by Mark Tufo
“Did you wish me to come?”
“No, she’ll just clam up. I need to play this out so she thinks we’re on the same side.”
“Michael, I will never doubt your resolve on the battlefield, but fighting a war of wits and deception with her leaves you extremely vulnerable.”
“Are you saying she’s smarter than I am?”
“By magnitudes of degrees. Especially in the arena of deceit and cunning.”
“It must be tough being me, hardly able to breathe and walk at the same time.”
“You infer that I have insulted you? There is no insult in knowing when you are over matched. I believe I can wade through her words and apprehend the truth.”
“The problem is, buddy, she’s not going to say anything with you there. There is one thing I could do, I could still play the ‘insane fantasy that we are still together’ card.”
“It is not wise to push one as unstable as her, you never know in which direction she will fall.”
“I hate it when you make sense.”
“Yes, I can see where reason would make you uncomfortable.”
“I have got to pick better friends.”
“You could do no better than me.”
“BT doesn’t give me this much shit.”
“He does not know you as well.”
“Wow, if we were verbal-sparring I’d be getting the shit kicked out of me. I see it on the tip of your tongue—let it go. I have to make sure she’s not stirring anything up on the Hill or worse. Do you know where she is now?”
“I did not see her leave the arena; she may still be there.”
“Yeah, why not.”
Dee grabbed me before I could leave. He tucked a small radio into my gear. “This is transmitting; I will hear everything. If you need help I will come.”
I wanted to tell him I thought I could take care of a woman that weighed a hundred and ten pounds, if necessary. Instead, I thanked him.
It was all in my mind, but the closer I got to the arena, the heavier my steps felt. I seemed to be getting weighed down with the guilt of those I had killed in there. By the time I reached the entrance, my shoulders were rolled forward and my head hung low. I took a few quick breaths in succession, fought hard against gravity and stood straight and tall; it was time to face my demons, both living and dead.
I thought my heart was going to outright stop when I walked in. The alien technology was in full swing; meaning I was standing on a sand dune replete with saw grass and maybe a few sand fleas for authenticity’s sake. A full Prog audience was even in attendance, and there sat Beth in her place of honor.
“Welcome, Michael,” she said as she arose. I knew a trap when I was ensnared. Still didn’t stop me from trying to go back out the door that had conveniently closed and locked. “I knew you would come.”
“Beth,” I said as I took a couple of steps in, my head rapidly scanning the mounds looking for the danger I knew to be lurking. “What’s this all about?”
“Our happiest times together were on this ship; do you remember?” She stood and gestured with her hands. The Prog audience began the incessant buzzing which signified their pleasure at the beginning of the games. They were holograms; I could only hope that my opponent would be one as well. Although I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d somehow convinced Paul to be my adversary here; to once and for all settle the imaginary dispute she’d fabricated between us.
“Beth, I don’t know about you, but I was never really happy. You constantly strung me around like a puppy on a leash. I don’t think I ever even cracked your top three while we were dating. I was head over heels for you back then and to you, I was a plaything, just something to keep you busy while you waited for the real thing to show up. That’s the way I remember it.”
“Don’t be silly! We are one of the great couples; destined to go down in the annals of history. Romeo and Juliet, King Henry and Ann Boleyn, Bonnie and Clyde.”
“There was great violence in all of those relationships.”
“I’m talking about the love they had for one another!” she shrieked.
“Holy fuck,” I muttered. “Dee, I’m in a bit of a pickle right now, you might want to send some help,” I said quietly. I guess he’d pegged my odds better than I had going in.
“You were much more manageable before you got that big head of yours. Thinking you were the Earth’s savior.”
“I’ve never thought that Beth. I’ve just been doing the best I can to survive and to help those around me to survive. To keep my family safe.” Big mistake that last part.
“That should be our family!” She was shaking with rage. “That bitch stole that from me! And you!” Her ire turned quickly. “The first whiff of pussy and you go running from me! How dare you!”
