Indian Hill (22 page)

We progressed forward for what seemed hours. I was beginning to think that he had somehow circled
around us. But I reasoned that
was impossible, there wasn’t really anything to completely cover him while circling past, we would have spotted him at some time. No, he’s laying low, we just need to be careful when we come up over the dunes, unless of course he’s buried himself… Too late!!! I screamed as the blade entered my leg just above my ankle. I felt it scrape against my bone; I could hear my muscle being cut as the blade exited right below my knee. He pulled the blade back and as he did so I could feel it scraping against my shin. I fell like a stone. Blinding white spots shot across my eyes, I could see nothing except pain, and it was savage. He had used my own tactic against me. I barely made out his shape as he jumped out of the sand to complete his handiwork. I couldn’t even raise my
axe
, because number one I had dropped it, and number two both of my hands were clamped against the wound on my leg. I knew that this was the end; I just wished that I could have kissed Beth one last time.

“You’re a fuck!” I yelled,
a
moment before I passed out.

The next thing I consciously remember was waking up with Deb looking down at me. But how could that be, did that maggot kill her too? Am I dead? Do they have pain in Heaven? Oh no, I’m in Hell? I did my best to try to get up but the searing pain in my leg prevented that. My teeth were chattering uncontrollably. From across the room I could hear Stephanie’s voice. I couldn’t even begin to concentrate on the words, the pain had put me into another whiteout. It was many moments more before I was able to regain some semblance of consciousness. I was able to focus on objects even if the edges were blurry.

“Am I dead?” I managed to stammer, not really sure which answer I wanted to hear.

“No, but it was close,” Deb said gravely, tears now forming in her eyes. “Tanya saved your life.” She grabbed me and hugged me, luckily she didn’t shake me or I know that I would have passed out again from the pain.

“What happened to him?” I asked incredulously.

“Tanya stabbed him in the back as he was moving in to finish you off, he was so intent on killing you he never even noticed her.” A noticeable shudder ran through her body as she explained the details. I drew her close to try and drive away the demons that were bothering her.

“And I’d kill that bastard again if I had the chance!” Tanya yelled from across the room.

“He killed her best friend in
the last round, talk about
justice,” Deb said. “She still has nightmares.”

“Still? How long have I been out this time?” I moaned. At this rate I’d sleep the rest of my time on the ship. I felt bad for Tanya and her nightmares, but the fears of what might have been far outweighed the action she took.

“A week.”

“A week! When’s the next round start?”

“Another week.”

“Deb, I can barely move after a week of recovery, how am I possibly going to be in any type of fighting shape in another week?”

“That’s not your biggest worry,” she said softly, obviously seeing the strain on my face.

“What could possibly be worse?”

“There was a huge power struggle over you. The gladiator overseers, I guess that’s what you’d call them, some of them wanted to have you executed. They said that you violated the rules and received outside help. But a slim majority felt that you used extreme cleverness and improvisation and heralded your actions as very advanced tactics. The minority had to acquiesce on two points so as to not have any further arguments regarding you,” she said with a sigh.

“And just exactly what are those two points?” I felt that I already knew the answer to one of them; the pain in my leg was testament to that fact.

“One, they did the bare minimum to fix your wound, basically to just make sure that you didn’t die.”

“And the second?”

“They dropped your ranking down to 152
nd
, last place.”

“Death sentence,” I mumbled.

“What? Don’t say that!” Deb cried.

“Come on Debbie, they left me injured and dropped my ranking. I have only come out of one fight unscathed and I was healthy for all of them. I’m going in there now with one good leg against my toughest competition. What do you think is going to happen!?”

“Stop yelling at me. I don’t know the answers. I only know what I want, and that’s you. I don’t want to be on this god-forsaken ship playing the aliens’ god-forsaken game. I just want to go home.” She broke down in heart wrenching sobs.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you any more than you are. I… I’m just not feeling too well at the moment. Could you please close the door on your way out, I would really like to get some s
leep
.”

“Of course,” she said as she wiped the few remaining tears away from her face.

