Blood Games (10 page)

It was nine now.
If Nadia hadn’t gotten Scrapper patched together and accepted a blue slip, she was out of luck. The photographers had to report to the stadium. They would race through the last pictures and be vanishing from the stables even now as Ink stood beside a toy vendor. And there beside him was a shelf full of little Samson figurines for five bucks each. He’d get a dollar off each sale, and this would be the last time any of them sold. Had Samson lived and won, there would have been Samson-related merchandise in every kiosk and shop at every show from then on. Ink would have raked in a fortune.

His smile faltered as he picked
up one of the figurines. “You like him?” Ink asked a boy who was doing the same.

“He’s my favorite!” the boy exclaimed.
“I got his poster in my bedroom. He wins all his matches and he
trounced
Ajax at the Sweep! I saw that one.”

That had been one of Samson’s first competitions, and Ajax had indeed been trounced.
The boy said, “You like him, too?”

Ink put the figurine down.
“No. He died. I like Thor.”

“He didn’t die!” the boy said in disbelief, and ran away to his parents in line at the cash register.

Someone, someone that was likely here at the Games, had done this. Done it and gotten away with it forever. Ink checked the time and realized he had to get to the stables for his luggage, and then over to the atrium for the picture. Pushing through the crowds, he went back.

Nadia had gotten Scrapper’s
picture done by the skin of her teeth. Now she was going at a more casual pace through her own ministrations. When Ink said there wasn’t time for that, she said, “Calm down. It won’t be taken right at nine-thirty.”

It would be.
Competitions ran on a tight schedule, and if she could stop thinking about herself for even a moment, she would know that. He picked up his luggage and left her there. The crowds had doubled in the five minutes Ink was downstairs. The noise was so great that the voices through the speakers only penetrated as bleats. The atrium was a hike, clear on the other side, so he pushed his way through the crowds around the stadium and didn’t look back to apologize when people tripped over his rolling suitcase.

The
bigwigs had a clubroom at every stadium, the best place high up to watch the fights. Ink loved to be invited in there at post-competition parties, to sit in the cushioned seats and motion to the bartender behind the counter for a drink. The bathrooms were private to those in the club, one for men and one for women, and each one had an attendant to give out a towel at the sink. Because Ink had won at Filo, the pre-Games to the Games, he already had an invitation to the post-party here, Samson notwithstanding. That would be where he’d hit up Constanzo for a chat and determine the likelihood of his guilt.

The atrium was on the ground floor of the stadium, and semi-private.
It had been cordoned off for the managers’ photo and celebratory champagne, and after that, anyone could walk in. Take a break from the screaming crowds and the heat to walk beneath the arches and rest on benches between vases full of flowers. Dozens upon dozens of managers were there when he arrived. It was five minutes to nine-thirty, and the photographer was already ordering them into a half-circle with tall people in the back and short ones in the front. Two stadium organizers raced around to prop up the suitcases before the shorter people. They put the last one in place at 9:28. Nadia had yet to show up. At 9:29, another manager ran in flustered, and almost leaped into the half-circle. Still no Nadia.

At 9:30 on the dot, the photographer got behind his camera.
Then he told them to squeeze in closer, which they did. Ink watched the clock over the photographer’s head as everyone pushed together. At 9:30 and fifteen seconds, the photographer said, “Forget cheese! I want to hear aloha!”

“Aloha!” they all shouted, and he clicked.
Then he took one more at 9:30 and twenty-five seconds, all of them crying
aloha
again.

“Perfect!” he said, and it was done.
Nadia strolled in five minutes later. The photographer was gone and everyone had long disbanded to shake hands with each other, with the sponsor, and to accept flutes of champagne from smartly dressed busboys.

Anyone else would have learned by now that a competition was a machine.
The machine didn’t stop for one person to blot her lipstick or fix his zombie’s hair. It ground on relentlessly, so you conformed to it or got crushed. Ink sipped his champagne and told his Thor versus Samson story over and over to those who hadn’t heard it in the stables. Then he changed the subject to Hawaii, which was what most people wanted to talk about anyway. The volcanoes! Zip-lining! Snorkeling! Giant turtles! Even those who had been to Hawaii before were very excited, because few of them had been there in
style
.

“I put a
black henna hibiscus flower on my zombie for luck,” one man said, and another manager laughed because she had done the same with a rub-on tattoo.

“You got to be careful with black henna,” someone warned.
“Looks exactly like a real tattoo, but it’s got coal tar in it. Nasty reactions, some of them will have to it. You can give them blisters and scars. I’ve had that problem in my stables and stopped using it.” No one answered the party pooper, and two men whispered to one another that they had been using black henna tattoos on their zombie fighters for years and never had a problem.

Constanzo
Rolf was there, but he was in a tight discussion with Gareth Hodging that Ink didn’t feel confident about interrupting. And Cantine had brought his women along, three new ones and all having posed with him for the picture. Ink took one look at the blonde and was instantly sorry he had ever seen her. That was a woman whose beauty could drive a man to obsession. The other two had baby fat on their cheeks and a dizzy look in their eyes; the blonde was a little older, a little more angular in her face, and absolutely riveting. As the younger ones giggled mindlessly about their tight-fitting Hawaiian shirts, she was calm in a purple halter dress with hibiscus flowers on it. Leaning over Cantine, who was sitting upon a bench, she pressed a champagne flute in his hand and gave him an intimate smile. Stunning. Just stunning. If she ever looked at Ink that way, he would melt into a puddle on the floor.

