by Maxey, Phil
As they walked between tarpaulins and benches, with hundreds of people buying and selling, the smell of simmering broths drifted on the air. They then moved into a small corridor, and up some stairs. The bearded man kept his gun trained on both of them all the time, and eventually they came out to a large corridor which must have previously been a suite of offices. Armed men stood at most of the doors, but the one they walked up to had the largest of the entrances.
The bearded man whispered to one of the two armed guards, and they opened the door.
“Wait here,” said the man.
He disappeared inside.
Zach looked at the two large men and the guns they had holstered. Maybe if he was alone he could take them, but Abbey being here would make the outcome too unpredictable.
The door reopened, and the bearded man beckoned them inside.
They walked into a large office with two other doors. It was then that Zach and Abbey realized the building they were in was actually a sports stadium, because a large window looked down upon an arena. But this wasn’t one that would have filled Monday nights viewing, the place he could see part of through the offices large windows, had a huge meshed cage covering the area that once held the court.
A man who looked in his sixties, dressed in a white shirt sat opposite them behind a large desk. Behind him on shelves sat golden statues of slim men in the middle of throwing basketballs, mixed with picture frames of various people.
The bearded man looked at the man behind the desk. “You want me to stay?”
“No, I’m sure it will be okay,” he smiled. “They can see the armed men just outside. Please take a seat.” He gestured to the chairs in front of him. They did as asked.
“I’m Jason Hemming's, I run Arena Town, or what you have seen on your way in. You just happened to be sight seeing in Lexington?”
“I don’t know what you got going on here, and I don’t care. We are traveling north, and just happened to pass through this way,” said Zach.
“Where you from?” He got to his feet and walked over to a small bar area.
A number of options ran through Zach’s mind. Do I mention the camp? He knew all too well, just how important people were as a commodity to some in this new world.
“We got a farmstead in Texas, with a few others.”
Hemming's stopped pouring himself a drink and turned around. “Why you all the way up here? I know your lady here—”
“My names Abbey.”
Hemming's sniggered. “I apologize. What I was going to say, was I know Abbey here is a creature coach, but still, there are some creatures that can’t be tamed. We learned that the hard way! Any of you want a drink? It’s a fine bourbon.”
“Water if you have it,” said Abbey.
Hemming’s opened a plastic bottle nearby and poured some into a glass and handed it to her.
“How long you been surviving here?” said Zach.
“Since the early days. Like most, myself and my family tried to get to the camps, but were left behind. So then I had the idea of coming here. It seemed the most secure building I could think of. And well, I spent most of my time here before it all went to shit anyway.” He walked over to a picture of him as a younger man, standing next to a group of much taller men. “I was the head coach here, for over a decade…” He sighed, then smiled. “Now we play a different kind of sport.”
“So we can leave?” said Abbey already knowing the answer.
“No I’m afraid not. Your kind are valuable here. Before we learned that some of us can control the monsters, things were bad. We lost hundreds to what was outside these walls, then we picked up on the airwaves that certain special people had the ability to control the creatures. We call them ‘coaches’ and well that changed everything.” He then walked to the window. “Not only can we defend ourselves, we can also entertain. That’s important. Keeping people entertained.”
CHAPTER NINE
Abbey sat on the sofa in a small room. It was comfortable, but she was still a prisoner. Every few minutes the floor beneath her would shake and in the distance a roar could be heard. After the meeting with Hemming’s, she and Zach had been separated, and she had been taken to this room. She was told later she and her pet will need to fight, but beyond the obvious she had no idea what that entailed. The thought filled her with dread, and as the hours past she had been searching for a way out of the room other than the way she entered, which she knew was guarded.
Eventually the door opened. An unshaven man with short blonde hair and a scar on his cheek stood in the gap. “You’re the lass they brought in earlier? Abbey is it?” he said with a Scottish accent, with the sound of a cheering crowd just noticeable somewhere beyond him.
She nodded.
“Been a coach for long? Or is it something that just happened? Usually the longer—”
“Long enough.”
“Ah good, that’s going to help keep you and your furry friend alive for longer.” He stepped inside and sat on a chair opposite her. “The rules are real simple. You and your creature go inside the cage. If you both leave in one piece, then you get to fight another day. My names Boyd Morrison. But my friends which honestly I don’t have that many of, call me Morri.”
Abbey remained motionless.
“You got that young lady? I don’t like to see the newbies die their first time out, kind of takes all the fun out of the event.”
“How long have you been doing this? Using people and E.L.F’s for entertainment?”
Morri rubbed his chin. “I’d say about five months. Keeps everyone on their toes.”
“And you don’t think it’s wrong?”
“Wrong how? Anyway we don’t have time to discuss how things are. You and I got a date in the arena. Your creature is already in there chained, as is his opponent. But the coaches come in after. So we need to be going.”
“Where’s the man I came in with?”
“No idea, probably being put to use somewhere in the town.”
“I want to see him.”
