Race with Danger (Run for Your Life Book 1) (18 page)

At the first snick of movement on the other side of the wall, Sebastian and I leap into position as planned, our running shirts stuffed into our sweats.

When the door opens, Sebastian is lying on his mattress, eyes shut, covered with his blanket. I am near the toilet bucket, tugging on the waist of my sweat pants as if pulling them up.

Camo Mask walks in, carrying a box of food. “Don’t get dressed for me, Princess,” he says.

Behind him, in the doorway, stands another faceless man in the black net mask. He holds a dangerous looking rifle trained on me. It looks like it might be military issue, but then, I’m no expert on guns.

“No move,” he says in heavily accented English.

I raise both hands in submission. Pointing with my chin, I indicate Sebastian. “He’s sick,” I tell them. “You have to get him some help.”

Camo Mask sets the box on the floor, and then straightens, watching me. He rests his hand on the handle of his knife. I raise my hands higher. He shoots a glance at his partner guarding the door, and then he turns to go to Sebastian. We had hoped both our captors would enter the room, but Gun Man stands straddle-legged in the doorway, his weapon focused on me, so I wait.

Camo pokes Sebastian with his toe. My partner makes a pitiful-sounding moan. When Camo leans over to feel his forehead, Sebastian grabs his wrist and surges upward. I know he’s going to try to loop his racing tee around the guy’s neck to strangle him. I hope that’s what’s happening as I leap straight toward the guard in the doorway.

In fencing classes in high school, I learned that if you can place yourself behind the business end of a weapon, your opponent must then step backwards to stab you, or in this case—shoot you. Madame Laurent taught me well, and I am in that strategic zone, plowing into the guy, before his gun goes off in a spray of bullets against the wall where I was standing. Gun Man is as solid as a rhino, but I have the advantage of surprise when I smash into his chest and plaster myself against him. Ripping my racing tee shirt out of the front of my sweatpants, I wrap it around his neck. He tries to shake me off as he staggers backward into the hallway. Bullets spray the ceiling. Chips of cement rain down on us. He manages to sling me over a shoulder onto his back. I hang onto both ends of my tee shirt, letting my body weight drag him down.

He falls backward on top of me, which knocks the breath out of my body. I fight through the blackness, pulling on the tee shirt with all my might.
Choke, choke, choke, damn it!
More bullets spray the ceiling, causing a heavier hail of cement. I can’t hear anything but the rat-tat-tat of blasting bullets and the air is thick with dust. Then Gun Man finally drops the weapon to grab at his throat. I begin to wonder if it’s even possible to strangle someone with a tee shirt, when there’s a flash of running shoe and a thud that nearly rips the guy’s head out of my hands. Gun Man goes limp, and I scrabble out from beneath him.

Bash pulls me to my feet, and we race through the lab room and the open doorway on the other side.
Only two, only two, only two
, I chant in my head, hoping that only this pair of guards are in the building with us. Luckily, that seems to be true. There’s an ancient television sitting on the table, along with a video monitor and a controller station that any gamer would envy. No window. No door. Wires lead from the electronics and snake up the nearby wall next to a metal ladder that disappears overhead into a vertical chute.

“Bash—the ladder!”

I scramble up the metal rungs as fast as I can. They rise up through a dark cylindrical shaft. I pray that I’ll be able to quickly open the hatch that must be at the top.

When I reach the ladder’s end, my partner is right behind me, his hands bracketing my feet on the same rung of the ladder. But now there is yelling echoing up the shaft. Our captors have caught up with us. I shove my hands against the metal door above me. It’s heavy, and I have to press my head and shoulders against it before it moves.

The yelling gets louder by the second. Below me, I see Bash’s anxious face. There’s a stripe of blood across his forehead that drips down across his nose onto his lip. Beyond that, I see a flash of hands and Camo Mask climbing fast.

The door budges at last. Sunlight floods in.

Then I feel a tug as Bash’s hands slip from the rung my feet are on.

“Go, Tana!” he shouts in strangled voice.

His hands skid off the rung as he is jerked downward. “Run!”

So I do.

I scramble out of the shaft on my hands and knees into blinding sunlight and dense, humid undergrowth. Somewhere nearby, a parrot squawks in alarm. The sun is intense. It must be near mid-day, and there are no trees shading the hatch. I’m in a small clearing, although the ferns are so thick that the hatch is pretty well hidden. I slam the metal door down behind me, hoping that will slow down my pursuers. But as I push myself to my feet, I hear the clank of metal on metal. Envisioning the tip of that automatic rifle pressing against the hatch, I run for all I am worth.

