Mistress pulled away, letting Flynn’s head fall limp. She leaned over the stock, shoving her crotch in his face. When she pulled back, she had two iron brands. She showed them to Flynn, holding them so close he could smell his own seared flesh on the end of them.
“Sixteen,” she said. “A one and a six. It’s so people know who you are. We have to wait for eighteen, nineteen, and twenty. Then we can get on with it.”
In too much pain to reply, Flynn stared at the bitch in front of him. She’d get hers; he’d fucking make sure of it.
Chapter 18
The hood over Flynn’s head blinded him as a hard and impatient hand shoved him forward. Each forceful push into the centre of his back made him stumble, his stomach lurching in anticipation of a trip. And with his hands bound, he’d be powerless to cushion the fall.
Yet somehow he managed to remain upright. He’d teetered on the brink of falling a few times, but he hadn’t toppled over. Not yet at least.
One of the guards put a pincer grip on the back of Flynn’s neck and it took all he had not to fold beneath the sharp sting of it.
When Flynn stopped still, the guard let go.
The crack of a bolt snapped free and Flynn jumped where he stood. Suddenly a rough hand grabbed his bound wrists, slipped a knife under the cable tie holding them together, and ripped the blade up, freeing his hands.
The guard behind him then pushed where he’d been branded, igniting the fire in his back again as he shoved him into the prison.
A sure sign of weakness in front of the other prisoners, Flynn yelped, stumbled from the shove, and crashed down, smashing his knees against the hard ground.
As he removed his hood, the gate slammed shut behind him. The bolt cracked home and they were locked in again.
Not that he recognised the prisoners in the room from his brief time in the dingy space earlier, but it looked like the same people still in there. They all stared at Flynn. He looked where number fifteen had lain dead. He’d gone now. Unfortunately, the brute who’d killed him hadn’t.
“What the fuck are you looking at?” the large bully demanded as he loomed over Flynn.
Where Flynn had previously thought the dungeon smelled of body odour, he now recognised the tang of seared flesh. They all stank of it.
In no state to fight because of the pain of his brand, Flynn dropped his eyes to the dark ground, the flickering light from the torches in the walls doing little to illuminate the place.
Flynn shuffled out of the man’s way and only looked up at him when he’d reached the wall at the other side of the space. He’d obviously done enough to placate him because he no longer seemed interested.
Now Flynn had returned to the prison, he saw something in the faces of the other prisoners. It took for him to be branded to identify the smell of the place, and now he looked at the sad faces around him, he connected to them because of the pain in his lower back. All of them had been marked like animals. He didn’t need to see the burns to know that. They wore their scars in their stares.
The atmosphere in the prison seemed to boil just below the surface. Regardless of how long they’d all been there, a pecking order existed with the brute firmly at the top.
So when a skinny man walked over to Flynn, his ratty eyes narrowed to slits, he knew he couldn’t back down again. Too much subservience and he’d go the way of fifteen.
“You’re in my space, boy,” the man said as he looked down at Flynn.
Aware of everyone else looking at him too, including the brute, Flynn got to his feet. Because of the pain in his back, he had to push off the wall to stand up.
Several breaths when he’d gotten upright to ride out the sharp pain over his kidneys, and Flynn found a little more resolve.
One last check to be sure everyone, including the brute, were watching, and Flynn said, “Now, I’m going to give you one chance.”
The skinny man laughed. “One chance for what? You’re in my space.”
Flynn flashed his fist across the man’s chin, putting a right cross square on him. The wet clop of it rang through the space before the man’s legs folded and he crumpled to the ground.
Adrenaline sent heavy breaths through Flynn and he looked at the others as he rode it out. His hand ached from where he’d just dropped the skinny man, but he kept his fist balled anyway. The staring eyes of only a few seconds ago had vanished. Each person minded their own business again. Even the brute looked away.
Chapter 19
Fuck knew how long had passed. Every time Flynn tried to get comfortable, either the cold and hard prevented it, or the fierce pain in his back screamed in agony. As electric as ever, his wound ran a constant angry buzz through him.
“Nicely handled.”
Flynn looked to his right to see the blonde girl had snuck up close to him. A glance at the other prisoners and no one else seemed to be watching. He might not have had much experience beyond his community, but he knew one of the best ways to disarm a man often came in the form of a beautiful lady. At first he didn’t reply, staring into the girl’s eyes as he looked for deceit.
“I think you showed them you wouldn’t be fucked with.” She spoke in a whisper so only Flynn heard her. “More importantly, you showed him you wouldn’t be fucked with.” While looking at the large man in the middle of the prison, she added, “After his alpha-male display, he needed to see that.”
At a guess, Flynn would have put the woman in her early twenties. The figure of someone still in her physical prime, she looked tired in her face, dark bags swollen beneath her eyes. “Thanks,” he finally said. “I would have rather not done it though.”
The man he’d knocked out had woken up about ten minutes ago and scurried over to the other side of the prison. If any of the other prisoners were looking for a weak link, they weren’t looking at Flynn anymore.
