Arena 3 (Book #3 in the Survival Trilogy) Chapter 17

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

I’m almost surprised when I wake the next morning, still alive and in one piece. No disaster befell us during the night like I’ve come to expect. I even slept at some point.

I still have the heavy metal neck brace on that the slavers put on me and have no idea how I’m going to get it off; I can’t exactly get Molly to take her axe to it. It’s irritating and cumbersome, but it’s just another niggling pain I’m going to have to endure.

My wounds are sore as I start to climb the ladder. When I reach the trap door, I push up with my hands and discover that it’s stuck. I push again, putting more strength into it. But it doesn’t budge.

I start to panic. The darkness down in the bunker seems to suddenly envelop me, and the stagnant air seems to grow even hotter. I can’t help but think of the prison cell Ben and I were locked in back in Arena 1 in all those months ago.

Finally, I jam my shoulder in the trapdoor hard enough for it to give. The hinges ping off as I slam my palms into it.

Quickly, I ascend the ladder, and the sight that meets me makes me cry out in despair.

Everything is gone.

From the floorboards beneath me, I can hear people jerking awake, scrabbling to get to the ladder and find out what’s making me wail. Ryan’s the first to emerge out of the hole. He looks at where I sit crumpled on the floor with an alarmed expression on his face.

“He took everything!” I cry. “Craig. He stole everything.”

The others begin filing out of the underground bunker, and look around at the empty room with dismay. The food, the weapons, our backpacks, everything has gone. Then I realize, with an even greater despair, that our map has been taken as well.

Ryan comes over and drags me back up to my feet.

“We can’t stay here, Brooke. We don’t know who he will have alerted to our presence. We have to leave.”

I know he’s right but I can hardly stand. The shock of losing our possessions is too great for me to bear. All that food, gone, and the means with which to hunt stolen from us too. What are we going to do?

Finally, I manage to stand and stagger out of the shack and into the bright daylight. At the very least, our bikes remain. Craig must have left them knowing the engine noise would wake us up.

Without the map to guide us to Houston, we have no choice but to follow the Mississippi south. The roads are so destroyed here that there aren’t even any signs we can follow, and the bombs have flattened everything, meaning there aren’t even any distinguishable landmarks. It may add some more hours onto our journey but at least we’ll end up in Louisiana eventually, and then it’s just a case of heading west until we hit Houston.

We mount the bikes and go, my heart falling as I lose a bit more faith in the kindness of mankind.

*

After several hours driving, our gas gauges start to get low. It worries me to think we might have to make the last leg of the journey on foot.

We’re in a town built on the banks of the river that hasn’t been completely flattened. It’s called Baton Rouge and the road here is still intact. There’s a road sign informing us that Route 10 heads all the way west right to Houston. I can hardly believe our luck. The road sign tells us it’s 271 miles, which will take about six hours if the road holds out the whole way. As long as we don’t have to detour or run out of gas we should be there by nightfall.

It seems like everything is finally looking up. But a feeling inside of me says it won’t last for long.

We’ve been riding for another four hours when something up ahead gets my attention. I can’t quite tell what it is I’m looking at yet, but something about the view ahead of me isn’t quite right.

The closer we get, the better my view becomes, and it dawns on me that we’re approaching a series of massive craters that have completely obliterated the road.

We drive up to the precipice and stop. One by one, we dismount from our bikes and stand side by side in a row staring at the chasm before us, the latest hurdle blocking our way.

“It looks like the Grand Canyon,” Bree says.

I don’t know how she can find beauty in it at all. To me, it looks like a scar in the earth. A war-inflicted wound. A gash that will never heal, violently blighting the world.

I can’t help the disappointment that bites at me. We’re less than two hours from Houston and now we’re facing another massive detour that might add who knows how many hours onto our journey. We’re so low on gas, I don’t even know if our bikes can handle going off course again. The last thing we need is to be stranded and have to proceed on foot. It would be a cruel trick for fate to play on us when we’re so close to the Texas border.

“What are we going to do?” Molly says. “We can’t go around it. It looks like it stretches on for miles.”

She’s right. The crater goes on and on, as far as the eye can see.

“We’ll have to find a way down,” I say.

“You want to drive through it?” Ryan questions me, an eyebrow raised.

“What about the radiation?” Ben adds. “It will be worse down there. We can’t risk exposure.”

As much as it frustrated me when the two were arguing, having them team up against me is even more annoying.

“Do either of you have a better plan? You know how to make a bridge?” I say sarcastically in response. When I’m met by a wall of silence, I add, “Didn’t think so.”

And with that, we get back on the bikes and begin driving slowly along the edge, looking for a place we might be able to drive down. But this crater isn’t home to a slaver community. No one’s chiseled a path for bikes into the crater’s edge. It’s just a sharp, jagged hole, blasted into the earth by a nuclear bomb.

“If we had some rope, we could try shooting it across with an arrow,” Molly says.

“I’m pretty sure that only works in cartoons,” I say. “Plus, there’s the whole not having any rope situation.”

“What if we abandon the bikes?” Bree says from behind me. “Maybe we’d be able to scramble down?”

It’s one of the more sensible suggestions, but it’s still too risky. Not having the bikes could mean the difference between life and death. We need to keep hold of them as long as we possibly can.

“Hey, look!” Charlie suddenly cries, pointing ahead.

