The Red Zone: Second Chance Sports Romance

by Sloane Peterson

  Bad move, I told myself, remembering that I still had countless hours to go sitting in this icebox of a room, and that doing so in a wet t-shirt was anything but an inviting prospect.

  But God, it tasted so good at that moment... Like nectar from heaven. My throat burned as I rehydrated myself, coming back to life after having spent a seeming eternity in these squalid conditions.

  It might seem like a small thing, even a little bit stupid. But in that moment, water, to me, was hope, and that was something I hadn't felt for as long as I had been in this mess.

  Water served as definite proof that they didn't intend to let me die– at least not yet. And as long as that was the case, I could still retain some hope, no matter how small and how distant, that Luc might yet swoop in and save me at the last minute.

  I drank so much on an empty stomach that for a minute I felt like I might vomit. Still my stomach rang like a gaping chasm, somewhere between hunger and sickness. I stared down at the plate of food in front of me, the bologna sandwich and generic looking potato chips– rippled, no less, gag me now... It wasn't quite a meal of bread and water, but it was just about as close as they could get. And even though I'd been a vegan for the past five years, my circumstances were such that I thought I could forgo my usual dietary habits, and do what I needed to in order to survive.

  A gourmet meal it was not, but at that moment it was the most delicious food that I had ever had passed through my lips. I tore into the meat and bread with a carnivorous fury, crunched greedily on the chips like it was my very last meal– and for all I knew, it very well might have been.

  Good God, it was all so delectable...

  And above the ferocity of my eating, as I stuffed my face as fast and as viciously as I could, so much so that I could feel a stomachache coming on, that I heard the sound of a scoff. Gorging gracelessly as a swine on this long awaited bounty, I'd very nearly forgotten my captor was present at all in those blissful moments.

  I looked up at him suddenly with my mouth still full of chips, surely a sight to behold, I thought, the prospect of seeing myself in a mirror at that moment making me shudder.

  O’Leary was scowling at me, eyes burning with such contempt that I thought he might suddenly jump over and attack me. “I don't know what the fuck he sees in you,” he said, his broken nose scrunched up as far as it was go.

  I swallowed my bite of food and watched him, waiting for him to go on.

  “That motherfucker could have any piece of snatch he wanted, and he chooses you? Look at you, you're a wreck! You're nothing! Just some scrawny, scraggly haired witch from his hometown... I seriously don't get it, if I was him, I'd have shacked up with a fucking model like now, and be bedding three or four cheerleaders on the side.”

  “But you're not him,” I said quietly, and I was somewhat grateful when he didn't seem to hear me, but instead just kept on going.

  “I mean for Christ's sake, look at this!” he said, pulling out his phone, and tapping through Google search results for a moment before turning the screen around in my direction. “Look at this piece of ass he was dating before you!” It was, sure enough, a tabloid photo of Luc with his arm around a gorgeous, olive skinned model, compared to whom I was clearly no match, at least in my present, bedraggled state. “I mean, come on! I would do her!” he said, as though this was some particular lofty threshold for a woman to cross, a standard of excellence. “I mean sure, I like 'em with a little bit more meat on their bones than that, but still!”

  He was trying to degrade me. I knew that. And on some level, maybe, it was working. But I couldn't let him realize it. I couldn't let him think he was winning.

  I stared at him for a long moment, for so long that he seemed to grow uncomfortable, fidgeting from foot to foot, peering repeatedly down at his phone as he waited for me to speak.

  “I have nothing to say to you,” I finally said, and it had the desired effect. He scowled at me, furious that I'd failed to rise to such expert bait.

  “Well then,” he said, “in that case, why don't you stop wasting my time, shut your fucking mouth and EAT?!”

  How am I supposed to shut my mouth and eat? I stopped my inner child from snapping back at him. He muttered some likely profanity under his breath and turned from me then, holding up his phone, evidently too disgusted with me to finish watching me eat.

  I trembled as I lifted the tray back up to my mouth.