I didn’t think reasoning with her, explaining how she’d given me the boot, was going to work at the moment. It’s not possible to have a sane conversation with an insane person.
“You married a good man, Beth. Is that not enough?”
She paid no heed to my words. “I thought…if I had your baby and wife killed, you would come back to me. Would it have worked?”
I should have shown sympathy, reminded her of her role as the queen of fucking Earth or some shit; I’m just not that smart. “Fuck no, you crazy bitch. After I shot you in the fucking head I would have taken a shit on your corpse.” I said in brilliant Talbot prose. This from the guy about to broker peace in the universe.
“I was expecting a variation of that answer or something of the sort…perhaps not that colorful. Very well. If I cannot have you, then neither can she.”
I heard a door on the far side open. “Shit. What have you done, Beth?”
“I’ve been guaranteed a place of great honor among the Stryvers.” She had a twinkle in her eye, though I’m more inclined to think it was a spark of madness.
“You are married to perhaps the most powerful man the world has ever known. You have great influence over him. You are an icon of our struggle, a beacon of hope to millions, and that’s not enough?”
Whatever edge she’d dropped off, she certainly couldn’t see my point from the angle she was falling.
“Who came in the door?” I asked her. To Dee, I begged him to hurry.
“It is your end and my beginning. Your omega; my alpha.”
“Shut the fuck up with your revelations, Beth.” I was starting to sweat now. There were any number of nightmares that could crest the next dune. The least of which being holograms of all those I had killed here and the women I could not save. Perhaps Beth was truly broken but there were times where my grasp on sanity was slippery as well. There was many a day I had wrestled with that Vaseline slathered beast trying to keep him in check and firmly entrenched in the reality I needed him to be, wow that sounds a bit like a masturbation reference, how about raging beast, nope not much better. If not for Tracy, Travis, and Dee’s support, it would have been very easy for me to have landed in a rubber room with my name permanently etched into the door. I’d be damned if I was going to let her pull me down into the abyss with her.
I looked to the weaponry wall; there wasn’t so much as a slingshot resting on the hooks. I quickly reached down and unsheathed the Ka-Bar I never leave home without; I longed for the rifle I left aboard the shuttle thinking I was now somehow safe. Was getting the feeling I’d brought a knife to a flamethrower fight. I could hear something approaching—sounded like chain lengths being pulled along wet cobblestones. I could not get the image of a tormented and tortured Jacob Marley coming, dragging the links of his sins. He would have been a welcome sight compared to what it actually was.
“Uut? I thought you were dead,” I said. “What the fuck Beth? Get me out of here!”
“I am going to kill you, Human thing!” he issued on every spidey channel available. Captivity had not been kind to the brute, he was missing wide swaths of hair in various locations, one of his eyes was permanently closed or missing and at least one of his limbs wa
s broken, another maybe just injured as it hung uselessly. But six were more than enough to give him locomotion and swing what looked like a makeshift mace.
“He promised me greatness!” Beth giggled. Yeah, she fucking giggled. That was almost as disconcerting as the hideous creature making its way over to destroy me. “I saved him. What else could I do when he promised me a throne? My very own throne—not at the side of a great man, but one of my own where I would rule!”
“Rule what you psycho? The Stryvers plan on getting rid of all of us.” I was frantically looking for anything that afforded some sort of cover. My best bet was to get close to the wall in an effort to make him have to swing short with his weapon of choice. I wanted to ask how someone hides a Stryver. Obviously, Paul could not see all that his batshit crazy wife was up to, but even he would have had a hard time missing the six hundred pound spider, quite literally, in the room.
