by Burks, John
Still, he didn’t know if he could do it or not.
“How did it taste?” he asked, genuinely curious. He imagined it like pork, like the old tales of ‘long pork’, but really had no idea.
“It tasted like shit.” Darius said. “But I don’t know that it was the meat. I think it was more the preparation. It was basically just meat and water, with whatever little bit of extra stuff people put in.”
“That was interesting,” John commented. “Even here, under these circumstances, these people pull together and support each other. I’ve seen others in the outside world that couldn’t hold a candle to these people’s sense of community.”
“I don’t know if it’s voluntary,” Darius offered. “Block could very well send his goons out into the crowd and just take what he wanted to add to the pot.”
“But they don’t, despite the obvious threat,” John replied, referring to the men with the spears. “They don’t have to be coerced into helping the community. They do it out of love. And have you seen the participants as they face off against each other in the game? These aren’t hardened criminals or slaves facing off against each other, they are friends.”
“More than that,” Darius agreed. “They are family. They take joy in the fact that, if they die, their brothers and sisters will live on by consuming them.”
Amanda turned to the side and dry heaved. The three men watched her until she was finished, wiping the saliva from her mouth. “You people disgust me. This isn’t Swiss Family Robinson. These are cannibals, period, and you two,” she said, pointing to Darius and John, “are no better.”
“You’ll either eat it or you’ll die, Amanda,” John told her. “The quicker you come to terms with the situation, the better chance you’ll have at surviving this.”
“What, so I can be a 60-year-old hag without hands? All for the entertainment of some asshole watching it like it was a football game?”
“Better no hands than being dead,” Darius said softly, looking at his own large hands.
“Is it?” Steven asked. “Is it really better than being dead? Is life here, like this, worth anything?”
“It is to me,” Darius told him, smiling. “And I’m going to live through this, period.”
Chapter Five
Steven awoke with Rebecca lying beside him, each sharing in their mutual warmth. He ran his hand up her stomach, feeling her heart beat between her breasts. He was unsure of when she’d laid down next to him, the hunger and exhaustion taking over early in the evening. For a few moments he could forget where they were and what had happened to him. For a few moments it was just he and his wife.
And the girl, of course, he thought, finally noticing her lying on the other side of his wife, his wife’s arm draped over her. He didn’t know how healthy her relationship was with the girl, considering her mental state when they’d arrived, but he resolved not to get in the way of it, despite the jealousy he felt. If she wanted this little girl to fill the spot in her heart that the loss of the boys had caused, he could see no fault in that. It could be good for her or, if something were to happen to the girl, it could kill her. He just didn’t know.
He felt her stir, her hand going to his and holding it tightly. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” she replied and turned over, holding him. “I’m sorry about yesterday.”
“Don’t be,” he told her. “I completely understand. I can’t blame you, all things considered.”
“I loved them, Steven,” she said, a tear forming beneath her eye. “I really did love them.”
“I know you did,” he said, pushing her hair out of her face. “And they loved you.”
They looked into each other’s eyes a few moments, not saying anything else, and for that few moments, the Game, the Cave…none of it meant anything. As long as he had Rebecca at his side, he could do anything.
“I’m going to look for something to make us some sort of shelter today,” he told her. “And something for you and Mia to lie on besides mud and rock.”
Rebecca beamed. “Thank you Steven. She…she needs us.”
“I know,” he told her, though he didn’t. Looking at the little mute girl and knowing she had probably spent the majority of her life inside the Cave, he doubted she needed much from them. She had the look of a survivor about her like the majority of the residents of the Cave.
The sounds of the Cave waking filled the air. There were babies crying, people crying mixed with the sounds of laughter. He was amazed how, in the worst of situations, life went on. The people didn’t get time to wake up easy and slowly as the alarm indicating it was time for the Game drowned out all other sounds. Hurriedly people stood up and made their way out into the canyon.
The morning air was crisp and cool, the smell of seawater thick on the breeze. Clouds lofted lazily by and a group of seagulls circled high above, trained by the event to expect a free meal at its conclusion. Steven held Rebecca’s hand tightly, watching the screen as the cartoon gladiators repeated their eternal dance of combat, the one on the left always impaling the one on the right with his short sword. The crowd cheered, despite the early hour, and the children yelled and skipped along merrily. Steven thought it was something like Pavlov’s dog. The instant the sign came on, the crowd was in festival mood, hoping that they might eat, and hoping even more that they might get to participate in the death match in order to facilitate their advance up the Cave’s pecking order.
“Steven,” Rebecca whispered in his ear, “I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“I hope…” she mumbled and then stopped.
“You hope what?”
“I hope you survive.”
