The Survivalist (Freedom Lost)

by Arthur T. Bradley

  “Is there anything to prevent me from fighting in another round?”

  Startled, Leroy sputtered, “Well, technically no, but—”

  “How would I go about it?”

  “You’d have to fight in place of a different Fallen. But why the hell would you do something like that?”

  Mason looked out at the crowd.

  “I’d do it so that these people might come away from this tournament with a very different message.”

  “What kind of message would you possibly be giving them? That it’s okay to break the law?”

  “No,” he said with a quick shake of his head. “That all men, even criminals, should be treated with some measure of respect.” He turned and pointed to the long line of prisoners being marched off to a holding area for the night. “Those men are no different than slaves being tossed into an arena for Roman gladiators to butcher.”

  “And what? You’re planning to be their Spartacus?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You can only fight one match each round. Even if you win, many of them are still going to die.”

  “Just because I can’t save all of them doesn’t mean I shouldn’t save some. Besides,” he said, setting his jaw, “if I remove a gunfighter every round, this thing’s going to get smaller in a hurry.”

  Leroy shook his head. “Don’t do this, Mason. These men will kill you.”

  “Ask yourself something, Leroy. Is it really my safety you’re worried about?”

  He bit at his lip. “Okay, fine. I admit it. If you were to win, it wouldn’t be good for the tournament. Gunfighters would be a lot less likely to sign up if they thought there was a real chance they might be killed.”

  “Right now, I don’t give a damn what’s good for your tournament or your gunfighters.” He met the man’s stare. “You brought people together to see men slaughtered. I’m going to show them something else.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to show them that a hero isn’t measured by the shine of his pistols or the speed of his draw. He’s measured by when and where he decides to make his stand.”

  Chapter 16

  Tanner studied the double doors leading from the cafeteria into the Peery Building. They were identical in every respect to the ones he had kicked in on the other side of the room, the only difference being that these were already ajar.

  He grabbed the handles and pulled the doors the rest of the way open. A dark hallway similar to the one they had just traveled lay ahead.

  Samantha glanced nervously back at the kitchen.

  “What do you think attacked that man?”

  “Can’t really say.” Tanner clicked on his flashlight and shined it down the hallway. There was quite a bit more junk lying about than in the other building—broken chests of drawers, smelly stained mattresses, and shattered fluorescent lights, all lying atop a bed of medical records.

  “A wild animal though, right?”

  “Could be.”

  She turned to him. “You’re not being very encouraging.”

  “I wasn’t trying to be.” She looked a bit rattled, so he quickly added, “Look, whatever got hold of him is probably long gone. And if it does come back…” He patted the shotgun. “We’ll teach it why man is still king of the jungle. Now, are you ready to go find Sister Clare?”

  “I guess so.”

  Tanner started down the hall, and Samantha fell in beside him, muttering, “But I’m pretty sure that lions are still king of the jungle. A man wouldn’t stand a chance against something that big.”

  He smiled. Tanner knew that if he could get Samantha’s mind on something else, she could usually shake the fear.

  Proving him right, she said, “How many kids do you think stayed here?”

  “I don’t know. Four or five hundred.”

  “Were there really that many crazy children?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe it was just folks locking up what they didn’t understand.”

  She wondered if he was still talking about the kids. Tanner had never forgiven the justice system for his incarceration.

  “I wonder what kind of experiments they—”

  Something dark crossed the hallway in front of them, and Tanner instinctively placed an arm in front of Samantha.

  “What is it?” She swung her flashlight from one side of the hall to the other. Other than an old bedframe and a tipped-over filing cabinet, it appeared empty.

  “I thought I saw something.”

  “You thought you saw something or you did see something?” she said, her voice wavering.

  “Probably just the flashlight playing tricks on me.” Tanner continued forward, but instead of being quiet and careful, he began to kick things out of his way.

  “What are you doing!” she exclaimed.

