James Axler – The Mars Arena

“Shut up,” Connrad ordered, “or I’m going to blast you through the mouth, see if that don’t cut down on the noise.”

Shooting Dean angry looks Perry quieted.

“Better,” Connrad said. “Got an announcement I want to make before we leave here.” He pointed at Dean. “Anybody so much as lays a hand on this boy, that person’s going to answer to me. Then that person’s going to die. That’s a promise. Any questions?”

There were none.

“Saunders, shut up this wag and make sure everything’s secure.” Connrad stepped off the platform behind the cage, already thumbing loads into the Mossberg.

Once the flaps had been dropped to cover the bars, Dean sank to his haunches and tried not to be sick. It was one thing to kill a man or mutie that was trying to kill him, or kill an animal for food, but it was another to shoot a man just standing there looking at him. His stomach rolled threateningly. His dad would have done it, though, and for just the same reasons he had.

“You feel better, you bastard?” Perry demanded. “Does killing an unarmed man get you off?”

Dean poked his fingers through the bars, finally able to get his whole hand through. He reached for the edge of the tarp covering the cage, trying to separate it.

“Ease off on him,” Louis McKenzie warned.

“Fuck you, too,” Perry said. “If they put a gun in that bastard’s hand and told him to chill us, what do you think he’s going to do?”

“What the hell’s wrong with you, Ethan?” Bobby Handley asked. “You have a soft spot for old Solomon? Seems you always was his favorite, and he liked looking at you in the shower.”

Perry lunged up, hands reaching for Handley’s throat. Several boys worked together to put Perry down, piling on top of him.

“That it, Ethan?” Jordie Ferguson asked. He was blond and blue eyed, his long hair spilling down his back. “Old Solomon feeding you sausage in the can?”

A cry of inarticulate rage split Perry’s lips.

“Mebbe you already forgot how Solomon sold us out,” Chanz Montoya said. “Me, I wasn’t going to forget. Ever. If Dean hadn’t killed Solomon, mebbe that man would have never got caught. Wouldn’t have wanted to see that happen.”

“I’d have killed him,” Enrique Green stated.

Perry calmed down. “Dammit, let me go.”

Louis fixed him with a hard gaze that Dean could read even in the darkness. “Word to the wise, Perrydon’t try that again. Not to Bobby, not to Dean, not to any of us.”

“And if I do?” Perry growled.

“Then we’ll chill you ourselves,” Louis stated.

Perry looked around the group. “You think you’re talking for all of them?”

“Yeah.”

His fingers on the edge of the tarp, Dean hesitated. Boots still showed at the back of the wag. He waited, not wanting to risk getting caught and catching someone’s wrath. He turned his attention to the boys at the other end of the wag, watching the shift of power from Perry to Louis.

“He is,” Moxen declared, quickly followed by the other boys.

Dean was surprised. Louis had always been the quietest and most pleasant of Perry’s group. He hadn’t seemed like leadership material.

“You okay with that, Dean?” Louis asked, not breaking eye contact with Perry.

“Yeah,” Dean answered.

“I put this group together,” Perry argued. “You’re not going to just push me out like that.”

“Solomon put this group together,” Louis corrected, “and he named you leader.” He gestured at the cage bars around them. “I, for one, am not too happy with where that has taken us.”

“You’re going to give me grief,” Perry said in a disbelieving voice, “and Dean just chilled Solomon?”

“I did it for a reason,” Dean said, feeling pressure to have his say. Some of it was so he could hear himself, maybe even convince himself.

“Why?” Perry demanded. “Revenge?”

“Works for me,” Moxen said. Green echoed the sentiment.

“They took us down with those trank guns,” Dean argued, “and didn’t make any sound that carried. A shotgun blast might have been heard back at the school. Especially if Jake or Joel was on duty. Thought mebbe they might come looking.”