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Across the sandbox came a sharp cry. Maire told herself not to look. She was moving more quickly now and didn’t want to stop. There was another shriek and then a sob. Keep going, Maire told herself. Don’t look. The heavy mud that encased her body was now being sloughed away by the sand. Again, her hands landed on something. Another bag. Maire shoved her fingers down deeper into the sand and caught a glimpse of bright pink. Her bag. She just needed to pull if free.
A figure dashed by Maire, kicking sand into her mouth, her nose, her eyes. Camille had found her bag and was moving on to the next obstacle. Ignoring the gritty bite of sand in her eyes, Maire kept digging, pulling. Her bag was slowly loosening.
There was another cry and a shout of, “What the fuck?” It was Samuel.
What was happening? Maire hadn’t heard any more gunshots. She almost had her bag free, that was all that mattered. Suddenly, a flash of hot white pain struck her hand, so intense that for a moment Maire couldn’t breathe. When she snatched her hand back, she expected to see blood but instead the pad of her ring finger was red and beginning to swell. The burning pain was excruciating. What was it? A spider bite? A beesting?
It didn’t matter. With one final heave, she pulled her pink bag from the sand at the same time that another sharp stabbing pain hit her ankle. Then another at her calf. With a cry, Maire scrambled backward, still clutching the backpack. Emerging from the sand were a legion of crab-like creatures with a multitude of legs and snapping pincers, all coming toward her. It wasn’t their clicking claws that terrified Maire, it was their curved tails with the needle-sharp barb. Scorpions.
She felt the skitter of something climbing her leg and frantically tried slapping it away. Another sting pierced her wrist. The pain was disorientating. Get up, a voice said in her ear. They won’t follow you. Get up and run.
Samuel was standing above her. He had his green backpack looped around his shoulders and held out his hand. Maire wasn’t going to accept help from anyone, especially not him. She was going to win the money, scorpions be damned. She gritted her teeth and stood up, rushing to the edge of the sandbox and stepping over its wooden frame. The pain had ingrained itself deep in her skin. All her nerve endings were screaming but there was nothing she could do. From what she could tell, she’d been stung three times. Finger, wrist, ankle. She shook the heavy pink backpack, examining it for any remaining scorpions before sliding it onto her shoulders. She had to keep going.
Maire resolutely ignored Samuel, who had fallen into step beside her, and she set her sights on the pink flag next to a table, twenty yards away, where she would assemble her puzzle. She limped to her spot, removed the backpack from her shoulders, and unzipped the pocket, expecting more scorpions to come crawling out. The pain in her hand and ankle weren’t fading. If anything, it was burrowing in, getting hotter. Scorpions were poisonous. Deadly, even. Maire gritted her teeth. She wasn’t dead yet.
Ned, Samuel, and Camille were already at their tables assembling their puzzles. She dumped the puzzle pieces onto her table and began to flip them over to reveal the scattered image. The twenty-five puzzle pieces were thick, made of wood, and cut into irregular shapes. There were no corners, making Maire think that her puzzle was circular. She was decent at puzzle solving. She and the kids always had one on the game table in the basement and would periodically work on it, but there was never this pressure, these high stakes.
Unfortunately, Maire’s puzzle was nearly monochromatic, chestnut brown with slashes of black, a little white and red thrown in. In its jumbled state, she had no inkling of what the final image could be. Next to her, the others were sliding their pieces around on their tables, deep in concentration. The senator finally appeared, breathing heavily, his red bag dangling from his fingers.
Maire focused on the round edges and an image began to emerge. Two ears, a scraggly chin. It was an illustration of an animal. The pieces with white quickly became a snarling mouth with sharp fangs. An uneasy familiarity fell over Maire as she pressed two red pieces into the puzzle that formed a heart-shaped tongue. She knew what this picture was. She just didn’t know why. With shaky fingers, she continued to work until most of the pieces were in place. A bear. But not any bear. It was the mascot of her former college.
The Tanglefoot Bear—a ferocious, gaping-mouthed beast with red eyes. Why was Gil the Bear one of the clues in this game? She hadn’t been to Tanglefoot in twenty years. She hadn’t even graduated. Two weeks after that fateful night, she quit school, went home to Calico, and threw away all her college paraphernalia. She would have burned them if a bonfire in the yard wouldn’t have raised eyebrows.
