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"I hate this fucking car."
Shoka collapsed dramatically at the picnic table, sending little plastic beads skittering across the surface and onto the ground.
"Dude," Audrey said. She put down her half-finished bead lizard and tried to corral some stray beads. "It’s just a summer camp. Will you relax?"
"I'm bored " Shoka flicked a bead halfway across the pavilion where they were sheltering from the sun and watched it disappear into the grass. "Can we just get Trish to melt a hole in something and get us out of here?"
"You can go find her at the archery range and ask her yourself, if you're that desperate."
"C'mon Shoka, it's not that bad," Mob chimed in. The stray beads lifted themselves from the floor and dropped back into the bin with a quiet plunk plunk plunk . "Those girls said that after this we just have to get through capture the flag in the afternoon and the bonfire at night, and then the door opens. It would've been worse if we had gotten here earlier and had to stay through the whole week."
"Hmph." Shoka glanced over to the field, where the girls in question were blatantly not doing the tasks assigned by this car's denizens (tall figures that were invisible except for their tie-dyed tee shirts and whistles), but instead lounging around in the sun. "What's the deal with those three anyway? Why do they know so much about this car? Seems suspicious to me."
"The one with the jacket, Jupiter, I think she said her name was? She mentioned that they keep circling back here." Mob said. "Kind of like Jason in the Fight Your Dad car."
Shoka scoffed. "Sure. A likely story. More importantly, did you notice that all three of them have the same number?"
Audrey frowned. "I didn't, actually." She squinted across the field, but the numbers on their hands weren't visible at this distance.
"You'll see," Shoka said.
At the other end of the field, one of the denizens blew their whistle in three short blasts. The arms of their tie-dyed tee moved up and down.
"Look," Mob said, "it's time for capture the flag already."
"Finally," Shoka said. "Let's go, lesbians!" she shouted in the direction of the trio. "Move it along so I can get out of here!"
The one with the chestnut hair and the jacket furrowed her brow. "We're not lesbians," she said, "Venus isn't even a girl." There was a soft sound of a number ticking up, projected in stereo across the three of them.
"Oh god, they're complete closet cases," Shoka muttered. Audrey smacked her on the arm. "Fine! Girls and egg! Let's get this show on the road!"
"Egg?" the shortest of the three said quietly, fingering their white-blonde hair.
"Knock it off," Audrey said to Shoka. "Not all of us are from the utopian future or wherever the hell you come from. Some of us have internalized homophobia to work through."
"Oh, do you know them?" Shoka sneered. "That would make sense. The only other person obscure enough that I couldn't recognize them so far has been you."
Audrey sighed. "No, I don't know them, I just know their type. Although..." she squinted a little. "I think I might have seen them in a game someone was advertising on tumblr."
"Well, you know what they say: like recognizes like and dyke recognizes dy--"
Audrey hit her again, harder this time.
The sun on the field was merciless. Audrey could feel the skin on the back of her neck turning redder by the second. She had volunteered for the task of guarding captured players because it seemed like it required the least amount of running, and she was still starting to sweat . Neptune, the one from the trio with the dip-dyed hair, had let herself be captured early on, presumably for similar reasons.
"So," Audrey said, "did the three of you all get on the train together? It seems like you're pretty close."
Neptune blinked up from where she was picking at her nails. "No, actually," she said. "It's weird, we never met before we all woke up on the train in the same car, but we all grew up a few towns away from each other, and we were all supposed to be going to the same camp when we got on the train."
So they were all from the same world. That was something. “Is it true that all of you have the same number?”
“Yeah?” Neptune said it like she thought Audrey was stupid. “We started in the same place, so obviously this is some freakish team bonding exercise or something.
“I started in the same car as some of my friends, and none of us have the same number,” Audrey said, “one of our friends even had his number go down to zero and open up his door home.”
“Huh,” Neptune said. She watched idly as Shoka teleported midair to hit Al with a flying tackle.
“If the three of you figure out how you’re connected, it might help you find a way off the train.” Aurey suggested. She wasn’t an expert in any of this, but her idea seemed to follow the logic of this place.
“I don’t think any of us are trying too hard to get back home right now,” Neptune replied. She flipped over her hand to reveal a [666] glowing neon green on her palm. “This summer camp sucks a lot less than the one we were supposed to go to. Plus we all have a ton of fucking issues or whatever. The only thing I really miss is texting my friends at home.”
