The War Game by Crystal Black Read Free Book Online

Minneapolis.”
                  He brought the bottle to his mouth but he stopped. He drops his arm down, “I was at Camp Z.”
                  I wanted to ask a million questions about it but he didn’t seem like he wanted to talk about it much, even though he was the one who brought it up. I carefully ran through the questions I wanted to ask, thinking of ways to carefully word it. I finally decided on one to ask. “Was it as awful as people make it out to be?”
                  “Yes. They hunt people.” He looked at me, finally. “Like we were animals. Game.”
                  So we sat. Drinking and passing the lemonade back and forth.
                  “You hesitate too long when you’re about to lie, you know,” John said. “You can’t let people see the wheels and gears moving around in your head when you’re thinking of a lie. You give yourself away.”
                  “What did I try to lie about?”
                  “Your bag and where it is. I don’t blame you, as I’ve seen a woman take a fork to this one guy’s eye when he was holding out on some supplies. You need an alias.”
                  “A what?”
                  “You know, a made-up name and the story that comes along with it. It’s easier in the beginning to have just one alias to keep the story straight. Some of the soldiers hide in the camps. Sometimes it’s too easy to spot them, they’re too friendly. They ask too many questions. And with strangers you will figure you’ll never see them again so why not tell them everything? That’s what the soldiers are counting on. You think you’re just talking but you’re really confessing. That’s how I ended up in Camp Z. It was this guy, younger than me. I could have easily taken him out if I had known what he was.”
                  There was a terribly long, awkward silence. Well, awkward for me. It looked like John was thinking about some things and I let him have those thoughts uninterrupted.
                  “Well, that’s long enough to think of depressing shit. It’s about time we started our adventure.”
                  He started to run and leaves me with no choice but to run after him. I trotted, actually. I didn’t feel like running much.
                  We arrived near the front of the park, where the miniature golf was located. There were a few guards that occasionally walked around the outside perimeter of the park but I didn’t think they would give us any problems.
                  “Ever play golf before?”
                  “No,” I admitted. Then after a thought, I added, “This is the adventure?”
                  “Yeah, look at the sign. ‘Adventure Golf.’ I told you I was taking you on an adventure.”
                  I let him see me roll my eyes as he laughed.
                  The golf park wasn’t as cheesy as I imagined it would be. There were lots of big rocks, big as buildings (in fact, one was a building), a waterfall (the water must have stopped falling a long time ago), trees, shrubs, and bushes. Some of it was fake but still in pretty good condition.
                  “The way that people play golf is that whoever gets the least amount of strokes win. Um,” he started looking around, “let’s find some clubs and a ball to start with.”
                  We looked around and spotted a rusty club in the grass. We looked for a second club but we decided on sharing the one since it didn’t really matter. John fished out a golf ball from a small pond filled with green rainwater.
                  “Look! I found a pearl, Pearl,” he said with a stupid grin on his face.
                  I tried to hide a smile but was unsuccessful. I took the ball out of his hands and walked back