What the fuck?
“Well, well, well…what do we have here?” a sinister voice growled. It was deep, sounding much like a bullfrog.
Ignoring the pain, Damon angled his head up and saw a man dressed in dirty blue jeans and a red and black flannel cut off shirt standing over him with a rocket launcher slung casually over his shoulder. A thick barbed wire tattoo wrapped around his thick bicep. His face was rough, scars littered the right side, his eyes were the color of gravestones. His hair looked like chopped corn stalks on top of his head, the sides shaven to reveal matching skull tattooes above each ear.
“Hagerty…” Damon grated through his teeth.
The butch haired man sneered with dingy teeth then two things happened-Victoria screamed and pain exploded in the back of his head. The last thing he remembered was Victoria being hauled away with her knees dragging against the pavement, then his vision faded.
Damon was back in the kill room at the church, the room in which he knew he and Chloe would never leave. He would never see his brother, never know if he was safe. He was on his knees, Chloe next to him with tears on her dirty cheeks. Marines loomed around with grave faces and rifles at the shoulder. They were going to die.
Then the room was black. He was alone. Chloe was screaming from somewhere down the hall. They had survived the kill room, only to be locked away to starve to death. The darkness enveloped him.
There was so much shouting around him. He cracked his eye open. In an instant his brain kick started-eyes flaring-muscles engaging-he shot to his feet. His fists clenched ready to dish out justice for what had happened to them-to all of them.
Pain shot through his head, the blow that left him unconscious still wreaked havoc. Damon fell to one knee, momentarily forgetting his rage as he massaged the back of his skull. After a few minutes he blinked his eyes, ready to try and stand again. This time he succeeded, allowing him to survey his surroundings. It didn’t look good. He was in a wooden box no bigger than a shower stall, the planks hammered together in haste, leading him to believe the carpenter had failed shop class. There were small gaps between the boards, but peeking through gave him no useable information.
His skin crawled with rage and fear, he was back in the dark, alone and someone’s prisoner.
“Hagerty…” he growled. He knew only his name and face but hated him as much as the General.
What had he done with Victoria? Should I shout? His fists clenched and unclenched, his brow pebbled with sweat. Not only was his rage boiling, but the room was stifling hot, like he was wearing a blanket of heat.
“Fuck-fuck-fuck…” he cursed out loud. It wasn’t original or a solution, but it was the only thing he could think of at the moment.
“My thoughts exactly,” a smooth voice said from Damon’s left.
Damon’s head snapped towards the sound. “Who said that?”
“Name’s Mathias. You?” his voice sounded as deep as the ocean.
He paused in the silence, not sure if he cared to converse with the man, but then thought he would try for information regarding his location. “Damon. What the hell is this place?”
“I haven’t rightly figured that out, but what I do know is everyone who has been taken from these rooms we’re in don’t come back.”
His stomach dropped into his pelvis, blood pumped harder once more. Where the hell was Victoria? “VICTORIA!” he shouted, the echo rang in his ears. He yelled again and again.
“Hey man! Calm down. We don’t want them coming over here. They usually take the ladies somewhere else, and if Victoria was the last female they brought through here, it sounded like she gave them a hard time. Pretty sure someone ended up with a broken nose.”
Damon smiled slightly, that sounded like Victoria for sure. “We gotta get outta here.” He didn’t know why he said we. Was he referring to Victoria or Mathias?
“Good luck with that. I’ve been trying for I don’t know how long.”
“Why haven’t they come for you then?” His suspicions rising,
“Honestly don’t know, wish they would though. I’m ready to be done with this, kill me, whatever. Let me go down fighting at least.”
“Son of a bitch.”
“Yup.”
Damon plopped down on his ass and laid his elbows over his knees. He thought about Harper and Riley. What happened to them? His truck was the only one in the ditch. “Hey did you hear anything about two trucks when they brought us in?”
