“But you’re right. I couldn’t stand by watching idle. The place got shut down by the NYPD. Somehow the word leaked out, and the police shut it down, citing that it was a cult, and against city ordinances.”
None of us asked if it was Jarvis that had called in the tip, but he sure as hell implied it.
Kyle picked up the metal piece that was smoldering in the fire and ash at that point, took a good look at the glowing end, flipped it once more and placed it back in the fire.
“So how did Avalon come to be?” he asked.
“Gordon had been building it for years. For all intents and purposes, it was operational when the dead started to rise. Realizing that violence was the truest form of entertainment, his new vision was to have gladiator-style battles. Live and to the death is how he explained it to me. He had already been hosting underground matches for a while. We’d gone slightly different paths by that point. However, when shit hit the fan on that first day of the outbreak, he reached out and invited me to his sanctuary. I didn’t know about the Arena until I got there. In Gordon’s mind, this is what he had been waiting for, and he wanted me, his partner, there to enjoy it. It was just a matter of putting a new kind of contestant into the arena. I knew I had to put a stop to it.”
“Jesus…” Aidan groaned, genuine shock on his face.
I’m not sure if he was playing to the crowd, or if he really got that Gordon was a monster. Either way, Jarvis didn’t respond. He looked over at Kyle while finishing off the last of his mini-bottle. Dropping his shoulders and taking a deep breath in, he looked down at the smoldering metal. “I’m ready for that now. Let’s make it quick.”
Jarvis put up a hell of a fight for an old man. He arched his back and nearly threw Aidan over the edge when Kyle first pressed the heated metal against the front and back of his leg to cauterize the wounds.
Holding a bandage over his melted skin, and just before he passed out, Jarvis looked up at Aidan and whispered, “Gordon has caused nothing but pain in this world, young man. You’d be better off to remember that.”
Aidan took a step back and stared out at the fire raging below. Kicking his new Nike Pegasus shoes into the ground, while twisting a stick that he’d been holding, I could tell that at the very least, Jarvis had got him thinking.
Chapter 22
Desperation seemed to shine a new light on what we were willing to do… how far we were willing to push ourselves to survive.
Kyle reached over and tapped my shoulder, pulling me from the uncomfortable half-sleep I was in. It was my turn to be on watch, and I grunted as I pulled myself upright in one of the busted airline chairs. We had moved ourselves into the cabin of the plane, deciding it would be the most defendable position should we come under some sort of attack.
Lifting my cell phone, only to find it still dead, I glanced over at Kyle.
Looking at his wristwatch, he said, “We’ve still got eleven hours. We’ll get back in time. We just need to sort through how. Hell, we’ve made it further in less time.”
“How long till dawn?”
“Maybe three hours.”
“We need to find a radio or a working car,” I said grimly.
“We will. There is something out there. The light will reveal it,” he responded before patting me on the back and lying down to get some rest.
After taking a deep breath in, I shook my head and walked away from the group to relieve myself. After watching a rainbow of piss flow over the side of the ravine, I decided to take a seat at the small campfire which had long since burnt out. Looking out at the scenery before me, I could see that the forest fire continue to burn bright, albeit now further in the distance. Luckily, it was burning away from us.
Dawn was close, but I could still see the moon trying to peek through the clouds and smoke on the far side of the horizon. Thinking back through the nightmare we’d survived below, I couldn’t help but wonder what the landscape would look like in the daylight.
Once Kyle fell asleep, I realized just how quiet it was out there. We were alone, or at least, I thought we were, in the largest forest I’d ever stepped foot into. The worst part about it was that we were completely out of ammunition, leaving us with nothing but blunt force objects to defend ourselves if something should force us to have to fight.
Tapping the wrought iron fence post against one of the chairs, I listened to the rhythmic moans from the creatures below. By my judgment, they were starting to diminish, letting me know that the center of the horde had likely passed by us at some point in the night. With the realization that the horde was now in front of us, I couldn’t help but shake the strange feeling that I could still hear the creatures in the distance behind us.
Not sure if I was losing my mind or not, I listened intently, unable to determine how far away the noise was, or how many of the creatures were making it. However, I was sure of one thing. It wasn’t moving toward us… well, pretty sure anyway.
Still, it created a stereo sort of effect, reminding me that, regardless of our little temporary safety, we were completely surrounded and we were going to have a hell of a time trying to figure out how to get home.
After a while, my mind finally drifted away from the monsters and toward Tyler and the first months of taking care of him. It had been an adjustment for sure, but I always found solace in the little things… like when he would burp over my shoulder, or giggle at me making silly faces. I smiled at the memory of the first time he’d opened his eyes and really looked at me, his father. I had all but thrown in the towel after Jenn had died. Tyler gave me a reason to keep on fighting. It was that look of pure innocence and trust that helped me to turn the corner.
I knew I couldn’t let him down.
Tapping the metal rod against the ground now, I suddenly found myself stewing at the fact that I was so far away from him because of Gordon. If we managed to survive this, I knew we’d have to make sure that Gordon would never be a threat to anybody ever again.
As the moon traded places with the sun, I inadvertently found myself sitting at full attention looking out at the aftermath below. Between the fire and the mega-horde, there was nothing left but ash. I could literally see the path that the creatures had carved through the dense forest, leading right up to where the fire had opened up and burnt everything away. In the distance, I could still see the tail end of the flood of monsters pushing through another section of forest. At some point in the night, the fire had shifted to the right, while the Zs continued forward. It created what I could only imagine looked like a giant fork in the road from above.
Squinting, I could see the ground below moving ever so slightly. The realization that it was Zs that had been mangled under the weight of the horde, likely because they were too slow or too small to stand up against its sheer force, reminded that in the end the zombies were no different from us. In this world, and even in the one before the dead began to rise, humans would run right over each other. Whether it was for something as seemingly significant as a promotion at work, or something as obviously fucking stupid as being the first in line on Black Friday to get the best deal on that big screen TV, the masses were bred to push past the slow and trample the weak.
“You hear that?” Nearly jumping out of my skin, I responded, “Jesus, man, what are you, a fucking ninja?”
Color had returned to Jarvis’s face and despite a nice limp as he stepped closer, he was looking a hell of a lot better than he had the night before.