The Last One(53)

“You hurt?” he barks.

“I just need a second,” Waitress replies.

“Drink some water,” suggests Rancher, before taking a sip of his own. Waitress nods and takes one of her bottles from her pack. She holds the water in her mouth for a moment before swallowing, enjoying the sensation of the liquid against her dry tongue and the inside of her mouth. This is a nothing moment, but it will be manipulated into great sensuality as the camera pans up from her slick, pulsing chest to pursed lips and eyes narrowed in pleasure. And then she swallows and the narrative segues clumsily to the future—they’re a mile farther up the trail and the sun has passed its peak. They pass the second faux boulder, the one that rolled farther. None of the three notice it, or the first. Their cameraman hangs back. Exorcist is in the midst of a ranting, circuitous monologue that will be played only in snippets: “His blood was blue—blue!—and tasted kind of metallic,” “My mother had warned me against girls like her, but I liked the way she smelled, so I married her anyway,” “And that was the first time I ate lizard meat!”

The cameraman thumbs the trigger.

Neither Exorcist nor his teammates hear the warning rumbles over his chatter, and they’re moving slowly. A pebble rolls into Waitress’s foot. She glances to the side, but is too worn out to actually process what’s happening.

It’s Rancher who figures it out first, but he does so far later than the previous teams. There is barely time for him to shout, “Watch out!” before the Styrofoam boulder bounces down onto the trail between him and Waitress. He jumps backward, out of the boulder’s path, and Waitress turns, confused. Exorcist turns too, a safe distance ahead; he is a background figure as the cameraman films the boulder striking a thick trunk and ricocheting up, back onto the trail, where it catches the upper bank and then begins to bounce and roll downward. Rancher turns to run away, and then rational thought strikes and instead of running down the trail, he leaps off it, pulling himself by slender trunks up and out of the boulder’s path. The boulder smacks his foot as it passes. Rancher’s expectant brain screams that his foot is broken before sensation settles in: the blow barely hurt. He clings to the slope, befuddled.

This leaves the cameraman filming the boulder as it rolls straight at him. This man is so accustomed to being invisible that he spends several seconds just watching the gray-brown sphere grow larger in his view screen. And then Rancher shouts, “Move!” and the cameraman finally recognizes the danger. He panics, dropping his camera. Fight and flight fall to a third option: freeze. Scared and dumb, he watches the boulder, and only when it’s about to strike does he react, scrambling away. But it’s too late. The boulder smashes into him, full on, knocking him to the ground then teetering to the side of the trail to roll to a rest. Rancher pushes past the boulder, coming to help. Waitress is right behind him, her mouth gaping. Exorcist is motionless in the background.

The cameraman is swearing and biting his bottom lip. “I think I broke my tailbone,” he says. He pinches his eyelids shut as Rancher helps him to his feet. When he reaches for his radio, he notices pain in his wrist too.

“Here, let me,” says Waitress, taking the radio. She presses down the button and speaks, “Hey, hello? Our cameraman is hurt. He got hit by a rock. We need help.” She pauses, then adds, “Over.” She takes her thumb off the button.

A moment later, a response comes, “How badly is he injured?”

“I don’t know,” says Waitress. Behind her, Exorcist creeps closer. “He can stand and talk and he’s not really bleeding, but—”

“My tailbone,” says the cameraman. “Tell him I broke my tailbone and maybe my wrist.”

“He says he broke his tailbone and his wrist.”

“We’ll send help. Wait there.”

“Wait here?” asks Exorcist in a contrary tone.

Waitress whirls to face him. “He’s hurt!”

“He’s fine,” retorts Exorcist, with a waved dismissal at the cameraman. “Sorry, friend, but it’s not like you’re dying.”

“We’re already in last place,” says Rancher. “Waiting isn’t going to hurt.”

“How do you know we’re in last?” asks Exorcist. “You two mucked up the first Clue, someone else could have too.”

Rancher still has a supportive arm around the cameraman. Turning to him, he asks, “Are we in last?”

The cameraman is breathing unsteadily. He glances around. He knows there are mounted cameras here; he knows he’s not allowed to tell the contestants anything. But surely, he thinks, this scenario is an exception. “You’re way behind,” he says.

“See!” says Waitress.

“Doesn’t matter,” says Exorcist. “I’m going on. Come with or don’t, it’s all the same to me.” He starts hiking.

“But we’re a team!” Rancher calls after him.

Exorcist yells back, “See you at the top!”

Above, the other contestants watch an EMT and a cameraman walk swiftly out of the woods, across the small clearing, and then down the trail. The cameraman who was assigned to Zoo and Tracker is doubling back; he’s the most physically fit of the crew—a marathon runner.

“I wonder what happened,” says Biology.