Savage Run (35 page)

“
I can’t do it!”

“
Yes, you can, Heidi. Just
focus on my voice, okay? We’ll be okay. This is the easy
part.”

“
For you it is!”

“
Place one hand in front of
the other. That’s all you need to do.”

I feel his hand around my ankle and he
squeezes it gently. “You’re doing great, Heidi. One hand in front
of the other.”

Pausing, I remind myself again why I’m doing
this. For Gemma. Yet even with her at the forefront of my thoughts,
it takes every morsel of willpower to slide my hand forward. I pick
up my knee and pull it toward my hands. The next hand. The next
knee. One at a time, I inch forward.

“
Good, Heidi. Keep going. A
little faster now.”

I pick up my pace a little, but thoughts of
how I might become forever trapped in this tunnel prevent me from
committing one hundred percent.

“
The faster you move, the
faster we’ll be there.”

“
Okay, okay,” I snap
impatiently, moving my hands and knees at a faster pace.
Mercifully, the rhythm of my movements starts to take over, and I
note that the more I focus on what I’m doing, the less anxious I
feel.

“
What did you have to
choose between back there?” Arthor asks.

It takes me a second to recall what I had to
choose between. “Things like my sandals and my trailer…Gemma’s
mother.” I’m careful to not bring up that I shot him.

“
Really? What was your last
one?”

“
It was between Gemma and
my freedom.” Squeezing through a particularly tight area, I grunt.
“You?”

“
It was between my lover
and my freedom.” He grunts, too, just as he crawls through the
tight space. “So who did you choose?”

“
Gemma.”

“
Really? Over your own
freedom?”

“
Well…yes. If I don’t have
those I care about, there’s no use in having my freedom, is
there?”

He doesn’t reply.

“
What did you
choose?”

“
I chose my
freedom.”

“
Oh.” My voice sounds flat,
but my insides are in turmoil. Obviously, I don’t know Arthor as
well as I thought I did. All his actions up until now prove that
he’d choose his loved ones over freedom or even over his own
life.

“
What other choices did you
have to make?”

Quickly, I reply, “Just some people you
don’t know.”

He pauses for a moment. “I chose my freedom
over my lover because I found out that he cheated on me shortly
before I left.”

“
Oh.” Now I feel like a
judgmental bigot.

“
I thought I had been able
to forgive him, but being in the booth, I realized that the hurt
sits real deep, you know.”

“
That’s fair.”

“
I still felt like a
scumbag doing it, though.”

“
Don’t,” I say. “You
deserve someone who will cherish you.”

“
Thanks, Heidi.”

Crawling forward, I notice there is more
space between the tunnel’s walls and me. We must be getting closer
to the end. I take a deep breath. “But don’t you think that it was
done in a quite manipulating way? I mean how they forced us to
choose like that?”

“
Certainly.”

After crawling for few a few more minutes, I
see a dim light up ahead and my heart leaps in my chest. “Arthor! I
see light!”

“
Finally. I can’t wait to
be out of here; you stink.”

I laugh. “Well, you don’t exactly smell like
rose petals.”

“
But I’m downwind to
you.”

“
You insisted,” I
retort.

The end came much faster than I had
anticipated, and it occurs to me that I haven’t yet discussed with
Arthor how we’ll proceed once we get out of here. We should just
separate and wish each other well. He’s officially my competitor
now—and I must see him as such.

“
Arthor?”

“
Yes.”

“
I’m just going to run
ahead as fast as I can once we reach the end here in a little bit.
Good luck out there.”

“
Okay. Just let me scout
out the area first just in case there are any dangerous creatures,”
he answers.

“
Trying to get a head start
on me?” I ask, jokingly.

“
What?”

I can almost hear the muscles in his jaw
tense up.

“
You’re crazy if that’s
what you think! Stop being so paranoid; I’m the only friend you
have right now and I’m not out to get you like the rest of
them.”

To say that I’m baffled is an
understatement. “I was just joking, Arthor, geez.”

“
Even when I have nothing I
want from you, you still think I’m out to get you. Not everyone is
like your father, Heidi.”

