Z 2134 (14 page)

Ana wondered if the additional
contestants were a blessing or a curse. More players meant her odds of her
winning were slimmer, but it also increased the odds that someone else would be
targeted at The Halo when The Games began, meaning she might be able to slip
away, as most smart players did, before chaos erupted.

She tried to avoid eye contact while
discreetly sizing the competition. None were familiar, which wasn’t surprising.
City 6 was the second-largest of the half-dozen Cities, but social circles
inside the City were small.

Across from her sat an oversized
brunette, who looked to be in her 20s and was so big she looked like she could
have been Bear’s daughter. Beside her was another brunette, tall and skinny,
who wore a smile that said she knew more than everyone else in the van added
together even though she looked all of 14. Last was a raven-haired woman, in
her early 20s if that, who sat beside Ana. While Ana was sure she didn’t know
the woman, she looked oddly familiar.

Ana wanted to know her story.

The raven-haired girl spoke. “What’s
going to happen when we stop?”

She earned no answer the first time, but
her second attempt saw a response when the partition between the driver’s cabin
and the cargo bay opened and an older man with longish hair stared at the girls
through the slit with his shadowy tired eyes and said, “Haven’t you girls ever
seen The Games?”

“Of course I have,” Raven said. “But
everything happens so fast. What are the rules? Why do some people fight and
others run?”

The man laughed, then said, “Are you
kidding? Sweetie, there are no rules.” He shook his head. “You run or you
fight, that’s up to you. Just don’t let those zombie fuckers near you; they’re
faster than they seem on the screen.”

Ana swallowed, then spoke. “How do
you
stay alive?” She stared past the partition and into the man’s eyes. “I’ve never
heard of TV crew members getting killed,” she said. “How do you all manage
that?”

“We’re producers for the show. They give
us body armor when we’re in The Barrens,” the man said as he patted the thick,
layered body armor that made him look like the dog trainers Ana had seen when
her father took her to visit the K-9 Unit at City Watch, back when she was 10.
“Mostly,” he added, “you learn to stay away, and to never miss a shot when you
need to take it.”

“You kill the zombies?” Raven said.

“We’re not supposed to,” he said, then
shook his head. “And usually don’t. But sometimes it’s them or us, and we do
what we gotta. We get great training. All producers have a mandatory two-weeks
training, twice per year. I’ve been taking mine for twenty years, so I’m used
to the ugly fuckers. But you all, I assume none of you have ever seen a zombie
up close?”

Nobody said a word.

The old man shrugged, then with no
warning or ceremony, the partition closed and the back of the van was draped in
another blanket of silence. Ana circled her worst fears for another hour or so,
waiting until they finally arrived at The Halo.

The Halo was littered with so many fallen
bodies, and so frequently, the zombies had learned to hang around, like birds
at a feeder, waiting for the next drop-off of fresh meat. One Game didn’t even
last an hour because after the initial scrum for weapons, there were only three
people left — with 40 zombies to manage.

Ana shivered, wondering how long she
would last.

Would she get a chance to make it to the
woods?

Or would someone in the van, perhaps from
one of the other Cities, target her immediately?

Being a girl in The Games was doubly
worse. You not only had to worry about murderers and zombies, but sometimes the
male contestants would rape the females. Ana hoped this would be an all-female
edition of The Games.

Just as a chill ran down her spine, the
van stopped, and with barely a pause, the man from the other side of the
partition — or perhaps the driver, it was hard to tell since they were both now
wearing helmets and fully armored — threw open the door and yelled, “Get out,
and when you hear the cannon fire, get to running if you want to live!”

Ana was grabbed by her arms and pulled
roughly from the van, with two girls before her and one immediately following.

The man yelled again, pointing to a shed
about 200 yards off, in the center of a clearing stacked with boxes of supplies
and a small swarm of zombies in front, feasting on the raw meat set there to
bait them. “Head over there if you want weapons and food,” he jabbed his finger
toward the forest, “or over there if you wanna live a few minutes longer.”

He spun from the girls, then turned his
eyes to a small glass card in his palm and swiped his fingers across the top. A
pair of orbs flew from on top of the van, then hovered above them, high in the
sky.

There were maybe two dozen zombies scattered
across The Halo, with most lingering around the meat and all the supplies
surrounding it, with many more pouring into The Halo from the forest to the
right. Another five black vans were emptying passengers from their cargo holds,
four players per van, all too far off for Ana to clearly see.

Five other vans were letting contestants
out beside them, forming a line in front of the field, which was surrounded on
all sides by thick woodlands. Ana noticed, to her disappointment, that the
other groups were varied in sex and age, which meant this wasn’t an all-girls
Game.

As the contestants eyeballed one another,
and some even started shouting threats, trying to psyche out their opponents,
another van suddenly pulled up, drawing everyone’s attention.

What’s going on here? Another surprise
for The Games?

She wondered what the producers had in
store. Were they going to open the door and set free a group of already-armed
contestants, like they had a few years back?

The passenger-side door opened, and a
producer jumped from the van, his helmet already on. He ran up to the two
producers who’d driven her and her fellow City Sixers, and began moving his
arms wildly through the air. Ana figured they were talking on radios inside
their helmets, which no one else could hear.

Whatever was happening, the excitement
was thick.

Once the new producer finished speaking,
one of the men who had brought them to the Halo approached their group.

“We’ve got a last-minute addition from
City 6. Do any of you wanna go back?”

The youngest ran forward, crying,
“Please, can I please go back?”

