66

LOU CHONG HEARD A SCREAM. NOT A WARRIOR’S CRY. IT HAD BEEN high and wet and filled with pain; and it had ended abruptly. Laughter and shouts rose up immediately and washed the scream away. Chong knew what it meant. Someone else had been fighting a zom, and had lost.

The thought threatened to take the strength out of his arms, but he set his jaw and held on. Literally held on. For the last two hours he had been using the Motor City Hammer’s black pipe club to chop divots out of the packed earth walls of the pit. It was grueling work, and to do it he had to gouge divots deep enough for his feet so he could stand in them and reach high to chop fresh holes. His muscles ached. Sweat poured down his body. His toes were numb with cold from standing in the holes, and his arm trembled between each strike.

He never stopped, though. Every time pain or exhaustion or fear tried to coax him down the wall and away from what he was doing, he held a picture in his mind. It wasn’t a picture of himself fighting another zom. It wasn’t even a picture of running free from this place. Chong knew that he had been bitten. He knew that he was going to die.

No, the picture he held in his mind was that of a girl with honey-colored eyes and snow-white hair and a voice like a whisper. A crazy girl. A fierce and violent girl. A lost girl who didn’t even like him.

Lilah.

If he was going to die, then he was going to die as a warrior. If Lilah didn’t—or couldn’t—love the weak and intellectual Chong, then perhaps she would have a softer heart when remembering the warrior Chong who fought his way out of Gameland. As Lilah herself had fought her way out years ago.

And maybe … just maybe … he could save some of the other kids trapped here in Gameland. Like Benny and Nix and Lilah had done last year. If he couldn’t go with them on their journey, if he was to die sometime in the next few hours or days, then he wanted his life to mean something. He wanted to matter.

He reached and slid his fingers into the hole he’d just chopped, and pulled. His muscles screamed at him, but his mind screamed back at them. The rim of the pit was only three feet above him now.

One more hole to go.