by Jude Hardin
“Stand him up.”
They stood me up and rinsed me off some more with the icy water.
They patted me down with towels and led me naked through the French doors on the side of the house. Same as the first day I’d been abducted. Déjà vu. The doors led to the fancy gardening shed with all the tools and the wire dog kennel. They forced me into the cage and secured the door with a padlock. The steel wire was very uncomfortable against my naked skin.
The cage didn’t smell like bleach this time. It smelled dirty, like sweat and blood.
They wheeled me through the interior set of French doors and down the short hallway to the elevator. We went up and got out on the first floor. “You’ve Got a Friend” played softly from invisible speakers. The James Taylor version. We turned a couple of corners and entered the large auditorium with the raised platform on the end farthest from the door. Freeze’s theater of doom. The same multicolored lights were attached to the same overhead steel trusses, and at the center of the platform Freeze once again sat on his throne. He was still bald and tall and enormously fat. The two large video screens behind him were blank at the moment.
“Leave us alone,” Freeze said.
The guys who had wheeled me in left and closed the doors behind them.
“I want to see my wife,” I said. “I know she’s here somewhere.”
Freeze paced the stage. Again the lighting was such that I couldn’t make out the features on his face. I knew he was tall and fat, but I couldn’t have picked him out of a police lineup or a book of photos if my life depended on it.
“I want to see my wife,” I said again. “You hear me, motherfucker?”
“That is so not going to happen,” Freeze said. “No, you’ll never see her again. I’m one hundred percent positive about that. What I’m not one hundred percent positive about is exactly what to do with you now. You’ve been a bad, bad boy, Number Eight. You have totally fucked up my game. You’ve totally fucked it up, but I’m thinking maybe I can turn it around and make it the most dramatic conclusion ever. That’s what I’ve been thinking about for the last thirty minutes or so, while most of my people have been rushing around tending to the little mess you left us over in section seven. Let me ask you something: are you familiar at all with the Snuff Tag Nine video game?”
I didn’t care about the stupid video game or Freeze’s plans for a dramatic conclusion. I wanted to know about my wife.
“Why are you so sure I’m never going to see Juliet again?” I said. “What have you done with her?”
Freeze looked at his watch. “She’s on her way to battle Number Seven as we speak. You know, the former Navy SEAL? Hell, she might be there already. I’m not able to watch it live because I have to deal with you. But I’ll see the video later. I’m sure it will be spectacular.”
“He’ll slaughter her,” I said. “She doesn’t stand a chance, and you know it. Get on the G-twenty-nine and call it off. Call it off and I’ll take on Number Seven. I’ll give you a good show.”
“Oh, you’re going to give me a good show anyway. Again, are you familiar with the Snuff Tag Nine video game?”
“Call Juliet’s battle off and I’ll cooperate. I’ll do whatever you want. Otherwise no dice.”
“You seem to be forgetting, again, that we know exactly where your daughter is. Would you like to see her thrown into the game as well? It wouldn’t take more than a couple of hours for us to—”
“All right,” I said. “All right. I read a little bit about Snuff Tag Nine when Nathan Broadway first hired me. Otherwise, no, I’m not familiar with it. The only thing I know about video games is that they exist and that some of them give my daughter a headache when she plays them.”
“Snuff Tag Nine is the greatest video game of all time,” Freeze said. “And I’m one of the world’s best players. Even so, I’ve never made it to the final level. I’ve never made it to level twenty. Nobody has. Some of us wonder if level twenty even exists. For years there have been rumors that it’s only a myth.”
“Level twenty is where the player gets to battle against the game master,” I said. “The character named Freeze. The insane billionaire who kidnaps ordinary people and forces them to fight to the death for his own amusement. The character you modeled yourself after.”
“That’s exactly right,” Freeze said. “That’s the myth, anyway. Like I said, nobody has ever made it to level twenty in the video game. No player on the planet has ever gotten to battle Freeze. So that’s why I’ve decided to make you the first, Number Eight.”
