by catt dahman
“All of it really, but I like Wodanaz, also known as Odin the god of battle and war. What I got from reading though is that there are battles and strife, and people die. The only way to make sense of things is to know that in all this, there is wisdom, we use wisdom to survive, and we have a lot to discover. There is magic….” He suddenly stopped speaking and looked embarrassed.
“Go on,” Lawryn asked.
“It’s just the time of battle, and one has to understand the reason we fight. We want to go on; it’s what we do.”
Ruby, now awake, watched Jeremy, and as people settled in; she plucked at Jack’s sleeve to threaten him, “Tell me all, or I’ll ask Jeremy.”
“You’re wrong. That’s wrong. He’s had a bad day.”
“Tell me.” Ruby petted John as he rubbed his nose against Ruby’s nose, and it made Jack almost smiled, seeing the tenderness.
With his face crumpled, he whispered what he hadn’t told before and paused to get his breath before going on. Brent was a selfish jerk at times, but Jack felt bad about losing him. He couldn’t be everywhere at once to help.
“Maybe you and Jeremy can’t do it all. And Marcus. Adrian. When did you sign up to be a hero?”
“They can hear me and see me looking at you, so I wanna tell them…the audience…this is wrong. We’re throwaways for entertainment. We are fun for an hour each week, but we don’t count.”
“I know,” Ruby said.
“We didn’t know. We did it, but the action is not real on television. This is my life; it is real here. I don’t know what I’m saying. Fuck the audience and SSDD and Dinosaur: 65 Million.”
“Donovan?” Ruby asked.
“Oh, that was a great one for ratings,” said Lawryn as she quietly slipped back over to the pair. “He couldn’t climb, we tried to help, but he had one hand.”
“What did he do?” Ruby asked, frightened of the answer.
“So I was looking at him, Ruby, yanno, looking down and telling him he could do it. I was all about he could make it because I wanted him to. But the audience saw. They watched him trying from my camera,” Lawryn said; she was crying now.
“Shhh, it’s okay.”
“It isn’t. I watched, and Donovan reached up for the next handhold, and then he would have it made. It was a piece of cake from there. Only, oh God, Ruby, he reached with his stump,” Weeping, she stopped speaking and hid her face in a blanket.
Marcus heard her, came over, picked her up, and tucked her into a sleeping bag to rest. He kept shaking his head sadly as he handled her like a small child. He made her turn to her side, zipped up her sleeping bag, and stroked her shoulder. He said, “You sleep now, Baby Girl. You had a bad day, and you rest now. I’m watchin’ out for you.”
Lawryn relaxed as he hummed softly and spoke in whispers, promising she was safe and asking her to get warm and sleep, “Will you stay awake and watch for the monsters?”
“You can trust me to, Lawryn. I’m right here,” Marcus vowed.
Jack was quiet, “Yes, that happened, and Donovan fell. Those things ripped him apart when he hit the bottom. Thank, God they killed him when he fell. Can you believe that? I’m glad he was dead,” Jack buried his face a while. He wiped his cheeks and sniffed, regaining his composure.
Marcus and Adrian both had drawn faces, tired, sad eyes, and tight jaws.
Wendy, Marshall, and Serinda, and members of the blue team did camp chores robotically, keeping busy. They all seemed defeated as if they carried heavy weights. They jumped at shadows.
“Susan is okay, but she’s been sleeping a lot. Shock, I’m sure. She drank and ate, and she checked on you, but she was worn out,” Jack told Ruby.
“Good thing she can rest. She needs it.”
“I told her that and said we were okay.”
“What were you…before this?” Ruby asked Jack.
Jack had a thousand-mile stare. He spoke, “I was a cop once. Deputy in a tiny town. I saved enough to get a ranch going, but it’s small. The town started failing, and they couldn’t afford me anymore, so I couldn’t afford the ranch. Now, they have one deputy sheriff, old guy waiting to retire, dry up, and die like everything else in town. The bank is gonna take my house and land unless I win. I thought I could come here, get a victory, and help myself and the town.”
“Oh, we all did, I think.”
“I feel like an idiot.”
