Z 2134 (15 page)

As if worrying about the other players
wasn’t bad enough, the woods were always crawling with zombies. A lifetime of
previous games strobed through Ana’s mind as she pictured one gory surprise
kill after another. The network loved the gory kills, routinely airing specials
such as “The Top 10 Most Surprising Kills!” during downtime of the live Games.

Ana didn’t want to make that kind of
highlights show.

After watching who knew how many seasons
of Darwin, Ana was certain the producers had ways of keeping zombies from the
forest and elongating tension. Her father had speculated a few times that he
was sure the network had laid out hidden gates, false walls, and other
obstacles, which it used to funnel zombies and players to the spots they most
wanted them. When the games began, most of the nearby zombies were already in
the Halo, meaning players were usually safe in the woods until after the
initial battle for weapons took place.

Still, the most consistent thing about
the Games was their inconsistency.

Ana looked around, trying to decide where
to go. She could head back toward the Halo, but that seemed like the stupid
option seeing how fast she had run from that direction. She could climb a tree
and hide, which might keep her safe while waiting for Liam, or she could keep
going just in case Liam didn’t make it back with weapons.

The longer she waited where she was, the
more danger she was putting herself in. Soon enough, other players or zombies
would start heading into the woods. And without a weapon, she was as good as
dead.

Paralyzed by indecision, Ana begged her
body to move.

Most of her wanted to wait for Liam. He
said he’d find her and she believed him, but it wasn’t like they’d coordinated
a plan. The Barrens were sprawling, and sudden danger could send you running in
any direction, and at any time.

Suddenly, a thought bubbled to the
surface, which made it even harder to decide what to do.

What if Liam was lying? Maybe he just
told me to go so he wouldn’t have to be saddled with me. Maybe he’s already off
on the other side of the Halo.

The Games were about survival of the
fittest, after all. There was always exactly one winner. Sure, people formed
alliances, especially in the beginning, but those alliances always ended in
bloodshed. Maybe he was doing her a small mercy, she figured, by leaving her
now, before it was too hard.

Run.

Forget about Liam.

Cut the cord and run, girl.

NOW!

Her mind flashed back to hiding under the
floorboards in the church as The Watchers stormed in and murdered the woman and
child. How Liam had held his hand over her mouth and kept her safe — for a bit,
anyway.

If he was risking his life to get weapons
for them, she owed it to him to wait like she said she would.

FUCK!

She shook her head, feeling stupid, as
she ignored her first instincts and began to trace her path back towards the
Halo.

He’s not gonna be there.

He’s probably gone.

Or dead.

Ana ignored her inner voice and pushed
herself forward until she reached the edge of the woods, staying hidden behind
a cluster of trees, as she peeked out at the Halo.

The shed at the center of the Halo was on
fire, smoke pouring from it and trailing into the sky. Ana could make out
several players surrounding the shed and fighting off zombies, of which there
were even more than when the cannon went off. There were at least 30
surrounding the players, and that didn’t include the 20 or so dead in the snow.

By Ana’s count, there were only three
player casualties so far, and none of them was Liam. But she also didn’t see
him among the survivors, though there were some people on the other side of the
fire that she couldn’t see from her angle.

Ana scanned the field, spying a heavyset
man swinging a two-handed sword at four zombies who were backing him toward the
woods. He made several wide-arcing swings while falling back in retreat. After
a half-dozen steps, the man suddenly roared, then charged toward the swarm,
bringing the edge of his blade crashing down into the closest zombie’s head,
raining blood like a bucket of dark-red paint over the others. With a second
bellow, he swung the sword in a wider arc, shearing a pair of zombie heads from
their shoulders before pulling the blade back, then plunging it deep into the
fourth zombie’s chest like a knife into pie.

The final zombie twitched on the ground
as the heavyset man thrust the blade one more time into the creature. Ana
stared in both horror and a sort of admiration, wondering how the man had grown
so skilled with a sword.

