Twisted World: A Broken World Novel (28 page)

“No choice,” Dragon said. “We play by the rules the best we can or we all die.” He turned to face me, his upper lip curling enough to show the gap where his teeth used to be. “Our day will come though.”

Our day will come?

I narrowed my eyes on him, studying his face for any hint of what he was trying to say. He was definitely trying to tell me something, but what that was I didn’t have a damn clue. One thing I did know:
my
day wasn’t going to come. Not unless getting shipped back to DC or being ripped apart by a zom could be considered
my day
. My future was shitty enough before I got here, but now that I was mixed up in this business with Meg and her family, I’d pretty much signed my own death warrant. All I could hope for now was a quick and relatively painless end.

“Take this,” Dragon said after a second of silence.

I looked down to find him holding a switchblade, and I almost stepped back. If he got caught arming me, they probably wouldn’t even bother sending him to DC.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked, shaking my head as I looked around. No one was paying any attention to us, thankfully.

Dragon pressed the knife into my palm, looking around like I just had to make sure no one was watching, and I was forced to take the damn thing. If I made a scene, people would notice and he’d be dead. Me too, probably.

“Don’t use it unless you absolutely have to.” His eyes were still searching the room and my gaze was trained on his mouth. The black hole that had once been teeth was hypnotizing when he talked. “If anyone sees it, you didn’t get it from me.”

Dragon was helping me? It didn’t make any damn sense. Not that anything really had since setting foot in this ass-backwards settlement.

I slipped the knife into my pocket, but I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Why?”

“Because the people pulling the strings think they are in charge, but it won’t always be that way.
We
will rise up.”

Dragon headed toward the ring, the crowd parting for him like he was a modern day prophet. The words he’d just uttered rang in my ears, seeming to echo that sentiment.

I didn’t move. The man was nuts. That was the only explanation, but right now I was thankful that he was just a little bit out of his mind. Crazy or not, he might have just saved my ass. I could take old zombies. I could probably even take one new zombie as long as I had a way to defend myself. But in a ring with no weapons and a freshly turned zombie, especially if it was a newer strain of the virus, I was fucked.

The wheels of the cart creaked behind me, and I stepped aside so Dragon’s cronies could pull the zoms out of the holding room. The newer one was still tugging on his chains, but he was on his feet the second he saw the people. He lunged, his chains pulling tight and stopping him from going anywhere, but not stopping him from gnashing his teeth.

His fight continued the whole time the men worked to get him chained up inside the ring, and more than once one of them came close to getting a chunk bitten out of them. I’d never seen a zombie so aggressive or determined. They were all blood thirsty, but this one didn’t get distracted by the noise surrounding him the way they usually did.

When Dragon called my name, I headed out. Every inch of my skin was covered in a layer of sweat and my stomach hadn’t been this uneasy since my first few fights. I looked toward the bar, but Meg wasn’t there, and when I turned back, I saw why. She was serving drinks to the VIPs. Jackson and his group of council brats. The asshole had his arm around the shoulder of some blonde girl while one of his friends talked to Meg. I was too far away to be able to hear what the little prick was saying to her, but with the way her hands were clenched into fists, I had a feeling it was a good thing I was out of hearing range. If I could have heard it, I probably would have broken the asshole’s nose.

In the ring the lights were so bright that they momentarily drowned out the faces of the crowd. My eyes would adjust before too long, but right now, I wished they wouldn’t. Having Jackson and his asshole friends here was a distraction I didn’t need.

Dragon asked the crowd if they were ready and cheers echoed through the air, making every muscle in my body tense in anticipation. He backed out while I turned my focus to the zoms. All three of them pulled at their chains, trying to break free, but the one in the middle fought twice as hard.

The door clanged shut, and in the blink of an eye the dead were charging me. It only took a split second for me to realize they hadn’t released the newest one. Even though I tried to see it as an advantage—if I could get at least one of the others down before they let him out, I might be okay—I knew they were just biding their time. Waiting for me to be distracted so they could let the other one loose.

The first one to reach me was so rotten that the skin had started to peel off his face. He chomped and reached for me, but thankfully, he only had three fingers on his right hand. I grabbed him around the wrist and jerked my hand to the left, and the cracking of bone echoed in my ears. He snarled and tried to get me with his other hand, but I repeated the process. The second zom was almost on top of me when I threw the first at him, and they both went down. They writhed on the floor, trying to get up, but I didn’t give them a chance. When I slammed the heel of my boot into the first one’s skull, I was rewarded with a crunch and the thing stopped moving, his motionless body sprawled out across the other one, pinning the bastard to the ground.

Chains clanged to my right and I spun around to face the sound. The newer zombie was free, but he didn’t charge. He just stood there, watching me like he was biding his time, his milky eyes narrowed but his dilated pupils focused and alert. The bright lights reflected off his smooth head as he tilted it to the side, his gaze moving to the zombies at my feet, then back to my face. When he opened his mouth, spittle flew out with his roar.

“Shit.” I took a step back.

The virus must not have turned him completely yet or he wouldn’t be able reason like this. The dark veins in his arms told me he was beyond saving, but I was willing to bet that if I cut him, his blood wouldn’t be black yet. It was the most dangerous stage of this new strain. Whoever had brought this zombie in knew exactly what they were doing.

Lucky for me, being locked in a cage with the asshole meant it wasn’t exactly possible for him to take me by surprise. Which meant that when the thing finally did charge me, I was ready for him.

