The Ruins Part 2 (Sequel to The Ruins)

Chapter 73

"Mal!" Called Negan suddenly. He spoke in a whisper, but it seemed dangerously loud. "I think I found something."

"What is it?" She said, fumbling blindly in the dark to try and cross to her side of the tunnel. Then she heard him curse in revulsion at the same time that she caught the smell. The stink of rotting flesh. "Negan...?"

He pulled her down to where he knelt and pressed something hard and round into her hand. Mal knew at once what it was. A bone.

"God." Mal said, and almost dropped it. She felt around and discovered other bones. Bones that had been completely cleaned of flesh, and some that the Infected had not finished stripping. She felt the shape and length of the bone. A heavy thigh bone. About eighteen inches long, with bulged heads at both ends; one end much bigger where it hinged into the hip. She weighed it in her hand.

There was an awful sound behind them. They had made too much noise. The Infected were coming.

"Hurry!" Negan said, and they clattered among the bones and found another thigh bone for her and a pair of stout shinbones for Negan. The darkness was filled with moans and the shuffle of slow feet. Time was up.

"At least we'll have more to go out fighting," Mal said.

"Yeah, but don't give me a hero bullshit speech. I just wanna get out of this."

Even though he couldn't see it, Mal grinned in the dark. Crazy, loudmouth, brave, unpredictable, asshole but wonderful Negan. She likes him so much that she wanted to shout. So she did shout. She gave a huge, wild war whoop as she raised her grisly weapons and charged down the tunnel tower the living dead. Negan gave a grisly, low, ululating cry and followed her.

-:-:-:-:-

The arena guards bellowed in fury and raced toward Tom.

"NOW!" Bellowed Tom, and gunfire erupted from four windows in the hotel, and the front rank of guards went down in a bloody tangle. Hector Mexico leaned out of a second-floor window and lobbed a pair of fragmentation grenades into the stands. The crowd started to scatter, but some were too slow. The explosions were enormous. Then there was a chorus of screams from the guards over by the tent, and immediately the screams were drowned out by the moans of the living dead as dozen of Infected swarmed over them. The crowd did not immediately understand what was happening even as the dead shambled out into the arena; then they saw the two men in carpet coats and football helmets hacking and slashing at the cloth strips that held the Infected in their chairs. The men were laughing as they worked.

Then the back doors of the hotel burst open, and Basher Clay led the team of free and unaffiliated bounty hunters out into the fray. Conan Mike, Dianna LaRose and her twins sons, Vegas Delaney, the hulking Fluffy McTeague in his pink carpet coat, Basher Clay with his baseball bats, and all the rest.

Tom leaped from the porch and slammed into the stalled and shocked guards, his rifle mirror-bright for a moment longer- and then it was laced with gunpowder.

-:-:-:-:-

Sam stared in shock from the top of the left-hand bleachers.

Tom!

He couldn't believe what he was seeing. Tom, against all odds, leading a charge of armed fighters against Preacher Jack and the crowds at KillGames. It was insane. It was impossible. And yet it was real.

He stared past the panicked spectators. He, Vix, and Lugh, Alec, and the kids had all the items the kids taken from the sports shed, along with a bucket of pitch and a lantern. Wasting no time, Rin and Johan used a fishing hook on a line as Alec and Vix snag a deflated soccer hall, dipped it in the pitch bucket, Lugh set it ablaze with the lantern, and hurled it far over the crowd. It splatted against the back of one of the guards, who was immediately wreathed in yellow and orange flames. The man's shrieks rose into the air louder than any other sound. Immediately the row of spectators in front of the group spun around, their faces showing a mixture of fear, shock, and anger.