The Human Zoo

by Kolin Wood

  The casualties of the Pit were rife, both in and outside of it; a bloody fact that he had come to realise early on. There was nothing that could be done except to ensure the loose ends were tidied up.

  Teddy stood, pulled on the knot of his tie and opened the button to the jacket on his suit. At the door, he stopped and watched as the throng of people below began to jostle away from the arena. The site was strewn with rubbish. Inside the actual fissure, an old man with a broom was turning over one of the boards in an attempt to hide the recent blood stain from the fallen competitor.

  With a deep moan, Sal set his head back on the cushion of the old chair and closed his eyes. Teddy snarled silently. He had never liked Sal. The man was a live-wire, untrustworthy, and involved in everything concentric to his needs—for now. Sal had a side-line running bets which he thought Teddy knew nothing about. His arrogance at Teddy’s perceived stupidity was something that would need seeing to at some point, but not yet. Perhaps he would make a match of throwing Sal into the Pit. Maybe even set him against that flea infestation of a dog; give it a chance to snatch some retribution for itself. The thought made him smile.

  The old man in the Pit set the broom down in one corner and reached for a bucket before liberally covering the cracked patchwork flooring with water. Even from up here, Teddy could see the water tinge red on impact. It had clearly been a bloody event.

  Above the arena, the higher and more expensive seats had already emptied out, leaving the lower tiers to fight and push for the exits. These cheaper vantage points did not offer very healthy views and, as such, were prone to outbursts of violence and chaos which often led to more than one death on fight night. Inside the ring there were several basic rules upon which the fights were based; the main one being that only one man could ever leave. Teddy found that the promise of death brought an intensity that the proceedings would have lacked otherwise. Basically it was simple: people would pay more to see somebody die. A by-product of this advantage was the threat of further violence; something he accepted and dealt with by adding extra security.

  Outside the tall gates, a chant began, Krane! Krane will smash your brain, and a deep frown creased Teddy’s brow. Krane was a good fighter; there was no doubt about it. And he could certainly pull a crowd, but there was an obvious problem—who could be matched up against him? What had started as a winning streak had quickly become tiresome. Now, an endless parade of cannon fodder lined up, waiting to be easily eliminated by a man that was equally despised and heralded as a champion. With every simple victory, the arrogance was ever more apparent. Teddy had to watch as Krane dispatched his opponents with increasingly theatrical methods.

  That was not his only worry either; the disrespect in the man was clear. He intended to ensure that Krane was never given an opportunity to make good on any threats towards him—founded or not. He’d sweat too much blood to let some thug-for-rent fuck things up for him, no matter how indestructible or irreplaceable he thought he was. No one would take liberties here.

  Turning to Sal, Teddy saw that his eyes were still closed and his mouth was hanging slightly open. “We need something new; something to spike some interest. Something…” He paused, looking down at the dog. “Spectacular.”

  “Uh huh, spectacular… Right… right you are, boss” Sal mumbled. The voice was light and slurred, almost dismissive.

  Teddy dipped his brow, striding back to the desk and shrugging off the impeccable dark suit jacket from his shoulders. His patience was beginning to wane and he was hot. The night hung heavy around him, making him sweat profusely through his thin shirt. He looked up, staring at the water-stained ceiling, suddenly very aware of the hum from the single bayonet light bulb hanging from a precarious-looking, taped, piece of flex. Anger pulsed, tightening the skin at his temples. Krane’s position was not without its advantages. The arrogance of his victories would mean that his defeat would send shockwaves through the city and promise the biggest payday ever conceived of in the Pit. There was nothing more to it. The fight had to herald the next phase of plans for his empire.

  “I need new fucking BLOOD!” Teddy shouted, slamming his fist down hard on the table.

  Sal, who appeared to be asleep in the chair, suddenly opened his eyes. With an expression of fear and worry, he bolted up straight, blinking hard. At his feet, Maxine growled.

