The Red X_Complete Edition

by Robert P. Sullivan

  “Yeah, I’m Mark, and I was hoping more for a layout of the immediate area.” Mark said.

  I tried to remember anything, about the place but being face down and half conscious didn’t give me any useful information to add. “Sorry, I don’t really know”

  “Damn… alright, so here’s what we know. Every day they come in here and take a few of us out, and they never come back.” Mark sighed heavily before continuing. ”If you try and break the cell, it makes too much noise and they come in here and kick your ass. I was captured just, uhhh, yesterday, and,” he paused for a minute trying to think of anything else to add. “No, that’s pretty much it.”

  “So, that’s all we’ve got?” I asked feeling disappointed that there wasn’t more to our little resistance.

  “I’m afraid so kid, it looks like we might not make it, but we have to keep passing on the information to give whoever else comes in the best chance of escaping. Everyone here is thinking about how to get out, just let us know if you think of anything.” Said Mark before letting his self sit back and think.

  “Yeah I will… and the name is still Jake” I said, a little annoyed that he kept calling me kid.

  Hours dragged on after that, we had a few short lived ideas, like all of us trying to break our cells at once, but we didn’t try it because we thought they would just shoot us. It was starting to get late and no good plan had formed. We were still talking about ideas when we saw the shadow from someone’s boots flicker under the door. Mark gestured me to keep talking about how to escape. I didn’t get it at the time, but I kept talking. ”If we get some of the filth off the ground we could blind them with it and try and rush our way out.”

  “It’ll never work,” Mark said looking at the door. “They always keep a guard with a gun at the far side of the room to shoot you if anything happens.” After Mark finished he motioned me to shut up, a few seconds of silence passed before the door opened.

  “Dinner time!” the guard said mockingly, as he walked to each cell with a living person and handed out some metal cups.

  “I take it there’s no food.” I said, shaking my head in realization that it was a sick joke.

  “You’re lucky you get a drink you little shit!” the guard yelled at me. “Maybe I should just spill it.” He went on starting to tip the cup a little.

  “No! I’m sorry…” I pleaded with him. It had been near twelve hours since I got there, and I was thirsty. Mark looked at me from his cell shaking his head.

  “Ok, I’m feeling generous, take it.” He set the cup down through the feeding slot in the door and walked out of the room. When the door closed behind him I lunged for the cup.

  “No stop!” Mark said, then his head went limp when he realized the shadows were still at the door. Then he continued talking “… they fill the cups with piss.” I looked in the cup with disgust, as he went on “It’ll only dehydrate you faster if you drink it. That’s what happened to the guy in the cell over there.” He pointed to the cell to the right of me where the rambling man that had been excited by my presence was. “Besides, do you ever think these guys, truly feel generous.”

  I set the cup down where I had got it from, I was thirsty, but not that thirsty. We sat there in the quiet hum of the flies, waiting, and sure enough, after about a minute the boots vanished from the door’s crack.

  “Why did you have me keep telling my plan to escape?” I asked Mark, who looked more somber than usual.

  “Because!... if you stopped they would have known that we knew when they were listening.” Mark replied with frustration in his voice. “And your idea was pretty useless anyway.”

  “Oh, I get it now.” I said, and he was right, the only edge we had over our captors was that they didn’t know we could tell when they were listening to us, and that, we could use to our advantage.

  “Shit!” said Mark, getting more pissed off every second.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked him, as he put his head between his hands.

  Mark rolled his head back and looked at the ceiling of his cage, and said “They heard me tell you not to drink the piss… They’re gonna be mad about that.”

  “Sorry.” was the only thing that I could say to him, because I knew bad things were going to happen because of him trying to help me.

  “Don’t be sorry, just make sure we try everything we can to get out of here.” he said trying to regain his composure. “We should try and get some rest. At least mumbles over there was good for that tip.”

  Then Mark pointed to the cage with the dehydrated man who was babbling. “Sleep! Yes! They don’t come when you sleep, only when awake, ye… no NO! not when awake, only in day. If you sleep in day they still come.”

  It was good to know that they weren’t going to harass us anymore that night, but it didn’t make sleeping any easier. Between the stench, flies, and the progressively worsening rambling of the man in the cage next to me, I found sleep impossible. When the next day came, I was almost relieved that the wait was over.”

  Chapter 11

  Jake closed his eyes, and rubbed them with the fingers on one hand while furrowing his brow. It was obviously getting more difficult for him to talk about, but there was no stopping now.

  “Three of them kicked the door to the kennel open and shouted at us. It would have probably scared the shit out of us, or woken us all up, but we had been waiting for it the whole time we were in there. I think our lack of fear may have just pissed them off a little, but they didn’t show it.

  They came walking by each and every cage inspecting us with a flashlight. And sure enough one of them walked to the end of the room with a shotgun and stood where no one could get to him if we were let out. “Hmm, what about this one?” asked the man by Mark’s cage.

  “Nah, I want to have a word with that one, and besides he looks like he’ll be more fun tomorrow. Try and get some that aren’t going to last that long.” the other shouted back.

