The Pompeii Disaster

by Dan Gutman

  “Oceanus! Oceanus! Oceanus!”

  Luke could hardly believe he had defeated a man so much bigger and stronger.

  “You’re alive!” David yelled, running over to hug his friend. “I can’t believe you survived!”

  “It wasn’t easy,” Luke told him as he gingerly sat down on the dirt against the stone wall.

  “You’re a mess, dude,” David said.

  “You should see the other guy,” Luke replied, wiping some blood off his arm.

  “Is he dead?”

  “No,” Luke said, a little defensively. “Are you crazy? Do you think I could kill a man? They were booing me because I didn’t kill him. I did whack the guy pretty good, though. Knocked him out. And you know what I did after that?”

  “What?”

  “I did a bat flip with the sword,” Luke said, trying not to laugh.

  “You are kidding me.”

  For readers who don’t understand the point of a bat flip, a short explanation—after baseball players hit a home run, sometimes they will flip their bat in the air as a gesture of triumph. The opposing team, and especially the pitcher, view it as a provocative gesture. And it is. The batter is sort of sticking it in the face of the pitcher.

  “Those nuts in the crowd were freaking out,” Luke said. “They never saw anything like that before.”

  David looked at the timer. There were 34 minutes left.

  “Listen, we need to get out of here,” he said. “We’re running out of time.”

  “Can I just sit here for a minute?” Luke asked. “I’m wiped out.”

  While Luke rested, David looked around for a way out of the Palestra Grande. There was no roof over it. Just a low wall on all four sides. A couple of guards were hanging around near the gates, but they didn’t look like they were paying close attention.

  “I think we might be able to climb that wall,” David said, gesturing toward a corner where a statue was positioned a few feet away from the edge.

  “You think so?” Luke asked, not all that excited about the thought of another physical challenge.

  “We’ve got to try,” David said. “Otherwise we’re just stuck here when Vesuvius erupts. Come on, I’ll help you up, and then you pull me up.”

  “Okay,” Luke said wearily as he struggled to his feet.

  They casually strolled over to the corner, doing their best to avoid attracting any attention to themselves. David quickly clasped his hands together to create a step so Luke could hoist himself up on the bottom of the statue. Luke planted his foot on it. Then he pulled himself up so he was standing on the statue’s pedestal.

  “Good,” David said. “Now, quick, pull me up.”

  That’s when Fred the Red came running over, with two guards holding long spears.

  “Oceanus! Hilarius!” he shouted. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “We’re, uh . . . just exercising,” Luke explained lamely as he jumped down from the pedestal. “We need to work on our quads.”

  Fred the Red wasn’t buying it.

  “Hilarius!” he shouted. “Come with me! Now!”

  “Why? What did I do?”

  “Nothing yet,” said Fred the Red. “You are next.”

  “Next?” David asked, backing away. “Next for what?”

  “What do you think, stupid slave?” Fred the Red said, slapping him. “Next to fight! Get your helmet! The citizens are waiting for their entertainment.”

  “W-what?!” David stammered. “B-but I never . . . I don’t know how to fight.”

  “Guards!” Fred the Red shouted. “Help Hilarius get ready for battle.”

  As the guards seized David by the arms, Luke pleaded on behalf of his friend.

  “Can’t you pick one of the other guys?” Luke asked. “He’ll get killed out there!”

  “So?” Fred the Red said. “That is not my concern. Guards, take Hilarius away!”

  Luke begged for just one minute alone with his friend, and Fred the Red granted it.

  “Listen to me,” Luke whispered to David. “I know a trick. It worked for me. It will work for you too.”

  “Yeah? What?”

  “Get the guy close to you, close enough to look in his eyes,” Luke said. “Then, act really terrified, point over his head, and shout, ‘Look out behind you!’ When he turns around to see what’s behind him, smack him as hard as you can on the side of his head with your sword. He won’t know what hit him.”

  “That actually worked?” David asked, disbelieving. “That’s the oldest trick in the book.”