We ride over to where he was pointing and see animal tracks leading down into crater. If we follow in their footsteps, we’re bound to find a safe way down. It looks like a pack of them walk this route regularly, at least enough to have worn a wide groove into the mountainside. But I look at the others, unsure.

“They might be predators,” I say.

Molly raises a cocksure eyebrow. “Last time I checked, we were the predators,” she says.

I can’t help but smile at her fighting spirit. She’s right. Whatever animals made those tracks, we’re stronger, better, and fiercer than them.

“Okay,” I say. “Let’s do this.”

I lead the way down the perilous path. We don’t use the motors, instead letting gravity do the work. Any way we can save gas now we’ll have to take. Plus, if we’re quiet enough, we won’t draw attention to ourselves to whatever predators are lurking in the bottom of the crater.

Bree holds onto me tightly, tense as I maneuver down the steep incline. Bits of rock tumble from beneath my tires, making my heart fly into my mouth. She’s gripping so hard it’s starting to irritate the wounds on my chest and back.

After a tense ten minutes, we finally make it into the crater. As soon as I get on level land, an eerie feeling comes over me. My spine tingles as I get that undeniable sensation that we’re being watched.

We race across the trough of the crater then reach the steep wall at the other side. There’s no sign of a path back up. I curse under my breath.

“We need to search on foot,” I say. “There’s not enough gas to keep riding back and forth.”

As I start scanning the crater’s edge, it occurs to me that the only way we’re getting the bikes back up is by pushing. Even if we do find a path we can follow, it’s going to be back-breaking work getting back out of here.

“I think I’ve found something!” Molly calls.

We all go over and see her peering into a hole, five feet in diameter, dug into the side of the crater. It’s clearly been made by an animal of some sort.

“Do you think it’s a burrow?” I ask.

“I guess so,” Molly says. “Pretty big burrow.”

I don’t want to even imagine the type of creature that’s living inside. At the basin of the crater, the radiation will be high, meaning whatever lives down here will have taken a huge dose over the years. Just like the crazies in the lakes in the north, the creatures living down here will have evolved into something unrecognizable and formidable.

We all agree it’s too risky to venture into the burrow, even if it does eventually lead out of the crater. If there is something sleeping inside, it’s probably best to let it rest.

“I think I see something,” Ben says, peering into the distance.

Sure enough, there’s another path leading up the crater, made by the same prints as the one we took down. The animals that made these tracks have shown us down into the crater and are now offering us a way back out. They’re like guardian angels.

We go back to get the bikes and head toward the path. But as we go, a new noise joins the thrumming of our engines.

Jack and Penelope are suddenly alert, their ears pricking up, their teeth bared.

“What’s that noise?” I call out to the others.

We draw to a halt and cut off the engines. As soon as we do, the noise becomes perceptible. There’s no mistaking it. It’s the howling of wolves. And it’s close. Too close for comfort.

Penelope and Jack immediately join in with the howling. Bree tries to quiet Penelope down but it’s no use. The tiny Chihuahua is trying to make herself look fierce.

“Quick,” I say. “We have to go.”

But it’s too late. All at once, we’re surrounded by the most disgusting creatures I’ve ever seen. They look like wild dogs, but the radiation they’ve absorbed from having lived in the crater has made their bodies mangled. Their spines are curved upward, making them look more like hyenas than dogs. Their fur is balding in places, sticking up coarsely in others. Tumors grow out of their skin. Saliva drips from their jaws in thick strings, and their teeth, like their claws, are enormous.

I gun the engine of my bike, hoping that the noise will scare them off, and start whizzing around and around in circles, trying to tire the creatures out so that they’re slow enough to take a hit. The others do the same. The wolves chase our bikes, their eager jaws snapping, treating it like a game, as though they’re nothing but puppies. It reminds me of Sasha, our old pet dog, and the way she would lumber around play fighting with me. I’m almost relieved that she was killed by slaverunners; they saved her from this fate, of being turned into a grotesque, cancerous, murderous creature.

We’re burning through our remaining gas fast, and the dogs are showing no signs of slowing. If only there was somewhere to ride the bikes up and out of the crater, but it’s too steep.

Suddenly, I hear a scream. I look back and see Molly’s bike careening away as she and Charlie tumble to the ground.

“Charlie!” Bree screams.

The wolf-dogs pounce on them straightaway. I turn my bike around and race straight at them. Thankfully, they’re scared off and run away.

I leap off the bike and run over to where Molly and Charlie are sprawled on the ground, Molly cowering over him, protecting him with her whole body. I grab her by the shoulders and roll her back. There’s a huge pool of blood there.

Charlie wriggles out and flies right into Bree’s arms. Molly lies there panting, gritting her teeth in agony.

The dogs have torn a hole in her calf so deep I can see the bone. The sight turns my stomach. Ryan removes his shirt and bandages her up, but it soaks up with blood within a matter of moments. He looks back at me gravely.

“We can’t stay here,” I say. “There could be more packs waiting to get us. Can you walk, Molly?”

She tries to stand on her bitten leg but the second she puts weight on it she cries out in pain. I look up at the sheer face of the crater. Not only are we going to have to climb, but we’re going to have to carry Molly. There’s no way we’ll be able to push the bikes up while carrying her at the same time. We’re going to have to abandon them. From here on out, we’re going by foot.