A thundering clang cut through the buzz of the crowd as two heavily armored guards slowly peeled the mighty iron doors across the arena from him open. A hush washed over the crowd, but from this distance Demoreo saw nothing, just a dark hallway across the massive arena. What was coming next was beyond his power. The rage would overtake him, it would drown out his consciousness and force him to feed on the flesh of the living and undead. All of it would unfold in front of a crowd, no longer in a darkened cell in private. The guards had seen to it that he had eaten nothing in days, and the hunger was growing with every passing moment. Whatever had taken over his body and mind was a good parasite, and it did what it had to do to survive, even if it meant overtaking the host.
"Ladies and gentlemen," an announcer's voice boomed over the arena. "Tonight Jordan Branch presents to you, the disgusting cannibal of the Wasteland, the Crusher!"
The crowd roared while one of the guards behind him poked him in the back with the muzzle of his rifle, "C'mon, Crusher, Branch wants you to play to the crowd." Demoreo turned around to face the guard, only for three others to swarm in, guns pointed at him, motioning for him to turn around. They were scared of him, knowing what he was capable of.
"My god, he's a lively one, isn't he!" The announcer boomed again. "Tonight we will see the Crusher against an entire horde of the undead, can the terror of the Wasteland outlast them? Only time will tell!" He boomed. "It's feeding time!"
The crowd fell eerily silent while the groaning started to come from the tunnel across the arena. The sounds of the approaching undead had triggered something inside of him and the dark cloud rolled in over his mind. Fists clenched, he advanced towards the tunnel. If he was to live as a monster for the rest of his life, how bad would it really be to just have it all end here? To fight, to not let the monster take hold and to die while he could still remember the face of his children? Death would be the only thing that he was in control of because it was his and his alone. Not Jordan Branch's.
The only thing standing in the way of this noble death was the feeling of the boiling rage flowing through his veins. The rage was bubbling up inside of him, overtaking his personality and clouding whatever logical thoughts were left inside of his mind. A few of the undead emerged from the blackness, moaning and shuffling towards him, the guards with stun batons to herd them. The crowd roared and all that Demoreo could think about was ripping them all—undead and the alive—limb from limb. His senses were dulling, the fog inside of his brain solidifying to the point of blocking everything else out, the rage overtaking him. He stumbled, falling down to one knee while the pain inside of his head grew. That pain, that blackness had overtaken him before and the only way that he knew to stop it was to let go, let it encompass his being, to let the monster take charge.
There was a dual-residency inside of his head; a struggle for dominance as to which personality would exist and eventually only one would be left. Demoreo, he whispered. Demoreo, your name is Demoreo. The pain inside of his mind intensified while the horde closed in on him. Demoreo, your name is Demoreo. A sudden jolt filled his body, the feeling of a set of rotten teeth digging into his shoulder. He let out a mighty roar, exploding to his feet, flinging the few undead that had clutched onto him off to the ground.
In one swift motion his foot came down like a piston, crushing the skull of the one who had bits of his flesh still in its maw. He grabbed another around its decaying throat, its menacing tongue lashing out, a hiss emanating from inside of it. The monster was hoisted into the air before its skull came crashing down onto the packed dirt, exploding upon impact. Crusher let out a mighty roar while another two hobbled toward him.
He reached down and grabbed a hold of a leg, using his might to effortlessly fling it to the side, taking the whole body with it. The body flew through the air, but the leg remained in his hand, quickly finding its way into his jaws. He tore a large chunk of meat off from the leg before tossing it aside, another clawing at him. This one he grabbed by the top of the head, leaning down and sinking his oversized teeth into the monster's stomach. With one tug there were entrails spilling onto the ground, the monster still hissing at him before he tore the head from the body, tossing it into the crowd, forcing a panic among the first two rows.
He was at least three times the size of them surrounding him, meaning that they stood no chance. There were no human thoughts left, just rage, just hunger, just destruction. The crowd was under control again, screaming in joy while he ripped through each one that stood before him, taking pieces into his jaw when he saw fit, other times simply tearing them limb-from-limb much to the delight of the crowd.
A commotion came from his right, him turning to see that a member of the crowd had fallen in. A woman in the front row was screaming, crying out, reaching for a man that had tumbled from the stands who lay flat on the ground trying to regain his senses. Crusher dropped the twitching body from his hands and stomped over towards the man who was attempting to scramble to his feet. The guards stood silent, watching. Their orders weren't to save anyone, their orders were to clean up.
"No, please! Someone help him!" The woman shrieked, a few guards surrounding her, taking her by the arms and restraining her. "Jonah no! Please!"
It was only a matter of a few steps before the Crusher stood before the man, blood and guts dripping from his maw and streaking down his heavily muscled chest like a primitive beast on the hunt. Demoreo, he heard faintly in his mind. Your name is Demoreo. A sharp pang traveled through his head, causing him to pull back, before the cloud washed back over him, the man's torso in his grasp having the life squeezed out of him.
