Ward Z: Revelation by Amy Cross Page A

we?”
    “Sure,” Lizzie said with a sigh. “Fine, okay, I'm sorry we lied, that was wrong. Just... We went to look for Beth. We figured she had to be out in the forest somewhere, and we were worried he might need help so that's what we were doing all afternoon. I know what you said earlier, but I really think you need to call someone and report her missing. It's been too long now, and she's blatantly not just wandered off. I think something might actually be wrong, and she -”
    “Oh,” Crystal replied, interrupting her, “didn't anyone tell you? Your friend Beth Bondell came back to camp about half an hour ago. Turns out she went for a walk and felt a little ill, but she's absolutely fine now.” She smiled, seeing the look of shock and Lizzie and Laura's faces. “Case closed, ladies, now get to work!”
     
    ***
     
    “What the hell happened to you?” Lizzie asked a few hours later as she sat on the bed next to Beth, who she and Laura had found sitting in the cabin. “We were worried sick about you!”
    “I'm fine,” Beth replied, a little blankly. “Really.”
    “We thought maybe you'd collapsed,” Lizzie continued, “or been kidnapped, or maybe hunted down by something. We went all the way to the lake today to look for you. At one point, we even worried that you'd been taken by this weird black-tentacled thing that we found in a deer.”
    Beth turned to her. “What are you talking about?”
    “Check this out,” Lizzie said, bringing up the video on her phone and starting to play it for her. On the screen, the dead deer could be seen, with Lizzie's hand reaching into shot and poking the carcass with a stick until the tendril whipped out. “We found it in the forest,” Lizzie continued, “and we have no idea what it is, but it seems kinda crazy, don't you think?”
    “Let me see,” Beth said, taking the phone and watching the end of the video.
    “Have you ever seen anything like that?”
    “It's a fun video,” Beth replied, swiping the screen to the right and tapping on a couple of buttons.
    “Hey,” Lizzie said, reaching out for the phone, “what are you doing?”
    Beth handed the phone back to her.
    “You deleted it,” Lizzie said with a frown. “What did you do that for?”
    “Sorry,” Beth replied, “did you want to keep it?”
    “Never mind, I already put in online.”
    “You did?” Beth stared at her for a moment. “Why?”
    “To see if anyone knows what it is. I also saved the GPS numbers, so I can go back later and take another look. By the time I leave Camp Everbee next week, I'm going to know exactly what's going on here. I mean, that thing is mental!”
    “It's probably nothing,” Beth told her. “You should leave it alone.”
    “As if!”
    “I told her not to poke it,” Laura said as she eased herself onto the other bed. “I told her it's a bad idea to poke things in general.”
    “And I told her ,” Lizzie continued, “that it's a bad idea not to poke things, especially if you're trying to find out what they are.” She paused for a moment. “So where were you? You were gone for, like, twelve hours.”
    “I was just taking a look at the area,” Beth replied.
    “For twelve hours?”
    “Is that too long?”
    Lizzie stared at her for a moment, unable to quite work out why she was feeling creeped out. She'd only met Beth a day earlier, but she already felt as if something was different, as if Beth's expression was strangely blank and unemotional. Her eyes seemed empty.
    “So you were just wandering around in the forest all that time?” Laura asked from the other bed. “Like... a hippie, that kinda shit?”
    “I wanted to get to know the terrain,” Beth said, turning to her. “It'd be suicidal not to know what the surrounding area is like. How can you live in a place without familiarizing yourself with the environment?”
    Lizzie glanced at Laura, and they exchanged a puzzled look.
    “I'm sorry,” Beth continued, “I didn't know that my absence was