Arena

by Karen Hancock

  He bent over his weapon, taking aim. Beside him, Gerry and Whit started firing. Already the mutant frontline was spilling down the face of the bank, climbing over the fallen bodies of their comrades without hesitation.

  Suddenly Pierce pushed away from the rock, grabbed Callie’s arm, and shoved her toward the cliff wall. “Get out of here!”

  Another boulder exploded, and they hunkered down, shielding faces and fronts. As the thunder faded, Callie ran.

  She hadn’t gone ten steps before a quarrel slammed her to the ground. She came to, struggling to drag air into her lungs and spitting dirt. Pain knifed her chest as she staggered upright, uncertain in the dust where the slit was. And then another explosion ripped out of the rock behind her, the concussion hurling her into the dirt again, battering her with a deluge of rocks and gravel.

  CHAPTER

  23

  Someone yanked Callie up by the arm. As she tried to get her sluggish legs under her, she was shoved through a narrow opening, her helmet clunking the wall, rough rock rasping her shoulder. As the impetus from behind stopped, she staggered toward the dim light ahead and came out in a chamber with twenty-foot ceilings and fire-blackened walls. It smelled of sweat and blood and something foul. Field lamps stood at various spots, casting ghostly illumination throughout the room, as well as the one adjoining it. Across from her, a milk white river of rock, streaked with red crystal, flowed from ceiling to floor. A passage led off beyond it.

  People had congregated in the second chamber, four of them laid out on blankets and parkas, six more clustered nearby, moaning. One man’s foot had been smashed to a bloody pulp. Wendell had a quarrel in his rear, and Brody had one in his thigh, which John was in the process of removing. Evvi lolled against the wall behind them, dead eyed, blood trickling ominously from her ears. LaTeisha and one of the women they’d rescued were working on a man who was the source of an awful sucking sound, his chest working grotesquely as he labored to breathe.

  John called Callie to help him with Brody, instructing her to hold the gauze padding in place while he wound a bandage around the man’s leg.

  Brody’s handsome face was scratched, his dark hair was coated with dust, and he smelled of sweat and faded aftershave. Beneath the shadow of his beard, his jaw muscles rippled over clenched teeth. Still he managed a sneer for her. “I thought this was supposed to be a Safehaven.”

  Callie glanced around. He was right—it wasn’t what she’d expected. “There’s probably a door somewhere.” She eyed him again hesitantly. “Do you know what happened to Meg?”

  He hissed as John tied off the bandage, shaking his head. “I think she got away with Morg.” John handed him a pair of pain pills and a cup of water. “She was one of the first to go. I was keeping up the rear.” He tossed the pills into his mouth and washed them down with the water.

  A series of thunderous explosions rocked the cave, the ground, the air. Dust and rocks cascaded from the ceiling as a new chorus of screams began. But the ceiling held. The dust settled. The rumblings faded.

  Tuck emerged through the slit, Whit following closely with a body draped over one shoulder. Gerry barreled in behind them, and he and Tuck turned back to cover the opening. Whit carried his burden to where LaTeisha was finishing with the chest injury and laid it down.

  Suddenly everything but that form faded from Callie’s awareness. “No,” she moaned. “Oh, please, no!”

  Pierce was laid out on his side, his back to Callie, a crossbow quarrel sticking out of it. The way LaTeisha dropped what she was doing and knelt beside him slew any hope that his injuries weren’t serious. By the time Callie reached him, Teish was slicing through the shoulder straps of his armor to remove the breastplate, and Whit was unfastening its Velcro sides.

  “What happened?” LaTeisha asked as Whit lifted the front away. Though there was little blood, Pierce’s skin gleamed an unhealthy gray.

  “Rocks blew right beside him,” Whit said. “Threw him into the cliff like a rag doll.”

  “There’s probably internal injuries, then.” She lifted away his undershirt, revealing the quarrel’s head protruding from his chest. Blood streaked the skin around it. “And he’s going into shock. Okay, we’ll cut off the back and pull it through.”

