Sound of Survival (Book 2): Fight or Flight

by Patten, Sean

My heart pounded, the strange, wavering feeling of an irregular beat flowed through my body. Black formed in the corners of my eyes, and I felt lightheaded and weak. These were all bad signs. I needed my pills, and I needed them badly.

  Come on, ticker, I thought to myself. Don’t you dare give up on me.

  I took a few calming breaths, trying to get my heart rate to slow down.

  Part of me considered lunging forward, slamming the guy’s head into the crates and taking his gun and whatever else he had worth taking. But then I thought about how easily that plan could go sideways. Sure, I had size on my side, but these men were trained killers. And I hadn’t been spending nearly enough time at the range to be worth a damn with that gun, especially in a life-or-death situation.

  The guard finished and zipped up, the sour smell of piss mingling with the hot, morning air and making my stomach turn. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as Amy’s mouth opened, wider and wider, in that unmistakable way that meant she was about to let out a sneeze.

  Oh, fuck.

  The guard turned, about to head back in the direction that he’d come. And right at that moment Amy let it rip, my hand shooting to her mouth and covering the sneeze right at the exact second that she’d let it loose. The sneeze came out muffled, spit covering my palm as I took the brunt of it.

  My hand on Amy’s mouth, the two of us watched with bated breath to see what the guard would do. He stood in place for a moment, his hand resting on the stock of his gun. I had nightmare visions of him turning around and spotting us, raising the gun and blasting us to pieces as we sat crouched and surrounded by the smell of his waste.

  But it didn’t happen. Instead, he stood still for a moment, glancing back at his piss puddle as if to make sure it was up to standard, then left. The crunch of his boots on the sand faded and faded and was soon gone.

  Once I was positive that he wasn’t coming back, I slowly took my hand away from Amy’s mouth.

  “How many times are you going to do that today?” she asked.

  “You’ve sure got some sass to spare for someone who just about blew our damn cover.”

  For a moment she looked as if she was about to give me a little more attitude, but she evidently thought better of it, forming her mouth into a hard, flat line and keeping quiet.

  Amy had a way of giving me pause. On the one hand, the girl had been through some serious shit and was totally out of her element, so I was inclined to cut her a little slack. On the other, she had a streak to her that gave me the impression she wasn’t at all happy about having to listen to a man tell her what to do. There was ego there, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it was going to get us into some serious shit sooner or later.

  I pushed that out of my head. At that moment, I had more important things to worry about than her attitude being an issue down the line.

  “Sorry,” she said. “Just a little nervous is all.”

  “I get it,” I said, keeping my voice down. “But you need to push past it. Nerves will get you killed if you’re not careful.”

  Amy regarded me with a curious expression, as if trying to figure something out.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Just looked for a second like you were really sick or something.”

  I knew what she was referring to, but we didn’t have time to go over my medical history right now.

  “Forget it,” I said. “And come on.”

  The only thing that mattered right then and there was getting as far away from the Dante and the rest of the gang as possible. We’d gotten lucky with the pissing guard, but I doubt our good fortune would be enough to carry us through another close call like that.

  With one more deep breath, I stuck my head out from behind the crates and took a look around. There were a few guards here and there, most chatting to one another or aimlessly milling around. But more importantly, there were plenty of crates and other gear piled here and there, more than enough for us to hide behind.

  And at the far end, closest to the main festival area, was another warehouse. I recognized this one, and knew that it served as an entryway of sorts between the backstage area and the public part of the festival. If we could get through, we’d be right where we needed to go.

  “There!” I hissed, getting Amy’s attention and pointed ahead to the boxy form of the warehouse.

  Amy sidled over to me and looked.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s how we’re going to get away from these assholes. Maybe even find a place to hide out for a little bit.”

  “What if they see us trying to get there?” she asked, her voice quiet and panicked.

  “Not like we have much choice right now,” I said. “We either take our chances getting out of here, or we sit around until they spot us.”

  Amy nodded. “Okay. Let’s do this and get it over with.”

  I glanced up ahead at the warehouse, knowing there was a not insignificant chance that the two of us weren’t going to survive the trip.

  I glanced back at her and spoke.

  “Let’s move.”

  5 Ed

  Slowly but surely, Amy and I made our way through the hallway-like passages formed by the crates. Guards moved here and there off in the distance, but we made sure to keep low and out of sight. Before too long, we reached the service entrance to the warehouse, Amy formed up on my side.

  “Nice work,” I said, my voice quiet. “Glad you managed not to sneeze.”

  She shot me a hard look, and I gave her one back that let her know I was mostly screwing around.

  Mostly.

  “Okay,” I said. “We just need to get through here. Once we’re on the other side we should be clear for the time being.”

  “Got it,” she said.

  I had to hand it to her a little; the girl was doing a halfway-decent job at keeping it together. She was soft, sure, but that was to be expected with someone like her—it was more inexperience than anything else. She was hardly acting like a spoiled prima-donna star, raging at the unfairness of it all.

  I still wasn’t thrilled about babysitting her. But she’d saved my life. I owed her.

