Scream Catcher Read Online Free Page A

I do enough?”
    Nodding, the old Captain reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a breath mint, pops it into his mouth.
    “You’re here. You’re alive. And you’re going to be my eyewitness. I’d say that’s enough.”

5
     
    Wild Bill’s All Day/All Night Video Arcade
    Lake George Village
    Tuesday, 8:15 A.M.
     
    Main Street cuts like a fault-line through Lake George Village.
    The narrow two-way is situated one hundred yards west of the Warren County Courthouse and the village green that surrounds it. During the summer, the crowded “strip” has the feel of a never-ending carnival. Its tourist-congested, six mile north/south runway is flanked on both sides with single- and multi-storied brick or wood-sided bodegas, specialty clothing shops, pizza parlors, Chinese take-out joints, Indian eateries, falafel stands, doughnut shops, gift shops, a Gap outlet, an Abercrombie & Fitch, and a Frankenstein Wax Museum of Horrors and Tortures. And bars. Bikers bars. Lots of them.
    Nestled within the smorgasbord of commercial establishments is Wild Bill’s All Day/All Night video arcade. Having discarded both the sedan and the silenced .22 caliber automatic into the Hudson River not far from the lake’s heavily forested south end, Hector “the Black Dragon” Lennox now stands glued to a stand-alone video game called Hurl . At base, the kill game’s object is to manipulate a first-person shooter through a maze of under- and above-ground tunnels, passageways and hallways while killing off the mutated monsters (some of them invisible!) that leap out from every corner of the dark setting.
    For Lennox, Hurl represents participatory video entertainment in its purist form. It enlists the classic components of a topnotch kill game: shadowy atmosphere, claustrophobic setting, disturbing pursuit and kills.
    Lennox should know.
    The video game software designer could not be more aware of the specific components that go into making a great kill game. First you consult your map design. Then you add your polygons, your virtual imagery, your dynamic lighting, your dramatic shadowing and your mesh optimizations. And of course, you add the screams. All those beautiful screams. From there you blend the cyber stew all into a realistic, almost Hollywood cinematic display of repeat kills and slaughter.
    Inside Wild Bill’s, ceiling-mounted neon lamps provide indirect illumination.
    Nearly every square inch of wall space is occupied with stand-alone, first-person-point-of-view kill games like Night Fighter , Frog Man , Fatality , Sniper Kill , Zombie Slayer , Hurl and even Project Night Fright —a local favorite. The cacophony of electronic explosions, gunfire, laser fire, screams, and colliding fists make the place seem more like a battleground than a video game parlor. For most of the kids who occupy the place, only empty pockets can keep them away from video death—from their High Scores, their H.P. (Hit Points).
    He is no longer a kid.
    Nor are his pockets empty. But the thirty-six-year-old Lennox can compete with the best of them. He stands like a messiah before his disciples, they being completely unaware of his true identity, nor the fact that he is the developer of two popular kill games.
    For now he is no longer the Black Dragon.
    He’s discarded his all-black clothing.
    Now he sports a different look entirely: white sneakers and wide-legged Carhardt pants, overly muscular arms bursting out of a too-tight T-shirt emblazoned with a Byzantine reproduction of a haloed Christ, the words “JESUS IS MY SUPERHERO!” printed above Him. The sleeveless shirt exposes a long, tail-coiled black dragon tattooed to the interior of his right forearm.
    He’s been occupying the stand-alone game now for nearly an hour, since his gravel pit kill game ended on a surprising note—the appearance of an eyewitness outside the back doors to Sweeney’s Gym.
    An eyewitness who got away with life.
    Soon the L.G.P.D. superheroes will come to arrest him.