When The World Burned

Chapter 7

1 Week Earlier...

Benjamin groaned as he broke free of the haziness called sleep. Something was dripping nearby, accompanied by some annoying creaking that reminded him of when Rue would play on one of the machines back in the bunker. The thought of his sister brought back the events before all the darkness in his head.

Opening his dark blue eyes, he glanced around to find out he was hanging upside down. The room was dark, lit only by a few candles sitting in bowls around the room. A horrid smell reached his nose as he took note of what looked like flesh lying around on some of the tables and the floor, red smeared all over the place and pooling toward a drain below him.

A smacking sound followed by yelling pulled Benjamin's attention to the left where he saw an open doorway. The yelling was in a language he did not understand, so he tried to look up at his feet. Rope was wound around his ankles in a knot rather sloppily. Jerking, he tried to bend and grab at his legs, only to fall back down. Huffing, he attempted it a second time and was able to grab onto his pants. Pulling, he heard the ripping of fabric, but refused to give up and wrapped fingers around the rope.

Something hard suddenly crashed into his back. Yelling out, losing grip on the rope, Benjamin dropped back down and groaned deep in his throat. Looking through blurred vision, he saw a man in a skull mask staring down at him. The man was speaking that odd language he did not understand, jabbing a finger against Benjamin's chest.

Shaking his head, he muttered, "I don't...I don't understand..."

The stranger hissed out something, punched Benjamin across the face and stepped around him. Spinning in place, his dark eyes followed the man as his own nose gushed with blood. Pulling a knife from one of the many belts at his hip, the stranger grabbed another man that was hanging upside down and started to carve into flesh. A cry of pain erupted from the hanging man as blood poured from fresh wounds. The skull mask wearing stranger kept cutting and cutting, peeling flesh away as he did so.

Holding back the sick feeling in his gut, Benjamin turned his gaze away and looked toward the doorway. He needed to get free, needed to escape this horrible place. It was best to wait until this sicko got done cutting up his...meat. Would that be him if escape were not possible?

Once done, the stranger grabbed a bucket and dropped most of the meat into it before leaving the room with a long strip in hand. The moment this happened, Benjamin jerked up with all his strength and pulled up to grab the rope. Jerking the rope hard enough, he was able to get free, dropping hard to the wet floor. Groaning, he rolled to the side and pushed at the floor to rise. Fighting through the pain in his back, he got into a crouch and followed the stranger to the doorway.

Grabbing the doorframe, he leaned out to see the man stepping into another room. Slipping out slowly, he stayed in a crouch and made his way to the room, looking inside to see it was a kitchen. Nothing useful to him was in there and he had not seen his supplies back in the room he had been hanging in.

Moving past the kitchen, he crawled his way to the fork in the hallway and looked down both choices. To the right was a hallway leading to a pair of double doors and to the left were a bunch of doors on either side of the hall. Following the left hall, he looked between the doors and took the first one on the right. Inside, as he expected, was a room full of trash and meat.

Covering his mouth as flies shot away from the meat, he held in the vomit threatening to rise. Closing the door, he tried the opposite room and found tools – to him, they were weapons. Stepping inside, he looked through them and found a familiar machete with a red bandanna tied to it. Rue had made him that bandanna four years ago. Grabbing it, he snatched up a belt that could hold multiple weapons to it and strapped the machete to it. Seeing a double barrel shotgun, he grabbed it along with a few knives, a dagger, and a pistol. Seeing a bin of sorted bullets, he grabbed all he could and tossed them into his pockets before leaving the room.