The Games

by Ted Kosmatka

  In the darkness, his eyes still caught the swivel of the arm, and his body leaped instinctively. Even as his body did these things, his mind did the calculations and knew he would be too slow. The creature’s blow would kill him.

  Then the power came on.

  Blinding white light deluged the room, and instead of taking his head off, the blow struck him squarely on the shoulder.

  He heard the bones snap like branches, and then he was flying. He hit the wall upside down and slid to the floor headfirst. Color rose up in his vision, and he blinked against brightness. He looked up, and the light had driven the pupil of the gladiator’s single remaining eye into a thin slit. Silas tried to stand, but something wasn’t working right. He looked down at himself and saw jagged bone extending from the mash of hamburger that used to be his shoulder. His arm was still connected, technically, but the thin shirt he wore did little to hide the dent in the side of his rib cage. He felt no pain. Shock, he diagnosed himself. I’m dying already.

  The gladiator spun around, and its eye had opened slightly, looking for him. In the light, Silas could see just how much damage the acid had done. He looked at the gladiator in awe of what one liter of sulfuric acid was able to do to a living organism.

  The single gray eye found him. Silas didn’t move. The creature was on the other side of his desk, and it reached down with one thick arm and, ever so casually, flipped the wooden antique across the room. It broke apart against the wall near the door. Silas felt an irrational wave of outrage. That had been a good desk.

  The gladiator seemed in no hurry now. It moved slowly toward him, its goal assured. There was a crash in the corner, and the creature stopped and turned. Vidonia froze against the wall, looking down at the picture frame she’d bumped to the floor. She slid along the wall to the corner, crouching down, making herself into a small ball. The gladiator looked back at Silas, as if deciding he wouldn’t be going anywhere anytime soon, and turned back to Vidonia, baring its teeth. It took a long step in her direction.

  Silas reached his good hand deep into his pocket. “Hey!” he shouted.

  The gladiator turned at his voice. Silas held up the shining black egg. “You want this?”

  The gladiator growled.

  “Go get it.” Silas bent his arm at the elbow and threw the egg from over his shoulder like a baseball pitcher. It crashed through his office window and disappeared into the darkness.

  The gladiator’s reaction was instantaneous.

  It sprang across the room and plucked Silas from the floor by his throat with one huge, long-fingered hand. Silas’s feet dangled a foot from the bloody carpet. He struggled for breath, beating at the iron hand with his good arm, but the grip only tightened, cutting off his air supply as neatly as a kinked hose.

  The gladiator pulled Silas close to its face. The tips of their noses almost touched. Its remaining eye burned into him, the pupil a sharp vertical lance. The mouth came open, and Silas waited for the bite. Instead, it spoke: “You die.”

  The world darkened as Silas slipped toward unconsciousness. Then muscles bunched in the iron, a quick jerk, and he was flying again. He gasped for air and felt the glass rake across his skin. Then he was tumbling. The sea of thick green sod rose up to meet him.

  Above him, the room went dark again.

  BEN WATCHED the small black object bounce to the grass and roll into a stand of bushes. It was smaller than a baseball but rolled as though it was heavy. He glanced toward the broken window, but the angle was wrong for a good view. Dark shapes moved behind the bright spiderweb of glass. Someone had thrown the small object through the window on purpose; he was sure of it. He stepped out of the cab and shut the door.

  “Wait here,” he said.

  “Sure,” the cabbie said, hitting the fare button again.

  Ben stepped off the pavement and onto the grass. He counted the windows along the wall of the building. Five down from the end, second floor. He had just time enough to realize which office that window belonged to when Silas exploded through the glass and fell like a stone to the turf. He bounced and came to rest on his side. And then he didn’t move. Even from this distance, Ben could see the bones and blood. Arms and legs went in several directions. A moment later, the lights went out in the building again.

