The Game

Nine year old Martin Haywood was just getting out of the shower when the doorbell rang.

"Marty, it’s for you!!," his mother called up the stairs.

"Alright, I’ll be down in a minute!" He had just moved into this house with his mother and his twin sister less than a month ago. He hadn’t really made any friends, and he wondered who in the world was here for him.

He dried and dressed quickly in jeans and a WWF shirt and ran down the stairs. Bobby Speed stood in the front hall. He was eleven, soon to be twelve, and muscular for his age. Marty didn’t know him too well, but he saw him around his new school a lot, talking with some other boys, after it let out for the day. He grinned widely at Marty. "Hi there."

"Hey Bobby."

"Do you wanna come outside with the boys and me?," he asked as Marty reached the bottom of the stairs. There was a group of about twelve other boys, ages eight to ten, in the front yard.

He looked up at his mother. "Mom?"

"Sure you can. Just don’t be late, ok? Dinner’s at six."

"Ok. Hold on, Bobby, I’ll be right back." He ran upstairs to his room to get his socks and shoes. He was kind of nervous. Bobby and his friends had never really paid any attention to him before. He thought they were kind of weird. When he saw them in class, they basically ignored him. They weren’t mean, they just didn’t associate with him. But last week when the gym teacher complimented Marty on how fast he thought on his feet, he knew that Bobby had been watching him. He wasn’t a stupid child, and he knew when someone wanted something from him.

He ran downstairs after tying his shoes and out the door, yelling good bye to his mother. Bobby smiled again when he saw him. "You ready, big boy?"

"Yeah, I guess," Marty said, shrugging. "What’re we doing?"

"We’re going to go play in my back yard," Bobby said, slinging a powerful arm around Marty’s shoulders. "That ok with you?"

"Yeah, that’s fine."

At Bobby’s house, Bobby’s little brother watched from the porch. He was silent as they walked around the house, passing only a few feet. He watched them, and then just as they were about to pass, he suddenly shrieked, "Get away, kid! Run while you still can!!"

They all jumped, and Bobby stooped and picked a rock up. "Game begin," he said, and then the rock went flying. It struck his little brother in the forehead and he fell back. There was a sickening thud and crunch as he landed on his head and his neck broke.

Marty’s jaw flew open. A lady ran out of the house. She saw her son and screamed, then looked at Bobby and how calm he was. "Bobby, is this a game?"

Bobby said nothing but started walking again, having to pull Marty with him. Bobby’s mother called something after them, but she was ignored.

"Bobby what did you just do to him?!," Marty said, pulling away. Bobby sighed.

"You’ll understand, Marty. Come on." He pulled him along.

Back at Marty’s house, right after the door slammed shut behind Marty, the phone rang. "Hello?"

"Karen?"

"Yes, this is she."

"Hey, it’s Mike."

"Hey you," she said happily. She was always happy to hear from her cousin. He had grown up in the town that they had just moved to, and he always called to check up on them.

"How’s the kids?"

"Fine."

"Where’s Marty?"

"He just went outside with some friends."

"Who?"

"A boy named Bobby, I do believe."

"Bobby Speed?"

"I think that’s what it was." There was silence from the other end of the line. "Mike?"

"Are you sure it’s Bobby Speed?"

"Yes."

"And you let him go?"

"Yes, I didn’t see anything wrong with it."

He hesitated. "I don’t… approve of Bobby and the way he plays," Mike said. He quickly changed the subject, and Karen forgot about it.

At the time Karen was getting off the phone with her cousin, her son was crouched, scared and shaking, with a machine gun in his hands. It was a miniature-sized gun, and he clutched it tightly to his chest in his anxiety. He heard the snapping of a stick behind him and jumped, screaming. He began running blindly, and he heard maniacal laughing of other children. Bullets thudded into trees and into the ground all around him. He threw himself, rolling, into a small brush covered ditch. He hit something vaguely warm and looked over. The dead body of a boy he knew only as Mark lay there, dead and empty eyes staring up at the blue sky. The only thing that kept him from screaming was the fact that he bit down on his lip, almost drawing blood. He looked around, scared. Whatever this game of Bobby’s was, he didn’t like it.

When they were ready to ‘play’, Bobby had handed him a red arm band and said, "You’re on the red team." Then he gave him a gun and three magazines and told him to start running. Marty wasn’t sure if he was joking or not until one other boy brought out a nine millimeter and pointed it at him. He began running like crazy. The shots rang out, and he barely missed being hit.

