by K. M. Raya
I have no idea where they are keeping Nina and Missy. We were separated when they brought us in here. They knocked me out after I pushed Liam into that horde with a smile on my face, and they beat me pretty good before sticking me in this cage. For the past day and a half, now that my mind is once again sound, I’ve been trying to think back and retrace my steps. We’re in some sort of stadium, maybe a baseball… or maybe a college football stadium. The place is one giant circle, but they walked us around a few times, weaving through hallways so I’d get confused, before sticking me in this musty room.
It’s dark and freezing cold in here, and my cage feels like it’s closing in on me. I hate small spaces, and the dampness and the dark just makes it worse. My skin itches, and my bruises ache. I’d give pretty much anything for a cracker, or even a sip of water right now. I can’t believe I got us into this situation. If we ever get out, I don’t think Missy and Nina will ever forgive me for getting us locked in here like animals.
I’d heard stories of the trappers since we left Florida. The further West we traveled, the more whispers we heard of a militant group attempting to hold dominion over the states. Their doctrine is spreading quickly from state to state, and if you refuse to comply, you’ll just end up providing entertainment. That was my mistake. Instead of just going along with it and pretending I wanted to join their psychotic little society, I rebelled because of my stupid girly feelings. Liam broke my heart, and I let that get in the way of my own safety, and I’ll ever forgive myself.
Above my head I can hear the sounds of stomping feet. The dirt from above trickles down overhead, covering me with dust. I can hear voices too, rising above the sounds of moans and death rattles coming from the other room. Together it creates a chorus of chaos that partially contributes to my lack of sleep. When I was first brought in here, a man named Mac paid me a little visit. He’s a relatively handsome man, probably somewhere close to my dad’s age, but his eyes show none of daddy’s kindness or wisdom. In Mac’s eyes, all I see is greed and death.
With his blonde hair tucked under his dirty cowboy hat and a handlebar mustache to match, I actually had to fight my reaction to giggle the first time I laid eyes on him. I’m glad I did, because he’s a mean old bastard, and he’d probably have killed me right there just because I disrespected him… and also the fact that I killed his son. Mac’s the leader of this particular outcropping of trappers, and he’s the one who sent Liam after us. He’s old southern money and had the resources and connections to start up this little operation.
But even after a few hours of listening to him tell me stories about how his society is the way of the future, if only we agree to comply, I saw him for what he really is. A tyrannical psychopath. He never intends to keep me alive. He captures free Americans and forces them to work for him in exchange for meager amounts of food and shelter, as if he has any right to the monopoly on it. The people here live like slaves in tents, eating only the scraps the trapper ‘soldiers’ toss their way. It’s no way to live a life, and for that reason I spat in Mac’s face. Literally. With a grin to follow. He didn’t appreciate that much, and for that reason I haven’t been allowed any meal privileges. Thinking back on it a hundred times, I ask myself if I’d have done anything different. The answer is no. Fuck Mac, and fuck Liam too.
It’s the evening of day three when two men come for me. I don’t have the energy to fight them off, so I just follow as they each latch onto an arm and practically drag me through the back hallways of the stadium. I know where they’re taking me. We’re going where all rebels are taken. To the pits. The thought of those pits used to make me shiver with disgust and fear, but now I feel only apathy. My ability to give a shit is running on the lower side right now. The further up we go, taking one staircase after another, the louder the screaming gets. Idly, I wonder how the fuck they get away with being so goddamn loud all the time. All this noise should be attracting evey fucking zom in the state.
The men push open a set of double doors, and we stumble out into a bright light, and I have to shield my eyes as they burn. They must have some seriously powerful generators to keep these stadium lights going night after night for their stupid games. There are people all around me, dressed in basically rags, and most of them are dirty and smell like piss. They’re also very drunk from the looks of things. I know moonshine is making a comeback in the apocalypse, but damn.
