Blood Bourbon

Beating Zone

The air was stale, smelling strongly of animal piss, blood and dog breath while the light only filtered through small openings outside of his field of vision. He could hear the thumping of fan blades and after staring at the metal ceiling above him which was covered by canvass padding, he realized he was in a helicopter.

A large one.

His brain was groggy enough that he felt himself fading in and out of consciousness, even as he turned his head in an attempt to knock the mask off his face. His mouth tasted strange and he was certain that the grogginess came from whatever it had pumped into his mouth and nose earlier. 

When he tried to reach up to grab it, he found his hands restrained in thick leather cuffs and a similar feeling on his ankles. His one leg ached terribly and he felt as if his back was stiff and bruised as well, though his mind was having a hard time figuring out what had happened.

He remembered the car hitting him and the paramedics grabbing him, the sky darkening and the sound of Janek yelling somewhere, but beyond that, he couldn't place himself. Restrained and drugged as he was, he didn't think it was a benevolent flight that he was on.

It was cool, uncomfortably so, telling him that the was probably in a cargo shipment of some sort. When he finally managed to get his head to turn to the side, he found himself looking into large eyes that were pink and set into a face that looked decidedly straight out of a horror movie, with a long snout and sharp teeth.

His heart rate jumped and the creature bared its teeth, one large clawed paw reaching out through the cage bars and gripping onto the metal railing of his bed. Wheels scraped against the floor and jostled his bed as he was pulled close enough that that snout was mere inches away from his face. This was a monster, he knew somehow that it had killed people and was perfectly capable of killing him, but he could also sense that it had no choice in the matter. It was angry and half-mad but it didn't know anything other than violence.

Daryl forced himself to breath and ignore the blood and chunks of flesh clinging to those teeth that were bigger than one of his fingers. It was then that he noticed that as he calmed down, the creature appeared to relax a bit. "I'm trapped here too..." His voice rough, cracking, and his words were slurred, but the creature tilted its head and nudged the bed. "I'm not going to hurt you. Not that I'm much of a threat, but... you know."

In the distance, he heard voices approaching. "You idiots! Why the hell did you leave him between the cages?"

The creature snarled as it looked in the direction of those voices, bloody drool dripping out of its mouth and onto Daryl's chest as it bared its teeth once more.

"Oh for fuck sakes, if he dies, they're going to turn you into one of those bastards."

Daryl heard the electrical charge running through the cage. "Get back."

The creature shifted backwards into its cell moments before the circuit was complete, giving him an odd look, though its eyes appeared unfocused, as if it couldn't see. Surprised, perhaps, that he had bothered trying to warn it. He met its gaze until his gurney was jerked roughly and he found himself pulled out from and managed to turn his head to see two Hunters and what appeared to be a pilot or something looking down at him.

"Fuck. He's awake." One of them reached down and smacked him hard across the face, eliciting a growl from him as he jerked his body in an attempt to go after the asshole.

There were two echoing snarls behind them, and Daryl saw the three humans look up towards the cages with decided fear. Whatever those creatures were, the Hunters didn't like them very much at all.

"Holy fuck, did you hear that?" The pilot murmured.

One of the Hunters narrowed his eyes at the cages, before he smirked and smacked Daryl, harder. "Fuck you, you ugly, twisted fuckers..."

There was a barking howl and the sound of a heavy body hitting something metal and electrical, followed by a yelp. The men standing above him laughed nervously, the one who kept hitting him glancing back down to him. "Looks like you have a new girlfriend, monster fucker."

"Stop riling those things up. If they move too much, it throws off the bird. It's a short flight but I don't want to crash with those things on board." The pilot rolled his eyes, glancing down to Daryl before turning and walking away, leaving him with the two Hunters.

"Give him some more gas. Then we'll wheel him forward a bit, we probably shouldn't let him die." The one who had been silent thus far murmured, before grabbing the bed and starting to pull it further away from the cages, right about the time that Daryl heard the release of gas and a weird taste filled his mouth and nose.

"Not sure what's so special about him."

"Who cares. They wanted him, so we got him."

"Cost us four good fighters though, between cutting down the vampires and whatever happened to those assholes in the alley."

"Put some pretty good holes into those monsters though." One grinned, glancing down at him. "Hear that? We opened up with a machine gun on your friends. Even blood suckers can't out run the beating zone."

Daryl couldn't focus on the words completely, his vision narrowing quickly into darkness. His heart lurched as the one grabbed him by the throat, choking him hard for a moment, leaning down and whispering in his ear. "Don't worry. We made sure to aim specifically for you boyfriend. I saw his brains paint the inside of the car myself."

Daryl didn't know if he was being choked unconscious or knocked out by whatever the gas had been. He knew, groggily, that the words should bother him, but merely fell back into blissful dark.