She stole a glance at the others. Camille had already moved on and her completed puzzle appeared to be an illustration of a purple chair sitting in an empty room. Strange.
Samuel plugged in his last puzzle piece and then immediately looked around, his eyes stopping on Maire. He looked as frightened as she felt. What was happening? He hesitated briefly and then took off toward the wall.
Maire knew she needed to head that way too, but she wanted to try to catch a glimpse of the other puzzles before she continued. Any clue was knowledge and would help her in the game.
She paused at the senator’s puzzle, which was still incomplete, but it looked to be a photo of a woman in an orange jumpsuit of some sort—a mug shot? But it was Samuel’s puzzle that made her breath catch in her throat.
An aerial image of a lake. But not just any lake. It was Tanglefoot Lake. What happened at Tanglefoot had been big news at the time, but all she wanted to do was forget every single minute of that terrible night.
Go, go, go, Maire told herself, not sure if she was ordering herself to run from this place, this strange, dangerous game, or to finish the challenge. She turned and dashed toward the rock wall. Camille was already at the top, hoisting herself over the other side with Samuel close behind. Maire could still win this. She placed her toes on the first foothold and reached above her for a handhold. She tried not to think about the puzzles, the scorpions, the throbbing pain in her hand and ankle, or the growing distance to the ground beneath her.
Soon she found a rhythm. Reach, step, reach, step. If she didn’t look down, she would be okay. Her muscles groaned with the exertion and sweat burned her eyes, sending rivulets of blackened perspiration down her cheeks. She was almost there.
Behind her, Maire heard the puff and groans of someone gaining on her. She chanced a glance over her shoulder to find Ned Bennett and a wave of vertigo swept over her. One hand, slick with sweat, slipped from a groove in the wall and one foot followed. Half her body swung outward, the scorched earth thirty feet below.
Fear pounded in her chest like a drum. If she fell, she would break into a million pieces. Her children would be motherless. She swung back toward the wall and frantically reached for the nearest divot. Don’t think, Maire told herself. Her breath came in ragged gasps and she waited until the world righted itself before she stepped up to the next foothold.
Just a few more yards to go. She and Ned Bennett made it to the top at the same time and she cried out as she pulled herself onto the sturdy platform. Below them, Camille was nearly at the bottom and Samuel was already running toward the shooting range.
Her limbs tingled with exhaustion, but she couldn’t pause to catch her breath. The next step was to use the thick rope to scale down the other side of the wall. The ground below loomed, hard and unrelenting. Ned grabbed his rope first and began lowering himself.
Maire tried to ignore him and reached for her rope, pausing to thread it around her left leg, across her chest, and over her shoulder, securing herself in place. It took more time this way, but at least she would be safe.
Down she went, careful to keep some slack in the rope. Just below her, Ned was struggling as his sweaty, slick hands kept slipping down the rope. He dropped a few yards and then scrambled for a foothold. After one precarious drop, he pressed his body close to the rock face, his toes resting on a gap in the stone.
If Maire could get to the guns, she was confident she could hit the target. She grew up shooting at old beer cans and going pheasant hunting with her dad and brothers. Ned seemed like the kind of guy who would keep a gun in his glove box but had no idea how to use it. She couldn’t see Samuel or Camille being gun owners, but who knew. The senator, a military man, surely had plenty of experience with firearms, but he hadn’t even reached the top of the climbing wall.
She steadily lowered herself, the hemp scraping the inside of her thigh. Her fingers gripped the rope so tightly that they went numb. She passed Ned and then lowered herself a few more feet. She was halfway down, just twenty feet from the ground. The sound of a gunshot exploded from behind her. At first, she thought it was the sniper but then realized that Samuel and Camille were shooting at the bull’s-eye. The challenge could be over at any second.
Maire continued to let out the slack and used her feet to bounce down the wall. Fifteen feet to go. Above her, Ned was once again gaining on her. The toe of his tennis shoe scraped the top of her head, prodding her to move faster.
The impact was unexpected and her head exploded in pain. At first, Maire thought Ned had slipped, accidentally striking her in the head with his shoe, but she quickly realized that wasn’t the case.
“Sorry,” he called out. Maire looked up and caught his expression. Cold. Calculated. Ned knew exactly what he was doing. Again, he crashed into Maire, sending her slamming into the wall.
