The Culling (18 page)

twenty-three

Air rushes around me. Someone slams into my shoulder, knocking me across the starting line. My eyes saucer as I brace myself for the blast of the energy barrier. But the only impact is my face thudding against the hard earth. I look up in time to see Ophelia smirk before sprinting off into the fray.

I spit blood and spring to my feet, ignoring the spasms in my wobbly legs.

A hand grabs my shoulder.

I whirl into Digory’s gaze. “You okay?” he asks.

I tear away from his grasp. “I’m
fine
.”

Then I’m off, wading through a sea of bodies. I gag at the stench. The entire place reeks of blood, festering wounds, and death.

Clenching a palm over my nose and mouth, I squat over the first body I come across, a teenaged guy not more than a year or two younger than I am. His scraggly dark hair is matted to his ashen face. The whites of his eyes are visible through half-opened lids. The beacon’s draped over the wrist of a bony hand, which is pressed against a gurgling wound in his abdomen as if trying to keep something from spilling out.

Shooing away the buzzing flies swarming over his lesion, I press my locator next to his beacon.

There’s a harsh
buzz
and the locator’s light turns the same color as his soaked shirt.

Not a match. What a horrible way to die, out here, alone in such filth.

His icy hand locks around my wrist. Bloodshot eyes spring open the rest of the way.

My heart nearly erupts through my gullet.

“
Please
… ” The word flows from his lips through a gout of blood. “
Help
…
me
… ”

I pull my arm from his wrist and clasp his hand. “I’m
sorry
,” I whisper.

Then we’re torn apart. Cypress shoves me out of the way so hard that a bolt of pain jolts through my arm. Her dark hair’s pasted wildly across her dirt-streaked face like poisoned veins.

One look at her eyes snuffs out my anger. Stark naked desperation, the kind bordering on crazy. She eyes the boy’s tracker and grabs it with muddy hands that smell of rot. This isn’t the first body she’s come across.

The moment her locator connects with his bracelet, there’s another harsh buzz and red flash.

She flings his hand down as if it’s shocked her. Her engorged eyes turn on me. “Not
him
either.”

Then she’s bounding off, crouching over another victim.

The boy coughs up another mouthful of blood. “
Please
… don’t leave me. I don’t want to die … alone … ”

The weight of what’s at stake crushes the air from my lungs.

I can’t help him.

Fog shrouds my brain, as if I’m in the throes of some terrible nightmare my mind’s trying to filter so I won’t break. This
can’t
be real. I back away …

My eyes sweep the field. Everything looks fragmented. Digory hunches over a clump of tangled limbs about ten yards to my right. Lifting wrist after wrist. Holding his locator to them. Hands reach out to touch him back. He bows his head. Pity-soaked eyes. Mutters unintelligible words …

To my left, Ophelia digs through heaps. Flings aside body after body as if she can’t figure out what to wear …

Only Gideon appears to be taking his time, strolling through the battle zone and occasionally stooping to check a beacon as if he were in a field searching for a particular flower to pick.

All around them, fireflies flit about, filling the air with their incessant buzzing even as they dot the landscape with bloody pinpricks of light …

Not fireflies—
beacons
. The thought burns through the mist clouding my head.

Then it’s like my brain’s launched into overdrive, careening forward until it synchs into real time. My breath comes in short, shallow bursts through my dry mouth. I squeeze slower breaths through my nostrils until the landscape stops spinning and the dizziness passes.

I sprint over the unnamed boy without even a glance back.

Beyond him lies a pale middle-aged woman, crumpled like a wad of paper.

The faces.

Don’t look at their faces.

I grip the beacon, trying not to touch skin. But the hair on my body prickles when my little finger grazes icy flesh.

Buzz
. Red light.

Letting go of her, I scurry through the human wreckage, dodging past Digory, skirting Gideon, leaping over a crouched Cypress, knocking into Ophelia, scavenging through body after body, groping through torn rib cages and steaming piles of entrails until I’m covered in gore and reek of the living dead myself.

