The Last One (12 page)

“Wait!” calls Banker. But Tracker’s gone. The fittest cameraman scuttles to follow.

What will the rest of the team do? They’ve gotten on well until now. Banker wants to cooperate. Rancher’s torn; he’d assumed they would move on together, but with their leader gone his assumptions are shattered. Biology tops off her water bottle, then declares her independence: “Good luck, boys.” By the time she disappears into the trees Rancher and Banker are filling their packs, splitting the leftover food between them. They further weigh themselves down with plastic flatware and paper plates. Soon little more than the potato salad remains on the table, and the mayo-based dish is already looking a little off.

Partners for now, Rancher and Banker follow their maps and former teammates toward the waypoint. They’re moving east. No one from the other two teams realizes they’re on the move. They’re busy roasting a fish and some Queen Anne’s lace root, dropping iodine into bottles filled with river water. Many viewers will laugh: The chumps don’t know what’s waiting for them.

Carpenter Chick walks into camp, tightening the knot of her yellow bandana around her hair, no mention made of where she’s been, no footage taken: female maintenance. Zoo takes a careful bite of roasted root. She chews, considering, then says, “Could use a little seasoning, but other than that, not bad.” She offers the root to Engineer to taste.

Exorcist tells his teammates ridiculous tale after ridiculous tale with the air of total belief. He waves his green bandana for effect as he begins the umpteenth, “I don’t specialize in ghosts, but I’ve met a few. I was in Texas a few years ago—”

“Shut up!” bursts Cheerleader Boy. “My God, I can’t take it. Just shut up.”

“He’s my God too,” Exorcist replies, straight-faced. “More mine than yours, I suspect.”

Is this a gay slur? No one’s sure—not Cheerleader Boy, not the producers, not the editor. Cheerleader Boy errs on the side of offense. “I don’t want anything to do with you or your God,” he says. “Get away from me.”

Exorcist doesn’t move; he watches Cheerleader Boy intensely. Without his smile, he’s a little frightening. Black Doctor and Air Force both stand. Air Force’s ankle gives as Black Doctor moves to intervene, but intervention isn’t necessary. Cheerleader Boy sighs, says, “Whatever,” and moves to the far side of their camp.

The editor will twist the moment. For all viewers will know, Exorcist hasn’t spoken since his walk with Black Doctor much earlier in the day. Why did Cheerleader Boy explode like that, out of nowhere? What a huffy, irrational,
hateful
atheist. The spin declares that
this
—not his sexuality—is his fatal flaw. A politician can’t win the American presidency without declaring himself a God-fearing man, and a vocal nonbeliever can’t be put forth as a viable contender on a program striving for widespread popularity among the citizens of one nation under God. It’s just good marketing sense.

Tracker consults his compass, then eyes a pair of boulders indicated by solid triangles on his map. He’s on course and making remarkable time. His once-teammates are far behind. Biology stands below the more southerly of a pair of small cliff faces, thinking she’s at the northern one. Banker and Rancher have drifted apart; Rancher is ahead. In fact, he’s ahead of Biology too, though neither knows it. Viewers will know. They’ll be shown a map with funky little symbols: four-legged rakes that have lost their handles stand in for cliffs, and Rancher’s bumblebee dot chugs along, passing the northern cliff as Biology’s orange dot meanders to the south. Banker’s back a ways, about to cross a stream marked by a squiggling line.

Back at the camps, Black Doctor asks, “How’s your ankle?”

“Better,” says Air Force. He doesn’t think he’ll need the walking stick for much longer. He plans to be back in the game, soon. Cheerleader Boy sulks on the opposite side of the fire.

Zoo has enlisted her teammates in attempting to filter water. She’s read about it, watched online how-tos, but never tried it. Carpenter Chick helps her set up a tripod of sticks, from which three bandanas hang like stacked hammocks: maroon with brown stripes, neon yellow, and light blue. Nearby, Engineer is grinding charcoal to ash. This could have been Waitress’s role, but she objected to getting her hands all black, so Zoo asked her to fill their bottles with water from the river instead. That’s where she is now. Kneeling, Waitress swears softly; the rocks hurt her knees. “Let’s see Miss I’ve-Got-an-Idea carry her own stupid water for her own stupid filter,” she mutters. Her violet bandana holds back her hair.