And then she saw something the man had
not — a small red-haired girl, who couldn’t have been an hour older than 12,
the earliest age allowed into The Darwin Games, racing from the woods toward
him. The girl was holding a wooden board over her head as she ran. The man
must’ve heard the little girl because he turned back, but he was too late.

The girl swung, and the back of the board
smacked into the man’s head and stuck there as the man fell face first into the
snow. The man was wounded but not yet dead.

The girl ran to grab the man’s sword from
where he’d dropped it, but it must’ve been too heavy for her because she
dropped it, then went back and started yanking the board from the man’s head,
where it was still stuck. It was then that Ana realized the board must’ve had
nails in it.

The girl pulled the board free and began
bashing the man again and again, until he stopped moving. She looked around and
froze for a moment when it seemed like she was looking right at Ana.

Ana’s heart leaped into her throat,
suddenly afraid the girl would come after her next.

Instead, the girl scurried off from the
direction she’d come, board in hand.

No matter how many times Ana had seen the
brutality on live TV, nothing prepared her for the brutality of in-person gore.
She stared at the crimson-soaked corpse, stunned.

Just beyond the burning shed, Ana spotted
a handful of players working together to stave off a sea of approaching zombies
who were streaming in from the north end of the woods. It looked like there
were as many as 40, the entire swarm seeming to move faster than normal, though
she had no idea if they were actually faster, or if it was the difference
between living it and seeing it on TV.

She wasn’t sure if the rest of the
players were among the dead, had taken off into the woods, or what, but it
seemed like these were the last humans on the Halo. She squinted her eyes
trying to see past the flames and billowing smoke.

Ana gasped, seeing Liam’s long hair
whipping back and forth as he came into view, swinging a machete with wild
abandon. Seeing Liam fight for his life, with a machete no less, made Ana think
of her father, flooding her with an aching guilt she couldn’t afford to nurse.

Liam cut four zombies to nothing in twice
as many seconds. Helping him was a large, black-bearded man swinging an
oversized mallet into one of the zombie’s skulls, sending it to a twitching
heap on the ground.

A horn brayed in the distance, and though
she’d heard the horn countless times before, it still filled her with icy
panic.

The Fire Wall!

Ana stood frozen, not knowing what to do
next. She’d completely forgotten about the Fire Wall.

Between 10 and 15 minutes into each game,
a massive wall of fire erupted through a seam in the earth. The seam, which was
made of a six-foot-wide metal pipe, ran north and south for miles in both
directions, across the Halo and through a charred clearing in the woods. The
snow around it was already melting, and she watched as the thaw created a dark
line that split the Halo into halves.

From her angle, it seemed as if Liam’s
group was practically on top of the seam. They would have to pick a side — right
or left, east or west — and get there immediately.

Ana looked down to see that she was on
the right side of the seam by a few feet. The Fire Wall was meant to divide
players early on. She couldn’t risk being on the wrong side of the seam once
the Fire Wall was turned on. The Wall lasted for at least a full day, and if
she wasn’t on the same side as Liam once it went on, it might mean that she’d
never see him again.

She’d have to get closer to Liam, and
quickly, in order to determine what side of the seam he and his group were on,
as she was too far away to tell with certainty. But she’d have to risk being
seen by the zombies and being too close to the seam once it erupted.

She ran forward, out of the woods,
feeling the cold air burn her lungs.

As she raced closer, she saw that Liam
and his group had killed all but 10 or so zombies. They were, however, down to
just three people. Liam, Black Beard, and a skinny, curly-haired guy with a
pistol. They were, to her delight, on the right side of the seam, though. But
they were also perilously close once the Fire Wall was turned on.

Liam and Black Beard worked in tandem,
slicing through the remaining zombies as the third man took down zombie after
zombie with nearly perfect precision with his pistol.

