There was a group of five people in front of him, and internally Robin was groaning, but he didn’t express that on the outside of his face. Instead, he said, “What?”
One of the people, the only woman in the group, and the only one who wasn’t wearing a side arm said, “Sheriff told us to report here. Said you were looking for recruits?”
“Yeah. After my coffee. I don’t deal with people until after coffee.” I turned to look at her and asked, “What’s your name?”
“Dixon. Sir.”
“My name is Robin. I don’t care what you call everybody else in this city, my name is Robin. Got it?” I waited for her to nod, then continued. “Well, Miss Dixon, why no gun?”
“Don’t need it.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You don’t need a gun? I’m sorry, are you confused about what’s going on? This is an apocalypse. The dead walk around and turn us into them. And you don’t need a gun?”
She shook her head, and I laughed. “Well then, why not?”
She reached for something in her pocket, and in an instant, I had pulled my gun from its holster, found where her hand was going, and shot. Whatever was in her pocket was blown out of it, and the bullet tore through them like they were made of paper.
“Throwing knives,” I grinned and looked at her shocked expression. “Fancy.”
She was stammering, and I grinned. “What? How did I do that?” I gestured at the knives on the ground and she nodded. “Practice. Lots and lots of practice. I turned to one of the other men and said, “You, get me some coffee. The rest, come with me. If you’re amazed by that, we've got a lot of work to do.”
I growled softly, at the world, at the cruelty that forced him to kill someone who once, long ago was his friend. And then I shook it off and hefted Dixon’s switchblade before climbing the stairs and running into half a dozen of the people Dixon had been in charge of.
I quickly jammed the switchblade up through the side of one of their biker helmets, before throwing the man's body in front of me and ducking down low, using the body as a shield. The staccato sound of gunfire filled the air, and dropped down even lower, still using the body as a shield, and then the second they were starting to reload, I leapt up. There were five people here, and I tore through them like they were made of paper.
I kicked the first one off of the stairwell and listened as his neck cracked and shattered. I was already moving by the time the others had registered that I’d killed yet another of them, I was slitting the neck of two of them.
They fell to the floor, clutching their throats, staring at me with both hatred and anger, and fear in their eyes, and I knelt for a moment and closed their eyes gently. I whispered a prayer as I did. A prayer in a foreign language, a language that I never understood. For some reason, I knew the prayer, I don’t know who told me the poem, and I don’t know who taught me any of it. But I remember all of it.
I stayed there for what felt like an hour, staring at the men as they gasped, and choked on their blood. They died choking on the very thing that let them live, the very thing that marked them different from the Bleeders.
And then I was moving, climbing the stairs again. I killed two more men, and I spared them the same courtesy, closing their eyes, and moving on. I knew I wasn’t a good man, but at least their spirits could rest easy knowing I didn’t want to do it.
An instant later, I was on the eleventh floor, a trail of bodies behind me, and I knocked on the door leading to the hallway gently. I heard a gun cock, and then a voice call, “Who’s there?”
“Robin.”
The gun clattered on the ground, and then the door opened. “What happened here?” I asked. There was blood covering every single one of the walls, and a mountain of bodies in front of the door. Over two dozen of them, it looked like.
Zack caught my gaze, and he shrugged. “Three or four would come in at a time. I don’t think they were expecting me to have a shotgun, and by the time they realized, I’d already taken down at least half of them. The rest were easy. I don’t know why you were talking about how dangerous these hunters are Robin, they’re not that hard to fight.”
“These weren’t hunters, they were soldiers. The hunters know how to use their gear, and their weapons. They know how to fight. These guys have no idea what they’re doing, they’re just here 'cause the Sheriff told them to be.”
“Why would he sacrifice them? Throw them at us if he knows that the hunters can’t beat you, why would he think the soldiers would?”
“Two possibilities. One he hoped that the sheer number of people with guns and bullets flying everywhere would manage to kill me, or two, he wasn’t trying to take us out.”
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“What?”
“He was trying to send a message to your group. Telling them that even with me, the odds of you five dying are incredibly high. He’s trying to tell you to either join him or get out of his city.” I faltered as Olivia walked out of the room holding some container of something in her hand.
“Hey.” She nodded at me, and then asked, “Do you know what this is?” Hefting the object in her hand.
I frowned for a moment, then leaned forward to grab it, and felt the cold steel, jerking back. She nodded. “Sorry, I forgot to tell you. It’s very cold.”
I took it in my hands, much more gently this time only using the tips of my fingers, and spun it around and around, before I found a button, and I pressed it.
Some sort of gas or liquid hissed out of it, and I frowned, shaking the bottle, and I heard something clattering around inside of it, and then the front fell off, and I caught the edge of a piece of paper.
