Southern Ouroboros

by Matt Kilby

  The door to the corridor didn’t open for four days, but he was ready when it did. As the red light blinked on, he walked into the living room with his fist clenched like a boxer, marching to where Pharaoh waited with a smile that said he knew Joe’s hunger strike wouldn’t last. He started to say something, but Joe hit his mouth as hard as he could, reeling him before the next punch took him to the ground. Joe sat on his stomach and pounded his skull until the bastard stopped moving, unsure if the blood on his fists belonged to him or Pharaoh. He watched the ceiling and raised his hands as if it was all they wanted.

  If time existed among those white walls, the people in charge didn’t care. So he became their model prisoner. Between meals, he did pushups and situps. When the room turned red, he dropped everything and went where they wanted him.

  Pharaoh was ready next time, dodging on the balls of his feet. As Joe stalked him, he kept his distance.

  “They got to you,” he said, but Joe wasn’t in the mood. Blood was the only way to answers now.

  “What did they offer?”

  “Shut up,” Joe growled as he tried to corner him, but Pharaoh moved fast.

  “Your son?” he cocked his head. He circled to the weapons and took a long chain. Joe went to choose his own, but Pharaoh whipped the ground at his feet. “Any freedom they gave you is mine by proxy, so you better talk.”

  He swung again, but Joe caught the links around his forearm. He tugged, hoping to pull him off balance, but his feet held. Pharaoh swung the other end against Joe’s chest, making him wince and step back. Closing the distance, Pharaoh put his knee into Joe’s stomach, doubling him over. They fell, but Pharaoh came up with the chain around Joe’s neck.

  “Now, tell me what they said.”

  “They might not keep their word,” Joe dug fingers under the chain though it didn’t help.

  “They will. If they gave you anything, you must be special.”

  “They said if I cooperate, they’ll let me meet the person in charge,” Joe said as spots floated in his eyes. His pulse pounded in his temple but didn’t matter. If he died, he would wake up to do it again. Still, Pharaoh let the chain fall slack.

  “If so, you’ll do it for all of us forced to suffer and die and suffer again. If you make it there, promise you’ll show them what kind of monsters they’ve created.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” Joe yanked the chain from his hands.

  “That’ll have to be enough,” Pharaoh said and let Joe beat him again.

  As the chain fell across Pharaoh’s shoulders, back, and face, Joe hoped the pain amounted to something. Despite all his torture at Pharaoh’s hands, he was the closest he had to a friend those days. Though their only purpose was to hurt each other, he didn’t want to if it didn’t mean anything. When Pharaoh fell, he went back to his living room and let the panel slide behind him.

  As he waited, he continued to do what the men beyond the walls wanted. He ate big meals and exercised. To anyone watching, he was building them a warrior, but his thoughts went a different direction. He fantasized of waking up back on the examination table, this time ready. He didn’t stumble blind but ran through the hallway into the conference room, finding those same men sitting around the table. Their fear became concrete as he tore them apart with his hands and walked out of the room and the facility, back to his life with a stature that said anyone who stood in his way would die for trying. Even if they took him all the way to California, he walked to Maryland and found Brad waiting. He was the father his son needed and would deal with immortality when the time came.

  In his quiet moments, he sat with his eyes closed to hold the fantasy. He daydreamed his way back to a world that seemed foreign now and not because of what the stone made him. He did things he would never forget, even if Pharaoh always lived to fight another day. How could he cook Saturday breakfast after stabbing someone in the neck or give Brad advice on girls when he cracked a man’s skull with a staff? At his lowest, he sobbed in desperation for the life he would never live, the one he lost when he met Vick at that diner.

  The idea helped him through the waiting. As days passed without the red light, he wondered if he trusted them too much: Dr. O’Neal for leaving the note and Pharaoh for saying he would come up with a plan. On the sixth day, by his count, the bathroom light went red as he showered, so he wrapped a towel around his waist and walked to the hallway, convinced it was just another fight with Pharaoh. One would kill the other, and he would be back in his room within the hour, so why did it matter how he dressed? Pharaoh stood in the circle with his arms crossed and a bright smile, something different shining in his eyes.