  They walked on to the cage past me where the man who had lost his mind from dehydration was. “Shit” the first one said looking on the demented man biting at his fingernail and spouting gibberish. “What did I tell you, they can’t go for more than three days without water or they go nuts. Oh well, we’ll throw him with the rest once we get a couple more people to wrestle him out of here without getting attacked by him.”

  The man with the light made his way towards my cage, and shined it right in my eyes. I squinted as he said “This one looks like he’ll do.” He opened my cage and told me “Get up! walk down to the door and wait there, and don’t even think about running kid, we’ve got people on the outside with more guns.”

  I did as he told me to do. Standing at the end of the hall I watched as they made a few more selections. Most of them were people that were either injured, or were going to have dehydration sickness if they went anymore days in their cage. That is until they got to the cage containing the biggest inmate that we had.

  “What about this one? I know you said keep the good ones for tomorrow, but I want to have a bit of fun today, c’mon what do ya’ say?” The one with the light asked his two partners.

  “Fine, get up!” The other one said, as he opened the cage to the large man. The light was so dim I couldn’t tell what he looked like other than size until they shined the light over him. He was a tall black man that couldn’t even stand straight inside the kennel. “I said get up fucker!” He yelled to the man in the cage.

  “The name is Clarence bitch!” said the black man as he rose to his feet. It was the first time we had heard him talk, and we were all shocked that he would say that back to the men that held us captive. He looked at them with one of the meanest glares that I have ever seen.

  “What did you say? I ought’a beat yer ass for talking to me like that asshole!” he said back to him, with a hint of fear in his voice.

  “Go ahead bitch! You’re gonna kill me anyway, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t get to break your scrawny ass neck before I die!” Clarence told him bac
k as he slapped his hand on his chest and opened his arms, just to show he wasn’t afraid.

  The man with the ‘X’ on his back took a step back; he hesitated not knowing what to do. A few seconds passed by, but it seemed to last forever. Just before the ‘X’ was about to make his response, his friend shouted at him from across the room. “Don’t even fucking bother. As much as I would like to shoot him here and now, it’ll just piss off the boss. And besides, he’s gonna get what’s coming to him.”

  With that the terrified ‘X’ backed off from the opening of the cage and let Clarence pass through to the rest of us. The ‘X’ walked past us to the door and opened it up. “Go on through.” he said with mocking courtesy. We stepped through the door and into the light. It hurt my eyes, but after they adjusted I could tell that the kennel we were in was guarded heavily. Men stood near all the exits armed with some kind of assault rifles. The only path we had to go was straight through a small side door that led outside.

  They took us through the door and out through a narrow corridor they had made out of some chain-link fence. The other ‘X’s looked at us and started placing bets on who was going to live the longest. I was terrified when the majority of them bet against me, and even though I didn’t know what was going to happen I thought they were right. They opened a shutter door to some kind of large poorly fabricated structure. They opened a small case full of weapons and shoved it towards us, before closing the door, and leaving us alone.

  “Take something to fight with and head through the door at the end of the room.” We heard one of the men shout through the door as we heard a padlock close it tight. It was instant panic, everyone pushed and shoved for the box. I tried too, but I got elbowed in the ribs, and remember, they were still plenty sore from the day before. By the time that I got up there wasn’t much to choose from, not that there was anything great in the first place; a few knives, a meat cleaver, one flimsy katana, and a few blunt weapons were in there, but when I got to it, there was only a pipe wrench, and a claw-hammer left.

  Clarence looked back at me with a sad look in his eye. “Sorry kid.” He said taking a firm hold of his hunting knife. “We all have to fight for ourselves you know.” I could tell that even though we all had it hard, he was probably the nicest one of us at heart, which was odd seeing as he was the only one of us brave enough to challenge our captors.

  I took both the wrench and the hammer, then we all made our way out of the large gate at the end of the room. It opened into some form of makeshift arena. I said it was poorly crafted, but that’s not quite true; it was welded together with all kinds of sharpened metal bits and pieces, and while it looked like it was just a jagged mess, it was sturdy enough to make sure we couldn’t break our way out.

  At the top of the arena were several stands where the ‘X’s were already climbing up to get a good view of what was going to happen. I half expected them to start throwing shit at us, but I guess they didn’t want to piss off the people who were betting on us. The arena had two openings, the first was the one we came out of, and on the other side there was an ever sturdier gate that was still closed.

  We stood there just waiting for what was going to happen, but as I recall, it actually took about three to five minutes of waiting there before we heard the gate we came out of open back up. When we turned around they tossed the crazy man from the cell into the arena along with us and quickly slammed the gate. “That fucker bit me!” we heard one of the ‘X’s say behind the closed gate which actually brought a few chuckles out of us.

  “Good work crazy!” The man who managed to get the sword said trying to keep his attention on what was happening. A few more minutes passed while more and more ‘X’s piled in.

  The top of the arena was just about as full as it could get when one of the ‘X’s from the highest seat in the ring, stood up and raised his hands into the air and yelled out “Welcome to the Pit of Steel!” He was such an ass; so arrogant and proud, welcoming us to the pit like it was some sort of sport, and he was the announcer. The crowd cheered at him, as he looked back and forth to them, that is, until he lowered his hands with a gesture to silence the crowd. “I’ll be your host Jethro Davidson! And today we are going to have a great show!” He spoke down to us in the pit.”

