Hell beyond the Iron Cage

"Bang!"

A dull crash erupted in the quiet office.

Lynn's fist slammed into the thick mahogany desk, his knuckles instantly whitening as he left a clear dent.

A mug printed with a cartoon elephant toppled over, tumbled to the floor, and shattered with a crash, scattering porcelain shards and water.

"FUCK! FUCK! FUCK-!!!"

A stifled roar squeezed from Lynn's throat, hoarse and furious.

His chest heaved violently as he stared at the ghostly blue screen hanging in the air, invisible to ordinary people. The blood-red word "Elimination" seared him.

"Lin?"

Min-seon's voice was tense with alarm and uncertainty.

Standing right across from Lynn, she had only seen his face turn deathly pale and his body tremble before he suddenly erupted in terrifying rage.

She stepped half a pace back, her hand settling on the tactical dagger at her waist as her sharp gaze swept the empty office.

"What happened? What did you see?"

The office door burst open, and Davis's massive frame filled the doorway.

He held the heavy, grease-stained hammer, his facial muscles taut, his eyes like those of an enraged beast as they instantly locked onto the visibly distressed Lynn.

"Boss?!"

Davis's voice was low. His gaze swept over the mess on the floor and Lynn's heaving shoulders before settling on Min-seon's hand on her dagger. His thick brows knitted. "Are we under attack?"

He lowered his stance, the hammerhead dragging across the floor with a piercing scrape.

The atmosphere in the office was heavy.

Lynn drew a deep breath and slowly exhaled, suppressing the sweet, metallic taste in his throat and that destructive impulse.

He raised his head, veins throbbing at his temples, but a deep coldness had replaced the fury in his eyes.

He raised a hand and wiped his face hard.

"We're not under attack," Lynn said hoarsely. "At least... not the kind you mean."

He turned his neck with difficulty to look at Davis and Min-seon.

The ferocity in Davis's eyes had not faded, but there was worry there too; Min-seon's lips were pressed tight, her gaze sharp as she searched his face for answers.

He needed their trust and strength.

There was no other choice.

"I just... received some... 'information.'" Lynn chose his words carefully. "A mission I have to complete. If I can't... I'll die..."

The word "die" carried an icy certainty.

Davis's pupils contracted, his knuckles whitening around the hammer's handle.

Min-seon's fingers curled slightly against her dagger.

"A mission?" Min-seon pressed, her voice taut. "What mission? Who gave it to you?"

Her gaze swept the room again.

Lynn did not answer the second question, wearily uttering the name and location. "Go to the hospital in Georgia... and bring that star sheriff, Rick Grimes... back alive."

"Rick Grimes?" Davis repeated roughly, his brow deeply furrowed. "That sheriff in a coma? The hospital?"

He whipped his head toward the window. "Boss, have you lost your mind?! Going to the hospital now? How's that any different from jumping into a meat grinder?!"

"I haven't lost my mind!" Lynn growled, his eyes bloodshot and filled with the madness of someone driven into a corner. "I don't want to go either! But if I don't... I'm dead!"

He could not explain "Elimination," so he could only stress the consequences in the strongest possible terms.

Looking at their frozen expressions, he felt a crushing weight of guilt.

He yanked open a drawer and rummaged roughly through it, grabbing the city map and several blurry hospital floor plans inside and slapping them onto the desk.

"Look!"

Lynn's finger trembled slightly from the force he exerted as he pointed to the zoo, circled in red on the map, then traced a winding red line that avoided the main roads toward the hospital, also marked with a red circle.

"This is the only way. We just have to pass along the edge of the old industrial district and take the alleys and abandoned factories. It's less than ten kilometers in a straight line. With detours... at least fifteen. We have less than two days."

His finger jabbed the red circle around the hospital, his voice strained and hurried. "We only have a rough idea of the hospital's interior. Rick's in a private room beside the fire stairs, on the west side of the inpatient building's fourth floor.

"That's old intel. What's it like inside now?

"God knows! And outside is even more of a fucking graveyard."

"Two days? Fifteen kilometers? Through the city?" Min-seon's voice rose in disbelief. "Lin! Do you know what it's like out there?!

"Forget fifteen kilometers. We could get torn apart five hundred meters beyond this wall, and we're supposed to charge into a hospital, find someone in a place like that, and drag him out?"

She pointed out the window. "This is suicide! Pure suicide!"

For the first time, she lost her composure, her face filled with anger and pain. "We barely managed to get a foothold here.

"We have high walls, supplies, people, and safety.

"You want to give all that up for some comatose sheriff you've never met and lead us out there to die?

"All for some goddamn 'mission'?!"

Her voice trembled; she clearly could not accept this.

The office fell deathly silent, broken only by Lynn's breathing and the rasp of Davis's hammer against the floor.

