Page 52 of Redemption (Devil Dogs of the Apocalypse #4)

Jax

The loud, obnoxious sound of an alarm blaring from across the room is enough to startle me upright. Vulgar curses bellow from my mouth as my groggy brain floods with questions it’s simply too early to comprehend.

Why is there an alarm going off? Who set it? It’s the end of the fucking world, for crying out loud. Why would there be a mandatory wake-up time? It’s not as if I’m about to go off to work, meet up with clients, or some other such bullshit. Why? Why won’t it just... fucking... stop!

Hoping to break the offending piece of machinery and allow myself to get a few more hours of sleep, I take the pillow I was using and chuck it across the room.

It does nothing but miss my intended target and therefore piss me off further.

The earsplitting sound forces me to extract myself from the comfortable bed, go in search of the wailing bastard, and chuck the godforsaken thing out the damn window.

Unfortunately, the dark shadows of the room do nothing to assist my quest in finding it, reminding me that it’s not even fucking daylight out yet!

If the rooster’s not crowing, it’s too damn early for humans to be awake.

I fumble in the dark, my hands grasping at anything in front of me, leading me closer and closer to the offending sound. And then... finally, I find the fucker.

A little, battery-operated banshee from Hell.

I don’t waste any time pushing the snooze or off button; whoever set this thing will just do it again tomorrow.

So, instead, I march my groggy ass right over to the window, open it, and give the little piece of plastic an abrupt lesson in flying.

It also learns how to go splat against the house next to us, breaking into thousands of little pieces upon impact.

There.

Finally, some peace and quiet.

I turn, intending to crawl back into the sanctuary the soft comforter provides, when suddenly, an annoyingly familiar sound calls in the distance.

Cock-a-doodle-dooooooooo

Son of a bitch.

I grumble and groan at the rooster’s call, my body angled towards the bed, aching to return to its warm, comfortable embrace, but I pause as I’m alerted to another presence in the room.

“Good morning, sunshine,” a dark, gruff voice sounds just behind me. Distracted by the wailing banshee, I didn’t hear the door open or his steps to enter the room, but that doesn’t discount the fact that there’s a menacing presence only a few feet from where I stand.

One, two... Pause... One, two.

Calming air fills my lungs as I take a deep breath and then turn to find the man who locked me in here last night.

I try to keep the sneer off my face, but I’m sure I fail when I reply, “Tank.”

“Good to see you remember,” he says in return with a sinister smile, crossing his arms over his chest as he assesses me in the brightening light of the new day. I take the chance to do the same.

While I know I’m no slouch and have a muscular physique to prove it, he’s.

.. enormous. You know the type: raised on a farm from a young age, fed hefty meals from dawn until dusk.

As a literal walking, talking brick shithouse, he stands at what must be close to seven feet.

I’m tall, but even I have to crane my neck back to get a good look at him. The guy is massive.

After spending two nights in a darkened cell deep within the town’s underbelly, completely secured and under full guard, Tank took over my twenty-four-hour probationary watch.

Forge, another guy from the medical facility, handed me over to him like I was a child witnessing a custody exchange between parents.

I was then escorted to this room, where I was fed and then left in silence until further instruction.

Well... silence until that fucking alarm clock started screaming.

I know you’re probably wondering why I haven’t simply leaped out of the window and gained my freedom.

The answer is that not only is this semi-truck of a fuck keeping watch from the inside, but he also has guys of a relative size running round-the-clock security outside.

Did I mention they’re all armed as well?

Oh yeah, every single one of the motherfuckers has a gun of some sort.

It’s like I’ve been turned into an inmate and transferred to a fucking replica of Alcatraz or Shawshank Penitentiary.

Only Andy Dufrain isn’t here to help me escape.

“Time to pay the piper, newbie.” Tank turns, offering the door to me. “You get issued a name yet?”

It was one of the first things I noticed about this place beyond the fact that it’s absolutely fucked. No one has a proper name.

For example, this one’s name is Tank .

My custody was transferred to him via another guy named Forge.

The doctor from the other day referred to himself as Stitch .

And now this guy is asking if I have a name yet?

“Yeah... I got a name. Not about to hand it over, though,” I say in reply.

He chuckles, shaking his head at my response.

“Hate to break it to you, shortcake, but no one in this town keeps their name. Only one who’s allowed to is David, and that’s only because he’s in charge.

The rest of us enter the town and leave our baggage at the door, including the names from our past.” He squints his eyes, looking me up and down. “Meat.”

“Meat?”

“That’s your name from now on. Meat .”

What in the fuck?

“As in dead meat,” he elaborates while blocking my exit and stalking further into the room. “You killed those guys out there. One of whom was a very dear friend of mine. I think the name fits the bill; don’t you think?”

Refusing to cower at his implied threat, I swipe my tongue over my teeth, overly fed up with this place and just wanting to find the others and get the fuck out of here, but instead I have to play house with a fucking psychotic giant who also—not so secretly—wants to murder me.

