I Joined a Fake Death Game for My Son's Surgery, and the First Rule Killed a Man novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Bell
On day one of Last One Home a valet stands through the first bell to collect his payout and drops dead; Jo sits on the floor at the second bell and saves the room, and the host tells America she always did know these cameras.
Forty told everybody he was going to be the first one written out.
"Two hundred fifty grand to walk out the back door," he said. "Day one, I'm gone. Cancun by Friday."
He was a valet from the Boardwalk with an Eagles tattoo on his forearm, and he said it to the whole room.
There were ten of us in black jerseys in a big white room nobody would tell us the address of.
Every one of us had a number on our chest and the same number on a black band locked around our left wrist.
My band said 14.
Next to me, a small woman with bottle-red hair and reading glasses on a beaded chain was praying with her eyes open.
Her jersey said 5.
"My grandson's at Stockton," she whispered. "Nursing school. Twenty-two thousand a year."
"Mine needs heart surgery," I said. "Three hundred eighty."
"Then we both stay in, honey."
A girl with pink hair stood under the nearest camera dome and blew it a kiss.
"Hi, babies," she told it. "Eighteen's here to win."
A heavy man with slicked gray hair and a gold pinkie ring laughed at her from the couch.
His jersey said 21.
Then the Wall came on.
The Wall was a screen two stories tall, and Garson Langan's face filled it.
"Good morning, house," he said. "Welcome to Last One Home."
He touched a thin gold bracelet on his wrist, the kind a girl gets for her sixteenth birthday.
Then six lines came up on the Wall behind him.
1. Every rule I say is the whole rule.
2. Once I say a rule, the house keeps it. Not even I can take it back.
3. The house never lies. Each day, it answers one question from one player.
4. A player who breaks a rule is written out.
5. The last one home goes home with five million dollars.
6. America watches thirty seconds behind you. The finale goes out live.
"Round one," Garson Langan said. "When the bell stops, sit. A player standing when the bell stops is written out."
Nine chairs stood in a circle on the carpet, and there were ten of us.
The bell started.
It was the brass jackpot bell from the old slot machines, a sound I'd heard a thousand times a night for ten years.
Everybody circled the chairs, except Forty.
He walked to the middle of the circle, folded his arms and grinned up at the nearest dome.
"Write me out, Garson," he said. "I'll take the money."
The bell stopped.
Nine people sat down.
Forty dropped like someone had cut his strings.
His head hit the carpet with a sound I can still hear.
Under the Wall ran a strip of glowing numbers with a heart rate beside each one.
The numbers didn't run in order. They went 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 14, 18, 21, 29, 40.
The rate beside 40 went to zero, and then the 40 went dark.
"Get up, man," Twenty-One said. "We get it."
A big man with a short graying beard was already on his knees beside Forty.
His jersey said 6.
He pressed two fingers under Forty's jaw, then lifted one of his eyelids with his thumb.
"He's dead," Six said.
"It's a stunt," Eighteen said. "It's in the contract. Stunt falls."
"His pupils are blown," Six said. "He's dead."
A steel door opened at the back of the kitchen, and two men in black masks came out with a stretcher.
They lifted Forty onto it and carried him back through the steel door, and it shut with a heavy click.
Five took hold of my hand, and her fingers were ice.
I looked up, because looking up was what I knew how to do.
The dome over the circle was smoked glass with a gold ring around its rim.
For ten years I'd watched the world through domes like that one, from a dark room above the Marquee Casino.
The Marquee had closed two years ago.
I'd been Operator 14.
My son was watching all this at home in Ventnor, thirty seconds behind me.
Leo is nine, and he does card tricks badly and loves them.
I taught him to watch the hands, never the face.
His heart had a patch in it from when he was three, and the patch had to be replaced before he grew any more.
The insurance company called it elective.
The show paid me fifty thousand dollars to sign, and every cent of it went to the hospital.
"The bell rings again in one minute," Garson Langan said. "Eight chairs."
The men in black masks came back out and carried one chair away.
There were nine of us and eight chairs.
Twenty-One took the chair nearest the Wall and planted his feet.
"Sorry, folks," he said. "I'm sitting."
She was sixty-one, and she wasn't going to win a shoving match with anybody in that room.
He'd said sit, and he hadn't said a word about chairs.
Rule one said every rule he said was the whole rule.
The bell started.
I walked into the middle of the circle, to the spot where Forty had fallen, and sat down cross-legged on the carpet.
"Sit on the floor," I said. "All of you. He said sit. He never said in a chair."
"She's going to get herself killed," Twenty-One said.
Five came and lowered herself down beside me, knees cracking, holding my arm.
Six sat down on my other side without a word.
A skinny freckled kid with a cowlick sat down across from us.
Then a huge quiet man with a cross on a chain sat, and a tall man in a Phillies cap, and finally Eighteen.
The bell stopped.
My own number on the strip said 151.
Every number stayed lit.
Garson Langan smiled down at us from the Wall.
"Every rule I say is the whole rule," he said. "Well read, Fourteen."
He leaned a little closer to his camera.
"But you always did know these cameras."
Every head in the room turned to me.
"Round two is tonight," he said. "The house will vote. The player with the most votes is written out."
The Wall went black.
Eighteen got up off the floor, brushed off her leggings and turned to the dome over our heads.
"Easy," she said. "Fourteen's too smart. Everybody vote Fourteen."
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