The Perfect Escape (The Perfect Escape #1) - Suzanne Park Page 0,57
One, you’ll start the competition at the red marker. Bus Two, you’ll start at the blue one. Bus Three starts at green, straight ahead.”
Nate put his hand back on my arm. “You ready to win this?”
“Affirmative.”
Chapter Eighteen
Nate
“How do we know when it’s time to start? And where do we line up? Do they blow a whistle or something?” There was an unfamiliar edge to Kate’s voice.
“Hey, do I look like a zombie apocalypse competition brochure to you?” I smirked. “I know about as much as you do.” The atmosphere buzzed with confusion. “Don’t worry. Everyone here looks as clueless as us.”
She punched my upper arm just as a horn blasted over the airwaves. “Good luck, Zombiegeddon participants!” a cheery voice said. “For more information about the event sponsor, go to zeneration.us.”
What the—?
The two guys next to me asked, “So we just…go?” They were identical twins, with extreme muscle definition and arms almost the size of their legs. Maybe they drank protein shakes and worked out together or deadlifted each other. Both wore matching red bandannas on their heads, tied the same way. Like loser pirates.
“Yeah, probably. Good luck,” I said.
“You too, Team Hot Pink. Hope the zombies are color-blind!” They jogged to join the masses, heading straight into the eight-foot-tall hedge maze directly ahead. The opaque, vibrant green walls were fashioned from entangled, dense huckleberry and honeysuckle bushes, trimmed back to let people through.
“We’re Team Magenta actually!” I shouted after them, but they were already too far ahead to hear me. “Team TBD!” I tugged Kate’s arm. “Let’s go too!”
If we didn’t move fast to join the others, we might miss out on something, like better weapons or some sort of extra-life bonus. Or money. Maybe they’d get better snacks. We sprang forward to catch up to the masses, leaving the designated marker behind us.
BOOM!
Smoke came from above the hedges. Burning-eyes-and-lungs smoke, not smoke-machine smoke. Shit just got real.
Shouts.
Moans.
Screams.
What had we gotten ourselves into?
No way were we walking straight into whatever was happening in front of us. Those first movers had encountered something scream-worthy, and we weren’t about to join them. A quick scan of the area revealed a separate dirt path running adjacent to the hedges. A hand-painted wooden sign on a nearby tree read, Beware! written in reddish-brown script. Blood, presumably. Nice touch, Zombiegeddon.
“Okay, let’s go over there!” I said to Kate. She jogged along next to me, both hands holding her backpack shoulder straps. My ankle had mostly healed from the ladder incident, but it was still stiff.
We reached the foot of the trail and exchanged looks. Kate asked, “Wanna do the honors and go first?”
“Nah, I think we do ‘ladies first’ this time.”
She shook her head. “Fine, you chicken.” She ran ahead before I could even tell her I’d been joking.
I caught up to her and was surprised by how winded I was already. The packs were heavy, and walking at an incline made me insta-sweaty. My heart pounded from the cardio and the sheer excitement and terror of everything happening around us. “Well, if there are any zombies on this path, they should be plenty distracted by all the noise going on in the maze.” Gray plumes of smoke wafted in our direction. My eyes watered from the sting.
Kate nodded and started walking northbound. “Hey, maybe we should go to the brook to fill our—”
My eyes widened, and instinctively I jerked her arm back. Hard. Like, dislocation hard.
“Ow! What the hell, Nate?” she snapped.
“Trip. Wire,” I panted. She’d almost walked straight into it. We needed to be more careful. Who knows what would have happened if we triggered it? Maybe hundreds of zombies would fall from the trees. Swarms of bees instantly released from captivity. Feces catapults. My imagination ran wild with possibilities.
“Holy shit,” she whispered as she regained steady breathing. “Trip wire? We’ve only walked a hundred feet.”
Holy shit was right. But winning this thing wasn’t supposed to be easy. My anxiety was at an all-time high,