  “It’s the year 79,” Luke replied. “They don’t have books.”

  “Okay, I’ll try it,” David said as the guards grabbed him by the arms again.

  “Here is your weapon, Hilarius,” said Fred the Red as he handed David a long spear with three short prongs at the end. It looked like an oversized fork. In later centuries, it would be called a trident.

  David looked at it with disbelief.

  “Are you joking?” he asked. “What am I supposed to do with this thing? Catch a fish?”

  “It is a very dangerous weapon,” Fred the Red assured him. “It is the weapon of Neptune, the god of the sea.”

  “It looks like a toy,” David complained. “How come Luke got a regular sword and I have to use this thing?”

  “It is not your only weapon,” Fred the Red said as one of the guards handed him a cloth bag. “You will have something else as well.”

  He reached into the bag and pulled out a large net made from thick rope.

  “Really?” David asked. “You’re giving me a net? Am I going to be playing volleyball out there? You’re putting me on, right?”

  But it was no joke. Just as some gladiators fought with two long swords and some fought with one curved short sword, others were given a trident and a net. As I mentioned earlier, the Romans liked to mix things up to keep the crowd interested.

  David wasn’t happy, obviously.

  “That’s it?” he asked. “All I get is a weird-looking fork and a net? I need a hand grenade, or a bazooka, or something. Don’t I at least get a shield?”

  “You are a net-man!” Fred the Red told him, as if that explained it all.

  “This is it,” David mumbled, shaking his head. “I’m gonna die.”

  But he had no choice. David put on his helmet and picked up the trident and net. Fred the Red led him to the same gate where Luke had entered the arena. David waited for the gate to be pulled up and his name to be announced. He was trembling with fear. Luke broke away from the guard who was holding him and ran over to his friend.

  “You can do this, David!” Luke said. “I survived. So can you.”

  “I’m scared, man.”

  “Look, the other guy is gonna have the same weapons you do,” Luke told him. “So it will be a fair fight. Remember what I told you. Use the look-behind-you trick. It’ll work. Good luck.”

  “What if I don’t make it?” David asked. “What if the guy is twice my size?”

  “Keep telling yourself that he’s just a man,” Luke said, his hand on David’s shoulder. “He gets up in the morning and puts his pants on one leg at a time, just like you do.”

  “Just a man,” repeated David, closing his eyes. “Just a man.”

  “Good. Now go get him!”

  “Our next gladiator,” announced the guy with the megaphone, “another slave battling for the first time in Pompeii, is the one, the only . . . Hilarius!”

  The gate was raised slowly. David stepped out into the light and the gate lowered behind him. The crowd erupted into cheers. The people of Pompeii had rarely seen a gladiator with dark skin. The novelty was fascinating to them.

  “Hilarius! Hilarius! Hilarius!”

  “My name is David!” shouted David.

  He stood there and looked all around the arena, just as Luke had when he was introduced. Then he peered at the gate on the other side to see who would emerge from that end.

  “And now . . . his opponent,”
announced the guy with the megaphone, “all the way from Naples . . . is the brave, the strong . . . They call him . . . Panthera!”

  The gate was slowly lifted up. And out of the gate walked . . .

  A tiger.

  “Oh, shoot!” David shouted.

  CHAPTER 16

  WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO NOW?

  YES, IT WAS A TIGER. PANTHERA TIGRIS, IF YOU want to get technical about it.

  Just like human life during the Roman Empire, animal lives were cheap. Teams of hunters were sent all over Europe, Asia, and Africa with instructions to bring back deer, bears, lions, tigers, and leopards, as well as more unusual animals to excite the crowd—elephants, rhinos, giraffes, ostriches, and crocodiles. Sometimes the animals would be sacrificed in hopes of pleasing the gods. And sometimes they became part of the gladiator shows, either fighting against other animals or against people. Gladiators who fought animals were called venatores.

  “Hilarius! Hilarius! Hilarius!” chanted the crowd.

