Mungus: Book 1 (27 page)

             
“Where are we?”

             
“We’re bellow the Theatre.  They put people down here to await trial before they lock them up in the Theatre to die.”

             
I swallowed hard and lay my head down.  Teddy was crying beside me and his sobs echoed off of the stone passageways.  I didn’t sleep that night, and a few hours later morning light started to creep down the steps and President Confagulous Dickerson came and stood in front of the holding cell with Greg by his side.

             
“Hello,” said the president with a nasty smile.

             
Neither Teddy or I said anything.

             
“This man told me that you two were caught trying to steal food from the charity tent that we’re giving to the Grecos.  Is that true?” asked the president.

             
Neither Teddy or I said anything.

             
“Oh, it is?” said the President, as if we had answered.  “Did you hear them confess?” he asked Greg.

             
“Sure did,” said Greg.

             
“Great.  Get them ready for the Theatre.  Lucky for them they will only have to wait a few more hours until the big show.”

             
Greg laughed and the president walked out.  A few guards came in and escorted Teddy and I to two separate cells at ground level in the Theatre.  Metal bars surrounded me and my cell was small with two locked doors.  One went into the halls of the Theatre and one looked out onto the sand which was stained red with blood from the shows that came before.  I entered through the hallway and would be exiting onto the sand.  People began to fill in their seats and I sat looking around at the other prisoners in the Theatre.  The cells were completely full.

             
Down at the floor level the air smelled of manure.  I looked around for livestock and found none.  The prisoners had been locked away in their cells and hadn’t been allowed to get out to go to the bathroom.  I supposed that they were livestock.

             
“Let me out!” cried a young Beardsley who was also locked into a cell flanking the Theatre floor.  “God!  Please!”

             
Men and women screamed and rattled onto the bars, begging to be let out.  Teddy lay docile in the cell beside me.  His face was in his hands and I couldn’t tell if he was crying or not.

             
As the crowd swept in to the stone seats surrounding the Theatre floor, I thought about what the President had said last time about all of the criminals in the Theatre being found guilty by a jury of their peers.  I had believed him and as the morning went on and I looked out at the sand behind the metal bars I felt foolish.

             
When the crowd was flush and the morning was hot, Georgie the clown walked out onto the sand.

19

What a Show!

              I went over to the edge of the bars and looked over the clown as he took center stage.  The crowd cheered and clapped for him.  “I love you, Georgie!” shouted a female voice from above.  Georgie turned and smiled at her with his black lips.  From my cell I could see more detail in the clown than I could from high up in the stands.  His face was chapped and cracked dry.  His strands of black hair that hung from his head were greasy.  He was taller than Saul had been and his shoulders were wider than Burl’s.  He smiled showing his sharp canine incisors.

             
“Good morning,” he said to the crowd.  They cheered and in a giddy dance the clown stomped his feet and clapped his hands.  “Oh, good morning, good morning, good morning!”  The crowd cheered some more and then the clown waved his arms for them to hush.  Guards were walking along the sand to get prisoners out of their cells while others were pushing out a large wooden contraption on wheels.  The contraption had a pole running horizontal twelve feet off of the ground.  Forty ropes tied into nooses hung off of it.  I sank back to the back of my cell, but luckily, no guard came and grabbed me.  From a distance, pushing the big machine in the sun, I thought that I saw Hank.

             
Guards flung open cell doors and with the use of force and weapons, they dragged screaming prisoners out of their cages.

             
“For our first act of the morning, we have something that is sure to please the crowd.  It is a competition.  While all of the contestants will die, there will, in fact, be a champion.  The game is quite simple; all that you have to do is hold on.  Forty contestants will be put onto a wooden platform with a noose around their necks and a pole above them to hold onto.  When I say go, the platform will fall from underneath them and they had better hold on.”  The clown let out a little squawk of laughter as the contestants were situated onto the platform.

             
“Walt,” Teddy whispered from beside me.  Tears were streaming down his face and he held his hand through the bars to me.  “Will you hold my hand?”

             
I put my hand in his and his slender fingers wrapped tightly around my hand.  “I’m going to get you out of this,” he said, not taking his eyes off of the contestants with the nooses around their necks.  “I’m going to do anything I can.  I’m sorry.”

             
“It’s okay, really.  I knew that I was taking my life into my own hands whenever I agreed to go.  I could have said no.”

             
Teddy squeezed onto my hand and I saw that all of the contestants were ready.  Forty prisoners held onto a pole above them with a noose around their neck.  A wooden platform was underneath them and Georgie was holding a lever.  “Three,” Georgie whispered into his microphone.  “Two.”  Georgie smiled and looked around the audience.  All of the contestants were holding onto the pole above them, waiting for the platform to drop and for their lives to end.  People of all ages had ropes around their necks.  White haired Grecos, Beardsley children, and even a few Salyers were up there.  I didn’t know if I was thankful that I was still locked up.  Hanging to death would be a blessing compared to the gruesome death with dogs that I saw in my first trip to the Theatre.  “One,” Georgie said in a flash, and the platform dropped down.  Six of the forty contestants, three children, one old woman, and two middle aged Grecos all hanged right when the platform was dropped.  They either weren’t ready or didn’t have the strength to hold on.  Their bodies fell two feet before the rope snapped tight and their necks were crushed with their body weight.  I could hear the ropes straighten from where I sat and I wondered if they had microphones on them.

             
Beside me, Teddy covered up his face.  I didn’t want to watch either, but just-a man fell with a scream that ended when the rope drew in on his neck-like the first time I went, I was having trouble looking away.  I looked up into the crowd and saw all of the citizens of Ramus watching on with fixed eyes.  “How can all of these people watch this?” I asked Teddy.

