Z 2136 (Z 2134 Series Book 3) (3 page)

“We brought our contestants to The Outback, a four-square-mile city from The Old Nation, teeming with thousands of zombies, bandits, and . . .” Kirkman dropped his voice to a whisper, “. . . God only knows what else.”

The orb screens showed an overview of the crumbling buildings, streets filled with zombies, and bandits driving through the city with their victims’ heads on pikes.

His voice back to a fever pitch, Kirkman continued. “For your enjoyment, we’ve outfitted our contestants with some very special Darwin Games Special Edition bracelets. Aren’t they pretty, folks?”

The screen cut to a half-dozen bracelets like Adam’s, glowing bright blue on a swath of ivory velvet, then to a tall man wearing one, who seemingly was panicking as he raced through the woods. He clomped through the snow, dodging thin and barren branches. Adam wasn't sure if the screen was showing Games footage or something else, but the background music, like the image, held a steady beat of terror. The fleeing man was armed, running with his pistol in front of him, ready to fire at the slightest movement.

A scream, shrill and sudden, pierced the air on-screen, yelping from the man’s bracelet. Zombies exploded all around him, pouring through the trees, arms outstretched. The man fumbled through the snow, occasionally firing at pursuers until his blaster had fully lost its charge. No chance to reload, or anything else. Zombies swallowed the view in a wave that rolled so fast that the man never stood a chance. The camera hovered above the fury until the swarm receded to a few piles of bloody flesh, scattered around a still-glowing ring of bright blue.

“These bracelets cannot be taken off, and to make things even more fun for you at home, they are programmed to go off at random. A contestant’s bracelet might go off never, just once, or once a day.” As if confiding in a friend, Kirkman smirked, “Watch out, Adam!”

The host continued. “These fancy bracelets emit a loud alarm, along with a strong chemical scent specially designed to attract zombies. Zombie Alerts, as we call them, will last anywhere from a minute to an hour.
Why the bracelets,
you ask? Because they’ll keep the underground scum from sticking together like rats . . . and because we think you’ll love them!”

The cheers were deafening. There wouldn’t be a person of age in City 6, or anywhere else, who wasn’t watching The Games and rooting for the traitors’ downfall.

“Though this is a new location, rules for The Opening Rush are the same. In the field’s center we’ve stacked an abundance of weapons and much-needed supplies. Of course—as promised—we also have boxes of zombies.”

Kirkman turned his address to the contestants.

“Test your luck and load up on supplies and weapons now, or flee to one of the four exits and take your chances in The Outback.”

His face took on a devilish look. “Just one thing you should know . . . we’ve
bombarded
The Outback with flyers announcing rewards for anyone who captures and kills Darwin players.
Be careful who you trust.
”

Kirkman continued, “And, oh, one more thing. Before any of you start getting ideas of trying to leave The Outback, know that if you do so, your bracelets will go off. And if you think you can avoid both zombies
and
our hundreds of hunter orbs circling The Outback, think again.”

The screen showed swarms of orbs hovering over The Outback. With no winner or chance of escaping, Adam wondered how he would ever survive. He wondered how many people would even attempt to just outlast The Games.

If there’s no Mesa to battle in, why not just hide and wait things out?

Then he realized the genius of The Network’s plan. No player in The Games could ever expect to live in The Outback for any amount of time. Someone or something—whether it be other players, bandits, zombies, or hunter orbs—would find and kill them.

There was no escape.

The only hope was to prolong survival. Perhaps it was The State’s plan to rob the players of hope, to further weaken them, but so long as Adam stayed alive, he would continue to search for a way out—of The Games and The Outback, bracelet be damned.

Kirkman’s voice went into its familiar singsong pattern as he wound up the audience. “And noooooow . . . let The Darwin Games BEGIN!”

Fireworks exploded through the sky over them. Even with the noise, Adam could hear zombies jostling boxes.

And then it began.

The line of contestants broke like a wave crashing onto the field in every direction, most toward the weapons and zombies.

Adam spun in the other direction, toward the tunnel ahead and to his left, out into the broken city and the only hope he barely had.

Ana stared down at the exploded van in open-mouthed horror. Chunks of truck littered the road. Fire crackled out from the billowing clouds marring her view of Liam and Katrina as well as the trigger man from City 6.

“Liam!” she cried out, digging into the snow to shove herself up.

She grabbed the rifle and started down the incline, eyes searching for signs of life, friend or foe.

Please, please, please be okay.

Nearing the road she heard coughing, then saw Katrina trying to stand.

The man from City 6 was moving toward Katrina, blaster drawn.

