Page 83 of Ship Happens
“Eve, you take the fourth station. I’ll take the third,” I say, and the girls nod.
With a plan in place, we take our starting positions and wait for Jim to drop the checkered flag. The boys do the same in the lane beside ours, choosing a starting order of Ezra, Aven, Maverick, and Bennett.
“Good luck!” I say to Maverick.
With a deep sigh and a shake of his head, he gives me a sad smile. “Good luck.”
Then Jim drops the flag, and we’re off.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Maverick
With a gleeful grin, Jim raises the bullhorn in his hand as the first contestants race toward the bellowing Cattle. “Station one!” he yells, not realizing that he doesn’t need to shout into a device that is literally made to amplify your voice. Feedback screams through the speaker, and the racing Sinners cover their ears.
“Keep running!” Aven shouts.
Jim jiggles the bullhorn, then raises it again. “Sorry! Station one, you must use the shovel to dig a pit. You must use the pail to fill your pit with water, then drown your Cattle. You may not use anything else, and you must work alone.”
“Jesus fucking Christ, how?” Cat screams as she drops to her knees and begins digging.
I get what she’s saying, though. She weighs maybe as much as her Cattle’s left quad. If she can even dig the hole deep enough, how will she ever get his head into it?
As she scoops sand, she speaks with the man on his knees beside her. Unfortunately, he isn’t speaking back, which is goingto make this problem even greater. She’s the Confessor. If he won’t talk, she can’t kill.
“Are we allowed to talk to our teammates?” Frankie yells toward Jim.
He raises the bullhorn once more. “You may talk to your team, but be mindful! Everyone else will hear whatever you say because you may not cross the red line until it’s time to run to your station!”
“Cat, just . . . keep digging!” she screams.
I nibble my thumbnail and look at her Cattle. He stares out at the ocean, as if he isn’t at all bothered by what’s happening around him. Stepping to the side, I spot the band on his wrist. It’s red.
Okay, sexual crime. The victim was an adult.
Studying his exposed skin, I spy Jesus’ crying face peeking from the top of his t-shirt. He doesn’t exactly strike me as the religious type, what with the contrasting satanic imagery scrawled over his right hand, so I can only assume someone in his life is. Probably his mother.
“How did she feel when she found out her baby boy was a rapist?” Frankie yells toward the man as Cat continues to dig. She figured it out as quickly as I did, though that’s no surprise, given her career choice. And fuck, she was made for this.
The man’s head twitches to the side, but he continues staring at the ocean.
“Did she cry?” I add, hoping to goad him into a response. “I bet you broke your mama’s soul when she saw?—”
“Shut your mouth!” the Cattle screams. He moves to charge toward me, but a chain hidden in the sand holds him back. As it snatches taut, he falls onto his face.
Frankie smirks at him. “I’d tell you to come shut it for me, but you seem a little...tied up.”
The girls giggle in their line, and I’m pleased when I look up and see Frankie smiling at me. Hopefully she can forgive me for my sour mood earlier. My stance hasn’t changed, but my approach has. My mother always said you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
Frankie isn’t a fly any more than she’s a serial killer, but I hope the principle still applies. I also hope that when she’s faced with the decision to end someone’s life, she hesitates. That’s all I need. If she gets to her station and pauses for even a second, I’ll keep clinging to the shred of hope that I can save her from herself.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Bennett whispers. “Don’t help them.”
I shrug him off and turn my attention back to the competition. Cat is making good progress with her sand hole, but Ezra has pulled pretty far ahead of her. He’s already on his third trip to the ocean. Peering down the line, I see that everyone else is miles behind.
Grim and Rosie scream from the sidelines as their brain-cell-deficient teammate attempts to drown their Cattle with the bucket. That’s it. Just the bucket filled with water. Despite twelve trips to the ocean and back, their teammate still hasn’t realized that the water just falls out every time it’s tipped over the Cattle’s head. It doesn’t help that Grim screams in German, and poor Rosie’s screams can’t be heard by anyone but Grim.
In the next lane, Ice Pick sits on his ass, dragging the shovel through the dirt and crying. His team walked off a few seconds ago, and I don’t think he noticed. I guess he’s taking the Amber situation harder than we realized.
