5. Audrey
AUDREY
The Barbarian who’d frisked me lowered a bolt over the door.
Yeah, a bolt. A giant piece of wood attached to the wall that looked like it belonged in a castle.
The energy in the room shifted as the women around me realized what we’d done.
What we’d signed up for.
We really were locked underground with the teams of masked men. We really had just agreed to let them hunt us in the tunnels. We really were going to be stripped, chained, used if we were caught.
The men crowded around each other on their side of the room, casting glances our way before turning their attention back to their teammates.
“They’re choosing.”
“What?” Madison asked next to me.
I hadn’t even realized I’d spoken aloud. “They’re choosing which of us to hunt.”
Which of us would be their prey.
“God…” Madison tugged on her braid and blew out a breath. Her bangs billowed out from her forehead. “This is so archaic.”
She wasn’t wrong, but I wasn’t surprised we were all here. We were just part of the centuries-long history of women who’d made difficult decisions and complicated trades to stay safe.
To stay alive.
We did what we had to do using the tools we had available.
Our bodies had always been first among those tools.
And there was even more at stake for me, because I would do anything in my power to keep Ella safe.
Fight. Maim. Kill.
I would use my body and any other tool I could find.
The men stopped talking almost all at once, like the teams had been communicating telepathically and had come to an agreement.
Then the bull who’d given me the consent form stepped to the front of the group and spoke to the Barbarian who’d locked the door.
“Open it up.”
He removed a set of keys from his jeans and crossed the room to open the door at the end of the short hall.
A rush of cold air blew into the room like a caged ghost suddenly set free, and with the cold, a smell that wasn’t entirely unpleasant: damp stone and dirt.
He stood in the middle of the room, between us and the masked men, and removed his phone from his pocket.
“You’ll have a five minute head start,” he said.
I shuffled with the other girls as they edged toward the tunnel entrance. The move was instinctual. There was no need for words, for commiseration.
The Barbarian held up his phone. “Three…”
My heart beat like an overactive drum.
“Two…”
My stomach turned, my pulse roaring in my ears.
“One.”
And then I was off and running with the other girls, stepping through the arched doorway that led to the tunnels.
The darkness was as solid as a wall and I skidded to a stop without thinking, my body rebelling against the idea of moving farther into the tunnels even as my mind knew I had no choice.
Someone grasped for my hand and I realized it was Madison.
“Come on,” she said. “My friend said there will be lights. Eventually.”
It seemed unimaginable as we waded through the soupy blackness. It seemed unimaginable that light existed at all, that there was a world beyond the endless abyss through which we moved.
In the absence of sight, my hearing was magnified: the shuffle of our feet as we hurried to put distance between us and the men, the gasp of our breath, the loose stone displaced under the soles of our shoes.
The smell was stronger now: cold stone laced with dampness, the dirt tinged with something fetid and overripe that made me think of dead animals.
I clung to Madison’s hand, feeling stupid and naive. I was older than her by at least ten years, older than all of the girls, and yet I felt like a child navigating the darkness outside my bedroom at night, afraid of the boogyman under the bed.
“Come on,” Madison said through the dark. “We need to get as far away from the holding room as we can.”
She pulled me along until I found my footing. Then I broke free and ran next to her.
The other girls peeled off a little at a time, their footfalls and the huff of their breath gradually fading as they fanned out into the tunnels that wound under Blackwell Falls like a secret labyrinth.
It was so dark I half expected to run into a wall, to be taken down by something on the ground — a mixture of dirt and stone from the feel of it — under my feet.
I didn’t know how long we’d been running when I realized I could make out the shadow of Madison next to me: her braid shimmering in the darkness, the point of her chin visible as a silhouette.
“It’s think it’s getting lighter,” I said.
“I think so too,” she said. “Come on!”
We picked up our pace and the tunnel slowly came into view around me, the stone walls slick with moisture, the curved ceilings surprisingly high for tunnels that had probably been dug by hand.
A minute later, we found the light source, a single amber bulb hanging from the ceiling and, a few feet away, a digital clock mounted to the stone wall.
23:42:51.
It had been less than twenty minutes since the Hunt had started.
“They’re in the tunnels,” Madison said, her pretty face glowing in the light.
Sweat dotted her hairline, but she seemed calm, all things considered.
“How far back do you think?”
“No idea, but we should take water while we can.” She headed for two pallets of bottled water I hadn’t noticed stacked next to the wall.
“It’s so weird,” I said, taking the two bottles she handed me.
She uncapped the bottle of water in her hand. “What is?”
“The water.” I took a drink and looked around, taking note of the thick chains hanging from the walls, their cuffs clearly meant for hands and feet. “This place isn’t exactly hospitable, and they’re here to hunt us. So why leave us water?”
“They can’t fuck with us if we die of dehydration,” she said.
She had a point.
I tipped my water bottle to my lips for another drink, then froze when a loud thunk sounded from deep in the tunnels. It echoed off the stone walls like a death knell.
Madison’s eyes were wide. “What was that?”
“No idea, but I don’t love the sound of it.
” I suddenly realized that we were deep underground, moving through tunnels that probably hadn’t been surveyed by engineers in decades, if ever.
We’d be buried alive if the tunnels collapsed.
Then again, maybe the sound had come from something else.
“Any idea what they plan to do to us in here?”
I consent to be hunted.
I consent to be stripped.
I consent to be marked.
I consent to be owned.
I’d signed the consent form, but detail was a hallmark of my job as a doctor, and after the sound I’d just heard in the tunnels, I suddenly wanted more of it.
Madison bit her lip. “I’ve only heard rumors, and none of them are the same.”
“What do you mean?”
“One of the girls I work with did the Hunt and said the team who caught her chained her to the wall, took off her clothes, and fucked her right here,” she said.
“But this other girl I know from school said she signed up last year and there were sprinklers and heat lamps and stuff. The team who caught her didn’t do anything to her until they took her home. ”
“Sprinklers and heat lamps?” I looked up but didn’t see anything in the ceiling except the glowing amber bulb.
“That’s what she said.” Madison set her empty bottle on the ground next to the pallets of water. “We should keep moving. Unless…”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Unless?”
“You want to split up?”
I shook my head. “I’m good sticking together. Safety in numbers and all that. Plus that sound freaked me out.”
“Honestly, same.”
I tucked the second water bottle into the pocket of my leather jacket. “You should take another water for the road.”
“Good idea.” She tucked a water bottle into the waistband of her jeans.
We startled when another thunk rang through the tunnels.
Goosebumps rose on my arms in spite of my leather jacket.
“What the fuck is that?” Madison asked.
“I don’t know, and I don’t think I want to find out,” I said. “Come on. Let’s keep moving.”