The Renegades 2 Aftermath (A Post Apocalyptic Zombie Thriller) (15 page)

T
he first thing
Domino did when we refused to give him the answers he wanted was to have his men take us into one of the twelve banquet rooms in the building. I kind of figured it was only temporary. No doubt his plans with us involved pain.

They forcefully shoved us inside and locked the doors behind us. In a weird twist of fate, the room we had been placed inside was called the President’s Room, located on the ninth floor. There were three large arched windows, a white pillar in the center of the room, and the walls were painted in jade, country-blue, and beige colors.

But it wasn’t anything related to the real president. Displayed on the walls were portraits of fifteen presidents of the Church of the Latter-day Saints.

“Ok, this is freaky,” Ralphie said, strolling around. “Is it me or do they look like they are eyeballing us?” He ambled over to one. “Don’t you go eyeballing me, boy,” he said in a Southern accent, “or I’ll give you fifty lashings of the birch.”

“Who does their décor? This is nasty,” Izzy spat.

Dax and I went to the far end and tugged on the windows but they were locked. The only furniture inside the spacious square room was an upright, dark wood piano with a stool and a podium. I immediately snatched up the stool.

“Stand back.”

I tossed it as hard as I could at the window then turned away, expecting glass to go everywhere. Instead it just bounced off not even leaving a scratch.

“Are you shitting me?”

“Out of the way, wimp,” Dax said, picking it up and sticking out his chest. He hurled it. The window cracked ever so slightly. He scooped it up again and repeated the same thing three times before he went a deep shade of red and gave up. Were they expecting their windows to be shot at? The glass was as tough as diamond.

Ralphie went over to the piano and began playing his rendition of “Chopsticks,” and then broke into playing some made-up song with the lyrics,
We are so fucked
. The longer he played the more violent he started to become with the keys until he stepped back and kicked the piano with his heel. White and black keys flew off in every direction.

“Whoa! Steady on, Jerry Lee Lewis,” I said coming over to him and gripping the back of his collar. The two of us just stared at the now destroyed piano. It was hard to get a grip on our emotions. They were all over the place. Jess had torn a piece of her own shirt off and wrapped it around Kat’s swollen and bloody hand. I could barely comprehend what Domino had done to her, let alone her father.

Inside that room, three hours passed. Every ten minutes a couple of men would check in on us. We sat, we wandered, and at times took out our frustration by destroying anything in the room that wasn’t held down. I wondered what was going through each of their minds, but more importantly what had happened to Baja and Specs. It was after midnight, three hours until the choppers would arrive. I leaned my forehead against the pane of glass and peered down. They used rod-shaped wood with rags on the end to create makeshift torches. The flames licked the air. Some gang members stood watch, while others had turned over boxes and were playing what looked like a game of craps. In the distance beyond the temple I could see the inside of a building lit up. I closed my eyes, allowing my mind to drift into the past.

“Johnny, now remember, squeeze the trigger slowly. Breath out as you apply pressure.”

“Like this?”

“That’s it, son. Remember equal height, equal light.”

My father was referring to centering the front sight air gaps with the left and right dots on the rear of the handgun. Once that was done you lined up the front and rear sights for equal height.

It was the key to aiming straight.

A sudden noise and I squinted to see how I had done. He had been showing me how to shoot for the first time. Everything could affect your aim from the size of the grip, to how you cradled it. Just a small amount of pressure from the hand that didn’t have a finger on the trigger could send everything off kilter.

Initially I missed anything I fired at but over time my accuracy got better, and with it came a quiet confidence. Even then it was just the beginning. Next was shooting from behind an object, then moving and shooting. Repetition was the key, my father would say. Do it again. Do it again. It became ingrained in me. I could hear his voice even now as clear as day.

“One day, you might find yourself having to kill another man, Johnny. That gun has to become part of you. There are only three reasons you’ll get shot. One, you’re not paying attention. Two, you’re uncomfortable handling a gun. Three, you can’t shoot for shit.”

I nodded, thinking my father walked on water.

After our mother died, he would make us sleep with a handgun. It was never loaded. But he wanted it to become second nature to us. Our father was strange that way. How many other kids at the age of eleven went to bed with a Glock 17?