After she’d glanced around the place as if checking to make sure they didn’t have an audience, the girl said, “No, but you had to do it.”
Despite years of living with naked flames for illumination, Flynn still hadn’t gotten used to how the flickering light animated the inanimate. One second the people around seemed to be closing in in his peripheral vision; the next they were farther away than ever.
“I’m One,” the girl said as he held her hand out to Flynn.
“Sixteen,” Flynn said back, wincing at another sharp kick from his wound when he stretched over to her.
“I know you are. And it fucking hurts, doesn’t it?”
Flynn nodded at the second comment. “Although, I think I would have rather just had a one branded into me.”
A raised eyebrow and One nodded. “Sure, but it also means I’ve been here longer than anyone else.”
“How long?”
One shrugged in the low light. “A fortnight,” she said, “maybe a month.”
“A month?”
“Maybe.”
Before Flynn could ask her anything else, the lock on the dungeon’s door snapped free. The guards shoved two people in and announced them to the room. “Eighteen and nineteen. One more and it’s party time, fuckers.”
The two newest arrivals—two women who couldn’t have weighed any more than about nine stone between them—stumbled into the room. They withdrew from the collective attention as if the stares caused them physical discomfort.
After a look at the glowering brute, they moved to the other side of the space. The poor fuckers had no idea of the pain that would come to them soon. What Flynn had seen as hostility in everyone’s stares when he’d first arrived, he now saw as pity. They all knew what those two would have to face.
Once the room had settled down, Flynn said, “So what happens at twenty?”
Although One looked at him, she didn’t reply.
“I thought you might have worked it out by now,” he said, “being here for as long as you have.”
One shrugged. “They don’t tell you much down here.”
Flynn shifted against the pain of hi
s burn.
“What I can tell you,” she said, “is the person who runs this place is a complete fucking lunatic.”
“He is?”
“She,” she said. “She. And yes, she’s fucking insane.”
Tired, in pain, and sweating from the heat of the room, Flynn closed his eyes and leaned his head against the hard wall behind him. It had been a long fucking day. After he let out a deep sigh, any desire to continue talking left him.
Chapter 20
One and Flynn hadn’t spoken since he’d closed his eyes. And maybe he would have remained that way were it not for the snap of the lock on the prison cell’s door. He opened his eyes to watch four guards walk in, much like they’d done with him. Although, they didn’t kick either Eighteen or Nineteen in the face. He nearly said something as he watched the guards drag the women to their feet and lead them out, but what could he say. A ‘fuck you’ to the guards wouldn’t have achieved much other than another kick in the face and he didn’t want to see the women hurt like he’d been.
After the guards had left and locked the door behind them, Flynn felt the collective empathy in the place. They sat there like a group of people who’d been given some bad news. They were united in their solidarity for the afflicted. They were nervous for what would happen to the women.
A look at the primate in the middle and Flynn froze to see the brute staring straight at him. For a second he held his glare. The bullying man then looked from him to One and back to him again.
To save the stand-off, Flynn turned his attention to One. She sat hunched over, her arms hooked over her knees and her back arched. He spoke so only she heard him, painfully aware of the brute’s attention as his glare bored into him. “So, if you don’t know what happens when we reach twenty, how do you know about the woman who runs this place?”
“I used to live in a nearby community. Sure, we knew fucked-up shit was happening here, but we did our best to avoid knowing what that was. They left us alone. That was all we cared about. Until …”
A glance at the brute, who continued to watch them, and Flynn said, “Until?”
“Until they decided to take us over.”
“How many did you have in your community?”
“Just shy of fifty.”
“Where are the others now?”
One stared into the middle distance with glazed eyes as she said, “Dead. She slaughtered the lot of them.”
“How come she didn’t kill you?” Flynn looked at the brute again. The Neanderthal seemed ready to walk over.
“I’ve thought about that. I’ve had a lot of time to think. My only guess is that she wants someone to keep her legend alive. At least one witness needs to survive for people to understand just how fucking horrible she is. That’s how it works, isn’t it? Let the story spread. Once fear infects someone’s mind, you’ve beaten them already, right?”
Flynn looked at the brute again. “What did she do to your community?”
One looked at Flynn, her eyes wide. “You really want to know?”
Flynn shrugged.
After a deep breath, One stared back into the middle distance. She looked detached from her words and spoke in a monotone. “She killed the children first. We had a village hall, which she forced everyone into. It had a stage.”
It took several breaths before One spoke again, tears running down her face as she relived the experience. “She made the children line up on the stage, got them all singing a song they knew, and then …” She lost it for a second and dropped her head. A slight shake ran through her, and even in the poor light, Flynn watched her tears fall to the ground.
Another look at the brute and Flynn saw the smile on his twisted face.
One spoke again. “She cut their throats one by one.”
“My god!” Flynn said. “We had a woman like that near us. It was about ten years ago now.”
“Maybe it was the Queen.”
“The what?”
“That’s what she calls herself. After she’d killed the children, she dragged me out of the crowd and took me outside the village hall. She got her guards to nail every exit shut and then made me …” One lost it again and Flynn didn’t push her. She’d tell him in her own time.