  “Didn’t I tell you I’d deliver?”

  “What exactly are you delivering?” Joe stopped.

  “I had a conversation with the ceiling. I told it you were ready and I could prove it.”

  “How?”

  “Before you came, we had privileges. You can guess how we earned them. They cleared the rooms, and the last person on their feet could ask for anything, with one exception.”

  “Freedom,” Joe said.

  Pharaoh nodded. “So I suggested we give you the chance.”

  “And they agreed?”

  The doors behind him opened in a series of whispers, the sound he heard his first day there. The others stepped out of their rooms, those same men and women he last remembered leering over him as they tortured him to death. Now they appeared solemn. He was one of them, so they offered him a moment of silent respect. When it ended, they crashed as a wave, carrying him with such force he couldn’t keep his feet. He slammed into a wall, lost among the crowd before the more observant ones dragged him into the center. He pivoted to face them the best he could, though the odds of surviving slimmed when they pulled weapons from the wall.

  “The rules are simple,” Pharaoh shouted. “King of the Mountain like the old days. Winner gets a puppy or Swedish massage or whatever your twisted heart desires.”

  “That’s not what they told us,” a woman piped up, squeezing a mace’s handle with both hands.

  “They?” he pointed to the ceiling.

  She nodded.

  “You talked to them?” Pharaoh squinted in his doubt.

  “We all did,” a man called out.

  “And what did they tell you?”

  The woman with the mace pointed it at Joe. “Whoever kills that one is Queen of the Mountain.”

  Any confidence washed out of Pharaoh’s face as he turned to Joe and shook his head as an apology. Then Joe was distracted by the tightening circle. Old traumas resurfaced as the ones with blunt objects came first. He counted twelve at a glance. They waited for his eyes to stick, the first blow coming from the opposite direction, so he turned until dizzy. He waited for their inevitable impatience to give him an advantage. A boy not much older than twenty swung the hooked end of a shepherd’s staff at his head, and Joe caught it as the girl’s mace found his stomach. The air left him as he snatched the staff and drove it into the boy’s jaw. The kid spit teeth and staggered as Joe aimed for the side of the woman’s head, the impact crumpling her.

  A roar rippled through the crowd as the bravest and stupidest of them went still. They waited to see if the blow kept her down. Within a minute, she staggered to her feet but swayed as if something in her skull didn’t work right. Instead of helping, they rushed past her toward Joe, weapons lashing out so fast he couldn’t to do more than follow his instincts. He blocked nunchucks and long staffs, baseball bats and chain whips, unable to see the next attack before he knocked it away. His time with Pharaoh served him well, and he acknowledged his teacher with a glance before losing him among the shuffle of bodies.

  Any advantage he had was slight. He deflected most of what came but hurt enough from the ones that landed. His shoulder was dislocated and ribs cracked. After a low swing, one of the fighters caught him above his left eye with something heavy and split his forehead, blurring his vision with blood. Despite it, he fought harder, swinging until his sta
ff cracked and shattered on the last nearby skull. As he caught his breath and his bones reset, he scanned the scattered bodies as the next wave took their places.

  These had bladed weapons: knives and swords of different sizes and shapes with an occasional axe thrown in for good measure. They trampled the others as Joe pried a length of chain from underneath one of the unconscious, deflecting the first blows, though he soon felt metal bite his hands, arms, chest, and legs. The blood made him dizzy and the floor slick, but dropping would be the end, so he refused. He pretended his life mattered, as if the word meant anything without the threat of death. This might be his last chance to get back to Brad, so he fought, imagining Elaine behind him, her hand on his shoulder to hold him steady.

