The 17 (2 page)

“Hunting?”

“Yeah. Hunting. They send us out to … kill, I guess. They put us in messed up situations and see what we do. This time it’s hunting.”

“What was it the last time?”

Zill swallowed hard. “Being hunted.”

“Where are we?”

“It changes.”

“What do you mean it changes?”

Zill raised her voice. “I don’t know! It changes. Today we’re here. Tomorrow, who knows where we’ll be? You’ll get used to it.”

“Why didn’t you go … hunting?”

“Probably because I was left behind to deal with you.”

Zill was the welcome wagon.
Not very welcoming.

“How long have you been here?”

Zill swung her legs back over the armrest and placed them firmly on the rich shag carpet. She did that thing with her toes, the thing Zack did when he arrived, but it didn’t look to Zack like it soothed her in the least. “I was the first one here. I was in a cell with, like, this most uncomfortable cot. I don’t know how long I was in there. It seemed like forever. Then Harness came and we ended up in a shack in the woods with, like, snow everywhere and it was so cold. We had to melt snow for water and then kill rodents for dinner. So gross. Then we were in a tropical area. It was so nice. Then Cass showed up. She’s so ratchet.”

Zack’s head was spinning. He had known girls like Zill: Self absorbed, dismissive of anything and everything different, wildly insecure beneath of a veneer of superiority.

“You’ve lost track of time,” Zack said, drawing a very stank eye from Zill.

“It happens, you know. So, have any friends back from wherever you are from?”

Zack didn’t know how to answer that. The first thing that popped into his mind was no, not really. Sure, he had acquaintances, people who knew him and smiled and waved in the hallways, people who he sat with at lunch and talked about how boring Mrs. Elder’s sociology class was.

No, not really friends.

Then he thought of Caroline, the one person he knew he could call a true friend. The one person he had grown to care for and appreciate in his young, boring life. She was a lot like him, damaged, but in a more obvious and superficial way.

When she was only five, her left leg was pinned under a carousel. Her tibia and fibula were snapped gruesomely. Being so young, the growth plate was damaged and the break never healed properly. As she reached full maturity, her maimed leg was several inches shorter than the other and she had to wear a special platform shoe on her left foot to level her off.

Others teased her. Zack never did.

They had a close relationship—she was the girl next door after all—but they never dated. They weren’t an item, but she was the closest thing to a first love he had in this world or any other.

It was her eyes that got him: green like the ocean after the storm. He loved the way her hair flowed in curls down to her shoulders like a blonde waterfall and even adored her pale skin that made her lips look even more crimson than they actually were. She hated being so pale, but that’s the price you pay when you live in Maine. Caroline was devoutly against tanning beds and Zack agreed with her logic. There were plenty of things on this Earth that will chop days and years off your life, no need to voluntarily do it to yourself.

He wondered what perils awaited him on this planet. Clearly he was no longer on his.

That was the elephant in the room. He knew it, and he could tell Zill knew it, too.

“I have friends,” Zack finally answered, abruptly. “I think here we need all the friends we can get. Do you have any idea where here is?”

Zill snorted. “No.”

“You were the first one here. Have you had any contact with whatever, um, brought us here?”

“No. Thank God. I don’t want to talk to any creepy alien. Ew.”

Zack did. He was always the type to want to know the why of things. Everything had a reason and there was a reason why he and Zill and the others were here—wherever here was.

“You’re not curious?”

“No time to be curious,” Zill said as the door swung open and voices boomed into the room. The first one through was a boy holding a bleeding girl in his arms. Then three more entered: an attractive Asian girl with adorable chubby cheeks and soft thin lips; a boy so dark the white of his teeth looked like a string of floating pearls when he opened his mouth, very tall with a shaved head; and a girl, tall and trim, her hair pulled back tightly in a pony tail. She had uncommon definition in her arms for a teenage girl and they were covered in dark, grimy soot.

They all had dried blood on their clothing.

“What took you so long?” Zill asked as the tall, fit kid—man really—who had thick arms and well-defined muscles, sandy hair that was wet with sweat but still looked perfectly in place, and the jutting, rigid jaw of one of those actors on one of those MTV or WB shows that made all the girls giggle and swoon. He carried the girl briskly to the couch and dropped her onto the cushions as if he were dropping a bag of potatoes.

