The Gathering

Chapter Twenty Three

We waited for a long time in our cells, waiting for someone to come. Lindsay and I didn't react great to the shadow traveling and most of the waiting was filled with throwing up. Finally, several hours later, the boy that had brought us here came down the steps. "Hello, I don't think I've introduced myself yet. My name is Damon. Were all interested as to how you showed up, so if you would come with me" Damon said, gesturing to me, as he forced the bars down back into the ground so I could go with him. He seemed more calm now, and hopefully that was an attitude reciprocated by all of them.

I followed Damon up the stairs. When we got to the top, we entered a room with a bunch of glass cases. Inside of each case was a zombie, and a girl with brown hair and red highlights was walking around and seemed to be taking notes on them.

"What's she doing over there?" I asked, fully prepared not to get an answer.

"Never mind that. Her names Mandy if you must know" Damon said.

Damon led me to an adjoining hallway. We walked down it, but it seemed to take forever. The hallway was lined with paintings. "Umm, I know you're probably not going to acknowledge this question, but what up with the paintings?" I asked.

"Actually, I will answer that one. With it being the apocalypse and all, we've had a lot of extra time on our hands so we all made self portraits to keep track of who is still alive and remember those who have died" Damon said. Hmm, that was actually pretty cool. "This one here is me" He said, as we stopped at a painting near the end of the hall. "This is Angelo, our current leader" Damon said.

We finally reached the end of the hallway and Damon let me in the room, but he stayed outside the room. Weird.
I entered the room and looked around. There was bones that scattered the ground and everything was colored black and white. There was a white column in each corner. Someone, assumingly Angelo, was sitting in a black armchair facing the fireplace.

"Hello Vande, I hope you've felt welcome here in our humble abode" Angelo said with a slight bit of sarcasm.

"No, actually, you guys have kinda been pretty big dicks to me and my friends" I retorted.

"No need to get angry, I just want to talk" Angelo said.

We sat in silence for several minutes after. "Don't you find this whole apocalypse... So... Interesting?" Angelo said. "I mean, my dad created a regenerating soldier that does so on its own. Isn't that amazing?!"

"Heh yea" I said, rather wimpily. This guy is crazy. "So um... I'm just gonna go back down to my cell and you and Damon can figure out what you're going to do with us"

I began to walk back towards the door, but I didn't get far. "Nice try" Angelo said, as he brought his hands together and the bones from the floor came together and formed a cage around me.

"Yeah, I probably should've saw this coming" I said.

"Dam right you should've" Angelo spat. Why do you think you awoke right above our base. Because we're working with Matalel"

"But why?! Can't you see he's evil?!" I said.

"Evil?!" Angelo cackled. "He's brilliant. He's shown us things we never could've imagined about the zombies. We owe him everything"

"Did you know that he's killed our kind before?! He enjoys killing other kids like us!" I shouted.

"I've had enough of you. I'll come and visit soon" Angelo said. As he said this a large bone rose from the bottom of the cage and knocked me unconscious.