There's maybe a hundred people in here, making it hard to believe all these people live in tents on the inner rim under the seats. They're all crammed in like sardines, and in order to make our way to the center of the indoor stadium, we push people out of the way and step over sleeping bags and garbage. Well… the men leading me push them out of the way. Me, I just let them drag my tired ass with them.
When we finally make our way out into the center, I’m dragged down to what used to be grass, but now is just a bunch of packed mud, and over to a giant hole the trappers dug in the center of the field. Now that I see it up close, though, I find myself involuntarily digging my heels into the earth. White hot terror fills my veins as we approach the edge of that hole in the ground. The once deafening noise of the crowd becomes background noise as the moans of the dead rise up from the earth.
Below us is possibly the most terrifying sight I’ve ever seen. Something straight out of every nightmare I’ve ever had. Countless rotting bodies writhe together, chained together with iron collars clasped around their necks or shackles around their ankles. They’re all bunched up on one side of the pit, crowded together until their masters give the signal to set them loose. If I had any liquid in my body right now, I’d have peed my fucking pants. I’ve faced countless zoms out there in the wastes, but this is different. This is hell.
“Helana!” calls out a familiar voice over the cacophony of death rattles and gurgles.
Frantically, I follow the voice until I see Missy being tugged to the edge of the pit to my right. She’s got one man and one woman holding her arms as she fights against them, but it’s no use. She’s probably just as weak as I am right now, knowing what a smart mouth she has on her. I don’t know if Mac paid her a visit too, but I’m positive she didn’t tell him anything he wanted to hear.
I hear a curse form my left, and I see Nina being dragged to the other side of the pit. Her black hair's a mess of tangles around her frowning face. She whips her head to the side, sinking her teeth into the man’s hand as he clamps onto her shoulder.
“Fucking bitch!” he barks, before slapping her open handed across her face. Her lip bleeds, but Nina just smiles back at him, causing him to slap her again for good measure. ‘Good for her,’ I think to myself. Nina’s never been one to let men push her around. She’s always been scrappy, but she’s also the one who’s prone to getting injured due to her recklessness.
The three of us now stand facing the pit full of zombies, chests heaving as we stare in horror at what’s about to devour us whole. There’s just no way around it. This is what happens to those who don’t do what Mac tells them to do. This is what happens to women who kill trappers… and their only sons. My eyes rove around the stadium, searching for a familiar face. Most of these people look the same. They look dirty, mean and downtrodden. They look like they’re fighting some sort of internal battle with themselves, forcing themselves to seem enthusiastic about this, all the while they're just grateful they aren’t the ones in my shoes right now.
Mac stalks out onto the field with three men behind him. They all look like Texas good ole boys with their guns strapped behind their backs and their flannel shirts and ripped jeans. Mac and his cowboy hat look fucking ridiculous, and his handelbar mustache makes me cringe big time.
“Got anything to say for yourself, little missy?” Mac drawls in that deep southern lilt. “Got yourself into a mighty big bind here.” I clamp my mouth shut tight, glaring at the man with all the fires of my namesake burning inside me. “Nothin? Well, alrighty then, guess we better get a move on.”
He no
ds over to the men holding me and my friends. “Y'all know the rules. You make it out alive and you’re free to go, only as long as you cross state lines before the new dawn.” They shove us forward, releasing their holds on our arms and we stumble closer to the edge. “Tell ya what,” Mac says suddenly, snapping his fingers. “I’ll be a gentleman today and give you a little helping hand, what do you say?”
Snapping his fingers a second time, Mac’s men rush over to us on all sides, handing us nothing but a single butter knife each. I wrap my fingers around the pewter kitchen utensil, feeling my blood boil. Mac’s watching us with squinty eyes and a stupid smile under all that waxed facial hair. “I’m a generous man, little girl. You’d have come to realize that if you’d have just listened to my boy.” He shakes his head, pretending for a moment that he’s a grieving father. “But you showed your true colors, and there’s just nothin I can do for ya now.” He tips his hat with a condescending wink. “Godspeed, girls.”
