The Hunt by Megan Shepherd

breathe some fresh air. Gulp it down, like a man dying of thirst would drink water. These tunnels were so tight. Were they getting smaller? Chalk was getting everywhere. It tasted ashy, almost like something burning. The air had taken on the smell of smoke, not the pleasant campfire smell from before, but like something roasting and rotten. He pressed a hand to his nose, his eyes bleary with the smoke, and took a corner too fast.
    Something zapped his arm.
    A cleaner trap!
    There it was, that thin sparkly line, and his hand right smackin the middle of it. His throat closed up, but no ball of gas came. No flames.
    And then he saw why.
    Just ahead in the tunnel, curled in a ball, was the charred body of some kid who had already triggered the trap—it must not have been reset yet.
    Leon jerked his hand out of the trap’s laser light, eyeing the charred body with a grimace. Judging by the smell, it had been there a few days, at least.
    He crawled closer, shining his light on the body hesitantly. A black kid about his age, arms covering his face. Most of his clothes were too charred to be recognizable, though they were made of a khaki material with a lion emblem on the pocket. Leon nudged a pair of half-melted goggles around his neck. Part of the boy’s skin oozed off, and Leon gagged and stumbled toward the closest door.
    â€œGross gross gross.”
    He shoved the door open a crack. Blessedly, it led to an empty hallway.
    Fresh air came pouring in, smelling like ozone, and he gulped it greedily, trying to get the smell of burned skin out of his nose. He should climb out, figure out where he was, deliver this reeking package, and go drown himself in vodka until he’d forgotten everything he’d just seen.
    He started to open the door farther.
    But then he thought of that lion emblem.
    The boy wasn’t far from the door where he’d drawn the zebra-striped symbol. Lions, zebras—it didn’t take a genius toguess the dead kid probably came from the same place where Lucky and Mali were being kept. What if Lucky and Mali ended up in the tunnels too? Would he be crawling over their charred bodies next?
    He slammed the door closed. In the cage, he wouldn’t have hesitated to leave them behind. But something had changed. He had changed. For the first time in his life he had . . . friends. Friends who he’d rather not have die in a ball of fire. And in a way, he realized, his dad had been wrong. Friends mattered too.
    Grumbling, he turned around. He retraced his chalky marks through the maze of claustrophobic tunnels, back toward the door with the zebra-stripe symbol.
    Maybe—just this once—he could be a damn hero.

13
    Cora
    CORA BLINKED AWAKE TO find herself staring at the dead, black eyes of a deer.
    She sat abruptly, nearly knocking heads with the mousy-haired girl who Dane had called Pika. She was in the backstage cell block. A dead deer lay nearby on the floor, half covered by a burlap sack. Pika absently stroked its snow-white tail.
    â€œWhat happened?” Cora pressed a hand to her head. The deer’s blood made her remember other blood—Cassian’s blood—and the gleaming sharp point of the toy jack.
    Lucky swam into her vision. “You blacked out,” he said. “Your nose was gushing blood. Cassian carried you back here and Pika revived you.”
    The girl held up a greasy package that smelled like lemon, before heading to the medical room. Mali took her place, forehead knit in concern.
    Cora sat up, wincing, blinking so her vision would refocus,and looked at the clock. Free Time, about halfway over. The other kids were spread out in groups around the room. Christopher was reading from a dog-eared paperback by the feed bins. Makayla was twisting her hair into tight balls, using the reflection of a metallic wall as a mirror. Shoukry and Jenny played dominoes around a makeshift table. Dane came in with a saw, ignoring Cora, and grabbed the dead