Alpha City

Prologue

Alpha City


Prologue:


The Extraction





            When Jack came to he considered only two things: either he was a considerably heavier sleeper than he remembered or the two twelve-year-old boys standing over him in triumph were super mutant alien children with beyond-human strength. There was no other way to explain how the pair of them had managed to slip Jack, who was six years older than the two boys, into a pair of handcuffs and shackles. Either boy didn’t look a pound over ninety, and there was no one in the room other than the three of them.


“What the hell.” Jack muttered to himself after briefly struggling with the restraints around his wrists and ankles before finally accepting the embarrassing fact that somehow the pair of preteen boys had managed to drug him and bind him and carry him off somewhere. But what could they possibly be planning to do?


The two boys were smirking maliciously, one with his hands shoved deep into his light brown cargo shorts pockets and the other with his arms crossed.


“He’s awake.” The blonde one announced to the other, his hands still tucked away in his pockets. The other boy, the black haired kid unfolded his arms and knelt.


“Hey, Jack.” He whispered as casually as he might greet him on the way off to school, except Jack didn’t have any clue who these kids were and he doubted that they really knew him. The black haired boy’s emerald green eyes burned into Jack’s as he lay helpless on the cold stone floor.


“Who are you?” Jack asked him. The black haired boy looked up at the blonde haired kid who rolled his eyes and nodded.


“I suppose it’s only fair,” said the black haired kid turning back to Jack, “I’m Oni and that’s Tommy.” Jack was growing frustrated as he failed to recall what had gone on prior to being held prisoner by a couple of junior high kids.


“What the hell’s going on? Where the fuck am I?” Jack blared. Oni winced and Tommy frowned.


  “Father said he wouldn’t ask so many questions.” Tommy said.


“ Maybe we gave him the wrong bottle.” Oni suggested, but Tommy shook his head.


“Father doesn’t make mistakes; he knows why he’s here.”


“Oh, I do? Listen to me you little fucks,” Jack hissed venomously while struggling to sit upright, “I don’t know what kind of game you guys are playing but if you don’t take these fucking cuffs off I swear you little shits will be pissing the bed ‘til your nuts drop!” Tommy and Oni exchanged looks of irritation and partial amusement, but otherwise no signs of fear. Jack noted that the intimidation approach didn’t go over as well as he had expected. Besides, it didn’t take a genius to see that he was at a disadvantage, despite being several years older and much stronger than the two boys; he couldn’t simply overpower the two of them, not at the moment. Tommy and Oni knew this. Jack was going to have to play along with the two of them long enough to convince them to let him out of the chains so that he could pound the living crap out of these kids.


“That’s quite a potty mouth you have there, Jack.” Oni said as he stood. He paused and suddenly his face flushed over with excitement as he turned to his partner in crime.


“Remember what Father used to do when we cussed?” Tommy nodded, though he didn’t share the obvious enthusiasm that Oni did.


“Soap and toilet bowl cleaner.” Tommy said.


“Yum!” Oni chimed in, turning to face Jack who looked from Tommy to Oni, then back at Tommy. These kids were seriously fucked up, but from what Jack had picked up so far there parents were twice as worse. Jack was seriously beginning to worry, rationality might not go over well either.


“It’s a shame we don’t have any,” Tommy was saying, “or we would definitely wash your filthy little mouth out.”


“You kinda stink anyway.” Oni added as both boys broke into a mad fit of laughter. Jack was growing more and more frustrated by the second, and his patience was running thin. It was time, Jack decided, to get the hell out of here. Jack began to study the room. The walls were as bare as the floor, a single light bulb dangled from the low ceiling. There was also a single small flight of old wooden stairs that led down from a small metal door on one side of the room. Not a garage, Jack noted, a basement? Yea, it’s probably a basement. It didn’t help that there were no windows, he couldn’t tell what time it was or how long he had been here. Jack squirmed around so that he could see his wrists. Damn! They had taken his watch. His cuffed hands instinctively dove into side pockets, then his back pockets. Fuck! They had taken his cell phone too. These kids had done everything, hell what didn’t they do? Jack tried to think but Oni was so close to Jack’s face now that their noses were touching. Oni was making a funny face and Tommy was laughing again.


Jack didn’t know what to do, he couldn’t think straight for some reason, maybe they had drugged him, no, they definitely had drugged him. Jack had taken his fair share of visits to the hospital when he was younger, he knew how it felt.


Oni was standing again.


“Let’s get this over with, Tommy, I’m getting bored and you know how Father is when we’re late.”


“Fine. Let’s go get the fat man.” Both the boys headed for the wooden flight of stairs. As soon as Jack was alone he tried to stand but immediately regretted doing so as he suddenly felt woozy and extremely nauseated, he was seeing double as he almost hurled but managed to hold it down long enough for the feeling to pass. It was clear he wasn’t going to hobble out of here, but Jack wasn’t going to give up, he wasn’t going to let a couple of little boys win, there was no way in hell. But Jack was positive that the two boys hadn’t done this alone, there was just no way.


Jack tried to crawl his way towards the steps, though it was harder than it seemed with his hands secured behind his back and his ankles shackled together, but he managed to get halfway across the room before he noticed something pulling at the shackles on his ankles. Jack flipped around on his back and noticed for the first time that there was a rather thick chain connecting his shackles to the wall behind him. Jack began flopping and flailing about wildly wile cursing randomly and pounding his feel against the basement floor. The boys were obviously intent on keeping Jack here and, for the first time since he had awoke; Jack realized he was helpless to do anything about it.


