by Ryder Stacy
“What’s your name?” Rockson asked.
“Funny you should ask,” the scar-faced gladiator said. “I don’t remember. Been hit in the head too many times. Just call me Keeper—that’s what they all call me. I’ve been in combat for nearly twenty years—and never lost. So don’t try anything on me. There are crucifixes outside the arena with the rotting flesh of those who tried to jump me and escape. A most painful death I am told. If you are a good gladiator you will live well for a brief time and die by the sword—not by crucifixion. Believe me—it’s the man’s way to go.”
After that kind of advice Rock and Archer were led to one section of the vast dirt-covered arena where men were practicing with various weapons—sending out chips of bark as they chopped away at tree branches, snapping whips with loud cracks through the cold winter air, learning to punch and kick by immense trainers who kept knocking them to the ground with a single punch of their ham-sized fists. They trained with broadswords, pikes, tridents, sabers, maces, and battle-axes, desperately trying to gain the skills that would give them a fighting chance against the highly trained gladiators they would soon be facing.
“These are the two Americans—Rockson and Archer,” the Keeper said to a man who made him look scrawny. The gladiator’s girth was that of Archer’s, his broad arms even thicker. His sharp blue eyes bore into the American pair with disdain.
“The Americans? How am I supposed to train them? It is said Americans are wild, uncontrolled beasts. Feed them to the animals would be better—”
“Orders are to train them in combat,” the Keeper snapped back. “For the Centennial spectacle. The big one in net and trident, and the mutant here,” he said, pointing to Rock, “in duo-blade. The premier’s orders.”
The huge trainer sneered. “Duo-blade? That weapon is only for the most skilled. The premier wants to assure this man’s death. It takes years to learn duo-blade. So be it.” He turned toward the freefighters. “American scum—you will call me Trigrily. I am also known as the Mauler—so don’t get any funny ideas. Now,” he said with a smile, “we begin the training.”
Archer was handed his trident and net. He took it and looked around wondering. But a glance at the sub-toting guards who ringed the lower seats of the stands quickly dissuaded him of the notion. Rock stared at the odd weapon that the Mauler handed him. It had a fist grip in the center from which two weapons extended on each side. One was a two-edged, razor-sharp blade nearly a foot-and-a-half long, on the other end a hooklike attachment that looked like it could rip a man’s intestines out. Rock wondered if he could learn this new weapon well enough to make french fries out of his opponents.
There were about seventy-five gladiators in training on the dusty field, and they were all going at it with a vengeance under the careful eyes of their whip-master trainers. There were pygmies riding each other’s shoulders, wielding samurai swords that cut the air with a whoosh before decapitating melons. There were short, squat, hairy, almost apelike men who were practicing strangling treelimbs or crushing enormous hollow steel globes with their bare hands. Mutants and strange races of all sorts filled the arena floor, mock fighting one another, even a few Amazonlike green-haired women who slammed their axes into thick logs over and over, sending up clouds of sawdust. All were intent on surviving the ordeal ahead. They had to win their battles to live. A gladiator vanquished, beheaded, would mean a few more days of training, of life, sweet, horrible life for them.
Rockson was taken aside by a fairly stocky fellow who didn’t seem unkind. At first the Doomsday Warrior dismissed the man’s abilities due to his portliness and jowly face, but he quickly showed himself to be fast, cunning, and an expert with the lethal duo-blade. “You don’t have a chance,” were the first words he said to Rock. “But I’m going to do my damndest to teach you everything I know anyway. I hold no love for the masters of these games. We are all slaves under the Reds. But make no mistake: As tough as you may be, your opponent will be the strongest man you have ever faced.” He showed Rock how to keep the wrist as loose as possible so as to be able to spin the weapon from side to side. “Flexibility is the key to the duo-blade,” he said over and over after every move, as if wanting to imprint the words on Rockson’s brain. “Once you tighten up, you’re dead.” He showed the Doomsday Warrior how to feint, parry and thrust, how to catch an opponent’s weapon with the hooked end, spin it and then attack with the blade. They practiced together for nearly three hours under the cold silvery Moscow sky that threatened snow that somehow never quite fell.