  “Making sure there are no ninjas hiding.”

  “Ninjas?”

  “Little samurai dudes in black clothes.”

  She scoffed. “I know what a ninja is.”

  “Then why’d you ask?” He smiled. It was always satisfying to get her at her own game.

  Something crossed the hallway behind them, briefly dimming the light coming from the cafeteria. Tanner and Samantha both spun, weapons and flashlights raised.

  Nothing.

  “Ninjas…,” she repeated, this time slowly, as if genuinely considering the possibility.

  Tanner shone his flashlight all the way to the end of the hall. There was a stairway. Unfortunately, it was at least fifty yards away.

  “Put your back to mine. I’ll watch the front, and you watch the rear.”

  “Right,” she said, moving into position.

  “If you see something, shoot first, apologize later. Understood?”

  “Got it.”

  They advanced down the hall, moving at a steady but controlled pace. Samantha walked backwards, and Tanner dragged his feet so that they didn’t accidentally trip over one another. Unlike in the original building, the doors to most of the dormitory rooms were closed. Tanner thought that both a blessing and a curse. While they could easily be walking past a threat, only to have it sneak up behind them later, having the doors closed also meant that someone couldn’t simply lunge out from an open doorway.

  When they were about halfway down the hall, the door to the cafeteria slammed shut. Samantha immediately fired a shot, more as a reflex than from actually seeing a target.

  “Go, go, go!” Tanner said, picking up the pace.

  They arrived at the end of the hall to find that the stairwell door had been propped open with a decorative floor mirror. The words “come play with me” had been written on the glass in something red and sticky.

  “In here, Sam!” he said, ushering her into the stairwell as he watched the hallway.

  “Up or down?” she asked, looking at stairs.

  “Hold tight a minute.” Tanner swept the hallway with his flashlight beam. Mattresses. Furniture. An old fan. His thoughts came out as words. “No way to follow us without being seen. Unless…”

  “Unless what?” she said.

  “The rooms. They must be interconnected.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Instead of answering, he said, “What was it you saw back there?”

  “Nothing more than a blur. Something big, darting from one side of the hall to the other.” She stared out into the darkness. “What do you think it is?”

  “I don’t know, but whatever it is, it seems to be stalking us.”

  “Stalking? Why?”

  “I told you, I’m quite delicious,” he said, hoping to lighten the mood.

  It didn’t work.

  She shivered. “I’m scared.”

  “Come on.” Tanner turned and began climbing the stairs with a sense of purpose.

  Samantha followed close behind, taking them two at a time. They reached the second-floor landing and stopped to do a quick inspection of the hallway. Like the floor below, there was a hodgepodge of furniture, including several small st
udent desks, a chest of drawers, and a bedframe. An assortment of children’s clothes was also strewn about, like the crankiest of toddlers had thrown a temper tantrum at not finding their favorite pajamas.

  “Sister Clare!” he shouted.

  Fists began pounding on one of the doors.

  “In here!” a muffled voice called.

  Tanner and Samantha hurried forward, using their flashlights like lightsabers to navigate the almost impenetrable darkness. They found Sister Clare in the fourth room on the right, peering out through a barred windowless frame.

  “Help me, please!” she said, pressing her face to the bars.

  “Hold tight. We’ll get you out of there.” Tanner began rifling through the keys, trying them one at a time.

  “Who are you?” she asked, her voice calming.

  “Friends of Sister Margaret.” Even saying the word “friends” in the same sentence with the grumpy old nun’s name felt like an unforgivable sin.

  “Sister Mary Margaret? She’s here?”

  “Outside, waiting for you.”

  Samantha pressed her shoulder against Tanner’s back as she watched the stairs behind them.

  “Hurry!”

  “I’m trying.” He fumbled the keys, and they fell to the floor. “Crap!”

  A dark mass appeared at the end of the hallway, and Samantha brought the rifle to her shoulder.

