"How are we supposed to build a tank out of this?"
Chad had voiced the question that all the boys were thinking as they stared down at the pile of items that had been left next to their huge empty box. Besides the box itself, there were several rolls of duct tape, a sharp knife, some cardboard rolls that looked like you'd find inside a wrapping paper when it was done, and some extra pieces of cardboard.
"What do you mean?" River asked. "We have everything we need – except for some camouflaging stuff."
"There ain't no wheels," Sammy protested.
"We don't need wheels," Shawn said. "We just have to put holes in the bottom of it, so a couple of you can drive it – like the Flintstones."
"Tanks have wheels," Wilson said.
"No, they don't," Jack disagreed. "They have tracks. We don't need tracks for our tank, though. We just need to make sure it's better than any of the others'."
The boys grinned at that. Yup! That was all that was important to them! That theirs was best – or at least, better than any of the girls'.
"Well, we need to get started," River said, noticing that the other cabins were already sending kids and counselors off to get other items, like branches, rocks and pinecones – and who knew what else?
"Ian," Jack said. "You take a couple of the boys and start gathering up camouflage materials."
"What are those?" Chance asked.
"Branches, leaves, stuff like that," Jack told him – and the others. "Things to make it look more like a tank and less like a box."
"Oh."
"You guys make sure you stay with Ian, okay?"
Jack didn't need to remind them. None of the boys had any desire to wander off – even though it was still light out, and it wasn't raining or anything. As Ian headed for the edge of the woods, Sammy, Chance, Wilson and Chad followed, sticking close but already starting to pick up things off the ground that they thought they might need.
"What do we do?" Brian asked, turning to Jack and Shawn.
"We get the shape ready to be decorated."
OOOOOOOOO
By the time Ian returned with his charges – who had their hands filled with sticks, leaves, some rocks and even a handful of feathers they'd discovered at the base of a small tree – the tank looked more like a tank than any of them might have expected it to look. The cardboard tubes and extra cardboard had been turned into two gun turrets complete with barrels. There was a long narrow opening in the front of the tank for those inside to look out and see where they were going, along with two openings in either side that looked a lot like windows. The others had done a fine job, putting it all together with just duct tape.
"Great!" Jack said, grinning when Ian's group returned. "We need that!"
The boys who had gone gathering looked at the tank excitedly.
"It looks great!" Chad said, approvingly.
Those who had stayed preened.
"We just need the finishing touch, now," River said, picking up the tape again and gesturing for the kids to bring the camouflaging branches, leaves and other items over.
He was just taping the last big branch to the front of their tank when Gary Hines made his appearance at the ball field. The camp director took a long moment to make sure everyone was pretty close to being finished, and then went to the center of the field where everyone would be able to hear him and called for their attention. The kids quieted almost immediately.
"They look good, Campers!"
The kids clapped and hooted, each group certain that he meant that their particular tank looked better than the others.
"Now…" Gary said with a smile. "Let's see who built the sturdiest one."
"How are we going to do that?" Sammy asked into the silence that greeted that statement.
Gary's smile turned into a huge grin and he gestured to his assistants, who trotted over to the tarps that had been covering the secret pile. They pulled the tarps back, and the kids all gasped; some with surprise and wonder, others with excitement. Underneath those tarps was literally the largest collection of… stuff… that any of them had seen.
There were buckets of water balloons, dozens of eggs in cartons, little sandwich bags of what looked like some kind of white powder – flour, Ian decided. There were other buckets filled with water that held stacks of sponges beside them, bottles of ketchup and mustard and whipped cream and all sorts of other things that looked like nothing moe than the ingredients for a major food fight.
"What are we going to do with all this stuff?" Gary asked, after giving them a moment to babble amongst themselves. "That's easy. We're going to use these items to test the sturdiness and durability of each of the tanks."
As he'd been speaking, two of his staff members had been using chalk to make two parallel lines in the grass in the middle of the field. The lines were about 20 feet apart, and about a hundred feet long.
"This is a gauntlet," Gary told the curious campers. "One by one each tank will be 'driven' down the gauntlet by two campers hiding inside. Everyone else will be lined up on the lines facing each other, and your job is to throw stuff at the tanks as they pass by to try and destroy them." He gave the excited campers a suddenly stern glance. "I don't need to say this, but I'm going to anyways. You only throw those items that are in these stacks. No sticks, or rocks or pinecones… nothing that might hurt someone. Understand?"
There were excited nods of agreement, the kids all but twitching in their excitement. It was a glorified food fight, really, with the tanks as the actual targets – although anything that someone tossed at a tank and missed with would surely hit those standing on the other line of the gauntlet. With an assortment of wet sponges and water balloons – not to mention all the other stuff – it was going to get really messy, really quickly.
"The syrups and ketchup and other condiments get poured into your hand and then thrown," Gary said, making sure that no one lobbed a mustard bottle at the tanks – and the other side of the gauntlet. "The tank that takes the least amount of damage after three runs through the gauntlet is the winning one. Got it?"
There were excited cheers, and kids started clamoring to their counselors to be one of the two who would drive the tank. Since there were to be three trips through the gauntlet there would be six drivers total – which worked out pretty well for the Australian cabin. Most of their boys really wanted to be on the lines where they could be throwing stuff – although Chance and Chad both looked so eager to try out the tank that Jack told them they could go first.
"Let's get the tanks lined up!" Gary shouted over the din of the campers. He pointed to one end of the gauntlet, and the counselors started guiding their tank drivers into their tanks and getting them lined up to run the gauntlet.
"This is going to be great," River told Shawn, bringing over a bucket of water and a handful of sponges in one hand and a thing of water balloons in the other. He was followed by Ian, who had been given the condiments and a dozen eggs. The counselors would throw the eggs, since they could hurt if they hit something besides the tanks – although they'd make such a great mess that they just couldn't be left out of the ingredients.
"It's going to be messy," Shawn agreed, shaking his head in amusement as he watched Ian started pouring ketchup into eager little hands. This was nuts. But it was going to be a lot of fun.