I Am Alive (7 page)

Leo has a war to fight on his own now.

I don’t know what to do. Ten seconds to detonation. This bus is going to explode. This is not my bus anymore!

What should I do? The other buses are too close. Any explosion could affect me as well.

Suddenly, I hear many shots. Did Leo kill anyone? I wash the thought away.

“It’s heating up,” says Timmy. “Seven.” He is counting down. He is certainly entertaining the viewers.

Something bumps against the bus’s door.

It’s Leo with the Jeep. The Jeep looks like it’s from a zombie movie. Outranked on top, biting each other, hitting each other, some of them dragged to the tail, hanging from a rail. Everyone is protecting Leo though, so he can drive. I wonder what is happening to the other buses. I get closer to the door of the bus, leaving the wheel behind. Leo is barely keeping up with the speed. He can’t lend me a hand. Busy hands. One driving, and the other shooting into the air. He should try doing stunts, if we survive this.

As I stand at the edge of the bus’s door, we hit a bump in the road. The uncontrolled steering wheel shifts. The bus sways to the left, increasing the distance between me and the Jeep. I can see the hot asphalt underneath. I can’t jump. The Jeep is too far now.

“Four.” Timmy’s voice echoes in my head.

I am going to die, just as the girl predicted. I can’t jump, and even worse, the bus I am on is slowing down since no one is pushing the gas pedal.

Leo steers the wheel to the left, tangent to the bus, looking at me with that intensity in his eyes, almost parting his lips.

"Will you speak to me if I die?" I joke. Leo's eyes are going to bulge out.

“Jump, for God’s sake,” they scream from the Jeep.

I close my eyes and jump. Funny how a ticking bomb makes you do such an irrational thing.

“One.” Timmy is happy.

I land over Leo’s lap. Leo pushes the gas pedal to the maximum as the bus explodes. The heat of the explosion burns in my back. A couple of the outranked on the Jeep fall to the ground. Leo is a mess, looking like he’s come out of a coal mine. The air against our faces cools us a little while we’re speeding up. I look back over Leo’s shoulder. There is a huge irregular foam of black smoke reaching up for the sky behind us. This looks worse than in the movies. This isn’t a game. This is war.

“Boom!” Timmy celebrates. “I love explosions.”

Slowly, a bus appears out of the smoke behind us. Okay. They made it too. We have about ten teenagers on the Jeep. With that bus, I guess maybe twenty or so others made it. Did anyone else survive?

Did all those other kids just die? Is this mass murder, or what? All in the name of the Burning Man.

The floating smoke starts to clear away slowly. I see glimpses of the scene behind us. I close my eyes immediately. It’s unbelievable. Is this what my brother watches on TV and loves so much?

I hear the sound of motorcycles approaching from behind the smoke. I wait until whatever is behind the smoke shows through.

It’s not motorcycles. These are like skateboards floating above the ground, with some kind of fire engine underneath every board. Riding them are the calm tattooed guys from the other bus. Riding on the flying boards, they are smirking at us.

Who are they? Are they trained for this?

“Hoverboardz,” Roger This says. So he made it to the Jeep after all. “Awesome!” he says, as if this is virtual reality. Somehow, this death game doesn’t bother him at all.

I don’t want to be sitting on Leo’s lap. Practically, because it feels so good. I am worse than I thought when it comes to this ape. I crawl over to the passenger seat, sharing it with two other boys, but on no one’s lap. The boys keep staring at my ripped dress. What’s wrong with these boys? Doesn’t anyone here get that we’re about to die?

Leo glances in the mirror, lips sealed as usual.

“Well. Well. Well,” says Timmy. “We have about a hundred survivors. That’s a lot, and that’s fun. I see that none of them are following the rules though, should we blow ‘em up, do you think?”

“What does he mean?” I ask around me. Everyone is perplexed. What are we doing wrong?

It suddenly hits me. I press the red button on my iAm and scream:

“I. AM. ALIVE!”

Everyone in the Jeep says it after me, “I am alive.”

I hear those in the other surviving bus saying it too.

The tattoo gang with the Hoverboardz push the button on their iAms. They say “I am alive” in a tone suggesting they are confident and sarcastic, as if they’re used to all this killing. Who are they?

A number of voices from other places we don’t see say they’re alive too.