  “Something’s coming.” She squeezed off a shot, and a piece of plaster fell from the wall next to the stairwell.

  With the keys and flashlight in one hand and his shotgun in the other, Tanner turned, ready to cut down whatever was coming their way.

  There was nothing but darkness.

  “I don’t see it!”

  “It was there a second ago.”

  Tanner turned back and tried another key in the lock. No luck. He moved onto yet another. And then another. On the sixth key, he felt the lock move. He twisted harder. There was resistance but also a little rotation of the cylinder. He leaned into it.

  Snap!

  “Son-of-a—”

  Samantha fired another shot. Tanner didn’t even bother to look. His focus had to be on getting Sister Clare out of the room.

  “Stand back! I’m going to blow the lock.”

  Sister Clare hurried out of sight. “Okay!” she shouted. “I’m clear!”

  Tanner stepped to one side of the door and aimed just above the lock. He turned the shotgun so that the muzzle was at forty-five degrees, ensuring that the blast would go into the locking mechanism and door jamb rather than the room. While the double-aught buckshot wasn’t the right load for the task, the lock wasn’t a Sargent and Greenleaf either. This was about destroying the wooden frame as much as it was shredding the lock housing.

  “Fire in the hole!” He squeezed the trigger.

  Boom!

  The mangled lock tore free of the frame. He bumped the door with his boot, and it swung open.

  Samantha fired another shot down the hallway.

  “It’s too fast!” she cried. “I can’t hit it!”

  Tanner leaned in through the open door to find Sister Clare standing in the corner, hands clamped over her ears.

  “Let’s go, let’s go!”

  Rushing over, she said, “There’s something living in this building.”

  “What is it?” Samantha asked, refusing to take her eyes from the hallway.

  “I don’t know, but it was scratching and banging on my door last night.”

  “To get in?”

  “No,” she said hesitantly. “I think it was playing with me.”

  “Chitchat later,” said Tanner. “Right now, we need to find a way out of here.”

  “I wouldn’t suggest going back that way,” Samantha said as she quickly reloaded.

  “Then we go deeper.” He turned and faced the hallway. “Like before, Sam, only with the good sister sandwiched between us.”

  “Like grape jelly?”

  He smiled, relieved that her usual perkiness seemed to be returning.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Like grape jelly.”

  Tanner positioned himself in front again, and Samantha took up the rear. Even with his flashlight lighting the way, the old building held a hundred places to hide. All they could do was push forward.

  As they shuffled down the hallway, Tanner spotted rays of light coming from one of the rooms up ahead. He hurried closer, relieved to find the door unlocked. Pushing it open, he discovered a room whose outside wall had been damaged, the plaster, wood, and brick all having given way. A thick mound of black manure had been piled up from the outside to seal the hole, but a six-inch gap along the top allowed rays of sunshine to stream into the room.

  “In here,” he said, ushering them in and slamming the door closed. “You two see if you can dig us a way out through the dirt while I cover the door.”

  Samantha and Sister Clare hurried over to the mound and began digging. It didn’t take long for Samantha to figure it out.

  “Eww!” she said, turning to him with hands covered in black muck. “This isn’t dirt!”

  “Really?” he said, doing his best to sound innocent. “What is it?”

  She squinted. “You know exactly what it is.”

  He couldn’t quite hide the grin, and she flung a handful in his direction.

  “It’s cow poop!”

  “Good. That means it’s soft. Now hurry up.”

  She growled and turned back to the pile.

  “I’m going to get you for this. And when I do, it’s going to be sooo sweet.”

  A face appeared in the door’s barred window. It was only there for an instant, and Tanner wasn’t entirely sure of what he had seen. It was human-like, two eyes, two ears, and a mouth, but the entire head was covered with thick black fur. Its nose resembled a pig-like snout, and its forehead was swollen like that of early humans. Its eyes were equally strange—luminous and set within deep cavities. What concerned Tanner most, however, were the thick fangs that protruded from its lipless mouth.

