Page 78 of The Most Dangerous Games

“Listen to me,” Jack says, soft but steel. “The only thing you have to see is my back. You stare at my boots. You put your feet where I put my feet. You don’t think about the dark. You don’t think about the drop.”

“I just feel like my next step . . .” Rupert’s mouth trembles.

Jack puts his hands on the boy’s shoulders.

“Look at me,” he says softly, but sternly.

Rupert does.

“You won’t,” Jack says. Then he adds, because sometimes people need a lie that keeps them alive: “And if you do, I’ve got you.”

Rupert gives a nervous half-smile.

“We’re supposed to be looking for a leader,” Rupert says. “I think I already found mine.”

They get moving again.

Slowly.

Jack slips once on a patch of wet limestone, catches himself hard, knuckles scraping rock. Elena steadies Rupert with a hand on his shoulder. Conner stays behind them, sealing the rear.

A while later Elena stumbles and catches herself with both hands.

When they stop, Jack sees her palms are cut, streaked red against pale dust.

Elena leans in close. “Can we turn back?”

Jack doesn’t sugarcoat it. “Not if we want to live.”

She looks at him, breathing fast. “I can barely breathe.”

From behind them, Conner Lynch quietly says, “We’ve come too far to go back.” Pauses and adds, “Come too far in every possible way.”

Elena manages just a hint of a smile. “I can see why you made such a good politician,” she says.

He smiles back. “Hey,” he says, “there’s no need to insult me.”

A few hundred yards later, Jack steps into a hole.

They go another few hundred yards.

Jack steps onto what he thinks is solid ground.

It isn’t.

A shallow sinkhole gives under his weight. His foot drops, his balance goes, and he slides.

Unable to break his fall, he hits the ground hard. The trail is wide enough, though, that Conner Lynch moves quickly past Rupert and Elena and grabs Jack by the arm.

“I wasn’t the fastest player in the world,” he says to Jack. “But I always had good hands.”

Jack gets his footing again.

They are moving again a few minutes later, still no real light ahead of them. Just an unbearable tension, broken only by the sound of their footsteps on the rocks and limestone and occasional mud underneath their feet.

Jack really does feel he’s back on duty. There is the same quiet now, the same sense of dread, the fight to control his breathing and his heartbeat and remain alert, because alertness could mean the difference between life and death.

He then hears the roar from down below them.