I don’t have a clue which direction is safe. To one side of the hatch, what looks like an abandoned track leads away into the vegetation. I dash in the opposite direction, heading for the tallest trees and the densest underbrush. It proves to be a bad choice, because between me and those tall trees I stumble into an area that doesn’t offer even the cover of ferns or philodendrons. All vegetation has been cut or flattened. A helicopter pad.

Shouting erupts behind me. I’ve been spotted.

I sprint across the barren rectangle, anticipating a bullet in the spine at any second. I’ve just entered the forest beyond when the bullets begin to spray, making confetti of the vegetation. I dive to the ground and belly-flop over roots, dragging myself, clawing along the dirt with my hands and elbows and pushing with my feet as fast as I can. My right hand lands on something alive that slithers out between my fingers, but I don’t have time to stop and identify the local wildlife. Huge leaves slap me in the face, vines grab at my hands and feet. Sharp branches threaten to take out an eye. In my head, I am chanting
Go go go
; my own personal cheering squad.

It seems entirely, terrifyingly possible that I will die the same way Bailey will—in a barrage of bullets.

What a twisted world.

When the shooting pauses, I push myself to my feet and run as hard as I can, leaping over fallen logs and slimy-looking rocks. I’m vaguely aware of other creatures crashing through the forest nearby, but I don’t even look over my shoulder. It’s only when my toe catches under a trailing vine and I go down hard on both knees that I pause to take stock of my situation.

I back up to a tree and hunker down between its roots as I struggle to control my gasping and my thundering heart. My whole body is shaking with adrenaline. I focus on the ants that crawl across my feet. As my panic slows to a more bearable ebb, more of my surroundings leak into my consciousness. Birds chirp in the branches above. I smell leaf mold and a sweet muskiness. This looks like Verde Island. It sounds like Verde Island. It smells like Verde Island.

In the background is a faint, distant throb—boat, heavy truck engine, helicopter? Many people must be searching for The President’s Son, but who is closer—enemy or friend? Even the drones might be armed—do I dare venture into a clearing? Will I be shot on sight? Even if the good guys—whoever they might be—spy me first, will I be recognized? I’m not wearing my racing clothes. I left my shorts in our jail cell and my racing tee shirt around Gun Man’s neck.

I’m dressed in muddy filthy sweats, which are suffocating me in this heat with their elasticized wrists and ankles. Something is crawling down my right leg, and when I scratch, I discover my orange racing bib with the big numeral 7 wadded up inside my sweatpants. It must have come loose when I jerked my tee shirt out of my waistband.

I pull the bib out and slide the ties over my head. At least it’s a marker of sorts.

Go, Team Seven.

My heart hurts at the thought of leaving Sebastian behind. Are they beating him? Have they killed him?

Even if I live through this, I don’t know how I will survive the guilt. This is the second time I have fled, leaving a loved one behind. I am the very definition of
coward
.

The reverberation in the air gets louder and I can now identify the sound as a helicopter.

It might be a search party looking to rescue us.

It might be more thugs coming to kill me and move Sebastian to a new location.

There’s no way to tell. But I can’t stand the indecision, so I trot toward the noise.

I spy old overgrown vehicle tracks hugging the hillside below my position. I parallel them, staying in the trees and watching for activity. As I wade through thigh-high sharp-edged grass, I experience a strong feeling of déjà vu, but I’m not sure I can trust my senses right now.

When the stench kicks in, I study the roadbed more carefully. Little hillocks dot the dirt track, and then further on, a couple of huge craters. I don’t look at the dark stains in the dirt; I remember too well what those are. This is the spot where Maddie and Jason stepped on the land mines.

A tree, probably knocked loose by that blast, leans out over the roadway, barely hanging onto the ground beneath with its few remaining roots. The nauseating smell coming from up ahead will be that half carcass of the buffalo we found a few days ago, so rotten and odiferous now that no self-respecting tiger would even approach it.

The helicopter comes closer. Friend or enemy? I can’t decide what to do. If I reveal myself, the helicopter crew might simply shoot me. I have to find a way to make everyone on this island who might be looking for us to take notice.

The leaning tree. The trunk is thick and solid, heavy enough to land with a major impact. I gallop to the edge of the road and scramble up onto the leaning trunk. Then, hanging onto a branch to keep from sliding off, I leap up and down like a deranged chimpanzee, thudding my running shoes as hard as I can against the angled trunk. The tree slips another couple of feet toward the roadbed, but then its top hangs up in the branches of a tree on the other side of the road.

No! I crawl further up the trunk, even though this puts me directly above one of the land mine pimples. Then I jump again.

