“The game.” Riley sighed. “Right.”
“You could win.” said Red. “Not likely, but possible.”
“I bet you people tell that to everyone you force into this. Don’t you, Amy?”
“I do. And the only one who gets to call me Amy is the old man. Got it?”
Riley stared coolly at her.
Red continued, “I make it a point of always visiting the men or women before the game starts.”
“Why’s that?” Evan said it like there was something extremely distasteful in his mouth.
“Well, for one, it’s usually one of my blades that finishes them.”
“Isn’t that nice?” Evan mockingly asked Anthony.
“For another, I would know. Firsthand experience.”
“You’re the one—the survivor?” asked Riley. “The only one to live through this…this game?”
“That’s me. Six years ago. Thomas saved me. He found me, out there. I was a little kid.”
Red quieted as she said it and the four had to listen closely.
“I wasn’t alone. And the people I was with…” She fingered the handle of the Robbins of Dudley Trench push dagger she wore on her waist “They had done things to me. Were doing things.”
Red looked directly at Riley. She stopped fingering her blade, aware that she was doing it. “Terrible things. Things that shouldn’t be done to a child.”
They watched her and waited.
“Thomas and Gammon killed them all. They took me in. I was in rough shape. They took care of me. Got me healthy again. Then they made me run the game.”
“Doesn’t that strike you as, I don’t know, demented?” asked Riley.
Red shrugged. “I lived. When I was running, when they were chasing me, when they were coming after me with…well, I don’t want to give anything away. But I wanted to kill all of them. I really did. They had saved me from those…those people. And now they were hunting me? It made no sense.
“But by the time it was over, I chose to stay here. And that’s a decision I’ve never regretted. So when I say I know how you feel, I mean it.”
“We don’t feel that way,” said Troi.
“I imagine you don’t. But if you live, you might.”
“We just want to go home,” said Anthony.
“You can’t. Unless you win the game.”
“You’re one sick bitch,” said Evan.
“I hope you die first,” Red told him.
Before his friends could stop him or join in his attack, Evan crossed the room, swinging his fists. Little Red stepped deftly under his punches and out of his path, sticking the push dagger into his upper thigh with one hand, pressing the other to his back and propelling him across the remainder of the room until he hit the opposite wall.
No one had seen her unsheathe the dagger. She was that fast.
“Who else?” Red settled into a crouch, turned in such a way that she could face Evan on her one side and the remaining three on her other.
“She cut me.” Evan regained his feet and pulled his hand away from his thigh. There was some blood on it. “But she didn’t cut me too good, did you?”
“I could have killed you.”
“Evan, don’t!” Riley yelled at him.
Evan waited where he was, breathing heavily, watching Red.
“Red, you okay in there?” a voice called from outside.
“Yeah, Dalton.” She stood up straight and sheathed the push dagger. “You want to go again?”
“No,” Riley told her. “You go. We’ll finish this tomorrow.”
“No, we’ll start this tomorrow,” corrected Red. “And, incidentally? Today is tomorrow already, in case you hadn’t noticed. But I will go. I’m going to eat and rest up. I suggest you all do the same. When we meet again, I won’t be this talkative.”
“I’m going to hurt you, you rotten little red-haired bitch,” Evan hissed vehemently at her. His thigh didn’t look too bad. “I’m going to hold you down and do things to your dirty little ass.”
Red shook her head. “Yeah, I’m going to kill you first,” she promised as she rapped on the door. When Dalton opened it, she disappeared and the door closed.
“I think we’re in serious trouble here,” whispered Anthony.
“She is one screwed up girl,” Evan said with loathing.
“You had to go and threaten her with anal rape?” Troi demanded of him as she examined his wound. “What was that for?”
“You heard her. Those people who had her when she was a kid, they did stuff to her. I was trying to push her buttons.”
“I don’t think it worked”
“No, I think it did,” Riley’s voice was subdued. “But not the way you thought it would, Ev.”
“Screw her. She’s going to kill me first? Right. When we get out there, we find a stick, a rock, something. I’ll show her who dies first.”
“You got lucky, Ev,” said Troi. “She just jabbed you. Does it hurt?”
“No.”
“She’s right about one thing, though,” said Riley. “If we want to have any chance of surviving this, we need to eat. We need to sleep.”
“How do we know they won’t poison our food?” Anthony asked.
“Because they want a good game. They want us at our best.”
“Well then,” Evan still sounded mad. “Let me get some sleep. Because I am planning on messing some of those bastards up.”
Riley looked at Evan and shook her head imperceptibly.
Later, when they had eaten and Evan and Troi had fallen asleep, Riley whispered to her brother.
“Anthony? You up?”
He grunted.
“Listen to me.” Riley propped herself up on her elbow, looking over to where her brother lay, his eyes open, staring towards the ceiling. “Tomorrow, I want you to stick close to me, okay?”
“Rye, this is my fault. It’s my fault you’re caught up in this.”
“It’s not your fault. It’s no one’s fault. These people are sick, okay? But I need you to stay with me out there tomorrow, okay?”
