Impact (24 page)

“It wasn’t them,” I said, shaking my head. “It couldn’t have been.” I swallowed hard. The possibility of my family and friends being dead was too overwhelming. I couldn’t cope with the idea of being the only survivor.
How will I ever go on without them?
Worse than that, I was consumed by guilt, because they had died trying to rescue me.

“Was Claire with your friends last night?”

“Yes she was.”

He sipped his drink. “Why won’t you look me in the face? You afraid I’m gonna shank you?”

“Cut the small talk. I know you hate me, that you want revenge, but I guess we’ve both got worse problems now. Let’s just eat and get back to our cells.”

Surprisingly, rather than threatening to rip me apart and telling me all the horrible things he was going to do to Claire if she was still alive, he confided in me. For a brief moment, he sounded almost human. “I hate it here, and I know you do too. Heck, they murdered everyone you loved.”

I just rolled my eyes at him. Because that little fact simply hadn’t been proven yet. “I’ll believe it when I see it. I think he’s just pissed at me and is trying to play head games.”

“If that’s what keeps you strong, go on and tell yourself that. You know what the man’s capable of. Why, I’d venture to say his head’s screwed on even a little more crooked than my brother’s was.” 

I turned away, unable to find words to say to him.

“Hey,” he said, “I kept Lucas’s alias a secret. You know why?”

“Why?” I asked chewing some sort of tasteless green goo that reminded me of liquefied green beans.

“He promised to help me escape, but that jerk never came for me.”

“Of course not. He knew the second you got out, you’d traipse right back into Fairport to stir up trouble.”

“Nah. I’m done with all that. Everyone’s dead. There’s no one left. I got six kids and a wife. I’m gonna get outta here, grab my family, and go somewhere else.”

“Go where?”

“My kinfolk has a camp set up in West Virginia. I’m gonna go meet up with them.”

“If you can find them.”

“I know where they’re hold up, and I can get there just fine.”

“Good luck with that.”

“Thing is, I need your help.”

I coughed and about gagged on my food. “My help? In case you’ve forgotten, you beat me up and tried to kill me, and now you want to elicit my help?”

He nodded. “I know it sounds crazy, but we need to join forces.”

“So it’s that...the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend kinda thing?” 

He scratched his head and scrunched up his face like I’d asked him to solve for X in multiples of pi. Finally, he said, “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

I shook my head. “No way. For all I know, this is some dumb test of Kirk’s, and I’m not that stupid.”

“I ain’t gonna backstab ya, man.”

“No,” I said. “I’m not doing it. I already have one dangerous psychotic to deal with.”

“Won’t ya even hear me out?”

“I’ve been burned too many times in this new world. I’ve learned to trust nobody.”

He grabbed my arm.

I flung it away. “Don’t ever touch me!” I said in a threatening tone, holding my fork in a death grip, ready to ram it in his bloodshot eye. 

He backed off. “I understand you’re upset, seeing as though you lost your lady friend and all.”

“If you need help, why don’t you team up with one of Kirk’s muscle-heads?” I asked. “It just doesn’t make sense that you’d wanna join up with me. Especially when I left you back at the hospital when those zombies flooded in.”

“We threatened you, took one of your guys hostage, even shot at you. It was hectic. You were running for your life.”

“So all is forgiven?”

Compassion flickered in his eyes. “Yes.”

“Why do you want to join up with me?” I asked.

“I’ve got my reasons.”

“Like what? Getting to Claire through me?”

“No. This ain’t even about that. And besides, she’s dead. Justice has been served.”

“She’s not dead.”

“Let’s not argue.”

“Fine. Out of curiosity, what reasons would these be?”

“You’d never beat Lightning at Blood Fest,” he said. “That’s why you’re gonna fight me instead.”

“What?”

“If there’s more than one man on Kirk’s hit list, the youngest fighter—meanin’ you—gets to pick his opponent. That’s the way it’s done here.”

“But you’re not on his list.”

“Not yet, but I will be soon.”

“You’re going to purposely piss him off to earn your ticket to Blood Fest?”

“Now you’re getting it!”

“All right. Say you do manage to get on his hit list. Tell me again why I’d choose you. This is a fight to the death. And you’re way bigger than me. I’m not sure you’re less of  a threat than Lightning.”

