by Brown, TW
The man was having to struggle to keep from being grabbed. He was fighting a losing battle and I had no doubt that one of those things was going to get him.
At one point, he shoved Karasinda away only to be caught by the little boy that had been trying to shout encouragement to the toddler. When Trayvonn tore free, he let loose with another anguished cry. Pulling away caused the zombie to spin so that I got a really good look at the boy. His head was lolling to one side due to most of his throat being ripped away. It might’ve been my imagination, but I was almost certain that I saw bone.
He was more than likely doomed, but I could not help but silently cheer each time he escaped. I just wished he would take down the zombies that he was locked in with.
“They aren’t us anymore.” The words escaped my mouth before I could stop them.
Don’s head snapped around to me and I saw that dark glint in his eyes. Despite anything I’d tried, I knew right then that he would not be letting me live.
“You really are one of them types…aren’tcha?” Don accused as much as asked.
“What type is that?” It was as if knowing that my fate was sealed had stripped away any of my hesitation or fear. Sure, I would likely regret things later when I was being tortured—or whatever form of sickness Don had in mind—but at the moment, I found I could not muster the strength to care.
The man was an animal and I had to believe in my gut that he would make a mistake that would end his life. If there was a god, then it would be gruesome and horrible.
There was no denying that the man loathed my existence. I didn’t know why. I doubted he knew. But my charade had not gone undetected. And by his expression, I doubted that my fate had ever been undetermined.
“The bleeding-heart types that worried more about giving the lower class everything handed to them for free while us hard working types paid for it with our taxes,” Don spat. “The kind that walked in their marches and protests every time one of them got shot by the police and wanted to let the illegals have better healthcare than the working folks.”
“Do you really know anything about what you’re talking about?” I challenged.
“Lisa, bring our…guest…down here,” Don barked.
I felt the barrel of her rifle poke me in the back. “You heard him.”
It might’ve been my imagination, but the jab didn’t feel as harsh as earlier. I started down, but I could not help but watch Trayvonn as he continued to shove the undead away from him without attacking. It was obvious that the man was tiring. I didn’t give him another five minutes.
“You know…I had something I was going to give you once you proved yourself,” Don said with a smirk.
He made an exaggerated attempt at patting himself down as if he were searching for something. At last, he threw one finger up in an “ah-ha!” gesture and reached inside his leather jacket. He came out with something all wrinkled and creased from being folded.
As he unfolded it slowly, I felt my stomach twist into knots. I knew what it was before he shoved it in my face.
“Look familiar? Don crooned.
I could only make out the image for the briefest of moments before my vision blurred from the tears welling up.
The faded image of the picture I’d kept next to my heart until the day I’d been unfortunate enough to cross paths with this despicable bastard standing before me with his cocky grin.
It was the photograph of Stephanie and I together at Mount Hood. He’d had it this entire time. I could not begin to fathom his reason. How would he possibly know we would ever meet up again? It seemed unlikely. The only way that would happen…
I dropped my gaze to the ground. In that moment, I had no choice but to acknowledge that I was an idiot. Maybe he’d been told by Carl that I would come for Selina. Or maybe he just read me for the fool that I was.
I’d played right into his hand. I was beaten and there was no way out. As that thought hit me, I heard the scream erupt from the octagon ring. I let the sound of Trayvonn’s death seep through me and feed my feelings of failure and stupidity.
I wasn’t some sort of action hero. I was a high school music teacher. And now…I was probably about to suffer a terrible death at the hand of a man who was a bona fide sociopath.
“You disgust me,” Don snarled. Flecks of his spittle hit my face, but all I could hear was the whoosh of my blood pounding in my ears.
“Carl?” Don barked. The man appeared at his side, his presence like salt in a wound. “Take this piece of shit down to the boiler room.”
“You got it, Big D,” the man rasped.
“Lisa, go wait for me in my room. All this excitement has gotten me a bit worked up,” Don said as he leered at the woman standing behind me.
The woman stepped around me and headed for the school without a word. I guess I’d misjudged her reaction if she simply went to Don’s room without a word.
“Let’s go, Evan,” Carl snapped. He grabbed me by the shoulder and shoved me ahead of him.
We walked in silence the entire way. Eventually we came to a metal door with the words “Boiler Room” painted above it. I kept waiting for the man to say something…anything. But the silence hung over us like a physical thing.
When the door opened, the first thing I noticed was the smell. If there weren’t any down there at the moment, zombies had absolutely been kept down here.
We walked down the concrete stairs and arrived in a room that had large pipes running through it and at least three massive boilers that I could see in the gloom. The boilers were silent, and that allowed me to pick up on the sounds of clinking chains and the moans of the undead.
“So, you’re feeding me to the zombies,” I scoffed, doing my best not to sound afraid.
Carl said nothing as he continued to lead me deeper into the depths of shadow that held court here in the bowels of the high school. Eventually, he came to a stop at an orderly intersection of pipes.
A set of cuffs appeared in his hands and a second man stepped out of the shadows with a crossbow pointed at me. It was the massive albino. I only knew that because of his size and pale appearance. He was wearing what I imagine he fancied to be some sort of executioner’s hood.