Lost in my thoughts, I was snapped back into the present moment when the door burst open. Four of Domino’s men came in. Two of them holding fiery torches, the others assault rifles, sweeping the room yelling my name. At first I couldn’t make out what else they were saying as the main guy was speaking in Spanish. Frustrated that I wasn’t following their directions, they came over and grasped me firmly by the arm and dragged me forward. Dax tried to intervene but one of the men aimed his handgun at his head. The others watched helplessly as they led me out of the room. I was the only one they took. As I crossed the threshold I made note of how many were outside. Two. I shot Dax a look and dropped my eyes to my fingers where I was signaling two. I had no idea where they were taking me. Why they had selected me, or if I would see the others again. For all I knew he was going to impale me alongside the president.

I was never religious. I had my father to thank or perhaps blame for that. But in that moment I swear I said a prayer. It was nothing much. Just a few words murmured under my breath.
If you’re real, I could really use your help now.
I don’t know what I was expecting? An angel, a flash of light, or Ashton Kutcher to jump out and tell me I had just been punk’d, but nothing happened. At least, that’s what I thought.

They brought me down to ground level and ushered me out into the night air where they met with two more men. I glanced at my watch. It was close to one in the morning. Two more hours. That’s all we had left. What the hell were they doing up at this time of night? I could hear a crowd in the distance, rap music blaring and the steady pulsating of a bass. I cast a look upward towards the room they had us in. The windows were dark. If Dax and the others were watching, I couldn’t see them.

Pushed forward, I stumbled. That only infuriated them more. One cursed and batted me in the back with the butt of his gun. We were heading towards Salt Lake Tabernacle. It was a huge dome-shaped auditorium. The roof was a shiny aluminum resting on top of a sandstone foundation. Fire flickered, casting shadows against the walls and ground as I was pushed through the doorway. It was like entering an MMA event. Gangbangers were jeering, shouting, and even tossing empty beer cans in my direction. Someone spat at me. Others took advantage of the moment to land a few blows. Whatever I was being led into, it wasn’t good. The noise of the crowd grew louder, their voices echoing off the roof above. Above the bobbing heads I saw a steel cage octagon. I glanced up to the second tier above us. More men filled out the space and were tossing down toilet paper rolls that unraveled as they hit their targets below. The smell of weed lingered in the air as I found myself outside the cage. Domino was seated and talking to a good-looking girl in her twenties. She was wearing a tight shiny outfit that reminded me of the seventies.

“Ah, glad you could join us.” He rose to his feet and clasped the sides of my shoulders. “You are just in time for the main attraction.”

“Which is?” I asked inquisitively.

“You of course.” He let out a deep rumble of laughter. I got a whiff of his bad breath and felt like gagging. He smelled like he’d swallowed a Z’s ball sack.

“Isn’t this a little past your bedtime?” I asked.

He sneered before breaking into a grin. “I like you. That’s why I’m giving you a second chance to tell me what you know.”

“What makes you think I know anything?”

He scanned the crowd. “Have you wondered why these men follow me?”

“Let me guess. You give good head?”

He scowled, and prodded his finger against my chest.

“You’re a bit of smart ass. Now let’s see if there’s more to you than words.”

I sighed growing weary of his drivel. “Is this where you kill me?”

He snorted. “I’m not going to kill you.” He turned me by my shoulders. “He is.”

Inside the steel cage was a beast of a man. He had to have been twice my height and three times as wide. He literally looked as if he had swallowed another human being. Bald, his entire face and upper half of his chest was tattooed. Numbers, spider webs, dots, tears, skulls, and all manner of explicit imagery. His earlobes hung like an African Zulu warrior, with two bones piercing them. He had muscle on top of muscle. Hell, he looked as if he lived beneath a bench press. He grinned, showing nothing but a gold grill.

They shoved me towards the steps that led up to a thick metal gate. One of the gang who was hanging off the side like a monkey reached down and unlocked it. Entering the cage, I looked back when I heard it lock. I gulped. My eyes immediately began looking for a way out, or at least a way to stay out of the reach of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Hispanic cousin.