  What if he was right? What if I was nothing to Luc? Why should he come and risk everything, when he could have anyone he wanted?

  I chewed slowly now, running these thoughts over and over in my mind as I crunched on the remaining chips still littering the plate.

  O’Leary’s back was still toward me, head bowed over his phones. There were loud, slapping sounds coming from the speakers. Women moaning.

  Mother of Christ... Was he seriously watching porn right now?

  And then it dawned on me. Luc really wasn't coming to save me from this asshole. Whether that was true or not, I had to assume that it was.

  This might be my best chance. My only chance. I couldn't rely on anyone but myself to get out of this alive. And if ever I was going to get a chance to sneak out of here while their guard was down, it was now.

  Slowly, very slowly, I bent over, and placed the half empty tray of food on the floor in front of me. I picked up another chip, and slid it into my mouth. I didn't want silence to ensue, for O’Leary to notice that anything had changed behind him, in the off chance there was even a momentary lull in the faked anal orgasms on his phone.

  Still chewing, I rose very slowly from my seat, my legs shaking with the effort– I really had been sitting here for a long, long time now.

  My heart was throbbing in my ears, tears stinging my eyes, making it difficult for me to see. Very carefully, eyes constantly on the back of O’Leary’s head, I reached back, and folded up the aluminum chair on which I'd been seated.

  “Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!”

  “Yeeeeah, get it you slut! Right up the ass!” he snarled.

  I swallowed my last bite of food, took in a deep lungful of air, and crept up to him.

  One foot in front of the other. In front of the other. In front of the other.

  I could smell him. The smell of sweat. Of greasy, gross sex. The smell of hatred.

  “Hahahaha... Yeah, that's it...”

  Slowly, I lifted up the chair over my head, muscles tensed, praying I had enough strength to bring it down with the same force I had the football trophy back at Luc's place.

  And then, suddenly, he started to turn.

  My blood ran cold.

  “Hey! Princess! You about finished yet or what? I got shit to do that doesn't involve your condescending ass... Hey!”

  He saw me at the very last instant, but it was an instant too late.

  BANG!

  I brought the aluminum chair down on his forehead with as much force as I could muster. He tumbled to the floor in a heap, and for a moment I thought I might have snapped his neck. But then he let out a loud groan, and I saw that the gash on his forehead, which still hadn't fully healed from where I'd beaned him with the football trophy, was open and flowing again, spilling across the dirty concrete floor.

  I threw the chair to the floor with the clang and breathed heavily, hardly able to believe that I'd managed to pull that off.

  Out of the frying pan, and into the fire, I thought grimly, but I swallowed it down, unable to afford such pessimism.

  I stood there, watching him for a moment, his head still jerking as he tried to lift himself up off the floor. But then at last he surrendered to it, flopping to the floor in total unconsciousness, oblivious to the world.

  “This really isn't your day, is it?” I muttered, and stooped down to scoop up his pistol from its holster at his waist. I took a step forward toward the door, then froze, staring down at my bare feet. Unsure of just how much running I still had ahead of me I turned back, glancing at O’Leary’s twitching body.

  “Yo
u won't be needing those for a while...” I said.

  Moments later I rushed out the door wearing O’Leary’s tennis shoes, out into a long, narrow scarcely lit corridor.

  Where the hell am I? I wondered. The dim lighting could work both for and against me, I thought. It would be harder for me to navigate, but it would also be hard for any guards around to be able to see me coming, or at the very least recognize who I was from a distance.

  I glanced in both directions, forward and back down the hall, neither option seeming particularly appealing over the other.

  “Fuck it,” I finally muttered, finally deciding on the way behind me, for no other reason than my gut instinct.

  That was all that I really had to go on at the moment. I was the only person in the world I could depend upon to get me out of this. That much was clear.

  But as I ran down the hallway with almost nothing on, a lamb among lions, with nothing but a rinky dink pea shooter to defend myself against these thugs, I wondered if even my own resourcefulness would be enough to get me out of here alive and in one piece.

