Hell, maybe they had been.
“We had a plan,” I said.
He watched them creep closer. “Yeah?”
“We were going to kill Keller and put Durkee back in charge.”
He made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a grunt. It was something borne of desperation, his gaze glued to the zombies presently approaching us. “Well, I can’t say you don’t have big ideas.”
I chanced a glance at the side of the arena. Dax stood there alone, holding gauze to his shoulder. I did not see Renati near him, but when I peered deeper into the stands, I spotted the fluttering white coat moving upward toward Keller and his crew.
To deliver a message, no doubt. To say he was out of this or that. To make a suggestion.
To stab him with a scalpel.
To take as many of the commanders out as he could within a few seconds.
Meanwhile, we had a gaggle of armed revenants getting closer and closer to us.
Well, if this was how it ended, so be it. I lifted the axe up and held it over my right shoulder, deciding to treat it as a disturbingly sharp baseball bat for now. “Been nice knowing you, T-bone.”
Tony scoffed. “T-bone? Seriously?”
“I’m trying to have a moment.”
“You suck at it.”
I braced myself for the oncoming assault.
And then I saw the lone figure come out.
She was the last of them, and she emerged unarmed.
And she looked around in wonder, or perhaps horror, or some other feeling unique to the dead.
Tony saw me staring. “Vibeke?” He followed my gaze past the oncoming tide of ghouls and to the dugout and the small figure in front of it. “Oh…fuck.”
The crowd abruptly cheered.
Someone rushed past me, nearly knocking me out of the way. I recognized Lara, the victor of the previous round, who had apparently gotten her bathroom break and been sent back into the arena to score some more kills and audience goodwill. She reached the group of ghouls quickly and dove right into the fray.
These people had never been on The Outside, as they called it. Had never actually fought amongst the goddamn dead, had never been forced to actually survive. If they had, they’d never have charged so merrily into this battle. It was all a game to them. Some sort of horrifying, post-apocalyptic survival freak show.
Alyssa tottered uneasily. She stopped, gazing around instead of following the rest of them.
What was she doing here? Why send her in?
To throw you off.
Tony and I knew what she was, even if the rest of the audience just saw an unarmed ghoul plodding around. Could we kill her? Would she kill us?
“Alyssa,” I called out, but she could not hear me over the roar of the crowd.
Lara and her cronies were fully engaged with the dead now.
Would they engage Alyssa next?
Oh, shit. Oh, shit.
Would I stop them? Would I fight the living to stop them from harming Alyssa?
Keller, you diabolical shit. What way to better terrify the people of Hastings than to show them how insane the people from the outside were? See? They’ll kill the living!
Anger swelled up in me. I nearly threw the axe, just to give myself some sort of outlet.
A ghoul moaned, dragging me back to reality. I couldn’t throw the axe, because I needed it to take out this ugly undead son of a bitch waving his sword at me.
I don’t know what changed in me. Something had bent, surely, some wall had gone up or fallen, and the fear that had been gnawing at me for weeks and months dripped away like blood on the dirt. There was no sense in anything, not anymore. There was just me, the arena, the axe, and a bunch of zombies who needed to get acquainted with said axe.
The ghoul swung at me. I stepped and felt the displacement of air as the blade cut through it. I swung my axe clumsily against its throat, and a seam opened immediately, spraying blackened blood all over the place. I didn’t quite take its head off, but I had successfully knocked it off-balance. I wrenched the axe free, swung it upward, and then planted the entire axehead into the revenant’s skull.
It split apart. Blood and liquefying brain matter spewed upward as the body dropped to the ground.
Holy shit, this thing is kind of awesome.
I adjusted my grip on the axe and took off toward a second zombie.
“Vibeke! Wait!”
I was beyond waiting. Beyond hoping. Beyond feeling anything save a hot, burning sensation that flooded my veins and my heart.
It could only be rage. It filled me, made my arms strong and my legs swift. I tackled one revenant, then another. I hacked through them, sending parts flying off in all directions. Gore splattered my face. I did not care. I was beyond caring, beyond puking, beyond everything.
Several of them clustered around me. I waved the axe at them invitingly. “Come get it, you undead punks,” I said. “Let’s dance.”