“You want me to fight you?”
“That’s the idea.”
“Why me?” I said. “Why not wait and see who wins the game. Seems like that would be more—”
“I’ve been fascinated with you from the beginning, Number Eight. And even more so since I’ve seen you in action for a few days. You’re not especially intelligent, and you’re not as strong physically as some of the others, but you have something. Some sort of X factor I can’t quite put my finger on. In addition to all that, I would truly like to watch you die in person. You’ve screwed up my game more than once, and now you’ve started a fire that could absolutely ruin everything I’ve worked so hard to build. You’re the one I want for level twenty, Number Eight, because I hate you with a passion. I figured you would jump at the chance to fight me.”
“I would, if I thought it was going to be a fair fight. But I’m sure you’ll have a few of your goons hanging around ready to take me out if it looks like I’m even close to winning.”
“Nope. Just me and you and the cameras, right here on this stage. One hour, Number Eight. I’ll see you back here in one hour.”
Freeze punched some numbers into his cell phone, and the guys came back and wheeled me out. They took me up to my old room. There was a fresh uniform on the bed and a new pair of boots on the floor. The guy with the shotgun stood guard while I took a shower. When I got out, the other guy was standing there with the weapons cart.
“You get to choose again,” he said.
“Why can’t I just have my old weapons back?” I said.
“That’s not the way Freeze wants it.”
I wondered if Freeze took a random chance at the weapons he got. I doubted it. He probably handpicked the ones he wanted. So no matter what he said, it wasn’t going to be a fair battle. It was rigged to give him the upper hand. Of course it was. He wasn’t going to give me a chance to beat him. No way. And I doubted all ten weapons were even on the cart. He probably only loaded the ones he wanted me to have.
I chose drawers number two and seven. The guy opened them and handed me the contents. I got the slingshot and the nightstick. The slingshot was worthless, because we were going to be indoors and there wouldn’t be any rocks or anything to use as ammunition. So I basically had a plain old policeman’s nightstick to use against whatever Freeze had chosen.
The guy with the shotgun looked at his watch. “Time to go back down,” he said.
We went back down. Other than the guys escorting me, the house appeared to be deserted. I hadn’t seen anyone else since they’d captured me. Apparently everyone was in section seven trying to extinguish the fire.
They led me to the theater, all the way to the stage this time. We climbed a set of stairs on the right side of the platform, and they took me to a room the size of a walk-in closet. There was a padded chair and a vanity with a sink and a faucet and a lighted mirror.
“Wait here until Freeze calls you on the G-twenty-nine,” the guy with the shotgun said. He and his buddy left the room.
I tried sitting in the chair for a few minutes, but I was too restless. I got up and paced back and forth, from one end of the tiny space to the other. It was four steps each way, eight steps round trip. I felt like a tiger in a cage.
I was almost certain Juliet was dead by now, and there was every reason to believe I would be following her soon. At least I hadn’t been forced to watch her die, as I had Joe Crawford. At least I had been spa
red from that particular horror. Still, I felt responsible for her being roped into this mess. If it weren’t for me, Juliet would be safe at home right now, and so would Joe.
I paced around for a few more minutes, feeling anxious and sorry for myself, and then I remembered a quote I read one time on the Internet: Winners don’t blame. Winners don’t whine. Winners keep at it until they win. I didn’t remember who the quote was attributed to, but it had struck me as being true when I read it. And it struck me as being true now.
I decided not to give up, even though I knew I was going to die. I decided to go out a winner, giving it my all.
I faced the mirror. I looked haggard. I’d lost weight. My cheeks were sunken, and there were dark circles under my eyes. I looked to be in general poor health, although considering the circumstances and everything I’d been through, I really didn’t feel that bad. A nervous energy coursed through me, an angry state of hyperarousal similar to the first few hours of narcotics withdrawal. I felt strong and pissed off, the way you need to feel before beating a fat asshole billionaire sadist to death with a club.
