QUALIFY: The Atlantis Grail (Book One)

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT (draft)

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

 The first mystery of the new hot zone danger becomes clear about fifteen blocks into the zone as we pass thirty feet over East Cesar E. Chavez Avenue, and over what looks to be a green lawn-covered stretch of cemetery.

Snipers.

Bullets ring out all around us, and ricochet off distant concrete and buildings in the surrounding area.

“Oh, no!” Zoe shouts, and cringes automatically, pressing back against me as if I could protect her from a stray bullet. She then sings a sequence to increase speed.

From all directions I hear the shouts of other airborne Candidates as we pick up the pace and increase flying speed.

“Go faster!” Jared exclaims, as he bends forward, leaning in against the wind, and almost lies flat against his board.

About ten feet away in the air behind me, overhead, I hear a boy’s shout of pain, as a Candidate gets hit. His body goes limp, sliding down from the drone he’s riding . . . and he is falling. . . .

I cringe, and turn away and do not look back.

“Where’s it coming from? Who the hell is firing at us?” Ethan says from his board, easily matching our pace as he bends his knees in a wider stance for better balance while he remains upright.

“I’m not sure,” I mutter. Since Zoe’s driving and navigating the board and cannot easily take her eyes off where we’re heading, I am the one who must look around and try to get a bearing on our position.

“Do you see anything?” Zoe screams as another bullet zings nearby, cutting through the air, and almost touches us.

I look around as much as possible, but there is only a green stretch of lawn below, with tiny distant grave markers. I try not to look at what I know is the broken body of the fallen teen who was shot down seconds ago. Instead I observe a lone Candidate running on the street adjacent to the cemetery. The teen’s on foot, no hoverboard in sight, I think. Amazing that he managed to get this far simply by running. Or did he lose his hoverboard along the way? My feverish stupid thoughts trail off. . . . I am very sluggish now, and it is very hard to maintain any sort of proper focus.

“The shots—they’re coming from those multi-story buildings up ahead!” Ethan cries. “Past the cemetery!”

“Oh yeah, I see something,” Jared says. “A five-tier parking structure, and on the rooftop a bunch of black figures. They look like SWAT or riot police or something. With rifles! They’re the ones firing!”

“But why?” I say. “Why fire at us? That’s unbelievable. Why would the local police or whoever fire at what could be their own innocent kids competing to survive?”

“Maybe they’re not locals,” Zoe mutters grimly. “Maybe they were brought here exactly because they’re not, and told that by killing us and cutting down the numbers of Candidates overall—all of us competing for limited spots—they were improving chances for their own kids elsewhere?”

“That’s really sick.” I shake my head weakly. “But if that’s so, it makes sense.”

With bullets flying all around we manage to fly past the rest of the cemetery at breakneck speed, and then put some distance between us and the structure with the snipers on the roof.

Except for that one fallen boy, none of us are hit, maybe because those snipers were not trying all that hard to hit any of us—or at least that’s what I hope and tell myself. Because to think otherwise is much too dark, and I don’t think I can bear that line of thought.