“Of course. I gotta look after my big sister.”
“Anthony, listen to me. If Ev doesn’t listen to us, he’s going to get himself killed.”
“You think that little redhead could take him out?”
“I don’t know, but these people have guns. And we don’t. And who knows what we’re going to find out there tomorrow? If Ev doesn’t want to listen, you have to.”
“Okay. I got it. No problem.”
“I’m serious.”
“I am too.”
Riley settled back down.
“Rye?”
“Yeah, Anthony?”
“I think you could take her.”
Riley didn’t know what to say to that. She feared her brother’s confidence was misplaced.
“And I’m sorry, sis. About this whole situation, I mean.”
“Be sorry later, Ant. Get some sleep now.”
“Okay.”
“Goodnight, little brother.”
Despite their situation, Anthony smiled.
* * *
“Stick together,” said Riley. “Stick close.”
“This is nuts,” said Evan.
“We’re nuts,” offered Troi.
“No,” said Anthony, “They’re nuts.”
Together, the four moved at a fast trot to the tree line. Riley looked over her shoulder as they merged into the foliage. The girl, Red, and the brothers, Keith and David, were back there, sitting around, watching them go. They looked like they did not intend to follow them immediately. It looked like they were going to keep their word about the head start they’d promised. And Riley didn’t believe that only the three would be after them when the time came.
“This way!” As soon as they were lost from the sight of the hunters, Riley turned them from their path, cutting west, perpendicular to where their three malefactors waited out their start.
Moving along briskly at first, their t
rot necessarily devolved to a fast walk through the trees and thick bushes. Riley followed a wet dirt path, her eyes scanning ahead and to either side of the trail, wary for traps. They had gone for what Riley judged to be a couple of kilometers when they espied the first trap.
“Wait.” Riley called a halt. “Look.” A thin filament wire crossed the path at knee level. Although the wire was red, they almost hadn’t seen it. It disappeared into the trees on either side of the path.
“Good catch, sis.” Anthony knew he wouldn’t have seen the wire. He would have run headlong through it, triggering whatever danger it foretold.
“What do you think it is?” Evan squinted into the trees, trying to discern where the wire led.
“Who cares?” Troi sounded impatient. “Let’s just step over it and get the hell out of here.” She made to move ahead, raising one foot, when Riley jerked her back. “What?”
“There!” They all looked where Riley pointed. Beyond the trip wire, almost exactly where anyone goose-stepping over the thread would place their foot, the soil on the path had come unsettled. A glint, something metallic, shown from beneath the dirt.
“What is that?” breathed Evan.
“Some kind of mine,” guessed Anthony. “Okay, I think it’s time we get off this path.”
“No,” said Riley. “That’s what they think we’ll do.”
“What do you mean?” her brother asked.
“Think about it. If you were setting these traps, wouldn’t that wire be clear? Would you string a red wire in the middle of the road where anyone could see it?”
“I didn’t see it…” Anthony said.
“Maybe that’s all they had was red wire.” Evan didn’t sound convinced.
“No, Rye’s right.” Troi scanned the brush on either side of the path. “They set that where we would see it. They wanted us to see the wire and step over it onto the—”
“Onto the mine,” Riley finished her sentence. “Or go around it, off the path…”
“Damn.” Evan suspected Riley was correct.
“What do we do, sis?”
“We step over the wire,” Riley released Troi’s arm. “Carefully.”
They did. Troi followed by Riley followed by Anthony and Evan. They were careful to avoid the shiny convexity on the opposite side of the wire and were wary of further indentations in the soil.
Their walk slowed from that point to a pace none of them was particularly comfortable with. Wasn’t the idea to put as much distance between themselves and their pursuers as possible? But the slower gait was necessary if they intended to avoid any further trip wires.
They had gone several more kilometers when the path branched off in two directions.
“If we keep heading west,” Evan said, “we’re going to eventually hit that fence they were telling us about. If it really exists.” They had been told that the “playing field” was fenced in on its western and eastern edges. Supposedly a river bordered the northern boundary. Reach the river, they’d been promised, and if they managed to cross it, they were in the clear.
“If we turn north here,” Anthony pointed out, “we’re headed in the direction we need to be going.”
Riley did not appear pleased with either direction. “They’ve got to have tons of booby traps on these paths.”
“Especially this one,” Troi indicated the northern path. “They know we know we’ve got to go this way.”
“Okay, here’s what we do.” Everyone looked to Riley. “We follow this path—” she gestured to the trail leading north “—but we stay off the trail. We walk parallel to it.”
“Sounds good.”
“What if they thought we’d do that?” asked Anthony.
“They couldn’t have thought of every possibility.” Troi pinned her hopes on this.
Again Riley went ahead, shepherding them through the damp soil and the assorted leaves, twigs, and logs that had collected on the forest floor. They kept the northern trail in their sight the entire time. The going was slow and rough, and there were trips resulting in scraped elbows and knees, but they avoided any further traps. Bright hued leaves fell slowly from above to settle on the ground around them.
