The Wild Zone's Deadly Curse

Chapter 1 I Do Target Practice with the Family （I’m the Target）

I Do Target Practice with the Family (I’m the Target)

Some crisp fall night, you might find yourself stumbling through the woods, wearing a burlap sack over your head.

It won’t be a fashion choice.

Your hands will be tied behind you. Your wrists will burn from the ropes that bind them. You’ll probably have a spear pointed at your back, too, poking a hole through your favorite Super Junior T-shirt.

And as your captors cackle and prod you along, you will beg them for mercy…and a breath mint.

You do a whole lot of smelling your own breath inside a burlap sack. It’ll make you really wish you hadn’t eaten a chili cheese dog for dinner.

Heck, while my fellow abductees and I were being force-marched through the woods, I wished I’d done lots of things differently.

I wouldn’t have agreed to come to this unhinged training camp, for one thing. I wouldn’t have been so trusting when my new cabinmates surrounded me, grinning like hyenas, and then jumped me and bound my hands behind my back.

And yesterday, when this whole nightmare started, I wouldn’t have made my last words to my older sister Olivia so harsh.

Yes, at the time, she’d been rudely yanking my participation ribbons off the wall to make room for more of her first-place medals, but I shouldn’t have called her a heartless harpy.

She’d looked so hurt—eyebrows scrunched together, mouth turned down like a sad banana.

And Mom? She’d raged, “Katie Kim, don’t you ever speak to your sister like that!”

I’d called Olivia lots of worse things before, but whatever. I hated that my last memory of Mom and Liv was of them looking so disappointed in me. Especially since I wasn’t sure I’d ever see them again. They were my only real family, not counting my dad.

Which brings me to the next thing I would have done differently. Before I left home, I really should have tucked my dad’s dagger in my boot.

It was about the only gift I had gotten from the deadbeat. The last time I’d seen him was when he came to one of my elementary school soccer matches, but he left after I scored a goal for the other team. I guess he didn’t want to see if I’d score them any more goals.

Which I did do.

Mom assured me that I wasn’t the problem. Dad just had a lot on his plate, what with his continually stirring up conflicts between countries. They didn’t call him the god of war for nothing.

That’s right.

My dad is Ares, which makes me a demigod—half mortal and half god.

So really, it was my dad’s fault that I was at this camp.

Anyway, the day Dad abandoned my soccer game, he’d left a note for Mom, along with a dagger for me. The weapon wasn’t very fancy, and it wasn’t very his. His note said I stole this from a punk named Peleus. Give it to the rugrat, if you think she’d ever be able to use it without cutting herself.

Nice vote of confidence, Dad.

At least if I’d brought the dagger, it would have helped me feel braver during our jaunt through the forest. Instead, I was forced to calm my nerves by making a mental grid of our surroundings.

That was kind of my thing—my way of containing a problem before it got overwhelming. Even with a bag over my head, I had a good sense of spatial relations. I could imagine where I was on an x- and y-axis and almost always find my way around.

It was a pretty useless skill most of the time, but it helped me stay oriented in the woods at night. Also, never challenge me to a game of Battleship. You’ve been warned.

Where we’d started our forced march, at the cabins, I’d labeled J30. Where we were now was C12.

As we stumbled and slid over rocks and wet pine needles, I cataloged all sorts of creepy, scary landmarks. At F7, we’d passed a log where something inside growled low and menacing. At C9, we splashed through a slimy creek. At C11—

“Root,” warned Grant, the captive walking in front of me.

I was so focused on gridding, I didn’t register what he was saying until it was too late.

The toe of my right boot hooked under a tree root, and I pitched forward. With my hands bound behind me, I couldn’t use them to break my fall, so my face did it for me.

Rug burns ain’t got nothing on burlap.

My forehead and nose stung from skidding across the harsh fabric. I tasted the copper of blood on my tongue. Blinking back tears, I struggled to right myself while our captors laughed.

“Did you see how hard she fell?” asked a boy.

“Like Icarus in combat boots!” hooted another.

Embarrassment warmed my cheeks, my ears—pretty much every inch of my body.

“Maybe she wanted to knock herself out so she wouldn’t have to listen to your mindless jabbering,” a girl said over my shoulder.

The laughter stopped.

“What did you say?” The first boy’s voice took on a hard edge.

We’d been told that we weren’t allowed to speak. Another captive, a kid named Benny, had tried that earlier—reasoning with our captors: Why stand against us when we could all stand together?

He was then informed that his thoughts were like his farts—long-winded and terrible—and any further conversation would end in death by man-eating horse.