I stop dead in my tracks, coiling my fingers
into fists. “What’s gotten into you? Of course I realize that
everyone isn’t like my father!” From the way he reacts, I almost
think he’s hiding something from me. Maybe he had to shoot me, too,
and he’s feeling guilty about it.

I continue onward until I get to the end of
the passageway, and then pause before I step into the shadowy
jungle. Looking up, I have a hard time seeing the tops of some of
the trees, and I can only make out a few splotches of the blue sky
above, the leaves concealing the rest. Some of their trunks are as
wide as four or five lengths of me and the smooth, splotchy bark is
covered in moss. There’s a constant hum of insects, bird chirps and
caws, growling noises, rustling leaves, squeaking, and bushes,
vines and plants move as if by themselves.

A sharp pain goes through
my foot when I first step on it. Standing on my good foot, and
circling my injured ankle, I try to loosen it up a bit. I think
back to the Opening Ceremony when President Volkov announced
that
Eastern Republic scientists were
hired to recreate dangerous, extinct beasts and various
mythological creatures for the O-Region. Sitting in my chair back
in the Conference Center, it sounded scary. Now,
I don’t think there’s even a word for how I feel.
There’s just a queasiness that sits in my bones and muscles and
blood, screaming for me to crawl back into the hole I came from and
quit. Before it’s too late. But I can’t pull back now.

“
Just let me do this for
you, Heidi,” Arthor says softly, climbing out of the tunnel,
brushing the dust off his hands. “You saved my life,
remember?”

Why is he acting this way all of a sudden?
“Friends don’t keep score.”

Pulling me into his arms, he says, “True,
but I would be honored to do this for you.”

Is there something important that he needs
to prove to himself in doing this? He did insist on running first
during the latter portion of the marathon, too, so maybe he’s
trying to protect me. “Fine. I’ll wait. But if you’re not back by
thirty seconds, I’m out of here.”

“
I’m just going to look.”
He smiles, the sides of his eyes crinkling. “I’ll holler once I’ve
scouted out the area.”

I watch him vanish behind a large bush and
the second I can no longer hear his footsteps, I know I have made a
mistake. We’re not part of a team. We’re individual participants,
competing against each other for the cash prize, and if he were
truly my friend, he wouldn’t ask me to stay behind. What would we
do if we got to the finish line first? Would he let me go ahead of
him? Of course he wouldn’t. I certainly wouldn’t. I need that money
to free Gemma.

A large shadow passes overhead, causing me
to cower down, but by the time I look up, it has disappeared. Did
it see me, whatever it was? When a deafening bird-like caw vibrates
through the jungle, chills run down my spine. The creature must be
gigantic—one of the many dangerous beasts for sure.

Angry at Arthor—but even angrier at myself
for having fallen for his scheme—I start limping into the jungle.
The ground is covered in roots and mosses, making it even harder to
maneuver with my hurt foot, but thankfully the pain isn’t
unmanageable. I have no idea in which direction to go and after
pushing one bush aside, there’s always another one waiting to
replace it. There are no signs or clues that I can tell, and I
don’t even see any of the other participants out here yet. But of
course, with only a hundred or so of us left, all scattered
throughout this vast area, our uniforms blending with the
environment, we’ll be nearly impossible to spot.

Every achy step I take, I become more
furious at Arthor. At least he could have had the decency to just
say that we’d separate and not trick me, giving himself a head
start. I’m livid with him for messing with my future this way. I
thought he was my friend! I would never have done that to him—he
knows it—and is why he insisted on going first.

When I push aside the next bush, I enter a
small clearing. About twenty feet away, I see Arthor stuck to a
large web, grunting and flexing his muscles, and he has blood on
the left side of his rib cage. The web is made of chains, and the
edges are anchored in the trees and in the ground. In an instant it
dawns on me; he didn’t abandon me; he was prevented from coming
back because he became trapped. A pang of guilt rushes through
me.

“
Arthor?” I say, limping
out from behind a bush. A beam of sunlight streams down upon him, a
spotlight from the heavens.