The door above the steps flung open and down tumbled a rather large shirtless body.


“Tim-ber!” Jack could hear Oni call out from the open doorway as the large mangled body flipped and flopped down the steps and finally slammed onto the concrete floor. The man’s sagging bear-belly rippled and jiggled as he collapsed on his back at the foot of the stairs, there was a loud meaty sound rebounding off the basement walls and to no surprise, Tommy and Oni were in fits again. Oni was holding his stomach and pointing at the obese heap sprawled out on the basement floor, and laughing madly. Tommy was making some effort to contain himself but Oni was recreating the meaty sounds with his mouth and hands and Tommy couldn’t help himself.


Eventually the pair of boys made their way down the stairs; each taking hold of a fat hairy hand they dragged the man to the center of the room. Jack squirmed away as quickly as could. So this is the fat man, Jack was thinking to himself. He’s definitely fat, and he’s definitely dead. Though Jack had never been in the same room with an actual dead body before, he was pretty sure that this unfortunate fella wasn’t alive. Plus, he smelled dead anyway.


“That’s one heavy son-of-bitch.” Tommy noted as he let one of the fat man’s large arms fall, there was a thud. Jack noticed that Tommy now had on a black hoody and was fumbling with something bulky in the pouch. Jack tried to catch a glimpse of the object from the side, but Tommy turned to face him.


“Brought you some company, Jack.” He said and smiled. Fuck you, you twisted little prick, Jack thought to himself. He didn’t dare speak his mind, he’d witnessed what these little bastards were capable of, it wasn’t at all impossible for two twelve year old boys to kill an eighteen year old, not at all, and Jack didn’t want to end up like the mangled man next to him. The reality of the situation dawned upon Jack once again, only this time tenfold.


Kidnapped, drugged, and bound by a pair of kids, Jack thought. Given a lighter situation, Jack might have laughed at the prospect but, humor and irony were the furthest things from his mind at the moment. Right now, Jack was more concerned with playing his cards carefully and correctly.


Jack looked from Tommy to Oni as he heard what sounded like a jagged knife tearing through tough flesh. To Jack’s amazement, Oni had sliced open the man’s chest with a small scalpel-like knife and was now digging around inside with his bare hands. Dark maroon blood poured from the rift, rushing along the man’s giant stomach in many thick rivulets forming a large puddle beneath the man. Oni was mumbling something under his breath as he continued to explore the dead man’s guts giggling at the squishing sounds and random squirts of blood. Jack was fighting back the urge to barf, his eyes were already watering and his stomach was beginning to clinch painfully. He rolled over on his side just as the boy withdrew something small and metallic from the man’s chest and held it high into the air as if he’d just pulled the Excalibur from the stone.


Tommy immediately snatched the object from Oni’s blood cover fingers and examined it in his own. Relief washed across his face as his large icy blue eyes were lit with amazement, wonder, and just a hint of curiosity. There was a dark calculating smirk on Oni’s face as he stood.


“Father’s going to love this.” he said.


“Father’s going to love us.” Tommy added, now studying the object in the dimness of the only light in the basement. It looked like a computer chip to Jack, but he couldn’t really tell because the boys were holding it up into the light and every time Jack looked into the light his head started pounding and he would get dizzy.


“I’m gonna go wash this shit off my hands.” Oni said as he turned away and headed for the stairs, but just as he did, the man that all three of the boys had assumed to be dead, without warning, lurched forward in an upright position and began letting out an earsplitting screech. Not at all a sound you would expect to be escaping a man of that size. Both the boys jumped and Jack’s head began to soar. Tommy instinctively reached into the pouch of his hoody, withdrawing a rather bulky black gun Tommy aimed it directly at the fat man’s head and fired twice. There was two deafening bangs, followed by two very brief but bright flashes of light as the man hit the floor. Bits of brain, chucks of hair and skull fragments scattered the blood covered basement floor like a thick sticky brain stew.


The man’s head rolled over to the side and for the first time Jack could see the man’s face clearly, despite his own dizziness and the two large craters in the man’s face, Jack could have sworn he’d seen this man somewhere but he couldn’t summon forth the memory. The man had a double chin and a large mole just above his right eyebrow. Jack was sure he knew him, but for fuck’s sake from where? Not that it mattered, though, if the man wasn’t dead before he was definitely dead now- he brains were all over the floor for crying out loud.


Jack was terrified, horrified. All Oni had done was turn around briefly to see the man’s head get blown away and then he casually continued up the stairs and out of the basement as if nothing had happened. Tommy didn’t appear shaken either; in fact, there was no expression on the boy’s face at all as he tucked the gun away in the pouch of his hoody. 


Jack was now as far away from the fat man’s corpse as he could be. His stomach was still clinching and everything was spinning faster and faster. But through the blur, Jack could see Tommy making his way over towards him. Jack had never been more scared of a twelve year old in his life.


“Don’t worry,” Tommy was saying as he gently ran his hands over Jack’s face, “you’re not going to end up like Mr. Fatty over there. We have what we want and now we don’t need you anymore.”  Jack felt an odd sense of comfort in Tommy’s words, despite the obvious creep factor that snaked throughout his body in sync with the sudden stabs of pain that seemed to simultaneously erupt within his chest. Jack could see Tommy’s face hovering above his own, his mouth was moving but Jack couldn’t make out the words. He couldn’t hear, he couldn’t feel, he couldn’t see. Jack remembered thinking to himself, Is this it? Then he was gone…