The Last Hunter: Collected Edition (Antarktos Saga #1-5)

I checked all the walls; they’re fifteen feet tall all around. There are a few crevices and centimeter deep ledges that I’m sure a rock climber could use to scale toward freedom. But I’m a thirteen-year-old bookworm. I have trouble climbing the staircase at the Bunker Hill Monument in Boston. At my best I would be trapped here, and I’m currently at my worst, or quickly nearing it.

For a moment, I wish Justin were here with me. He’s the consummate preteen boy. MVP of the soccer team I quit. Manages trees like a monkey. I’m sure his ancestors were successful hunter-gatherers. Sure, my ancestors might have discovered fire or invented the wheel, but in a pit of doom I’d take his lineage any day. He’d have climbed out of this pit before the egg monster emerged from the shadows.

And I am seeing shadows now. Over the past three days my eyes have adjusted to the darkness more than I thought possible. I can see the walls of the pit around me, lit by the crystals. It’s still not quite enough to read by—not that I have a book—but seeing provides at least some comfort.

Thinking of Justin makes me homesick. I’m sure my parents are still searching for me. I’m sure Dr. Clark has told them about my inability to feel cold here. They still have hope. But I’m so far away.

Of course, this cavern could be only ten feet below Clark Station Two. It’s impossible to tell, but I feel a distance from the world that I can’t explain. I’m trapped in a dream. Or on another planet. Beyond reach.

In my heart I know it’s true. At the very least I’m out of earshot. I screamed my voice raw earlier. I don’t know if my throat has healed yet. I haven’t tried speaking. There’s no one to talk to, and I’m determined not to go mad talking to myself. What would a crazy person do down here? There are no pigeons to feed.

A smell tickles my nose.

The hamster in my stomach runs circles.

I smell meat. Cooking meat.

I don’t recognize it, but I would eat it. I would devour it.

I stand, fighting the ache in my legs, and smell the air. It’s divine. I wait there and count out ten minutes, hoping my captor doesn’t want me to die. He’ll bring me food, I tell myself. He needs me for something. He wants me to survive.

On my own.

The thought is mine, but I fight against it. There is no arguing, though. He wants me to survive. To escape, even. But without help. This is some kind of test. Like when I met Justin. After his mother escorted him to my backyard and asked if I would play with him, I brought him to a neighbor’s yard and had him scale a fifteen foot hunk of granite. I couldn’t do it myself, but he didn’t know that. I was in awe when he did it. And he was in awe at what I could do with LEGOs. It was a simple test: complete this task and we will be friends. Could this be something similar?

The hamster is in a rage. “Eat!” it shouts from within.

“Eat what?” I say aloud.

My voice is apparently healed.

As I spin around, looking for a meal that isn’t there, I see the limp silhouette of the egg-monster.

No, I think, but my legs are already carrying me toward it.

Before I see the thing, I smell it. The odor of decomposition turns my stomach, gagging the hamster momentarily. But then it returns, stronger then ever.

I reach out for the beast, regardless. Its flesh is rubbery and rough. I push, mouth watering with the expectation of feeling firm, potentially edible muscle. But the body gives like a water balloon. I wonder if its insides have liquefied, decomposing fully within itself in just three days. I confirm this theory when I push on the skin, and a thick black gel oozes from the wound I created. The substance slides slowly and then slips free, falling onto the back of my hand.

I yank back from it, disgusted. The smell hits me again, but this time it’s not the body that stinks—I’ve backed ten feet away—it’s my hand that reeks. I shake it, flinging the rotten jelly to the floor, coating stone and old bone alike. But I can’t remove it all. I take off my shirt, wipe my hand clean and wind up to throw the shirt to the top of the fifteen foot wall.

As the shirt flies away from me, I think better of discarding it and pinch the fabric just in time. I hold it out away from me and then discard it on the opposite end of the pit.

When I’m done, I’m struck by the fact that I’m back to square one.

The hamster is picking up speed.

The odor of cooking meat grows stronger.

Weakness washes over me.

But then something new joins the chorus of discomfort. A sound.

In all my time here, the only thing I’ve heard is myself. My breathing. My voice. My movements. Other than that, this place is more silent than anything I’ve ever experienced. So the wet slurp I hear now strikes my ears like a gunshot.

I spin, looking for the source, and find nothing. There is nothing around me, in the pit or atop the wall. The floor is stone.

Up, my subconscious whispers. Look up.