He heard the laugh of all the other boys around him. His face darkened. He didn’t want to play this game any more. He still had that shadow of a doubt that it wasn’t real, but he knew what he saw, and he knew he had to play like it was. He hadn’t used his gun yet, but now was the time. His brain suddenly shifted gears, and he started thinking clearly and logically. He looked around. He was safe for the moment, but he probably wouldn’t be for much longer. He didn’t like the gun he had, even though it could save his life. It was bulky and he feel strange with it, very unbalanced. He looked at Mark. He had a Smith and Wesson nine millimeter and a belt of ammo. "Sorry, Mark," he said softly, taking the belt and the gun. He had never loaded a gun before, he had only seen it on TV and seen his dad do it.

It didn’t take him long to figure it out, and soon he was ready to move again, feeling much lighter without the bulk of the machine gun. He stripped off his white t shirt and threw it away from him, knowing that the brightness would attract attention. He looked at his watch. It was five thirty.

He began moving, keeping low to the ground. There was a movement behind him. He spun. His eyes went right to the left arm, where the arm band would be. Blue. He pulled the trigger, throwing himself and blasting the other boy back.

He was sore already. The next time a boy with a blue arm band came out, he tensed his arms and prepared himself for the kick back and pulled the trigger. That was two down.

Fifteen minutes went by. He was running, and suddenly tripped and rolled, stopping by Bobby’s feet. He looked up at Bobby, wondering what was going to happen now.

Bobby pointed the gun square at Marty’s forehead. Suddenly the wristwatch on his arm started beeping madly. "Game over," Bobby said, the arm that was holding the gun dropping to his side.

Boys started coming out of the trees. Marty looked around from his position on the ground. He saw Mark. "Mark? I thought . . . but you . . ."

"It’s just a game, Marty," he said, grinning. Marty stood up.

"I don’t understand. I shot that guy right there," he said, pointing to a boy in a blue arm band.

"I know," Bobby said, patting him on the back. He took the gun from his hand and the belt from around his waist and drew him out of the forest. Marty saw Bobby’s little brother on the back porch, toying with a plastic truck. No blood, no broken neck, no nothing. Marty looked down at his clothes. Clean as they were when he put them on. The scratches on his arms were gone. The blood from a scrape on his neck was gone. "Go home, Marty, we’ll see you tomorrow," Bobby said, and Marty nodded dumbly and began walking, thinking about what he had just witnessed.

He had shot those people, and Mark had been dead. He had seen dead animals before—deer that his father had shot, rabbits he had shot, squirrels that had been run over by cars—but never a dead a human. Even so, he thought he was qualified enough to know whether a person was dead or not. Mark’s body had been cold before he had gotten out of that bush. He had blown one boy right in the neck with a bullet. Yet they were all walking and happy after . . . after Bobby said, "Game over." And what about Bobby’s little brother? He had heard the crunch. Something had broken. When Marty had lived in his old town, there was a boy who fell off of the his own barn roof when he was helping his dad refinish it, and he had landed on his arm wrong. Marty heard the crunch of the bone, and that’s what he heard when the little boy fell off of the side railing of Bobby’s porch. Yet he was sitting up and well in the back yard when they came out of the woods.

He walked into an empty house. His mother left a note on the table, saying that the next door neighbors had an emergency and she had to leave, behave, and she would be home soon. Marty locked all the doors and windows in the house and set the alarm to ‘alert’.

There was a distant rumble of thunder in the distance. The lights flickered. Marty looked around, not sure of what to do. His sister was probably with his mother, which meant he was alone.

The shrill ring of the phone broke the silence and made Marty jump. He answered it cautiously, using the phone on the table by the stairs.

"Hello?"

"Marty my boy!" His uncle’s voice booming through the phone line comforted Marty instantly, and he sat on the stairs.

"Hey Uncle Mike. How’re you?"

"I’m fine. How’re you doing?" Marty hesitated. "Marty? You still there?"

". . . Yeah. I’m ok."

"Something’s wrong, son. What’s up?"

"I was out playing today, and it was rough," was all Marty was willing to offer. Uncle Mike seemed to understand.

"Is your mother there?"

"No, everyone’s gone."

"Never say that over the phone, boy," Uncle Mike said sternly. Marty was taken aback. "Are all the doors locked?"

"Yes sir."

Mike seemed to relax. "Didn’t mean to scare you, boy, but you never know who may be listening. Have to be careful nowadays." They talked for about a half an hour until Mike had to go. "You behave yourself, boy, and be careful. And don’t forget if you ever have a question or a problem, you call Uncle Mike and talk to me, ok?"

