A look down at the stakes on the trailer beneath him and Flynn saw the woman who had cartwheeled through the air before impaling herself on them. Sweat ran into his eyes from the heat and his effort. His heart raced. When he looked at Rose again, he shook his head. He couldn’t do it.
This time Rose used her hands to press down on the air in front of her. She mouthed, slow it down!
Another deep breath and Flynn tried to follow her advice. He pulled his legs back and let the ring shift a few inches with him. He then rocked forwards. He went with the movement of the ring as he swayed forwards and then backwards, forwards and then backwards.
It worked! Slowly but surely, Flynn’s momentum picked up and he got the ring swinging again. The crowd below cheered when he looked down. They were all getting behind his efforts. The woman who threw the projectile at him now lay either dead or unconscious on the ground, ignored by everyone.
Flynn got to the rope’s maximum swing. He did several more before he trusted he couldn’t get it to swing any farther and then he let go.
Unlike on his other attempts, this time Flynn flew forwards with both hands out in front of him rather than just one. His stomach lifted as he rose through the air, and seemed to sink a few seconds after his body did as he came back down again.
The snap of his body weight against the ring ran down Flynn’s arms and into his shoulders. He clenched his teeth against the pain of it. The brand on his back ripped open again and he could almost hear it smack its tacky lips as the scabs tore.
But he held on. Of course he fucking held on. Whatever strength he needed, he had it. Anything to avoid those damn spikes.
A different method to those who went before him, Flynn repeated what had just worked for him. He got the fifth ring swinging as far as it could and let go again. He did the same with the sixth, the seventh, the eighth.
One left between Flynn and the building on the other side. Rose remained in the window, staring at him and silently willing him on.
Flynn got the eighth ring swinging as far as it would go before he jumped for the ninth. The crowd below went wild as he flew through the air and caught it. A look down as he swung and he saw even the Queen grinned at his acrobatics. Maybe he’d made a new fan.
When Flynn had the final ring at its maximum swing, he let go and leapt for the empty window frame where Rose waited for him.
At that moment, the brute walked across the space he headed for and bent over as if to tie his shoelace. He showed Flynn his arse and completely blocked off his access to the derelict building.
As Flynn flew through the air, staring at the large man’s rear end, his resolve faltered and his muscles turned slack. He had no way through.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
If Rose hadn’t pulled the brute’s T-shirt and tugged him away, Flynn wouldn’t have made it through the window.
The large ginger man—already leaning forward—crashed down on his crown against the hard floor with a loud thunk that echoed through the empty building. From the way Rose bit down on her bottom lip, she clearly dragged him with all the force she had.
Flynn sailed over the top of the brute and fell into the abandoned space. Before he had a chance to get to his feet, the brute had jumped up and had Rose pinned against the wall. Blood ran from the fresh cut on his forehead as he screamed in her face, “What the fuck? Are you trying to start something?”
Exhausted from the past few days, Flynn pushed through it, jumped up, and shoulder barged the brute. It sent him stumbling as Flynn shouted, “Get off her!”
The large ginger meathead turned on Flynn and lifted a fist, ready to punch him.
Flynn raised his guard, but the blow never landed.
When Flynn lowered his hands, he saw several guards pull the man back and pin him to the ground. It took the weight of three fully grown men to keep him down. Even then, he shook and twisted beneath their pressure and it looked like he might buck them off.
It took for Mistress to call through the room to silence the scuffle. “At ease, you fat fuck.” She walked over to the brute, hands on her hips as she stared down at him. “You try anything like that again and you’re getting launched onto those spikes out there. You understand?”
The brute didn’t reply, so Mistress leaned in towards him, their noses close to touching. “You understand?”
A wince twisted his red face as if it caused him pain to back down. He finally nodded his compliance.
“Good,” she said, pulled a black hood from her back pocket, and slipped it over his head.
Before Flynn had a chance to think, a hood covered his head too. Rough hands then pulled his arms behind his back.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The hood was ripped so quickly from Flynn’s head, the rough fabric of it made the end of his nose sting. He rubbed it as he walked to try to ease the slight buzzing pain.
Not that Flynn focused on the sensation for long. Not with what he saw in front of him. A box of a structure about five metres square, it stood about one metre from the ground. It had been completely covered in both black sheets and blue tarpaulins. It looked like they’d run out of one while trying to cover the structure, so they finished it off with the other. At the front he could see an entranceway of sorts. A crawlspace.
Because he hadn’t had the hood on for long, the sun stung Flynn’s eyes, but it didn’t blind him. Now rubbing his eyes rather than his nose, he looked at the crowd gathered around the strange structure.
Abandoned buildings ran down either side of the old high street. The crawlspace looked to be in what Vicky had referred to previously as a pedestrian area. She would always laugh when she said that. Everywhere was a pedestrian area now.
A look to either side and Flynn saw Rose on his left and the three other prisoners on his right. The brute, the teenage boy, and a slim woman who’d waited behind him at the rings. A man had also waited, but he couldn’t see him.
