The Last One(84)

“I wonder what happened to him,” says Biology.

Zoo feeds a stick to the flames. “Ours fell off a cliff,” she says.

Biology stares at her and asks, “Really?”

Zoo’s reply is clear: a look that says, no, not really, remember where we are. A look that cannot, will not, be shown, though the editor loves her for it. Loves her despite the exhaustion rolling over him as he watches.

Exorcist is tying a squirrel tail around his wrist. “We’ll find him,” he says. He takes an end of the tail in his teeth and pulls the knot tight. Speaking around the hair, he adds, “If not in this world, then in the next.”

“Shut up,” Waitress tells him, but her heart’s not in it. Exorcist is tired too. He pretends not to hear.

Tracker is sitting off on his own, a shadowy figure far from the fire. As Waitress starts complaining about her aching foot, Zoo stands and walks over to Tracker. She sits next to him so that their knees touch. “You okay?” she asks. Tracker slips a hand over his microphone before replying, “No.”

That night the contestants sleep crowded together in a ramshackle last-minute shelter. In the morning, they gather before the host, wary.

The host greets them from beside the elimination post, then pulls a neon-yellow bandana from his pocket and stabs it in beside Cheerleader Boy’s pink. The most surprising thing about the action this time around is the reminder that only one night has passed since Carpenter Chick quit. Banker thinks of the strong, beautiful shelter at their last camp, then glances back at the ugly collection of downed branches they slept under last night.

“Yesterday,” says the host, “was a tough day for us all.”

Us all? mouths Zoo.

“What do you know?” whispers Waitress.

The host continues, “But as you know, it was too much for one of your companions, who quit before even undertaking your most recent Challenge.” He begins pacing before them, holding Carpenter Chick’s backpack. “Today I have only one item to distribute.” He pulls a full water bottle out of the bag.

Had he ever seen this footage, the editor would have cut now to Carpenter Chick, riding away in the back of a car with tinted windows. “There’s only one other woman I think has a chance of winning anything,” she says. “So I guess give my water to her. Girl power and whatnot.”

The host hands the water bottle to Zoo.

“Thanks,” she says, not especially surprised. She thought she had about a fifty-fifty chance of getting the bottle, with the other fifty percent going to Engineer. Engineer had reckoned about the same, though he gave Zoo the edge—sixty-forty, he’d thought.

The host stalks back to his centered position. “Today promises to be even more challenging than yesterday.”

A cameraman interrupts with a loud, hacking cough. Everyone turns to him. He’s to the group’s left, the same cameraman who interrupted yesterday. Zoo’s silently and secretly given each cameraman a name and she thinks of this one as Bumbles. “Excuse me,” says Bumbles. “Sorry.” His voice sounds weak. He coughs again, doubling over. He can’t stop coughing. The producer walks up to him and the two speak quietly between loud coughs. The host keeps his distance, openly disgusted. After a moment, the cameraman walks away with the producer, who motions for the host to continue.

“Good thing they have redundancy,” says Engineer to Zoo, motioning toward the half dozen other cameramen currently milling about. In Zoo’s internal parlance: Marathon Man, Slim, Wallaby, the Plumber, Goat Face, and Coffee Breath, whose breath only smelled like coffee once, but that was enough. A fraction of the crew.

The host coughs a look-at-me cough. “Today promises to be even more challenging than yesterday,” he says again. “Come with me.”

As they walk, Air Force says to Black Doctor, “We never got a reward for finding that guy yesterday.”

“You’re right,” says Black Doctor. “That’s strange.”

Zoo overhears and thinks, Your reward was not having to pull a wallet from a blood-soaked pocket. Not having to watch the man jump. Tracker walks beside her, thinking about the vast inappropriateness of receiving rewards for farce.

The group reaches the small clearing atop yesterday’s cliff, where the Expert stands in the middle of ten color-coded stations wearing the same flannel shirt he wore in his first appearance. He greets the contestants with a gruff nod. The host steps forward to stand with him and says, “Until now, you’ve had modern means at your disposal for starting fires. Now, if you want fire, you will have to learn to make it the way it was made before matches, before”—he looks pointedly at Zoo—“fire starters. You’ll have to use a bow drill.”

“I’m here to show you the technique,” says the Expert. “Gather ’round and watch closely.” He kneels and picks up the pieces of his bow-drill kit: a curved wooden bow strung with deer tendon, a thin wooden baseboard, a thumb-thick spindle of harder wood, a palm-sized rock, and a tinder bundle made from twisted-together dried grass and threads of inner bark. Within seconds he has the spindle secure in the bowstring and pressed to the baseboard, which he braces against the ground with his foot. The socket rock has disappeared into his palm, which he rests atop the spindle. Bracing his spindle hand, the Expert begins to run the bow horizontal to the ground. The spindle catches, then spins. The Expert bows faster. A thin trail of smoke wafts upward. To the uninitiated: magic. Waitress gasps. Even Tracker is impressed—he couldn’t do it better himself.