Marty considered telling him about the ‘game’ earlier that day but decided against it. "I will, Uncle Mike. Thanks."

They hung up, and the lights went out. Marty’s hand shot to the phone thoughts of calling Mike back racing through his head, but before he could decide whether to or not, the phone rang again. A small yelp escaped his lips, and he picked the phone up. "Hello?," he practically shrieked into the receiver. Why was he so scared?

"Marty?"

"Yes, this is Marty," he said, getting his normal voice back.

". . . Hi, this is Sarah. From school?

"Yeah, hey Sarah," he said, relaxing.

"Is your power out?"

"Yeah, it just went out two seconds ago, right before you called."

"Oh. I must be a jinx."

He laughed. "No, I don’t think so."

"Anyway, I was calling to ask about math class. Did we have any homework?"

"No, I don’t think so. We had that test today, you know?"

"Oh yeah. So we didn’t have anything to look over?"

"Nope."

"I tried calling you earlier, but you were out."

"Yeah, I was with Bobby Speed."

She was silent for a moment. "I don’t like Bobby too much," she said. "He’s . . . weird."

"Yeah, that’s a good word to use," Marty said. "The guy’s creepy."

She laughed. "Yeah, he is. I used to be friends with him, but a couple years ago, when he was nine, he started hanging out with his cousin, Ike Speed, about a month or two before he was sent away."

"Sent away?," Marty asked.

"Yeah, he went to some sort of special school somewhere. No one’s ever seen him since then. It seems like everybody that hangs out in that group gets sent away. Usually when they’re twelve. My brother used to hang out with them, but when he was eleven, and Bobby was ten, he and Bobby got into a fight and they never spoke to each other again."

Headlights flashed as a car pulled into the driveway. "Hey, Sarah, I gotta go. My mom just got home."

"Alright, I’ll see you tomorrow."

"Yup. Bye." He hung up and ran to the door that led to the garage, flinging open. His sister stood there, a surprised look on her face. Then she hugged him tightly.

"Marty are you ok?," she asked, pulling away but not letting go. He nodded. Something passed between them. His mother walked up while they were still standing there, holding each other’s arms.

"Marty, are you ok? Your sister was pitching a fit coming back. She was sure you were in trouble."

"No, I’m ok. Really."

The lights came on, and Marty smiled. "Ya’ll just brighten my life."

His mother laughed and shooed them inside.

Later that night while she was fixing a late dinner, and Marty was sitting at the counter doing some homework, he had to ask her. "Mom, would you ever send me away?"

"What do you mean, send you away?," she asked.

"Like to that special camp where they sent Ike Speed."

"I heard about that. He was a . . . ‘disruptive child’, and he was sent to a military school."

"Seems like anybody who hangs out with a Speed gets sent there."

His mother didn’t reply.

After dinner, Marty was worn out. He went to bed, and just as he was falling asleep, the phone rang. He answered it, knowing his mother was in the shower and his sister in the basement. "Hello?"

"Marty. Stay away from Speed. He’s dangerous and he’ll only get you hurt," a hoarse voice said.

"What? Who is this?"

"Don’t play The Game with Bobby. It’ll turn you into a killer. Look it up in the library. By yourself. You’ll see what I mean."

The line went dead.

The next day Marty skipped school. He got on the bus, but when the bus let the children off at the elementary school, he slipped away. At the public library, the librarians gave him questioning looks but never said anything.

He wasn’t sure, at first, where to go. He finally went to the newspaper section and looked in all of the local sections. There it was. An article with two pictures. One was a picture of a group of about twelve or thirteen boys. He read the names. Various names, but there were two Speeds. Eight year old Bobby Speed and eleven year old Ike. The second picture was of Ike and Bobby together.

But there were no more articles until a year later. And Ike wasn’t in it. The caption below the picture with both boys in it read, "Isaac Speed leaves group leadership position for Camp Sequoyah, his cousin Robert Speed to take his place in one year."

The paper printed a year later showed a full shot of Bobby, probably his school picture. He was nine. The caption read, "Robert Speed to take leadership position." There was another picture of a group of boys. Some of the faces were new. He searched for a specific last name, Carroll. There it was. Larry Carroll. It wasn’t mentioned, but he was brother to Sarah Carroll.