The next moments happen in what seems like both the blink of an eye, and hours long at the same time. The three of us are pushed into the hole, landing at all the wrong angles. My face is plastered to the wet soil, and I smell nothing but coppery blood. This dirt isn't wet from the rain, being indoors and all. It’s soaked deep with the blood of the fallen. Fellow free thinkers who eventually joined the ranks of the undead chained up on the other side of this pit.
Now that we’re down here in this hole, the zoms descend into a frenzy, smelling all this fresh meet ripe for the taking. Missy, Nina and I back up into each other, keeping our backs to each other in a triangle formation, making sure all our angles are covered. We work as a unit, just like we were trained to do back in the military. This isn’t an all for one kind of fight. We won’t survive that way. The only way we’ll come out on top and win our freedom is if we have each other's backs and no matter what, don’t break rank.
All three of us are basically skin and bone now. None of us have eaten a scrap for three days, and our energy is running low. Luckily, though, unbeknownst to Mac, we’ve been trained for this. We’ve trained in the jungles of Japan, surviving off of pill bugs and snake meat for three weeks straight, so if they think a little three day hunger strike is going to stop us, then they severely underestimated these three wayward women.
A shotgun blast goes off, and suddenly the chains holding back the zoms are pulled away. My heart leaps into my throat as they begin to shuffle and scramble across the muddy pit. I can smell the rot and decay from here and it hits us like a tidal wave. “This is it, girls!” My voice cracks after so many days without water.
The stampede grows louder, and we clutch our fucking butter knives tightly, knowing they’re our only chance. The next thing I hear, though, is Nina’s cackling laughter. It fills the air like a warm breeze, and suddenly, against all odds, I find myself joining her. I laugh until tears spring to my eyes, because this whole situation is so fucking absurd, I almost wonder if I’m having some kind of fever dream. Missy starts laughing too, and the sound we make must be maniacal… hysterical. Out of all the ways we thought our lives would come to an end, this was definitely not even a wild guess.
“We always wanted to go out in a blaze of glory!” Nina yells as the zoms approach.
“We’re not going any fucking where!” I yell back with a wide smile. My heart pounds, and my heels dig into the mud.
This is it.
This is fucking it.
A wave of zombies crash into us and we start swinging. All around me is a frenzy of teeth and claws. Mud flies up into my eyes, but I keep that butter knife flying. Eyeball after eyeball, ear socket after ear socket... I shove the knife through their heads like a maniac, screaming at the top of my lungs...
Chapter ☣ 22
Beretta
Helana’s clearly struggling. Her head is resting back on some cardboard boxes, but she’s moving around, moaning softly, but there’s frown puckering her eyebrows. Her white blonde hair is a mess of waves around her shoulders, and she looks like she’s sweating.
Anubis must sense something’s wrong too, because his nose is burrowed under her right thigh. She’s sitting on the barricade to the front entrance where she said she’d be keeping a lookout, but I knew she was tired. I creep over, careful not to jolt her awake and climb up next to her. Anubis tenses for a moment, raising his head as he looks me over, but I smile and he goes back to sniffing at his owner. I’ve never seen a dog so fiercely loyal to one person before.
Hell thrashes slightly from side to side, and her hands are clenched in her lap. I’m contemplating waking her up, but I know she needs all the rest she can get. I spoke to Dante earlier, and he told me what happened between the three of them, and what happened with Alex after. Personally, I feel like Alex is being a moody little bitch, and I think he owes Helana a huge ass apology.
A part of me resents Alex. The thick headed guy obviously doesn’t realize what he has right in front of him. Not that Hell is automatically supposed to be interested in him, but even a blind man could see the sexual tension there. It’s thick, and we can all see it. We all see the way he watches her sometimes, when he thinks no one is paying attention. He follows her too, when she goes off on her own into the store, I’ve seen him follow after. He’ll never admit it, but some part of him cares about her, just like the rest of us. She has that effect on people, and I for one, can’t even blame him. Alex has some demons he’s still battling, but from the sidelines, it’s not hard to see that he’d probably have a better chance of defeating them with someone by his side.