To tell the truth, screaming “I am alive” after such an experience is such an ecstatic feeling. I haven’t felt this sense of victory before. I guess this is what Roger This meant. We’re all teens trying to be adults. We still love to play. If we play and don’t think about dying, we might make it.

“That’s the spirit.” Timmy is pleased. “You are alive indeed.” He stops, his eyes closer to the screen, “But for how long, Monsteritas?”

“Yeah. For how long?” a fat boy yells from the audience, with a mouthful of junk food.

“But wait a minute,” says Timmy. “Someone didn’t say it.”

Immediately, I look at Leo. He looks back at me. I wonder what keeps him so tight-lipped. I reach for his face and try to force his lips open. He resists and pulls away. It’s like trying to squeeze juice from a stone.

“Come on, man,” a boy says from the Jeep. “You are the hero. Don’t give up on us. By the way, is Chuck Norris your uncle or something? Vin Diesel maybe?"

Leo is speechless. There is a glowing in the corner of his eyes, that golden shade I saw earlier. I want to tell them that he is not going to open up for whatever reason. Believe me. I have known him for about two hours, and it feels like we have known each other since middle school.

My heart sinks into my feet. Leo is going to explode, and I will have no time to survive because I am too near. I will blow up with him. The girls in the Jeep grab for the edges, ready to jump. What will they do then? Run on foot like those other fools?

The Hoverboardz gang starts slowing down. It is obvious that Leo is all muscle, and no brains.

“Well, you leave me no choice, mysterious hero.” Timmy is reaching for something, a button, most probably the one that will blow up Leo.

I grab Leo’s iAm and shout in it. “I am alive.”

This should work. We are treated as numbers, and we have no real identity, so his iAm is more important than he is. What difference does it make who says it?

“That’s cheating, you little Monster.” Timmy is looking at the screen, as if he is looking straight at me. He says the word Monster slowly and with pleasure. He knows who I am. He hates me. He would certainly enjoy blowing up Leo, a Nine. Timmy, the envious Trickster. What’s the difference between a Trickster and a so-called Monster?

“It doesn’t matter who says it,” a girl screams at Timmy from our Jeep. I look at the timer. We have wasted a minute with this conversation, and only Leo knows the rest of the plan. We need him.

Leo, you fool. You can’t die before I know what your story is.

“Sorry, Monsterina,” says Timmy, wearing a sad mask with plastic tears on it. “Goodbyeee.”

I have to do something, and I do. The craziest trick I would ever have imagined myself pulling. I don’t know if it will work, but I am counting on the viewers this time, not the Trickster.

I hold Leo’s face with both hands and kiss him on the mouth, not taking my lips off his.

Leo doesn’t do anything back with his sealed lips. Only manages to drive fifty-miles-per-hour, while we are about to die in sixty seconds.

“He is busy,” I claim in the iAm. “Can’t you see? He is my boyfriend,” I lie, and I get back to Leo’s lips.
This boy is mine!
“And if we die, we will die together. This is the kiss of death.” I know no one will believe that he is my boyfriend, but I can try. A Nine and a Seven? That’s never happened.

The viewers go crazy. They shout at Timmy not to push the button. “He is the hero,” some say. “You’re killing the game too fast,” others protest. “This is so romantic,” the girls say. Some girls actually scream Leo’s name from the Zeppelins outside the battlefields, wearing their ClairVos.

I don’t know if this is exactly what I have expected, or did I just want to kiss someone beautiful like Leo before I die? All I know is that this is TV, Faya's biggest hobby. And even though they will all want to watch monsters die, no one can resist romance. I remember my mother loving the blood in the previous game, and also crying when the slightest romantic thing happened. Blood and romance, the ultimate entertainment.

Timmy clears his throat in the microphone, feeling a little overruled by the audience.

“Sweet little Romeo and Juliet — I mean Leo and Monsteriette,” says Timmy, making a silly face with two black teardrops falling off his makeup. “May I pronounce you as Monster and wife — ah — I mean, the audience has voted for you, which rarely counts in the games. But why not, we are only in the beginning, and you will die either way.”

The audience celebrates the verdict. They even scream my name after Leo. They call me Pixie because I am small.

Audience tic. Audience tac. Audience toe.

I am not Pixie. I am Decca, goddammit! Decca Tenderstone.

I pull my lips away from Leo’s, which I secretly enjoyed, and his eyes look hypnotized. This strong boy, hypnotized by me? I am only wishing. “See,” I say to Him. “You’re not the only one famous here.”