  I put my hand on the service-entrance knob and slowly, slowly twisted it. The door came open, a breath of cool from the last of the air-conditioned air greeting us. A quick poke of my head inside revealed that the place was mostly empty. A handful of guards were gathered at the far side, none of them seeming like they were paying too much attention to anything other than their conversation.

  “Stay close,” I said to Amy. “Should be able to slip through, no problem.”

  I realized that, more than anything, I was trying to keep myself calm and reassured.

  Right at the moment I was about to move into the warehouse, Amy gasped. I glanced over my shoulder to see her squatted behind me, an expression of white-faced terror on her features.

  “What?” I asked.

  She said nothing, instead pointing ahead at something just past me.

  At first, I had no idea what she was gesturing towards. Then I spotted it. Or, more accurate to say that I spotted them.

  Several bodies were strewn here and there, still and lifeless. Judging by their shirts they were roadies and other members of the maintenance crew. I couldn’t make out any faces, but I knew there was a damn good chance that there were guys I knew among them.

  The sight of them turned my stomach. Poor bastards likely got gunned down by the Black Mountain crew before they even knew what hit them. One second they’re stumbling around in the dark, trying to make sense of what the hell was going on, the next they’re getting dropped by machine-gun fire. Hell of a way to go.

  I did my best to work through it as quickly as possible. Amy, on the other hand, was struggling.

  “Oh my God, oh my God,” she repeated. She looked on the brink of losing her shit—what little of it she still had together.

  “Don’t look at it,” I said, referring to the scene of grisly carnage. “
Don’t think about it. Just turn your head and put it out of your mind.”

  Her eyes still fixed on the bodies, Amy nodded slowly.

  “Now turn your head,” I said. “Nothing we can do for them now. Best thing is to not join them.”

  She remained still as a statue for a moment. Then slowly, slowly, she did as I said, turning her head away.

  “Good. Now keep moving.”

  Amy nodded and kept on towards the exit on the far end. As we made our way, I could hear the men talking to one another.

  “Shit’s too easy,” said one of them. “Jackasses didn’t even put up a fight.”

  “What?” said another. “You want them to fight back or something?”

  “Would’ve been more fun,” said one of them. “Maybe we should’ve given one of these sorry pricks a pistol and a five-minute head start.”

  “Yeah,” said another. “Make a game of it.”

  My blood turned molten hot in my veins. Part of me wanted to turn back towards those assholes, let out a war cry, and try to take down as many of them as I could before they managed to put a bullet in me. Might’ve been the most dumb-ass idea I’d had since all this shit started, but damned if it didn’t feel good to entertain.

  No dice on that though. Not only would I more likely get dropped the second I stepped out of the shadows, I had a girl to look out for. Like it or not, taking a risk with my life meant taking a risk with hers.

  Still, what I wouldn’t have given for one of my guns from my stash back home and five minutes alone with those pricks.

  “These people are sick,” Amy muttered.

  “Hush up!” I hissed.

  Of course I agreed with her, but that didn’t mean either of us had to say anything—especially right then and there.

  We kept on, both of us lifting our feet as slowly as if we were trudging through a vat of molasses. Slowly but surely, one step at a time, we made our way to the far end of the warehouse. The men were still gathered in their little group, still cracking wise about the dead men at their feet. As much as it made me sick to hear them talk about my crewmen like that, I could at least take some small comfort in the fact that it was keeping them distracted.

  The tight, hot knot in my gut came unraveled the moment we finally reached one of the front doors of the warehouse. From here we were crouched, hidden behind one of the many storage shelves in the cool expanse of the space, we could finally take a few seconds to catch our breaths and collect ourselves.

  “You cool over there?” I asked, keeping my voice low.

  Amy had the look of someone who’d experienced more trauma over the last few hours than most people would in a lifetime. There was a faraway cast to her eyes, like part of her mind had hidden away to keep safe—but at the cost of her mental presence.

  “Huh?” she asked, coming back to the moment.

  “I asked how you’re holding up.”

  “Fine,” she said.

  She sure as hell didn’t look fine.

  “I need to know if you’re all there,” I said, putting my hand on her shoulder. “I know you’ve seen some serious shit, more than a girl like you deserves to put up with. I’m gonna tell you right now: this isn’t gonna get any easier. Now, I’m gonna make it through this, believe you me. But if you’re gonna be a burden, I need to know right now.”

  She looked shocked. Truth be told, I was a little surprised at the words that came out of my mouth. They were both harsh and determined.

  “Don’t say nothing,” I said. “Saying nothing means that you’re going to be dead weight I gotta carry. Now, I figure I owe you for what you did for me, but I’m not about to get myself killed because you got catatonic at the exact wrong time. So, say something way or another. Tell me you’re with me.”

  Amy closed her mouth, swallowed hard, and spoke.

  “I’m with you,” she said. “I’m with you.”

  Relief hit me. As serious as I was about surviving, the idea of leaving behind some scared, helpless kid didn’t exactly appeal to me. But this meant she could stick around.

  “Good,” I said. “Because things are only going to get tougher from here on out.”

  She nodded. The sound of movement from the far end of the warehouse caught our attention, both of us snapping out of our little one-on-one.