Ana raised her rifle, looked down the sight, and fired twice. The first shot missed, but the second pierced the side of the man’s black helmet and sent him to the ground.

Katrina stood, looking around, dazed but seemingly in one piece.

“Liam!” Ana cried out again.

No response as she rounded the first van and found him face down on the edge of the road. She couldn’t tell if he’d turned and run at her warning, or if the blast’s impact had thrown him.

Heart in her throat, she raced over and dropped to her knees beside him in the snow.

At first glance she saw no blood, though his back was filthy from the explosion. “Liam,” she said, reaching to feel his pulse. When she pulled his long hair aside, though, she saw the blood pouring out of his left eye socket.

His body jerked at her touch. He spun onto his back, hands clenched, good eye wild, as if being attacked. He finally focused on Ana and tried to relax, but it was then that he seemed to notice that something was very wrong. He reached up, felt the ridge just below his damaged eye, and with a confused expression pulled away blood-tipped fingers.

“There was a bomb in the truck,” she explained.

“What?”

Ana repeated herself, pained to see realization color his face.

“I can’t hear,” he said. “I can’t hear.”

She reached out for his hands, “You’ll be okay.” Ana mouthed her words carefully so that Liam could use the skill learned while spying for The Underground and read her lips. She could only hope his damaged eye didn’t hamper this ability too much.

Katrina stepped toward them. “Is he okay?”

Her face had a few bloody scratches, but her eyes (and ears) seemed fine.

Ana gestured toward Liam. “The explosion got his eye. I don’t know if it’s really bad or just really bloody. He can’t hear me, though. Don’t react too badly, until we know more. How are your ears?”

Katrina made a conscious effort not to meet Liam’s eyes—or, specifically, his eye. “Aside from the ringing, they’re good. I just checked the other van. Your brother’s not there.”

“Do you think he was in—?” Ana looked back at the bombed truck’s burning remains.

“No,” Katrina said. “I don’t think so. You were right. It was a fucking trap.”

Ana heard a mechanical sound behind her and turned. A hunter orb was hovering above them, cannon muzzle surrounded by crackling bright blue light. From the speakers, a man’s voice said, “Enemies of The State, lay down your arms and surrender at once.”

This was it. No way they could take out an armed hunter orb without one of them—or all three—dying.

Ana was first to lower her weapon. Katrina immediately followed. Liam’s rifle lay on the road, lost when he was knocked back by the blast.

The orb descended, crackles and hums escalating in volume and menace the closer it came. The monitor showed a City Watcher’s visored helmet in a command station somewhere. The orb went to Ana’s right, then left.

The man on-screen spoke. “Ana Lovecraft,” the man identified her. Then, “Liam Harrow.” He studied Katrina. After a moment, “Citizen, state your name.”

“My name is . . . Fuck You!” Katrina spit at the orb.

The orb pulled back, darted up about five feet above them, then took aim at Katrina, cannon belching with a whistling cry as it prepared to fire.

Ana expected Katrina to make a move, to grab her blaster, or something. But she stood defiant, seemingly ready to die—or perhaps
give up.

Ana was braced for death from above, when the orb’s screen went suddenly dark.

A moment later, it went silent and plunged to the snow with a crash but nary a dent.

“What the hell was that?” Ana reached down for her rifle.

Katrina retrieved her blaster, taking advantage of the moment, not seeming to care about how or why the machine had stopped working. She was about to finish off the orb when a girl’s voice cried out from behind them.

“Don’t!”

Katrina turned along with Ana, then Liam, and saw the figures emerging from the woods: five, all wrapped in thick layers of winter clothing, faces concealed by wraps and masks. They were dirty and armed with blasters and swords. One held something that looked like a small box with a glowing red ball at the end.

Ana thought
bandits
, but as the group moved closer and out of the shadows, she realized they were children, all but one. The closest child removed the wrap from her face, revealing a girl with bright blue eyes and short brown hair. She couldn’t have been older than twelve.

“Ana Lovecraft?”

Ana, not quite sure if the girl was friend or foe, didn’t know how to answer. But if these kids were responsible for bringing down the hunter orb, Ana wanted them on her side.

She nodded.

The girl removed her glove and extended her hand to Ana.

“My name is Calla Egan.” She made a small curtsy. “And it is a pleasure to meet the daughter of Jonah.”

Adam stepped over no less than a thousand dirty and wet red flyers that had been dropped across the city like confetti, each one announcing prizes for killing a Games contestant, but he didn’t dare stop long enough to read one.

It might’ve been an hour, maybe twice that since his flight from the field. He’d split at the sound of the cannon, away from the boxes of zombies, away from the weapons, food, and supplies.

