#6
Before Lindsey could answer, the sound of hurried footsteps slapping against the pathway outside sounded through the night.
"Shit, run!" he hissed at Lindsey and Calliope, feeling a modicum of relief as they immediately heeded his advice and slipped away into the darkness. He could no longer see them and could only hope that their invisibility extended to the eyes of the Raiders as well.
"What are you doing up?" came the familiar, gravelly voice of the guard with the scruffy, handlebar moustache.
Levi wheeled around to face him and put his hands up in the air, eyeing the barrel of the gun that was pointing at his chest through one of the many gaps in the fence.
"I asked you a question!" he barked.
""I'm just... I had a... I was..." stammered Levi, speaking slowly and stupidly with deliberation. The longer he kept this guard here, the better it would be for the girls.
"The fuck is wrong with you?"
Levi swore and shielded his eyes as the raider shined an effulgently bright flashlight at his face. His mind went haywire as he immediately realised that the man was searching for Levi's fellow slaves. When he figured out that they were not there, there would be hell to pay.
"Where the fuck's the hole?" he demanded.
"The what?" shot back Levi, a disgusted look on his face.
"You know what I'm talking about, where the fuck are they?"
"I helped them escape." he taunted, the words leaving his mouth before his brain had fully thought the idea through.
The resultant look of pure rage on the raider's face sent a tingle of fear down Levi's spine, despite the fact that this was the reaction he had wanted. His heart hammered wildly against his chest as he realised that, if his tactics were inefficacious, he would die within the next few seconds. He wanted to anger the raider enough to disrupt his equanimity and make him do something stupid, but not furious enough to kill him.
"You stupid piece of shit." he growled, reaching in his pocket and pulling out a walkie-talkie. "Once we find them, Thorne's going to-"
"If you say anything to him, I'll tell him about our little deal." threatened Levi, a pronounced sneer on his face.
The raider went silent for a moment. It was almost undoubtedly the calm before the storm. He reached into his pocket once more and produced a keychain replete with what looked like half a dozen keys. He slowly thumbed through each one before settling on the smallest one, inserting it into the padlock and turning. The padlock fell to the ground with a thud and the gate slowly creaked open.
"Wait, I was only j-joking!" he stuttered, cowering against the fence. It was odd, pretending to be terrified whilst actually being terrified. "Please don't hit me!"
Levi held his breath as the raider marched towards him, silently begging for the raider to hit him. If he chose this more personal and brutal route, Levi stood a chance. If he chose to go for the easy route, a bullet to the head, it would all be over without a glimmer of hope.
The distance between them seemed to take an eternity to close as Levi's eyes fixed upon the man's legs, desperately hoping that they would keep moving. Fifteen metres. Ten. Five. If he wanted to shoot him, he should have done it by now. Right? Four. Three. Two. One.
Levi launched himself at the man and lunged towards him like a crazed animal, knocking him onto his back and mercilessly digging his thumbs into his eyes. The raider, who had seemed so tough before, was now screaming in pain and thrashing around fruitlessly. The noise, by now, would have alerted the other raiders. It was time to end this or he, Callie and the other girl would die in this place.
Levi ripped the assault rifle from the raider's hands and stood up, pointing the barrel at his head as the man stirred on the floor. He took a deep breath, squeezed the trigger and pulled.
In a normal situation, he was not sure how he would react to the man's skull being blown apart by the volley of hollow point bullets. There would be cold dread, sickness, an empty feeling in the stomach and an eruption of goosebumps as he watched another human being's life snuffed out by his own hands. There was, however, nothing normal about this situation. He was a shell, just another walker, running purely on survival instinct. He felt himself rifle through the raider's pockets to collect whatever supplies he could, eventually finding himself clutching a set of keys.
He looked through them all and found a familiar emblem from the old world on one of the keys.
Good. Car. Escape.
