“Shit,” Dean said, continuing down into the valley. It was just his luck. Remanded to his room, and here he was finding Moxen probably dead.
He threw himself to the ground beside Moxen, not even thinking for a moment that the bigger boy was just fooling him. Moxen’s legs were too twisted for that, and it had to be painful. If nothing was broken, it had been a close call.
Dean grabbed the boy’s shoulder, turning him gently, wanting to make sure there was no chance Moxen would smother with his face pressed against the earth like that.
The youth rolled over loosely, dirt smeared against his pallid cheeks. The boy’s eyes were halfway open, glinting dully in the weak moonlight. Drool oozed out of one corner of his mouth, mixing with the weak traces of blood. He blew out white bubbles of spittle and moved one arm, struggling to speak.
Dean knew that if Moxen had been knocked out, he’d have come to quicker than he was. And that white spit looked like evidence of a bad reaction to something he ate.
“What’s wrong?” Dean asked, leaning closer. Then he spotted the small feathered dart stuck deep in Moxen’s neck. A chill slid down Dean’s back. He tried not to act as if he’d seen it. Then he heard the pad of a soft footfall behind him.
Throwing himself to one side, Dean dived and rolled, coming up on his feet so he could look back in the direction he’d heard the footstep. He was breathing hard, his heart hammering.
A dark figure, barely discernible in the black clothing and standing in the tree line less than forty feet away, took aim with a long-barreled blaster. A ruby dot appeared at the top of the pistol, sending a beam forward that stabbed into Dean’s right eye.
Dean dropped, squatting and placing the palms of his hands against the ground. What sounded like two huge bugs whipped by over his head, missing him by inches. Shoving himself up again, he ran, heading back toward the starting area. Dean didn’t recognize the man, but evidently he had been waiting for the boys to come breaking through the brush.
Or he’d come after them.
The new thought didn’t sit well with Dean as he ran, making him more cautious. The sound of footsteps pursued him. His shoulders tightened up, expecting to feel one of the darts pierce his skin.
Yells from some of the other boys, scattered over the terrain, let Dean know the man hadn’t come alone. He reached out for the slender bole of a pine tree and swung himself in a tight curve to point himself in an altered direction. While he had his hand on the tree, he felt a feathered dart sink into the rough bark between his fingers.
He stayed with the pine trees, knowing the branches would be heavy enough to deflect the darts. Then he was all out of trees, with the ridgeline leading back at the starting point seventy yards away. He zigzagged, risking a glance over his shoulder that showed his pursuer breaking out of the brush twenty yards behind him. His lungs burned from the sustained effort and fear, knowing the man following him could come faster simply by maintaining a straight line that Dean couldn’t risk.
He made it to the top of the ridge and saw Mr. Solomon standing there in the shadow of a tree and holding binoculars to his face.
“Mr. Solomon!” Dean gasped, sprinting toward the phys-ed teacher. “Something’s gone wrong! There are men out there shooting us!”
Solomon turned his head, dropping the binoculars to his side. “I know.”
Dean stopped his forward progress at once, reading the coldness in the teacher’s answer. “You did it! You betrayed them, betrayed all of us!”
“Yeah,” Solomon said. His fist came around suddenly, filled with one of the long-barreled pistols. The ruby light gleamed, splashing across Dean’s chest.
Before Dean could move, a trio of whispered coughs sounded, followed immediately by three bursts of pain across his chest and stomach. Incredulous, he glanced down at himself. Three feathered darts stuck out from his body. He reached for them, feeling the pain already going away as a numbness spread throughout his torso. Then his legs wouldn’t hold him anymore, and he fell to the ground.