"If he was nine . . . ," Marty said to himself, searching through the newspapers. Sarah had said when her brother was eleven and Bobby was ten. He found a newspaper, not exactly a year later, but a little longer, and there it was. A school picture of Larry. He looked a lot like Sarah. "Carroll boy leaves group on free will." There was a comment from Bobby. "He had a difference of opinion. When you’re not in a leadership position, you can’t disagree with your superior. Not even in your head. It causes conflict that you don’t need, which leads to poor performance, which leads to a big loss."

"Loss of what, Bobby? Isn’t it all fixed when you say ‘game over’?," Marty whispered bitterly.

There was a noise behind him. He turned quickly, but there was no one there, just a stack of what looked like newspapers that you would pass out in school. He was sitting on the floor, and just crawled over. There was a typed note on top. "Marty- these will tell you what you need to know."

It was an underground-type newspaper. It explained everything about The Game that Marty did—and didn’t—want to know. Most of the boys started when they were eight or nine. They went until they were twelve and then they were sent to a special camp. Camp Sequoyah.

During each game, whoever the designated leader was—for example, Bobby—said, "Game begin."

From then on, whoever died, died, whoever didn’t, didn’t. Once the Leader said, "Game over", everything went back to normal. If the Leader was killed, the Game was automatically over and he lived. Only certain people got to be in the group. Those who showed exceptional talent in normal, everyday life were in the group. They weren’t invited, they were forced. They really had no choice. The adults either choose to ignore it or they didn’t care.

Marty sat back, amazed. How could this be? Questions flew through his head, all unanswered.

The clock in the lobby chimed noon. He looked at his watch. He took some of the papers and crammed them into his book bag and threw the rest in the trash can. He ran down the street to the school. As he was running down the hall to go to class, finally, he was met by Bobby and three other guys from the Game. "Where’ve you been, Marty? Don’t you know that when you don’t go to school—"

"You’re kept after and you’re not allowed to play, yes, I know," Marty said. He tried to pass Bobby. A strong hand gripped his shoulder.

"What’re you talking about, Marty?," he asked calmly, but the grip on Marty’s shoulder said he was anything but.

"Isn’t that right? When you don’t go to class you can’t be part of it when you say ‘game begin’? Isn’t that right?"

"Where did you hear that?"

"It doesn’t matter," Marty said, surprising Bobby by twisting out of his grip with unexpected strength. His book bag fell, and Bobby ripped it open. The newspapers fell out. Bobby would’ve dismissed it, but he saw the look of apprehension that Marty didn’t cover fast enough. He looked down at the papers and back at him and smiled knowingly and evilly.

"Well well well, what do we have here?" He bent over and picked them up and started to read. Marty’s gut fell. But then a dark look crossed Bobby’s face. "What the hell is this shit?," he asked crossly. "Do you think this is a joke?," he spat, throwing the papers at Marty’s chest. "I hope you got some kind of enjoyment out of this, Marty."

He and his friends walked out the front door. Confused, Marty picked up a paper. The words were written in jibberish, even the head line. But, before his eyes, the words changed into English. He dropped the pages and backed up, shakily, looking around with wild eyes. What was going on?

He heard footsteps, what sounded like a lot of them, all marching in time, coming down the hall. Whoever it was hadn’t come around the corner yet, and he scooped up the papers and ran from the building, his torn book bag hitting against his back. He ran all the way home.

His mother was on the front porch, and she stood up, shocked, when she saw him. Sensing his urgency, she opened the front door. He vaulted inside, and she followed him, carrying the magazine she had been reading and the cup of coffee that she had been drinking. "Marty, what in the world is wrong with you?"

He dropped onto the stairs in the hallway, trying to catch his breath and think of how to explain it to his mother at the same time. She sat next to him and waited. When he could finally speak, he said, "Mom, have I ever lied to you about something that was really serious?"

"Well, no, honey."

"So if I were to tell you something that seemed really crazy but I knew it was the truth, would you believe me?"

"If you swore to me it was the whole truth, yes."

"No matter how crazy?"

"No matter how crazy," she replied.

"Ok. This is how it goes." And he started from the very beginning, from when he stepped onto Bobby Speed’s yard, not leaving anything out. Bobby’s little brother. The guns. Mark. The people he shot. How everything was normal when Bobby said "Game over". The newspapers. Everything.

Then they sat in silence, and he looked at her. She was staring at the ground, her hands clasped.

"Your Uncle Mike called today after you left for school. He told me what happened to the Carroll boy, after he and Bobby had a fight. He’s twelve now. He’s a happy, normal boy. He remembers everything but doesn’t let it bother him."

"What are we going to do?"

"We have to leave."

"Leave?"

