Arena Three

Despite our exhaustion, no one sleeps well that night. Bree wakes several times, sweating and screaming. She used to have night terrors all the time when we lived alone on the mountains but they stopped when we were at Fort Noix. I feel terrible for putting her in a position where she is so scared again. The only difference now is she has Charlie to comfort her. I can’t help but feel a little pang of jealousy as I realize she leans on him more readily now than she does on me. It’s partly her growing up and becoming independent—she’s starting to realize she can’t rely on me forever—but it’s also partly because of me, because of how I’ve had to shut down my emotions to get through it all. I’ve been through so much, I don’t have anything left in me to give.

As I lie there in the darkness, my mind mulling over everything we’ve been through, it dawns on me that I’ve become the soldier my dad always wanted me to be, the practical, tough, emotionless son he never had. But I also know that my emotionless exterior will only last so long. I won’t be able to keep it up forever. One day, all the heartache will hit me at once, and when it does, I’ll cry enough tears to refill the Mississippi.

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.