  The squeal of tires behind him turned his attention back to the cab. Through the windshield, the driver’s face was a mask of get-the-hell-out-of-here. He backed the car up onto the parking block.

  “Hey, hold on a minute!” Ben screamed. “Wait, he’s hurt.”

  The driver shifted into drive and peeled away. Ben tried to get in front, but only managed a solid kick along the side of the cab as it sped past him.

  “You fucking asshole, don’t leave!”

  The cab didn’t slow. Its taillights fled into the darkness.

  Ben cursed under his breath and ran toward Silas.

  He knelt at his friend’s side and grasped his hand. Silas seemed to feel the touch and turned his head toward him. A deep gash marred the side of his face. He whispered something. Ben couldn’t understand. He looked toward the window Silas had fallen from but could see nothing but the ceiling from this angle. Baskov’s goons would take a few minutes to get outside. Maybe there would be enough time.

  “C’mon, Silas, we’ve got to get out of here. Do you have the keys to the car against the wall?”

  Silas spoke again, and Ben saw his jaw working in several directions at once. It was broken.

  He leaned his ear closer.

  Silas mumbled something, gripping his arm tightly.

  “It’s okay, buddy,” Ben said. “I’ll get you to a hospital. But we’ve got to get out of here now.” Ben tried to pull him to his feet, but Silas resisted. His bloody hand curled in Ben’s collar, pulling the side of his head almost against Silas’s mouth.

  “Run.”

  Ben heard that clear enough.

  The ground thumped behind him. A trickle of fear ran down Ben’s spine. He suddenly understood that he’d been wrong about something. It hadn’t been Baskov’s goons who threw Silas through the window.

  Ben slowly turned. The gladiator sat on its haunches, head cocked to the side. Ben looked back sadly at his friend. “Oh, Silas.”

  The gladiator pounced.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Vidonia pushed herself into the corner as far as she could. The light seemed obscenely bright after so much darkness, and she felt its weight like a spotlight pointing her out. The gladiator turned away from the window it had just thrown Silas through and looked directly at her with its single gray eye. It didn’t move. She couldn’t make herself small enough.

  A sound caught the beast’s attention, and its head snapped around to the window again. Had that been a car door? The lights went out, and the room was plunged into darkness again. The creature moved to the window, becoming a dim silhouette in the starlight. Its wings bobbed partly open, but the one side didn’t move right. The broken edge of an arrow still protruded from the meaty joint.

  The gladiator leaned through the window. Then it dropped out of sight. She was suddenly alone in the room. She didn’t breathe for a moment. Didn’t think. Her heart drummed, and after a few moments she let herself believe it was gone.

  Why had it left? What drew it outside?

  She pulled her way up the wall to her feet. Her body was shaking so badly that she had trouble walking, but she forced herself forward. She navigated through the ruined mess of Silas’s office, past the shards of splintered wood and twisted metal drawers that used to be his desk. At the window, she forced herself to look down.

  She wasn’t surprised to see Ben. Something about him being here seemed right, almost as if it had been preordained. This was the endgame, and all the players had their final role to play. The irony was almost biblical, and Vidonia could sense her mother smiling down at the symmetry of it all.

  The gladiator became what it was, and for Ben, at least, it was quick. He deserved that much.

&n
bsp; It didn’t bite. The attack was less predatory than that, more a thing of anger. The gladiator struck a single powerful blow.

  She’d read once that police profilers could ascertain how emotionally involved a killer was with the victim by the placement and severity of the wounds. She wondered what they’d make of Ben when they found him. She wondered what they’d make of his crushed head knocked thirty feet from his body. Would that raise a flag? Would they consider it a crime of passion?

  At least it was over for him. She hoped it was over for Silas, too. She realized how much more fragile humanity was than the strange creature. Humans seemed much like glass for how easily they broke.

  The gladiator brought its attention to bear on Silas again. It crouched low to the ground and moved toward his broken form, sniffing around his head. Silas turned his face away.

  He was still alive.

