by Ward, Tracey
I pause, the circles I’ve been walking around the Arena coming to a screeching halt. Yenko meets my eyes over the stranger’s head and I can see the same shock as I feel.
“Three hundred,” Marlow repeats slowly.
“Yes.”
“Three. Hundred. People.”
The guy nods, his eyes on the floor.
When Marlow looks up at me I know the guy is going to die. It was a threat before to get him to talk but it’s real now. It’s a fact already written in history. The ink just isn’t dry yet.
The size of the new camp on Vashon Island is a blow to Marlow’s unhealed ego. We were over a hundred strong three years ago. Could we have grown to three hundred in as many years? Probably not, but try telling Marlow that. As far as he’s concerned we were on a permanent rise before the Colonists ripped the rug out from under us. Now they’re expanding all over town. Marlow always imagined us a distant second in size to them but to find out we’re not even in the same class as the Colony’s competition… things are going to be tense in the Hive for a while.
“Kill him,” Marlow tells me. He turns his back and heads out of the cage, probably up to his office to break the shit out of something.
I bristle at the command. I’m at the top of his counsel of six, his right hand man, and telling me to do his dirty work with a guy like Yenko standing right here and armed is a slap in the face. One I won’t bear.
“No,” I tell him firmly.
He pauses with his back to me. “What did you say?”
“Not my job, Marlow,” I remind him calmly. “You want someone to get their hands dirty like that, you gotta get one of your footmen because I’m not doing it.”
He turns on his heel and eyes me coldly.
I don’t flinch. I don’t give an inch of ground because I’m dead serious. I’ll go toe to toe with him on this. I won’t be treated like a low level lackey, like some kid off the street on his first day. I don’t do the dirty work. Not anymore.
Finally he comes forward, straight for me, and still I don’t move. Even when he pulls my knife from where it sits sheathed on my hip, even when he holds the blade up close for me to see, I don’t move. I barely breathe.
Quick as a snake he reaches out and slices the knife clean across the guy’s throat. The Vashon topples over, clutching at his torn flesh as his life slips through his fingers, warm and thick. It pools on the floor of the Arena and mingles with all the rest. All of the other lives lost.
Marlow throws my knife down on the ground next to the dead body. “The next time I tell you to kill a man you’d better fucking do it or I’ll put your own blade in your back.”
He stares at me for a good ten seconds before leaving the Arena. My muscles ache from the strain of staying still. From the clench in my fists and my gut, the rotted out anger rolling in my chest.
“Be careful,” Yenko says ominously.
I laugh roughly. “Or what? He’ll kill me?”
“Sounds like it.”
“He threatens to kill me at least once a year, usually when I remind him what an old bastard he is. I offered to find him Depends last month and he only laughed. I was due for a death threat.”
Yenko scowls. “He’s not kidding, Vin.”
“No, and neither am I,” I tell him seriously. “I’m not gonna slip down the ranks into minion level work just because he’s having a bad day. He wouldn’t call Doc in here to clean up this mess and he shouldn’t have asked me to make it. Besides, I don’t agree with it anyway. He should have left him alive, asked him more questions instead of going all premenstrual on him.”
“What kind of questions?”
“Like how they got the island Fever free. They killed off all the Risen and are locking it down so no new infected can pop up, but how did they do it without losing half their people in the process? And how are they keeping it secured? All that shoreline can’t be under constant guard so how are they doing it? Fences? Walls like the quarantine used to be?”
Yenko shrugs. “Wouldn’t surprise me. They’re from Oregon. Walls kept the Risen trapped in with them for a year. Probably have a lot of faith the walls could keep them out too.”
Mike appears at the door, poking his head inside. He frowns when he sees the dead guy on the floor but wisely doesn’t ask about it. “Guys, meeting. John just got back from rounds. He has news on the people in the park.”
Yenko and I nod, slowly filing out of the Arena.
“I got a dime that says he wants them all dead,” I offer Yenko.