Fucking great.

Wanting to live to see another day, I grit my teeth and say, “Sounds great.”

∞∞∞

After a quick breakfast, I leave the community buffet with Tank and a few others and am ushered to my.

.. job . Less than a week after waking up with a traumatic brain injury and a dislocated shoulder and, apparently, they put you right back to work.

They didn’t even let me keep a sling to help alleviate the pain.

For fuck’s sake, if they wanted to put me to work so soon, the sling would have at least helped a little.

Fucking bass-ackwards town.

But at least I’m not stuck in a room, hidden away from everyone. At least, out here, I can finally begin searching for everyone. The only problem? The job we’ve been tasked with isn’t conducted amongst the general population.

Instead, Tank leads the small group of us away from the town, indicating we would be conducting a routine perimeter check in what he calls the borderlands , inspecting the deterrent zones , and then later reinforcing the burn pits.

Not knowing what the fuck any of that meant, I’m even more on guard.

My fingers instantly head to the side of my leg, tapping out the steady rhythm in the hopes it’ll calm my anxiety.

One, two... Pause... One, two...

The taller guy to my right nudges my arm as we walk, drawing my attention. His short hair is white as snow and messy, sticking up all over the place as if he just rolled out of bed and showed up to work without any fucks given. He offers his hand to me in greeting. “Hey, new guy, I’m Casper.”

I return the gesture, gripping his hand in a firm handshake. “Jax,” I say with a salutary nod, gifting him my name since he seems to be the only one who’s shown some semblance of cordiality in this shithole.

“Nice to meet you.” He releases my hand—not caring at all that I didn’t give him my newly acquired Zombieland name—and indicates to the others in our group. “I see you’ve met Tank. He leads this group each week to check on everything.”

Needing to gain as much information as possible while also unable to stop my curiosity, I ask, “Why is he called Tank?”

“Oh, that’s easy. Just look at the guy.” He lifts his hand slightly and points to the leader of the group. I nod at the obvious connection, but Casper continues. “He, also, used to drive a tank during his stint in the military, from what I heard. Even has a tattoo of one on his shoulder.”

“Ah. Ok.” I file that information away and jut my chin to the left, to the other brick shithouse next to him. I saw him guarding the house last night. “What about that guy?”

“That would be Jim.” A little smile tilts the side of his mouth. “You know... like Slim Jim?” He covers a laugh as he continues, shaking his head as he stifles his fit. “He doesn’t like it.”

I grin at the easy conversation and continue. “And him?” I point to a guy who I haven’t seen yet.

“Oh, that’s Thomas,” he says quickly in return, almost like he doesn’t want to continue.

“Let me guess, like the English muffins?” I ask, trying to figure out the pattern to the unusual names. “Did the guy like baked goods a little too much?”

Casper’s eyes grow dim, his face tilting down towards the ground as he stumbles over what to say next. His jaw clenches, barely restraining a snarl as he says, “No... as in the train.” His gaze trails off in the distance, growing misty as he looks towards the fields just inside the town’s limits.

Something about the way he says it instantly makes me think there’s something important that I’m missing.

Some darkness that I’ve yet to fully uncover.

But the man’s obviously triggered by the topic, so I save that little bit of information for later, choosing to change the subject instead.

“So, what exactly are we doing this morning?”

Looking forward again, his eyes turn down in contemplation.

“We, uh, we’re on lineman duty. Simple explanation?

We’re what keeps the growlers from the town.

Or, at least, what we do keeps them from the town.

” He doesn’t elaborate any further than that, remaining silent for the remainder of our trip to the borderlands.

Just as I think we’re about to walk all the way to the next town over, we turn into a large storage facility.

There are hundreds of units, and each one comes with a roll-up overhead door.

Tank pulls out a set of keys from his pocket and opens one, revealing a pickup truck stashed away within its depths.

Modified is just the tip of the iceberg.

“Allow me to introduce you to the last member of our crew. This...,” Casper indicates with his raised hands, “is Betty.”

And Betty... is a beast.

There are multiple guns welded to the frame, while a large Gatling-style gun is mounted onto the roof, and twin semi-automatic rifles are attached to revolving mounts affixed to the walls of the truck’s bed.

Every window, including the windshield and rear, has been equipped with horizontal steel blinds.

And every tire holds a long blade reminiscent of the scythes formerly used on chariots.

My jaw drops at the vehicle. It’s a cross between something straight out of a Mad Max movie and the video game Twisted Metal, complete with the maniacal cackle that comes out of Tank when he sees it and strokes the fender lovingly.

Maybe a little too lovingly, in my opinion.

“Jump in, fellas,” he says, licking his hand and smacking the side of Betty before turning to the rest of us with a sadistic grin. “We’ve got growlers to tame.”