Flesh Worn Stone (13 page)

“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 would 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.

He stood slowly, smiling, and dragged the helpless man up with him. When the smaller guy kicked out, Darius head butted him hard, knocking him out. He then let go of one wrist and bent to pick up an ankle. His arms trembled as he knelt down, one knee out, and raised the man above his head. Just as quickly, he brought him down on his knee, instantly snapping his back.

All and all it had taken Darius less than two minutes to kill three people.

* * *

Steven didn’t catch Darius’ fight as it was over before he got a chance to turn away from his erstwhile adoring fans. When he did manage to turn around, Darius was standing with three dead bodies around him, looking like he’d hardly broken a sweat. The digital billboard lit up, going to the live view of the hand, thumb outstretched. There was absolutely no waiver in it, and it went up right away, the crowd cheering as the rusty steel doors set high up in the canyon walls parted and the stream of garbage rolled down the chute.

Steven was stunned by what he’d done. He’d killed a man so he could eat, plain and simple. He’d taken another human being’s life for food, and that was something he was going to have to live with for the rest of his life.

Rebecca took him by the arm and dragged him towards the pile of garbage. “Come on, there’s extra. We can get enough food for a couple days,” she told him, excitement in her voice like a kid at Christmas.

Mia was excited as well, hopping in place but still not saying anything. He wondered if the child even had the ability to talk.

The crowd piled on the heap of garbage with abandon, laughing and frolicking in the half-rotten vegetables, molded chunks of bread, and plastic and paper garbage. It was like a festival, and Steven, still numb from his fight, watched his wife dive right in like she’d been doing it for years. Seagulls fought to get in as well, and a few intrepid Cave dwellers would occasionally catch the birds and snap their necks. Steven figured between the meat of the losers, the birds, and the garbage, the Cave would eat well for days. He was even sure there would be enough garbage for him not to have to eat human flesh.

For now, anyway.

“You did well.”

Steven turned to see an older man with all his teeth and limbs, smiling at him, which was surprisingly rare for the people in the Cave. He was a tall man with a hawkish, narrow face. Long hair so gray it was white fell to the middle of his back, and he wore a purple bathrobe, long faded and repaired often, that gave him the look of a hippie holy man. He took Steven’s hand and shook.

“Ah…hi.”

“Hello, Steven. My name is Jackson.”

“How did you know my name?”

The old man laughed. “People hear everything here, and I hear everything they hear. Congratulations on your victory, Steven. It is unique for someone so new to the Cave to participate in the game, much less two of you.”

“Thanks, I guess,” Steven said, uncomfortable with being congratulated on killing another man.

“It’s something to be proud of here.”

He slowly realized that he was actually talking to someone from the Cave that he hadn’t arrive with. It was like the silent treatment he’d received since he’d been here had melted away with his victory. “Do you know where here is?”

“No, I don’t, and besides those in the Castle and those who bring people such as yourself here, I don’t know that anyone really knows.”

“There has to be some clue in all that,” he said, pointing to the people-covered pile of trash.

“Oh, there is,” Jackson told him, bending and picking up a crumpled paper cup and then handing it to Steven.

He opened it and saw the Carnival Cruise Lines logo.

“There are half a dozen different cruise lines represented in that mess, each, as far as I know, from all over the world. We know that we are somewhere near the equator, and some, who discuss this sort of thing, think that we are near Mexico, possibly one of the large resort towns. And, considering the ship and the plaque, that’s more than likely correct.”

“This is all garbage from cruise lines?”

“It would seem so, yes.”

“How long have you been here?” Steven asked, sensing that the man was willing to talk.

“I guess that would depend on how old I am,” Jackson told him, “which I just don’t know for sure.”

“You were born here?”

“Indeed. This canyon is all I’ve ever known, and, I fear, all I ever will know.”

“And you don’t know how old you are?” Steven said, thinking what a horribly sad thing that was.

“No, as you can see, there’s no good way of tracking the seasons here. I suspect I’m in my sixties, but I can’t know for sure. The Game and the Cave, though, are much, much older.”

“That ship…”

Jackson nodded. “It’s an old ship, no doubt, and Spanish in origin, though those origins, or the rumors of them, are somewhat murky at best.”

“It is Spanish, from around the time of Cortez,” Steven told him.

“You have a knowledge of old ships?”

“Just in passing, and only in relation to the history of the Gulf Coast area. Besides that, though, there’s the date outside in the Cage.”

“Ah, yeas,
Renacimiento o Muerte
. Rebirth or death, our founding fathers’ motto.”

“If the date is right,” Steven said, “it would put them here around the time of Cortez conquering the Aztec.”