  “You sit in that chair and ignore me again, and I will gut you and feed you to that fucking dog. Do you understand me? You piece of shit!” His barrel-like chest rose and fell heavily, and he felt sweat beads form on his forehead. “You lie there, in MY fucking chair…” He gritted his teeth, close to losing it completely. “Find me someone of worth or find yourself a new fucking job. Now get the fuck outta my office.”

  To be jobless in the shanty towns was pretty much a death sentence, and Sal knew it. All of a sudden very much awake and with a fearful, subservient grin on his face, the older man got stiffly to his feet and shuffled towards the door, pulling the dog begrudgingly behind him. As he walked past, he tugged his tattered coat up around his neck. Overhead, the light drumming of rain fell steadily on the metal roof of the cabin.

  “I’ll see to it, boss. You can count on me,” he said, making his way out the door.

  Teddy listened as heavy boots banged down the slippery metal staircase. The sound of the storm above was soothing, but he reached hastily for his bottle and glass. Desperate for the calming effects of the liquor, he poured himself a liberal measure then scooped up the notes and his book from the desk and locked them in the heavy drawer by his lap.

  There would be no need to move tonight. Even though he owned a house within the perimeter of the Capital, this office served as a perfectly safe and habitable apartment when the need arose, and tonight was one of those evenings. Besides, it would be cooler in here than it would at his boarded-up home.

  Teddy picked up the Scotch and trod wearily over to a worn sofa at the side of the room. He was fifty eight years of age, and he felt not a day younger. He sat, popping a few more of the buttons on his shirt as the beige leather creaked comfortingly beneath him. Groaning, and without bothering to undo the laces, he kicked off his polished loafers.

  The first slug of the amber liquid ensconced his senses with warmth. He could feel it working down into his chest and stomach, immediately serving its purpose. Fuck, he loved Scotch whiskey. With seats to the bouts commanding record prices, one of the many perks of being where he was now was that he was never short of his favourite beverage. The men in the Capital offered anything to be seen at the matches—even their wives on occasion—but of all the offers, Scotch was his most prized.

  Lying back, he tried to relax. He was almost there, so close to the unattainable, that he could smell it. Soon, he would be sitting at the table and they would be wishing that they had taken him seriously in the first place. Everyone would rue the day they ever took Teddy Braydon for a fucking nobody.

  He closed his eyes and his mind began to drift. Visions of his wife, Maggie, and their two bedroom, council terraced house in the East End crept into his head. He could hear her shrill cutting voice screaming at him down the stairs, “You weak bastard! You ain’t ever gonna amount to nothing. You are a pathetic and selfish waste of shit that can’t even look after his own family… I wish you would do us all a favour and fucking DIE!” Evil woman. Ironic how things had turned out.

  If only the bitch could see him now. It was a shame that she was dead, not for any reason other than the fact that he would have liked to have seen her begging. Cancer had stripped him of the chance. He would have given anything to see the desperation in her eyes, the pleading and the crying, throwing herself on his mercy, offering him herself, her body. Oh, how he would have made her pay!

  Thunder rumbled ominously overhead, sinking him deeper into his cocoon. His brain was furring over, narrowing on all sides towards the warm centre. Thoughts turned to his daughter, Juliana Rose. She was the only good thing to have come out of that poisoned whore. He hadn’t see
n his girl in nearly a decade. She had refused to have anything to do with him since her mother had died. In fairness, she hadn’t had much to do with him while she had still been breathing. He could only imagine the shit that had been spouted from that evil bitch’s death bed, further poisoning his only kin, his little girl; probably souring her against him forever. Whatever had been said, Juliana had cut all ties, not even bothering to inform him that some years ago she had given birth to a son. Not even a poxy fucking letter or word to tell him he was a grandfather.

  Fuck it, her choice, he thought, taking another swig. There was nothing to be done now. In fact, there was not even reason to think that any of them were still alive. If she had been lucky enough to have been born with his blood, then perhaps there was a chance that she had survived the disease. Even so, in the years that had passed since the outbreak, the world had taken an ugly turn. Dog eat dog had never been a truer catch phrase. Those without the means were an easy target and, from what he had seen, the family had never had much. Fuck, it was not like he had ever given them anything. No, they were dead. It was up to him, and him alone, to take the Braydon name and turn it into something.