Physically unable to contemplate his sheer luck, he picked up the assault rifle and pocketed the keys before dashing out of the slave pen. He tore down the tarmac path and made a bee-line towards the parking lot he had seen when he was first brought in here. If the car was anywhere, it would be here.
Shots and yells of fury rang out through the night, whizzing past him. He paid them no heed as he finally found himself in the parking lot, eyes scanning the area to find just two cars. He held up the keys to his face to re-familiarise himself with the logo, something which had completely managed to slip his mind during his sprint. Levi ignored the smaller car and dashed towards the 4 X 4 Toyota, jamming the key in to the driver's door. Mercifully, the lock opened and he scrambled in to the vehicle, tossing the assault rifle into the backseat. There was only one way to find out if his luck would keep running. He pushed the key into the ignition and turned.
Nothing.
He screamed in agony, completely beside himself as armed raiders began coming into view in the distance. He pulled the key out and slammed his fists into the dash, forcing it in once more and repeatedly turning.
The engine roared into life and Levi gasped with relief, smashing his fist into the steering wheel triumphantly. The horn blared out as if the vehicle was echoing his own exultance. He drove his foot into the accelerator and the car zoomed forward, causing raiders to leap out of its way. More shots rang out as the screaming raiders fired on the car, the high-pitched smacks indicating that the body of the car was taking more than a few bullets. Levi yelped in surprise as an almighty crashing sound was heard behind him and the rear window shattered, exploding as its sharp pieces were expelled in all directions.
The car was rapidly heading towards the fortified main gate and, in spite of the adrenaline coursing through his veins, Levi knew this was a bad idea. Just before impact, he swerved the car, ducked to avoid the incoming bullets from the raider guarding the gate and ploughed through the much weaker fence that encapsulated the raider camp. The car sliced straight through and the section of fence which had been impacted split open, revealing a massive aperture for the undead horde to invade through.
Before he could realise it, he had burst into jubilant laughter. His merriment echoed in the car, the sounds of a man who had just escaped certain death through his newfound friendship with lady serendipity.
The 4x4 mowed down walker after walker as he tried to find the path of least resistance and density. Before he had made it out of the herd, something caught his eye and the horrific realisation that he had left the girls behind him struck him with the force of a freight train. The herd was moving together in a specific direction but had not yet stopped, suggesting that they were still chasing their prey. Levi gunned the engine, a terrified whimper at the thought of what may await him.
He slammed his palm into the horn, the awful, loud and screeching noise distracting the herd from whoever they were trying to devour. He was getting nearer and nearer, there were just a few metres now to their abandoned corpses.
"No!" he yelled out frustratedly, his panic causing him to argue against his own mind. "They're alive, I know it!"
He slammed the brakes and turned the car to the right, causing it to shift violently to the side and knock the group of walkers closest to the point of interest to the floor. By now, the passenger side window had completely broken off, giving him a clear view.
Calliope's frightened eyes stared back at him.
"GET IN!" he yelled, lunging over to the door and pushing it open.
She scrambled up to her feet and ran to the door, clambering in and shutting it with a frightened squeal.
"Are you bitten?" he asked, his eyes scanning her clothes. They seemed blood-free.
"No!"
"Where's the other girl?" he demanded, looking around desperately as the snarls and guttural growls of the walkers began to grow louder, the herd shambling and closing in on the source of the tremendous amount of noise.
"I don't know," she sobbed, staring at her feet as the tears cascaded from her face. "We got split up!"
Levi bit his lip, feeling completely hollow. As much as he wanted to, there was no way they'd find her in this mess. It was miraculous that he had found Callie.
"It's... It's alright." he said quietly, patting the little girl's shoulder, her body heaving with sobs. "I'm sorry, kid."
With great reluctance, Levi floored the accelerator and the car took off into the night. Levi adjusted the rear view mirror and found, to the appeasament of his vindictive fury, that the camp had been breached by the horde.
A fitting end.