But still I push on and on, gulping down the bile and vomit. A part of me dies with every body I desecrate. And through it all, the moans and wails sear into my brain.

I’ll never stop hearing them until I fester in my own grave.

Soon, I’ve lost count of the running tab of bodies I’m keeping in my head. Why haven’t I found anything yet? I risk a fleeting glance around at the others. They’re all still searching, too. Could the Establishment be cruel enough to not have fitted any of the bodies with matching beacons?

Then a worse thought hits my brain, with the same ferocity as the inner fist trying to beat its way out my chest. What if Cassius deliberately disabled just
my
locator? It wouldn’t be the first time he’s tampered with the Trials. After all, didn’t he have Digory recruited and Desiree Morningside murdered just so I could take her place and provide him with two pawns to play his sick little game with?

I grab another wrist lying in the rubble. It’s so small the beacon nearly slides off the bony hand.

A child’s hand.

“It hurts,” a tiny voice moans over and over again.

My eyes squeeze shut against the molten river about
to burst free. I clamp my free hand against my ear, trying to
muffle as much of the agony as I can. If I can’t
see
them, they’re not real.

Bleep.

The sound startles me.

I
finally
found one.

Scooping the child in my arms, I hug its head against me.

But when I look down, the tracker’s still blinking red, sending a vibrating pulse burning into my chest.

I spin.

Digory’s a few yards away, cradling a frail-looking woman in his arms as if she were a newborn.

“Don’t worry, ma’am. You’re going to be okay,” he coos.
The green lights of the flashing locator and beacon reflect on both their skin like the hushed lightning of a distant storm, illuminating their faces with a shared gratitude and relief.

Skeletal fingers clutch his collar. “My daughter …
please
… you have to find her … ”

“Let’s get you out of here first.”

Then he’s scrambling off toward the safety zone with her.

My heart swells—then bursts with the realization of what Digory’s heroism means to the four of us still struggling to make it through this.

A flash of green to my right blinds me, accompanied by a steady
bleeping
that matches the rhythm of the blood battering the arteries in my brain. For a second I’m disoriented.

Someone else found their beacon.

Obscured by a veil of smoke, Gideon’s silhouette props the green-flashing arm of a stick-figured woman over his shoulder and stumbles with her through the battlefield, disappearing in the same direction that Digory took off in.

Two down and only three to go.

I hunch my head and bury my face against the small head nestled against me. Whatever I’m going to do it has to be done fast. “Please forgive me,” I whisper into a tiny ear.

Bleep.

What the—?

Cypress’s eyes lock with mine. Her locator and the kid’s beacon are both flashing green. She tries to pry the child from my arms.

“
Don’t
let Goslin have the girl, Spark!” Ophelia kicks a body out of her way and scrambles toward us, eyes flickering like wildfire. “If she takes her, we’ll both be tied for
last
place.”

My arms tighten around the faceless girl. She’s right …

Cypress tugs harder. “
Give
her to me.” Her words are drowned out by the wailing child held hostage between us.

An invisible force slams Ophelia to the ground. “Ungh!” She doubles over, clutching her side.

It was a taser mine.

I lurch toward her, dragging Cypress and the child along with me. “Ophelia! You okay?”

Cypress’s fingers dig into my arm. “There’s
no
time.”

Ophelia stirs, rising to rest on her hands and knees like a crouching beast. “We can
both
save our families, Spark. You hold Goslin here while I hide the girl.”

She lurches to her feet and sprints closer. In that instant I know that if she reaches us, she’ll stop at nothing to make sure Cypress doesn’t rescue the child.

I can’t bear the weight of any more blood. Even if I made it all the way through this, I’d never be able to look in Cole’s eyes again.

I release my grip and the child slips into Cypress’s arms. “Take her, and make sure she’s tended to right away.”

“Thanks,” Cypress whispers.

“
What
are you doing?” Ophelia lunges at them.

