Home Planet: Apocalypse (Part 2)

by T. J. Sedgwick

  The Gamesmaster looked at me as if to challenge me on my disrespect, but then shook his head and said, “So the rules are, fight to the death, no one leaves the ring until either victory or death. Other than that, there are no rules.”

  “Great,” I said.

  “Now I must leave,” he said, making for the baying crowd. He turned back and added, “Oh and Outlander, enjoy every minute—you don’t have many left.”

  We’ll see about that, I thought as the crowd roared with the Gamesmaster’s entrance.

  He took position on a small stage on the opposite side to Valdus and lapped up the applause. The noise died down.

  “Our first match today is between the criminal brothers George and Regus Huxley,” he said, pausing for the shouts and boos.

  Then he proceeded to read out their crimes, none of which deserved this. The guards brought out two small, frightened looking young men in the same sack-like attire as Myleene wore. They unshackled them, pushing one into the pit and kicking the other off the rope ladder as he tried to climb down. Already shaken and injured, another guard tossed in a couple of spears—copper water pipes with a diamond-shaped piece of sheet metal tied onto them. They looked far from lethal. The vitriol from the crowd was unbelievable—even small children watched from the front and spat down at the poor guys.

  From behind the lockers, just feet away, came a bare-chested, powerfully built man with a bald head, wearing sturdy boots and bloodstained jeans. Although a few inches shorter than me, he carried the bulk of both fat and muscle—quite an achievement in this impoverished place. His ugly, broken-nose face turned to me, eyeing me like a predator sizing up its prey before leaving to a rapturous welcome. He jumped into the pit with surprising agility and turned to catch the nail-enhanced club thrown to him.

  As the Gamesmaster introduced him, Baltan swung his club menacingly, his sadistic grin reserved only for his scared opponents. The guards moved me outside for a better view.

  Why not? If I’m next, I may as well see how he fights, I thought.

  “The Games will commence on your mark, Great Marshal,” the Gamesmaster said, sycophantically.

  And with the stroke of Valdus’s hand, the club-wielding beast charged the younger brother. As he did, the older one peeled intelligently right, thrusting his spear and causing Baltan to stop and focus on him instead. The older brother just escaped a scything undercut, falling backwards against the pool wall. He desperately threw the spear at Baltan, missing completely as the younger brother attacked from behind. He raised his spear and looked like he’d get it into the beast’s shoulder blade, but Baltan was too quick and pivoted one-eighty in the wake of his baseball-like swing. The younger brother’s spear arm stopped as the club’s nails buried themselves in his cheek, smashing it into a bloody mess. His eyes rolled back and he collapsed as his legs turned to jelly. The masses cheered and jeered, their bloodlust still unsated. The older brother, having just witnessed his sibling’s death, ran to the near end of the pit unable to retrieve his spear. He looked to Valdus, kneeling and begging for mercy. The tyrant just shrugged.

  “The Games will continue,” said the Gamesmaster, gleefully interpreting the command.

  Baltan grinned menacingly as he advanced on his quivering quarry. He bounded toward him full of fury, lunging forward, swiping the club through the smaller man’s knees as if they weren’t there. It sent him flailing to the floor in a messy heap. He picked him up by the throat one-handed watching his pain with apparent delight.

  “Sadistic bastard,” I muttered, wanting to take him down more than ever.

  Baltan threw the terrified guy to the ground, bowed to a cheering Valdus, then brought the club down on his victim’s face. The psychopathic victor spent the next five minutes lapping up admiration as the guards dragged away the two corpses. Going in that ring was as good as a death sentence. And my turn was next.

  “And now we have the second and final match of the morning. Baltan the Champion fights the criminal Outlander,” said the Gamesmaster to more hisses, jeers and boos as he pointed at me accusingly.

  Definitely an away game, I thought as I smiled and waved, attempting to put a brave face on it.

  In truth, I was nervous as hell, but who wouldn’t be? After all, bravery is being afraid and still doing what you’ve got to do. Besides, I’d seen the bald brute’s weaknesses. Now, I just needed to find out what weapon I’d get—presumably a makeshift spear.

