“Maybe it’s this Pain Day thing…” Sophia said. “I don’t like the sound of that at all…” Fraden squeezed her hand. He had thought of telling her of the whole plan, but it would only worry her. No one could understand that a mob could he used in a planned, controlled fashion until he had actually felt such a mob under the sway of his own voice…
“Probably you’re right,” he said, speaking more for Vanderling’s benefit than hers. “From what I was able to pump out of Olnay, the Animals take this Pain Day thing as seriously as the Brothers do. A nice piece of psychology on the Brotherhood’s part. Give the Animals a big torture-show one day a year, let ’em dig the same things the Brotherhood does to ’em all year, and instead of thinking that Moro and Company are monsters, they get to feeling that the Brothers are just like them, only luckier. If they get a little taste of sadistic kicks and dig it, it makes ’em believe in the so-called Natural Order all the stronger. Reminds me of the one about the three guys talking about how often they have women. First guy says ‘Once a week’ and doesn’t look too happy. Second guy says ‘Once a day’ and he looks jaded. Third guy says ‘Once a year,’ but he looks like the cat that ate the canary. When they ask him what in hell he’s so happy about, he says, ‘Ah, but tonight’s the night!’ ”
Vanderling grunted.
“Very funny,” Sophia said.
The trucks swung onto the main avenue of Sade, past the gleaming, gaudy false front of the fetid Sangran capital, the façade of synthmarble, wood and metal buildings that belied the miles of stinking makeshift warrens behind it.
They reached the hill on which the Palace Compound stood, came to a halt at the main gate beneath the heavy concrete walls. Fraden saw that the guntowers spaced along the walls were manned, but the galleries that ran around the top of the walls, which could hold thousands of armed men, were empty.
The gate swung open, and the trucks rolled forward between two lines of perhaps fifty Killers each, and they were inside the Palace Compound. Vanderling nodded, grinned at Fraden, and Fraden grinned back. Only a hundred Killers guarding the gate. The wide courtyard was jammed with wooden corrals packed tight with fat, naked little moronic children. There were perhaps a hundred Killers patrolling the corrals that held thousands of Meatanimals, and that was it. Two hundred Killers to hold the gate against twenty thousand troops!
“A setup,” Vanderling muttered sotto voce, “Sweetest little setup I ever saw.”
The trucks rolled past the Palace itself, and Fraden saw perhaps another dozen or two Killers positioned by the steps leading up to the main entrance. The trucks rounded the corner of the Palace, and the black Stadium loomed before them.
About two hundred Killers were waiting for them by the main gate. A Killer captain led a small squad up to the lead trucks, waved them toward the main gate. Another officer led the rest of the Killers to the rear of Fraden’s truck. They cordoned off the trucks carrying the two thousand victims, led them around the back of the Stadium to the arena entrance, where they would ostensibly be searched for weapons, then led up through the bowels of the Stadium and up onto the arena floor through the ground-level arena gate.
The trucks carrying the bodyguard parked in a semicircle between Fraden’s truck and the Stadium. The hundred herogyn-heads jumped down, quickly formed up into two lines of fifty men each to the right of Fraden’s truck.
“Well, here goes nothing,” Fraden said, and, carrying his bundle, he vaulted over the tailgate of the truck. Vanderling lowered the tailgate, and he and Sophia scrambled after Fraden, The three of them positioned themselves between the two lines of troops, the Killer captain led his men to the head of the formation, and Fraden ordered: “Let’s go!”
Silently, the Killers led them through the main gate and down a long, dank passageway that finally became an upward-curving ramp. At the end of the ramp, an open portal lit the dark passageway with a blaze of red sunlight. Vanderling made a hand signal, and the ’heads trotted ahead of them out into the sunlight behind the Killers. Fraden could dimly see them fanning out in the stands, forming a protective cup surrounding the entrance. Vanderling strode briskly out behind them.
Fraden glanced quickly at Sophia, she squeezed his hand for a moment, then let go. He took a deep breath, and then led her out into the glaring noon heat of the Stadium.
For a moment, as his eyes adjusted from the gloom of the passageway to the bright light of the Stadium, all seemed a piebald blur to Fraden, Then the blur resolved itself into a sea, a great tiered cliff of faces and bodies.
