Savage Run (33 page)

Defeated, I return to my buckets. Wrapping
my fingers around the handles, tightening my core, I lift them up.
Fifty pounds is much heavier than I thought it would be. Some of
these guys probably weigh two hundred and fifty pounds, and picking
this up is like picking up a pair of shoes or a washcloth. But even
though this isn’t fair at all, I’m not going to let President
Volkov win. Instead, I’m going to make my anger feed my strength
and determination.

I plant my feet firmly on the
mountainside—the ground black and crinkled like an old man’s skin.
A vain of red liquid with a black, cracking crust flows down the
volcano and it’s difficult to find a flat surface where my feet
won’t slip.

Cory walks next to me, and as I thought, it
looks like the fifty pounds he’s carrying weighs the same as a
toothpick with cotton balls on the sides.

“
You had better watch out
down here,” he says. “I mean, I don’t see how you can make it with
President Volkov after you. He could send snipers after you, plant
bombs, poison…”

“
I don’t need to hear all
the details.”

“
Sorry, sometimes I get
carried away thinking about all the possible hazards. It’s an
obsession, I suppose. But seriously, you need to take extra
precautions.”

I step over a rock. President Volkov just
has to be right, and since he says girls can’t be in Savage Run, he
must make sure I fail so he doesn’t look like an idiot.

As we get closer to the volcano, the air
turns thicker and hotter and hissing sounds come from the ground.
Each step, my legs burn, feeling weaker, and sweat is dripping down
my face and chest.

Almost up at the top, I start to become
careless about where I tread and with one misstep, I twist my ankle
and fall to the ground. The rocks in my bucket go tumbling down the
mountain, and the buckets too.

“
You all right?” Cory
asks.

“
I’m fine. Just keep going.
I’ll be right behind you.” Cory reluctantly starts to walk off, but
when I assure him again that I’m fine, he moves on.

Arthor, who walks behind me, drops his
buckets and catches mine so they don’t go tumbling down all the
way. He proceeds to fill them with the rocks. I sit for a moment,
wondering if I’ll be disqualified if I lost any of my rocks or if
I’ll be required to climb all the way back down to the bottom and
get more rocks. There’s no way we’ll find all of them. I might as
well start climbing back down because if I show up with a bucket
weighing less than twenty-five pounds, I won’t be able to continue.
“It’s no use!” I yell after him, letting my arms fall to the
ground. He looks up from where he’s searching.

“
There are just a few
more!”

I press my lips together and stare at him
for a moment. “No! They’ll disqualify both of us if you help
me.”

“
There’s no rule that says
you’ll be disqualified for accepting help.”

I move my ankle in a circular motion and it
feels like something is stuck inside of it, like it’s locked.
Arthor continues down the mountain without my approval. After a few
minutes he returns with more rocks, but I know he didn’t get all of
them because one of my buckets is only three quarters of the way
full.

“
It will have to do,” he
says.

“
No it won’t.” I stand up
and look at the buckets, not placing too much weight on my injured
ankle, afraid I might cringe and that he’ll notice that I hurt
it.

“
It will do. No one’s going
to weigh the buckets up there.”

Looking down the mountainside, I see Timothy
and Danny climbing up together. And after them comes Johnny and in
the far distance there are two other guys I don’t know. “Crap.”

Arthor turns around and sees Johnny,
too.

I pick up the buckets. “You go ahead.” I
want him to go first so he doesn’t see me hobble. I step onto my
well leg first, but when I put weight onto my bad ankle, I feel a
stabbing pain shoot up my leg. I grit my teeth and hold my breath
so that I don’t let out a single sound. I only have about twenty
feet to go before I reach the top; I have to make it. Grunting and
willing myself to walk, I continue onward. My ankle starts to feel
swollen in my shoe, the skin pressing against the material. One
step more, I tell myself. Just one more. I want to cry out from the
pain, but I force the scream back down to where it came from and
blow instead. Ever step is another one conquered.