  David just stood there in front of the iron gate for a moment, stunned. He had assumed his opponent would be some kind of a beast, but he wasn’t expecting a real beast. The crowd roared in approval when the tiger entered the arena.

  “He’s just a man, eh?” David asked angrily without turning around to face Luke, who was a few feet behind him on the other side of the gate.

  “I’m sorry, dude,” Luke said.

  “He puts his pants on one leg at a time, eh?” David asked.

  “Really sorry.”

  “He’ll have the same weapons as I do, eh?” David asked.

  “Seriously, man. I’m so sorry.”

  “I guess he won’t be falling for the old look-behind-you trick, will he?” David asked.

  The tiger slinked around, sniffing the ground. It didn’t seem to notice there was a gladiator on the other side of the arena.

  “How come you got to fight a plain old guy,” he shouted behind him at Luke, “and I have to fight a tiger?”

  “I’m so sorry, dude,” Luke replied. “I had no idea.”

  “What am I supposed to do now?” David asked.

  “Try to fend him off with that fork thing,” Luke suggested. “Keep his teeth and claws away from you.”

  “Gee, that’s a big help,” David mumbled. “I’m gonna die here.”

  “Look at it this way,” said Luke, who was always trying to look on the bright side. “You have a weapon, and he doesn’t. So you have an advantage.”

  “Yeah, but he has an advantage too,” David replied. “He’s a tiger!”

  The walls around the arena were seven feet high. David turned around and tried to climb the gate.

  “Let me back in!” he shouted through the bars. “Please! I’ll do anything!”

  “Get down, slave!” shouted the guards, poking their spears through the holes in the gate.

  David fell back down to the dirt. The crowd roared with laughter.

  Interestingly, when he was in third grade, David’s class had done a unit about endangered species. And quite coincidentally, David’s topic for his report had been tigers. He tried to remember what he had written. . . .

  Tigers: Friend or Foe?

  By David Williams, grade 3

  I love animals, and especially tigers, because tigers are cool! They are striped land animals and they are the largest of all the cat species. A tiger can weigh more than eight hundred pounds. Wow, that’s heavy. I wouldn’t want one of them to sit on me! They can run really fast, too, like thirty or forty miles an hour. And they can jump more than thirty feet. Tigers also live a long time. More than twenty-five years! They are the national animal of Bangladesh, India, Malaysia, and South Korea.

  I wouldn’t want to get into a fight with a tiger. They are carnivores. That means they eat meat. Tigers don’t usually eat humans, but sometimes they do. In fact, tigers cause more human deaths than any other wild mammal. When tigers attack a human or another animal, they usually go for the throat. They will grab onto the neck of their prey. Then they break the spinal cord. Then they pierce the windpipe. Then they sever the jugular vein. The prey dies from strangulation.

  “Oh, shoot!” David shouted again.

  The tiger looked a little confused after it entered the arena. It was startled by the sound of the crowd. It had grown up in the jungle and spent the last few weeks locked in a small cage. This was a new environment for it.

  David stood in one place like a statue, out of fear and common sense. He was trying to make himself invisible. Maybe the tiger wouldn’t notice him and just leave him alone.

  The tiger, more than anything else, was hungry. It hadn’t been fed in a few days. This was on purpose. The animals that were pitted against gladiators needed a little extra motivation to fight, so they were kept hungry. Human beings were not part of their regular diet.

  The tiger stalked around slowly, looking left and right, sniffing the ground for something to eat. Unfortunately, the only edible thing in the arena was David.

  “Hilarius! Hilarius! Hilarius!”

  “Fight, slave!” a man shouted at David. “Or are you a coward?”

  Somebody threw a rock, and it landed in the middle of the arena. The tiger saw it hit the ground out the corner of its eye and looked up. That’s when it noticed David, standing stiffly about fifty yards away. Slowly and cautiously, the tiger started moving along the wall in David’s direction.