“That’s an odd thing to say,” he told her, but she turned away, intent on the digital billboard.
The dying gladiator finished his death throes and flopped on the simulated ground while the other stood above him, sword and fist stretched above his head. The crowd cheered. The image faded, replaced by two numbers and the letter K.
There was something familiar about the first number on the left, 3456723. It took him several moments to realize it was the number tattooed on his arm, still scab-covered and oozing pus. He wanted, in that instant, to rip the number from his arm, to tear the skin away and fling it into the wind. His heart went from easy to turbo in a second flat, and he felt the sweat on his forehead, despite the cool morning air, run down his face.
He was going to die. He knew that without a doubt, not even knowing who his opponent was going to be. He felt the letter K, for kill, emblazoned on his chest like the Scarlet Letter.
His feet were locked in place, and Rebecca wouldn’t look him in the eye as he panicked. Darius strode forward and slapped him hard, snapping him alert.
“You’ve got to fight now, Steven.”
“I don’t know how,” he whimpered.
“You’re going to learn really fast or you’re going to die just as fast. Look, just go for his knees. Try to get one hard and send him to the ground. If you can get on top of him you can choke him or something.”
“I can’t do it.”
“You do it or you die and you’re dinner tonight. I don’t really care either way, but…” Darius paused, looking back and forth between Rebecca and Steven.
“But what.”
“But nothing,” Darius replied, his uncertainty gone. “Just get out there and kill the guy. Look at him…he isn’t much. No more than you.”
He looked across the canyon’s floor to where his opponent, a skinny, one-handed Asian man about his size, was walking toward the center. He looked just as scared as Steven felt, but there was one mark across the man’s forehead, indicating he’d already won at least one Game. He wondered if that was how he’d lost his right hand, and then he hoped that the guy was right-handed. At least that would be one advantage, as he couldn’t see the man’s stump, cut at the wrist, being very effective as a weapon.
He turned one last time to Rebecca who managed a smile. Had
she known about this in advance?
“Go, Steven,” Darius ordered, shoving him out into the open.
Steven felt his world crumble as he took the first tentative steps out. The other man strode toward him, a smile on his face and his left hand outstretched to shake. Numb, he took the other man’s hand.
“I don’t know you,” the Asian said, “but I’m sorry you have to die.”
“Me too.”
“Hopefully my victory and your body will be enough to feed the Cave tonight. Die with honor,” he said before stepping back and punching Steven in the face with his stumped right arm. Steven felt his nose break and blood rush free like water from a broken dam.
So much for his stump not being a weapon, Steven thought as the Asian advanced, swinging his right arm like a club. Steven stumbled backwards, his arms flailing out in front of him like a scared little girl. He caught a rock and stumbled backwards, falling onto his back.
“Ha!” the Asian man screamed as he leapt up in the air, his knee in front of him, ready to come down on Steven’s chest like a wrester.
He managed to roll to the side quickly and the Asian came down, knee first, on hard, stone floor, instantly shattering the joint. The man cried out in pain, grabbing at his pulped knee. In a hoped-for flash of glory, he’d destroyed his knee, disabling it so that he couldn’t stand. He rose to his good knee, screaming as he grasped the bad one. Steven scrambled up and lunged at the man, tackling him, and driving him down. The knee was all he could think about as he punched the man several times in the face. Darius said I have to get his knee.
The Asian tried to climb away from him but Steven stood, looking around as if the cops were about to show up and bust him for assault. He saw the entire crowd cheering but could only hear his own breathing and his own heart racing like a NASCAR. The Asian man tried to crawl further away and Steven, again, could only think of one thing.
Go for the knees. It didn’t matter to him that the man’s knee was already destroyed. He stood and then jumped down on it, feeling the further crunch of bones under his bare feet. He jumped again, trying to go higher and come down harder, and then again. He jumped until the man’s screams were just background noise.
Panting, he sat down on the man’s back and grasped his head in both hands, pulling it backwards until the Asian bent like a bow. He pulled as hard as he could, not sure of what he was doing, but trying to rip the man’s head from his neck never the less. He worked his fingers around until he found his opponent’s eyes and dug in deeply, the wet, squishy eyes giving way to wet, squishy brain. The Asian screamed out in agony worse than anything Steven had ever heard and then went still.
He let the man’s head go and it hit the stone floor with a sickening thud. He looked at the blood and gore covering his hands and felt…he felt good. As the adrenaline rushed through him and the crowd cheered, he felt glorious.