Away from the few things that might keep him alive for more than a night. But the risks had been too great, and he had to figure he could find a way to survive without supplies.

The city was old but not empty. Adam saw no people or zombies—yet—but could hear plenty of rustling from people (or things) seeking refuge in frigid shadows and icy hollows. He saw (or imagined) proof in flickers he spied through cracked alleyways and crooked corridors. He wondered if those flickers were friend or foe, people or zombies—or all of the above.

Extra players, a broken city, and the added element of wild bandits made these Games different from the zombie-centric ones that Adam was used to watching. He wasn’t sure if he was better or worse off. Part of him dared to hope and believe that maybe the sprawling city might make it easier to wait out his opponents. Wait for what, though? Who knew? All he did know was that the fewer contestants there were to deal with, the longer he would live.

That’s what Adam kept telling himself, over and over as he made his way from one crumbled exterior to another, darting from shadow to shadow as he slowly crept down overgrown streets toward the city’s long-forgotten heart.

Adam peeked into the hollowed shells of several old buildings before leaving them behind. None seemed quite right, though he couldn’t say why—just trusting his instincts and training with The City Watch—so he kept trudging forward until he finally found what looked like an old office building, charred on the sides from flames and covered in graffiti. The paint said something he’d only seen in The Dark Quarters a few times before, something he assumed was in relation to The Underground:

“Blind the eyes of the oppressor with the fire of truth.”

Adam entered through a rear door and drifted from room to room, then floor to floor, unsure of what he was searching for, other than something to maybe keep him alive. The place smelled damp and, for lack of a better description,
old
. After visiting several floors he’d found nothing of use. There were plenty of broken things—desks, tables, office equipment from another era—plus plenty of boxes filled with things he couldn't define, all wearing a thick sweater of dust. Hallways were patches of murky fog, dark shadows pierced by beams of bright light. Walls of dust poured through shattered windows to fleck scattered light through every room.

Adam surrendered his search on the building’s seventh floor. He was standing on the landing, one hand on the door and about to head back downstairs, when he heard something move from somewhere above him.

Adam swallowed, trying not to let fear short circuit his deliberate pace.

He wrapped his hand around the thin metal railing and looked up into the light-peppered darkness. Adam felt like he’d run from so much in his life. He’d avoided bullies, he had not trusted Michael when he should have, and he had always taken the easier route rather than face what had to be done. He was in The Games. He would have to fight to survive, and he couldn’t let the first sounds of the unknown scare him away. He needed to learn to adapt to his surroundings and play the cards dealt him. He told himself he’d go a few more steps—just see what waited. If it was too dangerous, he could still turn around. But he couldn’t allow his fear to scare him off, not before he saw what he was dealing with. He moved up the stairs to the top, turned the corner, and stepped into the first definite signs of life he’d seen since fleeing the arena.

Adam saw no survivors but did see signs of their recent presence: discarded ration packs, broken bottles, and a portable, solar-powered space heater with coils rigged in what looked like hands in a prayer. There was a soiled bedroll that looked awful to sleep on, though still better than the littered floor. Adam stepped deeper into the room, wondering who had been there before and how long ago they had left it.

Lost in his observations, it took him a moment to remember, with a sudden chill, the sound from just moments before.

Adam crossed the first room, then went into another. The second room looked more lived in than the first. Almost immediately he found a pile of old clothes shoved into a corner. As he did each day—despite his daily desire to stop it—Adam thought of his many hours in City Watch cadet training, watching videos that taught him the basics of reading a crime scene. He remembered every lesson: interrogation, autopsy, trace, ballistics, forensics, and DNA.

Unfortunately, none of those lessons would help Adam now.

It didn’t help that he couldn’t focus. Adam wasn’t sure if it was something in the building or his rattled nerves, but his instincts were screaming, ordering him to run.

But he couldn’t.

Not without gathering any useful supplies that could be in the room, abandoned by whatever might be hiding in the shadows. He ignored the humming buzz in his mind and sifted through the room, searching for food, a weapon,
anything
.

After a lot of nothing, Adam found an empty backpack and an old rusty hammer.

He slung the empty pack over his shoulder, tightened the hammer in his grip, and made his way toward the door. There was one more flight in the nine-story building.

Just one more flight. I can do this.

Adam climbed.

Beads of sweat on his brow continued to thicken. The hammer felt loose in his hand, the wooden stock slick from his sweaty palm. He just had to see what was ahead. He just hoped that he wasn’t trading fear for stupidity.

Adam stopped cold, his foot an inch above the stair. He fell back a step and tightened his grip, both on the railing and on his hammer. There was laughter above, but it wasn’t friendly. It held the edges of menace, the sort of laughter that Adam had heard throughout his lifetime, mostly from guys like Tommy, Morgan, Daniel, and all the other bullies he’d known in his life.

