"Okay, I'll tell him," she turned to go.

"Alice?"

"Yeah?"

"Did the others show up?"

"Yeah," she said, "Everything about that girl who was supposed to handle the kitchen. Annie."

Bill wiped his forehead with the back of his hand.

"Do you think we're going to last all summer?" he said, grinning.

"I don't know if I'm gonna last a week," she sighed.

Bill laughed, but she didn't.

She wasn't joking. Steve had phoned something else that absolutely positively needed to be done immediately and necessitated a run back into town. He had called in impromptu briefing around the Jeep and like a general making the rounds of his troops out in the field, he was issuing directives.

"Do you want that listed separately?" said Jack, who had just been put in charge of inventory.

"That's right," said Steve, "And Brenda: I want you to finish up that archery range, okay?"

"Okay," she said, having already started the jobs several times, only to be pulled of it to do something else.

"Now, if Annie gets here," Steve continued, "Get her started in the kitchen."

"Got it," Jack said.

"Do your best, alright?" said Steve, sounding somewhat less than confident. He looked at the sky.

"I'll be back sometime this evening. It's supposed to rain like hell, so get as much done as possible. I don't want to get too far behind."

"Bye," said Brenda as he drove off in his Jeep, wrapped up in his worries. She rolled her eyes.

"He neglected to mention to that in town they call this place 'Camp Blood," Ned said, wryly.

Marcie made a face.

"Next, they're gonna tell us there's poisonous snakes in the outhouse, some crocodiles in the lake."

"Nah," said Ned, "The crocodiles are in the cabins."

Brenda grinned. They had found a tiny lizard in one of the cabins earlier that morning. A little salamander. But by the time Ned was finished, he had her half believing it really was a baby crocodile.

'They look like that when they're really little,' Ned had told her, 'Cute and sorta harmless. I mean… look at it. Would you believe that tiny thing would ever grow up to be a crocodile? It must have been left here by some little kid who had it as a pet.'

She had stared at him, convinced that he was kidding, but he seemed utterly serious and both Jack and Marcie were listening with perfectly straight faces as he went on.