“Hop in,” the man said, jerking his thumb
toward the back of the van they’d just arrived in.

The girl climbed inside the van, and the
producers closed her door and then got into the front of the van.

All eyes turned to the fresh arrival as
the new producer pulled the doors open, then reached inside the van to pull the
replacement player out.

Ana gasped as Liam was shoved to the
ground.

“Good luck, anarchist,” the man behind
him said.

Ana met Liam’s eyes.

She hadn’t seen him since they got into
the argument and he told her to get out of the apartment. She wondered if his
anger was enough to paint a bull’s-eye on her back.

Or did it make more sense to stick
together and fight as one?

They looked around the clearing, taking
in the other clusters from each of the Cities as the vans kicked dirt into the
air at their departure.

Six groups, four people each.

And an army of zombies surrounding the
weapons stash.

The woods, which seemed so close on TV,
looked a quarter mile off, at least.

A long way to run in the snow.

Ana eyed the weapons in the center of the
field, then Liam.

In the distance, a cannon fired.

The Darwin Games began.

Run, girl, run!

T
he cannon blast erupted in the distance,
sending the players onto the field known as the Halo. In the mad rush, Ana was
thrown to the ground, back first, as several people trampled right over her.

She cried out, throwing her arms over her
face instinctively. Once the crowd passed, she moved her arms and looked up to
the cloudy gray sky, watching as the orbs zipped overhead, seeming to track
individual players for the audience back home’s viewing pleasure.

She rolled over, putting her elbows into
the cold snow, and looked up to see as half of the 23 other players immediately
raced toward the shed where supplies and weapons waited in the center of the
Halo for anyone brave enough to fight through the zombies that lingered in the
area. Around the shed there were a few crates with supplies, though sometimes
the crates were filled with nothing, or a nasty surprise.

This was the Opening Rush, and usually
one of the bloodiest parts of the competition.

The Opening Rush was considered one of
the true “can’t miss” moments of each Game. Even as a viewer, she couldn’t
imagine that so many people were willing to risk their lives in order to get to
the weapons first. Not only would they have to fight past the zombies, but they’d
also have to contend with any other player who got ahold of a weapon. It was
suicide.

In person, actually on the field, it
seemed an even more suicidal feat.

There were at least 50 zombies around the
center of the field. And as she watched, a zombie took its first victim, a
chubby guy who should have headed to the woods with the remaining players who
split up, some going to the right of the Halo and some to the left, heading to
the woods roughly 200 yards away.

That’s what the smart players did. That’s
what the weakest players, who wouldn’t survive a scrum in the center of the
field, did. That’s what Ana needed to do — head for the woods. She got to her
knees and then to her feet, and turned, desperate to find where Liam had gone
off to.

Did he leave me all alone as I was
trampled?

She turned to her right and was surprised
to find him standing just inches away. She flinched, wincing, almost expecting
him to attack her right there in the opening seconds of The Games.

She thought of one of the show’s many taglines:
“Keep your friends distant, and your enemies close.”

Their eyes met, and Ana felt foolish and
a bit guilty when she saw the deep look of concern in his eyes.

Darwin was a battle to the death, and
that meant Liam would eventually have to kill her if he wanted to live himself,
but for now, his eyes swore nothing but her safety.

“What are you doing here?” Ana asked
through panicked breath.

“Same as you!” he said.

“You were arrested?”

“Yeah. I’ll go get us some weapons,” he
said, pointing toward the Halo’s center, where a handful of players were
tearing through the weapon crates.

A gunshot thundered from the same area.

Wonder if it’s someone shooting a zombie,
or another player?

Liam must have had the same thought. He
wrapped his body like armor to shield Ana, then spun his head around the Halo.
“It’s a player taking down a zombie,” he said. “They haven’t turned on one
another. Yet.

“I’m going to get weapons now,” he said.
“I need you to run. I’ll catch up, OK?”

Liam wouldn’t waste breath or seconds on
needless explanation. She knew if he didn’t get to the weapons soon, he
wouldn’t have a chance in hell of getting one from the stash. She wanted to
argue with him, plead with him to go into the woods with her. They could get
weapons later, somewhere along the way.

“Wait, Li — ” Ana said, but before she
reached her second syllable, Liam had already released his grip and launched
himself toward the chaos. Ana stood frozen until another gunshot, louder than
the first, sent her spinning around and racing toward the forest.

Ana wanted to vomit at the source of the
second shot — a middle-aged bald man standing over the dropped body of the
heavyset 20-something brunette she’d ridden in with, her head busted open like
a dropped melon.

Ana looked up to search for any sign of
the people she had seen going right. She wanted to make sure she didn’t follow
them too closely into the woods. Nothing would be worse than running into them
and getting killed five minutes into The Games. Not seeing them, she ran toward
the trees as fast as she could, ignoring the sounds of gunshots and the screams
of players and zombies alike.

She reached the woods, her heart pounding
while her eyes scanned ahead for signs of others, not daring to stop or even
slow until she felt as if her lungs were on fire. A lifetime of nowhere to run
behind The Wall of City 6 turned a few hundred yards into a gauntlet she was
not in shape to run.

Ana made it a hundred more yards into the
forest before she halted in her tracks to catch her breath. She leaned forward,
hands on knees, looking around. The snow gave way here and there to bits of
brown earth, branches, rocks, and undergrowth, with the trees spaced closer and
the canopy casting the woods into cold shadows. On the plus side, there were
plenty of places for her to hide while she waited for Liam to return. On the
negative side, that meant more places for the other players to hide, and
perhaps attack her from.