“Indeed, and so goes the legend.”

“They were Cortez’s men?”

“So the legend says. They were supposedly dissenters, a few who chose not to participate in the slaughter of the Aztecs, sent here as punishment for disobeying the Church, forced to fight for their very existence. Another version of the legend has them as pirates, lighting out with some of Cortez’s captured gold. No one knows for sure, but we do know that 1521 is the earliest record of the Game, and that it has been going on steadily since, in one form or another.”

“You’ve seen many Games, then.”

“Yes, more than I care to remember.”

There was sadness in the old man’s blue eyes that tore at Steven’s heart. “I can only imagine. You don’t have any marks,” he said, nodding towards Jackson’s forehead. “You’ve never participated.”

He rolled up the sleeve on his arm. “I don’t have a number, so there’s no way for me to participate in the Game. Sometimes I wish that I did, though, because the stories I hear from people like you are intriguing. To know that there is something besides living off garbage and the flesh of your fellow man…I can’t begin to imagine that.”

“Who runs it all? Who has managed to keep this running for 500 years?”

Jackson shrugged and pointed up to the Castle. “Many of the people who are there, watching over us and directing the Game, are from the Game. They say that once a man has conquered five Games, he is different, a God among men, unafraid of anything, and immortal. Hogwash, I know, but the participants who have won keep the Game going for the next generation. We never see them, but hear of them through the stories of those who have arrived, like you. I assumed you were kidnapped and brought here against your will?”

“Yes,” Steven said solemnly, “with my wife. My…” It was still hard to talk about it. “My sons were murdered.”

“I am sorry,” Jackson said compassionately, “but that isn’t unusual for new arrivals. It seems that the Castle recruits people who have no family ties, or very few, at least. I’m assuming your parents are dead and you probably have no brothers and sisters to speak of?”

“I have one uncle I haven’t seen in ten years,” Steven agreed. “But other than that…no. No family to speak of.”

“And they eliminated the other ties you had when they murdered your children. Bloodthirsty bastards.”

“What’s to stop someone who escapes from exposing this place? I can’t believe that in 500 years there hasn’t been an attempt.”

“No,” Jackson said. “No one has ever escaped without winning five games, to my knowledge. As for why those who do win don’t expose the Game…I have no idea. Maybe what they say about winning, that it somehow changes you, is true. I just don’t know. I can say, though, that I’ve dreamt of just that. I’ve dreamt of your Navy coming ashore and taking us all away. The idea is intriguing, yet the scariest thing I have ever thought of.”

“The idea has to be as strange to you as this place is to me,” Steven said, watching as Rebecca and Mia filled a large black garbage sack with half-rotted food. It was nice to have a somewhat normal conversation with someone, just a calm exploration of the facts instead of a debate on life and death and where the next meal was coming from.

“We are both strangers in strange lands,” Jackson said, smiling. “Anyway, I just wanted to say hello and congratulate you on your victory. I’m sure we will get plenty of opportunities to visit in the future.”

“Thanks,” Steven said, watching as the man made his way up the line of people wallowing in the filth. He’d stop and talk to individuals, a hand on the shoulder, a smile on his face, and in return they’d give him some small part of what they had gathered. They looked at him with the reverence he’d seen reserved for priests and other holy men.

“He’s a nice man,” Rebecca told him, struggling to carry their haul. “And he’s been here a very long time.”

“How do you know these things, Rebecca?”

“I listen to people. You should to.”

“Yes,” he said, helping her with the sack, his mouth salivating at the site of all the half-eaten food. “I really should. But now I’m going to go see that vet about this nose.”

“He won’t do anything for you,” she told him.

“How do you know that?”

“I just know.”

* * *

He found the doctor at his makeshift clinic, near where the ghostly pirate ship hung in the sky. To call the collection of wooden boxes and curtains made from plastic garbage bags and newspapers a clinic was laughable at best, but the crudely painted sign, hanging above the entrance, proclaimed it just that. It red ‘Clinic’ and looked as if it had been scrawled by a stoned teenager.

His nose was throbbing and, as he pushed through the curtains, he was glad he couldn’t smell anything for the moment. There were two corpses inside on makeshift stretchers, both black and bloated with flies swarming around them. Several other people sat on benches made from driftwood and wooden debris, each looking as if they were ready to join the dead. They were coughing and sweating profusely, gripped by fever.

“What do you want?” the vet asked, coming out of the rear of the clinic between two curtains, his bloodstained leather coat even bloodier.

“Hey, Mr. Nixon,” Steven began, unsure of how to approach a crazy man. “I was just in a Game and…”

“Good for you,” the vet interrupted. “But this week I’m Marlon Brando.”