There’s a loud crack as the branch on the other tree gives way, and an echo when the roots snap on the tree I’m standing on. I run a couple of steps down the trunk as it falls, and then fling myself as far away as I can. My full-body landing is simultaneous with a gigantic explosion, so I have no idea which knocks the breath out of me. Chunks of wood, rocks, and major clods of dirt rain out of the sky. A tree next to me tilts and then crashes down across the back of my thighs, pounding me into the ground. A wave of blackness washes over me, but I hold my breath and emerge, still conscious, after it has passed.

Now I’ve really done it. I push myself up on my hands. Dirt clods, rocks, and pieces of wood roll off my torso, but I can’t pull my legs out from beneath the tree trunk. The falling trees have opened up the canopy overhead. The tropical sun beats down fiercely on my sweatsuit-clad body. My eyes catch movements around me, but the world is swirling and my brain can’t make sense out of anything. I hear only a loud, high-pitched ringing like the fire alarm in high school. Every muscle in my body is throbbing.

I am going to die here. I yank off my orange racing bib and flatten it on the ground next to me, face up. Let them know that Team Seven went down fighting.

Black spots tango across my vision and multiply like a madly mutating virus. I’m spinning, falling down a well.

I’m so sorry, Bash.

Bailey.

Aaron.

Please forgive me.

I tried my best.

The tiger looms over me, clawing at my arm. I don’t have the energy to push her heavy paw away. Then the paw transfigures into my mom’s hand on my shoulder, but she’s not calling my name. Instead, she’s making indecipherable noises.

Let me sleep. I try to slide back into the warm embrace of slumber. Then it hits me—Mom? I open an eye to see what Heaven looks like.

A dark-haired woman in a billed cap bends over me. She wears fatigues and a black Kevlar vest and as she straightens, I see it says MARINE on the front of it. I catch a glimpse of an American flag on her sleeve. Heaven has Marines? Well,
that’s
a nasty surprise.

Her mouth opens and closes, but I can’t hear a word she’s saying. Another nasty surprise: heaven isn’t filled with harp music, but with blaring alarms and blinding sunlight. I close my eyes again. Then I feel a great weight lifted from my legs, which is a relief. Hands run up and down my back and buttocks, feeling my bones and muscles. This seems way too intimate, but I don’t have the energy to object.

When a hand closes around my wrist, I have to pull away. Nobody is going to throw me into a jail cell again. I’d rather die here and now. I flip over onto my back, ready to fight.

The woman and two men are kneeling beside me, and I can see the woman making the word OK with her mouth. For good measure, she makes her forefinger and thumb into a circle, pushing her hand into my face, and then taps the label on her vest and the flag on her sleeve.

I nod to show I understand, and then I make the OK sign back.

A gale-force wind is blowing dust and vegetation and our hair every which way. For the first time, I notice that a huge helicopter is hovering overhead. This must be what it’s like to be born deaf, a surprise every which way you look.

The lady Marine exchanges a glance with the two guys kneeling on my other side, saying something and pointing to her own ear. I see a third man, standing off to the side, holding a rifle and standing guard.

Then I remember. I sit up, spit dirt out of my mouth, and yell, “Sebastian! Save Sebastian!”

I can’t hear my own voice, but from the way all three of them jerk back, I must have shouted loudly.

“Underground bunker—at the end of this road.” I point in the direction I came from. How long ago was that? “There’s a helicopter pad.”

She says something to the three men, and within seconds they all leave. So does the helicopter. The woman stays, though. When I try to stand, she helps me to my feet. After the rain of falling earth, the jungle floor holds a perfect impression of my body. You could use it as a mold to make half an Amelia Robinson.

Make that half a Tanzania Grey. I am going to have to be careful with my scrambled brain.

I lean on the lady Marine as we walk to the shade of a tree. We sit, resting our backs against its trunk. As I lean back, a tiny bronze lizard darts out of the way.

She hands me a bottle of water, which tastes as good as champagne. Pulling out a handkerchief from her pants pocket, she wets it from her own water bottle and then wipes it across my cheek. When she pulls it away, the white fabric is covered with dirt and blood.

She does the same thing on the other cheek, and then rinses it out and finishes my whole face. She’s not Mom, but this feels like she cares. She gives me the OK sign again, her eyes a question.

“Thank you,” I say, trying not to shout. I might be whispering for all I know.

“Who won the race?” I ask.

She shakes her head, and her lips form the word, “Nobody.”

I don’t know what she means by that. Were they all killed by terrorists? Flashes of Maddie Hatt’s dying face zip through my brain. Am I the only competitor left alive? I don’t know if I can bear that.

Will the Marines find an abandoned bunker and my partner’s body at the end of the road? By escaping, did I consign Bash to death? It’s like abandoning Aaron all over again.

Why do I survive when everyone I care about is killed?

When my tears come, the woman pulls me into her arms. I bet she has a daughter waiting at home for her.

I hope they both have long happy lives.