“No, no, no! That’s not the case at all. I’ve been in touch with them,” Beth said. I think if I could have gotten closer to her I could have heard the frying neurons in her brain sizzling, signifying her last hold on herself.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I was trying to get a grasp of what she was raving on about, but when a nightmarish spider is talking about how it is going to savagely rip your head off and eat the contents, that tends to take precedence. He was coming, and to say he was angry was an understatement. The words he was projecting into my head were laced in deep red hues that easily conveyed their meaning. He was wary of me, for whatever small defense that afforded me. I’m sure his time in captivity had taught him all about the brutality of Man. Although, if something the comparative size of a capybara had kept me captive and run all sorts of cripplingly painful and humiliating experiments on me and then I had been released to exact my revenge, there would have been no part of me that wasn’t in complete berserker mode just violently tearing asunder all I came in contact with. Well, if all I was armed with was his caution based on doubt, then that’s what I needed to use against him.
“Come on Uut…I’ve got a little something for you,” I said as sinisterly as I could conjure.
“Kill him!” Beth said gleefully. I thought for a second that maybe she was reliving our earlier experience aboard the Julipion and she wanted me to vanquish this opponent, sort of a knight and damsel-in-distress kind of thing. But she was looking at Uut, so I wisely changed assumptions. She wanted the spider monster from Mars to do me in. What in the hell kind of heroine was she?
“Dee get your ass in here! I’m about to become pulled meat!” What the fuck? Did he or did he not put a fucking wire on me?
Uut had what looked like a Chevy big block attached to an elephant chain whistling through the air. It sounded like an entire stadium full of South African soccer fans buzzing around as it whooshed in my direction. One hit on any part of my body and it was over. If it struck low it would shatter both my legs and hips, probably take my pelvis with it. Anything shoulder height would snap my neck like a fucking twig. I never faired all that great in these battles, always taking some sort of damage along the way. This would be the first one where I would not be afforded any type of cushion, or real weapon, for that matter. I kept moving along the wall, farther from Uut, he kept adjusting, always moving forward. He was fast, too—much faster than me, always scurrying to cut me off when I tried to find an escape route. To make matters worse, I had to think Uut may have gone insane. It made sense. A hive-being isolated from his kind might not even know how to survive without others around him; might not even see the point in surviving, except to defeat a threat. He would occasionally utter random blurbs; some were words in his own language or from places I’d never seen or heard of before. But he always came back to his desire to splash in my blood, like a child who walks away from a kiddie pool then gets hot again. Yeah and he sent me the imagery of my slaughter to go along with it as well. To be honest it was not something that looked overly fun from my perspective, although he appeared to be having a blast.
“Beth, come on! This thing is nuts! You couldn’t possibly make a deal with it!” I spared the smallest of glances Beth’s way, not sure which one of these two was farther down the crazy hole. It seemed they’d both taken up residence inside of it, though.
“Not him, silly. I told you I’m in contact with them. Their command.”
How and why immediately went through my head but there certainly wasn’t time to dwell on that at this moment. Uut was maybe leery, but not enough to be standoffish. He was looking to exact some revenge. He sped along towards me, that chunk of metal whizzing through the air like a fucking helicopter propeller. He was moving so fast and the weapon he was wielding was going even faster. It was to the point I could not make out much more than a blur. So it’s really not surprising that I hadn’t even realized he’d swung to hit me. He came up short; I would have to thank whoever plucked out that eye and made his depth perception just a wee bit shittier. The force of the air that rushed past me ripped my hat off and sent it spinning along the sand. I peered long and hard, certain I’d catch a glimpse of my detached head inside that cap. While I was processing the fact that I yet breathed, Uut was readjusting. I think the entire ship shuddered when the steel chunk crashed into the wall not more than three feet from me. He had gone from too little chain to too much.
Motherfucker was going straight for my head. He wasn’t going for any of the secondary spots; he had no intention of hurting me. On the plus side, had he connected, I would have never even known. My spirit would have stood there a few seconds longer with its thumb up its ass wondering how he had missed, then I would have been collected up and deposited wherever one goes when the final bell tolls. Running away, while it had its merits, was not in the cards. Uut was too fast. Escape, though, that held promise. I gripped the lip of the giant steel mace embedded in the wall and quickly pulled myself up. Uut wasn’t overly thrilled with what I was doing and swiftly came in to grab my leg before I could get over the wall. So fucking close. He wrapped whatever you’d call his arm around my ankle. He had such a tight hold on it I half expected my bones to break. I involuntarily cried out in pain.