“He’s all yours, Drake,” Carl said as he secured me to one of the pipes so that my arms were above my head.
I watched my former travelling companion walk away. Eventually, I heard the clang of the metal door as Carl exited the boiler room.
“I suppose you are here to torture me,” I said with surprisingly little tremor coming through in my voice.
“Nope, just beat the crap outta you.” The man’s voice was much higher than I expected for somebody so large.
“Wow…you got dealt a pretty bad hand,” I said with a forced laugh as the man approached. He cocked his head like a dog hearing a whistle.
“What?” the man finally asked as he stood directly in front of me now, staring down into my eyes with a hatred that I did not feel I’d deserved yet from this relative stranger.
“An albino and that voice? No wonder you hit the weights…and probably rode the roid train for a few cycles at least.” I stared up into his eyes, watching his brows knit in the large eyeholes of his executioner’s hood. “You probably got your ass kicked plenty in school.”
I never saw the first punch that smashed right into the center of my face. I heard as well as felt my nose crunch. Warmth flowed past my lips and I could taste the coppery flavor of my own blood.
The next punch caught me in the stomach and sent all the air from my body in a loud “oof”. And then the beating really began. Blows slammed into my ribs, gut, and a few more found my face. A vicious kick between my legs brought what little contents remained in my stomach out in response to the pain. Something slammed into the side of my head.
The world exploded in a blinding flash that was followed by darkness.
***
When I came to, it was almost pitch black. Somewhere in the boiler room there had to be a
lantern or something, because there was just enough ambient light for me to make out shapes. And then there was the smell.
There were zombies down here. I didn’t know where, but there was no doubt as to their presence. Then I heard the first of the most chilling sound of the zombie apocalypse and shuddered involuntarily.
The baby cry.
Whether or not it was on purpose, at least one of the undead down here made the frightful sound. I closed my eyes to try and find a calm place, but it was useless. Between the physical pain I felt from the beating and the real fear of what being eaten alive would feel like, there was no chance I was going to find inner peace.
The sounds of chains rattling from almost directly behind me caused me to jump. But that was also the thing that finally brought me fully awake so that I could inventory myself.
What I found was unpleasant to say the least. Breathing was a chore that caused me considerable pain. When I did breathe, there was an unpleasant rattling that I felt as well as heard. My vison was blurry around the edges suggesting that my eyes were swollen. I could not breathe out my nose. And then there was the realization that by bodily functions had let go at some point during the beating. That included the dried vomit on my shirt and chin.
I could not recall a point in my life where I’d felt so miserable. As I tried to compartmentalize all my pains and discomforts, I kept going back to the picture.
It made no sense that Don Evans would hold onto that for so long. Or at all if I was being completely honest. He simply could not know that he would cross paths with me again.
A distant sound got my attention and I could hear what sounded like boots clomping down the concrete stairs. A raspy whistle struck up a tune that my mind swore it knew…but could not identify at the moment.
A dark figure wove through all the pipes and machinery as it approached me. For whatever reason, despite my dire situation, I was focused on figuring out the song being whistled.
Eventually, the face of Don Evans emerged from the gloom. His lips were pursed as he whistled, but once he was close enough, he raised the lantern he was carrying, and the whistling ceased.
“Oh, oh, oh…Evan’s crying…” he sang, helping me recall the old Van Halen song he’d been whistling. “Always loved that band. Wonder if any of them made it. If what I saw on that reunion tour is any indication…I doubt it.”
Don actually looked sad for a second before he looked back up at me and turned on his fake smile. I took in his current attire and was not really surprised to see Iron Crosses and even a swastika emblazoned on the leather bands he had wrapped around his forearms. He had on a knit cap with a skull and crossbones which seemed to be my breaking point as I stifled a chuckle.
“You much for the classics?” Don asked as if we were two old friends hanging out in a tavern. “Van Halen and groups like that.”
“AC/DC was more my thing,” I answered.
“Which version?”
“Excuse me?”
“Bon or Brian?” Don leaned against a large pipe that went from the floor and vanished into the myriad of pipes in the ceiling.
“Both.”
“No, man,” Don pushed away from the pipe and laughed with a sarcastic bitterness. “You can’t say both. It’s like the Dave and Sammy thing. Either you like one or the other. Only the really weak sheep would be okay with both.”
“But they both fit the sound,” I argued, trying to ignore the surrealistic nature of this conversation and the conditions that it was taking place in.
“Bullshit. Bon was sleaze and sex. Brian was growl and power. The two have nothing in common,” Don argued.
“But Back in Black is as much a signature for the band as Highway to Hell,” I retorted with a shake of my head that caused the room to swim.
When I could see clearly, I saw Don open and close his mouth a few times as if he wanted to refute my statement somehow. Eventually, he shrugged his shoulders.
“It’s almost too bad that you ended up being one of them damned hippie, Liberal sympathizers.” He sighed as he slumped back against the pipe and folded his arms across his chest.