  The Gamesmaster read out my so-called crimes to a more hostile reaction. Baltan stood at the far end, grinning and waving for me to get into the pit. So I jumped right in and made a gesture for my weapon.

  “Oh, I suppose we should give him his weapon!” said the Gamesmaster, pointing to one of the guards.

  Number-80 emerged with my survival knife and threw it to the floor beside me.

  “How about my gun?” I called up to him.

  Worth a try, I thought, picking up the knife and wondering how a nine-inch blade would defeat a maniac with a club.

  I slashed the knife back and forth, getting a feel for its grip and its center of gravity; then I made some stabbing motions. With another stroke of his murdering hand, Valdus started the bout as the crowd went wild.

  High on his last win, Baltan jogged straight at me, his club cutting the air like a propeller. I stayed light on my feet and five yards out he accelerated with the club raised, simultaneously striking down at me. I sidestepped, with the trailing knife lightly slashing his chest, the sharp steel parting his flesh like butter. He turned to face me, furious, his club jabbing me away. Next came a series of more restrained, probing jabs with the end-spike. I could see his strategy as he continued to back me into a corner. Then, the end-spike stabbed me in the solar plexus, surprising me with his reach. I feigned injury but wasn’t hurt at all, my ballistics vest doing its unseen work. He looked pleased with himself, grinning at his first strike. With timing critical, I waited for his next foray. Moments later, it came and I slashed his club hand, the steel blade contacting bone. He dropped the weapon and instinctively charged me, but got a knee in the groin and an elbow to the back of the head, sending him floorward. I stamped down, but he rolled aside with aplomb, grabbing my leg and upsetting my balance until I fell six feet away. He scrambled across the concrete, having grabbed his club and reared up ready to pummel me. This time, I rolled away and his strike hit the concrete, the screams of the crowd a distant disturbance. I pounced to my feet and so did he and we circled each like dueling dogs—me thrusting and slashing, trying to draw more blood, and Baltan clumsily swinging his club. The bastard was sweating buckets, but so was I and lack of food hadn’t helped my energy levels. The longer this war of attrition continued, the worse my chances. So I waited for my moment … and then it came as he went for power over skill, raising the club for the killer head strike. I took a big step back, drew back the knife and threw it. Time seemed to slow. The crowd held its breath and the knife sailed straight and true, embedding itself in his throat. His club still came down, but the intensity had left it before he dropped the weapon and reached for his spurting carotid. His eyes grew wide and he fell to his knees as the futile attempt to preserve his life force continued. Color drained from his face to a near-silent crowd. Only the occasional gasp of disbelief broke the silence. I stopped looking at the dying brute and locked eyes with Valdus the Insane. I heard the body of Baltan fall forward into its own blood and watched Valdus’s face break into a smile. He started nodding and clapping, rising to his feet as his subjects mimicked him. I wanted to throw the knife in his throat, but the guards had guns and you don’t take a knife to a gunfight.

  I shook my head and climbed out of the pit. I’d seen enough death and gore in this sick bastard’s domain.

  But was it enough to win my freedom? I thought.

  They hadn’t even told me how many Games I had to win.

  I kept on going and sat down in the locker room while the nauseating Gamesmaster blathered on.

  ***


  The guards told me I had another Games set for two days’ time and they left me in my cell with a tray of food as a reward. It wasn’t much to write home about—just a bowl of gruel, some raw cabbage and mushrooms, a sugary drink and some chocolate. The chocolate was so bad that it could’ve cured the most die-hard chocoholic. I shared half with Myleene who’d been in her cell while I fought for other people’s pleasure.

  “Thank you, Luker. This means so much to me,” she said, humbly.

  She was a pleasant, simple young woman even after the brutality of her treatment here—she deserved much better.

  “My pleasure.”

  “You know they won’t let you win, don’t you? You have an unstated number of matches, which means they’ll go on weakening you in here until you meet your match. Then they will feed your body to the dogs.”