“You win this bout, and we’ll talk about it. And make sure you win, I got a lot riding on you and your pet. We don’t see many wolf-men up here, usually it’s more ape or things you can’t really describe.”
Abbey remained seated.
“Look lass, I know this is a bit overwhelming, but if you don’t get up and follow me then you are holding up the match, and the crowd starts to get agitated, and that makes Hemming’s pissy and I can do without that kinda headache.”
Abbey looked up at the man asking her to take part in some kind of gladiatorial death match. Is this real? Slowly she got to her feet, and followed Morri out and through a maze of corridors, while a drumming noise built around them.
“This is the way the bands used to come when they were about to go on stage. Real rock royalty used to walk these corridors,” said Morri ahead of her.
Her heart started to beat out of her chest. What is happening. Calm, I gotta keep calm, try and get out of this alive.
At the end of a long corridor they were walking down, double doors opened, and the cheers and screams traveled the length of the space until she was in no doubt what she was heading into.
As she stepped over the threshold and entered the stadium, a wall of heat combined with a cacophony of raw emotion that filled every molecule of air, hit her.
Morri leaned closer to her. “Just focus on your pet, try and keep the connection as long as you can. The other coach will be trying to fuck with your head, technically it’s not allowed in the rules, but they all do it.”
Flashes of light, angry faces, and the smell of sweat forced their way into her senses, and she had to reach out to the bodies close to her to steady herself. Before she knew it she was a few yards away from an opening in the cage that stretched hundreds of feet upwards to a place full of intense lights. She staggered up the steps and walked onto the dusty floor.
To her left was Jai, chained to the fence behind him, and roughly forty feet in
front of both of them was a creature which seemed to be formed of mostly muscle. It was almost completely back, with a tiny head, and even smaller eyes. But its arms and legs were twice as big as the ‘wolf-man’ that was a few feet from her.
Then the entire stadium hushed and another light shone down from the ceiling above, highlighting a spot behind the opposite side of the cage. She walked a few steps forward trying to see what the light was focused on, but couldn’t see who or what it was. The crowd started chanting. “Foster, Foster, Foster” Each time getting louder.
Must be my opponent.
She took a deep breath, and tried to feel Jai with her mind.
Can I kill this other person? I have too.
Her mind kept wanting to descend into panic, and she kept having to pull herself back from the brink.
The gate then opened, and her opponent appeared.
What?
She looked behind her to the now closed and locked gate. Morri was standing on the other side, his eyes wide. “Is this a joke? He’s just a—” she shouted.
“Look out!” shouted Morri.
She turned around just in time to throw herself to the ground and project the same intention to Jai, just as the ape like creature landed with both its fists striking the spot she was just standing in. If she wasn’t already on the ground, she would have been knocked down by the sheer force of the creature’s impact.
Jai spread his arms and snarled and growled at the tank like creature just in front of him.
Abbey glanced at the small human on the opposite side of the arena. He’s just a teenager—
Jai sprung forward, but before even a three-inch claw could strike its target the other creature spun around striking Jai in his chest, the force of which sent him spiraling through the air, eventually hitting the fence, and then dropping in a heap. He howled in pain, although Abbey didn’t need to hear to sense his cracked ribs within her own thoughts.
“Get your mind in the game lass!” shouted Morri.
Abbey shook her head, and scrambled to her feet. I need to give Jai time to recover.
Her opponents creature was strong, impossibly so, and fast, but maybe not as quick as Jai.
“Hey over here!“ she shouted at the creature. It stopped its lumbering towards Jai and turned towards her.
“Yeah! Over—” Abbey grabbed her head. The ground around her was swaying, like she had been suddenly transported to a ship at sea. She fell down on one knee, and briefly caught sight of the young man grinning. It was the look of someone who had done this many times to others.
No—
As the world around her continued to move and spin in ways it shouldn’t, she let the rage and pain from the previous weeks and months build inside her, until she couldn’t contain it anymore. She looked up at the gaunt looking individual thirty feet from her, and let the emotion explode outwards, projecting it across the gap between them.
His creature, the one that looked like it was resistant to all attacks had its three foot thick fists raised above her, poised to slam them down as the audience screamed for blood.
The teen collapsed as if he had been shot, and his creature froze, its arms wavering above its head and Abbey’s. Silence fell upon the entire stadium.
Abbey’s attention quickly turned to the creature next to her, who she focused on with everything she had. Slowly it lowered its arms, and then sat down looking perplexed at the cage around it.
She ran over to Jai who was wheezing but now was on his feet.
The cages gate opened, and Morri ran over to her. “You did it! You got the little shit!”
Abbey looked over to the boy who was still motionless on the floor, as people ran up to him. “Is he dead? Did I kill him?”
Morri put his arm around her. “Meh, who cares! You’re going to make me a fortune!”
