The Ruins Part 2 (Sequel to The Ruins)

Chapter 69

Negan pressed Mal back against the wall as the first of the dark shapes moved toward them. The pit they were in was thirty feet across, with large blank sections of wall interspersed with side tunnels. The torches were too high to reach.

"Mattress!" Mal blurted, and they rushed over to the stack of rotten old mattresses and began dragging them toward the tunnel with the Infecteds.

Mal squatted and upended one and used it to block them from view. "Might not stop them," she warned.

"It's better than nothing," he grunted as he dragged another one over and pulled it upright. There were only three mattresses, but they nicely blocked half the tunnels. "Maybe it'll confuse them, slow them down."

Mal jerked her head toward one of the open tunnels. There was no movement in that one, but torchlight spilled down from another opening around the far bend. Mal pulled Negan inside, and they peered up to see if White Bear or the crowd could see them. The crowd booed and yelled for the dead to go fetch their dinner.

"I think we're good," whispered Negan. Immediately he pulled out the tails of his shirt and reached inside his clothes. Mal did the same, and they knelt down and placed several hidden items on the ground. When the guard had locked them in the empty hotel room, they had though that the two were helpless; but both spent many years of never being helpless. Mal remembered the years with Tom teaching her that all weapons are made.

"They're fabricated from the things we find: wood, metal, rope, leather, stone," he once told her. "Nature always provides, but only a smart person can look at what circumstances offers and see the potential."

While waiting for White Bear to come and take them to the pits, Mal and Negan had looked at what the room had to offer: an old light fixture, crumbling plaster walls, dry laths, a window. Now on the ground in front of them they examined what circumstances had provided. They had several lengths of broken lath- thin, narrow strips of some straight-grained wood; several yards of copper-cored electrical wire; and long pieces of jagged window glass wrapped in torn strips from their shirts- steps whose absence was hidden by their pants. All their pockets were filled with plaster dust.

There was a loud moan from around the bend. One of the Infected had reached the end of the tunnel. The crowd began cheering. Mal hoped the wall of mattresses would confuse the Infected. Every second mattered to Mal and Negan.

"Fuck, hurry," breathed Negan.

They worked as fast as they could. They placed layers of jagged glass between strips of lath and used the wire to bind it in place. Mal wrapped the wire around and around as tightly as she could. While she did that, Negan used another piece of glass to slash strips from their pant legs and then poured the white plaster powder into punches made from those strips. When he was done, he and Mal swapped jobs. He took the make-shift glass-bladed hatchets and used more strips of their jeans to bind the laths from end to end, wrapping them the way an old weapons maker would wrap the haft of a war ax. Mal took the punches and tied loose knots in them and began stuffing them in her pockets.

There was a soft thud as one of the mattresses fell into the main pit. A second later a white hand grabbed the corner of the mattress wall, and then a lifeless face moved into view. Clouded eye and black mouthed, it moved past the temporary obstruction, then turned toward them and moaned. The sound was answered by other moans behind it.

Mal and Negan snatched up their weapons and began backing away. There was another chorus of moans. This time the sounds were behind them, coming from another tunnel. Mal turned sharply and saw three Infected stagger around the far bend, their dead faces painted yellow by torchlight.

Far above the crowd howled, and a commentator began calling out what was happening to those members of the crowd who couldn't see. "Look like we're coming up on round one, folks," he yelled in a fast-paced, high-pitched voice. "And oh! Here's a twist: somehow our two competitors have managed to sneak in some weapons."