Chapter 21
The sound of approaching guards ran up the tunnel towards the prison and everyone in the room turned to face them, including One, who looked up from her grief. They opened the door and shoved Eighteen and Nineteen back into the room. They hadn’t bound their hands like they had with Flynn, but they both had sacks over their heads.
The two women both fell to the ground as they came in. They brought the reek of seared flesh with them.
After they’d moved into a dark corner like beaten dogs, they huddled together and sobbed. The other prisoners paid them no mind. Not even the brute, who continued to stare over at Flynn and One with the same antagonising smile on his smug face.
About ten minutes had passed since One last spoke. She stared at Eighteen and Nineteen like everyone else did until the sadness had left her eyes. A steely glare replaced it and she straightened her back. “She made me set fire to the hall with all the people of my community inside. I promise you, Sixteen, when I get a chance, I’m going to make the cunt pay.”
“So what’s this, then?” The booming voice of the brute cut through the room and Flynn’s shoulders tensed at the sound of it. It had to come sooner or later.
The brute stepped forward a couple of paces. “It looks to me like we have a couple of lovebirds here. The first dungeon romance maybe?”
Both Flynn and One kept their mouths shut.
“You’ll have to give me time to buy a new suit before you two tie the knot.” He’d now stepped close enough for Flynn to see the glint in his dark eyes. The kind of arsehole that needed to dominate to feel secure. “And maybe let me have a go on it”—he nodded at One—“before you make an honest woman of her?”
One recoiled at the comment and Flynn got to his feet, his fists clenched, his heart pounding. The brute might have been bigger than him, but he’d already seen what Flynn could do when backed into a corner.
The brute laughed, his deep voice calling out into the tunnel beyond the dungeon. “What? You think you have the beating of me?”
Instead of replying, Flynn looked around at the other prisoners. Other than the man he’d knocked out, all of them huddled in groups of two to four people. The brute followed his line of sight.
“You’d do well to see you’ve isolated yourself,” Flynn said. “Now I don’t know what’s waiting for us when we get to twenty, but I wouldn’t mind betting most people are looking for an excuse to take you down if they get it.”
The confidence visibly left the brute and his entire frame sank. Before he could offer a comeback, Flynn said, “Now, I’d fuck off back to your space in the middle of the room if I were you. You ain’t welcome anywhere else.”
Although he kept his fists clenched and his jaw locked tight, the brute shook his head and stepped back a pace. More for the theatrics of it than anything, he pointed one of his sausage fingers at Flynn. “You’re on thin ice, boy. Thin fucking ice.”
Flynn sat down and leaned against the wall. No need to goad the arsehole any further. One shuffled even closer to him and said, “Thanks, Sixteen.”
“Flynn.”
She smiled. “Thanks, Flynn. I’m Rose.”
“Pretty name.”
The crack of the lock might have spared her blushes. Just a shame that it came with the guard announcing, “Twenty,” to the room as he shoved another prisoner in. Rose looked at Flynn, her features slack.
“Fuck,” Flynn said. “I’m guessing we’ll find out what happens next, then.”
Chapter 22
Because he’d been underground for so long, when the guards drove the prisoners out of the dungeon, Flynn couldn’t see for the first few seconds. The glare burned his eyes and the heat instantly made him sweat. It felt even hotter above ground than in the heady prison.
Every step Flynn took reminded him of the pain covering his right kidney. The slightest jolt shook the swollen flesh around the wound. It made his back feel fat where it never had before. He’d also picked up a whole host of aches and pains from where he’d sat on the hard ground for hours.
Flynn heard it the second he walked out of the dungeon, but he still couldn’t see well enough to make out the crowd and their purpose. They were obviously there to witness some kind of spectacle. A spectacle that the prisoners would be at the centre of.
As his sight recovered, Flynn frowned to look at the scene before him. The dungeon had been underground—that much he’d worked out—but now they’d exited it, he saw the deep pit that had been dug to access it. It looked like a huge square had been carved into the ground. Steep walls of exposed earth on three sides stood at least thirty metres tall. The only way out looked to be the long, slick slope in front of them. It led from where they were, all the way up to the crowd at the top about thirty metres above. Unless they wanted to turn around and walk back into the prison, they had just one option out of there.
Like Flynn, all of the prisoners had stopped and rubbed their eyes as they took in their surroundings. When the guards growled behind them, Flynn turned to see all of them waving bats to spur the prisoners forward.
As he slowly moved on, Flynn looked at the people above. At least a hundred spectators, maybe more, they’d all gathered around the vast pit and stared down at the prisoners. They were so far away, he struggled to see their facial expressions, but the jeers and cries said it all. They expected to be entertained, and they expected blood.
A look across at Rose and Flynn saw her staring up at the people too.
The pit must have taken months to dig without machinery. Months and an army of people. But they’d had twenty years since Vicky helped release the plague, and with very little incentive to travel—especially when the diseased fuckers wandered about—what else could people do?
The Alpha Plague - Books 1 - 8: A Post-Apocalyptic Action Thriller Page 110
