Read The War Game for Free Online Page B

water park. “Check it out.”
                  I looked and saw nothing, at first. Then I saw some movement in the waterless cement ditch, the one where on the brochures you’d see parents lounging lazily on inflated inner tubes.
                  “I see people,” I replied. In fact, there were several handfuls of people, maybe a couple dozen.
                  “It’s them,” he whispered.
                  “Who?” I asked.
                  “Them. The Nomads. They were here before us. They conglomerate here into one massive swarm.”
                  “I imagine the creature is one of them.”
                  “Who,” he asked, clearly half-listening to me.
                  “The ‘artist’ back from the tree house,” I halfheartedly teased.
                  “Oh, yeah,” he was too fixated on what was happening before him than to catch the humor in my comment.
                  “I don’t ever see anyone of them during the day, except for that one chick we stumbled upon. I wonder if the others back at the theater even know about them yet,” he added.
                  “The theater?” I asked.
                  “Yeah, that’s where everyone slept. Hey, where were you last night?”
                  “I guess I missed that memo. I slept at top that one water slide, near that baby roller coaster.”
                  “Do you want to head back?” he asked.
                  “Sure.” I followed him back, retracing our steps, minus the militaryesque maneuvers. We started to walk like normal humans once we get back to the sidewalk. We stopped at the theater. On the red and gold shimmering marquee, it said in black block letters, “SUM ER SPECTA ULAR NOON 2:30 & 7:30.”
                  He turned back to look at me as I followed him into the theater. “The men are working on some of the rides, hoping to get them up and running again. Do you think they can do it?”
                  “I don’t care for rides. I have never been on any, I mean. Wouldn’t want to.”
                  “Not even Something Wicked?”
                  “Especially not Something Wicked.”
     
    ~~~
     
                  “So what’s on the agenda?” John stopped to ask a man with a big nose and graying hair.
                  He shrugs his shoulders, “People are starting to eat lunch. Most are apt to explore today.”
                  John turned to me, the big nosed man was already gone. “Hey, how about you and me go on an adventure?”
                  “An adventure?” No idea what that could entail.
                  “Yes, let’s go,” he tugged on my arm. My heart skipped a beat, I thought he was going to take my hand in his.
                  “Say, it just occurred to me,” he started, “that you don’t have your bag with you. Did it get stolen?”
                  I thought about lying and almost started to say that it was stolen just so he wouldn’t bug me about it. But I'm so honest, it can be sickening, “No, I found a place to stash it.”
                  He took a careful pause to consider something before saying, “And may I ask where?”
                  “I could show you later but it would be better if it were dark. There’s too many people in that particular area right now.”
                  “Sounds like a great spot. So where were you before you got here?” He handed me a glass of lemonade. Some women had found a powder mix in a vendor cart. We mixed it with water from the Splash ride. It was tart, had rock-hard clumps in it, and tasted of dirty people.
                  I took a generous sip and handed it back to him. “It was the university, in