Page 162 of The Most Dangerous Games

They must have gotten to her somehow.

Because they obviously know.

And then it gets worse, because the smell isn’t the only thing.

Something damp splatters against the side of the coffin near his cheek. Something soft brushes his forearm. He can’t see what it is, only feel it, and his brain does what it always does in the dark: It fills in the blanks with the worst version.

Jack clenches and unclenches his fists. It’s the only movement he has.

His nostrils are filled with a smell he’d only encountered a few times with the Rangers, when they’d discovered a decomposing body.

He has only been in here a few minutes, Jack’s certain of that. But it already feels like hours. Or days.

In so many ways, this is his ultimate nightmare:

The complete loss of control.

He can’t even control his breathing now. He’s afraid to breathe. That would mean taking in more of the stench.

Feeling he can taste it.

He thinks he’d rather suffocate than do that.

This is what hell must be like.

My hell.

This can’t be happening, he tells himself again.

But it is.

Jack feels he might black out.

But he’s not going to say the word, no matter what.

He’s not going to quit.

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he hears his mother’s voice—an old prayer she taught him when he was small.

He reaches for it like it’s a rope.

But it’s not there.

112.

Ant Tipton has spent most of his life selling one simple story: Fearless. Untouchable. Built different.

It’s always been a lie.

One he’s told to the rest of the world since childhood. Just not to himself. Never to himself. As much as he wants to believe it.

He knows why, of course, just because he could teach a bloody master class on the reasons for his darkest and worst fears:

When he was twelve, Tipton had walked away from a twin-engine plane crash near Cornwall. His parents and his younger brother had died fiery deaths that day. Somehow Ant Tipton had survived. It was like one of those stories you read about, wild stories about sole survivors involving luck or destiny, about insert-tragedy-here not being your time, at least not yet.

That had been him.

Not his parents, not his little brother. Just him.