The thuds of walkers against the walls outside were especially clear.

Davis remained silent, looking at the red line on the map, then at the deep fear and resolve in Lynn's eyes, then at Min-seon's flushed face.

He abruptly raised a hand and thumped his chest hard with a dull thud.

"Boss," Davis said, his voice low and firm, "you saved my life from those Wild Dogs bastards."

He meant when Lynn had saved him from being surrounded and attacked at the start of the apocalypse. "Wherever you say to go, I'll go. Whatever you say to kill, I'll kill."

His fierce gaze swept over the hospital's location. "A hospital? Walkers? Hah! I haven't smashed one of those things' heads with this hammer yet! Perfect chance to try!"

He bent down and picked up a flattened empty tin can from the floor. His rough fingers squeezed, deforming the hard metal with a creak, before he tossed it aside.

Min-seon snapped her head around to stare at Davis as though he were insane.

Her lips moved, but all that finally emerged was a suppressed growl. "Fucking hell!"

She closed her eyes, her chest rising and falling. When she opened them again, anger still burned there, but deep beneath it was a trace of cold resignation and resolve.

"Fine... fine!" Min-seon gritted her teeth, forcing each word through them. "You're the boss. You call the shots.

"If this idiot Davis wants to go get himself killed, I can't stop him. But I'm telling you, Lynn,"

She called him by his full name, her gaze cold and piercing. "If this mission of yours gets all three of us killed out there, or brings a horde back to destroy this place... I'll remember you even as a ghost."

She stopped looking at Lynn, spun around, and strode toward the medical supplies piled in the corner. Yanking open a large first aid bag, she rapidly stuffed in tourniquets, powerful antibiotics, morphine, suture kits, and more.

Her profile was taut.

Watching their reactions, Lynn felt as though an icy hand had clenched around his heart, but he had no time to dwell on it. The blood-red word "Elimination" hung over his head.

"Davis, get the weapons ready. Prioritize shotguns. Carry as much ammunition as you can, and find two machetes."

Lynn spoke quickly, his voice cold and hard. "Min-seon, a first aid bag isn't enough. Bring all the antibiotics, cardiac stimulants, and glucose.

"Especially morphine. Bring plenty. If that guy wakes up halfway and starts thrashing around, give him a shot."

He grabbed the map and pointed to an intersection near the industrial district. "In one hour, we take the modified jeep and charge out through the small west gate. Follow this route?

"Remember, there's only one objective: rescue Sheriff Rick Grimes and bring him back alive. Abandon everything else."

Davis nodded once, turned, and left with his hammer.

With her back to him, Min-seon paused in her packing, then stuffed the supplies in harder.

Neither of them understood the reason behind all this, but out of trust, they said nothing more.

After all, the apocalypse Lynn had "predicted" really had come. That was also why they trusted him so much.

Lynn took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down.

He walked to the window, looking beyond the high, wire-topped wall toward the gray haze above the distant city.

The wind carried clearer sounds of the horde's howls and screams.

Beyond this wall lay hell.

An hour later.

On the zoo's west side, a concealed, heavy iron gate was pushed open a crack.

Outside lay a quiet path bordered by wild grass. No walkers were visible for the moment, but the sickly sweet stench of decay was thick and pungent.

The engine of a dark green military jeep growled, steel plates welded to its body and wire mesh covering its windows.

Davis sat in the driver's seat, his arms steady on the wheel. Boxes of shotgun shells and machetes filled the passenger seat.

In the back, Lynn gripped a modified suppressed pistol, his palm sweaty.

Min-seon huddled beside him, hugging the bulging first aid bag, her face pale and lips pressed tight as she stared fixedly at the path ahead.

"Hold on tight."

Davis's voice came through the engine's roar, low and grim.

Lynn took one last look at the zoo's towering walls, the fortress he had built, a symbol of safety.

Now it stood behind him like a tombstone. Those still inside watched the three departing figures, their eyes filled with bewilderment and incomprehension.

He withdrew his gaze, his eyes sharp and cold as he fixed them on the depths of the haze-shrouded city ahead.

"Go." Lynn forced the word through his teeth.

Vroom-!

The jeep's engine roared, its tires scraping the ground and throwing up dust and gravel as it rammed open the iron gate separating life from death, charged onto the weed-choked path, and plunged into the death-laden gloom ahead.

Almost the instant the jeep burst out, several ragged, stiff figures behind an abandoned bus stop less than fifty meters from the path stirred at the engine's noise and slowly turned, their movements contorted.

Hollow eye sockets in rotting faces "looked" toward the speeding jeep.

Hoarse, hunger-filled howls shattered the silence, stirring a scalp-prickling chorus of responses from the ruins and shadows farther away.