Free Alive by Scott Sigler

choose to be here any more than the rest of us did. We will never know why he attacked us. No one meant for him to die. Today…today was his birthday.”
    The words themselves are meaningless. The way Aramovsky says them, though, the smooth, calm tone of his voice…his words are comforting.
    We still have no idea what’s going on, and this nightmare keeps getting worse, but like the rest of us, Yong was a twelve-year-old kid. It isn’t my fault he’s dead. Now that I think about it, it isn’t his, either—the fault lies with whoever put us in those coffins and abandoned us in this dungeon.
    “Thank you, Aramovsky,” I say.
    Bello can’t stop crying. Her eyes are puffy and red. She kneels next to Yong. Her body trembling, she touches her forehead to his. She stays there for a moment. It’s heartbreaking to watch. It almost brings me to tears.
    But still, no tears come.
    She stands. Head hung low, Bello moves past me.
    Yong lays alone in a trampled, smeared ring of crimson slush. Now he’s just like the Grownups we left behind: a victim of violence, dead because a knife punched a hole in his body.
    I wonder how long it will be before he crumbles to dust.
    There is nothing else we can do here. I look at O’Malley, tilt my head toward the dark hall.
    O’Malley grabs Yong’s wrists. Aramovsky takes his ankles. Together, they walk down the dim hall, the dead boy a shallow curve between them, his head hanging limply and jostling with every step.
    They carry him away.
    Bello, Spingate and I wait. It doesn’t take long. O’Malley and Aramovsky come back—without Yong. I don’t know if they left him in a coffin, but they left him, and I feel relieved.
    The two boys join us. Aramovsky still doesn’t have any blood on him, but his expression is different. He’s seen something that frightened him, disturbed him.
    I look to O’Malley. He won’t meet my eyes. I know what he and Aramovsky saw—more murdered children.
    “All the coffins had been torn open,” Aramovsky says. His voice sounds different, like the last bit of breeze before a gust of wind fades away completely. “We found one where the lid still moved. We put Yong inside and pushed the lid closed. It clicked shut. He is at rest.”
    I wonder if they put him on top of a skeleton, or moved the skeleton to the floor so Yong could lie alone. I decide I don’t want to know.
    “Time to leave,” I say.
    I turn and move down the hall. The others follow. This time, O’Malley stays with them.
    I walk out in front, alone.

THIRTEEN
    W e walk uphill.
    We are covered in blood.
    Bello’s lower lip is swollen and split.
    O’Malley’s nose has stopped bleeding, but a few drops still ooze from the cut over his eye.
    The hallway goes on and on. The dust is endless.
    There has to be a way out of this place. There has to be.
    My mouth is dry and pasty. I’m so thirsty. I’m not hungry anymore, but I think that’s not a good thing. My head hurts.
    The others are in the same shape. They shuffle more than walk. They look beyond tired, with dry lips and sunken eyes. Maybe we were all perfect when we woke up, but not anymore.
    If we don’t find water soon, will we be able to keep walking?
    And we need to sleep. If we find any coffin rooms farther up, maybe we’ll rest for a while.
    Every few steps, I see Yong’s wide eyes, the look of disbelief on his face.
    It was an accident. Everyone thinks so. There was nothing I could have done. He ran into the knife. He did. He was going to hit me. Was I supposed to let him?
    I look at my hand, the right one, the one that holds the knife. His blood—dry now—is in the folds of my knuckles, mixed in with the dust and tacky sweat that covers me head to toe.
    I’ve never been this dirty. I’ve never been this sweaty and disgusting. I’ve never been this afraid, this thirsty, this alone.
    I haven’t been a good leader, but four people are counting on me to take them to safety. I don’t know if I’m twelve or if I’m twenty