On each side of the mirror were eight light bulbs lined up in a vertical row. They were round and smallish, the actual bulb parts about the size of golf balls. Together they made a nice bright light that would have been sufficient for applying stage makeup or performing brain surgery. I pulled some tissues from the dispenser on the countertop and unscrewed two from each side. I allowed them to cool for a minute and then stuffed them into the left side flap pocket of my black fatigue pants.
I was looking around for a way to short out one of the vacant light sockets and maybe start another fire when Freeze’s voice came over the G-29: “Time to play, Number Eight. I’m waiting for you.”
I took a deep breath and walked out to the stage.
The stage was much larger than it had appeared from my previous perspective. I’d played guitar for Chubby Checker at the 1988 Super Bowl halftime show, and Freeze’s stage was about the same size as that one had been. It was huge. You could have parked three tractor-trailers on it side by side. All the lights were on, the overheads and the footlights, and two big spots beamed from trusses below the balconies. It was showtime, ladies and gentlemen.
A dramatic overture faded in from the PA monitors positioned at the edge of the proscenium. I recognized the music. It was “Funeral for a Friend,” the orchestral prelude to “Love Lies Bleeding” on Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road album. It was Freeze’s way of taking a prebattle stab at me, of reminding me of Joe and Juliet, of fucking with my head and trying to distract me from the task at hand. I tried to ignore it. What I couldn’t ignore, though, was the imposing and altogether theatrical figure that now emerged from behind a curtain twenty feet to my left. It was Freeze, all six foot seven and four hundred pounds of him, dressed in a shiny satiny costume complete with puffy sleeves and a pointy hat and curly-toed slippers. The fabric was purple, dotted with glittery white images of moons and stars, and the shoes were studded with multicolored rhinestones. His face had been painted white, with yellow stars outlining his eye sockets and a black frown outlining his mouth. We’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of hell.
The article I’d read about the Snuff Tag 9 video game hadn’t mentioned anything about costumes and makeup. This was just some of Freeze’s dramatic lunacy. His own embellishments. He held a wand, but there was nothing magic about it. It was the stun baton, waiting to discharge over half a million volts of electricity into my body.
“Hello, Number Eight. So nice of you to join me. Do you like the music I chose? Are you familiar with it?”
“I owned it before you were born,” I said.
“Good. Now listen, because this is very important. Weapons are not allowed until you hear the intro to ‘Love Lies Bleeding.’ Understand?”
“What are we going to do until then? Wrestle? I don’t think so. You outweigh me by over two hundred pounds.”
“My game, my rules. If you refuse to engage, your daughter will suffer the consequences.”
He wasn’t even going to give me the chance to use my measly weapons. He wanted to kill me with his bare hands. He skipped toward me, doing little twirls on the way, like some sort of dancing hippopotamus. I stood my ground until he got to within a few feet of me, and then I dropped to the floor and rolled toward his legs. Not the smartest move in the world, considering I had lightbulbs in my pocket. The crushed glass from at least one of them ground painfully into my thigh, and a warm trickle of blood followed.
Despite my ill-advised maneuver, I caught Freeze just below the left knee with my right arm and shoulder, and he stumbled and tripped and landed belly down. He almost landed on top of me. I had to roll out of the way quickly. If he had landed on top of me, that would have been it. I would have been crushed and smothered. Maybe it was my imagination, but I thought I felt the whole platform rattle for a second when he went down. Like an aftershock from an earthquake.
I got up and straddled his shoulders, pulled his hat off, and grabbed two handfuls of his greasy hair. I tried to break his neck with a quick upward jerk, but he stiffened and my hands slipped and then he bucked and rolled to the side and I went tumbling like a rodeo cowboy thrown from a bull.
“Thought you had me, didn’t you?” Freeze said. He was on his hands and knees looking at me. A thread of slobber dangled from the right side of his grotesquely made-up mouth, glimmering like quicksilver under the hot stage lights. He was smiling. He was enjoying this. It was really like a game to him, as if we were a couple of school chums playing king of the hill.