They were standing about halfway up the stands in the section of the Stadium farthest from the Pavilion—well out of snipgun range, from the point of view of the Brotherhood. A narrow strip of benches had been cleared immediately in front and behind them, stretching from the top lip of the Stadium to the fence separating the stands from, the arena floor, and about twenty seats wide.
The rest of the Stadium, every inch of bench space, was jammed.
From where Fraden stood, facing the roofed Pavilion across the entire width of the Stadium, two great sections of seats filled with Sadians arced away on either side of the small empty area toward the Pavilion. From the upper lip of the Stadium to the fence at the bottom of the stands, the two huge semicircular sections were packed fight with Sadians, at least ten thousand of them, emaciated, semi-nude bodies, pressed tightly against each other on the backless benches. Fraden saw that an unusual proportion of them were old men and women, occasional cripples—a great rarity on Sangre. He waved to the stands, and a murmur swept though them. Fraden grinned. They weren’t about to start any ruckus here with all these Killers around, but they know, he thought. Old folks and cripples… It was a good sign, it meant that all the more able-bodied Sadians were preparing to take a more active part in the events of this Pain Day…
Fraden squinted, peered across the arena toward the Pavilion. The Pavilion itself was all decked out in gold and black bunting, and it was packed with thousands of Brothers—every remaining Brother on Sangre—and their slaves and women, the thousands of black robes contrasting grimly with the colorful tables of fruit, roasts, jugs of wine, with the naked tanned flesh of the slaves and the finely formed houris. Like vultures at a parrots’ convention! Fraden thought.
In the front and center of the Pavilion, he could make out Moro, black-robed like the rest and if anything grosser than before, sitting atop his raised throne with an electric bullhorn hanging loosely from one hand like a scepter.
Above, below, and on both sides of the Pavilion, the stands were black with uniformed Killers, perhaps as many as two thousand of them, sunlight glinting redly off thousands of rifles.
Flanking the Killers on both sides were two great sections of loincloth-clad men, perhaps two thousand on each side. Fraden grinned. They were got up as Animals, but even at this distance, he could see the healthy muscles of their chests instead of the ribs-through-leather look of the Sangran Animals. He didn’t have to see their teeth to know that they were filed to points, he didn’t have to pick out the rifles hidden in the forest of feet to know they were there. You couldn’t hide a mink among rabbits, and you couldn’t hide Killers among Animals. The trap was set, and the trap within that trap, and the final trap…
Suddenly, he felt a hand grab his—Sophia’s. Silently, she nodded toward the arena floor, her teeth clamped over her lower lip, her eyes wide.
He followed her gaze and swallowed hard, for only now did he see that the entire arena floor was a forest. A forest of crude wooden crosses jammed into the packed earth, thousands of them, row after row, and the base of each cross was heaped high with faggots. Here and there a brazier of oil blazed, and the braziers held long-handled iron dippers, and unlit torches were stacked in piles beside them. Piles of torches, and heaps of big iron nails. A couple of hundred Killers stood scattered among the crosses, waiting, gripping large, heavy-looking hammers.
With Sophia holding his hand tightly, Fraden led her and Vanderling to the center of
the cleared area in the stands. As they seated themselves, and as Fraden carefully positioned the paper-wrapped Brother’s robe beneath his seat, the herogyn-heads filled in the stands all around them, forming a protective wall of flesh about them, a square of seated armed men, with Fraden, Sophia, and Vanderling at the center.
Fraden surveyed the stands, the Brothers in the Pavilion: drinking, wolfing down great gobbets of flesh, toying with their houris, being toyed with; the Animals tense and silent, most of them staring his way with feral anticipation in their eyes; the Killers in uniform with their hands on their guns; the ludicrously disguised tiers of Killers, their hands hidden in their laps, near their concealed weapons… He felt a terrible tension hanging over the Stadium, a wave waiting to crest, as each group waited for the moment when the waiting would be over, when the dreadful events of this penultimate Pain Day would at last begin.
Then Moro rose ponderously to his feet, raised the bullhorn to his lips, and the air was shattered by a great, hollow voice.
“Pain Day!” Moro bellowed, and the echoes reverberated from the bowl of the Stadium. “Pain Day! Pain Day! Pain Day!” The amplified chant melded with its own echoes, formed a huge, shattering, shimmering cascade of sound.
