The Paintball Players

The Paintball Players
by Russ Vance

“Bwah, hah, hah!” a stifled chuckle emerged from the madman’s throat as his fingers deftly pressed the plunger on the syringe. His brow furrowed in concentration as the clear liquid replaced the small quantity of bright red paint from the tiny orb resting in his gloved hand. A small speck of red seemed to glow on the pale latex of the glove.
“That should be sufficient,” he said to himself. He touched the tiny tip of a miniature soldering iron to the needle mark, sealing the puncture with hardly a scar. He then placed the ball in a tube filled with dozens of other identical ones. “Ten more should do nicely,” he added, again addressing the empty room. An evil smile, more of a smirk really, creased his long, thin face. It created a slim, dark wrinkle at each corner of his mouth. The razor thin lips and palid complexion made the smile look more like a bloodless slash across his face than a human mouth. “The little cretins will never notice the difference,” he mused.


“Hey, guys! Paintball war at Josh’s place tonight!”
“What time?”
“Right after school.”
“Awesome! I just got my new gun and I can’t wait to try it out!”
“What did you get?”
“It’s a Diablo Wrath.”
“Cool! I seen one of those…”
“Saw one,” Mr. Larson corrected him, “And get back to writing. You guys can talk about your silly games on your own time!”
“He’s just mad cause he’s too old to play!”
“Hah, hah, hah!”
“I’m not too old to write a discipline slip. That’s half an hour, Mr. Patterson.”
“Like I care!”
“Okay, make it an hour, and you can go to the office right now.”
“Fine! I don’t like it here anyway!”
“Now, the rest of you get back to work!”
“Too late, the bell is about to ring.”
“Don’t forget, your papers are due tomorrow.”
“Awww!”


After school that day…

“Hey, where the heck is Zach?”
“He got detention, remember.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, let’s start the war without him.”
“Good idea. Hey, we can use these paintballs I got online. They were really cheap!”
“How cheap?”
“$16.95 a thousand and no shipping!”
“Wow, that’s super cheap! What site was it?”
“I can’t remember; I got an email ad for it.”
“I always thought those were rip-offs.”
“Well, this one wasn’t. I got my order in two days.”
“I’m gonna get that address from you.”
“Okay, let’s start the war!”

About an hour later…

“Great war guys!”
“Yeah, too bad Zach couldn’t make it.”
“What do you mean? Now you guys are gonna die!” laughed Zach.
“Get him everybody!”
“Whoa, that one went right in Zach’s mouth. That was awesome!”
“Better keep your mouth shut next time, Zach!”
“Gross, it made him puke!”
“Hey, Zach, are you okay, dude?”

Zach was doubled up in pain, vomiting profusely. Within seconds he dropped to his knees. “Oh, jeez, I think he crapped himself!” Zach’s eyes took on a vacant look (more than usual). He slumped sideways, his legs pulled up to his stomach in a fetal position. The other boys gathered around him. Jason was crying. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t try to hit him in the mouth.”
Mark’s face was turning green. “I don’t feel so good either. My stomach hurts.”
“I don’t think Zach is breathing you guys,” said Jace. “Let’s get outta here.”
“We have to call someone to help him,” Jason sobbed.
“I’m gonna barf!” Mark cried, as he launched his lunch onto his shoes.
“My stomach hurts real bad,” groaned Josh, “I wish my mom was home.”

One by one, each of the combatants began to feel the same ill effects. “Somebody call 911,” Jace gasped. Eric was the only one left who could stand, but he couldn’t reach the phone. He pushed a chair to the phone and climbed up. He became dizzy and his vision was blurred. First he dialed 611. On his second attempt, he managed to dial 911. “I need…I need…blaaargk…I…blaarg!” Eric was also succumbing to the deadly illness.
“911 emergency. What do you need sir?”
“Raaalf!”
“I can’t understand you sir!”
“Help! Bluh, bluh, blaaaargkkk!”
“I’ll send an officer to your location. Do you need an ambulance?”
“Yeaaahgraagle gag, gag!”
“Help is on the way sir.”

As the first officers arrived at the scene, they were treated to a grizzly sight. The paint spattered bodies of the boys were strewn about on the ground. The stench of vomit and human excrement assaulted the officers’ nostrils. The paramedics were soon on the scene, but as they examined each boy, they shook their heads at the deputies. Inside the house, little Eric was slumped beneath the phone in a pool of partially digested crispitos. No signs of life were found. “What the heck killed these kids?” one of the officers mused. “Maybe the autopsies will tell us something,” his partner responded. “Let’s get busy collecting evidence. All these paintball guns will need to be collected and the paintballs too.”

“The autopsy results are in on those kids, and you’re not going to believe this. They apparently died of dysentery,” said Deputy Clark
“Dysentery! How the heck would six kids all die of dysentery at the same time? It just doesn’t make any sense,” Chief Deputy Wiegmann responded.
“Right now, we are looking at the school lunch. They all had crispitos in their stomachs. The odd thing is, no one else at school got sick,” Clark stated.
“I didn’t know dysentery acted that fast.”
“It usually doesn’t. This was like a super strain of it or something. We are also sampling the water at the Mills boy’s house. Maybe they all got thirsty while playing paintball and drank contaminated water.”
“All of the boys died within 30 minutes of each other. The odd thing was, the Patterson boy was the last one there, but appears to have died first. Here’s something else that seems strange: he had traces of paint in his mouth.”
“Was he chewing on a paintball, or did he get shot in the mouth?”
“No way of knowing. Anyone who might have known is feeding worms now.”

“Call on line one for Deputy Clark,” droned the dispatcher’s voice.
“Got it!” Clark responded. “Yes. Really! You’ve got to be kidding! Okay, thanks for the call.”
“What’s up?”
“One of the paramedics who responded to the paintball deaths had died…of dysentery! I don’t think we are dealing with death by natural causes here.”
“Did he get into some of the vomit?”
“Not that anyone could tell, but he had a spot of paint on his arm. One of the doctors took a swab of it and sent it to their lab.”
“Don’t tell me, dysentery bacteria!”
“Loaded with it!”
“So, where did the paintballs come from?”
“That is the million dollar question! We also still need the FBI lab results on the kid’s clothes and the rest of the leftover paintballs. That should be in within a couple weeks. In the meantime, interview the kids’ folks to see if you can get a lead on where the paintballs were purchased.”
“I’m on it!”

Two weeks later…

“Well, I have good news and bad news on the paintballs,” Deputy Wiegmann said.
“Are you going to tell me?” asked Clark.
“Sure, I found out who bought the paintballs, Mills, and where he bought them, sort of.”
“Sort of?”
“Yeah, he got them on the internet, but when we tried to trace them, the site was no longer in operation.”
“Can’t it be tracked down?”
“Apparently not. It was routed through a number of foreign servers. Whoever did it really knows how to cover his tracks.”
“Great! The lab results show that about half of the paintballs in that order contained the bacteria. The only ones that didn’t were the ones left in Patterson’s gun. He must have arrived after they divvied up the ammo. Too bad he didn’t get a two hour detention; he might still be alive!”
“Let’s just hope this was a random thing, and these are the only victims we are going to have.”
“Yeah, let’s hope.”

The very next day…

“We’re having a makeup party at Brittany’s place tonight,” beamed Lesley.
“Cool! Are we supposed to bring makeup?” Tayla asked.
“No,” Val responded, “She got a really great buy on the internet. It came this morning, so she wants us all to come and try it tonight.”
“I’ll be there,” said Tayla.
“Me and Sarah are coming, too,” Caitlin chimed in.
“Sarah and I,” corrected Mr. Larson as a thin smile creased his pallid face.