Rage.
"No, ple—" The man was pleading, but the Crusher was hungry. Always hungry. Restraining himself only amplified the pain in his mind, making the choice a simple one.
The head popped inside of his mouth like a water balloon against a warm summer's day sidewalk, squishing and crunching while the body fell limp in his hand. He tore off an arm like he was casually munching on a game hen, a natural and effortless thing for him to do, when out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of the guards approaching him in defensive postures. The body flew towards two of the guards, knocking them to the ground before he felt the sharp pain of the taser throughout his body, falling to his knees, blackness flooding through his mind. Demoreo, he heard his voice say inside of his head. Demoreo.
Three
The Brawler
Life before the fall was a distant mirage to William. There were still those fleeting, hazy memories of his rain-soaked home in Britain, not that any of that mattered now. It was all bullshit now; he chuckled while he heaved his tank-like body from the bed, taking special care to not disturb the women on either side of him. He couldn't help himself, though, his hand slapping the ass of the one on the right, the blonde with the perky tits, Jenna. She giggled and moaned while he slunk off of the bed and onto the floor, pulling a bottle of scotch off of the nightstand.
"Baby where are you going?" Jenna murmured, still in a haze.
"Just need a nip an' a walk, that alright, innit?" He picked himself up, snatching the red kimono with the kanji on the back that spelled out "Metsu-Ken" off of the chair across from the bed and lazily draping it over himself, trying to tie the belt with the bottle still in his hand. His hand quaked like it had been doing for months now, requiring a deep breath to keep it from showing.
"But baby," she said, rubbing her eyes, "you know that you are in the arena tonight."
"Oh I am," he said, taking another burning pull from the bottle. "Just need a l’il air s'all."
The top half of Branch Tower was residential, with the topmost few floors being reserved for those of the utmost importance, a category that William fell into, even if he had to earn his way into the elite. Everyone knew him as the brawler; the man with the taped fists who would enter the arena with the British flag draped over his shoulders like a cape before he put on some of the wildest brawls that Branch's arena had ever seen. They cheered,
laughed and hung on his every motion, which helped turn him into a god of Branch's new society.
William was a hero in Branch Tower, and Jordan Branch himself had promised him the retirement that he was due for. Soon, very soon. In fact, he believed that very night would be the night that the "British Brawler" William Farrington finally retired from the arena. William was a hero, a tall tale, and of late they were feeding him bums to fight. Maybe it was that Branch ran out of anyone willing to fight to the death in the arena anymore, or that his legend had grown out of proportion for them. He was never sure of which, but he was sure that his time was coming to a close. Still, he didn’t feel much like a hero. Maybe after he got to retire, he could finally sleep through the night.
The only one that he hadn't fought yet was the Crusher, but he was always sure that the arena's two favorites would be kept separate, at least for now. With William on the way out, it meant that none of it would ever need to concern him again. He would only be a spectator at the fights from then on, not the main event anymore. A part of him would miss the roar of the crowd, the adrenaline pumping through his veins while he fended off hordes of the undead and whatever warrior had shown up at their doorstep. The rest of him just wanted it all to be over already. There was only so much self-medicating he could do to forget everything.
Some would categorize Branch as a monster, organizing fights between the living and other survivors, sometimes against the undead or even beasts from the Wasteland, but not William. William understood well enough that there was only limited space in Branch's new world that he was building and that his skills were important enough to gain him the trust of the most important man left in this world, Branch.
William had found his way to Branch Tower like everyone else had; through stories, conjecture and desire to survive. He was so far removed from his home at that point, with no hope of ever returning, that it seemed like the only thing to do was find a way to Branch's compound. His brother, Stuart, had been with him throughout their journey from what was California to the desert of Las Vegas.
Everything along the way was either decimated or in some state of disrepair. Stuart and himself had holed up in a shelter when the bombs dropped initially, but they knew that they couldn't live there forever. They spent an entire year inside of that shelter until one night in a fight over some rations, Stuart had slit the throat of of their de facto-leader's son. That was the critical mass leading to their exodus, leaving them no choice but to run. They would have to try to survive topside, in what was left of the world.
Will stumbled down the dimly lit hall of Branch Tower, hearing the fountain from the common area and laughing to himself at the luxury he found himself in. Their escape from the shelter was a bloody one, Stuart had snapped and had stabbed at least three of the men who attempted to come after him, with William forced to drag his brother away from the fight, subduing anyone in their way to the door. Women were crying, children were cowering while the two boys from Brighton brawled their way out of the shelter. The shelter itself was a dismal abomination of families huddled in corners and hoarding their supplies from each other.
The warm, arid wind whipped at them outside of the shelter, with the unfamiliar sunlight blinding them after their extended stay underground in a dimly lit, incandescent hole in the ground. The landscape that laid barren and still before them took Will's breath away at the moment, so much so that he didn't hear the heavy iron door slamming shut behind them and latching. Everyone had been afraid of the outside world, but Will and Stuart had known that their time there was running out. The food was growing scarce, tempers were flaring, and Stuart was finding himself in more and more jams that Will had to pull him out of.