There was a long pause. “You know what? I did overhear a conversation about Hagerty using a rocket launcher on a truck.”
“Yeah, that was us.”
“Shit…”
“Yeah. Anything else?”
“I remember them saying they were going after another truck, think they said it was white.”
“That’s them!”
They still had a chance. Harper was still out there, Riley too. Damon rested his head back against the rough wood, flinching slightly when the tender part made contact. He closed his eyes and prayed he didn’t piss off Harper too much. Damon wanted a chance to pay Hagerty back, and soon.
chapter 10
There was rustling outside what Damon figured to be the door of his cell. His eyes flared open, and he was on his feet in two seconds.
“Don’t do it man,” Mathias warned. “It never ends well.”
Dammit. Damon forced his body to relax but his shoulders refused to listen.
The door flew open, light glared into the room. The sound of fighting and screaming got louder, which Damon momentarily ignored because two men he hadn’t seen before were standing in front of him with compact submachine guns hanging at their waists, fingers on the triggers. One had his nose taped with a blood tissue stuck in his nostril. Two more men were pulling a bear of a man out of a cell to his left. The man he believed was Mathias, it had to be. He was huge and looked like he could have cracked the guys’ heads open with his two hands. His head was shaved to the skin, sunlight shining against his scalp. His eyes met Damon’s, he nodded, and Damon knew whatever was going to happen to them, it was going to happen to the both of them. He took the chance to look around, look for an escape. They were inside some sort of compound. Walls made of timber rose out of the dirt, and where the wall ended, a vast lake lay against the mountains. It was a sharp contrast to the tents and other slapped together shanties spread around the grounds; however the only people were the four men standing around him and Mathias. But what really caught his attention was an arena erected from wood and scrap metal like something out of Mad Max and the Thunderdome. He didn’t like the way it looked, and of course that was where they were being led.
“We got a special surprise for the both of ya,” one man sneered.
The one with the wounded nose bobbed his head. “Yeah, you guys will be a good show.”
“Yeah a good show.”
“Probably a good thing we didn’t eat ‘em huh Billy.”
“Eat me?!? What the fuck is wrong with you people?”
“Winter was hard,” the short man responded.
“There’s a fucking lake, should be loads of fish in there.”
“Shut up Lee!” the lead thug hissed. That stopped the conversation. The one known as Lee shrank away slightly, keeping his distance from the leader of the guard.
Nope, this wasn’t good at all. Damon chose not to respond. Whatever was waiting for them wasn’t good. He noticed there were guards stationed in makeshift towers around the compound. He stopped but quickly felt the muzzle of a gun pressing into his back shoving him forward.
“Watch it,” Damon growled, letting his anger get the better of him.
The shorter man in front of Damon whirled around and cold clocked him in the cheek. Damon shot back, but a firm hand gripped his shoulder. The sound of bullets entering chambers stopped him from clobbering the ass wipe.
“Good boy,” Billy said sarcastically.
Bile filled Damon’s throat. He wanted to beat the piece of shit into the dirt
, but it wasn’t the time. He noticed that Mathias hadn’t removed his hand, and he quickly shook it off, giving him a look that he had regained control of the beast inside.
“We’ll see how tough you are once you get in the ring,” Billy said with a smirk.
“My money is on the zombies,” Lee said, keeping his distance from Billy.
“Nobody bets on warm bloods.”
“What kind of shit are you running?” Damon couldn’t help it.
“You’ll find out,” Billy laughed and pounded on the arena door. It stood over Mathias’ head, which Damon figured to be about six five, and was constructed of car doors, corrugated sheet metal and slabs of wood.
This just keeps getting better and better.
When the doors opened, Damon and Mathias were shoved through and then slammed shut behind them.
Damon and Mathias stood side by side, backs pressed up against the gate, so they were staring into the center of the arena. The walls of the tiny colosseum were made from corrugated metal too tall to climb. Above the walls were seats for the spectators. Now Damon knew where the citizens of this compound were congregating. They were all on their feet watching them in silence; the cheering had stopped. Under an arch positioned directly across from them was a red throne with human skulls nailed on either side of the throne.