"We can’t stay here after all this. They’ll never leave us alone."

"Why not? They left Larry alone."

". . . Uncle Mike. . . Uncle Mike said that they won’t leave us alone. They want you, Marty. They haven’t seen anybody of your ability in a long time. You think fast on your feet, and you keep a cool head even in a bad situation."

They sat there in silence. "So when are we leaving?"

"I’m not sure. Tomorrow. Uncle Mike said that he’d have help here tomorrow. So you go to school, like normal, ok? I’ll keep your sister here. I’ll say she’s sick. She can help me pack. Act like everything is normal. Tell the boys that you changed your mind and even invite them to play here tomorrow at five. When they get here, we’ll be gone."

So they had a plan. They told Heather, and she nodded solemnly. The next day Marty went to school and set the plan in action. When he saw Bobby standing outside the building, probably waiting for them, he grinned widely and ran up to them. "Hey, Bobby, my mom said we can play at my house today. Is that ok?"

Bobby looked shocked for a moment, then nodded dumbly. "Sure, sure. Five o’clock ok?"

"Yeah, that’s fine. No problem. Well, gotta go. See ya later!"

He bounded in the school and saw Sarah. He walked up to her. "Hey, what’s up?"

"Marty, what are you doing?," she hissed at him, anger in her eyes.

"What do you mean?"

"Didn’t you understand what those papers said yesterday?," she asked. "Why are you letting them go over to your house?"

"That was you?"

"No, it was my brother. He called you and he gave you those papers. He’s the guy who founded them. Why are you letting them go to your house?"

He pulled her closer as they walked and confided his family’s plan to her. "And when they get there, we’ll be nowhere to be found."

"Well . . . ok. But if anything goes wrong, you can come to my house, ok? We’ll keep you safe."

He nodded.

The day seemed to crawl by. When the last bell finally rang, he bolted from his seat and then remembered not to look too anxious. He calmly boarded the bus and sat by the window. Sarah sat next to him, surprising him. "I didn’t know you rode this bus."

"I don’t. My bus driver’s sick, so ya’ll have to take us home."

They chatted the rest of the way, and, knowing that someone from the Game was behind them, spoke of what they were going to do in the coming days, making plans to meet and go over homework. As she got off, she called, "Call me at eight, ok?"

He nodded. When he got off the bus, he ran all the way to his house, not caring who saw him now. They were leaving anyway. Outside his house, he stopped cold. His mother’s car was gone. "Mom?!," he yelled, running up the front steps. The door was unlocked. He ran inside. The house was bare. Everything was gone. The pictures, the throw carpet, the furniture, everything. He ran upstairs. All the bedrooms were bare.

Back down in the kitchen, he searched for a note. Were they waiting somewhere else for him?

He walked around the now-bare rooms, trying to think.

"They’re gone, son."

Marty stopped. The voice had come from the living room. He walked to the door and looked in. There was a man there, sitting in a wooden chair. "Uncle Mike?"

He looked up at him and smiled sadly. "They’re gone, Marty."

"Where are they, Uncle Mike?," he asked, not hearing his uncle.

"Marty, they left two hours ago. They’re gone. They left you."

Then it hit home. It hit so hard Marty dropped to the floor. They were really gone. His mother had kept his sister from school because she was planning to leave him. The whole time, she had been planning to leave him. A tear coursed down his cheek. He heard the front door open behind him as his uncle got up from the chair. Mike walked over and placed a hand on his nephew’s shoulder. "Marty . . ."

Marty stood up and pulled away. "Don’t touch me."

"That’s no way to speak to your uncle," a voice behind him said. Marty spun around. Bobby stood there.

"You get out of here, Bobby."

"No way. I can’t leave you. Not now."

"Why not?"

"You’re the next Leader. I’ll be twelve soon. I’ll be leaving for the Camp. You’ll be taking my place."

"Like hell I will."

"That’s why your mother left you, son," Mike said. "She knew that she wouldn’t be able to leave town with you. She had no choice."

"Come on, Marty, being a Leader is honorable," Bobby said. "Almost as honorable as going to the Camp."

"I don’t want to," Marty spat. "And I won’t."

"I’m afraid you have no choice," Bobby said simply.

"Uncle Mike," Marty pleaded, looking to his uncle.

"I’m sorry, Marty, I can’t help you," he said, shaking his head sadly.

"I’m supposed to be resourceful, right?," Marty said. He lashed out at Bobby, surprising him. He knocked him to the floor.