  After all, I couldn't count on all the guards being every bit as dumb as O’Leary.

  How long could I keep on running, before my luck finally ran out?

  10

  Luc

  No noise. No gunfire. Not a sound until I'm inside, and hopefully not then if I can help it.

  I crouched in the snow outside the Ericson warehouse, evanescent flakes still sprinkling steadily down through the pitch darkness. I was armed to the teeth, guns strapped to each shoulder, two pistols on my belt, and brass knuckles wrapped around each fist. I would have to use these to get past the guard in the shack outside, I thought. I needed to get in there and switch off the breaker to the building, but I needed to do it without anyone inside suspecting foul play. I had to keep them off their guard for as long as humanly possible. Let them think a tree had gotten weighted down by too much snow, fallen and snapped a power line.

  But the moment they heard gunfire there would be no turning back. The chances of getting both myself and Sylvia out of there alive would decrease dramatically.

  I'm coming for you baby. I'm getting you out of there. You can hate me forever after all of this. You have every right to. But I am going to get you out of there, no matter what happens.

  And with one last, cold breath I crept forward through the night, forward in the direction of the guard's shack.

  His head was down, his face lit up by his phone. He seemed intensely invested in something, an article of some kind, his thumb occasionally clacking against the screen as he scrolled further down. Peering into the shack I could see that he had one hell of a weapon at hand. Some sort of rifle with a high capacity magazine, which would turn me into Swiss cheese faster than I could bat an eye.

  That was my target, then. Get that out of the way, let it be just mano y mano, without the sound of gunfire to attract attention.

  I crept slowly forward, praying that my crunching footsteps in the snow didn't attract his attention as I neared. I moved up to his right side, and was grateful to see his face was angled, however slightly, toward the left.

  Holding my breath, I reached for the handle to the door, opening it as soundlessly as possible.

  There was a light creaking sound from the hinges, almost imperceptible, but still very much there. The guard scratched his nose, not seeming to notice.

  I swallowed. Opened the door the rest of the way. Still no notice from the guard.

  I grabbed the butt of the rifle. I began to slide it out, as quietly as possible. I switched on the safety as I moved it through the door, just to be on the safe side.

  And thank God I did.

  Just then, the strap got caught on something inside the shack, I couldn't tell what. I jerked back on it, and the guard's eyes flashed at me, the phone tumbling from his hands.

  “HEY!”

  “Shit!”

  I tried to pull the rifle out the rest of the way, but he lunged for the gun, jerked it free from my hands. He spun the thing around, pointed the barrel at me, and pulled the trigger. Or tried to...

  Nothing happened.

  He made a confused sound, and I leapt up at him, grabbing the barrel and throwing my entire weight into it before he could switch off the safety. There was a sickening crack, a yelp from the man as the butt of the gun smashed into his nose. The blow weakened his grip just enough for me to pry the weapon from his reaching fingers, and he very nearly tumbled out the opposite side of the shack in the process.

  I threw the gun out the door I'd come through to get it as far away from him as possible. Already he'd whipped out a pistol and was aiming at me, and I lunged at him, slamming my metal fist into his hand and knocking the gun away.

  He roared at me. I slammed my fist into his jaw, knocking out a tooth.

  “You moverfucker!” he spat through a mouth of blood.

  “That's my name, don't wear it out,” I hissed, and delivered a sharp blow to his gut.

  He tumbled out the door of the shack and into the snow, but immediately reached in the door to retrieve his pistol. I flung a steel toed boot against his fingertips and he howled with pain– I prayed that the sound didn't carry as easily to the warehouse as I was sure the sound of gunfire would do.

  I kicked his bloody fingers away and knocked the pistol back across the floor with the heel of my boot. Still not deterred the bastard staggered back through the snow, dripping blood, then raced around in the direction of the other side, where his rifle lay in the snow.