All four of them looked fitter than the brute, and maybe the sheen of sweat on his red face had more to do with his fear than the summer heat.
“Okay,” Mistress called out as she stepped in front of the prisoners. “Just two people will make it through this event. This game is called the rat run. A crawl-through maze, it only has one entrance and one exit. The first two to come out of the other side win. The rest …” She giggled and glanced at the guards behind her. Six of them in total, they all carried a bloodstained sledgehammer each.
“You!” Mistress said and pointed at the brute. “You have a one-minute penalty because of your behaviour earlier.”
The brute’s face fell slack.
“I let you get away with killing someone on shit hill, but now you’ve tried it again, you need to pay the price. These games may be brutal, but they have rules.”
“But they’ll be out the other side of that thing in one minute,” the brute said. “I won’t have a chance.”
The same twisted grin turned Mistress’ face into a leer and she said, “Two minutes.”
“What the fuck?”
“Three minutes.”
Murmurs came from the crowd at that moment and a large section of them dropped their small slips of paper. They must have had number seven on them.
The brute’s already red face turned redder and he opened his mouth to respond, but Mistress cut him off. “Try me,” she said. “You’re lucky I’m even giving you a chance with the way you’ve carried on.”
A heavy sigh and the brute slumped where he stood. He then looked at the guards behind him, who closed in while gripping their sledgehammers.
At least Flynn wouldn’t be in the maze with him. His underhanded tactics would undoubtedly come into play when the guards couldn’t see him. A glance at the other two prisoners and he drew a deep breath. They seemed straight up, but who knew what they’d do. They were all fighting for their lives. Hell, even Rose could turn on him.
“If you’re wondering,” Mistress said to the others as she paced up and down in front of the
m, her leather apron flapping with her movement, “Twenty didn’t make it. He resisted a little bit too much and got a ride on my boot from the roof.” She looked at the prisoners as if daring one of them to say something. None of them replied.
“Right!” Mistress yelled and Flynn jumped at her loud call. A shake ran through him as he looked from Mistress to the guards to the sledgehammers in their grips, and finally to the maze.
“All except you”—Mistress pointed at the brute—“line up in number order. Like I said, the first two out of the rat run will be allowed to take the final jump to safety. The others …” She looked at each prisoner in turn, and by the time she got to Flynn at the back of the queue, she laughed. “Well, it was nice knowing you. You fought well.”
A couple of people in the crowd laughed, although when Flynn looked at them, he saw sombre expressions. Almost as if they’d gotten to know the prisoners and cared about their fate at that point. Their reactions also spoke of what would come to the ones who didn’t make it. He looked at the guards and their sledgehammers again.
“Number one,” Mistress called to Rose, who stepped forward. While pointing at the small tunnel entrance to the rat run, she said, “Go!”
Rose dropped down onto her knees and disappeared into the darkness.
“Number four.” The teenage boy followed behind.
“Number sixteen.”
As Flynn crawled into the small maze, he listened to Mistress say, “And last, but certainly not least, number eighteen. Good luck.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
The hard concrete ground burned Flynn’s kneecaps and he felt grazes opening up instantly. Not that he could do anything about it.
The maze had been so completely covered, the only light in the place came from the entrance behind them. The air in the hot space stank of sweat. It left a flat taste on his dry tongue.
When Flynn crashed face first into a wall in front of him, his world rocked from the blow as if it had been tilted on its axis. A solid wooden barrier, he couldn’t afford to crash into any more of them and still remain conscious. A shake of his head cleared it a little.
The scuffling sound of the other prisoners ran away from Flynn in different directions. Fuck knew where they went, the twisting maze offering too many choices already.
When a hand grabbed Flynn, he turned in the direction of it and raised his fist.
But then she spoke. “Flynn?”
“Rose? Do you know the way out of here?”
Rose took his hand and guided it over to the wall next to them. A groove ran through it.
“What is it?” Flynn asked.
“The way out of here. Feel it,” Rose said, “it’s been carved into the wall on purpose. The way it runs up and down, I dunno, it seems to be here for our help.”
“What if it’s a trick?”
“What other options do we have?”
The second Flynn took to think about it already felt like too long. All the while they debated what to do, the other two were getting closer to the exit. “Come on, then,” Flynn said. “Let’s follow it.”
Rose led the way and, although too dark for him to see her, Flynn heard her ahead of him as he followed the trail along the wooden wall with his right hand.
Every shuffle forwards seemed to take more skin from Flynn’s kneecaps. The hard ground became sandpaper against his fragile body. His trousers did little to protect his knees. Not that a few grazes mattered compared to the sledgehammers waiting for third place and below.
Within about ten seconds, Flynn’s clothes clung to his sweating form. But he pushed on, the hot air hard to breathe, his throat close to cracking with dryness.
***
Several twists and turns later and Flynn saw daylight up ahead. “We’ve found it, Rose.”
But Rose didn’t respond. Instead, she sped up as she headed for what looked to be the maze’s exit, the scuffle of her knees and shoes scratching over the hard ground.