I didn’t want to even ask him how he could justify any of what he was doing. The man was as insane as they came. We remained in silence for quite a while. Eventually, Don snapped his fingers as if realizing what he’d come down here for.
“You made a pretty good argument for your music stance. So I am going to do you a solid.”
“A quick death?” I snorted.
“Not really,” Don said with a sinister chuckle. “More like you can choose the lesser of two evils. I can either skin you alive…or you can be eaten by old Dirk.”
“Old Dirk?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.
Don grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me around. The cuffs bit into me causing me to wince, but I managed to bite back the yelp of pain.
Behind a grated barricade of poorly welded together bars were a trio of the undead. One in particular stood out. He looked like maybe he had been in his late forties or early fifties. His hair was almost a comical mess. It stuck up all over, but as my vision grew sharper, I could see that it was not just sticking up in spots, it was stuck that way. A mousse of dried blood and other unthinkable fluids had it dried into place. His face was a sagging mess of loose skin that hung in folds like one of those wrinkled dogs that I could not recall the name of at the moment.
His clothing was stiff and even crackled when he bumped against the bars. As soon as I made eye contact with the creature Don had called “Old Dirk”, it reached for me and opened its mouth. While all that came out was the typical zombie moan, I could swear the thing was trying to say something. I flashed on the peculiar behavior of the children and wondered if perhaps this man might be like them in some way.
“Old Dirk is an animal.” Don let loose with a laugh. “Almost put him down, but then he showed me something special.”
I have no idea why I asked…but I did. “Special?”
“We found him with a group. Had a blond wife, pretty little thing. And then his adopted daughter popped her head out of that RV.” A look crossed Don’s face like he’d just bitten into something unpleasant. “Had one of them mail order babies or something. Personally, I blame all them Hollywood bitches with shriveled hootchies that felt the need to bring all those damn Chinks and Africans over here. Didn’t they know there were plenty of white trash welfare bitches giving up perfectly goof American babies?” Don walked over to the makeshift cage and planted his hands on his hips.
“He was the one that inspired the arena.” There was a sickening degree of what could only be described as affection in his voice as he continued to talk. “We infected him and that little honey of his and then locked them in that dugout.”
I knew that there was a lot more to this story, but now I was hoping he would just let it be. I didn’t need the details. I also had no doubt I would hear every brutal detail.
“Threw that little chink brat in with her parents and figured they would rip her apart. But Old Dirk…” Don smacked his thigh and rapped on the cage with his fist. “He shoved that little honey of his away and wouldn’t share. He dragged that little kid into the corner and chowed like a fat man at a buffet. Every time that wife of his came over for a piece, he’d shove her away. Then, he got tired of her and stood up as she was coming in again. That time, he shoved into a wall so hard that her head cracked like an egg. He just stood there staring at her and I swear he tried to tell her that she’d been warned. Damndest thing I ever seen from one of these things. So now, every so often we toss him in at random. But now that we have the arena done, Old Dirk is gonna get some real action. Didn’t use him today because we needed Trayvonn to get in there and have something left to put down. Too bad he couldn’t sack up and handle his business.”
“So you are saying that…Old Dirk is…what? Different?” I pressed out of curiosity. I’d seen something in the disheveled zombie as well.
“Different? He’s a warrior,” D
on crowed. “Hell, give me ten of him and I would rule the world.”
The sad thing is that I truly thought Don believed what he was saying. And even worse, I did not doubt the depths of his megalomaniacal yearnings. This was what dictators and despots were made from. And in this new world, I suddenly had to wonder how many more Don Evans-types were lurking…or out in the open now that the system of checks and balances…consequences…all of that was gone. The world was absolute chaos now and if I needed any further confirmation that violence was the answer to how we would be able to survive…this was proof positive.
“And it is Old Dirk here that is gonna put you down if you would rather not be skinned alive by yours truly.”
And we were back to that.
“I’m just gonna be left hanging here and you will let him go?” I asked. “And I assume you will be watching from someplace safe.” It wasn’t a question.
“You think I’d miss it?” Don said in a low tone that changed the mood instantly. There was something dark under those words. Or…darker.
“Do you do this with everybody that doesn’t agree with your code?” I asked.
I’d just seen something cross his expression…and heard something in his voice that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. For some reason, this seemed like it was personal. Maybe it was just my own ego, but I didn’t think so. Don Evans had a personal grudge against me.
“Just you, Evan. You’re a special case.”
I let that hang for a moment as Don and I stared each other down. I wasn’t going to look away. I had nothing to lose at this point. I had to admit, when he blinked and dropped his gaze…there was a satisfaction to it that warmed my chest.
Then he muttered something under his breath, and I swore I heard him say Stephanie’s name. My mind whirled and then grabbed onto a memory from almost four years ago.
There had been a foreman at one of the sites where Stephanie worked. We’d just started dating, and it was something she hadn’t gone into that much detail about. All I could recall was that the guy had come on to her and she’d shut him down. Then things started to happen to her car…things in her office…and there was even one night when she woke up and was certain that somebody had been inside her apartment.
