The 17 (6 page)

It was like a different world.

“Oh my God. I see someone,” Jenai cried.

Zack moved his head to see through another gap. There was someone—four someones to be exact—on the porch of the shack. Their heads were green, their eyes big, round and red, and they wore long, brown robes. When they made gestures with their hands, Zack could make out webbed fingers.

Jenai blurted, “They look like Gorn!”

She was full of surprises
.

“You watch Star Trek?”

“Uh, yeah. Best. Show. Ever.”

Zack watched the figures on the porch. It appeared as if they were having an argument.

Zack was startled by a scream from Jenai, who quickly backed away from the hedge barrier, trembling.

“What?” Zack asked.

Jenai just pointed.

Zack peered through the gap in the hedge where Jenai was positioned and saw two red eyes staring back at him, and then quickly pull away. Zack could see the back of a green figure’s head moving rapidly away from him.

“He’s just as scared of us,” Zack said, watching the Gorn-like creature sprint toward the milky water and jump in, swimming and splashing back to the other four, who leaned over the railing of the porch, webbed hands held out.

Jenai hesitantly moved closer. “That was so creepy. Who do you think they are?”

“Just like us,” Zack answered. “Just like us.”

Part I

Chapter Four

So Emo

Zack pushed the paper football across the table and it stopped just short of the edge.

Jenai smiled and slid it back toward Zack. It stopped woefully short, prompting a playful protest from her. “No fair. The table is smoother on my side. It’s all warped and cracked on your side.”

She had a point. The table wasn’t much of a table really, but more like a few planks of redwood nailed together. Some of the cracks between the boards were big enough for the paper football that was carefully made from a sheet torn out of an empty journal that was left in the bedroom Zack shared with Brock and Harness, to fall through.

The girls shared a cramped room as well. In an old cedar desk in each room were diaries with black leather covers for each of them. Zack had concluded their captors wanted to provide them with an outlet for their despair.

Instead, Zack used a page in his to make a paper football that now slid and perched with the tip hanging over the edge of the table in front of a discouraged Jenai, who shook her fists and curled her lower lip into a pout.

“No fair.”

“Touchdown!”

Jenai tossed the paper football back at Zack and he giggled as it hit his chest. She made a goalpost with her fingers and Zack lined up his kick, flicking his index finger and sending the paper football soaring end over end through the finger uprights. It smacked off Jenai’s forehead, prompting a loud laugh and snort from her.

For a fleeting moment he felt normal. For a fleeting moment he was a just a seventeen-year-old kid again, not an animal in some zoo.

As with most nice moments in this place, it didn’t last.

Harness, a harbinger of gloom, doom and constant ridicule, sauntered into the kitchen like he always did: chest puffed out and full of bravado. He saw the scene at the table play out before him and scoffed. He filched the paper football off the table and stuffed it down the front of his tattered jeans.

“If you want it, Jenai, come and get it.”

Jenai stood and folded her arms. “You are so gross.”

Harness laughed. “Zack, you can come get it, too. You’re probably a fag anyway. You’d enjoy it.”

Zack had known many Harnesses in his life and their method of operation was always the same. He was a bully, maybe because his father put too much pressure on him to win at everything, maybe because his mother didn’t love him enough, or maybe because he was just as insecure as Zack, but was blessed with better features and physical prowess.

Whatever the reason, Zack had never really stood up to a bully before. The fear of repercussion was one of the reasons. Self-loathing was the other—he always thought he deserved it in some way.

If coming to this place had done him any good at all, it made him unafraid of bullies like Harness.
Bullies aren’t quite as terrorizing when you have died twice —perhaps three times—and been forced to battle strange life forms in a macabre death cage.

That epiphany made him bold. It made him do what he was about to do.

Zack stood slowly. He was attempting to be as serious and as menacing as possible, but was failing miserably at it based on the grin on Harness’ chiseled face.

He stood in front of Harness, tilting his head up to stare into his eyes. “You can keep it. It’s probably the biggest thing down there, anyway.”

Jenai chuckled, covering her mouth.

