65 Bingo! (1/2)

They ate so well that evening that everyone except the sentries slept like logs. Sven took the first watch together with Ulla. He thought, lazily, about killing her during the night, but dismissed that notion quickly. It would mean disrupting everyone's rest - he'd have to raise the alarm, and send out teams to search for Ulla's purported killers in the middle of the night. And it would have reflected really badly on himself; he was keeping watch with her - it was his duty to watch her back.

By the time his watch was over and he was shaking Henrik awake, he had found the perfect way to remove Ulla from the New World. He'd remembered the old maxim that people were killed by what they loved.

Dawn came and the night's frost became a sparkling blanket, turning from pink into yellow into white before it melted away into the ground. Invisible birds started to sing and call out from the trees, and the shapes arranged in a circle around the fire began to stir. One by one they rose from their rest, and stretched and yawned and hurried to the fire on legs stiff with sleep and cold. It promised to be a beautiful, sunny day.

But Sven wasn't in a sunny mood. They'd slept for too long, tired from two days' forced march and with bellies full of food. He calculated that they'd set out to look for the kids' camp a good couple of hours later than he'd planned, and he hated running late. What he'd planned to do later that day made his mood even worse.

He chivvied everyone along mercilessly, forcing them to gulp down their food. He shouted at the Vikings emptying their bowels in the bushes, telling them to stop wanking and get their shit together. This last instruction caused some confusion among the Vikings that had already started to defecate, and merriment among others.

He divided them into three teams. Karl and Erik headed northwest, while Lasse and Henrik went northeast. Ulla and himself struck out north, as closely as they could make it. They were guided by the sun, and the moss growing on the trees: it always faced north.

The kids had said the camp was only a few kilometers away from the mine, but Sven ordered all teams to move in a zigzag pattern, so they walked three kilometers for every kilometer they moved forward. After the first hour or so, they lost visual contact for good. Sven walked on with redoubled attention, scanning the terrain ahead.

He saw what he was looking for before very long: the grey face of a distant cliff flickering between the trees. He stopped, raising his hand and bending his neck to get a better view. When Ulla drew up level he said, pointing:

”See that cliff? Let's go there, and find out whether we can climb on top. With any luck, we'll see a good couple of klicks out. Save us a lot of legwork.”

He set off without waiting for her answer. He heard her follow, felt her gaze on the back of his neck all the way to the cliff. All the way to the cliff, he waited for the right moment to put his plan into action. That moment never came.

It arrived a good deal later. They'd found a way to climb the cliff, and were standing on the relatively level top of a rock right next to the summit. It was quite roomy, a dozen people would have easily fit in there. They'd have to be careful, though: the stone platform fell away to a precipice which guaranteed ten meters of freefall before ending on a slope bristling with pointed rocks.

It was like Sven had anticipated. They had a magnificent view, and they saw the kids' camp almost right away. It was in a clearing near the base of a heavily wooded hill, maybe a half an hour's walk away.

”Bingo,” said Sven. When he was a little kid, he was very fond of an ancient comic series that featured a character called Bingo. Bingo was twelve, and outsmarted every adult in the most horrid ways imaginable. His crowning achievement was a booby trap that made the contents of a toilet bowl shoot up instead of down upon flushing. It wreaked terrible casualties among health-conscious defecators who always examined their stools for warning signs before flushing them down.

And each time Bingo scored a hit, each time Bingo succeeded he said 'bingo'. Sven loved Bingo. Unfortunately, he'd only gotten to read the twenty or so Bingo issues which he got on on his fifth birthday from his grandfather - a well-meaning, naive man. He'd made up for it by reading each comic at least thirty times.

The most recent Bingo issue he'd read had been dated July, 1971. The problem was, Bingo had an older sister that was a model daughter and a model student and aspired to be a model, maybe even an actress if she got lucky. Their parents were very proud of her, and repeatedly asked Bingo why he couldn't be more like his excellent sister, and cease being a pain in the ass.

Naturally, Bingo retaliated against his sister as often as he could, and this provoked a growing public outcry as all the sisters who had brothers reared on Bingo turned into adults, and demanded that their voice be heard. Eventually, Bingo was killed off and another comic hero took his place.

But long before that happened, an October, 1967 issue featured Bingo grinding some pills he'd stolen from the bathroom cabinet, and sprinkling the powder into his sister's bedtime Ovaltine. After she'd drunk that and fallen asleep, he sneaked into her room with a toy he'd received for Christmas from his naive grandfather. It was a battery-powered, knee-high green plastic model of Godzilla. When activated, it walked around uttering threatening screeches while lit up by a bulb inside.

If Sven could recall correctly, the Godzilla was a big hit. Bingo's drug-moronized sister went out of her mind, and ceased to be a threat to Bingo's operations. Sven decided he would model his behavior on Bingo's.

”I think we both deserve a little reward,” he said, looking at the distant camp and thinking of Bingo.

Ulla looked at him expectantly. He stayed silent, forcing her to ask:

”What do you have in mind?”

Sven opened the satchel slung on a strap across his shoulder and took out a small leather bundle. He unwrapped it in front of Ulla and showed her the dried mushroom caps.

”You've done well on this trip,” he said. ”Help yourself. When we get back home, I'll give you back your stash. You're fine again.”

Her hand shot out, and she crammed the caps into her mouth like a greedy animal. Sven felt a little better about what he was about to do. He said:

”Easy now. Leave some for me. Here, wash them down.”

He held out his leather bottle and picked up a bunch of caps and when she tilted her head back to drink, he quickly replaced all but one. He wrapped the caps back up and put the bundle in his satchel, chewing the single cap as if his mouth was full. He took the bottle back from Ulla, and drank deeply before plugging it up again.