Finally reaching the top, I hear some of the
participants discussing where to go next. I set the buckets down
glad the climb is finished.

“
Can you believe it?”
Arthor says.

“
What?

“
The sign says that the
entrance to the Caves of Choice is down the volcano. The path is so
narrow that only one participant can descend at a time,” Arthor
says.

Timothy and Danny arrive together and set
their buckets down. Danny gives a high five to Cory. Do they know
each other?

“
I’ll go first.” Trying to
hide the fact that I’m injured, I walk as normally as I can over to
the edge of the crater and look down. The boiling sea of magma
moves like an aggressive, live creature and heat rises into my
face, and feels like it’s going to melt my skin and eyes. The cave
walls will be hotter than hell and we’ll roast alive if we climb
down. Surely they can’t mean that we have to climb down here? All
of us will burn to death and I’m sure President Volkov doesn’t want
that.

I glance at the sign and it reads:

Next obstacle: Caves of Choice—climb into
the red caverns.

The sign mentions pleural caverns. This is
only one. “Are there any other caverns on the island?” I ask to
anyone listening.

“
Playing detective?” Johnny
asks, setting down his buckets. There’s a second of awkward silence
and a series of careful glances.

Johnny’s eyebrows sink toward his eyes as he
stares at me. Wiping his dripping wet forehead, he slinks toward
me.

I swallow—fully aware that with one shove,
he could send me into the volcano, but Cory steps in Johnny’s path
before Johnny reaches me. Johnny forms a fist and punches Cory in
the face, sending him to the ground.

“
Stop!” I yell—this could
end very badly.

But Johnny doesn’t stop. Instead, he kicks
Cory in the gut and Cory rolls on the ground, grabbing his abdomen,
gasping for air. Arthor and Timothy respond right away,
immobilizing Johnny by grabbing his arms. Johnny wrings and kicks,
spewing out obscenities. Slowly, Cory rises to his feet and I see
that he has blood on the side of his mouth. He walks behind Johnny,
calm and strong as an oak tree, and slams his fist into the back of
Johnny’s skull. Johnny drops to the ground unconscious.

“
Should we just finish him
off?” Timothy says, glancing down into the volcano.

A huge part of me wants that—I’d love to be
rid of the threat of Johnny coming after me the rest of the
course—and it would be a merciful death—he wouldn’t notice a
thing—but I can’t find it in myself to kill him. “Let’s just leave
him here.”

“
You’re way too nice,”
Timothy says.

“
I didn’t think you had
time to mess with this kind of stuff,” I say, quoting what he said
last night.

“
I thought I’d try it
out—being helpful.”

Cory interrupts. “We have to keep moving
forward. Just leave him here.”

I look down the mountainside and see more
participants closing in on us and the slight lead we have over the
others is diminishing quickly. I peer into the pit again. “If we
climb down there, we’ll roast alive. There must be some other red
caverns somewhere,” I say.

“
I…I think I saw one down
by the shore where I landed,” Arthor says. “It was a small cave and
the walls were red.” He steps over to the edge of the mountain and
points. “That way.”

One by one, they start to descend the
mountain. Everyone except for Arthor and me.

“
You’re hurt,” Arthor
whispers.

I shrug my shoulders. “Just a little sprain,
that’s all.”

“
If it’s so little, why is
your left leg swollen?”

I look down and see that he’s right; it is
swollen. “Shoot.” Why now?

“
Want a piggy back
ride?”

I’ll be completely mortified.

“
I won’t tell anyone about
your ankle, I promise.”

The last thing I want is for any of the
others to see that I’m injured, so they know they have an advantage
over me.

I hop onto his back, wrapping my legs around
his lean waist, my arms around his shoulders. He smells like a
mixture between sweat and the outdoors and the perspiration on his
neck and hair glistens in the sun.

Chapter 26

Arthor carries me almost all the way to the
caves, gently setting me down by the base of a soaring tree, hiding
me behind roots that stretch above my head and reach into the
ground like giant veins. Leaning against the smooth bark, I stand
on my good foot.

