"The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last."- Oscar Wilde
There are many different ways to react in a situation in which you find a dead body. And in the situation I am now facing, Alice, Bob, Diana and I are a perfect example of this.
Alice and Diana's eyes grow wide and they quickly glance around the room, as if someone is about to come and shoot them in the head too. The thought makes me want to crawl into a hole and hide, but I know I can't. I need to remember to stay strong.
Bob however, seems to stomach the situation pretty well. Maybe it's because he's the one who originally found the body. But it could be for some other reason. Under either circumstance, Bob turns to me and says, "We need to search the body."
"Haha," I mumble in a bland voice. "Repeat that please."
Biting his lip, Bob mutters, "We might find important information." He says this in a certain voice, but I can tell that he wants to find a way to get back at Delgato.
I sigh and glance up at the muddy ceiling. How did my life come to this? I think. "Okay," I tell my friend reluctantly as I bend down on my knees next to the body.
"Women," Bob commands, "keep watch so that no one tries to stab us or something."
"Lovely," Alice rolls her eyes as Bob kneels down on the floor next to me.
Bob and I begin our unpleasant task. The body, I've gathered, is of a man, probably 30 or so, which makes him definitely too young to die. He's dressed in some kind of grey uniform. Just as I'm thinking this, Bob mutters to me that he looks like a janitor.
I nod and begin to look through his pockets. Fishing my hands through the muddy uniform frankly isn't the slightest bit fun, but then again, who expected it to be?
Soon, Bob and I begin to form a pile of things we find, which amounts to be surprisingly large.
A few minutes after we start, I find the note. It's in a pocket on his shin, and I can tell that my discovery is paper the second I feel its texture.
Yanking it out, I begin to unfold it the second I can. As I stare at it, my mind begins to swim. I don't read very well in English, so I decide to ask Diana to. I stand up and walk over to the blonde girl, who is watching the tunnel from which we came.
"I found this in his pocket," I explain as she turns around. "Can you read what it says, please?" I silently pass her the paper, and it only takes a second for her to read it. I can tell because only just after I've given it to her, her green eyes grow wider than I thought eyes could.
"What's the matter?" I ask. Diana doesn't answer. Instead she stumbles back against the dirt wall. Absentmindedly, she hands me back the paper and stares vaguely at Alice.
"Alice, you- you need to read this," Diana stutters, pointing to me.
Alice furrows her brow and stares at the two of us. "I need to read Guad?" She asks.
Lacking even the smallest trace of a laugh, Diana shakes her head. "You need to read the note he found."
Confused, Alice cautiously walks towards me. I hand her paper and turn my attention to Diana's pale face. It's strange to see her skin such a white shade, because she's been beyond tan, having come from California.
Alice clears her throat and begins to read. "'Diana... you're next.'"
"Excuse me, we will not discuss who we're eating first yet," Bob says, standing up from his spot on the ground.
"What?" I ask, my heart pounding. "What are you talking about?"
"You guys said, 'Diana, you're next.'"
"Because that's what the bloody note said!" I exclaim, pointing to the crumpled piece of paper in Alice hand.
"Did you find that on him?" Bob asks with a glance to the body.
"Where else?" I ask.
All the while that we're talking, Diana looks like she's trying to sink into the dark brown wall. For the first time since the plane crash, I don't have trouble approaching her. I just walk forward and put my arm around her shoulders.
"Hey," I say calmly. "You'll be fine. There's no way that I- and the rest of the squad will let anyone hurt you. You're not... next."
Diana looks surprised at first that I even talk to her, much less that I'm comforting her. "I know," she says, the tiniest of tears forming in her eyes. "It's just that Angelina and Lisa are both gone, and... I'm not sure how to explain it."
My arm around her shoulder suddenly feels awkward. "Explaining... is a waste of time," I stutter.
"What else did you guys find in his pockets?" Alice asks Bob and me, interrupting the first real moment I've ever had with Diana.
Leaning down and scooping up the items of our pile, Bob tells us that we didn't find too much.
"There's a toothbrush, pencil, wallet, gum packet, earbuds, and some kind of toothpick," announces Bob, holding out the small items for us to see.
"Eso son llevas, idiota," I scold him in Spanish, pointing to the toothpick that is obviously a key. Diana chuckles, even though I know she can't understand what I'm saying.
"Lo siento, yo no sabia," Bob apologizes, shrugging.
"No offense, but can you guys quit it with the Spanish?" Alice snaps. "This note is freaking me out, and it's probably even worse for Diana."
"No, the Spanish is funny," Diana says humbly.
Alice ignores her. "And where is this key from? The guy looks pretty normal, so it could be his house key but it could also-" She pauses and staggers back a few feet. "We're so stupid, I'm so stupid. It's right in front of our eyes! All the time we've lost! Oh my gosh!"
Diana moves out of my grip, but I hardly notice. "Alice? Are you okay? How about you, like, calm down?" Says Diana, giving the girl she's never really talked to a concerned look.
"We're so stupid! There is a killer on the loose in this maze and he could be stalking Perry and Janis right now!" Alice exclaims.
Bob's eyes widen. "No," he mouths. Diana seems to have the same idea. Before I even know what to say, she, Bob, and Alice begin to sprint down the way we came.
"Hey!" I call after them. "Hey, where are you going?"
"To the electronic map! We need to save Perry and Janis!" Alice yells back.
I start to jog after them, not wanting to be alone in the maze, like the dream I had when we first came in here. It only takes a few minutes to get back to the map, and once I'm there, all I see is the light from the map reflecting on Alice, Bob, and Diana's faces as they study it, looking as if they want to soak it all up just by looking at it.
And the despair in their eyes isn't hard to see either.
"G-Guad, come look at this," Bob tells me. My friend doesn't stutter often, so I automatically know that whatever he wants to show me is a big deal.
As I stand next to everybody else, I see Bob's finger point to a certain dot on the map. For a few seconds, I just watch it, but it doesn't take long to notice a pattern. The dot moves to another dot and they buzz around for a few seconds, as if they're fighting, before the second dot flickers and vanishes. This mysterious dot moves around the maze quickly, making dots disappear one by one.
"What does this mean?" I ask to no one in particular. And no one answers for a few seconds.
Then suddenly, Alice gasps.
"What is it?" Diana asks, her voice fearful.
"That dot, it's killing people. That's the serial killer who's stabbing everyone in the back, literally. There is a murderer down here with us," Alice says.
A shiver runs through me unlike any other. And again, like so often before, I feel a real fear. The maze seems to yawn around us, like, so you finally figured it out?
"Oh no, oh no," Alice suddenly wails.
Great, what now? I think.
"That dot," she says, "that killer. It's moving towards Perry and Janis."
Bob blanches.
Diana is quick to pull out her phone and take a picture of the map. "Let's go."
Not one of us speaks as we begin to run through the tunnels, following the picture on the small light of her phone.
We've probably not run 20 meters when we're interrupted. A crack, a gunshot to be more specific, erupts through the maze, bouncing on and off of the walls.
It's immediately followed a female, bloodcurdling scream.