  Her breath caught in her throat.

  He was still alive.

  Vidonia brought a shaking hand up to her mouth to hold it all in—the laughter, the crying, the screams. Everything that wanted to pour out of her. He was still alive. Tears slid down her cheek and dropped to the floor.

  She grabbed the broken sill. Glass sank into her palms, but she barely felt it.

  She extended a leg out the window, then shifted her weight onto the small ledge. Her other leg followed, and she let herself drop. She landed in the bushes with a resounding crack. At first she assumed the sound had been her leg or spine. She was in pain, but when she stretched, all her parts still moved. The sound had been a branch that broke her fall. Her butt had taken most of the force of the fall, and for once, she was happy for the little extra padding nature had provided her.

  She lifted her head up from the mud, half expecting to see the creature looming over her, attracted by the sound of her fall. But it still knelt beside Silas. It sniffed him, pausing over his front pockets where he had stuffed the eggs. One huge black hand raked down his body, ripping open his clothes and flesh. Silas screamed in pain as the gladiator picked the eggs from his wounds.

  Vidonia put her hand over her ears but could not block the sound completely. The screaming continued, and she crawled away on her hands and knees, staying behind the belt of shrubs next to the building. She tried to think of something, anything, that she could do.

  There was a loud thud, and the screaming stopped.

  She turned and looked through a gap in the shrubbery. She didn’t want to see but couldn’t help herself.

  The gladiator’s fist was high over its head. Then the arm came down on Silas in a savage arc, thudding again. Tears slid from her eyes. Any thought that Silas was still alive died with that second blow. It’s over for him now, she told herself. But the tears kept coming, blinding her. She continued to crawl, keeping her shoulder against the wall for direction. Behind her, she heard the arm come down again. Again. She heard the crunch of bones, the sickening squish of pulped flesh.

  She crawled on her belly with her face in the dirt, not looking, not wanting to see or hear what was going on twenty feet away. The sounds grew softer and farther away. She stopped when her head hit the tire. She looked up, and the car seemed impossibly huge—impossibly removed in time, like an artifact of some forgotten age. Had it really been only a few hours since she’d arrived on those very four wheels? It seemed like an eternity. Everything in the world had changed since then.

  Her hand closed on the door handle. She pulled, and the latch popped like a gunshot. She looked over at the gladiator, but its arm still did not stop. It was too distracted to notice. The thick black limb rose and fell like a piston, making of Silas a little dent in the ground.

  Tears came anew, and she told herself she wouldn’t look again. If it was coming for her, what could she do, anyway?

  She slithered inside, over the passenger seat and behind the steering wheel. She lowered her feet to the floor and raised her body up.

  She closed her eyes. “Please, God,” she whispered. “The keys. That’s all I ask.”

  Her shaking hand found the ignition. The key was still in it.

  She let loose a ragged breath and turned the key. The electric motor buzzed to life. It wasn’t loud, but she couldn’t help looking again, and this time, the gladiator did stop. It cast its baleful eye toward her.

  She shifted into reverse and hit the accelerator. The car jerked back from the wall and spun in a half-circle. She turned the wheel, and the car pivoted on its rear axis. She was straining over her right shoulder, hand gripping the back of the passenger seat hard enough to pierce the material with her nails. Still in reverse, she floored it, screaming wordlessly.

  The gladiator had plenty of time to react. It even lingered for a moment to scoop up its eggs before it stood. As the car jumped off the pavement and hurtled across the grass toward it, the gladiator raised its wings and thrust upward into the sky.

  Or it would have, had the right wing not been damaged by the arrow.

  The ascent was crippled, off-sided, and the gladiator’s body tilted in the air as the wings provided different amounts of lift.

  The trunk of the car connected solidly with the gladiator’s right thigh, spinning the creature over the top of the car and across the hood to the grass. She hit the brakes immediately, shifted into drive, and floored the accelerator again. It cost only a single second to do this, but still she barely caught it. The creature was up and moving. She jerked the wheel, and its hip collided solidly with the corner of the car, knocking the gladiator sideways to the grass.