There was a woman chained to the base of the throne. Damon’s breath strangled him. It was Victoria. Her clothes were torn and her face bruised. When she looked down at the new competitors, she cried out as if she had been struck. She jerked away from the chair, but she couldn’t break the chains. Damon heard her yell and he wanted to scale the wall to free her, but there was nothing he could do. He watched as Hagerty appeared from behind the throne, the crowd erupting into a roar for their leader. In one stride he was standing by Victoria. He held out a grubby hand, snatching her wrist. Damon could see that he was talking to her; at the end of his sentence he watched as Victoria spat in his face. With a smile he drew back his hand and slapped her across the face.
Damon charged forward. “I’M GONNA KILL YOU HAGERTY!”
Hagerty smiled wide as he tossed Victoria to his feet in a thud. He missed the killing look she gave him as she shuffled across the ground to the ring’s edge. His muscled frame prowled close to the arena ledge. “I’m sure you want to.” He motioned at two of his underlings, and they rushed off and out of sight. “But right now I suggest you find yourself a weapon. The show is about to start.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?” He looked around, eyeing the gaunt people in the stands. “What the fuck is any of this about?” Damon was done with all the bullshit.
Hagerty didn’t respond, just backed into his throne and sat down. He made a comment to Victoria, but it was ignored. She kept her eyes on Damon, her brow drawn together.
Damon switched his focus to the arena, and that was when he figured out exactly what was going on. There were bodies littering the beaten down dirt, most of them had been zombies, but one in particular was a prisoner, or had been a prisoner. The reanimated and mutilated body withered around on the ground, telling him that someone had been purposefully placed in the arena. Between the body, spectators, and what Hagerty had said, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out.
The sound of clanking metal knocked Damon out of his angry stupor. He flipped his head to Mathias who had torn off a three foot piece of lead pipe from the gate and was testing his grip by giving it a few swings. Damon went looking for something on his own. He knew more zombies were coming, but he didn’t know how many. The only type of shelter in the arena was a burned out husk of a sedan.
“Let the game begin!” Hagerty shouted, again the spectators burst into a deafening roar that shook Damon’s chest.
Damon acted lightning fast, sprinting for the car just as another gate opened, revealing a gaping black hole under Hagerty’s throne. When he reached the tail end of the car he flopped to his back and shimmied under. Making easy work of dismantling the loosely fitting exhausted pipe, he emerged with his weapon. It wasn’t his machete, but it would have to do.
“Mathias!” he shouted, motioning for the big man to join him at the car. “We’ll meet them right here.” He pointed to the tallest part of the sedan, beyond them was the void. “Probably a good idea not to be by the wall.”
Mathias pumped his biceps, his thick hand squeezed the length of pipe. “I never would have guessed this was what was happening.”
“These people are insane, and I’ve met a few to know.”
“Here they come.”
Damon heard them, the sound crawling all over his skin like a colony of ants. He could make out distinct differences in the moans and growls. There were roughly ten zombies shuffling around in the dark, and some of them were sprinters. He had experience with sprinters, and preferred not to have anything to do with them ever again, but luck wasn’t on his side, and he wasn’t making the rules.
“Careful, some of those fast ones are in there,” Mathias warned.
“Good. You know about them too.”
“Unfortunately.”
“I’m sure shitbag up there thinks we don’t-” Before Damon could finish three sprinters exploded from the darkness and into the bright sunlight without hesitation. Two males and one female, and the first male came towards the car in a fury; its dead limbs were uncharacteristically coordinated for a zombie, making him deadly fast. Its short hair was falling out in clumps, pulling away the graying flesh on the scalp, exposing bits of yellow skull between the flaps. It stood a good head taller than Damon with skinny shoulders and dead eyes that were locked on the two of them. Damon’s hand gripped the exhaust pipe waiting anxiously for the thing to loop around the burned out car.
