Something slammed into my right shoulder, and I almost fell off the fence.
“Get back here, Three!”
I swung over the top and my blood-soaked fingers slipped on the metal. I dropped off the other side and landed hard enough to get the wind knocked out of me.
Another explosion thundered from beyond the fence. The world lit up in a blaze of orange and red, the colors vivid against the night sky. I stared up at it, and—for the briefest moment—wished those colors would consume me.
When I lifted my head, I didn’t see Hunter.
And no one saw me.
I got to my feet and ran.
I followedthe sun for three days. Drank from shallow streams. Ate berries and mushrooms I knew were safe. Slept in cold, quiet pockets of the forest.
My chest burned right below my shoulder, a steady, pulsing pain that grew with every step. When I peeled my shirt away to look at the spot, it was red and crusty, and I wondered if a bullet had gone through me. Or maybe it was still lodged inside me, slowly killing me.
I didn’t care anymore. I was free.
It didn’t seem like it would last very long, though. The pain in my shoulder was only getting worse, so I tried holding my arm against my side to keep it still. It went numb at some point.
For the first time in my life, I wished for red rain. For the strength it would give me, for how it would dull the pain of my shoulder and help me move faster and farther.
For once, Iwantedthe virus to take hold of me. And if I corrupted…
Well. At least I’d do it out here instead of in a cage.
Halfway through the third day, one of the Corrupted found me. It began following me, but I just kept walking, hoping it would lose interest or die along the way.
It looked like it had been a child once. It was smaller than I was, and its clothes hung off its rotting frame in tatters. How old was it? How long had it been wandering, roaming the earth just looking for something to eat as it wasted away?
What a miserable existence.
The flesh on its face had been ripped off. Or bitten off. Its nose was gone, and the only skin remaining was a small flap dangling from its jaw. It fluttered when the wind blew.
I named it Thirty, because that was the most bloodhounds Hunter and Hayes had ever had in the prison at one time.
They were probably all dead now.
When the sun was high in the sky, I found myself at the bottom of some kind of ravine. The rocky, vine-covered hill in front of me was higher than anything I’d ever seen before, and when I looked left and right, there was no end to it.
That was where the sun was going. I needed to get up there, and I was pretty sure that thing wouldn’t be able to follow me if I climbed up there.
As the Corrupted ambled closer, I studied the steep rocky hill in front of me. It was on a slant, so I could climb it.
I was about to start when that familiar scrape in my head came, the pull in my bones that told me the Corrupted were near.
More than just Thirty.
Shit.
A few burst through the foliage a ways behind me, snarling and growling and heading my way a whole lot faster than Thirty.
“Bye, Thirty.” My voice was a raspy scratch as I waved at the dead thing that had been my companion for half a day.
I turned and started to scramble up the ravine.
I was weaker than I’d anticipated, but used the vines crawling through the steep dirt to help pull myself up. A few times, my arms shook so badly that I almost lost my grip.