  It was hurt now. Not badly, but it was hurt. She turned the wheel again, bringing the car back around and throwing turf in a dozen directions. She moved the headlights across the creature as it tried to gain its footing. She screamed again and stomped the pedal to the floor. The car connected solidly. There was a loud crack, and the creature spun away, up and over the hood.

  She spun the wheel again, and the headlights swung through the darkness until they found the black, bloody shape moving in the grass. The creature was damaged now. Badly. It crawled toward the building, pulling its broken body forward by its hands. She inched the car forward, using the hood ornament as a gun sight. When the crosshairs were lined up, she stomped on the pedal again.

  She heard the clumps of grass pummeling the inside of the wheel wells as she picked up speed, rocking over the bumpy turf. The gladiator turned its eye to the headlights and threw its arm up. It didn’t matter.

  The nose of the car connected squarely with the gladiator’s torso, carrying it forward through the bushes at more than forty miles per hour. The car buried itself in the wall with bone-crushing force.

  Darkness enveloped her.

  HER EYES opened to stinging darkness. She lifted her face from the deflated air bag and wiped the blood away with the back of an unfamiliar hand. The hand looked vaguely like hers but was shaped differently than she was used to. The fingers went in odd directions, and the wrist had a funny twist to it that shouldn’t have been there. She tried to straighten it, and the pain came then, crashing in with enough force to send her back into the darkness for a while.

  Later—she couldn’t say how long—when she traded one darkness for the other, her face felt very cold, and she was lying across the passenger seat. She moved by slow degrees, discovering what pain really was. Everything hurt. Then she remembered that Silas was dead, and that was worse than the pain.

  When she could, she tried the door. She couldn’t find the handle. She looked around the car for where it might have fallen. Glass was everywhere but the windows. She looked across the steering wheel, and the hood of the car was a crumple against the wall. A dark, huge, twisted arm led away from the point of impact.

  The passenger side was better. She pulled at the handle, and the door popped open with a clang. She pushed, but it would open only a foot or two. It was enough. She crawled across the passenger seat and aimed her face toward the gap. She pushed with her good arm, and the grass was damp and soothing against her skin. She sank
her fingers past the roots and pulled. Her body followed.

  For the first time, she realized the motor was still running. The throttle was stuck wide open, and it buzzed wildly, half bee, half sewing machine. She could see the flash of sparks falling to the ground under the motor.

  She crawled away from the wreck and toward Silas, pulling herself by the roots of the grass. Dizziness overcame her, and she collapsed back, looking up into the sky. Slowly, she became aware of stars. There seemed to be millions of them spread out above her. Had they always been so bright? The buzzing of the engine grew more frantic. She rolled to her stomach and continued crawling.

  Silas wasn’t Silas anymore when she found him. He was mud and blood and bits of broken bone, pulped into something that looked like it never could have been alive. Never could have been a man whose face she’d kissed. She followed a long, splintered arm to a hand and laced her fingers into his. She recognized the hand. Those same long fingers, with the same long nail beds.

  Blood ran into her eyes again, and this time she did not wipe it away. She let the blood blur the world away while she sat rocking. She wasn’t able to pretend he was still alive, but she could believe he was still whole and lying in the grass beside her. She rocked him to sleep, singing softly.

  It took her a long while to stop.

  She let go, without looking down. She didn’t want to see what was left of him. She didn’t want to see the blood again.

  She looked instead toward the car and the building.

  She tried to get to her feet and was surprised to be able to do so. The limp was bad, but she could walk.

  Her feet made shiny trails in the dewy grass.

  When she got to the car, she leaned against it, and the world swayed again. She moved around to the mangled front end and looked down. The wall itself was pushed in, a crumble of cinder blocks.