  Swaying with nausea, Callie averted her eyes. Her hands hurt from clenching each other.

  After Teish removed the back of the shaft, Whit pulled the quarrel through Pierce’s chest, blood puddling the ground beneath it. Muttering about the filth in which they worked, LaTeisha applied gauze pads and strips of torn undershirt to the wound.

  “Here, roll him onto his back—”

  “Where’s the Safehaven?” Whit asked.

  “Ian’s searching for a passage now,” LaTeisha said. “Oh, look at this—busted ribs. And maybe a ruptured spleen. He needs a hospital.”

  Pierce coughed, and bright blood foamed over his lip. Callie turned and fled, bouncing off Ian as he came around the flowstone curtain.

  “The passage!” she said, grabbing his arms. “Did you find it?”

  “No. There doesn’t—”

  “Then we have to keep searching!”

  “Callie, there isn’t any passage.”

  She gaped at him.

  “There are only three rooms here,” he said, waving a big rawboned hand. “They’re all dead ends.”

  “That can’t be.”

  But it was. Callie examined all three passages herself. Two were obvious dead ends. The third led into a crawlway that accessed a room behind the main chamber. Gerry was already there, in the process of conducting his own search.

  Their field lamps cast bright circles around them, sluing off a ceiling hung with ranks of short flowstone draperies and glistening nets of redorange crystals. To the left, tiny blue-green box crystals encrusted an entire wall, but at the top of a talus slope ahead, the light bounced off flat ochre rock. A dank mineral smell tainted the air.

  “The manual said something about the Devil’s Window and the Blood of Sacrifice,” she said.

  “Well, if the arch is the Devil’s Window,” Gerry drawled, hands on his hips, “we’re under it.” He looked around. “There’s a breeze in here. Feel it? Must be another opening.”

  “Could that be the Blood?” She spotlighted the red crystals on the ceiling.

  “Where’s the door?”

  She swept the room again with her lamp.

  “Maybe we have to ask,” Gerry suggested.

  But their request only faded into silence. No device glowed in the wall, no door opened, not even the air stirred. She clenched her teeth against the scream trying to rip out of her throat and said, “Maybe we missed something in the other passages. Or maybe we should try asking there.”

  But though she went back again, and again after that, nothing had changed. There was still no device, no door, no way to get through. When she returned to the main chamber, Pierce had regained consciousness. As she knelt beside him he tried a smile—the effect was ghastly.

  “You’re not dead,” he whispered.

  “No.”

  “I thought you were.” His voice rasped like dry leaves. He seemed distant and distracted. “My belt went off. . . .” He lay listless and horribly gray, a vacant gleam in his eyes. “I guess you didn’t find the passage?”

  She brushed hair back from his bloodstained face, desperate to touch him. His skin was cold, clammy. “No.”

  Disappointment flitted across his face and vanished as if forgotten.

  She told him about the red crystals in the central room. “I’m thinking that could be the Blood of Sacrifice. Remember that passage in the manual?”

  He swallowed. “I’m thirsty.”

  Catching her lip between her teeth, she went to get him some water. LaTeisha stopped her on the way back. “He can’t have that, Cal. He’s bleeding internally. If you give him—” She glanced at Pierce, then at the men by the slit, and sighed deeply. “Never mind. You might as well make him as comfortable as you can.”<
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  She went back to stitching up a gashed arm. Callie stared after her, cold to the core. By the time she got back to Pierce, she was shaking. It was all she could do to lift the vessel to his lips and let him sip.

  The water revived him. He wanted more, but she refused. After that he grew restless, his gaze shifting around the room. He reached for her arm, his grip weak and so very cold. “Did you find the passage?”

  “Not yet.” She felt brittle, unreal, as if this were a very bad dream from which she would soon awaken.

  “The Door of Hope,” he quoted, “lies beneath the Devil’s Window, where the water of life mingles with the Blood of Sacrifice. . . .” He coughed and that bright foamy blood flecked his lips. She wiped it away with her fingers, rubbed them on her pants leg.