Harness’ face turned red and that vein began popping on his forehead again. “Get out of my face, loser.”

Zack didn’t budge.

Harness made a fist and flinched. Zack didn’t waver. By now, the rest of the group had filtered in to see what the ruckus was about. Zack could feel them press into the small dining area behind him. Harness’ eyes veered off his glare at Zack and to the group. Zack held his breath in the hopes Harness would not call his bluff.

“Whatever, man,” Harness said, grabbing a red apple off the bowl on the corner of the table. He pushed past Zack, the force of his shoulder ramming into him nearly knocked Zack to the floor, and took a big bite of the apple as he disappeared down the hallway.

Zack twirled to see the others, all, except for Cass, with half smiles on their faces. Jenai simply clapped and giggled.

“Wow,” Jenai said, half mockingly and half seriously. “My hero.”

Cass was as snooty as always. “You’re bloody lucky he didn’t kill you. He could have seriously buggered you up, you know.”

“All right. All right,” Brock said. “Drama over.”

Jenai began laughing again, prompting the others to look at her strangely. Even Zack was at a loss to explain her giddiness until she finally made it clear. “He still has that paper football thingy in his pants.”

Cass shook her head, rolled her eyes and sighed, disappearing down the hallway again. Brock smiled. Mizuki just stared at her, slack-jawed, and Zill grabbed an apple and took a bite, completely ignoring the situation.

She had other concerns. “When are they gonna test us again?” She asked between chews of her apple. “Like, we’ve been in this cabin for days with nothing to do. I’m so bored. I’d almost rather be fighting creepy aliens with nunchuks or something.”

Even though Zack had only been with the group for a short time, he could tell it had been a much longer interval between experiments than normal.

There were many explanations for such a hiatus. Few of them were good and that fact was apparent on the faces of his companions.

“It’s never been this long before,” Brock said with apprehension. “What are they waiting for?”

Jenai blurted out, “Maybe it’s the Gorn.”

Zill cocked her head in confusion, a mush of half-chewed apple visible in her slacked mouth. “Like, what are you talking about?”

“The things Zack and I saw when we went on that walk the other day. They looked like Gorn from Star Trek. Lizard people. Maybe there is something wrong with them. I hope so. I don’t wanna kill them or be killed by them.”

Zack had made a choice not to tell the others about what he and Jenai had seen on their excursion—he thought it would just add to the already high level of anxiety. Jenai had agreed, but perhaps she thought it needed to be said now.

Brock did not see Zack’s logic. “You should have told us.”

He tried to explain. “It’s not like we could do anything about it. There was a barrier. They’re over there. We’re in here. It’s like a zoo. We’re in a zoo. Would that have made you feel any better?”

Brock was Brock-ly again—contemplative, analytical. “No. Probably not.”

Zill did not agree. “We so had a right to know lizard people were living next door. God!”

“No, Zack is right,” Brock said, rubbing his hand over his head in thought. “It would have only freaked us out more. But now that we know, it is curious. It appears we are just part of a collection like Zack said. Species of all kinds brought here for some sort of experiment.”

After a contemplative pause, Brock continued. “Or a competition. What if this is a contest? Perhaps we’ll be rewarded eventually with our freedom. Perhaps the ultimate reward is we get to go home.”

Brock was quite logical, almost to a fault. Zack, though, didn’t see the logic in ripping teenagers from their homes, placing them in a macabre festival just to reward the winners with a one-way ticket home.

The most likely scenario was that the winners would actually
stay.

Before Zack knew it, he was letting his theory fall from his lips.

All the eyes in the room snapped to him: big, round and fearful.

This is rather uncomfortable.

They wanted to hear more. “I mean, maybe they need something and they are testing all of us to see who the best options are to give it to them.”

It was a sobering thought and one that was not lost on the others. Zack’s theory meant one thing: they were never going home. Either they won and provided whatever these beings who kept them here needed, or they were discarded—left for dead on some fabricated battlefield.

“That’s certainly a possibility,” Brock said, soberly.

Jenai began to panic, waving her hands in front of her face as she began to weep loudly.