Suddenly there was a great commotion at one end of the arena. All stopped in their tracks, swords frozen in midair. A princely-looking man garbed in silk tunic and turban with an entourage of several dozen men entered the training area and behind them, walking step by arrogant step was a gargantuan man. He was nearly stark naked, except for a leopard loincloth, and black as ebony. He must have stood nearly eight feet tall and made even Archer appear small. A red-eyed megaman who snarled and spat with jaws of double rows of hooked teeth. The gladiators in training stared in amazement, not just at his size and obvious power but at the third arm he possessed which came from the center of his chest and which was clearly as strong and mobile as the foot-and-a-half thick arms that dangled at his side. He stopped and stared around at the slave fighters, and his mouth widened into a grotesque smile. Then he laughed.
Rock’s duo-blade trainer leaned over and whispered, “That’s the one they call the Black Menace, especially bred for generations is his kind. See that third arm and those rows of teeth? Watch them carefully. He’s been known to reach down in the midst of a fight and rip the head from his opponent with a single snap of his jaws.”
“Why should I have to watch them?” Rock asked, a little nervously. “I have no intention of getting near that charming fellow at all.”
The trainer stepped back. “Rockson, didn’t they tell you? You are to fight the Black Menace in a week’s time, armed only with the duo-blade. No—they didn’t tell you.” He could see by Rock’s wide eyes that it was all a rude surprise. “Train well, my friend. I will teach you all that I know. But no one has defeated him—or even come close. They are raised on genetic farms in Africa solely for the Moscow Gladiator Arena. You haven’t much of a chance. But you, too, are some sort of mutant, are you not—with your strange mismatched eyes and that streak of white in your black hair. Perhaps you have a chance—you are strong. But practice, Rockson, practice. You have one week. Shall we begin again?”
Rock looked at the giant black man with some trepidation. The Menace caught his glance and stared back. He raised all three arms forward and squeezed his hands tightly shut as if strangling the Doomsday Warrior from a hundred feet away. Then he laughed again and turned. The procession headed off once again, disappearing into the dark doorway of the arena, holding pens.
“Train me well,” Rockson said, turning back to the master of the duo-blade. “I’m not ready to die.”
Fifteen
Buglers stood on every parapet surrounding the coliseum, announcing with their clarion calls the start of the Games of Death. Immense Red flags flapped briskly in the fall wind. Far below, the vast dirt-covered arena awaited the blood that would soon soak into its parched soil. The day of the gladiators had arrived. The rulers of the world, the bureaucrats of Moscow, resplendent in their medal-bedecked, razor-pressed uniforms filled the stands of the coliseum, accompanied by their overly made-up mistresses. They greeted one another with the usual platitudes. The elite of the world—the men who ran the Soviet Empire. And as if their bloody domination wasn’t enough—now they thirsted for the blood of the arena. Safe in the stands with their flasks and fur coats they bristled with excitement as this was going to be a special day, indeed.
The Moscow Coliseum had been modeled after the ancient Roman arena both in shape and in function: to make death become a performer for jaded eyes. But this arena was even larger than the ancient crumbling piece of antiquity that stood in ruins in Soviet-occupied Ro
me. Its vast rows of steel seats could hold nearly one hundred thousand people, and today, they would be filled to capacity. Fifty thousand seats reserved for the elite of the elite and fifty thousand of the higher rows for lower level functionaries. All had blood lust in their eyes.
The men who ran the death games knew they had to fulfill their spectators’ expectations, otherwise they might well end up themselves taking part in the bloodletting below. The commissar of entertainment, as he was euphemistically called, was Commissar Dubrovnik, a short but muscular man who had worked his way up to the top through backstabbing and double-dealing at every step of the way. He had left a trail of bodies behind him and protected his privileged post, his mansion by the Volga, with narrow eyes and spies planted everywhere. Dubrovnik, as soon as he had reached this pinnacle of success, had studied the ancient Roman games thoroughly, filled with admiration at the myriad ways they had invented for a man to die. And this—this was the biggest event of the year—the celebration of the Russian conquest of the world a century before.