“We all do. We thought we were stars, but we’re just pawns for entertainment. We are their buzzes. You might still win this, Jack,” Ruby said.
“Well. Maybe. I don’t think so. I think I’ll end up like the rest. Seeing everyone die, it’s a wake-up call.” Jack fed John a bit of a fig and caressed John’s soft skin as he crawled out, greedily begging for a fig. He loved the fruits.
“No. We can do this. At least we can try. And when others are forced to do this with the initiative and poverty…this population control…we’ll know we won, and they’ll know they can, too,” Ruby said.
“Naw, social and monetary Darwinism…whoever wins will be rich, and rich survive to fight another day. What? You’re giggling at me? You don’t think a former cop can have a brain? I read.”
“I apologize. I am shocked at your depth of thinking though.”
“You’re a teacher.”
“So they say. I speak and am ignored, I break up fights, I am cursed at, and I get paid almost nothing.”
“Sounds like my job back when I was a cop.”
Ruby raised her eyebrows, “But I had no weapons. Only difference here is I got a gun, huh? When I was teaching and assigned my students to write about their family, they wanted to write: My Family. My family done gone true some bad things like my sister got capped punishment for trading sex for food but ‘dat ho weren’t paying attention and got busted by the po-po.” If I had had a gun and I had shot every student who called me a bitch when I gave him back an F on the essay because he refused to write in standard English, then I’d have had two students left, and the job would have been good then.”
Jeremy watched and listened, “All of that. And this. It’s wasting time and putting off what is the final evolution. Seriously, we can’t fight what is final, and this is…people want to be entertained, not educated. Think about it.” Every two weeks they sent in twenty-four on this one show, and there’s what? Ten like it? Here twenty-six weeks and twenty-four each time. Six hundred and twenty-four a year. Ten shows, that’s sixty-two hundred and forty less people”
In the morning, Jeremy, Marshall, Marcus, Adrian, Lawryn, Susan, and Jack had matching scars on their heads. Tiny marks. Serinda, Wendy, and Mali would have theirs removed by that evening.
The cameras would be gone.
Chapter Eight: Bert McTone / Teams Fail
“Bert, we have an exciting show tonight. We have lost several contestants, and the ones left are in quite a bad position,” Analisa smiled.
“Anthony is alive, a favorite, and as you know, he’s our contestant from New Jersey. What a fighter, Analisa! And how about Mali? She slept a lot and got her energy back. She’s a real fighter. I was worried about those two.”
“Impressive, Bert. I was biting my nails. Anthony really had to reach deep to survive this, and sadly, not all of the team did make it.”
The camera showed the tyrannosaurs attacking the blue team as they ran and fought back. The creatures relentlessly followed the people over rocks and boulders, hunting, their noses high and flared. The animals refused to stop chasing their prey, roaring dramatically, possibly letting the rest know how they were faring. The blue team didn’t have time to decide if the dinosaurs communicated while hunting; they just ran and fought back as best as they could.
Lizveth’s long legs were beautifully tanned, her butt was firm, plump and well shaped, and her perky breasts stretched her tiny tee shirt as she ran around the rock. She pushed her long, white-blond hair from her face, and despite her looking like a sex-bomb, her pretty blue, wide-set eyes looked very young and afraid.
> Bert jumped a little as the audience clapped and cheered Lizveth’s fight with a juvenile T-Rex. She slashed and cut at him as he snapped and roared. When they both fell as they plowed around a boulder, she reached back and slammed her machete at his nose, missing by inches. The weapon slid out of her hands and then skittered out of Lizveth’s reach.
The audience groaned.
Eyes wide with terror, Lizveth tried to crawl away into a small space in the rocks, scraping her skin away as she moved. It was cringe-worthy, and even the audience moaned as her shirt pushed upward over her back and a sheet of paper-thin flesh rolled away with the rock into a grey mass. Blood appeared in pin prick spots on the raw skin, making her cry with frustration and pain; if she were a little smaller in her boobs and rump, she would have been safe.
She was skinning herself for a chance to live.
Her wounds somehow got more attention than her rising shirt that showed her bare breasts and her tiny shorts that almost showed too much of her lower parts.