  “I shouldn’t have walked through the curtain,” he said. “That’s why this happened. My belt was off. If your belt’s off, you can’t see.”

  She squeezed his hand.

  He smiled. “You know, for not being able to die in this world, this sure is uncomfortable.”

  “Don’t talk like that. You’re not going to die.”

  “Don’t worry. They’ll send someone else.”

  “I don’t want anyone else!”

  His eyes fixed upon her gravely. His bloodied hand touched her cheek, fell to her shoulder, and slid down her arm. “Do you have your key?”

  “Of course.”

  “Well, then—” He swallowed and his eyes wandered away. “You should open the door.”

  “We don’t know where it is.”

  “He who has eyes to see . . .” His voice dropped to a whisper.

  “. . . let him see . . .”

  “There’s nothing here.”

  “It’s here.” His hand fell to his side, and he faded before her, his eyes half closing, his breathing so shallow that for a moment she feared he was dead.

  Gerry returned with her to the central chamber, and they searched every inch of it. Nothing. She ended up back at the wall atop the talus slope, where she pulled out her key and touched the smooth surface— here, and here, and here. Still nothing. She asked again and was reduced in the end to tearful pleading.

  Gerry stood by silently, his lamp aimed at the floor.

  “If Pierce was here,” she said, “I’m sure he’d see something—”

  “There’s no way we can bring him through that crawlway, Cal. Not in the shape he’s in.”

  “No.” It occurred to her that even if they found the passage, they wouldn’t get him through it in time to save his life.

  Her stomach churned. Don’t think about that.

  She swept the beam slowly across the chamber again, searched the yellow wall beside her for indication of an opening. Finally she turned her focus inward, seeking the link, but her thoughts kept straying to images of Pierce lying gray-faced on the floor, and to the horrible notion that they’d been mistaken, or tricked, that there was no Safehaven.

  No, there had to be something, something important that she was missing.

  As she turned toward the exit, the sense of being watched prickled up her spine. Realizing with a start that Gerry had left unnoticed, she hesitantly flashed the lamp left and right—and spied a Tohvani, standing at the base of the talus slope about twenty feet away. It did not flinch or blink in the light but just stood there, staring at her. Was this proof the door was here? Was the creature waiting to see if she could find it? Mocking her because she hadn’t?

  Anger erupted. Though she had been watched by these creatures since her first day in the Arena, she never got used to it, and she hated it now more than ever. Those cold, empty eyes, so devoid of expression, so . . . so superior. It was their disdainful attitude, more than their appearance, which made them seem so alien.

  She turned her back on it, feeling for cracks in the wall again.

  We can’t help what we look like. He won’t let us appear any other way.

  She froze.

  We’re as much victims as you are. He’s the one who runs things, after all.

  She should leave now.

  Makes you wonder why he’s gone to all this trouble, doesn’t it? I mean, bringing you here, demanding you jump through all his hoops?

  Get out now, she told herself.

  Ah. You’re telling yourself you shouldn’t be listening to me. I might make you think, and we can’t have that. When puppets start thinking, it’s no time until they’re trying to cut their strings.

  Her legs trembled. Her heart pounded.

  Why are you still here, Callie? You know I’m evil. The word was drenched with mockery, even in her mind. Why aren’t you running away like a good little witness?

  She clenched her fists and took a step down the slope. When had she turned around?

  Is it because for the first time you’re beginning to grasp the fact that “truth” depends on who you’re talking to?

  Confusion rattled her. It was as if everything she believed had come loose from its moorings and now swirled around in her head, nothing more certain than anything else. From the beginning she’d seen the Tohvani’s side of things only through Aggillon eyes. They had been dismissed as evil, and she had been warned not to speak to them. Was that for her own good, as she’d been led to believe, or because the Aggillon feared she’d learn the truth of the other side’s plight?

  If he made them look like this, if he forbade them to speak, was that not unfair?

  The black eyes bored into hers. We’re all in this together, Callie. We want to help you.

  She blinked. “You made the fire curtains.”

  He made the Arena, fire curtains and all.

  “You’re lying.”

