GAME ON - GoM 2

1

"Keep you in the dark
You know they all pretend
Keep you in the dark
And so it all begins..."
Dave Grohl, The Pretender

The tunnel was oddly quiet in the flickering light of the lamps on the wall. The heavy iron door on top of the stairs screeched open. It was the only access to the underground bunker, and it had a broad circle of symbols painted on its inner side. Outside, the night waited on dawn over Detroit.

A man stood at the doorway, his shadow darkening the stairwell at his feet. He drew a handgun, turned on a flashlight and stepped down the stairs. Tall, fit, in his early forties, his eyes moved over the lines of symbols painted on the walls at both sides, checking they were intact. He would've run down the stairs, calling for his brother out loud. But the sinister silence filling the tunnel was so thick, so oppressive, that even rats had fled the place. And it could only mean that things were even worse than he'd thought. So he had no choice but caution.

He spotted the first traces of blood on the last steps of the stairs. Just a quick teaser of what he'd see deeper into the tunnel.

The man searched every room, only to find the same at each and every one: gross pools of drying blood, bits of guts sprayed on the walls, broken bodies injured in a hundred different ways--all of them ruthless and deliberate. He clenched his teeth and headed to the end of the tunnel, bearing the stench, the fear, the anger.

The tunnel ended in a small square chamber. A stone altar in the middle of the room was the only kind of furniture. It was meant to display something that wasn't there anymore.

"Shit!" the man growled.

He wore latex gloves--the last thing he needed was the cops picking up his fingerprints. His flashlight showed the mark burned on the altar. What was displayed on it had been hot enough to scorch the dust and the superficial grain of the stone.

"Son of a bitch."

A weary, muffled groan from the other side of the altar caught his attention. He circled it to find another man fallen on his belly, in a thickening pool of his own blood. He hurried to crouch down, checked the man still had sort of a pulse and pulled from his shoulder enough to see his face.

"Charlie!" he cried, horrified. "Shit, Charlie! Hang on, bro! I'm getting you outta here!"

The dying man managed to shake his head and moved the hand trapped under his body. The crouching man understood and took what the stiffened fingers covered in blood still grasped: a phone. As soon as he had it, the other man died.

He left the body as he'd found it, his stomach about to turn and his eyes full of burning tears he wouldn't shed.

"I'll find it, brother," he muttered. "And I swear to God I'll get it back."