  As much as he wanted it, he was one man with a few feet of chain against too many others with better weapons. One tricked him into swinging wild and caught his sword with the chain, a woman beside him sending her spear at his face. He dropped the chain to dodge, though it didn’t matter. With empty hands, he was dead so stood waiting for the inevitable. The dozen or so left traded looks as if playing a silent game of rock-paper-scissors for who got the honor of killing him. Before they decided, Pharaoh approached without a sound. He had a sword, a hiltless katana he drove through the back of the woman with the spear, withdrawing it to pierce the throat of the man beside her. Some turned to see what happened as the rest charged Joe without caring. With a short whistle, Pharaoh met Joe’s eyes and tossed him the sword, snatching the spear on its way to the ground. A thin rapier slashed the air as if hoping to find Joe by chance, but Joe kicked the man who held it in the chest before putting the katana through his skull.

  When the fight was over, Joe leaned on his sword like a cane, his body screaming from the punishment, though he healed fast. Wounds closed, leaving only blood to prove they were there at all, though there was plenty and not just his. The room was only white where the puddles failed to meet. He scanned the bodies of the fifty men and women who would all be alive tomorrow, but his brain had trouble with the rationalization. He closed his eyes and moaned, staggering though he was now whole.

  “You aren’t done,” Pharaoh said. “There can only be one king on the mountain.”

  Joe had fought him enough times his odds were even, but he was exhausted. He didn’t think he had anything left to beat him this time but marched across the room with his eyes on his teacher. Joe prepared to dodge his spear, but Pharaoh stretched his arms and dropped the weapon. It looked like he was about to hug him, even more when his hands fell on Joe’s shoulders and pulled the sword’s blade into his own gut. Pain flashed through Pharaoh’s eyes as he lowered his head and breathed his last rattling words.

  “Show them for all of us.”

  Before Joe said he would, Pharaoh slipped out of his arms and off his sword. As he fell at Joe’s feet, a loud click came from the weapon rack. The wall parted like the other doors, opening on a long hallway. Joe stepped forward, a familiar voice crackling over the speaker.

  “Drop the sword,” Sergeant Ford said.

  Joe stared at the stained blade.

  Ford continued. “If you don’t, I’ll put you down and you’ll never get another chance.”

  Joe let the sword clatter to the ground as he walked through the opening. His eyes adjusted to the dark of the hall to find the left side divided into closet-sized niches, each lit by a control panel. Bronze plaques bore unfamiliar names until he found one that read “Pharaoh.” He stepped inside to glance over the row of buttons at his waist, pushing one labeled “open.” The wall slid away, leaving a window into an apartment similar to his, though not the same featureless white. Pharaoh’s living room was a Manhattanite loft with red velvet furniture and oversized pillows, built-in bookshelves surrounding his television. Sconces lined the wall behind the couch, a chandelier dangling in the center of the room. He closed the panel and went back into the corridor, imagining those kinds of luxuries were given to the ones who cooperated.

  The hallway ended at a locked door with no handle but a numeric keypad fixed in its place, a slot for an ID card along its side. He was stuck, but it didn’t surprise him. False hope was their currency. Next time, he might find the door open with more hallway on the other side, leading to another locked door. They could lead him along forever, a rat in a maze that could have all he wanted if he did what they asked. Failing that meant starving again, but the idea didn’t scare him anymore. He could manage if forced to, but ignorance was different. In that hallway, he had a hint of some eventual knowledge but no guarantee. Accepting the idea it might not exist, he turned back, deciding it better to wait among the dead until his apartment door opened. He would shower off the blood and go to bed. When he woke, he would eat. When the light went red, he would fight or he wouldn’t. They would have to come ask him for anything more. He took three steps before a low beep sounded behind him. As stubborn as he was, he glanced over his shoulder when the door opened.

  “I heard you wanted to talk,” a different man said over the intercom, but Joe didn’t recognize his voice. “Come on back.”

  “You won’t like what I say,” he called out.

  “Maybe not, but you’ll want to hear what I do.”

  Joe wondered whether he should trust anyone offering what he wanted. After losing Elaine and Brad, he accepted something in the universe didn’t want him happy. God or karma or that stupid black rock he gave Vick—whatever had control hated him or was too indifferent to intervene on his behalf, so he doubted it would hand out blessings now. Still, his legs carried him, the slightest chance at answers enough. If the man didn’t deliver, he would kill him too.