The crowds roared a name.
Bones
. They repeated it over and over again. I was pretty sure it wasn’t my nickname, and he wasn’t called that because he had two in his ears. No, I didn’t think it could get any worse than going hand to hand with Goliath. But it did. Tossed over the top of the cage, two medieval-looking weapons landed in the center of the octagon.

One was a one-handed flail. A sickening device that had a wooden handle with a chain attached to one end, and a spiked ball on the other. I’d seen these on Halloween in Castle Rock. But this was no kiddie replica. It was a real ball cracker. The other? A shitty little knife that might have been good for peeling a tomato, and that was it.

Bones didn’t wait for me to decide how I wanted to be killed, he immediately went for the flail. He was fast, but then again I wasn’t planning on getting my noggin cracked with that shit. I lunged forward as he bent down to pick it up and kicked him in the side. Now I was pretty damn sure my boots were going to give him air. Instead, it was like kicking a wall. He didn’t move a fucking inch, and yet I bounced back a foot.

When I reared my head back up, the look on his face said it all. It turned from a grin into a scowl. The next thing I knew I was running around that ring hoping to break the four-minute mile with a tiny little knife that probably wasn’t sharp enough to cut my toenails with.

Every time he swung the spiked ball it would rip into the wooden floor and tear up splinters the size of stakes. Now clearly I was at a disadvantage both in size and weaponry, never mind the fierce mustache he was sporting. He could have won an award for that in Movember. Yep, November, the time of the year all the pricks in our town grew thick mustaches.

I ducked as he swung his meat-shredding ball sack with fury.

Now I’d seen enough Muhammad Ali video clips over at Baja’s house to know when to dance like a butterfly and sting like a bee. And I’d like to say there was a strategy to my mad River Dance moves that I was doing to avoid becoming torn to shreds but there wasn’t. I was just hoping I could wear him out, or at least make him consider dance academy. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working.

From the time that flail hit the ground and got stuck to the time he managed to pry it loose, I figured I had about three seconds.

Now I knew I wasn’t going to be able to hack his head off with that penis-size blade even if the ladies like to say, it isn’t the size of your tool that matters, but how you use it.

It was a lie then, and it was a lie now.

The ball of metal tore into the floor and I saw my opportunity. With his wrist down tugging at the handle I came down on his arm with a lethal kick that would had made Baja proud. The fucking guy was holding it so tight his arm crunched beneath me. I toppled to the ground and scrambled to get clear but he wasn’t rushing. He was yelling in agony. The bone hadn’t pierced his skin but I had clearly unhinged some part of the joint below the muscle.

As he was screaming all manner of obscenities I came over to the side of the cage right in front of Domino and spat at him.

“Who’s the bitch now? Get in here. I will…” I saw his eyes flare with excitement and I knew that meant only one thing. I dived to my side just before my head was nearly caved in by the weapon from hell. The meathead had snatched up the flail in his other hand. I kept him on his toes as I bounced my way around that cage like a man on speed. I was panting hard. My heart felt like it was about to burst out of my chest. I could hear my pulse ringing in my ears.

Once again as the flail came down, I scooted around him and cut Bones on the back of his legs.
Shit! This tiny thing does work?
He screamed in agony and swung the spiked ball again like a lunatic.

When I attempted to repeat the same move that had unhinged his one arm, Bones caught my leg. He spun me like a feather with one hand. I’d never felt such strength in my life. I smashed into the side of the cage. The sharp metal cut the side of my face. Blood began to trickle down. Now maybe I got lucky, but he never did get that flail back out of the floor. It was stuck in there stronger than the sword in the stone. While that had worked in my favor, what happened next didn’t. Bones slammed his foot down on my back. I swear it might as well have been a ten-ton rock. Pain shot through me. He grabbed me by my neck and slammed his other hand into my nuts and lifted me up as if I weighed nothing more than a buck. I gasped as he tossed me from one side of the ring to the other. I slammed into the cage. I tried to get up fast but the muscles in my leg wouldn’t have it. I spat blood. The crowd was going wild. This was like an MMA fight except no one was getting paid, and they had certainly screwed up the weight class.