Games were held weekly, but they were often run-of-the-mill overweight gladiators ripping each other apart with unimaginative and hardly graceful thrusts and smashes of their giant swords. But today was different. The Day of the Games—a once a year spectacle that rivaled anything the Romans could have imagined. Dubrovnik had made sure that this would be a festival of blood that none would ever forget. He sat at a glass-enclosed booth high atop the stadium walls, earphones around his head and a microphone pressed against his lips, shouting out orders to his hundreds of underlings who rushed frantically around the immense stadium making sure that everything would proceed smoothly. They knew that mistakes, delays of the game would be dealt with harshly—very harshly.
At last the stands were filled to bursting, and Dubrovnik, over towering ten-foot-high speakers placed every two hundred feet along the surrounding walls, welcomed the fans to the games.
“Welcome to the Day of the Games,” he said, speaking slowly in his deep, nationally known voice. For Dubrovnik had made certain that he was the announcer on most of the important games, introducing the gladiators, many of whom were heroes of the Soviet Union—with their own millions of rubles of reward money for having survived so long. Such names as the Red Lancer, whose long, razor-sharp spear had dissected many an adversary; the Netman, whose dazzling net work pulled opponents from their feet so that his short Sword could finish them off; Two-Sworded Mikael, whose dazzling blades could whip a man into so much bloody meat before he had time to know what hit him; and of course—the infamous Black Menace, the toughest of the tough, who to date had over two hundred kills to his name. One of the few blacks allowed the privileges of the elite he was even welcomed to Kremlin parties. Although the generals and bureaucrats kept a nervous distance from this eight-foot warrior of death. All would fight today. And some would die.
“I am proud,” Dubrovnik continued, “to start the Games of Death. I promise you all, you will not be disappointed.” Then in that famous four word sentence he started the blood sport. “Gladiators prepare to die.”
Dubrovnik liked to start the games off slowly, gradually building the intensity, the danger, until it peaked in the final fight of the big name gladiators. He had learned how to tease and play with the crowd’s emotions, make them want more and more blood and death, until after hours of murder and decapitation they would go home satisfied, excited, and take out their own violence on their mistresses and wives.
Gates opened at each end of the nearly five hundred foot in diameter circular area floor, and young women emerged, terrified, barely clothed, pushed out unwillingly by the probing tips of guards’ spears. Nearly fifty of them—slaves taken from various of the empire’s vassal nations—all young and pretty. They had already been used by those who desired them and now were discarded to meet their fate in a way more horrible than any could imagine. They gathered together in the center of the arena to the roaring jeers of the bloodthirsty crowd. They stared around with wide panic-stricken eyes, begging for mercy from an audience that had not one drop of mercy to give. Suddenly a large gate at the far end of the arena grounds opened. Deep guttural roars emerged from the darkness. Within seconds they emerged—lions, tigers, leopards, all snarling, angry at their captivity, starved for days and ready to take it out on anyone they could sink their fangs into, rip their claws through. The predators paced nervously around for a few moments, growling at one another but too unsure of this unfamiliar terrain to really go at it. Lions with huge golden manes, tigers, fiercest of the cats with teeth like scalpels, leopards, sleek and quick with slashing claws that could rip a chest open in a flash. They slunk down for a few seconds when they heard the rising roar of the crowd above, their hair standing up, tails falling down between their powerful legs.
But only for a second. Then they saw the women. Instinct took precedence over fear. Their eyes opened wide with a kind of murderous joy that at last they would get something living, something squirming and hot to eat. Not the half-rotted slabs of beef that had been tossed into their cages. They moved toward the women cautiously at first, their eyes focusing in on the cowering, wailing females. Then they moved in for the kill.
The girls from the slave nations, their thighs and breasts showing through their flimsy ripped garments, moved backward as a group. They held onto one another for dear life as if the grip of their neighbor would somehow break the spell of this nightmare. They edged back until they were up against a wall, nearly twelve feet high with no chance of escape. The spectators in the closest seats leaned over the steel wall and jeered them, telling them in no uncertain terms what was about to befall them.
“Get ready to die sweeties.”