Audrey tried not to think of Emma. She focused on Mob, sweating and panting, but holding the enemy flag. Jupiter, who had been holding her own fairly well despite being pitted against a bunch of superpowered weirdos, moved to block Trish so that Mob could make it over the line for the win. She laughed and cheered, offering a high-five to Mob, and then to Trish. She didn’t look like someone with enough inner turmoil to have a three digit number, but then, books and covers and all that.
“Ugh, I can’t believe she actually has fun with this.” Neptune flipped her hair over one shoulder. “Alright, I’m out of here. See you at the bonfire.”
Dusk still lingered purple in the sky when they arrived at the bonfire. The fire pit was cupped by a small amphitheater, so that anyone in attendance sat with their backs to the dark woods beyond. It set every one of Audrey’s genre instincts on edge. She took a seat close to the fire, letting Al and Trish fill in the bench behind her. She trusted them to watch her back.
The trio sat together in the second to last row, chatting amongst themselves. Next to the fire, one of the denizens cleared their throat. They were holding an acoustic guitar, which they strummed without rhythm. The warm air swallowed most of the sound, except for the pop and hiss of the fire.
“They’re waiting for you to sing a song,” a voice chimed in from the back. It was Venus, the one that was definitely for sure not a girl, don’t even worry about it. “All of the campfire songs that we know are about Jesus. It kinda kills the mood, so we usually let other people go first. Unless you don’t know any songs, then we can go.”
“Who’s Jesus?” she heard Al whisper to Trish.
“It’s a long story,” she replied, “but I think he was a stand user.”
As entertaining as that conversation sounded like it was going to be, Audrey needed to prevent any possibility of her hearing Christian campfire music, for her own sanity.
“Shoka,” she said to the girl next to her, “do you know any songs?”
“Mmm no,” Shoka shook her head. “This sounds like an American thing.”
On her other side Mob shrugged helplessly. Damn. The first thing that came to her mind was that one Spongebob song, but there was no way in hell that she was going to sing that. She tried to think back to the Girl Scout camp that she had gone to for all of two weeks when she was 10. There was that one song about the three little angels, which she guessed was still religious, but it was simple and repetitive, so hopefully the rest of them would catch on.
“Okay,” she cleared her throat. “This is one of those songs that, like, counts down in each verse? You’ll see what I mean. Either follow along or shut the hell up, because I know I’m not a performer. Ready? One and a two and a three little angels all dressed in white, trying to get to heaven on the end of a kite…”
“...one little Martian all dressed in green, trying to get to heaven in a washing machine, but when the washer broke and down they all fell, instead of going to heaven they all went to – don’t get excited, don’t lose your head, instead of going to heaven, they all went to bed!”
Audrey took a deep breath. Al and Mob had started to join in for the last few verses, minus the final trick ending one. Hopefully that would be enough to satisfy the train and open the door.
“Bravo!” the denizen with the guitar said. At her side, Shoka snickered. “We’d love to have you for the rest of the night, but we understand if you’re in a hurry. The door is just that way.” The denizen gestured to a gap between two trees where a door was splitting the air.
Shoka was already on her feet. “Outta my way!” she said, “I’m not waiting for the rest of you chumps to serenade me
“Shoka…” Al groaned. He offered a hand to pull Audrey to her feet. By the time she took it and stood up, Shoka was already through the door.
At the top of the amphitheater, the trio was getting to their feet, brushing off any stray dust and ash.
“You coming with?” Audrey called. Venus shook her head. The firelight lit up her eyes with a catlike glow.
Jupiter spoke for the group. In her hand was a cobbled-together piece of equipment that looked like what would happen if a CB radio started to grow organically. “There’s something we want to try,” she said, “so we’re going to stick around here a little while longer. Good luck, though! Maybe we’ll see you later.”
The three of them headed back down the path they had come in on. In the darkness it looked like the woods swallowed them whole– visible one second and then gone the next.
“Is it just me,” Trish said, “or was that really ominous?”
Audrey laughed despite herself. “Oh yeah, those guys are for sure from the horror genre. C’mon, let’s get out of here before they summon the devil or something.”
She stepped through and the door collapsed into darkness.