He laughs with a shake of his head. “That ain’t a bet, man. That’s a sure thing.”
***
“Take ‘em out again,” Marlow commands angrily. “They’re getting too big. You’ve let them grow.”
John sighs heavily. “They’re not a threat. Their numbers are bigger than ours, yeah, but a quarter of that is kids.”
“Kids who will grow up to be adults.”
“Yeah, someday, but—“
“So put a stop to it. Rob them of everything. Keep them down, do you hear me?”
“Yeah,” John answers unenthusiastically. “Yeah, I hear you.”
“Tonight.”
“Fine. Yeah.”
Yenko casts me a knowing look from the far corner of the room and I raise my hand toward him, rubbing my fingertips together in a sign for ‘money’. He smirks and flips me off.
John leaves the room, his annoyance broadcast loud and clear in his body language.
I get why John is mad. He’s an original like me, one of the guys thrown out of our home in the stadiums years ago, and we know the people living in the small city park. The Colonists threw them out of the baseball stadium the same day they took the football field from us. Nothing but farmers and families, they went the wholesome route while Marlow built his tarnished empire. And they took a lot of our defectors with them. While we took on whores, they started having babies. We sell Honey, they grow crops. They’re not a threat to anyone and still Marlow insists on keeping their numbers lower than ours. He has their fields destroyed and their homes invaded every time they start to look too secure. Too comfortable.
It’s petty and a little insane, but that’s Marlow. He can be a real dick sometimes.
“Is that it?” he asks when John is gone. “Nothing else?”
“Nothing, boss,” Hector answers from the desk, closing his little blue accounting book.
“Good. Get to your posts and be ready for anything. It’s fight night.” He turns to me, his eyes hard and still angry. “Is the Arena ready?”
No, you sloppy motherfucker, I think bitterly, it’s not ready because you threw a tantrum and left a corpse rotting in the center of it.
“It will be soon,” I promise.
He smiles slightly. “Make sure that it is.
I get a lackey to do it. Some new kid who just joined up a month ago. He pales when I show the body to him, telling him he has twenty minutes to make it disappear.
“What do I do with it?” he asks nervously.
I look at the guy on the ground, slack and empty. It’s not a person. It’s a meat suit. It’s a weird smell and a big pile of bones. It’s catnip for the dead. Marlow wants it dropped in front of the Pikes but I’m pretty sure if I send this rook out in the wild with a dead body into Pike territory we’ll never see him again.
“The Sound,” I tell him finally. “Toss it in the Sound. Maybe the current will take him home.”
“Where’s he from?”
“Just get it done.”
I leave him to figure out how he’s going to get the body to the pier out back. Fastest route is to drag it through the long hallway filled with doors that rattle and moan and scratch. A hallway that stinks with death and all the Risen I keep on hand for fights. He won’t take that hallway, though. No one likes going down there. Not even me.
I head through the lobby to go upstairs and get dressed for the night. It’s already buzzing with people waiting to get into the Arena and start bet
ting. To start drinking and getting laid and forgetting their troubles, or making them as it turns out more often than not. A few people call my name but I ignore them. I don’t have time. The body in the Arena is setting my night back and I need to hurry to play catchup.
The Hive is crazy when the Arena is open. I’ve got an Eleven and a Hive member signed up for the openers, Hyperion as my closer. Guy’s a champion. Tall, built, golden eyed, and the kind of charismatic fighter that makes me miss the thrill of the bout.
Fighting in the Arena isn’t exactly what it was in the Underground, and it’s not just because of the zombies or the fact that it’s to the death. There are different tiers of fights now. Third tier allows you one weapon. It’s what most newbies choose to get a feel for the fight, to get their confidence up, but the payout is minimal. Second tier has no weapons and instead of one infected you’re fighting two. It’s a lot harder but the payout is a lot bigger, so it’s worth it. Then there’s the first tier fight. The Blind. You go in with no weapons and no sight. We blindfold you and pit you against three zombies. The payout is huge, assuming you survive, but it’s only been attempted twice and successfully completed once. Not even Hyperion will do the Blind.
