Chapter 9
For a second, nobody moved.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Rhys asked.
Maren's voice had steadied slightly, but her hands were still shaking. “Every car in that lot has slashed tires. And it's not just that. My car won't even turn on. The engine's totally dead. So even if the tires were okay…”
She trailed off, and the silence that followed lasted all of two seconds before everyone started moving at once.
The parking lot was a five-minute walk from the assembly hall, tucked behind a tree line on the western edge of camp. By the time we got there, it was clear that Maren hadn't been exaggerating for effect.
Every single car in the lot was sitting on shredded rubber, the damage too consistent and thorough to be anything but deliberate.
I walked to my own car almost on autopilot, crouching down to look at the front tire even though I already knew exactly what I'd find.
The slash was clean and deep, not the jagged tear you'd get from road debris.
I checked the rear. Same. I even popped the trunk and found the spare with a neat puncture through the sidewall, rendered completely useless.
I straightened up and stood there for a moment with my hands on the roof of the car, staring into space as my mind whirled with shock and confusion.
Around me, sounds of confirmation were coming from every direction.
Doors opening, trunks popping, voices climbing in pitch and volume as the reality of it landed one person at a time.
“Mine's dead too,” Jesse said from two cars over. “Engine won't turn over at all.”
“Same,” said Zach.
“What the actual fuck?” Sutton shouted from the other side of the lot.
Jasmine looked around like the perpetrator might still be nearby. “This didn't just happen,” she said. “Someone came in here and did this.”
Nobody argued with that, because there was nothing to argue with. This clearly wasn’t an act of nature or a mechanical coincidence.
“Now you see,” Maren said, tight voice cutting through the buzz of anger and confusion. “We can’t leave.”
“Hold on.” Rhys lifted a palm. “The groundskeeper has an old beater truck he keeps here, right?”
Some of the other guys nodded. “It’s in that maintenance shed on the north side,” one of them said.
Rhys and Jensen were already moving.
The rest of us followed them, moving in a loose, urgent mass, heading for the path that skirted the northern edge of the main grounds.
The maintenance shed was a large, utilitarian structure set back from the path. Jensen got there first and found the padlock unlatched and hanging open, which would’ve been a relief if what was inside hadn't made it irrelevant.
The groundskeeper's old truck sat in the center of the shed, all four tires flat, the hood up. Levi leaned in and looked at the engine for a moment, then stepped back.
“Distributor cap's gone,” he said. “This thing isn’t going anywhere.”
A ripple of gasps and swear words moved through the group.
“Okay.” Jasmine's voice was controlled but had an edge to it that I hadn't heard before. “So. No phones. No internet. No cars.” She looked around at the assembled faces. "Someone’s gone out of their way to make sure that none of us can contact the outside world or leave this camp.”
“But why?” Grace said, looking from face to face as if someone might have an answer they'd been holding back.
Nobody did. Or if they did, they weren't saying.
Zach scrubbed a hand over his face. “How the fuck is it even possible to shut off all the phone signals from a single area?”
A few heads turned toward Rhys then, presumably assuming he was an expert on the subject due to his family’s ownership of Northgate Telecom.
He furrowed his brows, one hand rubbing the back of his neck. “I know it’s definitely possible to take down a cellular network. But every single one of them? Including all the landlines?” He paused, slowly shaking his head. “I’m not really sure how that could be done. Maybe a signal jammer? But—”
“Who cares how the phones were cut off?” Jasmine cut in, throwing her hands up. “Right now, we need to figure out how the hell we can get out of here without cars!”
“The walkie-talkies,” Wren said suddenly. Everyone looked at her. “The ones we use for the orienteering exercises. They run on a radio frequency. So they don't need cell service.”
She ran off before anyone responded. While she was gone, the rest of us stood around muttering quietly to each other, hoping Wren’s idea was the fix we so desperately needed right now.
She came back five minutes later. The look on her face was enough, but she held one of the walkie-talkies up anyway. The casing was cracked, the interior was gutted cleanly, and the battery was gone.
“Every single one,” she said.
A chill shot through me. Whoever was doing this to us hadn't missed a thing.
“Fuck,” Jesse muttered. “We’re really not getting out of here anytime soon, are we?”
“Why don’t we just walk?” Knox suggested from somewhere near the back of the group. His slower-than-usual tone suggested he was either incredibly tired or stoned.
