Monster Gauntlet (4 page)

I was allowed to go to the bathroom, then we boarded the train. I had a window seat on the right side of train. The three men took up positions around me. I didn’t care. I was happy to be going home.

The train departed. I couldn’t stop looking out the window. London and the prison and all signs of industry quickly vanished. It was like the train was a time machine. It passed through green fields dotted with white sheep and occasionally cut by rain-swollen burns and waterfalls. The landscape on either side of us rose into sheer mountains.

Sometimes we’d pass through small towns, and I’d think with a flicker of both hope and sadness how much of the world there was still left to see, even just in my own small country.

At some point the train stopped at Pitlochry. I looked at the small, popular town. It was October, and I could see several signs and banners advertising their annual festival. Each October, they create a light and sound show in the forest and charge tourists to walk through it. The year I went, the show had a “faerie woods” theme and it was very cool. Some years were better than others. I heard the last one was kind of like a rave, with giant glow sticks and trance music and stuff like that. I wasn’t into that. I liked the faeries.

From the banners, I couldn’t tell if this year’s theme was fantasy-based or not.

There was a bookstore in the small train station. About ten meters away, I could see their window. There were many books on display. I couldn’t make out the covers, but I assumed they were are all Halloween-themed, like the rest of the display. I had no doubt the books included ghost stories, tales of witchcraft, myths, and legends. Jack-o-lanterns grinned in the window. I could make out an old broom. Cotton spider webs were stretched across the display.

Halloween is fun, I thought. I like scary stories. I like fancy dress. Then I remembered Alysh and her plans to wear something sexy for a Halloween dance. I thought about where I was going, and suddenly, the thought of being scared didn’t seem like fun anymore.

With a slight jolt, the train pulled away from the station, and we were moving again.

–––––

OK. The bottom line is that I ended up at a military base in Scotland. The guards handed me over to the custody of the military and the MG security staff. It was hard to tell the two apart.

My new room was another cell. This one was larger and cleaner than the last one. It was a small improvement.

Maximilian Cain came to see me. He flashed a smile and shook my hand, but his face quickly fell. His relaxed, salesman persona was gone. He was clearly stressed out.

“Everything all right?” I asked nervously.

I was fishing for information. I was hoping I would hear something encouraging. I thought of the possibilities. Maybe the monsters weren’t working or died or something. There weren’t enough Runners. Maybe the show had to be cancelled.

No such luck. Cain waved his hand.

“Don’t mind me. This is normal. The show’s in one week and it always gets crazy around here.”

He smiled and said, “Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be great.”

Then he left. I didn’t think everything was going to be great.

–––––

The next morning, I met my personal trainer. Her name was Quinn. She was young and toned and athletic. She kind of reminded me of Alysh, or at least her body did. She had long, straight brown hair that she wore in a ponytail, and she was wearing black “yoga pants” that may as well have been airbrushed on to her legs.

Wonderful, I thought. What a world. Is this really what men wanted?

    The answer was apparently yes. The male members of the audience could stare at Quinn while she exercised, lust after Vasha while she introduced the Runners, and then watch me get attacked by animals or whatever-the-hell-else was coming for me. Great.

I put on the workout uniform provided to me, which wasn’t as skin-tight as Quinn’s but was still very revealing. I said something like, “It don’t know if this is tight enough. It doesn’t go up my ass-crack far enough.”

Taking my point, Quinn laughed. At least she had a sense of humor.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “In the arena, you’ll be covered up and wearing boots and a jacket and all that. You’ll be so covered in gear we’ll barely get to see you. This is the audience’s chance to get a good look at you and size you up.”

“Size me up? For what?”

“The betting, of course.”

Quinn looked at me suspiciously and said, “You really don’t watch the show, do you?”

I shook my head.

“Well,” she said. “It doesn’t matter. This show is just like any other sport. People like to see the athletes.”

I hardly thought this show was “just like any other sport,” but I didn’t say anything.

Quinn took me out to a fenced-in field with a smooth dirt track around it. She reminded me that from this moment on, everything we did would be recorded.