  A bit too much information. The thought was chilling and yet another reminder of Valdus’s inhumanity.

  “I’m scared,” she said.

  “About your fight tomorrow?”

  “No, about something else, something tonight. Come closer, to the edge of your cell.”

  And then she told me her secret.

  14

  Friday, 3 September 2066, South Central, Los Angeles

  Three months of hell had seen Luker bury his beloved Juliet and Ryan, their unborn son. It wasn’t just a tragedy for Luker, but for Juliet’s family and friends too, including Luker’s sister, Nikki. Juliet’s work—the Forever Project—would soon help millions of people around the world live on in a virtual world, work her company carried on as her legacy. In the next year, they aimed to start a revolution in human lifespan, creating a new eternal class of being which could grow wise through the centuries. With this wisdom, they could provide a beacon, a guiding light to all of humanity and a virtual heaven inside the ones and zeros of a computer network. But it all came too late for Juliet, its principal architect.

  His bereavement leave had ended six weeks ago and his colleagues at the LAPD were no closer to finding the murdering son of a bitch that killed her. But Luker had not sat idly by while the investigation went nowhere. The LAPD had rules and ethics, and red lines that it crossed at the peril of hundred million dollar lawsuits. Apparently, they extended civil liberties to scumbags as well as everyone else. Innocent until proven guilty was all very well but somewhere out there was the psychopath that had killed Juliet. And baby Ryan. The rulebook didn’t apply anymore, not for Luker, not on this case. The gloves were well and truly off and he would get down and dirty in the gutter to see justice done.

  The hacker who went by the tag Seeker had charged a king’s ransom, taking a large chunk of Luker’s savings. After two weeks of nothing from the shadowy character, Luker was beginning to wonder if Seeker had ripped him off. He had begun to think all the online recommendations were a big scam. After all, if Seeker could hack people’s devices, then it’d be child’s play to shill a few recommendations and ratings. Then week three rolled around and Seeker delivered a name and a driver’s license photo matching the security camera footage from the crime scene. Two days later, he sent a chronological map of the scumbag’s last two weeks’ locations from his smartwatch. The final thing came three days after that. Seeker had clearly broken into the LAPD’s servers and confirmed what Luker had himself checked out—that one Dwayne Tyla Jones had already been questioned and released and was no longer considered a suspect.

  Now back on duty, Luker cruised the mean streets of South Central in the dead of night in his autonomous squad car. It was an experimental lone patrol—unless one considered the deployable droid a partner. It sat there in the same seat as Blanco would have and, like him, it was humanoid, too. But it was dead to the world unless activated by the human officer or remotely by Control. Luker had the car park itself at a fast-food joint on the rain soaked lot. He got out, leaving his GPS-enabled body camera clipped to the droid’s chest, then took a stroll around the back of the burger place to the poorly lit residential street. A dog barked and the crack of distant gunfire drifted through the rain. A hooker stood with her friend on the street corner ahead as a John pulled alongside. She pointed over toward Luker and the client sped off, warned of the approaching cop. His patrol took him within a block of the back alley where Jones plied his trade, selling hits to the youths and hookers that inhabited the neighborhood. Luker stuck to the shadows until reaching the single family home—a shabby, once-white house with chain link fence. With no one watching, he flanked around the back and peeked through the overgrown backyard and into the adjacent alleyway. The location data from Seeker indicated that the target spent time here most nights. Luker drew down his visor and activated his night vision. A guy in a dark hoodie stood talking to a young black boy, hardly into his teens. The hood was down revealing the face of Dwayne Tyla Jones. Rage grew inside Luker’s very soul as he studied the smug parasite. It took every ounce of his self-control to resist blowing him away there and then. But he needed to do this the right way, so he slipped into the night and back to his waiting patrol car.