But sleep was the last thing that happened that night. I thought about all the wondrous and glorious ways that I was going to die next week. It’s amazing how humans think, I mean I’ve always known I was going to die but when you put a date on it, it becomes almost insufferable. Death seemed to be all around me. The smell of it seeped through my bandages. If I tried hard enough I felt that I could catch a glimpse of him gleefully wisping around my room waiting for his opportunity to come. “Not yet you bastard!” I yelled. The women
were probably
huddl
ing
together in the adjacent room looking at each other in bewilderment. They
would do
their best to comfort each other, but they knew the score as well as anybody. If I died they died, plain and simple just like algebra, a=b.

The next day, or what I perceived to be the next day, I awoke and jumped out of bed. Oh crap! I thought to myself, I am going to pay dearly for that move. I waited for the blinding pain to sear the front of my brain, and then I waited a little more and then I waited just a little bit more. Ah there it was, but it certainly wasn’t the stampeding of wild stallions that I expected, it was more like a lone small donkey. The blinding pain had been replaced by a slow steady throb. I finally opened my eyes and unclenched my teeth; I must have been somewhat of a sight.

“What the
hell
is going on?” I yelled

“What do you mean?” Deb said as she entered the room with a huge smile.

“You know damn well what I mean, woman. Yesterday…”

“Three days ago,” she interjected.

“Okay three days ago you were all depressed and I was in a great deal of pain.”

“Well from what I can gather,” she started, “is that large amounts of drakka…”

“Huh?” I asked

“Money,” she continued. “Drakka is money on this ship.” I nodded in understanding, barely. “It is wagered on these events and apparently there is a fairly significant amount of drakka or money riding on you. So an alien doctor was paid off.”

“They have corruption too? It’s good to know that that’s not just a human condition.”

“So you feel better?” she asked hopefully.

“I’m almost perfect,” I said as I grabbed her in my arms and twirled her around, and was regretfully rewarded with a doubling of the pain. I tried my best not to let her see me wince.

I felt curious enough or possibly morbid enough to sneak a peek at my wound. I unwound the bandage that had this incredibly sticky feeling to it, but stuck to nothing but itself. Man, would the doctors on Earth love to get a hold of this stuff. When I was done I could only stare in disbelief. What had been a life threatening gash and at best a handicap making wound now appeared to be no more than a briar scratch. My skin didn’t even look as if it was going to scar in any way. As I reapplied the bandage, I was convinced that within another day the throb and scratch would cease to exist. My mood healed almost as quickly as my wound. As long as I was mobile I still had
a
fighting chance, and I was oh so close to seeing Beth again.

I knew it had to be done but I was having the hardest time convincing myself to do it. I walked into the adjoining room where the women were. Stephanie appeared to be about to speak. I shot her a glance that could have frozen a glass of mercury from twenty-five yards away. Needless to say she got the hint and let whatever she was about to say drop off her lips. I made a beeline for the huge screen. I soon discovered that in these advanced rounds the competitors could do more than just watch reruns; we were also given short snippets of information on each contestant. Lord knew I could use all the help I could get. But to be honest, all I was concerned with was Durgan’s last
match
. The terrain had been similar to my last bout. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Even though they say seeing is believing it was still difficult for me to grasp. Durgan was even bigger than when I last saw him. Schwarzenegger at his prime was never this big. I had hoped that possibly the added bulk would make him slower and less agile. But almost as if he heard my thoughts he did a standing back somersault for the benefit of the crowd. Obviously this was his new signature move before every fight. The aliens had to be feeding him straight steroids, there could be no other explanation for his massive increase in size, strength and speed. What was even more surprising was his nonchalant attitude. He looked like he was going out to get some lunch, not kill another fellow human being. He couldn’t even be bothered with getting a weapon. No. 254,  one Derek Sanderson (a formidable looking character himself), opted for the two handed sword.