About an hour along in their new direction, Evan asked, “How much longer do you figure we have until the sun goes down?”
It was hard to see the sun through the trees from where they were.
“Five or six hours,” Anthony hazarded a guess.
“We can’t move through the dark,” said Troi. “Can we?”
“No,” said Riley, “we can’t.”
“Can they?” Troi bent down and picked up a perfectly formed, fiery red leaf.
“If they have night vision goggles they could,” said Anthony.
Evan scoffed. “They gotta worry about the traps too though.”
“Yeah, but they set the traps.”
“Be quiet,” said Riley. “Did you guys hear something?” They continued to walk through the evergreens, the trail appearing and disappearing through the branches and needles off to their right.
“You think they’re after us already?” Troi twirled the leaf in her fingers. “They said they’d give us a day—”
“Shhhh…” Riley stood stock still.
They were deep in the woodlands. Though the day was cool and the air crisp, there was little breeze to be felt this far in. Despite this, the branches of an evergreen shook gently up ahead, as though someone or something had just passed by and brushed up against it. “Something’s there…” Riley barely whispered.
Troi looked ready to bolt off into the woods. Anthony looked to his sister, but she was focused on the trees ahead. Evan bent down and picked up a rock about half the size of his palm. He cocked his elbow back and pitched it forward into the suspect trees.
Something groaned behind the pine needles.
“What—the—hell?” Evan question hung on the air.
Before anyone could proffer an answer, a zombie burst from the pine needled-branches ahead of them. The blue jeans it wore were soiled and muddied, ripped across the thighs in several areas. The thing was naked from the waist up, its torso pocked by multiple gunshot wounds. Much of the hair on its head looked torn out.
It was a booker, and would have been on them if not for the chain fastened around its ankle that went taut and jerked it off its own feet as it ran at them. The zombie landed on its ass and pawed impotently at the four men and women standing a mere meter from it.
“Can you smell it?” Troi wrinkled her nose. “I can smell it.”
“They’ve set traps with zombies,” said Evan. “Those bastards.”
“We would have walked right into that,” concluded Anthony.
Riley stared angrily at the zombie, which sat there on its bottom, looking up at the friends.
“This is seriously screwed up.” Evan assessed their predicament.
“We’re still okay,” said Riley.
“We are definitely not trying to move around at night.” Troi said adamantly.
“Should we kill it?” wondered Anthony.
“With what?” Evan looked around them. “No, let’s leave it right here. Maybe it’ll surprise our friends.”
“That trails’ looking pretty good right now, sis.”
“No way,” insisted Troi. “Riley was right. If they put something like that here, they want to keep us on the trail. And I don’t want to see why they want us on the trail.”
The zombie had regained its feet and strained against its tether. It gnashed its teeth and clawed at the air between them.
“We’re lucky these things aren’t too smart,” said Troi.
“This one’s a brain, right?” asked Evan. “I mean, the way it was waiting there in the trees. Waiting for us to walk by.”
“Yeah,” Riley agreed. “This is one of the ‘smarter’ ones.”
There was no sign of intelligence in the zombie’s dead eyes. There was no sign of anything. The spark of life had long disappeared from its gaze.
“We’re wasting our time…” Evan lookedup through the trees, trying to get a bead on the sun and its position in the sky.
“Ev’s right.” Riley gave the dead thing on its chain one final look and walked around it, leaving a wide berth.
* * *
As the trees thinned, the ground they walked on softened noticeably. Soon it clung to the soles of their boots and only let go with a violent sucking noise. When the four friends reached the edge of the marshlands, this change in geography made sense. They were finally out under the sun, which had moved across the western sky.
“A swamp…” Evan stared at the mangrove trees ahead of them.
“We can skirt it on either side.” Riley looked left and right. “But that way—” she motioned to their right “—looks like it heads back south a little.”
“We don’t want to be heading south,” said Troi.
“No, we don’t.” Riley had to agree with her. Their pursuers would be coming somewhere from that direction.
“Let’s go through the swamp,” said Anthony.
“I don’t know…” Riley peered off past the mangroves, into the marshlands with their green-slicked pools of dank water, into the twisted bracken. “It’ll slow us down.”
“It will,” agreed Evan. “But it’ll slow them down too.”
“If they follow us in there,” said Troi. “What if there’s a shortcut around this?”
“You see any shortcuts?” asked Evan. The swamp land disappeared as far as the eye could see in either direction. “Even if there are, they’re going to have to pick up the trail on the other side where we come out. That won’t be obvious to them.”
“Unless they have dogs.” Troi tried to think of every possibility.
“I didn’t see any dogs back at their camp. And I don’t hear any now.”
“That’s because they’re not chasing us yet,” said Riley. “I don’t want to go through this swamp. I say we head that way.” She motioned farther westward.
“And I say we go through the swamp,” Evan said.
“I don’t know…” Troi looked from one direction to the other. “Riley’s been right so far.”
Resurrection (Eden Book 3) Page 21