It was more instinctual than thought-driven as I twisted and drove my blade, hilt-deep into his appendage. He screamed into my head “KILL.” I had to assume he had shredded my brain and it was now leaking out my nose in thick runny runnels. He ripped his arm back so quickly I lost my grip, but not before I cut through a significant portion of the muscle and tendons in his…arm-thing. He had three appendages out of commission and still he had more than twice what I had. Hardly seemed fair. My ankle throbbed in pain as I pushed farther away and into the stands. I got my feet up and under me; the pain was intense but negotiable. I had gone another few rows up when Uut jumped and landed not more than ten feet away. The amount of muscle required to send a huge beast hurtling into the air has to be amazing and terrifying and I wanted nothing to do with it. Tormented ankle or not, I was getting the hell out of there. I wanted to angle for Beth but I think Uut knew that and was keeping himself smack dab between us.
It was safe to assume there was some level of trust there; the occasional glimpse that I got from her gave me no indication she was worried about Uut’s proximity to her. I was limping, had no weapon, and was rapidly running out of ideas; I had been hoping the wall would have scored me a bigger tactical victory than it had. That not being the case, my next play was holding Beth in front of me as a Human shield. Normally that sort of thing would make me sick but since she was the one that put me in this situation and was apparently morally bankrupt, I was surprisingly fine with that idea.
“Beth, call him off!” I could see Uut was getting ready to pounce.
“How much better off would you be, if you’d just dumped that bitch bride of yours? I was really hoping she was going to come with you. There would have been something so poignant about the two of you dying together by a plan I enacted. It would have been wonderful. Like, Greek tragedy wonderful.”
No help on that front, that chick had checked out. Uut crouched slightly, this was the moment of truth, like being a goalie during a penalty kick at Lord Stanley’s cup. My only chance of success lay in me predicting where Uut was going to end up, but unlike a goalie, I had to land away from where he shot. I launched fractions of a second before Uut. I’d nearly waited too long. A hairy arm dragged across my back, ripping my shirt as tiny, razor-sharp barbs hooked into the fabric and tore it free. I sprinted for the wall; we both jumped at the same time. He sailed past, reaching out with one of his legs and delivering a strike. I was forced down to the ground and I again cried out in pain as my bare back was lashed as if from a spiked whip. I had seen the gleam of what I was looking for while I was in my short free fall, punctuated by a kick. I twisted my body to make sure I’d be as close as possible to the blade when I landed.
Had not been expecting to land ribs first, of course, and the sand inside the arena really should have had much more give. Maybe it would have if I’d not been pushed so hard. Every ounce of air was forcibly expelled from my lungs as my rib cage compressed against its oxygen gathering organs. My ankle throbbed and my back burned but that had nothing on the extreme vulnerability I felt when my limbs gave up the desire to move and lacked the fuel to do so anyway. Amazing how quickly all else loses importance when you can no longer breathe. I struggled to keep my eyes from dancing around inside my skull. I could feel the sand covered metal floor vibrate through my bones as Uut landed some feet away.
It was a cacophony of noise as Beth and Uut screamed their desire to either have me killed or to kill me. Tough room. With flagging reserves, I pushed off and just reached the handle of the blade. I turned the moment Uut was coming down from his most recent pounce. The blade, as if some other, stronger hand had guided it, slid easily into the joint where one of his previously damaged arms attached to his body. If I thought he shrieked before, I was completely unprepared for what he let loose this time. I made sure to keep a firm grip on the handle this time as he tried to pull away, though my vision was beginning to tunnel. I pulled and dragged down and back on that knife for all I was worth and for as far as I could before he jumped away. Had to have opened his underbelly up a good foot or so; internal organs and whatever other glop made up a Stryver, pushed through his exoskeleton and was leaking onto the ground like a can of run over stew.