  “Jesus Christ, learn your goddamn lesson already!” I hissed. I leapt out the door and intervened before he could get to the gun. I grabbed him, slammed the brass knuckles into his cheek, then grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. I hurled him forward, smashing his head through the guard shack's window. I jerked him back again and this, at last, seemed to have done the trick. He staggered on his feet for a moment, then collapsed backward into the snow, not moving a muscle, though still breathing. “Cheese and crackers,” I groaned, nerves alight, barely able to believe I'd pulled that shit off– even if only barely so.

  I picked up both of his guns, adding them to my arsenal, and stepped back into the shack. I opened up a panel over his desk lined with switches, and my face lit up at the sight of them.

  “Bingo was his name-o,” I muttered, then felt lame about it, and reached to switch them all off without further adieu.

  Instant darkness.

  Even the snow disappeared into shadow, and only the very distant lights of the city remained visible at all. I lowered a pair of night vision goggles down over my eyes, and just as instantly the world was lit up with a grainy, neon green film.

  So far so good, I thought, fixing my sights on the next target, the Ericson warehouse a few hundred feet away.

  I hurried off, trudging through the snow, my arsenal of weapons making it difficult to run, but the thought of Sylvia waiting for me through those walls keeping me going all the same.

  I was almost up to the entrance when I froze, and saw a bright green figure racing through the door, off in the direction of the guard's shack, presumably to find out what the hell was going on.

  I waited until I was sure he hadn't seen me, then lunged at him, tackling him to the ground, and knocking his lights out with a swift blow of the brass knuckles.

  Damn, I'm starting to like these things, I thought, and ventured forward.

  I was inside now. At least in the entrance, there didn't seem to be any signs of life. I held one of my rifles up at my side now, thinking that if the shit hit the fan, I would need to be ready for it.

  Right now, it seemed as though I had the advantage, but there was no telling how long, if at all that might last.

  One foot in front of the other. In front of the other. In front of the other.

  Down one hallway, then another.

  Nothing.

  I held my breath, listening. Wait, what was that?

  Thundering footsteps.

&nbs
p; I spun around, eyes wide, peering down to the opposite end of the hallway. It was definitely somebody, but they ran straight past me. Paying me no mind, not even heading in my direction.

  More footsteps. Overhead this time, causing dust to funnel down through the floor onto my head.

  “Probably this damn snowstorm,” I heard a muffled voice say, then dissolve into gibberish I couldn't understand.

  I took another deep breath. Then a door caught my eye. I tried the knob, and it was locked.

  Shit.

  I lifted the butt of my rifle, drew it forward, and prepared to bust the glass. Then I stopped myself. I looked up. There were several stories to this building... Would they really keep a prisoner on the first floor, make it that easy for her to escape or be rescued?

  No, of course not... I would only be running a risk by making such a loud sound by breaking the glass, drawing attention to myself. I turned my attention to the ceiling again.

  Up. I needed to go up.

  I raced around a corner, and found an elevator that would do me absolutely no good without power. I ran a little bit further and discovered the stairs, face lighting up at the sight of them.

  I would have to be light footed... I couldn't let anyone hear my approach.

  I crept upward, practically on tiptoes, still not encountering a soul. I made it to the second floor landing, paused at the double doors to the hallway, then changed my mind and kept on going.

  Third floor. It'll be at least the third floor. They'll want to make it as hard for her to get out as they can. I'll start there and work my way up.

  I was winded by the time I made it up the next flight of stairs, but I didn't have the luxury of slowing down and resting. Carelessly I flung open the doors, my exhaustion preventing me from realizing my idiocy until it was already accomplished.

  “Oh, shit...”

  “HEY!” one of the three men shouted, and the other two pivoted immediately after their companion. I leapt back through the double doors and crouched down just as a volley of automatic gunfire rained down in my direction. The glass shattered and rain down onto me overhead, and the moment the firing stopped one of the men was throwing their body against the door, trying to force it open with me in front of it.