He clapped my shoulder and smiled. “Because we’re gonna escape this hellhole together, that’s why. The fight will just be a front to set us up for it.”

I stared at him, dumbfounded. “They’ve got snipers on the rooftops, Jim, and there are zombie hordes on the ground. How are we supposed to get out of there alive? We’ll escape, all right, but it will be in body bags, just like Kirk said—if the zombies leave any leftovers.”

“I can’t tell you my secrets, but you gotta trust me.”

I stood. “No.”

“We can do this, Dean.”

As much as I wanted to trust him, wanted to escape, the whole thing felt off, like another of Kirk’s mind tricks. The man loved to test people, and I was sure he’d put Jim up to it. I did find it odd, though, that he had chosen Jim for the role, since he had to know I’d never cave in to him. If, on the other hand, Jim really did plan to run, I didn’t see how he was going to get very far without a bite in his neck or a bullet in his back.

I shot him one last look. “If you’re so anxious to escape, then let’s take these guys on right now. We can run and hope for the best. I bet we can scramble those barbed wire fences like nothing if the adrenaline is pumping.”

“Nah. There are way too many of them suckers. Even if we get outta this building, they’ll stop us at the gate. They’ll radio the perimeter guards, and the two of us might be able to kick some ass, but we can’t fight a whole army.”

“You’re right. If we could, I’d be long gone by now.”

“That’s why we gotta play this smart,” he said. “Now just sit down, before you draw too much attention over here,” he whispered, nodding toward the guards, who were looking at us suspiciously.

Realizing he was right, I plopped down in my seat and stared at him hard. “What’s this plan of yours?” I asked hesitantly. “If you want me to consider it, I need to know what I’m in for.”

“You want complete honesty?”

“Yes. Full disclosure.”

“What if I told you there’s a manhole under that stage?” he said.

“I’d say those are impossible to get open, unless they’ve been loosened.”

His eyes widened. “Done. We can slip right down in there like one of them Ninja Lizards.”

I laughed. “Turtles. They’re Ninja Turtles.”

“Oh. Well, I ain’t one for a lotta movie-watchin’.”

“Anyway, is Kirk going to be waiting for us when we get down there?”

“Nope,” he said, shaking his head. “Instead, there’ll be weapons, food, flashlights, backpacks—all that stuff we’re gonna need.”

“You’re delusional.”

“No I ain’t. Remember the last fighter who died? He told me about it, said he had it all lined up, but he got killed ‘fore he could get to the stash.”

“And we’re supposed to take a dead guy’s word for it? For all we know, Kirk locked that manhole tight and reclaimed all the supplies.”

“Kirk never knew. Nobody did but me. I know the guy wasn’t lying. He made me swear to secrecy before he died. I’m only telling you ‘cause I need your help. He also told me two guys already got away, The Butcher and The Pit bull.”

“I heard about them. That Pit Bull guy was the one with a spiked collar, right?”

“Yeah. They say them two hated each other.”

“Yes, and they also say they tumbled to their deaths into the zombie herd. You want a repeat?”

“I ain’t got no death wish. I don’t hate you neither. I told ya, I’m over all that. Maybe I done growed up or somethin’. I don’t know. All I do know is that we need to work together if we’re gonna get away from these crazy idiots holding us prisoner.”

I still wasn’t ready to buy his line of bull. I thought it might be some devious plan he’d managed to come up with on his own, a way to fight me and get his revenge. “If you want to take me on,” I said, “then let’s do it right here, right now.”

“For one thing, you know Kirk don’t allow that. His guards will be on top of us like, uh...”

“Like white on rice,” I finished for him.

He laughed. “White on rice? I like that. But anyway, for another thing, this ain’t about fighting you. You think I’d do all this to just have a shot at taking you down?”

“Yes. It wouldn’t be the most insane thing I’ve encountered.”

“Listen, it’s really simple. We fight, and we make sure to tumble to the northeast side of the stage. There’s a blind spot there, and nobody will see us for a minute.”

“And how do we keep the zombies from pouncing on us like—”

“Like white on rice?”

Now it was my turn to laugh, and I shook my head. “More like lions on antelopes.”

