The Odds - Jeff Strand Page 0,61

before Kenny slammed his face into the ground again.

As far as he knew, there was no time limit, so this could go on for a while.

He spat out some blood. “What about a tie?”

“What?” Kenny asked.

“A tie! If we both came out at the exact same time! What would they do?”

“Boil both of us.”

They rolled into the wall.

Ethan punched him in the face.

Kenny let out a howl of pain that seemed excessive. He clutched at his eye and screamed.

There was no jelly on Ethan’s knuckles or anything like that, but, yes, the punch to Kenny’s face might very well have got him directly in the eye. Ethan’s first deranged instinct was to ask him to pull his hand away so he could take a look. His second, much more rational instinct was to use this opportunity to get closer to the maze exit.

He rapidly crawled forward as Kenny bellowed.

Almost there.

Kenny grabbed his foot.

Ethan kicked him in the face. From the sound of it, he might have kicked Kenny in the eye again. Same eye? Different eye? No way to tell without looking back, and Ethan was focused entirely on the exit.

He reached the open gate.

Later he was sure he’d have nightmares about punching and kicking some poor guy in the eyes to win the challenge, but for now, he was happy that he’d get to see his wife and kids again.

Kenny got up and charged at him.

Ethan tried to gracefully step out of the maze, but toppled over and crashed to the ground instead.

He’d done it. He’d come in second.

Rick helped him up as Kenny stepped out of the maze as well. His right eye was closed, but nothing was leaking underneath the eyelid.

Lisa was seated on a lawn chair, a frozen drink in her hand.

The Claw Man lowered his megaphone. “It looks like Ethan Caustin may be our second place finisher. Hand me your keys.”

Ethan took the four keys out of his pocket and gave them to him.

“Whoopsie,” said The Claw Man. “Looks like we have a problem.”

21

“What’s the problem?” Ethan asked.

“You were supposed to find four blue keys,” said The Claw Man. He held up one of them. “This one is turquoise.”

“It’s blue.”

“Turquoise.”

“Turquoise is blue,” Ethan insisted. “It’s light blue.”

“It doesn’t match the other keys.”

“Nobody said it had to match the other keys. You said to find four blue keys. Those are four blue keys.”

“You say blue. I say turquoise. Unfortunately for you, we have an imbalance of power here. My turquoise outranks your blue. Sorry.”

Ethan couldn’t believe what he was hearing. This was complete bullshit.

“Let’s be fair,” said Rick, stepping forward. “Turquoise is technically a shade of blue. He followed the instructions.”

The Claw Man laughed. “Oh, hi, Rick. Hypocritical much? You were right there with us when we planned this out, and you loved the idea of tricking them with the colors of the keys. It may even have been your suggestion.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Either way, you were totally on board until it came back to bite you in the ass.”

“But turquoise is blue.”

“No. Turquoise is turquoise. I’ll put that on a bumper sticker for you.” The Claw Man extended an open hand to Kenny. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Kenny, not looking happy, dropped three keys into The Claw Man’s palm.

“Ooooh, same problem here,” said The Claw Man, picking up one of them and holding it up for everybody to see. “This isn’t green. This is olive.”

A tall, thin woman with gray hair shook her head. “No, no, no.” Ethan wondered if she served the same role for Kenny as Rick did for him. “Olive is green. That’s why they call them green olives.”

“Sorry, Christine, you were right there in the meeting with Rick and the rest of us. You thought it was a simply delightful idea. You can’t start whining about it now.”

“I didn’t get to see the keys,” said Christine. “Neither did Rick. If you’d shown me the olive-colored key and said that it wouldn’t count as a green key, I would’ve argued the point I’m making now. It’s clearly a green key. And it’s clearly a blue key. When we discussed this in the design stage, we assumed that the keys would be different enough from the main color that you could definitively say ‘This is not green’ or ‘This is not blue.’ That’s not the case here. If you went up to people on the street and asked them what color these keys were, they’d say that they were blue and green, not turquoise and