Recoil (4 page)

I was surprised when Graham, who hadn’t yet even made eye contact
with
Sarge
, let alone said anything to him, asked,
“Do we get any scope calculators or laser range-finders?”

“No you do not. This is a game for snipers, boy, not a class for
programmers or code-breaker geeks. But since you kids may not have had any
shooting experience with real distances, I will give you one clue for yardage.
From where we’re standing to the end of the alley over there is a distance of
525 meters. Y’all will have to extrapolate to the rest of the arena based on
that.”

I immediately calculated the distances of objects and landmarks
between where we stood and the end of the alley and memorized them.

“Any other questions?”

“Once we’ve taken out you three,” Bruce indicated the team of
instructors, “do we then become targets for each other?”

I exchanged a glance with
Leya
. Bruce
was gung-ho to the point of unsettling.

“
Once we’ve taken out you three
— listen to him. Not
lacking in confidence, are you, son? It may interest you to know that I’ve
never yet been taken down by one of you gamer punks. And I was never hit in my
tour of duty either. But you’re welcome to take a shot. Just remember, the aim
of the exercise is to take as many of our lives as you can,
while
keeping your own
. You get hit by a kill shot, you’re out of the
game, no matter how fancy
your
shooting until then.
And no, son, you are not to shoot each other. You hit one of your own team
members, that’s an own-goal and you’re immediately disqualified. A sniper does
not jeopardize the lives of his fellow soldiers. Squad before blood,
comprehend?”

“Huh?” I had no idea what the phrase meant.

“In war, your squad, your fellow soldiers, comes before everyone
and anyone, even including family. Get it?”

I nodded. But looking at Graham fidgeting and Bruce cracking his
neck, and thinking of Mom and Robin, I figured it was a good thing this was
only a game. Family would always come first for me.

Leya
looked hopefully at
Sarge
and asked, “Can we begin now?”

Chapter 5

Rats

Sarge
consulted his co-instructors. “I
forgotten anything?”

“The rats,” said Juan.

“Ah, yes, the rats.”

Graham, who had been fiddling with his rifle, setting the safety
catch on and off and on again, looked up at this.

“We have some rats in the arena, and you get bonus points for
hitting them.”

“Real rats?” Graham swallowed hard.

“Well, they
ain’t
stuffed toys, boy.”

“But are they plague rats or ordinary rats?”

Plague rats were disgusting mutants, genetically modified crosses
between Gambian Pouched rats from West Africa, Argentinian Nutria, and a few
other things the scientists were still trying to figure out. They were as big
as cats, the biggest weighing up to twenty pounds and measuring over three feet
in length, nose to tail. They had been carefully bred by the terrorists who
launched the contagion, and then infected with rat fever and released into
towns and cities across the nation. Naturally aggressive and themselves
apparently immune to the virus, they spread the contagion to people and other
susceptible mammals with their vicious bites. They made lethal and efficient
carriers, and they bred faster than they could be trapped or poisoned. Every
mutant rodent was potentially death on four legs. Everyone hated them. They
freaked me out big time, and I’d never even seen one except on T.V. Good thing
they hadn’t mentioned rats in the letter to Mom, or she would never have let me
come.

“They’re plague rats, but they’re lab-bred and
ain’t
infected, so don’t you worry about that. But they add
an element of realism to the exercise, and they’re a good measure of your skill
— big enough to hit, small enough to be a real challenge, and likely to be
moving. Right, that’s it,” said
Sarge
, hoisting his
rifle onto his shoulder and turning to go. “Good luck, and may the best man
win.”

“Or woman,” I said softly to his back.

He turned around and looked at me for a few seconds. Then he
suddenly pulled down his mask, flashed me a manic grin and said, “I stand
corrected. May the best man —
or woman —
win.” The smile was
gone before he returned his mask into position. He, alone of all of us, left
off the protective eyewear and helmet. Cocky? Or just confident?

The three instructors took off down the alley at a jog.

“Are we going to play together as a team, or separately as
individual snipers?” I asked the others.

“Together,” said
Leya
and Graham.

Bruce shrugged. “Whatever.”

