I blew out a long breath. I hoped cannibals weren’t the case. “My sister ran into a bunch of them on her journey from Philadelphia to Ohio. And I’ve experienced it myself too. People are starving out there, and you know what they say about desperate times and desperate measures.”
“Now that gives me the creeps,” Toby said.
Lewis leaned forward and looked at me. “Well, you’ve obviously managed to survive.”
“Yeah, I’ve been pretty lucky so far.”
“I’ve heard about people having to fight zombies in an arena,” Lewis said.
“Kingsville?” Toby whispered.
I cocked a brow. “Yeah. How did you know?”
“People we’ve met and stayed with talk about that place. I thought it was a myth.”
“Nope. It’s far too real. I barely got away.” I went on to quickly describe the games and everything that happened. “If I can survive that, I’ll survive this,” I finally said. “We just need to figure out what they want.”
Elliot nervously ran his hands through his hair. “My guess is that they want us for food. That’s why they took the healthiest of our group.”
I looked at him, trying to make sense of everything.
He continued, “We spent a couple months in a town about an hour from here. I’ve been hearing stories about people getting kidnapped, and they’re never seen again.”
“Don’t let the fear get hold of you,” I said. “You can’t let ‘em get in your head. No matter what they want with us, we’ve gotta stay brave, gotta fight, gotta get out of here!”
Suddenly there was an audible click, and the door started to open.
All riled up from my own pep talk, I held up my fist, ready to attack. “Anyone dumb enough to come in here is gonna get taken down,” I said, seething.
“Please don’t hurt me,” said a woman with short blonde hair. “I just brought you some food.” She smiled sheepishly and held out a tray that held open tuna cans and a jar of muddy water.
“Who are you?” Lewis said, taking the tray from her hands.
“Eva,” she answered, sounding a bit nervous.
I met her gaze. “I came here with a brunette and a woman who was unconscious. I need to see them.”
“Jackie and Asia, right?”
“Yes!” I said excitedly, touching her arm. “Please tell me they’re okay.”
She nodded. “They’re fine. Asia came to and is recovering, and—”
Suddenly, before she could get another word out, Marcus wrapped his arm around Eva’s thin throat and pulled her back. “You’ve got no right to hold us here like prisoners when we didn’t do anything wrong. What’s to keep me from snapping your pretty little neck?”
“Not before we get answers,” Elliot said.
“Just stop!” I shouted. “Let the girl go!”
Marcus shook his head. “Not a chance. Not until she sings like a canary.”
“I’m a prisoner, too, just like you,” she muttered. “They won’t care if you kill me. I’ve got a bum leg and limp when I walk. I’m of no use to them anymore. Why do you think they sent me in? I’m...expendable.”
He slowly let her go and looked at her skeptically, trying to make out what her true motives really were.
“You can smash that jar and cut my wrists for all I care!” Eva shouted, sounding like a suicidal maniac.
“We’re not gonna hurt you,” I said softly, trying not to spook her. “Right?” I asked, looking at other guys for acknowledgment. The girl was obviously a victim, and I assumed it might pay to have someone on our side, someone who could act as a bit of a mole. I figured she could give us the layout of the place and what we were up against, so we could plan a safer escape.
“I just might take the girl up on her offer,” Marcus said. “I’m sure she’s one of them. I’m not buying her crap.” He looked her up and down. “We’ve got nothing to lose, honey,” he said, glaring at Eva. “Tell us why we’re really here, what’s going on.”
“You’d better eat up,” she said. “They might not feed you boys for days.”
Lewis looked at the brown water. “What is that anyway? You trying to poison us?”
“It’s rainwater. We live off the land. You’re just lucky we went on a raid and found the tuna.” She stepped closer. “And speaking of that, I’ll need the tin cans back when you’re done.”
“No way,” Elliot said, shaking his head.
“If I don’t return with those cans and the jar, they’ll kill me.”
“I know you’re up to something!” Marcus shouted. “Nobody in their right mind would send you in here alone, with possible weapons.”
