left in the wake of the bus driver’s emphatic response. “Can you tell us about the park?”
Mack leans back, tuning out Linda’s chirpy summary of a family fun amusement park that ran for a couple of decades in the middle of the last century. Linda’s not going to give them any useful details. She’s made that clear. And they’re keeping them out of the park while they can see well enough to gain some sort of advantage.
Ava slides into the seat next to Mack. She points out the window. “That’s a person, right?” What Mack had taken for a rock is actually a statue. There’s a hint of a head, the barest form of a human. And, at the base, one perfect dismembered white hand, pointing back the way they came. Mack nods toward it.
“Well, that’s not creepy at all.” Ava sits back. “One week in a crumbling, probably dangerous old theme park. Still not the worst summer vacation I’ve ever had.”
“Me, neither,” Mack whispers.
“Did you see the other Ava getting cozy with Jaden? Think people are going to form alliances?”
A glance reveals beautiful Ava sitting closer than necessary to Mr. Muscles himself. Mack shrugs. “Only one winner. What good would a partnership do?”
Ava nods thoughtfully. “True. So if I need help in there…”
Mack shrugs again.
“Fair enough. But…” Ava puts a hand over her heart, her face shifting in exaggerated earnestness. “If you need help, Mack, I promise, I’ll feel real bad for you when you get out.”
Mack snorts a laugh. Ava, satisfied, watches through half-hooded eyes as the sun finally sets and the driver gets out to open the gates. The hinges squeak, the only sound in the heavy summer evening. The rest of the park looks weathered, but the fence is well maintained, though again it doesn’t match the significantly older gate.
“On our own in the game, fine,” Ava whispers. “But look. I know I’m paranoid; I still think they drugged us. And if that shit goes down again, I have your back. Will you have mine?”
Mack nods. It’s an easy promise to make. She doesn’t anticipate having to break it.
The driver gets back in and slowly steers the bus into the park. The road is bumpy and cracked. Several times he has to carefully maneuver them around debris too hard to make out in the quickly deepening dark. It looks like this road isn’t part of the original park design—several of the pathway walls have been demolished, still sitting in rocky piles where the road was widened. The driver takes a few turns that seem random. Between his agonizingly slow speed and the winding road, it’s hard to say how far they’ve actually gone when they arrive at last.
“This is your stop,” Linda says. “I’ll stay with you until the start time in the morning. I will not be back until sunset.”
“Who gets us out?” the intern asks.
Linda laughs. “Certainly not me! Can you imagine, a woman my age clambering around in kitten heels. It’s all part of the game. You’ll find out.”
“Not me,” the guy sitting next to the prank girl blusters, standing. “I don’t intend to find out at all.”
The writer rolls his eyes. “Bully for you.”
“No way that dude makes it past the first two days,” Ava says, her observation covered by the noise of everyone gathering their things and getting off the bus.
“Which one?” Mack asks, as if she knows their names anyway.