  But he had to find him first, impossible even with every door standing open. The facility was a tangle of hallways, which he doubted was an accident. Every corner gave Ford’s soldiers a place to send him snoring back to where he belonged, but no one stopped him as he wandered, trying every door until one led somewhere different.

  Beyond the carpeted labyrinth, he found a room he recognized: an examination table in its center surrounded by medical machinery. Monitors showed the piles of men and women he left behind him, his attention divided among the screens, reminding himself every corpse would be alive again in a few hours. It didn’t help as much as he thought. He felt sick with himself, disgusted at being capable of that kind of carnage. As a shudder went through him, he lashed out at the nearest monitor, buckling the glass though the image held. The next shattered, its shards shredding his knuckles, but he ignored the new pain as he moved down the line, destroying every screen. Blood marked the cracked glass and floor beneath them. When done, he moved on, hands healing at his sides.

  In the next room, a man and woman in lab coats sat at a table and replayed the fight, jotting notes. They didn’t look up until he was close enough to snap their necks with his bare hands. To his horror, he had to fight the urge. He told himself they didn’t bring him there, even if they were complicit in everything that happened since. They sat in this room and watched him suffer without offering help or finding someone who could, so maybe they deserved as much as the rest. As he debated their fates, the woman glanced back, drawing a sharp breath as she touched her partner’s shoulder. The man jolted so hard he fell out of his chair and crawled in a slow retreat as if there was some chance Joe didn’t see him. When he was halfway to the door, the voice spoke again from the speaker.

  “Let them go. Your business is with me. For anyone else, if you are too busy to obey the standing order to stay in your labs, there is a man covered in blood wandering the halls. If you see him, keep out of his way. Does that sound fair, Dr. Richards?”

  Joe nodded and hated the way the woman’s eyes filled with gratitude. Then something moved in the doorway. He raised his eyes to see Sergeant Ford come into the room, the crawling scientist scrambling to his feet to run toward him. Ford grabbed his coat and yanked him past, waving for the woman to follow. When they were safe, he fixed his attention on Joe.

  “You don’t
want to be here,” Joe warned.

  “I came to take you where you need to be,” Ford held out his hand as if placating a gorilla.

  “Like that night on the highway?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’re the reason I’m here,” Joe seethed.

  “No,” the sergeant shook his head.

  “Then who?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t be the asshole sent to escort you. Still, if you want to settle up—”

  “Don’t tempt me,” Joe glared.

  “I doubt it’d take much. Mentioning your orphan son should do it.”

  Joe didn’t consider the fact he was right or what it would mean if he killed him. He ran at Ford, getting there before he drew the pistol on his belt, lowering his shoulders to drive him off his feet. They hit the ground hard, and he slammed his fist into Ford’s jaw, the blow taking two of his teeth. He didn’t need to explain to him it was a mercy. It showed in his eyes, wide as his hands rose in surrender. The gesture didn’t mean anything to Joe as he wrapped his hands around Ford’s throat.

  “This isn’t the way,” Ford croaked. “It isn’t you.”

  “It is now,” Joe squeezed harder.

  “Then you’re weaker than they said you were,” Ford strained through trembling lips as his face swelled with trapped blood. His eyes squinted to slits, but he didn’t look away. “The night we met, I witnessed what made you special. You would do whatever it took to get back to your son, even tearing through soldiers I trained myself. But Pharaoh got a hold of you, and look what he did. You’re like him now: bitter and ready to fight anyone, even if it costs you everything.”

  “You’re not just anyone,” Joe loosened his grip to allow Ford to breathe. “You brought me here. You took me from my son.”

  “You’re right, but there was a reason. Don’t you want to hear what that is?”

  “You thought I had the stone.”

  “The one you gave Vick Hafferty?”

  Joe studied him. If they didn’t need the stone, why were they keeping him? Without time to figure it out, he shook his head. “Doesn’t prove anything.”