“Well, it’s all fenced in around the loose panel under the stage. They had a friend on the outside help to set this up. The fencing is just a bunch of wire mesh around some junk so it’d look natural and blend in with the other junk. It was put there to hold off the zombies long enough to get inside the stage by crawling through the loose panel.”

“Kirk could’ve had the junk cleared.”

“He hasn’t. Nobody dares to go down there with all them zombies. Now if we fall off the corner the right way, like one of them Olympic gymnast guys in the little tights, we’ll land right inside the fenced area. Meanwhile, rotters will be our cover. The crowd and Kirk will just think we fell into the mosh pit of zombies and are being devoured. We just have to let out a few screams of agony, and I’m sure they’ll buy it, just like they did with those other two guys.”

I thought for a moment, pondering the viability of his plan. “So then we lift the lid, hit the sewers, and run like a madmen?”

“Exactly.”

“We have no idea what’s down there waiting for us, and I barely survived the last time I went underground,” I said, shivering as I recalled my unpleasant subterranean adventure.

“It’s clear that the manhole cover hasn’t been touched since them other two used it. There ain’t nothin’ down there but rats.”

“So you say, but if that’s true, you oughtta be right at home. But what if someone spots us and comes after us?”

“I promise you they won’t.”

“They could just cut us off at a different manhole. Kirk isn’t going to let us waltz out of here. He doesn’t like to be humiliated, and he takes escape attempts as a personal insult.”

“We ain’t gonna get caught. They’ll think we’re just zombie bait.”

“Why do you need me?”

“It’ll be easier than going alone. I need somebody to watch my back, just in case, and I’ll watch yours.”

“A sewer, huh?” I stood back up. “Pardon the pun, but it sounds like a bit of a pipe dream. I can only back a solid plan, a sure thing. You’re going on hearsay, and I’m not willing to risk my life for that. I’m gonna have to pass.”

Suddenly, one of the guards  grabbed me by the arm. “You starting trouble, Zombie Slayer?”

“No,” I answered.

“Save it for Blood Fest.”

A few minutes later, I was thrown back in the jail cell where Marcus and the others had been shot. I thought long and hard about Jim’s words, but I was worried that too much of it might just be gossip. For all I knew, the manhole either didn’t exist or was welded shut, and if zombies discovered that a fresh meal was lurking under the stage, trapped like a caged animal, it wouldn’t take long for them to rip through any kind of fencing. It was really crazy, too big of a gamble. Then again, I had no desire to fight anyone to the death, and I knew I wouldn’t have the nerve to throw my opponent to the zombies in the end. As cold and callous as the world had made me, I still had a heart beating faintly in my chest.

I blew out a long breath. My world had been turned upside down, and it was all a crazy mess. There seemed to be nothing left, and I wasn’t even sure if I’d lost all the people I cared about. Life was beginning to lose its meaning, and I wondered where I was going to find the strength to keep going, to keep living. Nothing about my existence even remotely resembled anything my life had been before, and that grim reality was hard to swallow.

I pondered all that doom and gloom for a long time, then tried to drown out those horrible thoughts by thinking of my family on the island. I had hopes of being reunited with them, and I wasn’t ready to accept that they might be dead. If there was even a remote possibility that they were alive, I had to get to them. That gave me the inner strength to survive the nightmare of captivity. I had to think like a survivor and never give up hope. I was behind enemy lines, but I had no intention of staying there for much longer. 

All the other meals after that were served to me in my cell, slid in through the door. I was kept in utter isolation, unable to speak to anyone, as if I’d been sentenced to solitary confinement. I wasn’t sure why Kirk was being so cruel with me, but I assumed he just wanted to remind me that he was running the show, that it was in my best interest to cooperate because he controlled everything I did. He thought he had taken my freedom, but I was not going to give that up so easily. 

T
he day of Blood Fest finally arrived, and I was happy that we’d finally be getting it over with, though I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do.

Kirk walked up to the bars of my cell and sighed. “There’s been...an incident, someone else added to the list of potential contenders.”

Feigning that I had no clue what was going on, I act surprised and asked, “What happened?”

“It seems Jim had some sort of tiff with Ned, and he beat him up badly. He’s been added to the lineup. You can fight whichever opponent you choose, so do you want to face Lightning or Quick Death?”