“I’d like to suck those tits of yours before the cats get hold of them.” And other such terms of endearment that increased the women’s stark terror. There was no escape. Suddenly they realized it. They prayed to the gods of their homelands—these women from the plains of Africa, the fields of Britain, the forests of Indonesia, the vast mountains of China. Prayed that they would be released from their judgement. But the gods were too far or too busy to hear. Only the cats would be their judges now.
The creatures moved in, nearly thirty of them, their thick shiny fur glistening in the afternoon sun that peaked through the Russian clouds above as if anxious itself to witness the spectacle of death. The predators circled in on the screaming women, no longer concerned with interspecies rivalries, acting now with an instinctive hunting cooperation. They came in from the front, and from each flank, not allowing a single one of the massed group of flesh to make an attempt at escape.
One of the leopards made the first move, a beautiful creature with stark black spots dotting its rich golden coat. It moved in a blur faster than the human eye could capture. Its five-inch-long incisors, created by evolution to sink deep into its prey, dripped with the juices of its hunger. The leopard tore into the front ranks of the hysterical women and sank its fangs deep into the neck of a teenage black girl from the Mlawi tribe of East Africa. The ivory teeth found the arteries, severing them with one bite. The girl fell to the dusty arena ground, the leopard holding tight, squeezing ever tighter with its iron jaws. Her blood vessels torn, hot red blood pulsed out down over her shiny black flesh. But mercifully for her it was over almost instantly. The leopard was a quick killer unlike the lions and tigers who preferred to play for a while with their prey—like a cat. The leopard dragged the twitching corpse backward, away from the crowd, searching for some shade where it could gorge itself in peace.
As if the kill of the leopard was the signal to attack, the other predators charged forward like an army. Each one singled out its particular meal, drawn to them by some unknown internal process of food selection. An immense tiger, nearly five feet high at the shoulder, rushed at a buxom white Irish girl with skin as fair as a first November snow. But it wasn’t a quick or efficient killer. It ripped out one of its plate-sized paws, the claws fully extended like a row of daggers, and slashe
d her across the chest. Her right breast was ripped from her body like a piece of flimsy paper. The Irish girl fell to the blood-speckled ground, screaming like a siren. The tiger slashed again, this time across her softly rounded stomach, ripping deep into the tender flesh. The five claws dug in nearly half a foot, five scalpels crudely dissecting the human prey. Her intestines and inner organs spewed out onto the arena floor in an explosion of blood and torn flesh. The huge carnivore put one of its paws on the squirming woman’s throat and slammed its opened jaws into her oozing innards. It ripped at the red goodies, taking bites of the soft organs—its favorite food—pulling out large chunks of the firm dark kidneys and liver and pancreas. The poor girl was still alive, her heart pumping furiously to sustain her existence. She could feel the tiger tearing at her and knew there was not a thing she could do. Its face red with blood, dripping in little drops from its long white whiskers, the tiger moved up to the skull for the brains—the next item on its list of delicacies.
The other cats tore into the crowd of sacrificial girls like a hurricane from hell, slashing and biting everyone in sight. They ripped heads from bodies, severed arms and legs with single swipes of their razor claws. The roars of the blood-maddened predators mingled with the cries of the dying girls and the appreciative cheers of the Red elite from the stands above. The sun winked out again, disappearing behind a mountainous cloud, dark and purple, a bruise across the repulsed face of the sky. Within thirty seconds of the charge every creature had tasted blood. The girls were pulled from the crowd, dragged across the now blood-soaked ground as if a mortuary had exploded, sending out pieces of once beautiful female flesh into a hideous sculpture of human parts. The big cats bit at the still hot bodies, pulling out huge chunks of face and chest with each snap of their teeth. Some of the carnivores began fighting over a particularly choice piece, one on each side, ripping the screaming victims literally apart at the fleshy seams, pulling arms and legs off the bodies like parts of a doll. Only these dolls spurted blood, gallons of it. The cats bathed in hot red liquid, feeding themselves from the tasty flesh until they were full. Within minutes there was nothing even vaguely recognizable as something that was once human—a butcher shop of human meat.