Out of nowhere the thing jumped-JUMPED-onto the hood of the car, a low, threatening growl escaped his maw like a feral animal. In an instant it was across the hood, fingers with cracked, yellowed nails stretched for Damon, but a quick maneuver saved his life. The mechanic dipped his shoulder just as the zombie leapt, causing the creature to miss its mark. He then brought his free hand up to heave the zombie over and onto the ground. The thing hit the dirt with a thud and before it could get up, he finished it completely. The crowd erupted in cheers.
He looked up to see Mathias had crushed the skull of the second male sprinter and just landed a powerful kick to the female sprinter’s chest. The zombie let out a shriek from the ground. A sound from his right caught his attention, and he whirled away from the big man. Another shambling zombie pawed the air inches from Damon’s shoulder, with a second only a foot behind it.
While they were battling the sprinter zombies, eight more slow moving corpses had staggered their way into the arena. Damon and Mathias fought with their back together as the zombies closed in. They were forced to move away from the car to keep from being surrounded completely, among the cheers and jeers from the crowd Blood and brain matter splattered his boots, compelling another deafening roar from the crow. A few boos echoed through the arena from those who came to see someone get ripped apart by zombies. Damon heard them-felt them-and he was enraged by them. His chest burned with hate, hate for the zombies...the crowd...but mostly Hagerty. The mad man subjected innocent people to this ring of torture, left to die for entertainment.
In a haze of blood, cheers and boos Damon crushed another zombie's skull, then turned looking for his next kill. Mathias was on the opposite side of the car after pummeling another zombie, he then used the length of metal to take the legs out from under another. Blinking back to what was in front of him, Damon squeezed the exhaust pipe and attacked a wobbling, molding man with half a jaw and no nose. His tongue hung down his neck. Damon snarled, and swung the pipe in a wide arc, making contact with its temple. The rest of its face fell to the beaten ground with a splat. One more went down before old moldy hit the ground. He charged another, slamming into its chest. With such force the zombie slammed back into the wall. A horrible cracking noise echoed. Damon snarled again. He felt fe
ral, like a monster, but he fed on it. More zombies fell until the last one dropped.
After the cheers died, Damon stared at nothing. His grip pulsated on the cold pipe as he attempted to recall what had transpired. He didn’t notice Mathias approach until he put his big hand on Damon’s shoulder, the big man was saying something, but he couldn't hear over the rushing in his ears. His head snapped up when a voice pushed through his beating heart.
"Wasn't that an amazing show?" Hargerty boosted with his muscled arms spread as wide as his smile. The crowd erupted once more. "Am I not the best president ever?" More cheers. Some women in the stands even blew kisses at him.
"Is that all you got?" Damon shouted.
Mathias punched an elbow into Damon's bicep.
"Easy now-don't test me. There are plenty more where that came from," Hagerty warned with a yellow sneer.
"Bring it motherfucker!" He was feeling more than dangerous and was oblivious to his position in this situation where Hagerty, unfortunately for Damon, had the upper hand.
"Well aren't you a testy son of a bitch. Don't worry, you'll get another chance." With that Hagerty disappeared, yanking Victoria along with him.
Damon held Victoria's gaze as long as he could before her face vanished behind the arena wall. It was then he realized how foolish his behavior was. Why would he test the person who held them captive? His pride and ego got in the way once again. How many times would he let it? Who else would get hurt because of it?
"Not a good idea, son," Mathias spoke softly.
"Whatever." He was pissed off and worried.
"It's just Hagerty...he's—"
"Don't fucking say his name," Damon growled, but then his face softened. "Sorry man, I'm just...not myself."
"I just don't want you to end up like the others that come here."
"Thanks Mathias, but you don't even know me."
The Beginning of the End Page 11