Page 35 of Hide And Seek

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 poppedthe 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?”