The Never Game

Colter Shaw himself learned of this concept when he was on a survival run, alone, in December. Fourteen years old. His father had driven him to a remote corner of the Compound and let him out of the truck, to make his way back over the course of two days. He had everything he needed: food, matches, maps, compass, sleeping bag, weapon. The sky was blue, the weather cold yet above freezing, the trek that lay ahead unchallenging and through spectacular scenery.

An hour later, he was crossing a fast-moving stream on a fallen oak that would have been a solid bridge had it not been a host to termites and carpenter bees, who’d been dining on its insides for years. In he went.

Gasping from the cold, Colter scrabbled up the stream bank, shivering fiercely.

He didn’t panic; he assessed. The matches, in a waterproof container, and the knife were on him. He’d had to jettison the backpack when it dragged deep below the surface. He gathered leaves and cut pine boughs and soon had a fire going. In forty minutes or so his core temperature was stable. But he was ten miles from the Compound, now without his compass or map or pistol, and by the time he was safely warm and his clothes and boots dry it would be too late to hike. He needed to spend the time until nightfall building a lean-to big enough to take the fire inside; the air smelled like rain.

This he did. And while it was still light enough to see, Colter watched squirrels as they searched for nuts they’d hoarded. He followed only the gray squirrels; the reds don’t bury. He found several stashes in abandoned burrows and collected walnuts; acorns are edible yet too bitter to eat without boiling to remove the tannins. He drank stream water and ate and fell asleep confident the trails he’d spotted before the dunking would lead him in the general direction of the Compound.

He woke up about six hours later to the blizzard. Two feet of snow was on the ground.

Colter’s head had sunk with despair. The snow covered the trails he’d noted yesterday. He had four walnuts left.

Would he die here?

As he surveyed the rolling white landscape, he noticed something beside the lean-to: a large orange backpack. He yanked it inside and, with trembling fingers, opened the zipper. It contained energy bars, a wire saw, extra matches, a map and a compass, a thermal sleeping bag. Also: a weapon — the Colt Python .357 that he carried still. The gun that was his father’s pride.

Ashton Shaw had not returned to the cabin after dropping Colter off. He’d been following the boy all along.

Intervention...

Which is what happened now.

Shaw’s phone hummed. It was the toy man, Marty Avon.

“We still have a way to go with the proxies. For what it’s worth, one of the subscribers logged on a few hours ago without turning on his VPN — his proxy, you know. His real IP address popped up. He fit our criteria about being an obsessive player but had been offline when the crimes occurred. We traced him to a house in Mountain View.”

“May have something,” he told the detective. “It’s Marty.”

Standish disconnected her personal call and took the phone and had a brief conversation, at the conclusion of which she gave Avon her email address. It was only a moment after they disconnected that the detective’s phone chimed. She read: “I’ll DMV him and see what our databases have to say.” She typed: “Okay. Forwarded.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Shaw looked around the café, focusing on the computer history wall. Mario the plumber and Sonic the hedgehog. Hewlett and Packard. ENIAC, an ancient computer as big as a semitruck. Then his eyes took in the front door of the café and he recalled seeing Maddie Poole for the first time as she walked inside, twining her red hair around a finger.

So. You’re wondering, what’s up with stalker chick...

Standish’s phone sang out once more.

The detective read quickly. “His name is Brad Hendricks. No warrants, no arrests. He was detained frequently in high school. Bullying incidents. Don’t know which end of it he was on. No charges filed. Here he is.”

He glanced down and must have stiffened.

“What is it, Shaw?”

“I’ve seen him.”

It was the boy in the red-and-black-checked shirt who’d been so harshly rejected by the pretty girl right here in the Quick Byte Café, two tables away from where Shaw and Standish now sat.

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