We stretched. I used to do yoga, so I was decent at that. Then she said what I feared she would: “Let’s run.”

After two laps around the track, I was exhausted. This exercise reminded me how out-of-shape I was. I was an engineer, not an athlete!

“Never again,” I told myself. I would not let myself get this out-of-shape in the future once I got out of here.

“The future.” That was assuming I had one. But I couldn’t think about that. All I could only focus on was the present.

“Alright,” Quinn said. “We can take it slow. But think. You’re going to need this skill more than anything else. Shooting, fighting, survival training – They’re all good, but more than anything else, you need to move. Move a lot, and move fast.”

That’s what we did that for the next three days. One the fourth day, Quinn said, “Alright. Now the fun stuff. Weapons training.”

She took me to the outdoor rifle range. The targets were shaped like dark silhouettes of men on white backgrounds. Quinn and I wore clear protective goggles and sound-dampening ear muffs.

There was a table with unloaded guns on it. I was allowed to pick each one up and decide if I felt comfortable with its weight and grip.

“Just like in America,” Quinn said. “I’ve been to gun shows and they’re just like this. The guns are all out there. You try them on for size. You find one you like, give them your shoot tickets, and they hand you a loaded gun.”

I tried to ponder a world where what I was doing was somehow normal. I couldn’t, and moved on. Many of the guns were very heavy. I picked the lightest ones. Quinn told me which ones would have the least amount of recoil.

I stood with my feet apart the way Quinn showed me. I held the gun out with both hands. I fired three shots at the closest target. I got of little hit of happiness firing the gun, I confess. I instantly felt powerful. I was the master of life and death. I controlled my destiny. I was not to be messed with.

I didn’t even hit the target.

“Relax,” Quinn said. “Focus on the target, not the gun.” I thought I had been doing that, and tried again. I hit the target figure in the shoulder and felt a spike of joy. I fired again. I hit him in the lower left kidney area. I’d been aiming for the head.

“Hard, isn’t it?” Quinn said.

“Yes, it is.”

“It takes practice to get good – like with anything.”

How would someone in Britain practice shooting guns? I wondered.

“I’m going to try another gun.”

I fired several more pistols. My results were all about the same.

“OK,” Quinn said. “I know you want to so let’s get this over with. Let’s try the big guns.”

There was a shotgun that I could barely lift, so I passed on that.

“Smart,” Quinn said. “Remember. You’ll be carrying the weapon all day, and probably running with it.”

I tried one of the machine guns. When I fired it, I felt like some force was trying to telekinetically rip the weapon from my hands. I could barely hold on to it.

I was aiming for center mass on the target and I watched the top of his head get blown off. I tried to hit him in the heart and blow out his bowels. When I fired at the far targets, maybe a third of the bullets I fired hit them. A lot of the holes were in the white background and not in the actual target zones.

I lowered the weapon.

“So,” Quinn said. “What do you think?”

“Awesome,” I said. I could see how people could really get into this for fun. “I think I need more practice.”

Quinn nodded her head.

“So how many rounds do I get?” I asked.

Wrinkles appeared in Quinn’s flawless face. “That’s up to the producers,” she said. “Silver bullets are available for some of the pistols, but you’ll get less rounds if you choose those.”

I didn’t have to choose my weapon right then. I did make a note of which one I wanted if I ended up picking a gun. I’d take the machine gun.

–––––

I had lunch that day in a segregated part of the cafeteria. I was eating alone, and then I picked up my tray and walked over to join Quinn.

I sat down across from her and said, “Quinn, are we on camera right now?”

See took a sip from her water bottle and said, “Technically, yes, but probably not.”

That’s what I thought. There was nothing sexy or dangerous or exciting about us sitting there eating lunch.

“Quinn, can I ask you something?”

“Go ahead,” she said.

“What’s the best weapon?”

“I can’t answer that.”

I stared at her.

“Really,” she said. “Legally, I can’t, and personally I can’t either.”

I was quiet for a moment and then I asked, “What would you pick?”