  “I’m going to die. I’m going to die. I’m going to die,” David mumbled to himself.

  He realized he wasn’t going to win this battle by becoming invisible. He started walking backward along the wall. But he would have to come up with another strategy. The tiger was moving faster than he was, and getting closer.

  Stay calm, David thought. It’s just a big cat, right? I used to have a cat, but we had to give it away because my mom was allergic to it. I love cats. Cats are cute and cuddly—

  That’s when the tiger opened its mouth and let out a roar. They could hear it echo up in the top level of the amphitheater.

  “Oh, shoot!” David shouted again.

  The crowd gasped.

  The tiger charged toward David.

  He dropped the trident and the net and ran for his life.

  The tiger was gaining ground on him.

  Well, this is surely where the story of the Flashback Four ends, right? David is going to get eaten by the tiger while Luke, Isabel, and Julia will be stuck in Pompeii and have their all-too-brief lives ended when the volcano erupts and destroys everything in sight.

  What a sad and tragic ending, especially in a book for children. Your innocent eyes and ears probably wouldn’t be able to handle such a depressing and violent ending like that. Children’s books are supposed to end happily, with the main characters looking ahead to their bright future and further adventures. Maybe the author—not me—is going to come up with some miraculous way to get the Flashback Four out of this predicament. But he’d better do it fast, because there are only 27 minutes left on the timer, and only a few more chapters left in this book.

  From his years of playing basketball and baseball, David was in good shape. And he was fast, one of the fastest kids in his school. He took off, hugging the wall as he ran around the perimeter of the oval arena. The tiger was right behind him. The crowd was loving it, screaming and laughing at the spectacle. To them, Hilarius was hilarious.

  While tigers may be able to run forty miles per hour and the fastest human can only run about twenty-three miles per hour, this was not a particularly fast tiger. He was old, more than twenty years. That was why it was possible for the Romans to capture him in the first place.

  David was able to stay about five steps in front of the tiger all the way around the arena. In the middle of their second lap, though, both of them were starting to slow down. David was getting winded. So was the tiger. But it was relentless. It kept moving toward David, snarling and growling. It was hungry, and there was food right in front of it.

  As he compl
eted a second lap around the arena, David saw the trident and net on the ground in front of him. He rushed to scoop them up.

  “Fight, coward!” somebody shouted from the crowd. “Fight for your honor, and the honor of Rome!”

  The tiger kept advancing on David.

  He kept walking backward. As an animal lover, he didn’t want to use the sharp edge of the trident. But he would do whatever he had to do to survive.

  David started opening the net. It was bigger than he’d originally thought. Fully opened, it was about as large as a king-size bed.

  The tiger opened its mouth and roared. It had two razor-sharp teeth, perfect for cutting into flesh. David held the net up, still keeping one hand on the trident.

  The tiger wasn’t dumb. It knew it couldn’t catch David by running. The boy was too fast. Its best chance would be to gather up its remaining energy and attack with a bold leap at David’s throat.

  So that’s what it did. One last roar, and then it was all teeth and flying claws. The crowd gasped.

  David instinctively threw up the net so it was between him and the tiger. He stepped to the side like a bullfighter. Or, in his case, like a batter who gets out of the way of a fastball coming at his head.

  The tiger hit the middle of the net with its face and tumbled to the ground, rolling over so the net fell on top of it. Thinking quickly, David ran over and grabbed the edges of the net to wrap it around the struggling animal.

  “Hilarius! Hilarius! Hilarius!”

  The tiger was tangled up inside the net. It struggled to get free for a minute, but only ensnared itself more tightly in rope. It realized its situation was hopeless. It stopped fighting.

  The tiger was out of breath, panting. So was David.

  “Stab it!” somebody yelled. And then the crowd started to chant.

  “Stab it! Stab it! Stab it!”

  David looked up at the crowd disgustedly.

  “No!” he shouted.

  “Boooooooo!”

  Food and garbage rained down into the arena. The people came to see gladiators and animals killed, not captured.