  ***

  Monday, 6 September 2066, South Central, Los Angeles

  The sun had set just after seven and three hours later darkness ruled, bringing out the usual cast of lowlifes and chancers. Tonight, Luker entered their world, having walked miles from where the taxi had dropped him with his bag of clothes. The transformation from a neatly dressed, upstanding citizen to a broken drug addict took just fifteen minutes. Applying the temporary tattoos on his arms, neck and face in the bathroom stall with only a hand-held mirror was the hardest thing. Next, followed the fake beard and the outfit. Finding and then dirtying some suitable clothing had been a project in itself due to his height and build but a Salvation Army Family Store had come up trumps, providing the baggy pants, basketball jersey and sports hat he needed. The branded sneakers finished off the look, allowing his old shoes to go in the trash can along with the rest of his clothes. The imposing Luker had shed his skin and now regarded himself in the mirror of the beat-up bathroom. He practiced his gait, part limp, part shuffle, his head lowered and shoulders hunched. Maybe acting ran in the family, he thought, satisfied with his performance. But no actor, however good, could disguise his stature. Still, it was too late now for a change of plan. A last check of the unregistered 9mm in his waistband signaled that the operation was a go. He walked out of the poorly managed fast-food joint near the highway off ramp and under the elevated highway.

  Another couple of miles past bums and hookers, crack dens and house parties brought him to the right street. Luker felt for his piece and flicked off the safety, leaving it tucked in his pants in the small of this back. His stomach lurched momentarily before anger suppressed the weaker emotion. He couldn’t fail Juliet now. Justice would be done, his way. He shuffled along the sidewalk and took a right into the alleyway between a corrugated iron fence on the left and the overgrown bushes on the right. A familiar form skulked in the shadows where the light from the distant streetlamps grew weak. The man who had come to represent pure evil in Luker’s mind spoke to his smartwatch then looked Luker’s way.

  “Whaddya need, friend?”

  His arrogant voice made Luker feel nauseous, his use of the word friend as further insult. Luker continued to limp forward, coughing profusely, delaying his response.

  Five yards out, Luker said, “Some crank, man ...”

  Jones chuckled, his smirk unable to disguise the years of addiction and abuse. Luker couldn’t tell his age—he could’ve been anywhere from early twenties to late thirties. Who cared? However long he’d lived, this would be his last day alive.

  He eyed Luker drawing near until suspicion replaced his smirk.

  “Haven’t seen you ‘round here before. Who the fuck are ya?”

  Luker lost the limp and kept on walking, standing tall and upright as Jones reached for his piece. Lunging forward, Luker grabbed his gun arm, squeezing his wrist until he dropped the weapon. As Jones’ face turned from anger to panic, Luker landed
a devastating right hook, knocking the smaller man to the ground. Unwilling to cut up his knuckles further on this trash, he reached into his baggy pants and took out his baton. Jones deserved some punishment before hearing his indictment. He waited for Jones to stand. He looked unsteady but defiant before looking up and spitting blood at Luker’s face. He kept his cool and wiped it away. This son of a bitch really didn’t know what was good for him. Luker gritted his teeth then jabbed Jones in the throat with the metal nightstick causing him to reflexively grasp his neck. The baton swooped through the night air and smashed into his knee, sending him back to the ground against the fence. Luker leaned down and, placing the baton under Jones’s neck two-handed, lifted him to his feet.

  Jones winced and croaked, “Just take the crank…”

  Luker ignored him and kept him pinned there one handed while reaching into his pants for something. He took out a photo of Juliet.

  “You know who this is?” he growled.

  Jones smirked.

  “Nah, but I’d like to fuck her!”

  His answer earned him a crunching head butt to the nose. When Luker held up the photo again, Jones’s fight had left him.

  “Her name is Juliet. That is the woman I love. The woman you murdered, you son of a bitch.”

  Realization dawned over his battered face.

  Luker put away the photo and showed the second print.

  “She was eight months pregnant. This was our little baby boy growing inside her. You …you murdering motherfucker … You killed him too!” he said, his voice rising with emotion. “You make me sick!” he shouted.

  Jones said nothing, but his eyes were no longer fixed on Luker. Luker followed his gaze down the alley to the three gun-wielding gangsters strutting closer.