  By the time he swung the shotgun up, it was gone. He fired anyway, a fist-sized hole appearing in the door as the deafening blast shook the room.

  Sister Clare screamed, but both she and Samantha continued their frantic digging. Light poured into the room as the hole grew bigger.

  Tanner glanced over his shoulder. The gap was easily big enough for Samantha to squeeze through, and perhaps barely so for Sister Clare.

  “Up and out, both of you. Now! Hurry!”

  “It’s not big enough,” cried Samantha.

  “It is for you. I’ll dig my way out after you two are safe. Now go!”

  She shook her head. “No way. If one stays, we all stay. Right, Sister Clare?”

  The nun’s wide eyes showed anything but a willingness to fight.

  The door to the room slowly swung inward, and Tanner turned to face it, his shotgun held at waist level. Nothing came through. Whoever, or whatever, had pushed it open had ducked back out of sight.

  “Sam!” he shouted without turning around. “You’ve got to get her out of here. We promised Sister Margaret.”

  Samantha turned to Sister Clare. “Go on. If you crawl on your belly, you’ll make it through.”

  Not needing to be told twice, Sister Clare squirmed through the narrow hole. Once she was clear, Samantha turned and stepped up next to Tanner, her flashlight and rifle trained on the doorway.

  “Okay, what’s the plan?”

  “The plan was to get you to safety.”

  She placed the edge of her boot against his.

  “I feel pretty safe.”

  He let his eyes cut over to her. She stood tall and proud, her chin raised.

  “All right. Let’s put our backs against the wall. That way—”

  What happened next occurred with such speed that neither Tanner nor Samantha had time to react. The beast was huge but also incredibly fast, knocking Samantha to one side and driving Tanner back against the wall. Before he could recover, it b
egan to beat him with its enormous fists.

  Tanner tried to bring the shotgun up, but the creature ripped it from his grasp and flung it out into the hallway.

  With the monster’s mouth closing in for the kill, Tanner lunged forward, driving his head under the beast’s chin. The blow was tremendous, setting the creature back on its heels. Hoping to turn the tide, Tanner swung a wide haymaker that would have put Rocky Marciano on the mat. But the creature was too quick, not only avoiding the punch but once again driving him back against the battered wall.

  Samantha groaned as she struggled to get to her feet. One cheekbone felt swollen and sore from where her face had struck the floor. She turned to find what looked like a massive grizzly bear attacking Tanner. It smashed him against the wall, and the old framework shuddered with the impact. The beast began striking him over and over, pounding its huge fists against his head.

  She snatched her rifle off the floor and rotated the flashlight with her foot to point in the creature’s general direction. She brought the weapon to her shoulder but hesitated. There was no clean shot. Tanner and the beast were so entangled that the bullet was as likely to hit one as it was the other.

  She had to get closer.

  As Samantha formulated a plan, Tanner was fighting for his life. The hairy beast was stronger and faster, but it lacked any real skill in hand-to-hand combat. Instead, it pummeled him like an ape, determined to pound him into blood sausage. Tanner did his best to counterattack, but he found himself having to use his forearms to shield the sides of his head, like a boxer caught against the ropes.

  The beast lunged forward, jagged teeth snapping at his face. Pivoting at the waist, Tanner fired a short right hook. The blow caught the creature on its snout, and blood erupted from both nostrils. It squealed and snorted in pain, quickly returning to smashing him with its powerful fists.

  Samantha crept closer, her rifle extended like an infantryman’s brandistock. When the muzzle touched the creature’s hairy back, she pulled the trigger. A muted pop sounded, and the beast whirled around, howling with rage. It slapped away the rifle and barreled into her, lifting Samantha off the floor to send her flying into the corner of the room.

  It took Tanner a moment to get his bearings after the creature turned. His ear and cheek were on fire, and one eye was nearly swollen shut. He let out three quick breaths and forced his head to clear.