It was his eyes that commanded the most attention—deep blue like a polished marble. “Harness, we have a new one,” Zill said, paying no mind to the girl who bled on the couch.

Harness’ gaze turned toward Zack and an odd smirk formed on his face. Zack had learned long ago what a look like that meant. If there were a locker nearby, Zack would surely be stuffed into it.

“Hey, fresh meat,” Harness bellowed. Even his voice was Adonis-like. “Welcome to hell.”

Harness had given this place a name. It seemed to Zack, though, that he liked it here. He stood over the girl, who moaned and bled from a wound to her side. The blood seeped out of it, coloring her white tank top a bright crimson. She was sweating and her eyes flittered about.

Before Zack even realized what he was saying, “She’s gonna die,” fell from his lips.

Harness stared at him, his eyes narrowed. “She’s not gonna die. Well, she is, but she’ll come back. They always come back.”

The girl, her skin wan, coughed a spray of blood that hit the carpet like cardinal raindrops. She let out a long exhale and died.

Just like that— poof—she was gone. Her lifeless eyes fixed hauntingly on Zack, who swallowed down crouton-laced vomit that had slithered up from his belly.

“Never seen anyone bite it before?” Harness said, laughing. “Well, get used to it.”

The Asian stared at her with compassion and wiped a stray tear that had trickled down her cheek. She was the only one who seemed to care. Then she and the others walked briskly into the kitchen. Harness laughed, clanged about and popped Hot Pockets into the microwave that their captors had provided.

Zill spoke softly. “One of these days we’re not going to come back.”

“What’s her name?” Zack asked.

“This was, well, is Jenai. She’s okay I guess. Kind of emo. She came just before you did. This is like the third time she’s died. Kind of the runt of the litter, you know.”

Zack lurched back and nearly lost his croutons again when Jenai began blinking wildly and coughed up more blood. She sat up, blinked even more rapidly and stared at a smirking Zill.

“Jesus, I died again?” Jenai seemed more frustrated than anything else. “Jesus. I can’t believe I died again. Grrrrr. I’m such a loser.”

Harness and the three others entered the room from the kitchen. Harness wiped his greasy lips with the back of his hand. “You’re damn right you’re a loser. Hey, we have a new guy. Maybe he’s more pathetic than you. He looks like he is. Damn. We got another loser. How are we going to compete when we keep getting losers like him and you, Jenai?”

“Shut up! Shut up!” Jenai yelled, stood and bolted down the hallway. Zack could hear the sound of a door slamming.

“Okay. Okay. Okay,” Zack kept repeating “Okay.” He repeated things when he was flustered and confused. He babbled. He was a babbler. It was perhaps his way of mentally processing the events around him. He wondered if it was even possible to mull these kinds of events. “What. What. What …” He was once again babbling, “is happening?”

He heard laughter; the laugh-at kind, not the laugh-with kind.

“Wha wha what’s happening,” Harness mocked. “Look around, noob. What do you think is happening? We’re royally and completely screwed.”

Harness was right. Zack didn’t know why he was here or where here was or who these people were or even if he was awake or alive or dead. He did know one thing: Yes, he was definitely royally and completely screwed.

“C’mon, Harness,” Cass said in a strong British accent. Zack knew she had to be Cass because she, well, did look ratchet with a short shirt, a tank top that displayed an ample amount of cleavage and a face so heavily caked with makeup that Zack wondered what was really under there. She had a ring on her bottom lip that she flicked with her tongue before she spoke. “Give the new bloke a break.”

“Seriously? Look at him.” Even when Harness spoke, his muscles flexed and he looked like a god. “He can’t help us. He’s just going to drag us down.”

“Help you do what?” Zack asked.

Harness drilled a hole in Zack with his eyes. “Win, stupid. When we win we get stuff. When we get stuff, we can forget for at least a little while that we’re in hell. When we lose, it sucks.”

Zack was curious. “Is that what this hunting is about?”