Zill rolled her eyes and shook her head. “God! Don’t be so emo. No way that’s true”

Brock had a knack of making things worse with his logic. He sugar-coated nothing. “It’s just as plausible as any other theory.”

Mizuki had remained very quiet throughout this conversation and Zack had just now noticed that she was still here, listening.

She stood and crossed her arms on her chest. She gazed down at Zack with a curl of her lips—a strange mix of a frown and smile.

It was very odd.

“Well, Zack. What do you say we go for a little walk?”

†††

Mizuki walked so fast toward the tree line Zack had trouble keeping up. He had to break into a jog a few times to keep pace.

“What’s the hurry?” Zack barked.

“I gotta see this for myself.”

“They aren’t going anywhere. This isn’t a race.”

Mizuki stopped and twirled. Her nostrils flared and Zack was taken aback by that. “You’re leading that poor girl on, you know.”

Zack took a step back in shock. “What do you mean?”

“Jenai. She’s like a puppy dog. I know you don’t feel the same way toward her, but you’re encouraging her. It’s wrong.”

Zack stammered. “I … I’m … what? I’m not doing anything. I like Jenai. We have a lot in common.”

Mizuki muttered, “Whatever,” and began her rapid march again.

Their boots crunched the branches and the cones loudly as they reached the woods. Mizuki was the first to cut through the bramble and reach the hedge barrier. She crouched to glean a closer look.

Zack, huffing from the brisk pace, did the same.

It was a vastly different scene than the one he had seen days ago. The habitat on the other side of the barrier was very much like this one. The shack was the nearly identical to theirs. Yellow dandelions sprouted on the sunlit, sloping hills of grass that surrounded the cabin.

Mizuki pulled her head back; her lips quivered. “There are no
Gorn
here.”

“This is different than what Jenai and I saw.”

Zack peered through the gaps again to see people who looked very much like Mizuki milling about on the porch. He could make out an Asian girl, her black hair pulled into a pony tail, wiping her face with an unsteady hand. An Asian boy, who had a thick crop of black hair, rubbed her shoulders and leaned down to say something into her ear.

Mizuki pulled away from the hedge. She had a rather intimidating scowl on her face. “I’ve seen enough.”

She stomped away even more swiftly than before. Zack hurried to make up the gap between them.

Part I

Chapter Five

Bitte. Bitte.

Zack held a lead pipe in his right hand and had brass knuckles secured to his left.

He eyed his surroundings. It looked to be an old warehouse. Dust covered the floor and large hooks hung from beams high above him. Windows, clouded and grimy, spanned all four walls. He smelled a hint of motor oil.

He wore jeans and a tank top tucked into them. The tank top only accentuated his skinny arms.

Harness’ arms were not skinny, his exposed muscles bulged and flexed as he beat a figure about the head and face with his lead pipe, grunting with each furious blow. Splatters of blood covered his face and tank top.

He seemed to enjoy it way too much.

“Take that, you dirty bastard.”

Zack walked carefully toward the figure Harness had just brutally bludgeoned. It was lying motionless in the dirt and dust and wore green cargo pants and a T-shirt that had some peculiar writing on it, partially obscured by blood and what Zack thought could only be teeth and brain matter.

It was a humanoid, pale and thin.

And very much dead.

Zack turned to look at Harness, who smiled almost giddily as his chest expanded with each of his deep breaths.

“Harness, where are the others?”

“Too busy taking these asshats down to freaking care. C’mon. We have some hunting to do.”

Harness pressed ahead, dodging large, sharp hooks. Zack followed closely behind, his eyes wide as he anxiously surveyed his surroundings.

Don’t want to be bludgeoned to death by a T-shirt-wearing humanoid.

Harness turned a corner, stopped and lowered his pipe. Thick blood still dripped off of it and began to pool next to him.

Zack pushed past him to see what had stopped Harness in his tracks. It was a sight he wished he had not seen.

It was Zill hung on a hook, her eyes open, but lifeless, streams of red flowing from the corners of her mouth. The hook had pierced her between her breasts.