The part of Adam that had spent months in City Watch under Keller’s care, training hard to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a City Watcher, wanted to charge the stairs with only his hammer and confront the waiting danger. The rest of him, the part that cried when City Watchers took his books as a child, wanted to flee—down the stairs, out of the building, and into the street as fast as he could.

Adam finally listened to the coward inside him. He slowly turned, then took a step. He followed with a second, slower step; then his heel landed on the back of a bottle and sent him tumbling down the stairs.

Adam could feel himself flying through his life’s longest second, then his back crashed onto the concrete and his head smacked the wall hard enough to burst a melon. He bit his lip to keep from crying out, but even the sudden metallic taste of blood in his mouth couldn’t stop his yelp.

The upstairs fell silent.

A few seconds later, shadows fell on his body from above as he lay trembling and hurt on the landing. Adam forced himself to stand and face the strangers.

A group of men stood on the flight above. A half dozen it seemed, but with so many shadows he couldn’t be sure. The one in front, the shortest, must be the leader. He cocked an eyebrow, looked back to his group, grinned, then turned to Adam as he took a step down.

“Ay, are you one of dem Darwin players?”

Before the stranger had finished the question, he’d drawn a pistol from his coat and had it aimed between Adam’s unblinking eyes. It was an old-fashioned gun, the kind that shot lead. It took everything inside Adam not to turn or flinch. He knew they’d see it as weakness.

Gun on Adam, the leader said, “Ooh, we got ourselves a reward, folks!”

Adam cleared his throat as he stood, one fist balled, the other tight on the hammer. He’d rather die like a man than run like a dog. That didn’t mean he needed to charge heedlessly into his own death, though. He could use his words and maybe convince the men above to spare him.

Maybe they weren’t looking for blood.

Maybe
he had a chance.

Adam opened his mouth to speak, then saw how much the stranger’s smile reminded him of Tommy, and all hope was lost. So instead he spun around and leapt to the landing below. He ignored the shock as it tore through his body, turned the corner, ran down another six stairs, then jumped the remainder. At the next landing, he ducked into the corridor and ran down the long hallway without looking back.

He kept running, racing down the hall as footsteps echoed behind him. He had no idea if the door at the end was locked, or what he would do if it were. He didn’t really have a choice, though. He could hear his pursuers rounding the corner behind him when he reached the door, and he grabbed the handle and gave it a twist.

No luck.

But as he frantically searched for something to smash the lock with, he noticed a hallway to his left that he hadn’t seen before.

He ran harder. He had only seconds. When they rounded the corner this time they’d send a bullet into his back.

The doors on either side of the hall were all closed, and he couldn’t take a chance to try any of them. He only had the window ahead.

Just 40 feet from the window, Adam had already made up his mind to jump. Death would be quick, his pain would be over as soon as it started. A leap from above would certainly be better than whatever was running behind him. He wouldn’t see Ana again or taste his revenge against Keller, but at least his rotten life would finally be over. Maybe he’d be reunited with his mother and father if something really followed death.

If . . .

Heavy breath harmonized with laughs of victory behind him as his pursuers realized they had Adam cornered. He pictured the leader raising his gun and tried not to imagine lead ripping into his flesh.

Now just 10 feet from the window, he steeled himself to do what he must. Maybe his bold decision would be rewarded by a soft fall. God knew there was enough trash littering every corner of The Outback. Maybe he’d get lucky this time.

Maybe.

A few feet from the window, though, Adam’s feet found something wet and sticky.

With his second fall in only minutes, he slipped in what smelled like blood and fell flat on his face. On the ground, Adam was shocked to realize he still had his hammer. He tightened his grip, got to his knees, and held it up in the air, turning to face his attackers.

“What are you gonna do with that?” one of the men chortled. “Build a wall?”

The leader laughed loudly, waited for the chorus of echoes behind him, then took a step forward, raising his gun. “Think it can stop a—”

The man’s head burst into crimson gore. The first shot was followed by many, until his attackers were painting the wooden floor with their bodies and Adam heard a series of clicks.

He flinched. Adam had been prepared for death and now feared facing something worse. The two men standing before him were garbed in City 6 blue. One was a giant of a man with a thick brown beard and long curly hair.

And the other was . . . the dark-skinned, green-eyed man from his youth.

Colton reached down and held out his hand. Adam hesitated, so his father’s old friend reached down farther, grabbed Adam gently by the arm, and lifted the boy to his feet.

“Come with us, son. We’re getting you out of these Games.”