  “Shit,” I said. “We need to move. You ready for this?”

  “As ready as I’m going to be,” she said.

  I gave her a nod before reaching up and taking hold of the knob and giving it a twist. Normally, I’d be all ladies-first about this kind of shit, but I wasn’t about to send this kid out into the middle of danger if I could help it. I opened the door just wide enough to slip my body through.

  “Oh, fuck,” I said, my jaw going slack.

  It was the smell. The smell of bodies rotting in the late morning sun.

  6 Amy

  “What is it?” I asked.

  Ed’s bulky body blocked the way out. Off in the distance I heard more movement, sounds that I recognized right away as those assholes going out on patrol or whatever the hell they had in mind.

  “Ed!” I hissed, trying not to speak loudly enough to be noticed. “You need to move!”

  I pressed against him but he didn’t budge.

  “What’s going on out there?” I asked.

  A beat passed before he said anything.

  “It’s…it’s bad out here.”

  “Okay, but it’s about to get really bad in here if you don’t move and let me out.”

  Ed glanced over his shoulder back at me, giving a quick nod.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Just…be ready. It’s not pretty.”

  He shifted his body to the side, giving me enough space to slip through.

  Hot air blasted me as soon as Ed was no longer blocking it, but the temperature was the last thing on my mind at that moment. All I could about were the guards moving through the warehouse, moments away from being on top of the two of us.

  I slipped through, shutting the door behind me.

  “What was that all about?” I asked, a tinge of anger to my voice. “They’d have spotted me if you’d kept me waiting a moment longer.”

  Ed said nothing, his eyes fixed forward. He had a million-miles-away look on his face, something about the expression causing dread to grab a hold of me and not let go.

  I didn’t want to look ahead. But I did. And as soon as my gaze was forward I realized, to my horror, just what had given Ed pause.

  The scene was like something out of a nightmare. There were bodies, so many goddamn bodies. And the smell…I’d never known what the scent of rotting flesh was like—my sole experience with it, if you could even call it that, was remembering how characters in those crappy procedural shows I watched would react to it whenever they happened to encounter the remains of a murder victim.

  As soon as I inhaled, I understood right away why that was the standard reaction. It was like nothing I’d ever smelled before, the most awful, rancid meat scent combined with a sulfur scent that was almost sickly sweet. The little that was in my stomach rushed up to the back of my throat on a hot wave of acid and bile. It took all the restraint I had to not puke right there into the sand.

  And that wasn’t even the worst of it. The scent came from the many bodies around us, corpses splayed out in the desert, some with horribly twisted limbs and broken skulls, some smashed under the many cell towers that had been pulled down in the chaos of last night, some simply trampled or beaten or God knows what else.

  “Oh my God,” I said before covering my mouth and looking away.

  “Yeah,” said Ed. “It’s brutal. But we need to keep moving through it. Prep areas are up ahead. Only options are that or back, or into the main festival area. And I’m guessing I don’t need to tell you why those are bad choices.”

  I wanted to argue, I wanted to tell him there was a better option. But Ed was right. However bad it was up ahead, we had to push through it.

  “Come on,” he said, gl
ancing back at me. “Prep area isn’t far. Let’s get away from this door as fast as possible.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Let’s.”

  Staying crouched, we moved away from the warehouse, taking the first corner around a nearby equipment van. Once we reached it, Ed held up his hand and signaled for me to stay put. I watched as he opened the driver’s door and poked his head in, then slid into the seat and turned the keys in the ignition.

  Nothing. Not a whine from the engine, not something failing to turn over—not a single sound other than the soft, metallic click of the keys in the ignition.

  It was weird to hear a car so…dead. I’d dealt with my share of shitty, unreliable cars in the past, especially back when the band was just starting out. But there was always a part that didn’t work, some strange noise in the engine that’d give of us a clue as to what was wrong with it. This car, however, was stone dead, just as surely as if someone had opened up the hood and pulled out every last chunk of metal out of the engine.

  It was eerie.

  I didn’t have much time to think about it before another gust of wind brought a fresh wave of corpse stink to my nose.

  “Can we please get going?” I asked, doing my best to force down my retching.

  “Yeah,” said Ed. “Car’s old, but not that old. Figured it was worth a shot.”

  He slid out of the seat and back out onto the sand. The two of us continued on, the roar of the crowd in the distance growing louder and louder. Every now and then an engine let off a dull, distant roar, sometimes accompanied by gunfire.

  “They’re all going to be in the main area,” said Ed. “Penned in by the Black Mountain Mob.”

  “What do you think’s happening there?” I asked.

  I wasn’t sure why I asked the question as soon as the words came out of my mouth. Ed was just as in the dark as I was, and the sounds we were hearing in from the distance answered it better than he could’ve hoped to.

  “I’ve got my guesses,” he said. “But I can guarantee you that we don’t want to be anywhere near it.”

  We kept on, moving through the wreckage of the backstage area. I learned quickly to focus my attention forward—as soon as I’d let it drift, my eyes would inevitably land on a body. And I’d seen enough corpses for one day. Deep down, though, I knew they weren’t going to be my last.