"Marty, here!" He looked up. There was Sarah, and she had duct tape. Marty understood. Without being able to speak, the game couldn’t begin. Marty bound Bobby quickly. He looked to his uncle.

"Run, Marty. Get out."

And he ran.

He wasn't exactly sure where he was going, but he guessed that as long as he was far away from Billy, he would be ok. But what about Sarah?, he thought, and his step hesitated.

She'll be fine, a voice in his head answered. She knows this area well and can get away with no problem.

But what about him? He had to find a place to hide until he figured out what he was going to do. He slowed to a walk, panting for air and holding his side. He needed to save his breath, too, in case he had to run some more. A pick up truck pulled up beside him. A man he had never seen before leaned out the window and said, "Go to 225 Pennington Drive. The people there will help you."

The man sped away. "Great, where is Pennington?," Marty asked no one in particular. He heard a dog barking up ahead, and he squinted against the afternoon sunlight. A German Shepherd sat at a sign post, and when he saw that Marty had spotted him, he stood and barked one more time, then trotted down the street that was perpendicular to the one Marty was walking down. Where had he seen that dog before? He remember as he turned down the street to follow the dog. He has seen Sarah walking it one day, before Billy ever invited him to plat the Game. That seemed like a million years ago. So why . . . he stopped the internal voice. He was beginning to learn to not ask questions. That only got him into trouble.

The dog waited almost too far away to see. Marty began jogging. Halfway there, the dog ran off. When he reached the spot where the dog had been, he looked around. The dog was nowhere to be seen. Marty looked skyward. "You're going to have to give me a little more help than that."

He listened. No bark. No nothing. Just silence. He started walking forward, looking at sign posts. Alvin street. Cherryvale Road. Queen street. Kingsport lane. No Pennington. He sighed in frustration. He wasn't getting anywhere, and Billy was going to find him soon.

He heard a bark and turned towards it. Nothing. But he understood. He walked in the direction it came from. Then he heard three short barks, very urgent sounding. He started running. The dog jumped out of the bushes ahead of him and ran beside him. He fell back and nipped at Marty's heels when he got too slow. Marty looked over his shoulder and looked behind him. There was a car a ways back, but it was coming. And it was coming fast. He went faster. The dog turned down a street. Pennington. There, in the distance, was Sarah. She saw him and started running for him, but he threw his arm in her direction, motioning her back. She hesitated, and there was the screeching of wheels and the sound of a sign post grating across the side of the car as it flew around the corner behind him. She turned and ran.

There was no way Marty was going to make it. He couldn't run anymore. His mom deserted him to these people and they were going to get him--his mother. Left him. His own mother. She told him she was going to be there. Something inside him exploded and poured fire into his nine year old veins. He ran faster than he ever had in his entire life.

He beat the car to the house.

Up the sidewalk, the porch stairs, through the front door, right into the arms of his mother.

Everything went black.

He woke up an hour later. He felt much better, and he felt even better when he saw his mother's face. She squeezed his hand.

"I thought you left me."

"Oh baby no, no," she said, hugging him. "I could never leave you."

"What about Uncle Mike?"

"Thought you'd never ask," came the reply. Marty looked over in the corner, where Mike was sitting in a rocking chair. He grinned at his nephew. "You think I'd let those guys get my favorite nephew? I think not."

"Then, at the house . . . why did you . . ."

"Well, the plan sort of backfired. I knew that we were being listened to, and I know that Bobby and his people think I'd never lie to you. I had to tell you that your mom was gone so that they'd think she was. Do you see?"

"Yeah, yeah, I do."

"So what do we do now, Mike?," Karen asked. "We have to get out of here. Will they follow us?"

"Once we cross the state line, we should be ok," Mike said.

There was a knock at the door. "Mom? Is he--Marty!! You're awake!," his sister said, running into the room. She jumped onto the bed and hugged him. Sarah came in behind her and sat next to them.

"We have to leave, you know that, Sarah?," Marty said. She nodded. "What about you?"

"They won't bother us. I'll be ok. You just keep in touch, ok?"

"Yes. And maybe when I'm older I'll come back and put a stop to it."

"Oh, you will, I know you will," Mike said, rising from his chair and walking over to them. "Now, how are we going to get out of here, Marty?"

His nine year old brain started clicking away . . .

"I'm an 18-y/o rising sophomore in college, majoring in Psychology. My favorite activities are playing the guitar and piano, singing, writing, sleeping, annoying people, babysitting and spending time with friends."

E-mail: marshalm@licensedtokill.com

URL: http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Den/7520

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