The Brothers picked it up, began to chant, thousands of voices drowning out Moro’s amplified shouting in a guttural, staccato roar. “PAIN DAY! PAIN DAY! PAIN DAY! PAIN DAY!”
Then the vast sections of Killers were chanting it, and finally the Animals, and the whole Stadium shook with the sound of twenty thousand voices chanting: “PAIN DAY! PAIN DAY! PAIN DAY! PAIN DAY! PAIN DAY!”
The Brothers tossed aside haunches of meat, jugs of wine, women; began to roll their heads madly and clap rhythmically. The Killers caught the beat and began to pound the concrete with their boots and rifle butts. The Animals began to clap too, stomp bare feet on hard concrete, and it was a sound like distant thunder, a sound like guns: “BOOM-da-da-BOOM-BOOM! BOOM-da-da-BOOM-BOOM! BOOM-da-da-BOOM-BOOM!”
And a counterpoint above it, the chant, working itself up into a huge snarl of frenzy—“PAIN DAY! PAIN DAY! PAIN DAY!”
“PAIN DAY! PAIN DAY! BOOM-da-da-BOOM-BOOM! PAIN DAY! PAIN DAY! BOOM-da-da-BOOM-BOOM!”
The sound assailed Fraden’s ears. Through the concrete of the quivering Stadium, through the soles of his feet and up his leg bones, the vibrations jellied his guts, rattled his teeth, set the short hairs on the back of his neck on end. Sophia’s hand was a constricted claw around his, her face was ashen, her jaws clamped shut like a vise.
“PAIN DAY! PAIN DAY! PAIN DAY! PAIN DAY! PAIN DAY!”
The clapping, the boot and foot stomping were dying out now, and the entire Stadium was screaming, the chant became a wild, blood-curdling, shrill, ululating cry: “PAINDAYPAINDAYPAINDAYPAINDAYPAINDAY!”
Across the arena, the Pavilion was a serpentine tangle of writhing bodies, as the Brothers tore flesh from roasted human limbs, screaming all the while, spitting greasy fragments as they howled, biting off more meat, screaming, spitting, pommeling and kneading naked women with cruel and brutal abandon, a ghastly riot in a vast churning pit of vipers.
And now the disguised Killers were all too apparent even to the Animals, as they chawed madly on their own foaming lips, bathing their lower faces in beards of blood-red spittle.
The Animals too became lost in the frenzy, screaming, pummeling, clawing madly at each other, old women’s claws raking the scarred flesh of cripples, wizened, bent men beating unthinkingly on the heaving backs of crones…
Even the damned herogyn-heads who were supposed to be guarding them were howling in frenzy, their hollow eyes the eyes of kill-crazed wolves.
Fraden felt it coming up at him, down on him, penetrating into his guts—the concentrated animal fury of twenty thousand human beings giving themselves over utterly to the darkest urges within them, a mindless, bottomless, shoreless sea of horror, an inchoate wave, a great tide of liberated berserker blood lust.
He teetered on the brink of engulfment, felt the yawning jaws of the beast reach oat to take him, this beast that larked within every man, this giant carnivore, this kill-crazy, primeval thing. He felt the beast without call to the beast within, the beast that pounded in his Wood in a great unbidden surge of adrenalin. His mind strained against the mindless, primal call of the jungle, of the raging carnivore within him so long denied…
Desperately, he grabbed for Sophia, clung to her, sucked at her softness, her warmth, her womanness. She buried her face against his chest, sobbed uncontrollably.
“PAINDAYPAINDAYPAINDAYPAINDAYPAINDAY!”
Out of the corner of one eye, incredulously, he saw Willem Vanderling beside him. Vanderling howling, Vanderling, his face a contorted, reddened devil-mask, a huge purple vein distended and pounding, atop his bald skull.
“God, god, god, god, god…” Fraden muttered, half-praying.
And then, abruptly, it crested. There was a final, terrible, roar, and then a sudden silence, a deep loud silence more terrible than the screaming, the ominous, clammy silence of the tomb.
Below them, on the arena floor, the big gate had swung open, and a knot of bound men, and then another and another and another were being ushered out into the blood-red sunlight by small squads of Killers. Then more men and more Killers, and more and more…
The victims were being led to the slaughter.