Written on it, no more like scribbled over and over and over again, the same word, different sizes, different colors, almost nothing like each other, until I saw what the word was. Wordlessly I handed it over to Olivia and she read it, her eyes widening slightly, and then she breathed out, “Run?”
I shrugged. “I told you he was sending a message. I just didn’t think it would be that obvious. He’s not usually this obvious.”
I put the paper back in the canister and threw it towards the window angrily, and then stopped, the canister still in my hand. Something was running through my hand, and I sat down for a moment, pulling out my knife and slowly, gently inserting the tip into the metal canister, and prying it open.
Inside of the canister was a small blacklight, and Robin smiled to himself. He pulled it out and shined it on the letter where all of a sudden words were very visible. “I’ll be there in one week. You have two choices, Robin. Submission, or annihilation. If you choose the latter I’ll be calling on the alliance. You know what I mean Robin.”
I tossed the letter to Olivia and she read it before asking with a puzzled face, “The Alliance?”
“It’s an alliance between all of the major survivor groups in Southern Florida, about three or four hundred of them. The Sheriff made a totalitarian government system that allows him to call on their aid if he is ever in combat with a large or skilled group.”
“What are you saying? We’re going to have to fight four hundred people?”
I shrugged. “That or submit to him. If you want to do that go ahead. He’ll probably accept you. But I cannot and will not allow myself to go into his home again. I’ve done too much to him, and too much to his group for him to not kill me the second I walk up to him.”
Olivia frowned, then said, “What if I tell him that he has to accept your joining his group? Or we won’t?”
“You’re not exactly in a position to make demands. If you don’t agree with one of the conditions or any of the conditions, or you simply don’t want to be part of his group, he’ll just kill everyone.” I smiled at Olivia. “If you want some sort of safety, some sort of reliability, something solid to hold on to, this is your only opportunity. If I tell him no he won’t stop until either all of us are dead, or he is.”
I smiled at her once, sadly, and then turned and walked away, climbing instead of up the stairs down, where I headed out into the city. I had one quiver on my back with maybe twenty arrows in it, but I had my knife, and I was royally pissed off, so I started heading over to the Sheriff's base.
I didn’t run into too many Bleeders on the way, likely because the group of people I’d just killed had come through her before me, and most likely they’d either lured them away from this path or killed the ones in the way.
It took about an hour to walk there, I didn’t run or anything, I just strolled casually and peacefully. I shot down two bleeders on the way, but let the rest be. I didn’t feel like killing today, I’d watched my friend die by my hands, and it wasn’t something I wanted to be forced to see again.
Eventually, I reached a street, and as I turned on it, I saw a fairly awe-inspiring sight. Tall walls, almost seven or eight feet high, of concrete and wood, overgrown with vines and trees on the outside. On one side of the wall, a massive bamboo grove was spreading out from the wall, and I took note of it in my head. I could see the silhouettes of men walking around atop the wall, and as I walked closer, I saw one of them lift their gun and point it at me.
Seemingly without looking at him, I drew my gun and shot that gun out of his hand, before following up with two more shots, one directly to his spinal cord, through his neck, and then a second one right in between his eyes.
The sound of the gunfire drew all eyes to me, and then to the man’s body as it fell to the ground off of the wall. I heard screaming inside but I didn’t care at this point. I pointed my gun at one of the men on the wall and said calmly, “Go get the Sheriff.” He hesitated, and I roared in rage, firing my gun above my head, “NOW!”
He scrambled off of the wall, and I smiled, before sitting down on the floor and seemingly closing my eyes for a nap, as I did, one of the men lifted his own gun and I sighed, lifting my gun once again, shooting off first his finger’s this time, and then two bullets to the knees.
He screamed in pain and fell to his knees tumbling over the wall and onto my side and I growled something under my breath, then shot him in the head as well shutting him up very effectively. I smiled to myself at the looks of shock and utter fear on the men’s faces, and then I sat up, pulling out seven bullets from a pouch on my hip, and loading back up my gun.
I was leaning back, when I heard a voice say, “Mind not killing my men, Robin?”
I sat up instantly, and put my gun out, centering it on the Sheriff’s forehead, and he smiled. He knew just as well as I did that I wasn’t going to shoot him. I grumbled and pulled myself up, my shirt clinging slightly to the concrete floor, and tearing a few holes in it as I did.
The Sheriff looked at me and said, “What do you want Robin?”
I smiled and said, “I want you to leave me and my group alone, understand.”
“We both know I can’t do that Robin, so then why are you here?”
“To kill you.” I smiled, pulling my revolver up and I fired one shot before I started running towards the bamboo grove, drawing my knife as I did so. The sheriff had seen the shot coming and moved out of the way as I fired, and he was struggling to draw his own gun.
And then I melted into the shadows of the bamboo grove, and I started to climb the stalk nearest to me. It took a few seconds to get to the height where I was happy, and then I sat and waited for The Sheriff to come.