“They aren’t...enemies, per se,” she said.
“Back off for a minute, buddy,” Elliot said, trying to calm his friend down.
“She’s one of them!” Marcus said in a rage. He then threw Elliot to the ground, and they both screamed out a barrage of obscenities.
Eva walked over and whispered something in my ear, but I couldn’t make out her words with all that commotion going on around us.
“What?” I asked, drawing closer.
“If you wanna live, attack me,” she whispered.
I shook my head and looked at her like she was insane.
“Do it! They’ll come in and stop it.”
I raised a brow. “Why?”
“It’s a test, to weed out who will fight and who is too passive. Do it or die!”
“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.
“Because Jackie said you’d help me escape, that we could work together to get out of here.”
At that moment, I realized she really was a prisoner and wanted our help. Eva truly was on our side. She’d had enough and wanted out of that crazy place. In order to live, I had to fake an attack on her. It had to look authentic, as if I was trying to kill her, but I wouldn’t hurt her at all. As far as I was concerned, she was now our ally.
“On second thought, maybe you’re right, Marcus,” I roared. “Give me that!” I snatched the jar and smashed it against the wall, then tore a long strip of fabric from the bottom of my shirt and wrapped it around a shard of glass, creating a stabbing weapon like some kind of sociopathic MacGyver.
Marcus’s eyes lit up. “Now that’s a shank!”
I wrapped my arm around the girl’s neck and held the blade close. “I’ll kill her!” I shouted.
Eva screamed for effect, and the others began hooting and hollering like wild animals.
“Open this door right now or she’s dead!” Elliot demanded.
“We’ll slice her throat!” Toby screamed.
In the next second, the door opened, and a gang of men rushed in like some kind of commando team. Pain burst across my jaw as one of them hit me with the butt of his gun. Another used his handgun as a blunt weapon and clubbed me. Blood dripped down my face, and I dropped to the ground.
“Sweep it up!” a man said to Eva, pointing at the broken glass.
“Yes, sir.” She rushed in and swept up the glass, then collected the tuna cans. She then ran out of the room without saying another word to me.
One of the guards gave one last kick to Toby, causing him to writhe and gasp in pain, and then he stormed out and slammed the door behind him.
“You okay?” Marcus asked, though he was just as dismantled as I was.
“He nailed me pretty good on the side of my head.”
“Got me too.”
“They took our makeshift weapons,” Toby said.
“Why didn’t they shoot us though?” I asked, rubbing my head.
Marcus pondered. “I was just thinkin’ the same thing.”
“We had one of theirs, that chick,” Elliot said. “Maybe they were scared of hurting her.”
“If that was the case, they never would have sent her in here,” Marcus argued. “Heck, Dean coulda killed her with his glass shank.”
“Well, whatever their reason, they clearly want us alive,” I said.
Marcus nodded. “Yup. That’s
the scary part.”.
“But for what?” I asked. “That’s the dreaded question.”
“They don’t care about that woman,” Elliot said. “She said so herself.”
“They kept us alive for some reason. We just have to figure out what it is,” I said. I didn’t tell them about Eva because I didn’t know them well enough to trust them with that little secret. I knew if they blabbed for any reason, we’d lose Eva’s trust, and she might very well lose her life. She was our key to getting out, and I couldn’t risk exposing her, not even to them. There were a lot of symptoms that came along with living in such a disease-infested world, and one of them was a big batch of trust issues. Enemies were everywhere, living and dead, and desperate people would turn on me in a heartbeat.
I knew a little from what Eva had told me, but I still didn’t know what our captors wanted. That haunted me and was more painful than the beat-down the guards had given me. I wished I could have a few minutes alone with Eva, because the curiosity was killing me. Most of all, though, I needed to see Jackie and Asia. I couldn’t rest until I knew they were really okay, and I would do whatever it took to find out.