Everyone turned to look at him.
“To Millhaven. It’s the closest town,” he clarified, as if half the counselors weren’t intimately familiar with the place.
Jasmine narrowed her eyes. “You’re kidding, right? Millhaven’s forty-three miles away.”
“Yeah, so what’s that? A four-hour walk?”
“Four?” Tamsin piped up, voice dripping with scorn. “Try fifteen. Maybe even twenty. And that’s without counting rest breaks.”
Caitlin nodded. “The average person walks around three miles per hour, and right now it’s pretty hot most days, so you’d have to stop for a lot of breaks to avoid heatstroke,” she said. “So yeah… it could take an entire day to walk from here to town. Even more if you take a longer break to sleep.”
“Fuck that,” someone muttered behind me.
I stuck my hand up. “I might have an idea,” I said.
I paused, waiting for everyone to look at me before I went on.
“There are kayaks here, right? And there’s that river on the northwest side of the property.
So if someone takes a kayak and follows it downstream, it has to pass through a town eventually. That might be faster than walking.”
“That’s… actually not a bad idea,” Sutton said.
“Yeah.” Jesse nodded. “Current could carry you most of the way.”
The group surged into motion again, heading for the boatshed. It was a long wooden structure with barn-style doors that sat at the edge of the lake.
For a brief, fragile moment, everything about it looked totally normal. Then someone who was already inside swore loudly.
We hurried forward, crowding into the doorway.
The kayaks were still there along with the canoes, lined up along the racks exactly where they’d always been left. Then I saw the damage.
Several of the hulls had been split open along the sides with long, deliberate gashes that rendered them completely unusable. Others had holes punched clean through the base.
The panic really hit us then.
“Are you kidding me?” Tamsin’s voice cracked. “Every single one?”
“What the fuck is going on?” Jensen said.
“This isn’t possible,” Wren said, shaking her head. “It’s actually fucking insane.”
A chill moved through me as I stared at the ruined kayaks and canoes. Whoever had done this hadn’t just trapped us at Camp Blackpine. They’d thought ahead, planned for every single way out, and systematically removed each one.
They’d also managed to do a good chunk of it in just a few hours, because the cars in the parking lot were presumably fine when Director Mabry left along with the other staff members.
“Why the hell is this happening?” Grace cried out, wild-eyed and on the verge of tears. “Why?”
“Guys, listen to me.” Rhys’s voice cut cleanly through the noise. “Obviously, none of us have any idea what’s going on, but panicking isn't going to change it.”
“Oh, wow, thanks, Rhys! I feel so much better now,” Maren said, voice thick with sarcasm. “No need to wonder who’s doing this crazy shit anymore. Or why.”
Rhys didn’t rise to it. He just looked at her.
“That’s not what I was trying to say. Of course we should be asking those questions,” he said.
“I’m just saying we’re not going to get anywhere if everyone’s freaking out and shouting over each other.
We need to stay calm and talk things through rationally. Try to figure out what’s going on.”
“Okay. Go ahead.” Maren folded her arms, eyes narrowing. “What’s your theory?”
Rhys hesitated for a beat, one hand coming up to rub his jaw. “I don’t really have one yet,” he said. “At least not a solid one. The only thing I can think of is that this is some kind of fucked-up prank.”
“A prank?” Sutton said, disbelief sharpening her voice. “You think this is even remotely funny?”
“Of course not. But whoever did it is obviously a twisted asshole, so it might be funny to them.”
“I guess,” she muttered.
“Right now, it’s the only explanation we’ve got,” Rhys went on, a little more firmly now. “People do messed-up shit for attention all the time. Especially out here in the sticks, where they know it’ll take a while for anyone to respond.”
There was a pause as that settled. It wasn’t exactly convincing, but it was enough for people to latch onto.
“So what are we supposed to do now?” someone finally asked.
Rhys rubbed a hand along his jaw, then looked around the group again.
“I think our only real option is to send a couple of people on a long walk to Millhaven for help. But it’s already half past seven, so it’ll be dark in an hour, and sending anyone out on foot at night would be stupid,” he said.
“So for now, I think we just keep it simple. We go back, make some food, start a fire, and figure out a proper plan in the morning.”
No one pushed back on that. The agitated energy from earlier had burned itself out now, leaving behind something quieter and more resigned.