Then the bigwigs reported to their clubroom, their big, beautiful clubroom where brunch was wa
iting, and Ink went to his seat among the commoners. It was eleven o’clock. They stood for the Pledge of Allegiance and sat for a patriotic song by some famous young singer he had never heard of who stumbled over the words and squinted at the teleprompter. Just as she wrapped it up, a protestor dropped over the wall and ran out into the ring. He bared his chest, where ZR was painted for Zombie Rights. Everyone booed, and then laughed as security took him down and dragged him off.

Every seat was taken around Ink
, except for the one that belonged to Nadia. She had gone to change out of her embarrassing Hawaiian outfit and inspect the vendors. The place looked like it had sold out. Two hundred and fifty thousand people burst into applause as the lights were turned on to shine into the ring. The beginning entertainments were nothing important, and only existed to keep the mood light and excited. Horses trotted around the ring, each mounted by a man or woman bearing a giant placard with a picture and name of a competitor. Everyone fell apart at the big names, pumping their fists into the air and shrieking. Maenad! Poseidon! Wrath of Neptune! The last was an adult male placed in the 36-50 age group. The zombie simply refused to bow down to time and accept its limits. He was the fine wine of aging fighters, only growing better and better with the years.

Vendors climbed up and down the steps with trays of popco
rn, hot dogs, and racks of beer, soda, and bottled water. Another one had visors for people who wanted some eye protection from the sun, and the man behind that vendor had little packets of sunscreen. The smell of the hot dogs was so good that Ink almost bought one. Yet the prices were jacked up here twice above what he could get in the stables. He just wanted to buy one like everyone else, eat and yell with bits of bun and catsup escaping from his lips. But his hand never went to his wallet. He had self-control.

At noon,
he left the exuberant crowd to fetch Thor for the adult male melee. The fad of destroying costumes in a melee was fortunately limited to children and elderly, although there had once been a fad among women competitors to do the same. But women were respected as fighters now,
real
fighters, leaving halftime for real-time. No one would be gussying up their females in princess gowns and cocktail dresses before the adult women’s melee at two. Both male and female fighters had similar garments. All of them wore tan trousers, and the women often had sports bras while the men were bare-chested. Tank tops were also acceptable for both men and women. There were no shoes or socks. If either sex had long hair, it was to be clipped back firmly so chasers didn’t have to run into the ring with tranquilizer guns and nets if the lights didn’t work on someone as a match ended. If a chaser died bringing down your zombie, you paid for it in spades. Even if the clips had been lost due to some other zombie ripping them out. When Ink fought Medusa, he was exceedingly careful with her hair.

He ferried Thor to the south funnel and left him with a
Games stadium organizer. Hades was also there, that big fellow who was going to win easily without Samson. Then Ink got his binoculars and went back to his seat, which took so long that he was just sitting down when the one-minute countdown to the melee began. He felt rather silly in his parrot shirt, but it marked him as a manager trying for the top prize, and that was more important. It was proven to him when a guy in the row behind him clapped his back and said, “So, who is your gent down there?”

“
Mine is Thor,” Ink said as the crowd bellowed
twenty-nine, twenty-eight, twenty-seven!

The guy paused, trying to figure out who that was, and said, “I’m sure he’
ll be great!”

Samson would have been great.
Thor was just here to save Ink’s face. He shook the man’s hand and chanted
nineteen eighteen seventeen
at the top of his lungs. Then he turned his binoculars away from the ring. Up through the big windows of the circular clubroom were all the bigwigs, some in seats and others standing, all of them staring down to the ring with smiles. Ink was overcome with a fresh wave of determination to get up there one day for more than the post-parties. Those were his people. They just didn’t know it yet.

“
Fifteen! Fourteen! Thirteen!”

The blonde in the purple dress leaned over Cantine’s chair and rested her arms upon his shoulders.
The back of his balding head was nestled up to her breasts. Not a breast on any of the three of them was natural, but she had picked the right size for her curvy frame and the others had gone for inflated pillow cup size.

“
Eleven!”

If Samson had won, and he
would
have won, Ink would have been able to afford that blonde from whatever escort agency she hailed from. If she were a hanger-on, he wouldn’t even have had to pay. She was just a woman who wanted to taste his success, and he’d let her sip as much as she wanted.

“
Ten! Nine! Eight!”

Ink looked down to the ring.
He had views of the east, west, and south funnels, but not the north. He could look to one of the giant screens up in the air for the last one. Stationed above each gate were chasers, and stadium security was sprinkled around the ground level aisle in bright blue shirts. At a show several years ago, a frustrated security guard had knocked a persistent protester into the melee and let her get ripped apart. She hadn’t been screaming that zombies were her brothers then.

“
Seven! Six! Five!”

The gates had been opened while he was looking up to
Cantine’s blonde woman. It was easy to draw the zombies along the funnel and outside to the ring. One just dimmed the light directly overhead and made one more dazzling a few steps away. They would gravitate to it, and the ring held the most dazzling light of all. In matches and the brawl, one had to place the zombies on their starting marks. But in the melee, you just let them drift out and stand wherever they fancied.

“Four! Three!”

And there was his Thor, looking quite puny between two of the most doped-up zombies in creation. Fifteen zombies had come out of each funnel on the three sides Ink could see, and the big screen showed fifteen more at the north. Of the sixty, some had real brands on their arms. Others had tattoos, either fake or real, and in varying amounts over their bodies. One man had been in prison before he was infected with the virus, Ink recognizing some of the tattoos the zombie bore from television cop shows.

“Two! One!”

About a third were wearing facial pieces to make them look decayed and fearsome, less human and more monstrous. Ink had never used those, even though the audience really liked it. But prosthetics were a mark of a newbie manager and a lot would be destroyed in the melee. Some of the fighters bore wounds from previous fights, but not badly and the gashes on their arms and chests were mostly healed. Thor fit in with the crowd, and Ink sent up silent gratitude to Vasilov for that queer Zombie Walk in Venice.