The massive wizardly form somehow rose to a standing position and stomped toward me. He walked stiff-legged, shambling along with his arms out in front like Frankenstein. He was actually laughing now. I wondered if he had smoked some weed or taken some other drug before coming out to battle me. That’s the vibe I got. He seemed high.
I got up and started sidestepping in a circle. I locked in with his eyes, which were big and round and glassy and bloodshot. He lunged for me, those chubby fingers of his aimed at my throat, but I dipped and dodged and managed to throw an uppercut to his solar plexus as I backpedaled stage left. It didn’t faze him. He coughed once and kept coming toward me.
If this had been a boxing match, I would have been ahead on points. But that’s not how this was going to work. I could have hit him a thousand times, and it wouldn’t have mattered. The kill was all that mattered. Winner takes all. I was wearing myself out trying to fight him. I was sweating and huffing and puffing and my legs were like cooked spaghetti. I kept waiting for the bell to ring. I needed to go to my corner. I needed to collapse on my stool and take a breather. I needed for my manager to give me a pep talk. Like Rocky Balboa. Rocky had it easy. Compared to what I was facing, Rocky’s battle was a stroll in the park. I wanted to call out for Adrian, only my Adrian was named Juliet and she was probably dead now.
Freeze took two steps toward me, and I took two steps back. “Funeral for a Friend” was almost over. It had been a long time since I’d heard it, but it was ingrained into my memory like the voice of an old pal. I knew it by heart. It was almost over, and once it was, the intro to “Love Lies Bleeding” would start and weapons would be allowed. That’s what I was waiting for. No more hand-to-hand with this behemoth. Thirty more seconds, I thought. Thirty more seconds and I would pull the nightstick from my belt loop and charge him. I would charge him and bash his stupid fat head right the fuck in. I gripped the handle and kept sidestepping and backpedaling and waiting.
And then the fog rolled in.
Machines from both sides of the stage erupted with thick rolling clouds, and in a matter of seconds the entire area was engulfed with a multicolored haze. Visibility zero. I couldn’t see him, and he couldn’t see me. But he could hear me. I was wearing heavy boots, and he was wearing satin rubber-soled slippers. He always made sure he had the advantage in one way or another. One move and he would zero in on me and squash me like a bug. In an
effort to level the playing field, I sat down and yanked my boots off and chucked them blindly into the distance. Now I could move around silently, same as him.
“Good move, Number Eight,” he said. “Only, now you don’t have any shoes. It’s going to be hard to beat me without shoes.”
He laughed maniacally. His voice seemed to be coming from everywhere. I couldn’t track it.
I figured he wouldn’t allow the fog machines to run for long. The mist was obstructing the cameras, and I knew he wanted the death scene to be fully visible. My death scene. He wanted his demented audience to see, in vivid detail, the slaughter of the player who had dared to cross him, the player who had made it to level twenty.
The intro to “Love Lies Bleeding” came in, signaling that weapons were allowed.
I pulled my nightstick.
The haze began to clear, and immediately it became obvious why he had fogged the stage in the first place. Kidney-shaped beds of red-hot steaming coals had been dragged in and placed here and there, like sand traps on a golf course. Freeze had anticipated me ditching my shoes. Now my movements were severely limited, limited to where the hotbeds were not. One step out of line and the bottoms of my feet would be seared like burgers on a grill. Things just kept getting worse. I felt like an idiot for taking my shoes off. Freeze was toying with me. He was loving this shit. He was loving watching me sweat.
He tiptoed toward me, walking through the hot coals like nobody’s business. There must have been some sort of heatproof barrier between his sparkly twinkly slippers and his feet. With unlimited financial resources, you can pretty much have whatever you want. He could have ordered those gaudy motherfuckers from NASA for all I knew. Maybe the soles had been fashioned from reentry heat tiles off the retired space shuttle or something. Whatever the shoes were made from, they did the trick. He showed no signs of discomfort as he gaily danced toward me, disturbingly graceful and agile for a monster his size.
