Stung Read Online Free PDF

beside me. I roll to my side and gasp for air, pressing my cheek against the slimy ground.
    Noise fills the tunnel—grunting, struggling, and breathing loud enough to wake the dead. Arrin whimpers and lets out a cry. I climb to my feet, turn toward her voice, and nearly trip over something. A body. My hands flutter over it; feel the gentle inhale and exhale of a living person; feel broad, square shoulders with lines gouged into the bare skin and a face covered in coarse hair. My attacker.
    I yank my hands away and stand, shuddering.
    The sounds of struggle still haunt the black tunnel. I follow the gasping and grunting and growling and stumble into flailing bodies.
    “Arrin?” I ask.
    “Help me!” she gasps. I freeze. Help? I can’t see anything. IfI start kicking, I might kick Arrin. If I punch, I might hit the wrong person.
    “Jump on him, Fo!” Arrin calls.
    I take a deep breath and halfheartedly throw myself toward the sound of the human skirmish. I land atop a roiling, lurching pile of arms and legs. And then I can tell which is Arrin and which is the other. He’s big and muscular with arms like fur-covered clubs. She’s a pile of skin and bones. I grab a handful of greasy, coarse hair and yank his head backward. Arrin grunts. Without warning, the man jerks twice and goes limp.
    “Get him off me!” Arrin cries. I push the man over, and my hands come away wet. “Hurry. They travel in packs.” Arrin grabs my hand, and we start staggering through the dark. Before my heart has had time to calm, we stop.
    “Bloody hell,” Arrin whispers, her hand tightening in frustration on mine.
    “What’s wrong?” I ask.
    “We’re lost.” She yanks me forward once more.
    After a few minutes of staggering, I make out a hazy glow down a tunnel to my right and tug Arrin to a stop. “Light,” I say.
    Arrin curses and pulls me into a crouch. “Don’t say a word,” she warns. “Or make a sound! Walk on the outside edge of your feet, Fo. Because if they hear you, they’ll murder you. And I’m not going to save your sorry, fat butt a third time.”
    “Even though I just saved you?” I ask, trying to understand her logic.
    “Whatever! I had that under control. Now shut up,” she hisses.
    I struggle to balance on the outside of my feet and managesomething close to silence. But as we approach the light, confusion fills me. They don’t look like murderers. Arrin stops.
    A hollow-cheeked woman sits on the ground beside a candle. Four children huddle at her feet. One child, the tallest, a boy who can’t be more than ten, holds a dingy plastic container in his hands. He fishes around in the container and pulls out something long and thin. It curls and coils in his fingers. I blink and stare at the child holding the earthworm, wondering what he’s going to do with it.
    He hands it to a wisp of a child—a girl, I think—wearing an oversize T-shirt that hangs down to her knobby knees. The girl shoves it into her mouth, chewing and sighing like she’s eating chocolate.
    My jaw drops, but I snap it shut. I can taste the sewer when I breathe through my mouth.
    The boy gives each child a worm, then hands one to the woman. Once everyone else has had one, he takes one for himself, eating the wriggling creature in little bites, savoring it.
    “Why are they eating worms?” I whisper.
    “Obviously their father, wanting to live a life of leisure inside the wall, abandoned them,” Arrin whispers, voice bitter.
    “No way. A father wouldn’t do that.”
    “Wanna bet?” She squeezes my hand, mashing the bones together. I gasp and try to yank my hand away, but she clings to it. “Shut up, Fo!”
    In one collective movement, all four children whip around to face us. A knife appears in the boy’s hand. Another appears inthe wispy little girl’s hand. They stare into the darkness, poised on the balls of their feet. The woman, eyes panicked, leans forward and blows out the candle, and the safety of darkness swallows