Zoo drops handfuls of dirt into the yellow bandana, then she and Carpenter Chick join Engineer in grinding charcoal—they need a lot. When Waitress reappears with their bottles hanging heavily from her fingers, the others take handfuls of fine black ash and pile it into Zoo’s blue bandana.

“So, how’s this work?” asks Waitress, putting down the Nalgenes. Her face glistens with sweat and her bra has darkened between her breasts.

“You pour the water into the top bandana, and it filters down through the layers. Each one gets out more junk,” says Zoo. “At least, that’s the theory.”

“Most of the water filters you can buy are charcoal-based,” Engineer adds.

Zoo pours about a third of a Nalgene into Engineer’s empty striped bandana. The water immediately starts dripping through to the middle tier, where it dampens the dirt.

“It’s just making it wet,” says Waitress.

“Give it time,” says Engineer, as Zoo pours in more water.

Soon liquid drips through the lowest point of the yellow bandana, plopping into the charcoal below. Carpenter Chick pours a second Nalgene’s contents into the top bandana. The drips coalesce into a thin, steady stream.

“What happens once it goes through the charcoal?” asks Waitress.

“We drink it,” says Zoo.

“From what?”

Zoo laughs, a loud, surprised laugh—there’s no container under her bandana. “I forgot,” she says, and she tucks an empty bottle under the bottom tier; there’s not enough room for it to fit without impacting the bandana, so she digs a hole. The first few drips of clear water strike dirt, but the editor cuts them away. As far as viewers will know she finishes just in time to catch the first drop.

Three miles away, Tracker reaches a brown log cabin, where the host—having been treated to a journey via four-wheeler on an old logging road—waits.

“That was fast,” says the host, awe unfeigned. Tracker traversed the heavily wooded miles in only sixty-four minutes. Rancher, the nearest contestant, is more than a mile distant. The host sweeps his arm toward the log cabin. “As the winner, the master bedroom is yours,” he says to Tracker. “Last door on the left.”

Tracker enters to find a small but lavish bedroom: a queen-size bed thick with quilts and pillows, an en suite bathroom with a standing shower, a bowl of fruit on the nightstand. Two windows, both of which he opens.

Back in the field, eight contestants are preparing for nightfall: busy work and atmosphere.

Rancher breaks the tree line, sees the cabin and the host waiting. He’s welcomed and directed to a room across the hall from Tracker’s. A pair of twin beds with thin blankets and pillows, more fruit. A shared bathroom in the hall. Banker arrives a few seconds—twenty-two minutes, really—later. He gets the bed across from Rancher’s.

“She left before us,” Rancher tells Tracker. “I don’t know where she is.”

Biology knows that she’s off track and is trying to determine how far off. She sees a stream and beelines for it. She studies the features nearby: a cluster of boulders, the crumbled remains of a man-made wall. With her finger she searches the map, consulting the key at intervals. She finds the dotted line of the run-down wall, one of only two marked. The symbols match her surroundings. “Here I am,” she says, exhaling with relief as she glances at the camera. She consults her compass to determine her next move. Northeast, to a marshy area—thin, tightly etched lines—that she should be able to follow to a thicket and boulder cluster. From there, a wooded but relatively flat half mile due east to the finish. She might make it before nightfall.

Carpenter Chick crawls into her corner of her team’s lean-to. “Good night,” she says. It’s more crowded tonight; Waitress has joined them. One by one, Air Force’s team also trickles into their shelter. The cameramen chatter over their radios about needing better overnight footage and settle in.

The shadows around Biology are morphing into night. She has the flashlight in her hand. “It can’t be far,” she says. She wants to run, but knows that between the encroaching dark and her weary legs she’d probably hurt herself.

Exorcist snores. Cheerleader Boy lies awake in the dark, his face tight with loathing. In the other camp, Engineer is the one who is still awake. The warmth around him, the softness at his back—he decides his luck is definitely good.

Biology sees light through the trees. Like a moth, she hurries toward it. The host is there to greet her, as though he’s been standing at attention for hours instead of reading comment threads on his smartphone.

“You made it,” he says. “Welcome. You’re our fourth-place finisher, which gives you your choice of beds here.” He opens the front door to reveal the log cabin’s main room, which the editor will have hidden from viewers until now. The room is crammed tight with bunk beds—no pillows, a sheet each. Six beds total, leaving room for five more finishers, leading to the question: Where are the last three to sleep?