  Barry sat up and leaned in a bit more intently as his interest was piqued. “Jethro Davidson, I’ve heard that name before…” Barry said trying to coax an explanation out of Jake.

  “I’m not surprised.” Jake replied. “He was the leader of the ‘X’s, and they used to prey on Aegis back in the day. I’m sure the name used to get around a lot more back when they were still attacking us, but a few people still bring it up now and then.

  On a personal level he was completely over the top, everything was a show to him. He led his group with a sort of psychotic charisma that, while disgusting, was actually quite appealing to those in his band.”

  Barry looked a little bit off put by Jake’s comment, to which Jake asked “What did you want a more thorough explanation of who he was?”

  “Well, I was kind of hoping you might have had more experience with him…” Barry said hesitating a little before continuing on. “We would like to know anything we could about Davidson, as he was the primary threat to the town.”

  “Well, it wasn’t like I had the chance to really get to know him. He was a crazy bastard who tried to kill me.” Jake said to Barry, who scratched his head and gestured Jake to keep the story going.

  “Ok, so where was I… Oh yeah, Davidson was going on about how much he was thrilled by our presence, that is until Clarence shouted right back at him. “Shut the fuck up!” His words broght gasps out of the crowd.

  Davidson’s head snapped right to him with a look of surprise. The pit was silent as everyone looked at their leader to see how he was going to handle it. “Well it looks like we have some contestants with some backbone today!” Davidson said emphasizing the word backbone, by saying it a bit louder and putting a small pause in the middle. “You know, I’m tempted, Just! Tempted, to go ahead and put a bullet in your head. But! Let’s not get carried away here, we still have plenty of fun ahead of us.” Davidson carried on really selling his words by waving his arms around in grand gestures, and the crowd loved him for it.

  Davidson was just about to start back up when Clarence yelled out. ”If you’re gonna kill us, then why don’t you come down here and do it yourself?”

  Davidson moved an ear towards Clarence as he was yelling and was looking slightly at the sky with his eyes rolled. He looked back at him with a huge smile on his face. “Oh, I’m not going to kill you… The zombies are.” And with that Davidson gestured to his men to open the gate across from where we entered.”

  Chapter 12

  “The zombies poured in through that gate, and the crowd cheered, which actually confused the zombies and bought us a few seconds, not that it mattered.” Jake continued. “I remember thinking that is was an overwhelming swarm of them, but the truth was that they only outnumbered us about two to one. I guess there were only about ten or eleven. We were pushed back to the wall before any of us started to fight… But, before we could do anything, the nut job that was suffering from dehydration, walked right into the zombies saying something like “I missed you guys so much!”

  Crazy bastard! It caught all of us off guard. He walked right up to them and tried to give them a hug; he let himself get eaten. The crowd let out a few disappointed screams, and a few people laughed. I didn’t understand it at the time, but everyone who bet that I would die first was pissed.

  That was our chance to make our strike at the zombies though. Clarence pointed it out. ”Kill them while they’re eating him!” he said and we started out with a charge. It didn’t last too long. When they others ran up and stabbed into the zombies with their edged weapons they had the same problem I had back with the hatchet. Some of their weapons stuck inside the skulls and bodies of the zombies.

  I had managed to take one down with the pipe wrench
, which as it turns out is a surprisingly good weapon for bashing in a skull. Afterwards, I heard a scream coming off my right side as one of our guys got himself bit in the leg by one of the zombies that was on the ground eating Crazy. His knife was stuck in one of the zombies heads that was now laying limp on the floor of the pit, and unable to bring it out he couldn’t defend himself. I was about to go help him out when Clarence booted the zombie off him and went back to fighting.

  It was chaos, we quickly lost control of the situation, and it was becoming everyman for himself. “What the fuck!” I heard over my shoulder. I turned to see the katana was snapped in two. “Cheap piece of shit!” he yelled as he kept trying to fight with it. Another person I wasn’t looking at started screaming, and everything was just going to shit. I started to lose focus as I looked around. Each of my teammates was falling to the zombies one by one. I didn’t even notice one of them was right behind me when Clarence ran up and stabbed it in the face over my right shoulder. “Pull it together kid!” He yelled in my face. A zombie grabbed onto his arm, when I snapped back to reality, I kicked it off Clarence and it fell to the ground. We backed up and tried to assess the situation. There were only the two of us left at that point, and Clarence just broke his knife off its handle with the blade still stuck in the dead ones face. “Give me that hammer!” Clarence said. “We gotta come up with a plan kid or we’re toast.”

  I gave it to him, but he was about to make the same mistake I made back with the hatchet again. “Clarence!” I yelled before he managed to swing at one of the undead. He stepped back from the zombie and his eyes locked on me. “Use the blunt end of the hammer! It won’t get stuck.” He said nothing, just gave me a nod and flipped the hammer around, before he took a swing and finished off the zombie that I knocked to the ground.