  Am I? Or is he?

  She swallowed hard.

  He brought you here, Callie, not us. He’s letting your man die, not us. The creature paused to let her absorb the truth of that, then added, He could easily save him. But no. First you have to find the secret door. Does that sound like someone who really cares about you?

  The words fell like drops of acid, eating into Callie’s soul, exposing a long-buried vein of resentment. He had brought them here—snatched them away from Earth for his own purposes, not for theirs. How could she have forgotten that? How could she have stopped being bothered by that?

  She licked dry lips. “Is there a door here?”

  There are doors all over the Arena. How do you think they collect the bodies?

  “I mean, is there one here, in this cave?”

  He could save your man. But he won’t. Can’t you see he’s just playing with you?

  “If there is a door here, can you show it to me?”

  Laughter burst through her brain and the creature vanished. Callie stood there, reeling, feeling strangely empty, as if something vital had been ripped out of her. Her knees wobbled and gave way. She held her suddenly splitting head in her hands and took deep breaths. Gradually the pain passed, and when she looked up again, a faint nausea was all that remained.

  The maelstrom of confusion had settled, but it had reduced her convictions to ashes. Suddenly she didn’t know what she thought. Elhanu did seem to be toying with them. To bring them all this way, lead them through that awful camp, promising safety and succor if they just reached this slit. . . .The taste of betrayal lay bitter on her tongue.

  She flashed the light around the room and sighed. There was nothing left but to go back to the others. Yet she hesitated, afraid of what she might find in the next room. Oh, please, she thought fervently. Don’t let him die. I couldn’t go on without him. . . .

  Back in the main chamber, Pierce was still with them, but even Callie’s untrained eye saw he was failing. Every so often he would rouse, grope for her arm, and mutter, “Can’t see . . . belt . . . belt’s off . . .” Then he’d lapse into unconsciousness. She sat with him, stroking his face and hair, holding his hand as if their connection might keep him from slipping away.

  Besides Pierce, four others had sustained life-threatening injuries. Karl
was in shock, bleeding internally. He lay on the ground beside Jesse, whose chest wound would certainly kill him without treatment. Anna had wandered around for half an hour before collapsing. LaTeisha suspected a brain injury, and the woman now reclined beside the others. Along the near wall, Evvi lay eerily still on a sleeping bag, her glazed eyes fixed on the ceiling. Her skull had been fractured when she fell down the same bank Callie had, and LaTeisha was surprised she lived at all.

  Teish herself lay stretched out beside Evvi, sound asleep, her dark face hollow with exhaustion. The others, about fifteen of them, were spread out between the slit opening and the flowstone. Fatigue pulled their faces and flattened their eyes. Surveying them, Callie suddenly realized who was missing.

  “Where’s Mr. C?” she demanded, her voice sharp and loud in the silence. The others roused and blinked at each other.

  Dell said, “He didn’t make it.” His cherubic face was pale around the bruises and grubby whiskers. “He was behind me when we set off, but I don’t know what happened.”

  The others mulled this over in silence. How could we have lost Mr. C? Callie thought. His humor, his steady patience, his understanding— they’d been the glue that held the group together. And more than that—in so many ways he’d been the father she’d never had. . . . A wave of grief swept through her, and suddenly she was fighting tears, struggling to think of something else.

  At the slit Tuck unwrapped a chocolate chip rations bar and bit into it.

  Whit stood. “I’m gonna have another look around,” he said.

  “You’ve already looked three times,” Brody protested, scowling up at him. “And Callie’s scoured the place bare. Why bother?”

  “Maybe we missed something.”

  Brody snorted as Whit walked past him and disappeared around the flowstone. In the lamplight, its crystalline veins glowed like fresh blood. As the sounds of his footfalls faded, John leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, his earring gleaming in the lamplight. Tuck crumpled the rations bar wrapper and stuffed it in his pocket. Ian continued to stare blindly out the slit. For the first time, Callie realized Alicia wasn’t with him. She hadn’t been with the prisoners either, though, so maybe she had died and had finally gone home.