Page 106 of The Most Dangerous Games

Hannah next, “This is pointless. This doesn’t prove anything. Your entire experiment is a joke.”

“You can go ahead and hate me more than ever. But let me repeat: This is what it is all about.”

Wyatt sighs. “You’re wasting your time. He won’t listen. He thinks he’s doing the right thing. He thinks he’s saving the world. No, he believes it. You guys think he’s evil, but he thinks he’s righteous. Just like Amos was talking about. The blind faith that doing the right evil will net out the right good. Everything in his life told him this was true. He’s trying to convince us, recruit us, get us to see the world the way he does. Just like they did to him.”

They hear more bombs falling outside then, a cluster of them clearly hitting close by, the force enough to knock some of them back into the wall and some to the ground.

“He’s right about one thing. You’ll all see the truth for yourselves. Now all of you do what Conner Lynch just did,” The Host says. “Go save some lives.”

70.

They move tentatively outside onto Church Street. The damage is somehow even worse now than it had been before. The ground is cratered like the moon. Glass crunches under their boots. Smoke curls from a building that used to be a shop, a home, a life. Bodies lie on rubble across the street where a library must have been. People are screaming somewhere ahead.

For now, the only bombs they hear are being dropped to the east, the sound of them slowly diminishing until the streets around them are again quiet.

For now.

A young soldier—barely older than Rupert—touches his earpiece, listens, then looks at Jack.

“Last night and this morning,” the young soldier says to Jack, “this is the worst day of the war.” He looks back at the street in front of them. “They want to finish us off today.”

In the distance they can see adults frantically using their hands to dig through more debris up ahead, clearly trying to find those who might be buried but still alive.

“I must go now,” the young soldier says to Jack. “Tanks coming now, couple of miles.” Then he nods once and jogs away.

“Hey!” Jack says.

Jack salutes him without thinking.

The kid blinks like he’s not used to being seen as a person.

Jack thinks: I was that kid once.

The kid stops, finger to his earpiece again. “Your boss,” he says, and spits the word like it tastes wrong. “He’s in my radio—rebroadcasting on our frequency. Someone gave him access. Someone high . . . He says your job is getting survivors to the public hospital. Not far.”

He rattles off directions, fast.

They huddle and discuss the strategy. Jack, Tipton, Wyatt, Hannah, Alek, Rupert are still one team, along with Marcelo Oliveira. The other team remains Amos Meyers, Zhi Lin, Carlos Lopez, Gabrielle Fontaine, Fumio Hase.

They agree to split up.

The bombing still has not resumed in the part of the city between the museum and the hospital, half the buildings blackened by fire or already crushed to rubble. No matter which way any of them look, the devastation is so sad.

“Where do we even start?” Alek asks.

“By looking for the living,” Jack says. “You and your mother did that after bombings in your city—”

“—More than I care to remember,” she cuts in.

Jack stares at her for a moment.

“You’re tougher than any of us,” he says.

They turn a corner now and see an apartment building halfway up the block, fire already engulfing the bottom floors. One more place about to come crashing down. And soon.

They are running toward it when they hear the sound of drones above them. Jack’s blood goes cold. These are not part of the war. They’re part of what their sick Host calls a game.

The drones are followed by a thunderclap of noise that Jack and Tipton and Alek recognize all too well, the whistling sound that means more bombs are about to hit.