I shove my body in front of Cypress and the girl. Ophelia rams into me, fingers raking my back like talons. Her bloody claws reach out and clamp onto the frail little shoulder.

The child screams.

Cypress’s fingers dig into Ophelia’s hand, ripping, pulling, but Ophelia won’t let go. Her head plunges down and her teeth sink into Cypress’s wrist.

“Ah!” Cypress’s face contorts in agony.

With every ounce of strength I can muster, I try to pry Ophelia loose. I twist and lock my arms around her, but it’s like trying to hug fire. Finally, I wrench her free. But her body bucks and kicks, jaws snapping like a rabid Canid, spraying me with a mixture of burning spittle and Cypress’s blood, which is dripping from the bits of flesh lodged between her teeth.

Cypress’s face is drained of color. Dark blood oozes from the missing chunk on her hand. As she whisks the child away, large dark eyes peer over her shoulder at me like shards of guilt impaling me where I stand.

Ophelia’s arm squirms free of my hold, and she jams a thumb into my eye.

Blinding pain shoots through my socket. I swing her away from me, hurling her into the ground. I clutch a palm against my eye, half expecting to feel the molten gore of a shattered eyeball squeezing through my fingers. But the throbbing and blurred vision confirm there’s still something there.

There’s a flash of her boot. Then a searing pain in my groin. I curl up into a ball, knees pressed against my stomach. Tears stream from my eyes, seeping down my cheeks and between my lips. The salty taste mixes with the blood where my teeth have bitten into my upper lip.

She looms over me, a dark blur. “Guess we’re about to find out who you love more, your brother or Tycho.” She hunches down. “Personally,” she whispers, “I’m counting on it being your brother. After all, he looks so sweet and adorable.” Her smile is laced with blood-stained teeth. Then she takes off.

Adrenaline surges through me, mixed in a whirlpool of anger, desperation, and fear that propels me up. The months of intense training kick in. I tear after her, leaping over the bodies I’ve already rummaged through, dodging the taser mines, holding my breath as I pass through the clouds of smoke, avoiding the fire of the automatic stun rifles. Faster and faster. Everything’s a blur.

Soon, I’m gaining on Ophelia. She’s reached the far end of the battle zone and is digging through the last cache of victims, a tangled heap of arms and legs about ten yards away from the safety zone. When she glances up at me, I can see the beads of sweat trickling down her forehead.

Good. She’s scared.

She’d
better
be.

I dash up to the opposite side of this miserable pile of humanity and start pulling out arm after arm, pressing my locator against them, ignoring the blood, the smell, the countless moans that rise upward and fill the air with a chorus of doom. Flashes of red and the crackling buzzers from the locators bombard us with light and sound, giving the entire scene the appearance of a human bonfire.

Despite the din, one small sound rings through my ears like a clap of thunder, accompanied by a flash of green lightning.

Bleep.

Ophelia’s found her beacon before I have.

I can’t feel my fingers as they fumble from one beacon to the next, rewarded with one sharp buzz after another. I chance a look through the wailing mound. Ophelia’s bathed in green strobes that fragment her face as if I’m flipping through hundreds of images of different people. Her eyes connect with mine, conveying one clear message:

I’ve beat you. Now you get to watch Cole or Digory die.

Something’s wrong. Her triumphant expression scrunches into frustration. She tugs on the arm she’s clutching, trying to pull it free of the writhing mound.

“No! Let go of me!” A girl’s voice. Her wail pierces the air, a sobering reminder that these aren’t just
things
we’re digging through. I drop the wrist I’m holding and grab the next one, trying not to squeeze too hard in my panic.

Ignoring the screams, Ophelia continues to yank. But despite the sound of unsettling
squishes
, the girl won’t budge. The thought of what she might be stuck in makes my stomach heave and I stifle a gag, reaching for the next beacon.

Ophelia cups the pale face. “Hush now.” She runs her fingers through the girl’s gore-matted blonde head.