  He set the empty glass down on the dirty floor beside him and yanked a woollen blanket from the back of the sofa, covering only his legs. Tomorrow was another day. Tomorrow, he would show the world. But first, he would need a new champion.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Hello, Swede.”

  The General grabbed the sides of the grimy basin and looked into the cracked mirror, immediately wishing he hadn’t. The growth, which was roughly the size of a root vegetable, sat proudly clinging to his head like a parasitic alien embryo. With no formal type of pain medicine left, he had nothing but cheap whisky with which to dull the pain; he swigged hard from the bottle, wincing at the throat-stripping burn. Empty plastic pill bottles lay discarded all around him on the floor.

  Allowing me to survive the apocalypse and then killing me slowly anyway, huh? Quite the comedian, aren’t you? You sick son of a bitch, he thought.

  The sight from his left side had almost completely disappeared now, and he brought a hand up to survey the state of his face. The lump on his forehead was pink and ghastly, pregnant with blood. It hung in front of his face and was dented and decorated with bloody flowers, hot and soft to the touch. He poked at it, wincing with pain. The skin felt rough, like that of a cauliflower.

  He looked back in the mirror at himself; his good eye was surrounded with heavy, dark rings. The iris was so large and such a dark brown as to seem almost black, it had the look of a shark's eye, lifeless and without a soul. It was a stigmatism which he had been gifted with since birth. His hair was thin and brown, straggly at the sides, bald on top.

  Ugly, ain’t ya? he thought.

  But he was procrastinating, avoiding the inevitable. Even though the lump was big enough to have a name, it would not bandage itself.

  After another deep pull on the bottle, he picked up the dressing from the side of the basin. The once white and sterile material, now tinged with yellows and reds, had long ago turned tacky with blood and pus. The disinfectant aroma had gone, now replaced with a fragrance more akin to the smell of meat left to rot on a sideboard on a hot sunny day. But none of that bothered him anymore. This was just the routine; it was all just part of the routine.

  He finished wrapping the bandage and grabbed his heavy leather coat from the back of the chair. It had been a while since he had worn it, and he enjoyed the feeling of the woollen lining, which sat snug around his large and rigid frame. He looked at himself once more.

  “Let’s do this,” he said.

  ***

  Outside the weather had turned, replacing the never-ending frost with a muggy humidity that itched at the skin and clammed up the clothing. It was the first time that the General had been outside the gates of the prison for over a year. As he stood there breathing deeply, he felt shocked by the quiet and the clean scent of the air. The ever-present, gagging smell of burning rubber and plastic had finally gone and since been replaced with a fresh and blossom-filled aroma that seemed oddly overpowering in the warm summer sun. The path he had stared at from his window for the past twelve months had become thick and overgrown with green, covering the broken glass and hiding the skeletons that he knew lay twisted amongst the weeds, distorted in lonely, empty-grabbing gestures.

  They set off. As they walked, he studied the chosen gaggle of boys around him, scattered and laughing, seemingly happy at just being outside of the walls. Each of them had adorned themselves with their own trinkets and garments, clearly acquired from previous jaunts into the destroyed world. They looked like a platoon of zombie soldiers, high on blood and dressed in the trophies of their previous victims.

  Mitchel, positioned at the front of the troop, walked with his usual swagger and confidence, smoking a cigarette. Unlike many of the others, he kept his hair cropped close enough to look almost bald. His trademark, a large, jungle machete, swung freely in his hand. He looked more man than boy, and his naked muscular torso was testament to that. The General noticed that the younger and smaller lads kept a clear distance from him, and it was not surprising. Mitchel was a bully. Inside of him resided a coldness; a detachment from emotion underpinned by a psychotic but rational hardness that separated him from the rest. These very same traits had swayed The General towards him when had chosen the first twelve to release. A loose cannon is still effective if you have the strength to hold it tight and point it straight, he had thought at the time; although now he was beginning to question this early logic. Mitchel was a psycho of the first order.