“Duh,” Harness taunted. “That’s all we do here. Compete against the others. It never ends. The places change. The weapons change. But that’s it. Over and over and over again. Now with, what, seven of us it’s gonna get even harder. And we get you. I bet you can’t even lift your own weight. Great. Just awesome.”

Harness took a final angry bite of his Hot Pocket and stalked off down the hallway.

Zill looked at Zack and shook her head. “He’s competitive. And he’s right. We need to win. You don’t want to lose. Losing is, like, really bad.”

Zack wondered just how bad.

“What happens when you lose?”

“You get put back in that room with just the cot and nothing to do but think. It’s awful.”

Zack could understand that. Just those few hours he had spent in that cell were enough. He couldn’t imagine being put back there again.

Jenai wandered back into the room, wiping wetness from her cheeks. Cass put her arms around her and hugged her. The African-American boy and Asian girl did the same, and then stared at Zack with curious looks.

Zill noticed the inquisitive stare-down. “Guess I should introduce the rest of us to you. Brock is the black guy. Pretty handy with a weapon. He’s not a bad dude.”

Brock held out his hand and Zack shook it, wincing as his fingers closed around his like a vice.

“This is Mizuki. She’s a tough chica, can fight just as good as Harness.”

Mizuki’s handshake was even stronger than Brock’s, but she had a soft glint in her eye. “I know it’s a lot to take in, but you have to get yourself together,” she said in a perfect American accent. “Who knows what the ‘liens will throw at us tomorrow?”

Zack was confused.

“’Liens?”

“Aliens,” Mizuki said. The others laughed.

“We don’t know they are aliens.” Brock said.

“Then how do you explain what’s been going on, the changing climates,” Mizuki said with a firm, calm voice. “The changing accommodations?”

“We’re dead.” Brock answered, bluntly.

Zill rolled her eyes. “And you’ve met Cass and, well, you sorta met Jenai.”

Harness sauntered into the room, tightening his belt. “And me. Don’t forget me. Let’s have a little powwow, get oriented with the nerd.”

They sat in a circle on the plush couch and chairs and told stories of their young lives before they ended up here.

Harness was a classic jock, the star of his high school football team in New York. He was also the star on his basketball and baseball teams and won two state javelin titles with throws in excess of two-hundred feet. He got poor grades, but not because he was dumb, but because he didn’t apply himself to the material.

Zack thought him cliché.

Mizuki lived in the United States all her life, her parents moving to San Francisco from Japan when she was just in her mother’s womb. She, too, was all too stereotypical for Zack. An honor student. Captain of the debate team and blunt in her opinions almost to a fault.

Cass was London born and raised and walled up inside. It was the broken home, Zack, thought. Or maybe it was just because she was British.

Jenai was quite a bit like Zack: A loner, average in almost every way. She was short—maybe five-foot-one and very dainty. Got good grades, but wasn’t exceptional in anything.

And then there was Brock, who had the typical back story of a young black man trying to rise out of the projects and make something out of his life. He was often overlooked and underestimated, but he was well-spoken, smart and capable. He could have fallen into gang life growing up in the bad part of Detroit—Zack wondered if there was a good part—but he resisted, ignoring peer pressure.

His older brother was gunned down in a gang fight when Brock was just a boy and he swore to not follow the same path.

Zack found all of their stories contrived and too perfect. It was as if they were plucked out of one of a billion teen movies and plopped into this situation. None of them were special; quite the contrary.

There was something wrong with each of them. They were all flawed. They all had a zit they couldn’t pop, a boil they couldn’t lance, a blemish they couldn’t hide.

What could their captors possibly want or need with them?

Part I

Chapter Two

The Struggle is Real

Zack gripped a katana tightly his hands. He had no idea how it had gotten there.

Light, wispy snowflakes fell and footprints led away from his position under a large pine tree. It was cold, but not frigidly so. And there was nary a breeze, the large flakes floated straight down to the ground.

“C’mon, noob,” Harness poked out from behind a tree ahead of Zack and waved his arm. “We got some killing to do.”

The katana trembled in Zack’s hands. He had seen samurai movies before and often wondered what it would be like to wield such a sword. But now it was all too real.