The T-Rex, smelling blood, was excited and pushed his nose into the rocks. Lizveth kicked him solidly on his snout, making him rear back and roar. The audience cheered. Any pain was cheer-worthy. “Come on, ya, bastard, let’s go again,” she said, aiming for another kick.
The juvenile creature learned, however, and he dodged back just in time and caught her heel in his teeth. Her other foot pounded his head, but he ignored it, and with great satisfaction, he yanked, pulling Lizveth out. She screamed and kicked, but her crimson blood soaked the rocks as he bit down and took part of her foot and boot in an uncalculated bite force, leaving gore.
She froze as pain filled her like an impossible white bolt of lightning. She gulped for air to scream, and she shrieked her throat raw when he snapped off her other leg right below the knee as he pulled her out from the rocks. Getting away was the least of her concerns as she prayed to pass out or anything that might stop the pain. She was conscious as he bit again, taking more of her legs, but her head was full of buzzing noises, and she was only dimly aware of her situation.
The young T-Rex pulled her apart.
Bert and the audience were quiet.
“Ummm, she fought,” said Bert, a little confused. He couldn’t read the teleprompter to recite specifics about Lizveth and her life, so he mumbled about her family but then stopped talking. He was supposed to say she went to pieces but didn’t.
The camera crew cut away from Bert and Analisa. A producer, watching, whispered and asked what was wrong with Bert.
On camera, Mali clutched her head, her face dazed and petrified as she watched Lizveth die. She used the time to run full speed and distance herself from the kill zone.
***Camera shift ***
The camera showed Donovan, Traci, and Brent. Bert couldn’t read the words he was supposed to say. The audience groaned and cheered, but Bert stared blankly. Donovan was almost to the top, and Lawryn eagerly looked at him. She shouted encouragement, and then he reached…reached with wrong hand and fell.
Brent fell; Jack and the others went to his side but shook their heads. Jeremy climbed down and then climbed back up. Brent didn’t move after that; he was dead. Everyone was left to wonder what Jeremy said as Brent died, but there was no audio.
“Did he…what did Jeremy do?” an audience member called out.
Bert ignored the question, and luckily, the audience had a short attention span, so the question was forgotten a second after it was asked. Bert didn’t know how he felt about the video clip or the issue posed. He didn’t know anything right then.
“How about Kathleen? She was a fighter,” Analisa said, trying to get back to the program as they showed that clip, “Bert, I thought she was going to make it.”
“With a bite and a broken leg? How in the hell could she?” Bert snapped.
Analisa looked as if she had been slapped.
“She had no chance. She was done in; she knew it. We knew it.”
“Right. That’s right, Bert.” Analisa frowned and looked to the producers who shrugged. They didn’t pull the cameras because this was one of those times they could gather sympathy and a touch of the morose for the show. Bert’s emotions looked genuine. He was a star! How could they every doubt his professionalism; he knew how to stretch a moment to the fullest, the producers thought.
“Kathleen fought to the last few seconds. She was injured as we know, but she tried. I saw her as a warrior. I really felt bad hearing her scream afterwards; the other contenders heard her,” Bert said, off script.
The camera showed Jack crying, but the audio wasn’t there. There was a close-up of Jeremy’s dark scowl and several seconds of Ruby lying motionless.
“Jack was sad about losing friends,” Bert said dully. The network wasn’t about to let the audience hear Jack’s diatribe about game shows and reality television and what he had to say, “And it seems some of our camera are malfunctioning.”
“It must be because so many had head injuries,” Analisa smiled.
“Yes, they all got hurt in the same place, it seems.”
Analisa gave Bert a warning glance.
“But how did green team get to those rocks? How did this happen? Let’s watch and see what led to these terrible events,” Bert said.
The cameras were ready to show everything before, so the watchers could understand how this came to be. As anticipation and curiosity built, no one could dare miss a second of the show. They had to know how their favorites got in the position.
“Polls show viewers think Marcus and Jack are ahead, but Jeremy and Adrian are creeping up, and Anthony remains in the top three. Of the women, Lawryn remains ahead in the polls, and Mali is up now. Lawryn is a level-headed woman, cute as can be, and dependable.”
“I think Wendy is one to watch, but Serinda seems strong,” Analisa said.