She leaned in a little closer and spoke quietly, saying, “Honestly? I wouldn’t pick a gun. Men always pick the guns. Sometimes every Runner has one. Then the producers send something that can’t be killed by bullets. I can’t tell you what to choose.”

She took another sip and added, “Whatever you pick, just make sure you know how to use it.”

I nodded my head. This was going to be a harder decision than I thought. I still liked the machine gun.

 The next day, Quinn and I stretched, ran, and tested more weapons. This time, the weapons were medieval. The targets were upright bundles of straw that the trainers called “straw men.” I liked hacking at them with the swords and jabbing them with the spears. I couldn’t hit anything with the bow and arrow.

At lunch that day, I met the director, Mr. Ziegler – a German guy. He had short brown hair and might have looked good if he would actually smile, but he didn’t. If fact, he looked gravely serious the whole time. He said he wanted to meet me, but he didn’t want to get to know me. His job was directing the show, and he didn’t want any personal emotions to make him feel bad during the more spectacular kills. He actually said that.

The assistant director did sit down and have lunch with me. He was a young guy named Kent. He didn’t say if that was his first or last name. I guess he just thought he was cool enough to have only one name, like a celebrity or something. He was big – Alysh’s type – and he wore glasses that I’m sure he donned deliberately to make himself look smarter.

He told me we could relax and that lunchtime conversations typically weren’t recorded. He asked if I were looking forward to the event.

“What do you think?” I replied.

His lame smile faltered a little, then returned.

“Surely you must be excited,” he said, totally clueless.

 Well, if excitement was the beginning of fear, then yes, I was excited.

I just said, “Sure.”

He smiled, as if my affirmation confirmed his belief that we were all having a good time. I was starting not to like this guy.

We ate in silence for a while. Then I asked, “What’s this I’ve heard about betting?”

Kent said, “You mean you don’t know?”

“No.”

“Oh, it’s just something a lot of people do before and during the contest. Unofficially, of course.”

“They bet on who’s going to survive?”

Kent almost choked on his chocolate milk. He mopped up his mouth with a napkin and suppressed his laughing.

“Well, I guess you could bet on that,” he said. “Mostly, we bet on who is going to go first.”

“Who is going to go?”

“Sure. You know, who’s going to die. But don’t worry. I didn’t bet on you. I don’t think you’ll go first. Second, maybe, but not first.”

He took another sip of his milk. It was official. I really didn’t like this guy.

I looked around the cafeteria. It was filled mostly with MG production crew. I didn’t see any of the other Runners. I knew that was deliberate. We were kept apart on purpose. The producers didn’t want us meeting before being dumped into the arena. They didn’t want us forming alliances or making friends or enemies before the actual contest began. They wanted all that on camera at the start of the show.

The rest of the day included more running and more weapons choices. There were miscellaneous things, like baseball balls, cans of mace, as well as bigger, one-shot deals like a bomb with a remote detonator. I still hadn’t decided what I wanted and what would make me feel safest.

That’s really what this was all about. The weapons made people feel powerful, and that, by itself, was power. I still didn’t know what to pick.

–––––

One day before the show, I did a run around the track with Quinn. I was sore from working out the whole week, so Quinn said we would “go light.” I had to rest and conserve my strength. I was going to need it.

As we were walking around the track for a cool-down, I asked, “Quinn, what should I do, you know, in the arena?”

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“Right. Policy,” I said with disgust.

“No,” she said unemotionally. “I can’t tell you because I don’t know. It’s like life. The circumstances are different for everyone. You have to decide what’s right for you.”

“But you ... So that’s it? Nothing? No advice?”

Quinn said, “I have a favorite quotation. ‘Beware any advice, even this.’”

I was quiet, letting the weight of that sink in. I couldn’t argue with that logic. Finally, Quinn spoke quietly and said, “Don’t go it alone. That’s good advice for anybody, in the arena or out. Also, don’t move at night. Get to shelter before the sun sets. Hunker down, build a fire, and try to ride out the night.”