Utter silence reigned in the Stadium as the squads of armed Killers herded the two thousand bound men, naked to their waists, out of the bowels of the Stadium onto the dirt floor of the arena, dispersed them among the great forest of upright wooden crosses, one man to a cross, one Killer, armed with rifle and morningstar, to each four crosses. The victims, their hands bound behind them, daggers hidden uselessly in their loincloths, looked up at the stands, at the silent, waiting Animals, at the Killers, their mouths soiled with bloody foam, at the Brothers in the Pavilion, gnawing distractedly on human limbs, swilling, wine from clay jugs, and all the while staring down at them, red-eyed and grinning.
And the bound men looked up at Vanderling and Fraden, beseeching, waiting for a sign, for the deliverance that had been promised them. Fraden could not meet their eyes, for the timing was too coarse to save these men. Even now, the People’s Army must be approaching the Palace Compound, but before they could break in…
The Killers on the arena floor holding the great hammers raised them over their heads in a grotesque salute. Moro held the bullhorn to his lips.
“Give Pain, receive Pleasure!” Moro shouted. “Give Death, receive Life! Let the ceremonies begin! In the name of the Brotherhood of Pain and the Natural Order, let all share in the Pleasure of giving Pain—Kill! Kill! Kill!”
The oppressive silence was sheared by a shrill, animal cry from twenty thousand throats as Animals, Brothers and Killers began to chant, “KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL! KILL!”
The chant quickened in tempo, lost its rhythm, became an endless, wordless, mindless scream like the sonic pulse of a siren: “KILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILLKILL!”
Fraden, his arm around Sophia’s waist holding her to one side now, willed himself cold, banished all emotion, commanded himself to become a juiceless calculating machine. Beside him, Vanderling was staring down into the arena, his lips working silently, mutely forming the syllable “kill.”
Savagely, Fraden drove his elbow into Vanderling’s ribs. “Snap out of it!” he shouted In Vanderling’s ear. “This is it! Get your goddamned ’heads into position!”
Vanderling started, shook his head like a man emerging from a dream, barked orders to the seated herogyn-heads. The ’heads snapped to their feet, rifles at the ready, formed a solid shield of flesh and guns all around them.
Fraden forced himself to estimate coldly. By now, the army should have reached the Compound; perhaps they were already breaking in. It was impossible to hear anything over the endless, shattering scream.
He craned his neck, trying to see over the human wall in front of him. He let go of Sophia, climbed up o
n the bench, looked down over the shield of men to the arena floor. Killers and victims alike seemed frozen, transfixed. The Killers stood immobile, listening to their own battle chant being howled by twenty thousand throats. The bound men stared up at the tiered stands filled with creatures howling for their blood, their faces white with fear, their eyes great saucers of shock and anguish.
Unbidden, a great spasm of self-loathing tore through Bart Fraden. For these men would not be saved, and he had planned it that way. Their slaughter was to keep the Killers preoccupied while the guerrillas broke in, and Fraden-the-calculatlng-machine hoped for panic. Fraden the man was disgusted. Both watched and waited.
He did not have long to wait.
Suddenly, as if on signal, each armed Killer grabbed a victim, dragged him to a cross. The Killers with the hammers grabbed up fistfuls of nails from the piles by the braziers, and each ran to a cross where a Killer held a writhing, bound victim. Near the center of the forest of crosses, two Killers made the first move. One ripped away the struggling man’s bonds, shoved him up against the cross, spread-eagled him on the crossbar, while the other leaped to the top of the heaped faggots, drove nails through the victim’s palms and deep into the rough wood. The man screamed as blood spurted from his ruined hands, and then all hell broke loose.
Instantly, hundreds of other teams of Killers were ripping away bonds, crucifying victims. But some were not quick enough. Here a man’s bonds were ripped away—and he pulled loose from the Killer’s hands, reached into his loincloth, pulled out a dagger, and without pausing thrust it into the heart of the startled Killer, grabbed the dying man’s morningstar, smashed the skull of the Killer with the hammer before he could move, took the hammer in his free hand, and swinging hammer and morningstar attacked the Killers by the next cross. Scores of Sangrans hung screaming from their crosses, but scores more had broken free, stabbed their tormentors, were freeing other men, grabbing the weapons of the fallen, lashing out blindly in all directions.
The Men in the Jungle Page 26