“Let’s go to footage of the blue team. I have to say Lizveth fought valiantly, and I was hoping she would make it. I bet,” he winked, “some of those men of her team will miss her now.” Bert meant that to mean they would miss her because she was gorgeous and flirtations.
Analisa sneered, “Well, there was a lot of bumping boots with the men and one woman. There’s going to be added frustration in that camp. Lizveth was like a little mink in heat.”
Bert was shocked. The audience cheered and chanted Mink in heat. He almost couldn’t go on.
He went on, “And we lost Nora….”
“Bert, Nora had problems from second one. She had sneakers, no boots, and was one of our glitzy, glamour queens. It’s impossible to take a ‘tiara princess’ and expect her to make it under these conditions. But she did go with her pearls on.”
The audience roared with laughter, and Bert felt his face flame. Since when were they vilifying the deceased contestants? Tides had turned, and each death was a joke.
The cameras showed how Trish had been chased by a pair of T-Rex, and then each one grabbed her almost simultaneously, her legs in one mouth surrounded with serrated sharp teeth, and her head caught in the teeth on the other side. Watching, one could easily guess what was coming next. Both creatures bit down so Trish’s head popped right off and was gulped, and her lower legs vanished down the gullet of the second beast. Her torso fell into the dirt.
Hers was one of the more merciful deaths.
The T-Rex didn’t stop: one took her chest in his teeth, and the other took tattered thighs, and again they played tug-of-war until the thighs disjointed with a spray from the femoral artery. The winner of this sickening game took his prize and ran away carrying Trish’s torso, to be eaten at his leisure.
“Their play is pretty brutal,” Analisa said.
Steve ran down hill and ahead.
Mark, the quietest of the team, was snatched up and almost swallowed whole. In fact, this would be a favorite part of the show. On the massive creature’s tongue, before he could be bitten, Mark slid to the side of the mouth, near the gum line, slipping on ropy, slick saliva that smelled of rotting meat. Rearing back, h
e slammed his machete deep into the gum line next to a tooth, and as the creature roared and tossed his head, Mark used the sudden chance to bury the machete deep into the back of the animal’s tongue, severing most of it.
The machete flew out as the beast tried to spit him out, but Mark managed to use his knife to puncture more of the animal’s gums before he fell at the animal’s feet next to his lost machete. Bloody, slick saliva dripped onto Mark. The fat tongue tore away and fell, and if it were seen alone, lying on the ground, few would be able to guess what the odd-looking, meaty object was. The dinosaur ran away, roaring with fury and was beside himself with pain.
Mark walked away with Anthony, Mali, and Preston, but they could do nothing as Steve, screaming, was systematically disemboweled. Anthony took a few shots and finally scored one in Steve’s head to stop the torture. His remains were left as the T-Rex ran to follow the roars of the rest of the pack.
In the thick woods, the contestants sat to rest.
“Did Liz make it?” Mark asked.
“No. She almost did, but one of the smaller ones got her. It was…it was the most horrible thing I ever saw,” Mali often spoke in her neighborhood’s lingo and slang, but she, sickened, forgot she was on camera as she spoke.
“Nora bought it,” Preston said.
“Could you be any more uncaring and disrespectful?” Mark asked.
Preston flipped him off, “One less means I made it. They eat someone else, and I am saved. Survival of the fittest.”
“I may kick your unfit ass,” Mali threatened.
Anthony raised a hand, “Calm down. Everyone. Breathe. We need our energy to get to a safe place; fighting wastes energy.”
“Freak boy is wasting my oxygen,” Mali said as she walked away from Preston. He grabbed his crotch and had she seen that, she might have punched him.
The audience, watching, began laughing hard.
Mark sighed with relief and then bolted to his feet, screaming as a thick, sinuous snake dropped from a tree and draped heavily across his shoulders. Everyone yelled for him to freeze, but Mark, deathly afraid of snakes, slapped it. Olive-colored with a pale yellow belly and wings on its head like a cobra, the snake wasn’t a cobra but something that existed sixty-five million years ago with nubs that were all that remained as evolutionary feet. It was a taipan or an early ancestor of one.