THE BOY RACED through the woods, blood streaming from his hand.
He was growing faint.
Can’t pass out. Just gotta make it to the fence.
He heard his pursuers yelling. They sounded as panicked as he felt.
He didn’t know if the dizziness was due to blood loss or the shock of what had just happened.
They were gonna kill me.
He’d known this place was twisted from day one, when they’d stripped him of everything, including his own name. But even with all the vile things he’d seen, he had still assumed that the brutal punishments were designed to intimidate. Not exterminate. That’s why he’d been so calm, willingly letting them guide him along blindfolded and gagged, right up until the moment they’d sliced his palm.
What if this particular test was no different? Maybe he was doing exactly what they wanted him to, running through the trees like a trophy animal. They had only cut his hand. No arteries. Plus, he’d somehow gotten away from the two men holding him, one of them enormous, much bigger than any of the other adults he’d seen there. Had they purposely let him go? No, he shouldn’t sell himself short. He’d fought like hell.
The boy felt a flash of pride. All those hours of memorizing Jean-Claude Van Damme’s moves had been worth it.
Can’t wait to rewatch Kickboxer.
He struggled to move at a full clip, as branches, rocks, and logs snuck up on him in the sparse moonlight. He dodged the obstacles, hoping he was heading in a straight line.
Where’s the damn fence?
He saw it just before he collided with it, the grass of the pasture on the other side of the chain links glowing a dull gray under the night sky. He started to climb without thinking, pain exploding as the metal wire slipped into his open wound. He stifled a scream, hoping to conceal his exact point of escape. While clenching his jaw, summoning the resolve to hoist himself up the ten-foot barrier, he saw it: a cut section of fence not five steps away.
Lucky.
As he pushed his way through the flap and stood in the pasture, he heard the roar of an engine to his left. A pickup truck was hurtling across the pasture in his direction.
They were trying to head him off.
He broke into a sprint toward the cover of trees bordering the pasture, his shadow sprawling in front of him as the headlights shined on his back. He was confident in his speed. Ninety-ninth percentile in the President’s Challenge Shuttle Run. He’d timed himself.
But they were closing the distance, fast.
Get to the tree line.
He knew there’d be a barbed-wire cow fence at the edge of the field. He’d have to clear it in stride.
In only a matter of seconds, they would be upon him.
He was steps from the trees.
The headlights lit up the short fence, helping him judge his distance. He stutter-stepped to set up his leap, then threw his lead leg in the air.
A clean jump.
He heard the truck skid to a stop on the wet grass behind him, the doors opening. Men screaming.
He knew this stretch of forest well; there was barely a patch of nature around town he hadn’t explored. Another hundred feet or so and he’d make it to the clearing.
He broke into the lane cut through the forest, a grassy corridor that followed the sewage line along its lazy descent to the water treatment plant. He heard the chasers clumsily moving through the woods, crashing into branches and grumbling to themselves.
Morons.
Randomly choosing a direction, he dashed down the clearing, reaching a manhole in less than fifty steps. He grabbed a nearby stick and jammed it into the notch on the cover, just as he’d done a thousand times before, no longer thinking about his throbbing hand. The weighty metal disk lifted, releasing an acrid smell. He raised the lid on its edge and swiftly descended into the rank darkness below, skittering down the iron rungs as fast as he could.
The disheveled men popped out of the trees no more than ten seconds after he’d dropped the manhole cover in place.
The boy listened as their cursing voices passed him.
He waited in stinking silence for another five minutes.
Thrusting open the cover, he emerged into the damp air.
The boy fled deeper into the woods.
1
THOUGH REX MCCLENDON knew that he and his best friends were about to attempt something audacious, he never could have anticipated the category-five suckstorm that would spin out from the next hour of his life.