Savage Run (17 page)

I look at Arthor. “Can you move?”

“
Yes, thank you. I would
have drowned had you not…”

“
We’re not out of danger
yet.”

He leans his head back into the water. “Are
you okay?” He swings his head quickly to the side, the drops from
his hair showering the glassy surface. “Did they get you?”

“
A little, but I’m fine.”
My legs sting horribly, but I don’t dare to look at them, afraid
the e-condas have burned my flesh to the bone, and if I see the
blood, I’ll lose my courage to keep going. If I bleed to death
while swimming, so be it. “You?”

“
I’m good. Let’s keep
moving,” he says.

The next few miles are uneventful. Every
time I think I feel movement beneath the water, I snap my legs in
beneath me, and silently pray it was just my imagination.

The clouds have returned, and as they turn
to rose gold, a heavy fog rolls in. Now I won’t be able to see
Devil’s Cliff in the distance—a hopeful beacon to swim toward. And
with the fog there, it’s also impossible to tell if I’m swimming
westward.

“
This is ridiculous! We
don’t even know where we’re going,” I say. “We could be going in
circles.”

“
Just keep moving. The fog
must mean we’re close.” Arthor flips over and starts swimming on
his back. “They want to make it harder on us—not
easier.”

“
Maybe,” I give him. We
swim on for another ten minutes before I say something. “How do
they expect us to get through this fog?”

“
They don’t,” Arthor says.
“The only expect the elite to make it.”

I shoot him an angry glare. “Whose side are
you on anyway?”

He shakes his head at me. “Don’t even ask me
that.”

I want to rip his hair out, but I think it
has more to do with the fact that I’m exhausted and hungry than
that I’m upset at him. As we keep swimming, I start to think about
how I haven’t even made it through the first of three phases, and
how I’m already both physically and emotionally depleted. How easy
it would be just to give up and let myself sink into the water
abyss. I’m sure it wouldn’t take long before I went unconscious and
slipped into a quiet death. While contemplating this, I feel a warm
current against my body. “Do you feel that?” I ask Arthor.

Arthor stops swimming forward for a moment
and treads water instead. “We must be close to shore.”

The new information makes me abandon the
thought of my suicide operation. If we’re almost there, it means I
made it through round two! Eager to be done, I kick harder. But
when my foot hits something hard, I immediately pull my legs close
into my body and scream. It must be an e-conda, or worse, maybe
there are a whole slew of them and is why the water turned warmer.
Unable to control my fear, I cry out and begin to thrash my arms
and legs sending the water in every which direction.

“
It’s okay! It’s okay!”
Arthor yells, taking my hands in his. “They’re rocks! We’ve reached
the shore! They’re rocks!”

I pause as his words start to sink in.
“Really?”

“
Really,” he says with a
broad smile on his face.

Chapter 14

Still not quite able to
believe that we’ve reached the shore, I hesitantly stretch my legs
downward. Soon the rocks at the bottom of the lake press against my
feet—firm and unyielding. I exhale. Standing up, I gasp in relief;
the water reaches just above my waist. We
have
reached the shore!

Ecstatic I have managed to live through two
of the three rounds in this phase, I jump into Arthor’s arms,
whooping and screaming. “We made it!”

He squeezes me back, and we stand wrapped in
each other’s arms for a long time. Not until I start thinking about
how he’s got his arms around me do I feel awkward. It’s not that
I’m attracted to him, and I don’t think he likes me in that way
either. But standing so close to him, sharing this, not only
physical, but very emotional moment, it feels so good to have
someone who understands what I’ve just been through.

I let go. “Sorry.”

“
No apology needed,” he
says.

When I turn toward the shore, I see bushes
and trees—foliage—but I can’t make out any more than that; the fog
is still too thick. Eager to get out of the e-conda infested water,
I wade toward land, and the instant my feet touch the raggedy,
stony shore, I lie down onto the rocks, my legs still in the water.
I don’t really care how they’re stabbing into my back or how I’m
cold and wet. I’m safe. And I’m alive. No more e-condas will come
after me, and I don’t have to worry that one of them might
electrocute me or pull me down. How many young men now lay
there?