“We can split up later, if we want to,” suggested
Leya
.

“I’m good with that.” I checked that the safety catch on my rifle
was engaged, adjusted my goggles and said, “Let’s go.”

From somewhere down the alley, the siren screamed, echoing
strangely off the painted sky roof.

We set off, dividing into pairs and clinging to the walls on
opposite sides of the alley as we made our way deeper into the game arena. At
first I was surprised that Bruce chose
Leya
to be his
partner — until now, he’d been keen to stay as near to me as possible — but
then I realized he’d made a smart decision. This game would not only be about
accuracy, it would also be about strategy, and it was a piss-poor strategy to
be paired with Graham. He must be a top-scoring online player in order to have
qualified for this prize, but he was a liability as a partner out here. He
twitched and fidgeted, focused more on the gun than on searching for targets,
and seemed mostly oblivious to the need to stay behind cover. Before we’d crept
ten feet up the right side of the first block in the alley, I had to shove him
back into the shadows cast by the building.

“Keep back, right up against the wall,” I told him, speaking as
softly as I could.

Bruce was monitoring our exchange, and judging by the crinkle of his
eyes above his mask, he was grinning at us. He’d deliberately let me go with
Graham, probably hoping the fool boy would get us both spotted and taken out of
contention, leaving him with only
Leya
as his
competitor. Bruce might be annoying, but he wasn’t stupid.

I had just eased forward a few paces to take cover behind a high
metal dumpster reeking of rotting garbage, and motioned to Graham to get behind
me, when
Leya
whispered from across the alley.

“There!”

I saw it at once, a small movement between the trash cans about
halfway down the left side of the alley. I lifted my rifle to my shoulder,
brought my eye up to the telescopic eyepiece, and studied the scene. The rat —
if that’s what it was — had disappeared behind the bins.

It looked like the others were all going for a shot at the rat,
but I hesitated. This game would be more easily lost than won. Hitting a target
might score you points, but it would also reveal your position. Getting hit
bounced you out of the game immediately, so surely it was more important not to
be seen than it was to hit a rat. Taking the risk that I might be losing out on
the chance to score a few bonus points, I lowered my rifle and looked around.
Bundled against the bottom of the peeling green paint of the dumpster’s side was
a length of discarded cloth. It may once have been a brown bath towel, but now
it was a ragged, dark cloth, patched with dirty stains. Perfect.

Forcing myself to ignore the stink, I pulled it over my helmet
and braided loop of hair, and around my shoulders. Later I might drape it over
my rifle to camouflage that, too. Then I scraped my hand into the dirt at my
feet, and smeared the muck in rough stripes and patches across my face, mask
and the rim of my goggles, breaking up the distinctive face shape to anyone who
might aim their scope in my direction.

I picked a spot at the corner of the dumpster that jutted into
the alley, and sat down, angling my body to keep most of it hidden behind the
protective metal. Next, I fished the spare bagel out of my pocket, browned it
all over with dirt and then balanced it on my left knee. As I’d hoped, it made
a perfect brace for my rifle to rest on.

This was it. I was actually going to try shoot something real and
moving. Something alive. Finally. And I found I didn’t like the idea of hurting
an animal, especially just for the sake of a game. The paintball probably
wouldn’t kill the critter, but it would hurt it, surely? I didn’t know the
muzzle velocity of the paintballs from these rifles, but it would be enough to
bruise. It was a weird moment. I’d spent years playing The Game as a marksman,
but I’d somehow never connected the gaming to actual shooting. The enemy
soldiers and
repbots
and explosive devices that I’d
taken aim at on the computer screen had simply been targets — some easier and
some harder to hit, a fun challenge for my skills. This was real.

A quick glance to either side confirmed that the other three each
had their rifles trained on the target, and apparently they had no second
thoughts about paintballing a live animal. Maybe I was being silly. Head in the
game,
Jinxy
.