The boys and girls in the Jeep let out a sigh. Down here, this is no lovey-dovey moment. Everyone knows it is a silly trick.

One minute left to termination.

I give Leo a slight slap on his face. “You better have a plan now.”

He gives me that angry look again. It’s like:
How dare you kiss me while I am trying to save the world, driving fifty-miles-per-hour, with one hand on the wheel?

“I am afraid the love puppets and their friends have one minute left,” Timmy smiles again.

We are no love puppets. I hope you didn’t see this, Woo. It's not real. I'm coming for you.

“You should reset the timer,” a familiar voice from the audience requests.

It’s Ariadna.

I go crazy, looking in the iAm and the screens around us. There are plenty of the iScreens on the sides of the road inside the Playa. The camera doesn’t show her, but I know it is her voice. The audience supports her. “Don’t kill the game, you fool,” they tell Timmy again.

“Okay. Okay.” Timmy ruffles his hair with his hands, sounding like when I first met him, stripped of his Trickster confidence. “B-b-but…” He starts waving his hands around his ears and buzzing again. “Th-th-this is the only exception I’ll make today. Here we go. Three minutes and counting…”

Here we go again. Leo speeds up. With the wind against my face, my hair stretches back, and I think my cheeks look like they have been sucked in by a vacuum cleaner.

To the left and to the right, the other bus and the skateboarding teens catch up with us, waiting for Leo’s next move. I bite my lip. I am not used to following someone blindly. I am used to having a plan, but there is so much going on right now. I remind myself of the flashlight Leo picked up from the military bag. I remind myself that he has plans for making it until tomorrow morning. Every minute counts.

Leo grabs my hand and slams it against the wheel. It's as if I am his beer-drinking buddy. I wonder how an ex-rock star becomes like that. I cross over to the passenger seat and steer the wheel again, noticing he has started the Jeep’s engine by connecting two wires.

"If I live, I think I’m eligible for getting a driver's license already," I shout against the wind.

"Your driving sucks!" A voice says behind me. A voice I haven't heard for about ten minutes--which felt like a lifetime already. It's Mr. Pessimistic. "You're going to kill us all!"

"Wow. You're still alive." I watch him in the mirror.

"What's that supposed to mean?" he snaps at me.

"It means I will push you off my car if you don't stop talking." I say.

Before Mr. Pessimistic objects, Leo turns around and aims his rifle at him. Glad we're on the same page, I think.

Leo brings up an unfamiliar application on his iAm. The device rejects it at first, showing a window with an unauthorized symbol on it. Leo pushes a number of buttons with one hand. This time, it works. He gazes ahead at the rollercoaster, which starts moving and picks up speed.

Enthusiastically, the boys and girls raise their hands in the air. The rollercoaster is set to run faster than fifty-miles-per-hour, I think. Leo must have some hacker experience to do this.

But how are we going to catch up with the rollercoaster’s speed? If we walk to it, we will explode on our way. There is no way we can run fifty-miles-per-hour to it, without stopping. I look at Leo as he is adjusting the rollercoaster’s speed to meet the minimum speed allowed in the game. Still, that’s not enough.

“Boys and girls, we have a computer hacker here,” Timmy blasts out in the microphone. I am sure he is envious. Hacking computers should be his specialty. I hope he has no time to hack back into the system and stop Leo’s plan. But I still don’t know how we are going to get on to the rollercoaster.

Two minutes to the final explosion.

Awkwardly, Leo points his rifle at one of the boys on the flying Hoverboardz. The boy grins at Leo, speeding up, not wanting to stop. It makes sense. Those on their Hoverboardz, flying fifty-miles-per-hour, are the only ones who could make the transition from their Hoverboardz to the rollercoaster, still keeping the minimum speed limits. But I see them flying toward the rollercoaster, leaving us behind.

Leo urges me to speed up after them. I steer the wheel to the right, chasing the boys. They are our only way out. They have to let us on the Hoverboardz.

Closer, I see the boy has another tattoo underneath the surfing one. It is a Six.

Those skaters are military. At least, they were at some point in their lives. They look older than us, and younger than Leo. It makes sense. They were ranked a couple of years ago. I wonder what happened to them that made them have to get a newer tattoo over the older one. Are they banned? Rebels? Why are they in the game?