I was not under the impression that something as unwieldy as a two-handed sword was a good idea against an opponent so fast. But I think that he was also under the false impression that all that bulk was going to make Durgan a lot slower and more vulnerable. Big mistake, one that I personally wasn’t going to make. Durgan had no fear, he just strolled up the middle of the arena like he owned the place. Sanderson, upon seeing that Durgan had no weapons, decided to take advantage of the fact. He came running at Durgan as fast as the sand would let him, sword raised and poised to strike. Mistake number two, upon approaching closing distance Sanderson lowered his weapon. With lightning quick speed Durgan stepped to the side and avoided the strike, leaving one foot behind and with his right hand push
ed
the flailing Sanderson to the ground with a resounding thud. His sword unfortunately went flying through the air and landed some fifteen feet away. Durgan deftly placed himself between Sanderson and the sword. With what seemed like considerable effort, Sanderson raised his body from the sand. Blood oozed down both of his knees and dripped from his hands. Warily approaching Durgan, he never saw what hit him. If I hadn’t had the luxury of rewind I wouldn’t have caught it either. With blinding speed Durgan did a roundhouse kick that would have easily broken the neck of a less statuesque man. As it was, Sanderson’s jaw was clearly broken and some of the bone had even protruded from the right side of his face. I thought that if he were to live he was going to have a hell of a time eating, but I don’t think that was his biggest concern at the moment. He went down faster than a hooker at a convention.  

Even as dazed and confused as he was, I’m pretty sure he knew what was going on. Durgan picked Sanderson’s slack body up and proceeded to raise him up over his head with no more effort than a basketball player puts into lifting a basketball. He then found the nearest Joshua tree and threw Sanderson on it. The spiny plant pierced Sanderson’s  body in multiple places. The scream that came from him was one that will haunt me t
o
the end of my days. Durgan had no desire to make this a merciful and quick killing. He proceeded to put his foot on Sanderson’s  midsection and push until some of the spiny leaves began to make their way through to the other side of his body. Thankfully his screaming began to lose some of its velocity, blood began to fill his lungs and served to further stifle the noise. Shock mercifully was settling in; Sanderson’s eyes got the thousand-yard stare. To rouse the crowd even further Durgan pulled off one of the spiny leaves and jabbed it directly into Sanderson’s left eye; apparently he was not far enough in shock. He managed one more scream that rivaled all the previous ones combined, then gave one final convulsion and stayed there. I tried to imagine that he was just a scarecrow stuck to Velcro, that was far more palatable to swallow than the truth. I was about to turn the set off but my lack of better judgment prevailed. I wanted to see what Durgan did with his newest spoil.

He strode with all the pride of a peacock to the woman who was helplessly tied up. What he did next surprised and disgusted me. He knelt down on one knee before the woman and yelled up into the stands, “I will have no woman but the Goddess of the games” With that he stood up and put his hands on either side of his captive victim’s head almost as if to caress her and with a sudden twisting motion he broke her neck. That was probably the most humane thing that monster had done on this ship since he arrived. She was dead and that was that. I was not as appalled at the death as I should have been; I guess that I was getting desensitized
.
What horrified me more was the thought of that Cro-Magnon with my Beth,
that
was ripping my soul apart. Well, I thought to myself, he vowed to have no other woman, so I must also do the same. I had to focus on one thing and one thing only, survival. But now the focus wasn’t so much on myself anymore, I had to do it for Beth. The guilt I felt for having been with Debbie was already beginning to consume me. I had needed her then, I still needed her. When I felt that I wasn’t going to survive I needed her comfort but now that I had a chance, even as slim as it was, I had to focus all my attention on that possibility. Beth was my reason for living and fighting. I no longer needed or wanted Deb’s comfort, I told myself. I kn
e
w that sound
ed
selfish but I had to be true to myself in order to be true to Beth. I decided to check the rankings to see who my possible opponents would be, if I made it through the next round. That’s when my biggest break thus far showed itself. I kept telling myself it had to be divine intervention. If so I would forever be in debt to the one I called God. The competitor’s names, vital statistics and rankings came up and by some twist of fate only 151 names showed. Sometime between the decision of the alien board and now, one of the victors had died.
Durgan would get another bye, I would get number 2.
It was only later that I learned it was not by wounds suffered in battle but by a jealous woman in one of the competitor’s growing harem. These women were proving more and more to be my allies. Confidence was beginning to build; now it was time to see what No. 2 was made of.