“
Heidi.”

“
What happened?” I
ask.

“
I set something off…a
trap—a strong wind. It blew me onto this…”

I take a step closer. “I want to help
you.”

“
No! Stay where you are. If
you come any closer you could end up here.”

Hundreds of red light beams appear when I
take the next step. Undoubtedly, if I touch any of them, I’ll set
off whatever it is that released the airstreams that blew Arthor
onto the web. “I’m going to help you.” Without wasting any more
time, I look for a way in which I can get to him from above. I
locate a tree that has a branch right above him, and head toward
it. Maybe if I extend a branch to him, he’ll be able to pull
himself up.

“
Heidi, I’m sorry for
leaving you. Forgive me. I…I was trying to get a head
start…”

His confession makes me feel like the life
has been drained out of me. So he did lie to me.

“
I just wanted for my
parents to be proud of me.” He’s breathing heavily and his face
morphs into a map of sadness. “Ever since they lost Tristan…the
strong one…they know I’m different somehow…I thought if I gave them
my money…they’d be as proud of me as they were Tristan.” His head
falls forward and he sobs.

I could just continue on—leave the traitor
here. It’s what I should do to him for betraying me. But if I
leave, he’ll never get free and the man-made beasts that roam this
jungle will be attracted by the blood and finish him. There’s been
enough death to last the century, and if I can help it, I want to
stop anyone else from dying. “You owe me big time, Arthor, and once
I get you out of here, I’m going to give it to you.” I pick up a
thick, long branch from the jungle floor, and begin to climb the
tree. But before I can climb up even a foot, a hand covers my
mouth, and someone pulls me behind the tree. I kick and flail my
arms, and scream; the viciousness has started, and I’m one of the
first ones who will be killed.

“
Shhh…a dragon is scoping
out the area.” I recognize the voice as Cory’s and when I stop
resisting him, he lets go. I look up to the sky, and see a huge
beast flying above the trees—probably the same one I noticed
earlier. The dragon is yellow and has reddish-brown splotches on
his body, spikes on his legs, back and head, and brown wings that
look like they have claws on the ends. Its head is square with
sizeable nostrils, and fan-like gills protrude like branches from
his skull. With the flap of its wings, there’s a beating sound, and
as it roars, it stoops into a clearance, breathing flames right in
front of where Arthor hangs, setting the dried branches and twigs
on fire. Arthor! Smoke rises to the sky and the smell of burned
wood and vegetation breezes past me.

“
Is that all you have?”
Arthor spews toward the dragon.

The beast roars again, and I cup my hands
over my ears to shield them from the piercing sound. My eyes are
still glued to my friend’s face, and when he looks at me, I reach
my arm toward him as two heavy tears roll down my cheeks.

“
Cory,” I whisper, even
though there’s hardly anything he can do to save Arthor
now.

Cory picks up a large rock from the jungle
floor. He places the rock in a makeshift sling made of vines, and
hurls it. At first, I think he’s aiming for the dragon, but as the
rock leaves his hand, I see that it is headed toward Arthor’s
skull.

I scream at exactly the same time the dragon
roars again, my voice being swallowed up by the earsplitting sound.
The rock hits Arthor in the center of his forehead just a second
before the flames from the dragon’s mouth consume him.

A mercy killing.

The dragon seems not to have noticed that it
wasn’t his flames that killed his victim, rather the rock from
Cory’s hand.

Cory grabs my hand. “Come—now!” He tugs my
arm, pulling me with him away from the grove before I can fully
wrap my mind around what just happened. I can’t see through the
tears in my eyes; everything is blurry. I hobble after him for at
least ten minutes before he stops by a stream and lets go of my
hand, but the smell of flames and the look on Arthor’s face just
before he died has followed me even here. Kneeling down by the
water, Cory cups his hand, scoops some water into it and smells it.
He takes a sip, and wets the back of his neck and hair. I stand and
watch him, unable to move, unable to let go of or fully comprehend
what just happened. I want to scream at him for killing my friend,
but I can’t. I want to cry, but the tears have dried up.