But what if they’d gone full circle? What if they were about to step out of the entrance to the maze rather than the exit? Not that they had any other choice. They had to check it out.
Rose slipped from the maze first and Flynn crawled out a second later, back into the glare of the sun. When he stood up, the slight breeze cooled him and he looked over the top of the maze to see the brute on the other side, waiting by the entrance. He hadn’t even had the chance to enter it.
Chapter Forty
“Great!” the large ginger man called out, his arms falling limp at his sides. But before he could say anything else, a guard next to him bit down on his bottom lip and swung his sledgehammer.
The loud crack ran a weakness through Flynn’s legs that nearly threw him to the ground. He watched the hammer catch the brute flush on the temple, robbing him of his next complaint, turning his legs bandy, and knocking him down dead.
“Well done,” Mistress squealed and walked over to Flynn and Rose as if a man hadn’t just been executed right behind them. A broad grin split her witch’s face. “You found the trail, didn’t you?”
Neither Flynn nor Rose replied, both of them looking between Mistress and the dead brute on the other side of the maze.
“Oh, look,” Mistress said and hunched down to peer into the maze’s exit. She sang the next few words as if in celebration of what would come. “Here comes another one.”
One of the guards with a sledgehammer ran over and wound it back.
When the woman in her mid-twenties poked her head from the maze, the guard swung for her and yelled, “Fore!”
Flynn winced and turned away to the sound of the crowd laughing and a deep crunch as the woman’s skull gave in. When he looked back, two more guards each had an arm of the woman and were dragging her limp form from the maze. Blood ran from the huge dent in the side of her head.
They dragged the dead woman past Mistress, who paid her no attention. The life of a number didn’t matter.
Nobody spoke as the scuffling sound of the final prisoner called out of the maze. Flynn’s ragged breaths rocked his tired frame and every time he swallowed, a heave lifted up his throat from the dryness turning it tacky.
As the sound of the teenager grew louder, Flynn’s pulse sped up. He’d be sticking his head from the maze any time soon and some oaf with a sledgehammer would try to knock it clean off his shoulders.
Flynn saw Mistress nod at the next sledgehammer guard, who ran to the maze’s exit and wound his weapon back like the other one had.
It took just a few more seconds before the prisoner poked his head from the maze. He didn’t seem to notice the guard, because he looked up at Mistress and smiled. The poor bastard thought he’d won.
The sledgehammer clattered into the side of his face, forcing his left eye out and turning him instantly flaccid. The blow opened a deep split in the boy’s head and Flynn turned his back on him. He’d seen enough.
Chapter Forty-One
Flynn kept his back turned on the dead prisoner at the maze’s exit. The sound of dragging feet ran over the ground from where some of the guards pulled the corpse away, but he still didn’t look back. It took for someone to tap him on the shoulder before he turned around.
Where he’d expected to see Mistress, he gasped to see the Queen staring at him.
Flynn glanced at Rose, who watched on with her mouth wide. He then looked back at the Queen and her angular features.
After several dry gulps, Flynn accepted he wouldn’t get his breath back and did his best to ride out his fear. He tried to speak in the presence of her stony expression, opening and closing his mouth several times. But he couldn’t find the words.
A stiff back that ran all the way up to an arched eyebrow and the Queen spoke. “Quite squeamish, it would seem.”
He didn’t reply.
A look from Flynn to Rose and back to Flynn again and she said, “You two came out of there awfully close together. One might think you were working as a team.”
“Um …” Flynn said.
Before he could say anything else, the Queen spoke again. “It’s fine. Work together all you like. You’re not trying to kill each other”—she glanced over at where the brute had been—“like lesser people would do. I admire that.”
When Flynn followed her line of sight, he saw they’d taken the brute away and were dragging him into an abandoned shop. The other two prisoners were being taken that way too.
“It’s how we get to use this town for our games,” the Queen said.
Flynn stared at her.
“We don’t live here. This town, like most towns in the area, are hostile places run by gangs. We use it for holding our prisoners and for the games. In return, they get eighteen fresh corpses as payment every time.”
Another look at the shop the bodies had been dragged into and Flynn looked for the rats in the shadows. He didn’t see any.
“Despite their brutish appearance,” the Queen said, “the gang who run this town are quite nice when you get to know them. And no one in my community eats people. There isn’t any point when you can trap animals.”
The thud of Flynn’s heart boomed through him. He’d finally recovered his breath, but he currently existed on the edge of a panic attack. If he said or did the wrong thing, the gang would have nineteen corpses to feed on.
Flynn straightened his back as if it would help compose him, and although he stood taller than the Queen, her presence dwarfed him.
“Anyway,” the Queen said, “One and Sixteen, only one of you can walk away from this. We need to take you to the final trial of this course. The winner will be welcomed into our community. The loser will be trapped and imprisoned again. They’ll get their chance to escape, but they’ll have to go through the games again to do it.”
The Alpha Plague (Book 7) Page 11