keep us moving.
We have no choice but to continue our way up the mountain.
“ Drag your hands!” Flo yells. “Don’t pick them up and drop them. If a blade is going to pop, you’ll feel it beforehand, something hard in the sand. Pull back your hand.”
It’s good advice, and we all continue up, dragging our hands as we go. After several feet I feel something, and quickly retract my hand. A split-second later, a huge blade pops, missing me by a millisecond.
More rocks fly at me, and a large rock bounces off the back of my spine. It hurts like hell. I have an idea. I pick it up and grab it.
“ Collect all the rocks!” I say to the others.
Bree, Ben, Logan and the others begin to collect the rocks.
“ Throw them in the sand, before you move. It will set off any traps.”
At the same we all start chucking the rocks ahead of us. We set off dozens of blades and we clear a path most of the way.
I save one rock, though, and turn around and aim for a spectator. I hurl it back, hitting him between the eyes, knocking him down. The crowd boos.
I turn around and smile to myself. It is a small satisfaction. It barely made a dent, but it sure felt good to give them a taste of their own medicine.
There are about thirty kids still alive, higher up on the mountain. These are starting to realize how treacherous it is, and some get a new strategy, stopping and wait for others to pass them. Others have yet another strategy: to retreat back down the mountain and kill off everyone below them. I guess they think that reaching the top is impossible and eliminating everyone else is the way to win.
Three kids scramble down right for us. One of them, running right at me, steps on a trap and a metal spike impales him; he drops to his knees and falls face first, dead. The other two, though, make it. One charges right down the mountain for me, his momentum carrying him, and before I can react, he tackles me hard.
I land flat on my back, and the two of us go sliding down the mountain, fast. I’m heading right for the blades at the base, and I need to think quick.
I arch my back and lift my legs up with all my strength, as if doing a backflip, and manage to use his momentum to send him flying over my head. Just in time: he gets impaled on the spikes at the base, and it just stops my free-fall.
But now I’m back down the mountain, rocks flying at me painfully, and I scramble back up as quickly as I can, trying to carefully retrace my steps. The other remaining kid dives into our group, aiming for Logan, going for the weakest link. He tackles him hard, and they go sliding down the mountain at full speed.
They are sliding for the spikes at the base, and my heart stops. It seems like in moments, Logan will be impaled. The crowd cheers wildly.
At the last second, Logan summons his strength. He reaches out, grabs the boy and spins around. As they reach the spikes, the boy gets impaled, back first, blood gushing from his mouth.
The crowd cheers.
But something is wrong. Logan is stuck, too, not moving, and as I look closely, my heart drops: I see that the spike has gone through the boy and into Logan’s arm. Logan screams out, and the pain looks excruciating.
I scramble back down the mountain, as do the others, and hurry over to him and yank him out. The others help, and as we do, he shrieks. The steel slowly leaves his flesh, blood gushing everywhere. He’s breathing hard, sweating, and I reach down and tear a strip off my shirt and use it as a tourniquet, tying it around his wound. It quickly fills with blood.
Flo and I each take one of his arms around our shoulders, and begin to drag him up the mountain, away from the jeering spectators and the flying rocks.
“ Leave me,” he grunts.
“ No way,” I say.
Together, we all hobble back up the mountain. I look up and notice there are hardly a dozen kids left, sitting there, higher up the mountain, probably waiting for us to pass them. They all seem scared to move on, not knowing what’s in store for them.
And then, everything changes.
Another buzzer sounds, and high up, I detect a strange motion in the sand. At first I can’t understand what it is. And when I do, I can’t believe it.
Slithering out of the sand, in every direction, come dozens of brightly colored snakes.
The dozen or so kids higher up try to get out of the way, but it’s too late for them. They try to dodge the snakes, running left and right, but the snakes dig their fangs into them. They scream out in agony, one after the other. The venom works quickly, and several of the kids lie limp; a few of the others impale themselves on spikes as they run.
The good news is that the snakes die on impact as they sink their fangs into the kids; it seems that using up their venom kills them.
The bad news is that there is one, particularly large, snake left.
It slithers its way down the mountain, right towards us.
No, I think. Not a snake. Anything but a snake.
Of course, the snake zeros in on me. I brace myself for the attack, flinching in advance, having nowhere to go.
But Flo leaps out from the side, grabs the snake by its head, and holds it there, squeezing hard with both hands. It squirms like crazy but cannot get out.
“ Charlie, your wire!” she yells.
Charlie hurries over, takes a wire with two handles from his pocket and wraps it around the snake’s throat, several times. He squeezes as hard as he can, and Ben hurries over and helps him. Finally, the snake’s head is severed. The rest of its body slithers, uncontrollably down the mountain.
I look around and see that all the other kids are dead. We are the only survivors left. I can hardly believe it.
We grab Logan and we all head together up the mountain. We go single file, carefully following the trail of the dead bodies, other kids who paved the way for us, who already set off all the traps, and within moments, we reach the top, safe.
A buzzer sounds, and the crowd roars.
I can hardly believe it. We have survived.
S E V E N T E E N
Back in our cave, at night, we all sit around the fire, completely exhausted. I lean my head back against the wall and close my eyes, and don’t think I can ever open them again. Every bone in my body is aching and hurting. I can’t believe what my body has been through these last two days. If someone told me I could fall asleep and wake up in twenty years, I think I would.
I just want this agony and suffering to end-not just for me, but for all of us. We are fighting for our lives, clinging to life, but a part of me wonders, what for? This will only end in all of us being killed. In some ways, we are just prolonging our agony.
I look around and see the exhausted faces of Bree and Charlie, Ben and Logan-and even Flo. It especially breaks my heart to see Logan, lying there beside me, looking like this. He was hurt the worst today of us all, and while I’ve been trying to staunch his new wound, it’s barely working. He’s lost a lot of blood, and he looks so pale, it’s almost as if he’s dead already. I’ve tried to wake him several times, but he just groans and turns away. My heart sinks, and I fear for him. If he doesn’t get serious medical attention soon, I don’t see how he can survive. Not to mention, it’s just not possible for him to compete in tomorrow’s games. I can’t help but feel as if I’m sitting on a death vigil.
The rest of us hardly fare much better. We are all so beaten and broken and bruised and exhausted, not to mention, filled with dread for what might come tomorrow. Flo was right: they do up the stakes each day. I can’t