He stood and raised his hands above his head in triumph, soaking in the crowd. For a moment he didn’t feel any guilt, any horror at taking another human being’s life. For a few moments he felt no remorse, no philosophical agony. For just a few moments, as he turned in slow circles, letting the crowd see their winner, he felt nothing but glory. For a few seconds he understood, with absolute clarity, what the Game was all about. It was a feeling of elation unlike any he’d ever had, greater even than seeing the birth of his two sons. It was glory, pure and simple.
Looking at the dead Asian it only took a few seconds for the guilt to replace the glory, and then, even more quickly, anger replaced the guilt. How dare someone force a man into this position? They’d have to pay, not just for killing his two sons, but for murdering his humanity.
* * *
Darius couldn’t help but laugh at the fool Steven prancing around the arena like he’d just won a battle at the Colosseum. The reality that he’d just murdered a man would set in later. And Steven, whom Darius considered the epitome of suburban white Republican male, would break down and cry like a little baby. He’d mourn the loss of someone he didn’t know even as he was partaking of the man’s flesh.
“He got very lucky,” John said, seeming to read his mind.
“Yeah, if the little Asian hadn’t tried the wrestling move right off the bat, he probably could have beaten Steven to death with his stump.”
John laughed and Darius joined him. “Can you imagine? Getting beaten to death by an amputee’s stump?”
“I don’t think it’s very funny,” Amanda said, just joining them.
“You don’t think anything is funny,” John told her. “But if you don’t have humor, you won’t have anything.”
“Yeah, girl,” Darius said. “Laugh a little.”
“Fuck you,” she spat, locking eyes with the big man. “I hope your number comes up and I hope you die. Then I’m going to eat part of you and shit you out, then stomp on the shit.” She was nearly hysterical and Darius was sure she was about to try and hit him again when the next event’s numbers, four of them, popped up on the digital billboard.
“Crap,” he said, looking at his arm, and then turning to Amanda. “You might get your chance.”
The four numbers were again followed by the letter K, and Friday night wrestling cage matches came to mind. He scanned the crowd for the other three contestants and saw them, two good-sized men whom he thought ran with Block, and one woman, as they stepped out of the crowd.
“Die, motherfucker,” Amanda spat again, the venom in her voice akin to a rattlesnake’s.
“Might happen,” Darius said, shrugging. “Might not. It won’t change the fact that I’m not who you think I am.”
“Go die,” Amanda ordered, fading back into the crowd.
He shrugged again and took John’s hand. “Well, wish me luck.”
“I don’t think you’ll need it, Darius.”
Darius started to walk away but turned back and said, “Hey, if I die, make sure you piss in the pot before they eat me.”
John chuckled as he said, “Yeah, no problem.”
The other three men and the woman were shaking and hugging in the center of the canyon, all familiar with each other. The smiled grimly as he approached. The woman came to him and hugged him. “I wish I’d gotten the opportunity to get to know you.”
She wasn’t saying it as if she knew she was going to win. She simply knew that there would only be one winner from the match and that person would never have the chance to get to know him, the newcomer. It was a sweet sentiment, he thought, as she turned away. He grabbed her rough, greasy hair at the back of her head and jerked her back towards him. Then, with hands on each of her ears, he twisted her head until her neck snapped. She slid to the ground, instantly dead from the broken neck, as Darius stared the other two men down.
The crowd was silent for a moment, digesting the quick nature of Darius’ kill, and then they erupted as one.
He cracked his neck both directions and popped his knuckles as the other two men stared at him.
“Well, aren’t you hungry?”
“That wasn’t very friendly,” one growled, circling Darius like a cat ready to pounce.
“Yeah, well, this doesn’t seem like the friendliest of places.”
The man rushed him and Darius sidestepped, leaving his left leg out far enough that the man tripped over it, rolling forward. While he was distracted, the other man, a medium built, heavily muscled black man, rushed forward like a lineman, intent on tackling Darius. Darius took the man full on in the chest and then fell backward but used his own momentum to hurl the man over his head, behind him. He rolled all the way over and came up on his knees just as the first man had recovered and lunged at him.
He stayed low as the other man bear-crawled towards him on all fours, eyes blazing with anger. He waited until he was close, then came up and drove his palm into the man’s nose, driving bone and cartilage up into his brain. He died instantly, but his body crawled on a few steps anyway before collapsing, late to get the message from the brain that its services woul
d no longer be needed.
Darius swung around as the last man got to his feet and rushed him before he had a chance to ready himself. The man caught him in the chest and he felt pus burst through torn stitches on his abdomen as he was driven backwards. Darius didn’t have a good enough hold on the man to flip him backwards and ended up with him sitting on his chest, reaching for his eyes. He held the smaller man’s hands away from his face and then rolled to the side, dislodging him, but still maintaining his death grip on his wrists.