When I get downstairs the room is already buzzing with guys in the stands looking down into the ring, and tables on the outskirts are filling up fast. They’re buying booze and placing their bets with my assistant, but what most are waiting for is either the fight or the women. The girls haven’t come in yet but when they do the real money will start to flow.
I’m doing my final checks on the locks to the cage when the doors to the Stables swing open and the men start to cheer. The women file in slowly, all smiles and hips swaying. All but one.
Seven pulls up the rear with Bennett following close behind, both of them sour faced and annoyed. He gives her a shove, muttering something in her ear, and she recoils from his hand like he burned her. She slowly makes her way around the edge of the room before taking up post in a far corner.
I haven’t seen much of her in the last few weeks. Just these moments when she takes to the floor before the fight starts. We exchange a few words, mostly hostile shit that makes me smile, and she goes on about her night. Most of the time I’m too busy to care where she is or what she’s doing, but when I look at her now something inside me aches a little. Her face is in shadow but it looks like she has a black eye. Maybe a swollen lower lip.
“Hey, Bennett,” I snap angrily as he passes by. I nod to Seven. “What’s up with your girl?”
He snorts, oblivious to my tone. “That trick? She’s giving me nothing but trouble. I can’t wait to cut her loose.”
“What’s with her face, asshole? Did you do that?”
“No! All part of the job, dude,” he replies defensively. “She wants out fast so she volunteers for the hard gigs.”
“What does that mean?”
“Why do you care?”
“Knowledge gets me hard. What does it mean?”
He shakes his head, stalling because he thinks it make him tough to make me wait. “It means she’s laying out for the Pikes.”
My blood roars in my veins, liquid fire that tenses every muscle in my body. It’s all I can do to keep it under control. To keep from lashing out and breaking Bennett’s head off in his own ass.
It’s nothing to do with the girl, with Seven. Or at least it’s not all about her. I’d be this angry over any of the girls being handed over to a Pike. Not only do they resent our house because we stole it from them, but those idiots are known for violence. For wanting to take what they’re paying for, even when it comes to them willingly. Most of the girls won’t go anywhere near them, but there’s a couple that will agree now and then because of the bigger payout. Though from what I hear Bennett takes a big cut. Protection, he tells them, but most of the time, like right now, it doesn’t look like he’s earning his keep.
Bennett leaves to go bargain for his girls and I watch Seven prowl around the room. She walks slowly, tenderly, and I’m guessing she’s got at least one cracked rib. Probably two. She should go to the doctor and have them checked out but if she’s trying to kill her debt fast, seeing Doc isn’t the way to do it.
I turn back to the cage, rechecking the locks and minding my own business. I grab my clipboard and double check the lineup, looking to see if there are any takers for next week’s fight. The old rules don’t apply anymore. There’s no more patrol trying to thin the Risen population, so anyone can walk in and decide he wants to put in a bid to enter the fights. It ends ugly a lot of the time and that’s why I have to make sure I’ve always got a steady like Hyperion to anchor the night. Blood baths all three rounds don’t fill seats. People want at least one victory and some nights it’s tough to—
“Do you ever go inside the Arena?”
I look down, surprised into silence by her presence.
Seven is standing there next to me, gazing into the cage. Her throaty voice is quiet, subdued, and it’s the most raw I’ve ever heard it. The most real.
“No,” I finally answer. “Not anymore.”
“You’re retired?”
“I’m not allowed.”
“How can you not be allowed? I thought you ran it?”
I slam the clipboard onto the hook outside the cage. The wire on the exterior shakes with the movement and sends a strange hum over the entire Arena until it dies out somewhere near the top. It’s a living, breathing thing, the cage. It’s a beast that’s taken a lot of lives. It’s shed a lot of blood and it’s always humming, always begging for more.