Chapter 11
Just as Eva warned, they didn’t feed us over the next few days. I truly felt like a prisoner. I’d been kidnapped, thrown into a dark room with strangers, and just left to rot. When they finally marched me alone to another room, I was happy to be taken away from the pit I’d been suffering in for days.
I was mostly tormented by the fact that I didn’t know what they were doing to the girls. Jackie and Asia had been through enough already. They barely had time to breathe before they were kidnapped for a second time. First, it was Charlie, and now they were in the hands of people who had some motive we didn’t even know.
I also feared for my safety. Elliot suspected that we’d been brought there as food, captured by cannibals, and I couldn’t help thinking they might be right. They hadn’t fed us in days and I wondered if they were trying to cleanse the toxins from our body before they fed on us. I knew from what I’d seen with my own eyes, as well as the horrific stories Val had told me, that people would do desperate, inhumane things when there was no food. It all came down to survival, at all costs.
My hands were duct taped together at the wrists in front of me, and I was plopped down in a chair in the center of the room. Streams of sunshine flooded through open shades, causing me to squint after having been locked up in a dark hellhole for so long.
Kirk, their leader, walked in and circled me like a wolf stalking his prey. His short, brown hair was neatly cut; most people in our post-apocalyptic world had given up on hairstyling long ago, but that guy looked like he had abducted his own personal barber. He was older; I guessed him to be about fifty. He was in shape and looked like he worked out every day, maybe out of sheer boredom.
“Welcome to Oxford,” he said.
“Nice little town.”
“It’s my pride and joy.”
“Where are the girls I came here with?” I asked.
His light brown eyes narrowed. “They’re fine...for now. They sure are pretty little things. Jackie tells me you are her boyfriend. How did you manage to trick her into that?”
I stood, ready to rip his face apart, but two of his goons came in and forcibly made me sit back down. Do these idiots really think duct tape is gonna hold me? I thought in a rage. They’ll have to wrap me up in enough rolls to mummify me! I raised my taped hands above and behind my head. Then, with as much force as I could muster, I brought them down, past my hips, while pulling my arms apart. The tape ripped right off.
One of Kirk’s men attacked, and we traded blows furiously. He finally stumbled backward, but a tattoo-covered man grabbed me by the throat and held a gun to me. “Sit down!” he ordered.
Just as I began to perform another self-defense move to knock him down next to his friend, Kirk got right in my face. “Do as he says, or I will go fetch Jackie and Asia,” he said. “They might not enjoy a knife to their throats!”
“I can kill all of you before you even get out that door,” I said.
“And then my men outside will kill you, then Jackie, then Asia.”
I glared at him, realizing he had me. Defeated, I sat down in the chair. I couldn’t believe I’d been so threatening, because I certainly wasn’t a murderer. I’d learned from Nick and Lucas and the things I’d seen that survivors often had to kill to stay alive. I didn’t want to believe it, but it was true. In that crazy world, I had to fight for every day. The bandits had my girlfriend and a very dear friend of mine, but as livid and angry as I was about that, I couldn’t do anything to free them—at least not yet.
“I take it I now have your undivided attention,” Kirk said.
“You do,” I said in a huff.
He patted my shoulder. “Good. That’s what I like to hear.”
“I want to see Jackie and Asia,” I demanded again. “I need to see for myself that they are all right.”
“Then cooperate with me. Hear me out, and let me take control of your destiny. If you do that, if you’ll be a good little boyfriend, maybe I’ll grant you your wish.”
“Just tell me why I’m here,” I said. “And, for the record, do you guys always go around bashing young woman’s heads in with bats?”
He smiled. “You’re full of questions, aren’t you?”
“Wouldn’t you be? You kidnapped us, and we have no idea why.” I shot him a hard look. “Are you with Z’s gang? Are we waiting for one of the infinite brothers to arrive?”
“Z? Are you talking about that lunatic who lives on the outskirts of Fairport?”
His sidekick butted in. “Wait. Didn’t he move into Fairport? Ain’t that what’s causing the gang turf war.”
