The Sky Beneath Us (on hold)

THIRTEEN

Day 12. 12:27.

____________

8 days. Avery had been counting. 8 days of pain.

Why wouldn't they just kill him already?

He had begged for that, to be killed. He didn't care how they did it, he just wanted it done.

He wanted the pain to end.

"Wakey wakey, meat".

The scrawny thug kicked Wesley in his already broken ribs. Wesley moaned out in agony, tried to get up, fell flat on his face. He had received the worst of the beatings. Avery and Chad had received their fair share between them, but nothing like Wesley's. They were extreme, to say the least. Whereas Avery and Chad received one or two a day, Wesley got five.

They were also brought out to be fed once a day, at different times. Avery was given food scraps, crudely in a dog's dish one of the men had found in storage. Wesley wasn't fed at all, just given water. Five days ago, Chad unsuccessfully tried to smuggle some food back to the cage. They had broken two of his fingers for that.

"Oh for fu-", the thug gripped Wesley by the arms and proceeded to drag him out of the cage muttering every curse imaginable, even a few unheard of swears that were surely made up. Avery didn't care. Nothing mattered anymore.

"Can't you just kill us already?" Chad called after the thug, shivering uncontrollably and his voice hoarse from dehydration, "we're just about dead anyway!"

Avery hadn't spoken in two days, The Flip didn't bother him anymore, nor did the fact that his parents were most likely dead. He didn't even care about Becca's fate, or Mark's, or Pam's or anyone's. He only felt concern about his own fate, and wanted that to come to a close. His battle was over.

Avery Greenwood wanted to die.

Wesley's cries of pain rang out like that of a dying animal. He wouldn't last much longer, no doubt.

"Hey boss" one man could be heard calling from behind a stack of crates, "what happens when we run outta food? Do we eat the prisoners?" He laughed coldly, and another man chuckled along with him.

"We're not gonna run out've food anytime soon", the boss replied in his thick Texan accent, "besides, our prisoners will be long dead 'n' gone by then".

Good, Avery thought to himself and managed a smile. The thin skin on his lips cracked under the strain.

"Hey...hey, Avery", Chad called weakly, "you hear that? They said they're gonna ki-"

A gunshot echoed around the room.

***

Day 12. 12:28.

____________

Richard heard the screams of pain coming from the hole.

"This must be it" he whispered to Diego behind him, who held his hand over a thuggish teenager's mouth. The boy was seventeen, easily. And the fool had led them right to his gang's hiding place. The same gang that had killed one of his people while she was out alone gathering supplies.

The body they left behind them was too gruesome to look at, even for Richard. These men were sick, twisted savages. There was no 'law' anymore, these men deserved all they got. And they were about to get a shitstorm.

Laughter from the hole, they were distracted. Good, now was the time to strike.

Richard jumped down first, then Diego with the kid. As soon as he landed, Richard put a bullet in the leg of a gang member who was beating another man lying prone.