I press my palms to my eyes and release a
laughing, crying sound, and with it, all the tension in my body
releases. A moment later, it feels as if all my guts and muscles
and bones have been scraped dry and pumped full of jelly. But
though my survival has so much more to do with crazy luck than
anything, the joy of having lived through the first two rounds is
not any less.

When I finally resolve to open my eyes, I
let them wander up toward the sky, and there I see Devil’s Cliff.
It hangs over me like a bad omen. The mountainside is a jagged and
vertical sloped monster of a rock, and it extends to the heavens
like a pillar of fire—the height dizzying—the red surface looking
like it could be something from Hell. Many participants are already
climbing up the wall, their fingers and toes gripping onto the
edges of the rocks. For the life of me, I can’t see the top. The
fog is still just as thick. Something tells me it could be much
higher than what I dare to imagine. Or dread. How in the world I’m
supposed to make it to the top of that mountain is beyond my
comprehension. And with the sun soon to set, my muscles already way
past spent, climbing Devil’s Cliff at night will be impossible.

There isn’t a single part of me that isn’t
achy or sopping wet, but I can’t lie here all day. I scramble to my
feet and look for Arthor. I find him standing at the base of the
cliff reading a sign. Walking over to him, I notice that my legs
sting, and when I look down, I see that they’re riddled with minor
burns. However, all my pain is temporarily forgotten when I see the
back of Arthor’s right leg. Part of his calf has a chunk removed.
And we still have a cliff—the tallest cliff I’ve ever seen—to
climb. But what’s even more mind-boggling is that he hasn’t
complained about it a single time. I pause behind him. Will he be
able to climb the cliff? My heart drops. If he can’t climb the
cliff by himself, I’ll either have to abandon him while I continue
to press forward or help him climb to the top.

Arthor turns around and points to the
sign.

Fifteen-minute rest stop max.

Without warning, there’s a scream from
above, and then a loud thud behind us. Instinctively, I turn to
look—but stop myself—I know what I’ll find there, and I don’t want
to see it. I never in my wildest imagination would have thought
that I’d grow so callous about a dead teenage boy that I’d refrain
from walking over to him and showing my respects. But I don’t. And
I hate myself for it. Instead, I tell Arthor to sit down, and after
he complies, I rip off a piece of my uniform, to tie it around his
injured leg. He moans a little when I cinch it, but stops when I
stare him in the eyes.

Should I leave him behind? My chest
squeezes.

I study the wrap, and it seems to help
control the bleeding. He’s going to slow me down significantly, and
most likely, he won’t be able to make the climb.

“
Ready?” he says, gritting
his teeth.

“
Will you be…?”

He interrupts me, and says angrily, “Don’t
worry about me!”

I force a smile, but
suspect that it looks more like a pained frown. “Okay?” I walk over
to the base of the mountain and press my palms against the red
rock. When I look up, my stomach drops like I just swallowed a bag
of concrete. Of course they had to put the hardest challenge last
when we’re thoroughly exhausted. A lump forms in my throat, but I
force it down and put on a stern face. I lean my back against the
cold, hard surface of my next challenge. I need strength, and I
need it now. Glancing upward, I see a dozen or so participants
ascending the wall, moving slowly, clinging to the mountainside
like spiders. I study their movements—their strategies—to see if I
can pick up on how to climb the cliff.
When I try to survey the best route to climb, I happen to
notice a strange pattern of rocks.
I hear
Nicholas’s words in my mind. “All the things you need to succeed
are within the obstacles…”

Every few feet there are protruding
rocks—stepping stones up the mountainside. And all the guys
climbing seem completely oblivious to them. I gasp.

“
What?” Arthor
asks.

I tell Arthor to come in closer and I show
him what I see. The only problem is that the steps are just beyond
reach of each other. Why would they go to such lengths to create
those ledges if we can’t even use them? Then, from the wall, I see
movement; a ledge protrudes out from the mountainside as another
vanishes just a few feet away. The steps appear and disappear at
timed intervals. If I can just figure out the timing, we can climb
all the way up.