CHAPTER TEN
Zach slumped down to the cold hard floor. It was the spot he had been designated as his sleeping area. A two by five piece of stain-laden concrete against one of the walls in the vehicle maintenance bay. To his left and right and just overlapping where his boots rested, the other mechanics were already sleeping. It had been a tiring night for most as they had lost a fair bit of their food ration coupons on some newbie that had won their first creature fight.
Zach only caught the loose retelling of what had happened in the arena, but it was enough for him to know the victor was Abbey.
As the breathing of those around him grew heavy, and after he initially feigned the same, he as quietly as possible pulled the one thin sheet he had been given back and got to his feet. A single light somewhere off across the bay gave him just enough light to navigate his way through arms and legs until he was leaning up against the closest door.
He had seen people come in and out of it all day, and hadn’t seen it locked once.
In the gloom he reached for the handle and turned it. It rotated a small amount then stopped. Locked.
In the dark he shook his head for that meant walking all the way across the bay to the only other door he was aware of. But there was no other choice. He and Abbey were not going to spend the night here.
During the day while he had been helping repair a 1990s black sedan, he memorized the entire layout of the huge area he had been taken too, after being separated from Abbey.
As he recalled the positioning of the vehicle ramps, tool boxes and machinery, he crept forward, arms out front trying his damnedest not to slam into anything and wake anyone. Not that he thought any of those sleeping would care what he was up too. Most had been captured like he had, but they had come to accept their fate. They didn’t realize that civil life still existed outside, even if it was far away and until recently under constant siege. Still, during his brief conversations with those he had been working with throughout the day, it was obvious many had tried escaping before. He wasn’t the first nor would he be the last.
His hand hit the metal edge of a rack of shelves, which he knew sat up against a wall. He also knew at the end of the row was the door he was looking for. He followed the line of the shelves until his hand moved past them, and then felt for the door.
A noise came from somewhere behind him, causing him to freeze. His first instinct even after all this time was that it was rats. After waiting a few seconds and with no follow up, he felt for the handle of the door and turned it, this time the knob kept on rotating and he pushed it forwards slowly. A cold wash of air brushed past him. He breathed in a lungful. It took him a good few hours before he had gotten used to the smells of forty or so men and women living in close quarters with nowhere to wash.
He moved into the cooler air and gently closed the door behind him. At the far end of the narrow space he was inside of, was a bright light emanating from low on the floor. He had now spent enough time exploring places in the dark, to recognize that what he was seeing was light seeping beneath a door. Using one hand to trail along the bare brick of the corridor walls, he quickly arrived at the door, and pressed his head up against it. The sound of muffled noises were just audible.
He felt for the handle, turning it, then pulled the door towards him. Light flooded into the corridor and he squinted to be able to focus on what he was walking into.
Cages, some a few stories high flooded his gaze. He walked out onto the floor of a huge underground cavern. In front of him a row of huge iron boxes full of bars inches thick, stretched to his left and right for hundreds of yards. Each one containing a creature, many of which he had not seen before.
One cage had something which was a mass of orange and red arms and legs with a tiny torso, the closest thing that came to Zach’s mind was a starfish. To the left of that was a cage which contained what looked like a tree. He walked closer not understanding why that would be locked away, or perhaps the E.L.F’s in this cage were inside the trunk somewhere. He then noticed this ‘tree’ was quivering, and what looked like bark was actually a kind of skin.
Raj would probably exchange places with me.
Most of the creatures seemed to be sleeping, or moving slowly as if they had been sedated.
High above, a few lights lit the entire area, but there were still many shadows and Zach kept to them as he moved past each cage.
A noise came from behind him, making him turn around. He looked along the row of bars, trying to see if any of the E.L.F’s were moving, but nothing seemed to be.
He carried on walking forward, keeping low, trying to find a way out of this insane zoo. The noise happened again, this time it was a lot closer. He whipped around hoping to catch whatever was the cause, but there was only empty space and darkness.
He suddenly had an intense feeling he was being watched, so he ducked into the closest shadow and waited. Then he saw it, about six cages from him, something moving. He had to concentrate to even notice it at all as its shape was only briefly visible every few seconds when it passed from light to dark. Something was walking towards him, something that had two arms and two legs, but definitely wasn’t human.
I can’t stay here. If it’s a creature, hiding in the shadows won’t help.
He emerged from the dark recess he was in and ran. It wasn’t long before he spotted another door, this one had “Exit” above it. He had no idea if it led to anywhere good, but it would be better than being down here with the thing that was stalking him. Not bothering to look back he sprinted across the smooth cold floor and grabbed the handle. He quickly pulled it down and opened the door in one swoop, and then something grabbed him.
*****
Abbey was drifting into sleep when a scratching noise came from somewhere close by. Her eyes flickered open and she laid in the complete blackness of her small room waiting for it to happen again. It did.
She pulled the sheet back that she had been given as a means to make the sofa in the room a bit more comfortable and sat up. The room had a light, but it was controlled from outside, so she kneeled on her hands and knees and waited again.
Over there.