  They walked onward quickly, past the empty buildings that were once abodes. The doors, splintered and ajar, spilled forth the contents and the remains of their former inhabitants, leaving it all strewn like discarded litter in the overgrown gardens. But the General barely noticed. This close to the prison, the surrounding area had been picked clean of anything of use. Anyone with any sense had fled long ago.

  Today though, they had a different destination in mind—somewhere completely new and, he hoped, thus far untouched. Birds squawked warnings above them from the ruined roofs as his troop of former juvenile convicts marched onward towards the edge of the town and the unknown.

  They walked for miles, stopping as a large bridge came into view. Clearly once a former, pride-inducing link to the metropolis of London, it now represented nothing more than a useless concrete monolith. At best, it was a temporary shelter from the warm summer rain that had started to fall freely and steadily around them. Under its shadow, they marched in single file with weapons at the ready, like a group of hungry tribesmen.

  A movement to his left brought the General to a halt. He scanned the space with his good eye, straining it to focus farther in the murk, back under the huge arches, and down again. All around them lay the wreckages of broken cars, and the floor sparkled with broken glass. Then he spotted it; a hut. Formed primarily using corrugated panels and scrap wood, the hut was propped between the side of an old transit van and one of the thick concrete bridge pillars. A heavy tarpaulin sheet, draped unceremoniously over the entrance, moved in the modest breeze that accompanied the rain.

  With a look that needed no words, the General flicked his head in the direction of the shelter. Mitchel, clearly pleased that he was going to see some action at last, raised his machete and nodded back. He tapped one of the others—a heavy-set, black lad called Dominic—on the shoulder, and then set off at a pace without waiting, lithely dodging between the myriad of rusted, broken vehicles and piles of blackened, twisted metal.

  The rest of the brigand needed no explanation as to how this was to play out either. They stood still in single file; every one of them watching avidly.

  Mitchel and Dominic stopped outside the shack. As they positioned themselves on either side of the make-shift doorway, Dominic began to bounce up and down on adrenaline filled legs. Mitchel roared. It sounded like a battle cry and echoed off the graffiti-co
vered concrete walls, sending a flock of sleeping crows soaring into the rain-filled sky.

  From underneath the plastic sheeting, a man came into view. Skinny and gaunt with his pale arms raised high in the air, his body positioning was crouched and defensive. Inaudible words were exchanged before Mitchel struck him hard in the face with the handle of his cleaver, felling the man in a single blow. Spurred into action, Dominic, who had remained static until that point, turned and ducked inside the shelter. Mitchel swung his machete at the fallen man. A life-fearing scream erupted from the floor. Mitchel swung his machete again and the sound stopped.

  The General looked around sadly as the lads laughed and jostled each other like bratty children on a school trip, a few of them throwing out shrill wolf-whistles of admiration in the direction of their comrades. Save for the rusting cars, the landscape surrounding the underpass lay barren. A stream, swollen full by the sudden rain, ran perpendicular to the bridge, and a line of trees and bushes almost obscured it totally from view. He shut his eyes, listening to the water running there, fast and no doubt fresh, the old pollutants of the past long since washed away.

  Not a bad spot; in fact, it's almost beautiful, he thought to himself.

  Another scream filled the air and the General only half-turned back, watching with disinterest as Dominic emerged from the hut dragging a scared-looking, dark-haired woman by her hair. Her top had been ripped open, exposing a heavy set of breasts, and she appeared to be naked from the waist down. Excited, almost to the point of being ecstatic, Dominic let out a shrill whistle. Not waiting for any sort of approval, the rest of the group took off at a run, many of them whooping and hollering, excitedly jumping in the air, and swinging their weapons in wild, bloodthirsty arcs.

  The General felt his shoulders sag as he watched the group descend on the poor woman, like a plague of locusts on a freshly seeded field. Freshly seeded; how unintentionally apt, he thought as he made his way over slowly.