The first day she spent in the camp was the day she had learned of all the malfeasance being committed by the tyrant ruler ‘Greg’. People told her to stay on his good side, to not ask for anything too extreme because it would more than likely result in a punishment worse than death.
That was two weeks ago. Since then she had done what she was told, didn’t cause waves, didn’t speak up when people were mistreated, thrown around by the officers on Greg’s leash for saying the wrong thing or looking at them wrong. Yet on they good days children played in the streets, people chatted away as though they weren’t being held under an iron fist. She was becoming stir crazy and she needed to do a run into town, for something new. Maybe a book, or a pack of cigarettes. She had never smoked in her life, but there was no time like the present. She just needed something, anything, to get her mind off the mess she had involved herself in. But when she tried to leave she had been ‘arrested’ and dragged to the building that was once voodoo trinket shop. It had been fashioned into a city hall type area and was equipped with a large table that held the ‘council’.
A group of entitled assholes who had apparently been the first people inside the Safe Zone, so therefore were the self-appointed government. She jerked her arm out of the officer’s grasp once they got inside the building, glaring at him and smoothing down her clothes. “What’s your name?” Greg asked.
She had met the man before, he seemed like one of those people who liked to use the apocalypse as an excuse to kill people. “Beck.” She spat. “And I was in the middle of going on a run when your little shit here manhandled me.” She directed her insult at the kid who had brought her to the council. He was clearly younger than her, but had twice the muscle mass.
“A run? For what?”
“Some stuff. Things. Things I need. What’s it to you?”
“This is my camp, my society. You are a member here and therefore you will report to me. I ask, you answer.” He sounded so alarmingly calm. Sickeningly peaceful. A man walked in then, clearly late and he knew it, but he was ignored by everyone else. She decided to pay him no mind as well, and instead argued. Originally she tried to quietly argue with him, saying that he ought to let her hunt, because she was hell of a good one and he’d be impressed by her skills. He refused, using the stupid excuse that they already had too many hunters. There were never enough hunters in her opinion.
So she started to yell at Greg that she was a free citizen and that he had no reign over her, whatsoever, and she was going to be dammed if he sent her out their like a piece of meat like all the other morons who could only pull their weight in one way.
“Are you saying that you’re unwilling to do your duty as a citizen here?”
Beck felt her anger boil up as the man talked down to her, like she was nothing more than a pawn, an expendable player in his game that he’d have no trouble disposing of. “No. I’m saying, that you have a shit ton of nerve to think you can send me out there and not expect me to rip your dick off in the middle of the night.” As soon as it left her mouth, she knew what was going to happen next. But she didn’t regret it, she was glad that she could give the council a little bit of that shock factor that they seemed to be missing in their everyday lives.
She was manhandled once again and put in a makeshift cell they had made from gates and wooden pallets. They weren’t the sturdiest of things, but they kept her locked inside. She spent the night sleeping, waking up, sleeping some more, then waking up at the crack ass of dawn to bounce a pebble off a two-by-four at her eye level when she sat on the ground. It was Greg who came to get her in the morning. He smiled at her, and opened the entrance to her temporary cell.
“Morning.” He said, grabbing the chair that had been sitting next to her cell and sitting. He rested his elbows on his knees. “How did you sleep?”
“Soundly.” She said harshly, staring him in the eyes.
“Great to hear. You’ll be taking bait duty today. I hope you run fast.” She didn’t say anything, just stared. He was a cocky bastard, one of the few men in the aftermath who still felt the need to separate the strong from the weak, kill off those who couldn’t fend for themselves or others. She had no problem with teaching those who couldn’t handle themselves responsibility, how to use a weapon, how to survive on their own if need be. But she’d heard stories of Greg killing off the people who were weak, not even giving them a chance before sending them out to play his sick little game of being bait. “I like you.” He says finally after a long minutes of silence. “I’d like to see you come back from this, and join the council. You seem smart, faithful, and overtime you might grow to like me as well.”
“Fuck you.”
“Or not. It’s your choice.” He stood. “But just so you know, being on my good side is much nicer than being on my bad side. With nice cold glasses of water and warm food. I am offering you an opportunity here that’ll make your life much easier. I urge you to consider it.” He left the building after that, letting her know that she would be ‘fetched’ in an hour and if she wanted breakfast than she better act fast before it was all gone. She didn’t eat that morning.
He kept good to his word and an hour later one of the officers came in and dragged her to the front gate. She wasn’t given anything, just told to stand there by this guy Yan. He seemed to be one of the few people left in the joint that actually gave a shit about human life. He talked to her before ‘the other sacrificial lambs’ got there. “So, I heard ya threatened to rip Greg’s dick off. Pretty bitching.” He smiled at her.
She couldn’t help but give a little victory smile back at him. “Yeah, man’s unreasonable, so I figured I’d go straight for the manhood.” He howled with laughter at that, wiping the little straggler hairs from his face. “So what do you do around here?”
“This mostly. I’m a wall watcher. Boring, but there are days when it gets interesting.”
“Like today.” She said, watching his face suddenly get a look of dismay and he began to apologize. “No, don’t worry about it. When there’s a hoard of them it’s always fun to just sit there and take ‘em down, one by one.” He gave her a small smile, and leaned against the gate. “What’s it like out there?”
He shrugs. “Scary. Terrifying actually. Like being strapped to a chair and playing a game of Russian roulette you wanted no part of. The only advice I can give is run like hell, don’t waste your time trying to kill them. Weave, dodge, and never slow down. If a runner comes after you, climb. Jump on the wall, get at least six feet up and wait till something else grabs its interest.”
“You speaking from experience?”
“Seven time bait veteran.”
She lifted a brow. “Seven times? How’re you still alive?”
“Ran track in high school and college. I could run for a good four hours and still want to run more. Greg says that the only reason he keeps putting me on bait duty I so he can see how many lives I have. His best guess in nine.”
“Like a cat.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, like a cat.”
A young boy arrived next and she could tell that he wasn’t a nobody, not by the way Yan looked at him. He looked surprised, if not a little sad to see the kid standing there, but he didn’t say anything. A young woman showed up next, her long hair draped around her shoulders. It was curly in that annoyingly natural way. “You should cut that, or at least put it up.” Beck said, not glancing at her.
The girl didn’t say anything, just stared forward like she hadn’t heard a damn word Beck said. She let it go before it began to bother her. When this whole thing started she had the same length hair, and she had hated it. It was hot, heavy, annoying. She’d cut it off not long after being grabbed and having a big chunk ripped out of her head. She had underestimated the strength and reach of those things. Short hair kept her alive, it kept her safe, secure. Long hair was a luxury of the world before the infection, and a hazard after.
The last to show up was an older man. She recognized him from the council. She wondered what he was doing out here, standing next to the rest of them. He said a speech he had probably said and heard too many times, and ended it with his concern for the man. He called him Val. She decided to remember that so she could beat the shit out of him later for letting this happen to people.
She snatched the hammer out of Yan’s hand, twirling it in palm and readying her body. Her knees bent, her elbows out at her sides. She was going to do everything Yan said, except the non-killing part. Beck would smash as many heads as she needed, hell, she’d push one of these other poor saps down to do it too. Just as long as she could survive and get back through those gates with a few kills under her belt and prove to that Greg asshole she was more than just a worm on a hook. Beck was a god damned force to be reckoned with.
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