As for me, I’ve been mostly content to watch her from afar. For now, I’m okay having her as a close friend I can secretly crush on, because I’m just not quite sure where her head is at regarding other females. Hearing about her hot sex with the guys makes me envious, but not to the point of jealousy. If my time with her comes, then it’ll happen on her terms.
Missy and Nina have noticed, and they’ve teased me about it a few times, but I just try and brush it off. I’m actually sort of jealous of the intimacy the two of them share. It makes me miss Kara all the more, even if my romantic notions fled long ago. But I’ve worked hard at letting go of Kara’s memory. I’ve made peace with it, something Alex needs to learn how to do with Jessa. I don’t even think the dude loves her anymore, he’s just got a grudge the size of the state of Utah on his back.
As I make myself comfortable next to Hell, I run my eyes over her soft features, wishing I had the fucking guts to tell her how I feel. I don’t want to overwhelm her, having all these random people suddenly express interest is bound to drive her away even faster. And I’m hoping we don’t drive her away at all.
To keep myself busy, I’ve been scouting the area, making sure we’re all safe and nestled in here for the time being. I found my way to the roof access and have been staking out up there for a few days, making sure I take out any zoms that decide to get too close for comfort. The others don’t know I’m doing it, but I don’t care. Sometimes it’s just nice to be alone with my thoughts for a while.
Hell jolts awake, her bright golden eyes going wide and she swivels her head back and forth. Her brow is coated in droplets of sweat, and she shimmies up straighter, stopping when Anubis reaches out and lays his heavy paw over her thigh. I watch with a small smile as she settles and regains her breathing. She pats Anubis on the head before looking over to me a little surprised.
“Did I wake you up?” she asks. “I’m sorry…”
“Nah. I came up here to see what all the noise was about, but it looked like you were having a bad dream.”
“You could say that.” Her eyes suddenly look far away.
“Wanna talk about it?”
She looks back at me, those gorgeous golden eyes running over my face as if she's deciding what she wants to reveal. “Have you looked outside lately?” she asks finally, laying her head back against the boxes behind her.
“Why?”
“I don
’t know, just thought I saw something out there earlier… It’s probably nothing.”
Sitting up a little straighter, alarm bells are going off in my head. “What did you see?”
She looks at me, worry clearly still all over her face. “Lights. Through the fog. I’m not sure, but I just have this nagging feeling like something’s about to go wrong…” She laughs quietly. “I sound crazy. Sometimes the fog gets to my head, you know? Makes me see things.”
“You’re not crazy. Maybe it’s something we need to check out.” Seriously though, if she saw something out there, we don’t have the luxury of waiting around to find out if it’s something serious. Her eyes darken, and she’s chewing on the inside of her cheek, fiddling with her fingers. I know what she’s thinking about, and I know why she’s afraid. “You think it’s them, don’t you?”
Her eyes snap to mine. “Who?”
“You don’t have to pretend with me.” Reaching out, I tuck a section of her long wavy hair behind her shoulder. I see they way her whole body stiffens. She doesn’t have a clue how to react to me, and a part of me likes that. “I know you’re worried about those trapper guys. But we haven’t heard so much as a peep from them and it’s been over three weeks.”
Helana sighs wearily. “You just don’t know them the way I do. A week or a month means nothing. These people are fucking batshit.”
I see a lot more than worry on her face. I’ve seen it since the first time she told us about the trappers. Helana’s scared. Terrified. For such a tough chick, she must have gone through something crazy to make her clam up like this. “I know you probably don’t want to talk about it, but I want you to know that I’m here, if you’re ever ready to. I can tell you saw some serious shit, and that you’re scared… but we’re all here to back you up. We’re a team now.”
“You really think that?” she asks, sounding smaller than she really is.