             
“When something goes on for long enough, you just start to think that it’s normal,” he said.

             
He must have been right.  The people in the audience certainly did act like what they were watching was ‘normal.’  A father had brought his son out to watch the show and he bought a bag of peanuts from a vendor.  Two women sat under an umbrella and gossiped as they glanced at the dead.  Pimple faced teens sniggered and made vulgar gestures at one of the hanging corpses who had big breasts.  It was like they didn’t even understand that they were real people.  I felt as though they didn’t know that I was real, like them, and being in the Theatre was
actually
happening to me.

             
Half of the contestants were dead, and half held on.  It was hot outside and a few people seemed to slip because of sweaty palms.  The corpses swayed in the wind.  20.  21.  25.  29.  A Greco woman with blond hair running down her back was crying out for help.  She pulled herself up on the bar with her arms and then twisted back and got her legs onto the pole.

             
Georgie sprinted, laughing while he went, at the woman.  When he reached her he leapt high up into the air, grabbed her hair, and pulled her body down with a nasty snap of the neck.  I heard a toddler giggle in the audience.  “Was that funny?” its mother asked it.  The toddler giggled some more.

             
A minute later there were two left.  “This is it,” said Georgie.  He licked his lips and slicked his hair back.  “This is the big moment.  One of you two lucky contestants is about to be the champion.”

             
A Greco girl who looked to be about 17 years of age and weigh 110 pounds, and a large Beardsley man with a long ponytail and arms the thickness of trash cans were still holding on.  The man’s face was red and he kept on jostling around on the bar and readjusting his grip.  The girl had her eyes closed and was trying to remain as calm as possible.  With a deep scream, the man’s hands slipped and he fell to his death.  The rope tightened and he was just another swinging corpse.

             
“We have a winner!” said Georgie.  At this comment, the girl opened her eyes for the first time since the competition had begun.  She looked around her, saw the corpses and began to scream.  So many people who had been walking, talking, feeling, fearing, just a few moments ago were nothing more than dead bags of flesh and bones.  She screamed and thrashed and lost her grip and soon joined them.

             
Georgie clapped his hands and jumped up and down.  “Excellent!  Excellent!” he said.  The contraption with the nooses was wheeled off, the corpses swinging into one another, and Georgie again took center stage.  He licked his lips with his long tongue and smiled up at the audience.  “Now, we have for you,” he said addressing the crowd, “the most basic form of contest.  It is, in my belief, the oldest for of competition.  A barbaric, bloody thing, but also entertaining.  War.”

             
Guards were walking over the sand towards the cells.  Their boots made imprints and they unlocked cells and dragged people out.  Teddy and I were still safe for the time.  No guards walked our way.

             
“For the remainder of our time today, ladies and gentlemen, for your viewing pleasure, there will be battles held upon the sand.  Yes, like the old ancient myth about the gladiators and the coliseum, we have for you criminals fighting to the death.”  A guard brought Georgie a big burlap sack and he dumped in out onto the middle of the sand.  Wooden bats, knifes, syringes, broken bottles, plates, and other crude weapons fell into the middle of the arena.  Six prisoners were standing with their arms held behind their backs by Salyer guards.  “And, like they did in ancient Rome, and a Theatre first, the winners of the fights will get to keep their lives, at least until next time.  Six people fight.  One wins.  Go!”

             
The Salyer guards released the prisoners’ arms and pushed them onto the sand.  Four of them were wemon, all Grecos, and there was a Greco man and a Beardsley man.  The prisoners looked wildly around at each other.  The Greco man stood up and raised his arms wide at the audience.  “I’m not going to fight them.  You people are mad!”

             
As if to prove him wrong, the Greco man was then taken down by the neck.  The Beardsley man was strangling him as he brought him to the ground.  The Greco man whirled and kicked while a woman in the group ran after the Beardsley and plunged a sword into his torso.  And it began.  An hour went by and the sand was crimson red with blood.  The game was a hit.  The crowd yelled and screamed and stood in their seats.  They were invigorated by all of the excitement.

             
Teddy and I held hands until we were torn apart.  Two guards pulled open his cell on squeaking metal hinges and ripped him from my fingers.  He looked back at me with pleading eyes.  He was the sixth man to be pulled out in his group and I would be the next to go.  I looked around at who would be my competition next round.  Four grown Beardsley men and a little Greco boy of two or three.  The men were thick with heavy backs and strong shoulders.  I breathed in the air and knew that I was going to die.

             
The guards pulled the contestants to different places around the Theatre.  Teddy fought and writhed in the guards arms, but couldn’t get loose.  He would have to kill a tall blond haired Greco man, two Beardsley little girls, and two old arthritic Grecos if he was going to save his life.  He was the tallest and the best built.  I thought that he had a shot.

             
”Go!” shouted Georgie with a shrill laugh and the contestants were released.  Teddy was off to a sprint the second that he was free.  He sped into the center of the sand where all of the weapons sat.  He reached the weapons before anyone else had.  Georgie was jumping up and down and clapping his hands with excitement.  Teddy grabbed an axe and ran off, the axe securely wrapped in his slender fingers.  He was running straight for an old woman who had closed her eyes shut to brace herself for death.  But, to my surprise, he ran right passed her.  She heard him go by and then looked around, baffled.

             
By the time the guards realized what he was doing it was too late to stop him.  He ran right up to Georgie the clown and, despite Georgie’s shrieks for help and frantic attempts at dodging, Teddy lodged the axe deep into his skull.