Across the way, Bruce and
Leya
tensed
up, signaling that they’d spotted the rat again. My scope was at my eye just in
time to hear a shot and to see the end of a tail disappear behind an old oilcan
which lay in a small pile of rubble in the center of the alley. If my ammo was
real I could have shot it through the can, but paintballs wouldn’t penetrate
metal. Heck, the target practice had shown they couldn’t penetrate cardboard.
I’d have to hit any target directly. I sat still, doing my tactical breathing,
scanning the alley.

Graham, however, was incapable of sitting still or staying quiet.
A sudden fizz of escaping gas startled me. I glared over my shoulder at him. He
stared back at me guiltily, his hand frozen in the act of twisting the cap off
a bottle.

“You brought sparkling water?
Sparkling
?” He was beyond help.
“Just sit still and be quiet,” I hissed at him.

I was probably being very rude, but I didn’t know how to tell him
tactfully. He might be a genius at the math and science of The Game, but no way
was he a natural sniper. He lacked any semblance of patience and control. I had
a sudden mental flash of him behind his PC, thinking up formulas and doing
calculations to while away the downtime of stalking and observation. As soon as
I could, I needed to peel away and play my own game. It was only a matter of
time before
Sarge
, Fiona or Juan spied Graham and
took him down, and I needed to be far away from him when that happened so that
he didn’t give away my position, too.

I took a deep breath, blew it out and went back into observation
mode. With my rifle resting on the bagel on top of my knee and braced against
my shoulder, I studied the alley systematically through my scope. Side to side,
near to far. The goggles were a nuisance, but at least I was used to playing
The Game wearing virtual reality eyewear. The gloves were plain horrible. I
never wore gloves at home so I wasn’t used to shooting with them on, and was
frustrated that I couldn’t feel the trigger properly beneath my index finger.
The layer of latex separated me from my weapon, stopped my being one with it.

Then I saw it. A rat as big as a lapdog scuttled in short,
tentative bursts away from the rubble. By my earlier calculations, the rubble
pile was about halfway down the alley, which would put it at approximately 260
meters. Quickly, I adjusted my scope and took aim, leading the target
fractionally to the right to compensate for its movement. Then I gently pulled
the trigger.

It was a direct hit. Through the scope I could see the splatter
of blue paint directly between the horrible creature’s eyes.

“Pity — so close,”
Leya
whispered
across the alley to me.

It wasn’t close, it was exactly on target. I’d hit the rat right
where I’d been aiming and was indignant that she counted it a miss. If I’d been
shooting with live ammunition, it would have been a kill shot.

I frowned at her but she wasn’t looking at me. Both she and Bruce
had taken a bead on the rat which now sat still, momentarily stunned by the
blow. They both pulled off shots simultaneously.

“Yes!” Bruce said quietly, bumping gloved fists with
Leya
.

I peered through my scope. He’d shot the rat right through one of
its eyes. It was an impressive shot, but I felt sorry for the creature lying on
the ground. Paintballs probably wouldn’t do more than bruise us, but they had
enough force behind them that a direct hit into a rat’s eyeball would do some
serious damage. And it had. The rat writhed and twitched on the ground. Blood
and some thick goo oozed from the red, paint-rimmed eye socket. Nausea
threatened as I witnessed its suffering.

Beside me, Graham knelt with his head between his knees, making
dry retching noises. Sure that his head must be protruding beyond the edge of
the dumpster, I stretched out an arm and thrust him back, a fraction of a
second before a movement of air past us and a thud behind us indicated that a
bullet had just missed him.

He sat back, leaning against the wall, holding a hand over his
mouth. He was as pale as paper, and a fine sheen of sweat covered his face. He
was losing it.

“If you freak out, you’ll get taken out. Just breathe, okay,
Graham? Breathe. Slowly.”

I inched back along the side of the dumpster, squeezed myself
into the narrow gap between it and the alley wall, and crawled along. Graham
followed me until we emerged from its cover. I crept down the alley, carefully
hugging the wall, keeping my rifle up against my chest. At the end of the first
block, I crouched down on my haunches and peered around the corner — scanning
the road, the buildings, and windows for something that didn’t fit in its
surrounds. The thumping rap music was coming from down this cross-road.

A volley of shots from behind me made me spin my head around.

“Man down! That’s a kill-shot.”