After that, the five of us captives stayed quiet. I didn’t even bother pointing out whose farts they actually were.

(Seriously. Avoid chili cheese dogs.)

The girl behind me—I was pretty sure her name was Zuri—didn’t sound intimidated. She just clicked her tongue. “See? You’re jabbering so much, you can’t even hear me.”

“You’d better watch yourself,” one of our female captors snarled.

Zuri scoffed. “Or what? I could burn a hole through this sad sack in five seconds flat.”

My embarrassment was fading, so why did my skin still feel warm? The back of my shoulders started to bake. I caught a whiff of smoke from my hair, like it had been under a blow-dryer too long.

I realized the heat was coming from Zuri.

“I’m only wearing these bonds as a courtesy,” she said. “If you can’t be courteous, we can end this charade right now.”

Great, I thought. She must be a child of Apollo. A potential human bonfire. Which meant I was in danger of being served extra crispy.

Nevertheless, my busted lip hurt from smiling. I liked Zuri’s attitude. I liked hearing our captors shuffle backward, even if their uneasiness only lasted a moment.

“Whatever,” said our female captor in a surly voice. “Just keep moving.”

And that was that.

The air turned chilly once more, and we continued our march through the dark woods. As I tramped along, Grant fell into step beside me.

“You good, KK?” he whispered. His gum squelched between his teeth.

He was another one of Ares’s kids, and his calming habit was chewing gum. I should’ve accepted the piece he’d offered to me earlier. Another thing I would’ve done differently.

“Yep,” I whispered back. “A little burlap exfoliation never hurt nobody.”

Grant snorted. “Just pay more attention when I give a heads-up.”

“BOO!” one of our captors yelled in my ear.

I stumbled into Grant, and we both smacked our foreheads against a low-hanging tree branch.

Our captors howled with delight.

“Heads-up,” Grant muttered with a groan.

I winced. “Yeah. Thanks.”

Note to self: low-hanging tree branch at grid point D14.

Finally, at grid point D16, our captors called a halt.

“On your knees, newbies!” said the leader. Her voice had a commanding air to it, like she knew she was in charge, and anyone who thought otherwise was in for a world of hurt.

I knelt as quickly as I could to avoid being forced. My face couldn’t handle much more abuse. The shuffling sounds next to me indicated that the other abductees were doing the same.

The burlap sack was yanked off my head. Cold night air swept across my cheeks and forehead. The scents of woodsmoke and Grant’s cinnamon gum replaced my chili-cheese-dog breath.

I squinted and blinked in the orange glow of our captors’ fiery torches.

In front of us stood half a dozen Ares kids with cruel expressions, assorted weapons, camo pants, combat boots, and bright orange T-shirts with the words camp half-blood printed across them.

According to Silas, the guy who had brought me to camp, this place was supposed to be a special sanctuary for demigods (aka half-bloods), where we would be trained in how to defend ourselves and the mortal world from monsters.

You’ll love it! Silas had said. You’ll feel safe and protected!

I was beginning to suspect Silas was full of goat poop, which made sense, because he was a satyr—half goat from the waist down. I was feeling a lot of things, but safe and protected were not among them.

The girl with the commanding voice towered above us. Her brown hair settled around the shoulders of her camo jacket. She was maybe fifteen.

“For those who don’t know me yet,” she said, “I’m Clarisse La Rue, head counselor of the Ares cabin. Welcome to Camp Half-Blood, demi-dorks.”

Unfortunately, I’d already met Clarisse. She was in charge of my cabin. I’d come to the conclusion that she was less of a counselor and more of a reason to see a counselor.

She paced in front of us, hands clasped behind her back. “You’ll probably hear me called Queen of Mean, Death in Denim, or Oh, crap, run. It’s Clarisse.” She shrugged. “They all work. Pick your favorite.”

On my right, Benny hunched one shoulder, like he was trying to raise his hand except it was tied behind his back. “Um, is this a camp-sanctioned activity?” he asked. “Because technically, we’ve already been welcomed, and this doesn’t seem…”

As Benny trailed off, Clarisse leaned toward him and smiled.

“Please hold all questions until the end of orientation. If you’re still alive by then.

” She pulled a scroll from the back pocket of her camo pants, bopped Benny on the nose with it, and then unfurled the parchment and scanned its contents.

“Now, let’s see what off-season, D-list talent we’re working with. Katie Kim, daughter of Ares?”

She said this like we hadn’t just met a couple of hours ago. Maybe I hadn’t made much of an impression.

“Hi!” I chirped. My mom once said I have a nice smile, with just the right ratio of teeth and gums, so I gave Clarisse my best grin. “Happy to be here.”