“Yeah, that’s him,” I said, “but he’s not living in Fairport—or anywhere. We kicked him out of our city, but he’s dead now. Thus, his brothers aren’t so happy with me. So you aren’t in with Z’s guys?”
“I have no affiliation with him...and I couldn’t care less about turf or gang wars.”
I blew out a long breath. I was frustrated not knowing the truth. I knew he could be lying to me, trying to throw me off their scent. As sad as it was, I’d learned not to trust anyone except the people closest to me, and that especially included the jerks who’d kidnapped us.
Kirk met my gaze. “You’re full of surprises. That was a nice trick you pulled with the tape. How’d you manage to do that?”
“I’m not into amateur bondage,” I said.
“How was it done?”
“Anyone can break out of duct tape using that method. Saw some FBI agent do it on T.V.”
He cocked his head and smirked. “I like you, Dean. You’ve got spunk and a fighting spirit. I admire that in a man—or even in a boy.”
“Is that why you kidnapped us? To start a fan club? I’ll give you an autograph if you freaking let us go.”
He circled around me slowly. “Of course you’re wondering why you’re here.”
“Uh, yeah. Mind telling me?”
He came up from behind me and whispered in my ear. “Why don’t you take a guess?”
“If you’re not with Z’s gang, only one thing comes to mind. I’d have to guess that people would only go through this much work to capture humans for one reason.”
He walked in front of me and crossed his arms. “And what’s that?”
“To eat them. It’s survival of the fittest now.”
“Eat you?” He laughed. “Boy, are the dark rumors spreading. That’s truly terrifying. I’m afraid you’ve seen one too many horror films. We aren’t going to eat you.”
“I wish it was only a movie. I’ve been captured for food before,” I said. “Hollywood’s got nothing to do with it. It’s what this crazy world has come to.”
“There are no cannibals around here,” Kirk assured me.
“They’re out there.”
“Why don’t you tell me your story?” he asked. “How did you escape
from a cannibal?”
I briefly filled him in.
He seemed truly shocked. “Hmm. That’s a bit...concerning. I’ve traded meat before with some of the other cities.”
“Don’t eat it if you aren’t sure where it comes from. When the world was normal, that was our rule in the school cafeteria. It sort of pertains to now.”
“A mad world,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “Did you ever hear that song?”
“Tears for Fears, right?”
“Right.” He sighed. “I’m going to make you an offer,” he said, his gaze narrowing. “If you take me up on it, nothing like that will ever happen to you again.”
“So...it’s an offer I can’t refuse, huh?” I asked sarcastically. I really didn’t want to make any sort of deal with him, unless it was to guarantee our freedom.
He chuckled. “I suppose you could look at it that way.”
I wanted to wipe that smirk off his face so bad that I could taste it. I knew I could take him out, but he had at least a dozen men outside that room. Worse, I knew if I laid a hand on him, they would make Jackie and Asia pay for it.
“You’ve been struggling out in the zombified world,” he said. “We are safe in this compound, a big group of people in a nice, secure fortress. I can offer you and your friends protection, food, safety, and peace of mind.”
“And you’re doing this out of the kindness of your heart?” I asked.
“While I’d like to say so, nothing is free in this world. There is a price to pay.”
“Of course,” I snapped, dreading his elaboration.
“You need me,” he tried to assure me.
I didn’t need anybody and surely not him; the man was clearly delusional. “I was doing quite fine before you met me.”
“Living on the streets, fighting zombies, and getting into gang wars?” he asked. “You were barely surviving. I’m here to give you a better life. I’m giving you a shot at...paradise.”
I didn’t dare tell him that the city I lived in was zombie free. The last thing we needed was another Z harassing the locals. They almost had their city back, and no one had the right to burst in there and try to steal their sanctuary. I had to let him believe things were bad there, worse than his precious compound. My only choice was to play along and see where that took me. “Yes, it’s hard out there,” I agreed.
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