I held my ground until the last possible second, then darted out of the monster’s way. He flew past me, slamming into the fence at my back. When I spun around, the grinning face of Jackson momentarily distracted me, but a snarl brought me back. This time when the zombie headed my way, I lifted my leg and slammed my boot square into the center of his chest.

He let out a howl when he once again went crashing into the cage, but I wasn’t sure if it was from anger or pain. He tried to jump at me again, but I slammed my shoulder into his chest and held him back. His face was inches from my ear when he snapped his teeth, so close that spit sprayed across my cheek. I jerked my head away while keeping my shoulder pressed against him, and in a moment of horror, I realized that deep in his chest, his heart was still pounding away. The rhythm was odd, slower than normal, the beats somehow longer and more spaced out, but not struggling. Even as the zombie jerked back and forth, trying to break free, I knew that he shouldn’t be able to move this quickly with his heart beating at such a slow pace.

What the hell had this virus created?

I pulled him off the fence and threw him to the ground, then stood over him, my feet on his arms so he was pinned to the floor. With him restrained, I was able to take a moment and really look him over. A line of crimson liquid dripped from the cut on the side of his face, bright enough to almost make me step back. That was wrong. His blood shouldn’t have been red like this. It was supposed to be dark brown, well on its way to turning black.

This was unlike any zombie I had ever seen.

I gave him a closer look, my own heart pounding so hard it echoed in my ears. On first glance I’d thought he was bald, but now that I was able to get a better look at him, I realized that wasn’t right. There was
no
hair on his body at all. None on his head or chest, and he had no eyebrows or eyelashes either. On top of that, his skin was so thin it almost looked transparent, reminding me of the eighty-year-old man who had lived next door to my family when I was young. Only, the creature’s skin didn’t rip easily the way an old person’s did, and the texture was different. Not soft and thin, but leathery. Like the sun had hardened it.

In one violent twist that caught me totally by surprise, the zombie threw me back. He was on his feet so fast that it almost looked like he had superpowers, and all I could think as he charged at me was that he was planning to rip me apart with his bare hands.

This time when he reached me, I didn’t mess around. I slammed my fist into his face just like I would if he were a living person who was trying to attack me. He stumbled back but didn’t fall; only it didn’t matter because I ran at him, keeping my body low. My shoulder slammed into his stomach and he doubled over. I wrapped my arms around his torso and lifted. His feet left the ground, flailing under him, and his hands clawed at my back for a second before I threw him across the ring. He slammed into the cage and the chain link rattled all around us. The creature landed on his stomach and scrambled to get up, but I was on him before he could. I sank one knee into his spine to hold him down, then grabbed his head between my hands. One violent twist was all it took to end it. A crack echoed through the air when his neck snapped and his body went limp. I got to my feet, panting as I stepped back. Staring down at his now lifeless eyes.

The room was silent except for the sound of the other zombie, still at my back and still trapped under his fallen comrade. I was gasping for breath when I turned to take care of him. Two stomps to the skull and he was gone too, but still no one made a sound. The stunned silence that had fallen over the room made perfect sense considering what just happened.

I had just killed a zombie without destroying his brain.

Was he even a zombie?

The gate clinked when Dragon opened it, but I didn’t look his way. Instead, I lifted my head, focusing on Jackson. Around him, his friends looked just as stunned as the rest of the room did, but the little prick was smiling. A sick, evil grin that made his eyes flash like hellfire was burning in them. The disappointment that swam in his gaze was a total contradiction to that smile, and it caused a shudder to move up my spine.

T
he water
I splashed against my face wasn’t cool, but it was refreshing. I squeezed my eyes shut and splashed more, running my damp hands in circles across my face, hoping to wash away all of the blood spatter. When I opened my eyes, the water in the sink was gray.

I stepped back and took a deep breath before looking at my reflection. My face was pretty clean, but there was still a sprinkling on my arms and chest. Only they weren’t all black. A burst of red painted my right bicep, so bright it stood out even among the lines of black on my skin.

“What the hell was that thing?” I asked my reflection.

Like me, he didn’t have any answers.

“Donaghy?” Meg’s voice echoed through the room and I turned to find her standing behind me. “You did it.”

“I did.”

I held her gaze, not sure what to say now that I’d made it through the fight. We’d kissed. It wasn’t the first time, but there was something significant about it. Something that didn’t just tell me how she felt about me, but made me accept the truth of how I felt about her. I wanted this girl. Despite the crazy and danger surrounding her life, and how it would most likely leave us both with a lot of heartache, I wanted Meg.

She stepped closer, her fingers brushing the red on my bicep. “What was that?”

“I don’t know.” I shook my head. “It was fast and powerful, and it’s heart was still beating. It was like some kind of crazy hybrid zombie.”

“Is this what they’re doing in the CDC?” Meg’s green eyes searched mine.

The thought hadn’t occurred to me, but mainly because I hadn’t had time in the middle of the ring to really process it all. But it made sense. I never believed Jackson’s father wanted to stop the zombies. With the threat out there, people were forced to stay behind the wall and do as they were told, which gave the Regulator all the power. But if he didn’t want to create a vaccine, why he would kidnap people who were immune was an utter mystery. Until now. That thing, whatever it had been, wasn’t natural.

“I don’t think there’s any other explanation for it.” I let out a deep breath and ran my still damp hand over my head. My hair was starting to grow back after being shaved in DC, but it was still soft against my palm. “I’ve been out there for weeks. On the road, traveling from settlement to settlement. I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“We have to stop them.”