The group continued drifting toward her
and was 50 yards away, close enough to see her, if any of them bothered to look
up. She stopped, not daring to go any closer and risk being seen by the
zombies. Once they’d killed all but four zombies that had yet to reach them,
Ana waved her hands over her head, trying to draw Liam’s attention.

The horn’s second blast warned of 30
seconds to go before the Fire Wall burst through the seam.

Suddenly, the skinny man with the gun
turned the pistol at Black Beard and Liam, who were looking away from him, at
the oncoming zombies. Liam was in the lead, closest to the zombies, with Black
Beard just behind him, holding his mallet, readying for more deadly swings.
They were both oblivious that their partner was about to betray them.

“Liam!” Ana screamed, earning the
attention of all three men, along with several of the surrounding zombies.

The moment froze, and several things
happened at once.

The skinny man fired point-blank at the
back of Black Beard’s head, sending the big man to the ground in an instant. At
the same time, Liam had spotted Ana and was frozen as their eyes locked onto
each other. He opened his mouth and screamed at her, waving her toward the
forest as the zombies began to run after her.

Oh God!

The skinny guy then turned his gun on
Liam, who was still looking at Ana and waving her away. She wondered if Liam
hadn’t noticed the skinny guy murder Black Beard. Perhaps he’d heard the shot
but figured the man was just shooting more zombies. She tried to scream and
warn him of the gunman’s threat.

As the skinny guy took aim, Liam
surprised both the gunman and Ana by swinging his machete without looking. The
blind swing sliced through the man’s gun hand, lopping it off at the wrist in a
swoop and sending his hand, still holding the gun, sailing through the air and
into the ground where the snow had already melted away.

As the skinny man screamed, his left hand
clutching the bloody fountain spraying from his stump, Liam thrust his blade
through the man’s chest, then ripped it back out, grabbed the gun from the
man’s dead hand, and looked up at Ana.

The horn screamed again as the four
zombies raced toward Ana, now 50 feet away. Liam fired twice but missed both
times.

No way he could kill all four before they
reached her; there wasn’t time. Zombies rarely fell at a single bullet unless
you hit them in the head. Even if he had more than the scant seconds he did,
there was a damned good chance he’d wind up shooting her instead.

The zombies were a dozen yards off, and
Ana was again frozen with fear.

The horn brayed a final time — five
seconds until the Fire Wall would ignite. Ana looked down. She was practically
on top of the seam and would be fried in moments if she didn’t move one way or
another.

To the right were the zombies, fast
approaching.

To the left, nothing but woods.

Liam was 20 yards behind, racing toward
her and firing shots as he ran. She moved without thinking — racing across the
line, glancing back long enough to see that three of the four zombies were
following, but still on the other side of the seam.

She closed her eyes and pushed herself to
run faster, hoping she had managed to lure the zombies into the path of the
coming fire.

Then the line bisecting the field erupted
in a wall of ungodly heat behind her, hissing loudly, charring the debris that
crossed the seam. Something nearby exploded so loudly, she thought for a moment
the explosion was closer than it was.

Ana dared to look back and stumbled,
falling face first into the snow.

Ana rolled over onto her back to make
sure the zombies weren’t still on her trail.

Then she saw them, charred black bodies
caught within the fiery curtain, screaming as they died again. However, one of
them refused to die, stumbling out from the screaming blaze, still on fire, its
arms reaching out and waving madly as it awkwardly stumbled toward her.

Ana forced herself to get up and run
toward the woods as the burning monster followed. But before she’d made it 20
feet, she heard the creature hit the ground, surrendering its charred remains
to fate.

Ana stopped in her tracks and turned
back, desperately scanning along the Fire Wall for any sign of Liam.

A lump hardened in her throat.

Oh God, what if he was caught in the
flames?

Ana swallowed, feeling sick to her
stomach when she spotted a dark shape in the fire, a body.

Oh God! Liam!

Then she heard a scream above the fire. “Ana!”