He peeks around the trunk at the red cave.
“Looks like there are a number of them and they’re crawling in.”
Turning to me, he says, “You okay to walk?”

“
I’ll try.” I step onto my
left foot, and right away, I feel a sharp pain. I grit my teeth,
reapply pressure to my wounded leg, and take a step forward. With a
little practice, and a lot of determination, I should be able to
walk, though not without a limp. Arthor doesn’t say anything, only
waits patiently while I take another step. It’s not easy making the
muscles in my face relax.

“
You good?” he
asks.

“
I’m ready.”

We head over to the cave’s entrance—one of
several small holes in the mountain barely large enough to crawl
into. I see another guy crawl into the blackness. My throat grows
hot and dry.

It looks so easy for the other guy to go
into the cave—like he enjoys tight spaces and darkness. I can be
that way, can’t I? My chest compresses the air out of my lungs and
my heart thumps wildly against my ribcage. I have become the girl
who was locked up in a trunk when she was five years old, not
knowing if she would ever get out.

Trying to ignore my fear, I take three deep
breaths and get down on all fours. I feel the damp, leafy earth
against my palms and I peer into the cave, noting the hole is no
wider than one of my bicycle wheels back home. My chest feels
tighter, but still, I walk my hands forward onto the smooth, cold,
red surface of the cave’s entrance, and stick my head into the
cavern. All I see is blackness.

Why am I doing this? I’m crazy! I can’t do
it. I crawl backwards in retreat, stand up, and limp away from the
cave, interlocking my fingers behind my neck.

“
Heidi!” Arthor follows
after me.

“
I can’t do it! It’s too
tight—too dark.”

He walks backwards right in front of me,
reaching his hands to my shoulders and pushes against them so I
have to stop.

“
Yes, you can,” he
says.

“
What do you know about
what I can and can’t do?”

“
I know that you’re strong
and brave and caring. And that you won’t let an obstacle like this
one keep you from your freedom. Or Gemma’s.”

In a moment of fear, I forgot why I’m doing
this in the first place. Gemma. “If the caves were just a little
wider, maybe, but they’re so tight.” I glance back at the hole in
the mountain.

He squeezes my shoulders gently. “I have to
keep going, Heidi. Every second we wait, someone else might make it
to one of those eight cages.”

The cages. What am I doing? Will I let one
day from my past prevent me from having a life of freedom? I have
to be in one of those eight. And I have to finish this course so I
can find out for myself if Gemma is still alive. “I’m going in.” I
limp toward the cave’s entrance, pushing my way past two
participants, and before anyone’s able to object about me sneaking
in line, I crawl into the hole. Right away, blackness surrounds me.
Normally the darkness combined with the tight space would bother
me, but not now. I’m too angry with my father for what he did to
me. Too angry with myself for allowing fear to set me back.

Pebbles and dust stick to my palms as I edge
forward, and the air smells of mold mixed with sulfur. Within
minutes, the cave’s walls close in so much that I’m forced down
onto my elbows and stomach, slinking forward like a snake. I try
not to think about where I am, that I’m inside a tight cave with
millions of pounds of rocks and lava looming above me. But the
thoughts just creep back in. I grit my teeth and press forward,
fighting to ignore the growing tightness in my chest.

I steer my thoughts to other things. Why are
these caves called Caves of Choice anyway? It’s rather a weird name
for a cave. Do I have to choose something? Or maybe the path will
divide in several directions, forcing me to decide which path to
take, and if I don’t take the right one, I’ll be lost in here
forever. The space around me is getting tighter—I find it
impossible to exhale and my hands and arms feel weak and are
trembling. I had better think about something else quick.

In an attempt to distract myself, I think
back to Nicholas’s and my first kiss. I recall the scratchy coats
against my back, his soft, wet lips on mine…I didn’t even give a
second thought to being in a tight closet with him. He made me feel
so safe and…calm. Just like Gemma. Just like Ruth.

I speed up so I can be done with this
faster, however, soon I’m pushing against a pair of feet.