Their arrival in Los Angeles had been on a vacation across the United States. They were on a trip to clear their minds after their mother had passed on from cancer. Stuart had taken it worse than Will had and was getting into more trouble than Will could deal with, so he arranged for their great American trip. Little did either know that they'd never see home again, instead find themselves stranded in the American wastelands after the fall. Sand and ash had swept throughout what was once a great city, the Earth reclaiming what humanity had taken from it and helped to destroy. Buildings had crumbled and what was left of them had become overgrown with plant life, like the Earth was trying to reclaim what belonged to it. They dared not go into any of those old buildings, though, for fear of what could have been lingering inside still, or worse yet, random collapses. Their journey towards Branch Tower was a solemn march, most of it spent in relative silence. Stuart's clothes stained with the blood of the people he had stabbed, and neither had muttered a single word about it. The trip took them over two months, in part because of the terrain, but also from the survivors. When the undead first appeared, the panic was undeniable, but there was a sense of control after a few weeks. That was until the bombs dropped. That was when they realized that they'd never see home again, and that all hope was lost. There were a few shuffling undead along the way to Las Vegas, but they were few and far between on their journey. Most of their problems came from the living.
Will first killed a living man halfway into the trip when an older man with a pistol and an itchy trigger finger accosted them. He was hungry; he had said, and he wanted their food. He'd let them live if they handed it over. Stuart had wanted none of that, of course, brandishing his knife and lunging at the old man who naturally began wildly firing. A shot had whizzed over Will's head before he pushed Stuart aside and buried his shoulder into the old man's ribs. The old man was on the ground in an instant, Will on top, smashing away at his face with his knuckles and elbows until the old man drew his last, pained breath. He had continued to smash at the man's battered skull, unsure of the possibility of the old man reanimating and wanting to be sure, but it took Stuart dragging him off of the old man for him to realize what had happened. That incident became another that the brothers refused to speak of, with the fear of retelling the events out loud making them more real or horrific. Will still saw that fucker’s broken skull every night in his dreams, no matter how much he drank.
Along the way they had run into some trouble with a few slavers, but that turned into a mostly silent affair for both brothers, serving as the place where Vera came into their lives. The poor girl. Neither one of them had spoken much after picking her up, just grunts and nods for the rest of their journey before they reached their destination. When Branch Tower crested over the horizon, a lone marvel of man's endurance and perseverance, their silence was finally broken. "Quite a fuckin' sight, innit?" Stuart muttered.
"Aye," he had agreed.
"That fire," Branch said, brandishing a smile and rubbing his hands together. "I know that you'll be tremendous tonight, a star. No... No, my star."
"Aye," Will said, Branch's hands grasping onto his broad shoulders. "Well, I'm ready to knock some heads off."
"Good," Jordan said. "That is what I want to hear! You see, Will, can I call you Will?"
"Why not?" He shrugged.
"Well Will, we've known each other for a while now, right?"
"Aye, that we have Mr. Branch," William was sitting on a bench in the dark underbelly of the arena, pulling his gear on. A gauntlet on his right hand had become his signature; him using it, the cave in the skulls of the shuffling undead and any of the living that they tossed at him. The spikes made for an imposing visual, but the electromagnetic charge that pulsated through whoever it contacted was the real killer. He had even given a name for that punch, the dreaded Metsu-Ken, which in Japanese meant "Destroy Punch." At least that’s what someone had told him. That what was he did, though; he destroyed lives with that punch, and they all ate it up.
"Oh please, Will. Call me Jordan," he assured him. They hadn't known each other all that well, but Branch had taken a serious liking to him of late, which didn't bother William that much because it was all business at this point. Branch was arguably one of the most powerful men in the world. For all that he or anyone els
e around knew, Branch was the only powerful man left. There was always this vain hope that there was life and society thriving elsewhere, but Branch painted a rather vivid portrait of how the rest of the world was in chaos and how it was on them to survive, to thrive and to rebuild after all of this time. He should know. He still has a working helicopter.
"Alright, Jordan, then."
"Good, good," he said. "Tonight is a special night. Tonight we add to our menagerie of sorts, our society that we are rebuilding from the ground up."
"That's a good 'un, innit?"
"It is. It is."
"What's this addition now then?"
"The addition is hope, my good friend. It is hope in the way of a new survivor, one that nearly everyone will recognize. He's more than a man to most of them, he's many men, he's a memory of our past opulence and also of our triumphs."
"Some sort of hero?"
"A hero, yes," he said. "Are you familiar with TK Gabriel?"
"He's that picture badass, innit he?"
"That he is, that he is."
"He's here? Fuck off."
"No, really," Branch was staring off into the distance. "He showed up at our doorstep this afternoon. I believe that he could be a turning point for our little society here. He's a symbol of hope, a symbol of what existed before all of this."
The Tower Page 3