The men emerge to congratulate Biology on her arrival. All three are freshly showered. Banker’s chest is bare, his shirt laid out by the fireplace, drying from a recent hand-washing. He clearly makes time for the gym, but Biology is far less impressed by his physique than the average female viewer will be. She collapses onto the bottom bunk nearest the fire. Tracker frowns. Judgmental jerk, bigoted viewers will think, assuming that he is scornful of Biology’s relative weakness. Another misinterpretation. Tracker feels bad about Biology’s exhaustion, her clear struggle. He is forcefully reminding himself that he’s here for the money and that helping these people will only slow him down.

The window behind Tracker shows a setting sun. At the camps the sky is dark and the moon is high. Our narratives are out of sync.

A roaring blare rips through the camps—a sound like fear itself, loud and hard and everywhere. Contestants become a tangle of confused, waking limbs. Waitress yelps; Air Force is on his feet, injury forgotten; Exorcist freezes, tense and waiting.

“Good evening!” comes the host’s voice, amplified. “I need everyone in the center of the field, double time! Bring your gear. You have three minutes.”

Blinking heavily, Zoo shoves on her glasses, then tugs on her boots and shoulders her pack. Carpenter Chick is ready just as quickly. Engineer can’t find his glasses; his eyesight is worse than Zoo’s. Carpenter Chick is twenty-twenty; she spots his frames on the ground and hands them to him. Waitress is near tears, she’s so tired. She doesn’t think she can do this, whatever
this
is. Zoo and Engineer disassemble the water-filtration system, quickly. Bandanas are reclaimed. Zoo almost dumps the charcoal ash from hers, then changes her mind and ties the bandana into a little bundle as she walks.

Cheerleader Boy stalks toward the center of the field, alone. Air Force is hard-pressed to make it in time; he’s feeling the ankle again. Black Doctor hangs back and offers an arm, which is politely declined—the walking stick is enough. Exorcist drifts along beside them, his pack casually slung over one shoulder. “When you’ve dealt with those who dwell in Hell,” he says, “an early wake-up call isn’t so bad.”

The host is waiting. He holds a steaming mug of coffee. Waitress nearly tears it from his hands.

“Where’s the other team?” asks Cheerleader Boy.

“Good morning!” says the host. “And it is indeed morning. Twelve-oh-four a.m., to be precise.” All eight contestants have arrived within the allotted three minutes. A shame—the host was looking forward to penalizing someone. “It’s time for a Solo Challenge. Here are maps.” He indicates a bin to his left. “And here are flashlights.” A bin to his right. “First five to the waypoint get to sleep indoors. The quicker you finish, the more sleep you get. And, go!”

Engineer springs toward the maps; Zoo, Carpenter Chick, and Waitress for the flashlights. Zoo takes a flashlight for Engineer, and Engineer takes four maps.

Waitress is terrified. She knows she can’t make it through the night woods alone. Carpenter Chick catches Zoo’s eye and nods a question.

“I’m happy to work this one as a team if you guys are,” says Zoo. If it was daylight, or she wasn’t the leader, she’d be less inclined to cooperate, but right now working as a team seems prudent. The others agree; Waitress wants to hug them all.

Air Force and Black Doctor’s cooperation is rightfully assumed. The level of mutual trust they’ve built in a day is remarkable. The producers will share a phone call later, seeking a way to use the allegiance against the allied.

“Maybe we should all stick together?” says Black Doctor to Exorcist and Cheerleader Boy.

Cheerleader Boy is still looking around for Tracker’s team, the best team. He doesn’t want to be locked into this one. Black Doctor and Air Force are okay, but Exorcist? Any minute spent in his company is a minute too long. Cheerleader Boy allows personal dislike to overwhelm common sense. “He said it was a Solo Challenge,” he says. “So I’m going solo.” He flips his former teammates a salute and then walks away—but only a few steps. He needs to consult his map.

“So we’re here and we need to get…here,” says Zoo. Her finger cuts across a flashlight’s beam to cast a thick shadow across the map.

“What are all these symbols?” asks Waitress. Her voice shakes.

“Look at the key,” says Carpenter Chick. “Each means something different.” She pauses. “What’s a knoll?”

“They live under bridges,” says Waitress.

Her teammates look at her, incredulous.

“That’s a
troll,
” says Engineer.

Waitress’s embarrassed flush is hidden in the moonlight. She’s rattled; her brain isn’t working right. Laughter from the producers, laughter from the viewers. Perfect.