“I run it for Marlow,” I explain blandly.
“And he won’t let you in? Is it because you’re no good?”
I chuckle at how wrong she is. “No. It’s not because I’m no good.”
“Is it because you’re too good?” she asks sarcastically.
“Something like that.”
“What about the Hydes?” she asks suddenly, her eyes still inside the cage. “Have they ever been inside?”
“Yeah, a couple times.”
She licks her lips anxiously, her pink tongue darting out over her swollen, busted skin. “Who?”
“You thinking about going in?”
Her eyes flash to mine and for one brief, odd moment they look excited. “I can’t. Right? I’m a woman.”
I shrug. “Just because I’ve never had a woman—”
“Never had a woman?” she asks, smiling slyly. “Vin, I’m shocked.”
I smile slowly down at her. “Never had a women in the ring.”
“Still feels like you’re falling short of my assumptions about you.”
“Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
“Well, when I met you I assumed you were a ruthless, sex obsessed, egotistical moron.”
“And now?”
She grins faintly. “You’re not as dumb as I first thought.”
I laugh from the gut, drawing looks in our direction. Seven obviously doesn’t like them. She doesn’t like being noticed or looked at or touched. I’m actually surprised she’s talking to me and I’m definitely shocked by the smiles I’ve seen. But they’re gone now.
“Marlow would never let me inside,” she tells the cage longingly.
“Have you asked?”
“Of course not. I don’t talk to that douchebag if I can help it.” She reaches up, her fingers slipping through the links in the fence and gripping the cage hard. “I don’t talk to any of you if I can help it.”
“You’re talking to me.”
“Don’t think I don’t regret it.”
“Ask him.”
She hesitates. “I can’t.”
“Yes, you can. Lay off the Pikes, give yourself a chance to heal up, and fight.”
“Could you get me out of the Stables until I go into the cage?”
“No,” I admit bluntly. “Sorry. I can’t.”
She frowns as she releases the fence and takes a slow step back. “If I can’t quit the Stables the
n I can’t quit the Pikes.”
“They’re animals,” I argue.
“I know. That’s the reason why.”
“You like it rough?”
Her face erupts in flames of anger and for a split second I honestly feel like she’s going to come at me. That thought is weirdly satisfying.
“I don’t like any of this but I’ll do whatever I have to do to get out of here,” she replies sharply. “I stick with them because at least I can be myself with them. They want me to fight. They don’t want me to want them, and I don’t. It’s horrible but it’s the most honest part of my day. I get to punch and kick and claw, and yeah, they hit back but it makes it better somehow. I feel real when I’m fighting back. I feel strong.”
“But you lose,” I remind her, eyeing the purple bruise on her cheek. “Every time.”
She doesn’t answer right away. Instead she turns her back to the cage and surveys the room. She stands perfectly still, her face a blank page I wish I was able to read. “I may not win,” she whispers to herself, “but at least I try.”
“One night in the Arena could clear your entire debt.”
She looks up at me, her expression hard, and I wonder why I’m doing any of this. I don’t know for sure Marlow will let her in the cage. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ll have to cash in a favor or two to make it happen, and what will I gain? She won’t owe me anything and she’ll be gone. She’ll never set foot in the Hive again. So what’s in it for me?
Nothing. I’ll get nothing other than knowing I stopped it. I can’t look at any of the girls, see them this beaten and used up, and not either help them or murder every Pike I lay eyes on. And as much as murder would make me feel better, it would start a war. One I’m not willing to fight.
The part that kills me is that I can see it in her face that she can’t keep going like this. They’re going to break her and if I look into those eyes and see anything but the smoldering blaze I see right now, it’ll take something from me. Some part of myself I didn’t know I’d invested in her.
“When?” she asks.
“I wouldn’t want to put you in there until you’ve had a chance to recover. Two weeks at least.”
