S. Davis - 900 Miles

“You lost it, Gordon. You turned something that could have been good into another one of your twisted games. You turned the people against you. Only this time, you didn’t have the money to bail yourself out.”

“Ahh, but Jarvis. Don’t you see? It was perfect. We had the perfect hierarchy built. The leaders of the world were at the top. The worker bees were in their rightful place, serving us. It would have been a utopia. Don’t you understand that you could have been a king in my world? Instead, you settled for a king in yours. Trust me, old friend, mine would have been better.”

In chess, there are kings and pawns. At that moment, I got the feeling that Kyle and I were the pawns on the board. There was some sort of feud between these two that went back much further than our little revolt during the first weeks in Avalon.

Sometimes pawns are sacrificed. Sometimes they are just enough to change the game.

The only thing I knew for sure was that my son depended on this lowly pawn.

Gesturing with his cane toward his captives, Gordon looked over at the front door. “You’re not keeping very good company these days, Jarvis. Is this what we have to face at Avalon?” Sticking his cane under the chin of the Amigo with the gash split in his head, Gordon prodded his face up, forcing him to make eye contact. “Do you know what you’re fighting for, little man? Do you know what you’re going to die for?”

Lifting his head back up toward Jarvis, Gordon laughed out loud with a smugness that made me inadvertently grip my rifle. “Good thing we cleared this school of creatures for you. I can promise that it was a real mess in there. You see, Jarvis, I had to make sure we’d get our chance to chat. You should actually be thanking me, old friend.”

“How would you have known we were heading for this school?” Jarvis finally challenged.

“Ohh, Jarvis. Do you really think that I wouldn’t have some friends still lingering amongst your ranks? Well, now, it seems that you’ve underestimated me a bit. I would have expected more from you. I know everything you do. Everything .”

Another long pause as Gordon lowered the cane and began to rhythmically tap it on the ground. I saw him look out toward his men with a smile, and then back over toward the front door. Finally, his gaze landed on Mr. Mullet. “Jarvis, Jarvis, Jarvis. Come on now, I don’t want to have to be more persuasive. I mean, really, you need to be thinking about the fate of your men kneeling here before me.”

“If you’re gonna kill them, you’re gonna kill them, Gordon. I don’t believe that me coming out there is going to change one thing,” Jarvis yelled out defiantly.

“Yes, that’s probably true. You know me better than anybody, I suppose. I do miss our chats. Why don’t you just come out now? Let’s discuss this face-to-face. No need to hide in the shadows.”

“The end of the world must be getting to you, Gordon. You’d have to know we’re not going to just come out and give up.”

Gordon was smiling once again, but didn’t say a word. I watched him pull the red beret off his head and pat it against his leg. He then slid his forearm across the top of his brow.

What the hell was the bastard waiting for? Where was the big reveal? Of course, he would know that we wouldn’t be willing to give up.

There are seconds in each person’s life where they know what’s about to happen before it actually does. Not any sort of a mystical clairvoyance or phony crap like that. It’s really a simple gut instinct. These tiny seconds are never enough time to act, just enough to scare the shit out of you.

Even from the distance, I saw it in Jarvis’s face a moment before I realized it. Gordon was distracting us. He had planned this whole fucking thing, and we were nothing more than bugs caught in this elaborate spider web.

Nodding over to a man who was holding a CB, Gordon said two simple but horrifying words, “Move in.”

The man echoed the phrase into the radio, and before Kyle or I could do anything about it, we had seven armed men rushing out the door to the roof behind us. I heard the crunching of their feet racing along the pebble-filled rooftop before I had time to react.

Kyle was up on his feet in an instant, but it was too late.

They had us.

Now, THAT was a contest!

The still warm blood from Mr. Mullet’s wound soaked into my pant leg, a sure sign that his life was much too quickly dripping onto the concrete below. Kneeling before Gordon, along with Kyle, Jarvis, and Rodgers, I found my mind racing at the thought of what came next.

Looking around for the backpack that Jarvis had filled with the meds, I found it resting in a pile along with our weapons. It was fairly full. I knew Jarvis wasn’t kidding when he said he’d hit the mother lode.

Drawing my attention back to the man in front of me, I found Gordon sharing his biggest smile with us. However, he didn’t say a single word at first. Instead, he walked over to the man holding the CB. I could hear a request to signal their ride slip through his lips, calling it back to our location at the school.

The wind picked up a bit, and from time to time, I would hear some of Gordon’s soldiers get spun-up at the chance to kill another approaching Z. They reveled in every kill. I can’t say I blamed them. After all, I didn’t mind bashing a few Z heads. But not even the exaggerated weapons’ fire bouncing off the walls of the school could pull my mind from the myriad of questions plaguing my mind. As we sat in silence, I couldn’t help but wonder why the hell these maniacs were keeping us alive. Why would Gordon have lured us here… and who the hell helped him from the inside?

“Thirty minutes ’til they’re here? Well now, that gives us time to have a little fun,” I heard Gordon say in a deep, sensationalized voice, loud enough so we could hear it.

The rhythmic click of the cane got louder as Gordon stepped back over toward his captives. He finally stopped right in front of us, but behind Mr. Mullet, still held face down by that giant hulk of a man. Up close, the Hulk looked as dumb as he was big. His face was near expressionless, with larger than what I would consider human eyebrows, and a slight dumbfounded smirk that seemed to be permanently painted across his face.

Raising his cane into the air, Gordon finally spoke. “So, gentlemen, we have a little spare time ahead of us while we wait for our ride. This presents us with an interesting opportunity.”

His men were gathering around us now, grinning ear-to-ear along with Gordon. They followed his every movement, listening to each syllable.

“I’ve got the perfect idea,” he pronounced. After nodding over toward a few of his men, they circled around our little group and prodded us to our feet. At gunpoint, they marched the lot of us over toward the side of the school where I remembered seeing the playground from the rooftop.

As we turned the corner, I immediately noticed that the former children’s stomping ground held all the normal playthings. A set of swings led up to a pole attached to a large rolling slide set in the middle. Surrounding it were a few benches, now covered in dark red blood that had come from the creatures killing the fat man. Gordon’s team had taken them out as we approached. The playground had a pirate theme, and there was a torn black flag displaying a skull and crossbones. It reminded me of the broken-down playground where we’d found Leonard, or Michael as he first introduced himself to us, in that first week of the apocalypse.

I have heard the term innocence lost. I’m not sure I can believe in loss without gain. However, what I am absolutely sure about is that what we were getting ready to experience felt a whole hell of a lot more like innocence torn away.