The Ruins Part 2 (Sequel to The Ruins)

Chapter 52

Benny woke up.

He was still in hell... though he was immediately certain that he was now in one of the darkest rings of hell. Lalon grunted and spring out of his sleep. They had taken their shirts and shoes, leaving them shivering only in jeans. The ground on which Benny lay was hard-packed dirt. Cold and damp and smelling of decay. Benny sat up and wrapped his arms around his body. He had a lot of wiry muscle but no body fat at all, nothing to keep him warm down here in the clammy darkness.

Lalon tried to look at their surroundings. There was enough light to see, but it was shadowy and gloomy. The walls were also made from dirt that had been pounded smooth. Lalon raised his head and saw that the walls rise twenty feet above him, with no ladder, hand holders, or rope.

"There's no way to climb through it. Could claw a bit, but the dirt is pounded smoothly." Lalon said.

Benny started to get to his feet, but immediately cried out in pain and dropped to his knees. His whole body seemed to be composed of different kinds of aches stitched together into a tapestry of searing pain. The worst hurts were where he had been punched in the jaw, rammed in the stomach with the wooden stock of a shotgun, and kicked in the groin while he lay gasping on the ground, with Lalon being kicked and punched to the ground. Benny tried not to cry.

"You okay?" Lalon said, going on his knees.

Benny shook his head, fighting the tears and fighting the pain. Lalon could see the strength in him.

"I'm fine. I need to be warrior smart." He spoke in a fierce whisper through gritted teeth.

"OK. Now, try to get up. I'll help-"

"No!" He snarled at him.

The pain was enormous, and he dropped back onto his knees. A sob broke from his chest. Then another. While he knelt there, his minds did terrible things to him. It conjured Lalon speaking and laughing at the weak, skinny kid. At the "town boy" who thought he could be a warrior.

"Hey! Benny." He snarled at Benny and woke him from his mind. "You don't have to be a warrior and be so tough. I've seen you fight with me agains the herd in Fairview. Don't act so heroic. I can help you."

"I appreciate it, but I need to fight my pain."

Lalon thought about it, then agreed to let himself to it.

When his mind went to the terrible implications of him being weak, endangering the lives of his people, and the coward who had run away, they were like nails driven into his flesh.

But sometimes shame is a more powerful engine than rage. Like rage, it burns hot; and like rage it tends to consume its own furnace. He bit down on the pain, devouring it, accepting the hurt as something he deserved, and fueled by its centering, he planted a foot flat on the ground, pressed the knuckles of his two balled fists into the cold dirt, and pushed himself up off his knees. Straightening his body made it feel like every bruise was being stretched to the ripping point.

"Warrior smart," Lalon said.

"Warrior smart," Benny said, but he loaded the words with scorn.

"Now ain't that just a stirring sight?"

The words were like a bucket of cold water over Benny's head. He jerked backward as if pushed, and he snapped his head upward to see three men looking down at them from the lip of the pit. One was the big one-eyed man with the flowing white hair who had brought them here. The man whose face was a melted ruin. The other was the stubbed head Calvin, smirking down at Benny like a plate of meat. The other was the brute bulldog face of Motor Hammer. They were smiling in ways that leached all the strength from Benny's limbs.

"Who are you?" Lalon demanded in a fierce snarl.

"'Who are you?'" Mocked the big man. His voice made their skin crawl. It almost sounds like Charlie Pink-Eye. Lalon can't wrap his head if this man was really Charlie? When Negan had hit Charlie, had the man survived and gone back into the burning camp? Or had the fires from that battle caught up to Charlie as he tried to crawl away? Was this Charlie Marion? The man he loathed for many of years.

"I'll bet you have a lot of questions, little Indian," said the Burned Man, as if reading their thoughts. "Well, think on this."

He tossed something down into the pit that landed between Benny's feet. It was a flower, an orchid. The petal is pure white you think it's fake. Benny bent and gingerly picked it up.

"A orchid is pure," said the Burned Man. "It's youth is so pure it lives so long. These orchids are my favorite, a signature to my calling. Hell, became famous all across the Ruins and in every town from Freehold to Fairview."

The men laughed at this, giving each other high fives.

"Charlie was not a hero or a savior. He's a man who is cowardice, sending children into pits and raise money. He's nothing but a monster, like any man in the Ruins."

"Maybe he was," Calvin said, smirking down at Lalon. "But he achieved so much and made history than the Flyer Frontiers."

He snorted at him, eyes burning into the Calvary Boy. "I know I had my differences with Charlie. However, you know who caused the pain me and boys have been through."

The hell is he riddling about? Lalon cocked his head before Calvin realized at his reaction, clapping his thigh hard. "Oh, I forgot. Mally still hasn't told you everything. Too bad for you, thought you were friends."

Suddenly rage sparked Lalon, he jumped onto the dirt, clawing and scratching the hard and cold dirt into his fingernails. He then gives up and snarls at Calvin.

Soon enough Motor Hammer takes out a pipe that isn't his and struck in down on the pits and in the ground.

"The Calvary Boys was one of the few who survived what happened last year and the Claimers. They saw what happened, how Negan and his slut taken down KillGames. Twice from those fucking Saviors. They ain't saving people, they take and destroy people."

Benny wanted to throw the club at him, but he took a hold on to it. It was all he had.

"Negan saves people," Lalon stated. He wasn't afraid of these men. "Unlike you people, you want power. Survival for the fittest. People always fight against each other for pleasure, dominance, and power. But, what you do is a cowardice act, a sickening thought."

The Burned Man smirked, bending down to one knew to peer over the pit. "It won't matter to me, if you both live or die, little men. You live and you get to hold on the pipe. Maybe one day you'll be like us. Wouldn't that be something?"

Benny shook his head but said nothing.

"On t'other hand, if you die... well then, we got lots and lots of other kids who'd kill to have something like a nice piece of black pipe for when it comes to be their turn."

Benny finally managed to squeeze three words thought his gritted teeth. "Go to hell."

The men all laughed, and the big man hardest of all. "Hell? Boy- ain't you been paying attention? We're already in hell. The whole world's been in hell since the Black Night.

He stood up and nodded at the men. They vanished, but almost immediately other faces appeared around the edges of the out. Men and women. Hard. Faces with hard eyes and mouths that smiled with icy cruelty. A small rat-faced man and a boy who was clearly his son shoved their way to the edge of the pit and started calling numbers and taking money.

Bets, Benny knew with growing horror. God... they're taking bets.

"You're all sick!" Yelled Lalon towards the crowd.

The crowd fell into an expectant hush, and every eye turned in the direction where to two companions of the Burned Man had disappeared. When they came back, both of them were wearing carpet coats. Between them was a pale figure that snarl and twisted and tried to bite the air.

"Welcome to KillGames," said the Burned Man.

And then they pushed the Infected into the pits with Lalon and Benny.