Suddenly a ledge juts out right next to me.
Arthor and I look at each other.

“
Let’s go,” he
says.

Without hesitation, I climb onto it and
offer my hand to Arthor. He takes it willingly. The ledge is about
two feet wide, and protrudes about twelve inches—just large enough
for us to fit. Clinging to the cliff with Arthor right next to me,
I see the next step jut out a few feet away and about a foot above
where we are. I spring across the divide and onto the next ledge.
Normally I’d be able to land without a problem, but since my legs
are rubber from running the marathon and swimming for miles and
miles, I wobble a bit. Once I have my balance, I offer my hand to
Arthor. He takes it. We continue on like this for a while: me
moving ahead, and then pulling him up. I notice that he’s avoiding
putting weight on his bad leg, which causes him to sway so much
that I fear he’s going to lose his balance and fall.

“
You all right?” I ask
after we’ve been going for some time.

“
I’m feeling a little
weak.”

I look down at his leg and see the wrap I
put on earlier soaked. “Just hang in there, okay?”

I turn to continue upward, but he grabs my
arm. “Listen…if I don’t make it…if I fall…”

“
You’ll make it. We both
will,” I say harshly. Unwilling to have this conversation now, I
press onward. From time to time, I hear Arthor puff. I assume he
must have put some pressure on his bad leg. But I don’t stop.
There’s no time limit to complete this first phase, but we need to
get back to civilization before Arthor loses too much
blood.

We climb in silence, the shadows growing
blacker by the minute. I wonder how dark it will get, remembering
that in the northern countries, it supposedly stays light through
the entire night. I see a drone hovering just by us—a camera—and
then just as quickly as it appears, it vanishes. Nicholas said
they’d be here, snapping illegal shots for the media. I just ignore
them. As we hop from step to step, the space on each step seems to
be diminishing. I don’t mention this to Arthor, not wanting to
cause him to worry, but as we continue to move upward, my fear is
validated. The ledges are shrinking in size and where it was fairly
easy to stand together before, now it has become very
challenging.

“
They’re smaller,” Arthor
says, studying the ledge we’re standing on.

He doesn’t ask the next obvious question out
loud, but I know he’s thinking the same thing as me: a little
farther up will the ledges eventually vanish? “Yeah, I noticed
that, too.” With an injured, or partially removed calf muscle,
Arthor won’t be able to make it to the top.

“
Let’s just keep going,” he
says.

I nod, but for whatever reason, I look down
at the ledge. The next thing I know is that my gaze focuses past it
and all the way down to the bottom of the cliff. My head spins and
I grab onto Arthor’s arm.

“
Careful,” he says,
steadying me.

I take a deep breath and go to the next
step, but when my first foot touches the surface, it slips, and I
fall. Somehow, I’m able to grab onto the ledge and hold on. With my
heart in my throat, my fingers white-knuckling the edge, I
scream.

“
Hang on!” Arthor yells. He
hesitates for a moment before leaping to the ledge I’m hanging
from. Landing on both legs, he cries out in pain.

“
Hurry, please,” I say,
feeling my fingers slipping on the smooth surface.

He turns so he faces outward. Clenching his
teeth, he bends down and grabs onto my wrist. “I can’t pull you up
alone, so you have to find a way to get one of your legs onto the
ledge.”

I kick my right leg up, however, it slips
off the edge and I end up dangling in the air. I scream. Desperate
to hang on, I press the bottoms of my feet against the mountainside
to try and find a ridge to hold onto. The surface is smooth like
glass.

“
Kick your leg up and dig
your heel in!” Arthor yells.

I swing my leg up again. This time I drive
my heel into the step and it remains there. When I push off with my
heel, it gives Arthor just the leverage he needs, and he pulls me
up so I end up standing on the ledge, squeezing onto him for dear
life. We stand like that for a few seconds, as I cry.