by James Axler
THE FRIENDS had gathered outside the arena.
“O captain, my captain,” Doc said, capturing Ryan’s attention, but speaking to the entire group. “The fair lady Eleander has brought something to my attention that I feel should be shared with the rest of you immediately.”
“You’re in love, Doc,” J.B. suggested.
“That is besides the point, John Barrymore. What she has brought to my attention is that in addition to all the beneficial drugs and medicines made by Baron DeMann, there are also operations within these walls which produce the more sinister variety of stimulants and narcotics such as wolfweed, dreem and jolt.”
“I knew it,” Mildred said, slapping her thigh. “There’s no way someone operating out here alone could be so altruistic.”
“Did a good job hiding it,” Ryan said.
Eleander stepped forward. “He uses the medicines as a cover for his drug operations. With every shipment of insulin or penicillin that goes out, a package of jolt or dreem goes along with it.”
“So anybody wanting medicine for their ville has to take the bad drugs along with the good.”
“That’s sort of how it works.”
“We all suspected it,” Ryan stated. “And it’s why I want to leave as soon as we can, but why are you telling us this now?”
“Robards produces a drug called bang that I think the baron is still unaware of. I know Robards has plans to overthrow the baron and take control of the ville, and your arena challenge might be a part of his plans.”
“That seals it, then,” J.B. barked. “Forgot this stupe challenge. We leave now—fuck the ammo!”
Ryan nodded his agreement. The one-eyed man had seen plenty of internal power struggles turn ugly, and he didn’t want to get caught up in one here. “We go!”
“Hold on there, Ryan.” It was the voice of Baron DeMann. “We had an agreement.”
“Changed our minds.”
The baron sighed. “And here I thought you were an honorable man of your word.”
“Talk’s cheap, Baron. Your sec chief told us we could leave anytime we wanted.”
“Hmm… I’ll have to have a word with him, lying like that. Next he’ll be stealing and cheating me out of my jack.”
“Mebbe he already is,” J.B. said.
“Mebbe,” the baron said, deflecting the comment. “But this isn’t about my sec chief, it’s about you. If you leave now, I guarantee you won’t be getting very far, especially without ammo.”
“Take our chances.”
“But I want you to stay.”
“Sorry, we’re leaving.”
DeMann shook his head, and as he did, sec men appeared behind him. A moment later, sec men appeared on the wall surrounding the arena. Finally, a pair of sec men showed themselves on the tops of nearby buildings, each sporting a longblaster with a scope pointing down at the group of friends.
“Perhaps you didn’t hear me.” The baron bared his teeth in a smile. “I said, I want you to stay, and it is my ville after all.”
The door leading into the arena opened up on the friends’ right.
“All right, Baron,” Ryan said. “We’ll do your challenge, but not with those toys you showed us last night, but with real blasters.”
None of the friends blinked.
However, a few of the assembled sec men gasped and muttered in protest. Ryan had not only anted up, but he’d raised the stakes to a level that most of Baron DeMann’s sec men weren’t exactly comfortable with.
“Bravo, but that won’t be necessary. I want to test your group’s skill against that of my sec men. I’m not interested in losing sec men for the purposes of entertainment. I think we’ll stick with the paintballs this time.”
Ryan didn’t want to step inside the arena, but they were surrounded by the baron’s sec men and there wasn’t anywhere they could move to without getting torn apart by a hailstorm of hot lead. Their best chance was to partake in the challenge and hope an opportunity for escape presented itself while they played. “All right, we’ll play your game, but after we win, we walk out the front gate of this ville with your blessing. Agreed?”
“Oh, absolutely, agreed.”
The friends headed for the open door that led into the arena. “Uh, one last thing,” the baron said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to give me your weapons. We can’t have you tempted to use them during the challenge.”
“Fuck you,” J.B. said. “Blasters stay with us.”
“Oh, I like your spirit, J.B., but you haven’t changed my mind. Air-powered guns only inside the arena.”
“What about your sec men?”
“The rules apply to them as well, of course. And you’ll be free to check them and their weapons before we begin.”
“Doc and Jak hold our blasters, then,” Ryan stated.
“Of course, whatever you wish. I assure you I already have more than enough blasters for all my men.”
Of that Ryan had no doubt.
“All right, people,” he said. “Give your blasters to Doc.” He looked at Doc, but said nothing while he and the friends put their blasters in the care of the time traveler.
“I assure you, my captain, I will guard these blasters with my very life.”
“I’d prefer you guard them with your LeMat,” Ryan said.
“As you wish, Ryan.”
Doc, Jak and Eleander collected the friends’ blasters, then headed for the seats where they would watch the contest.
The rest of the friends reluctantly entered the arena.
Chapter Twelve
The arena had been modified slightly by the baron’s sec men and now featured several wooden buildings and ramps that would be useless at providing cover against blasters in the Deathlands, but gave solid protection against the paintballs used inside the arena.
“It’s a little like a maze,” Mildred commented, walking through the recently erected structures.
“Plenty of places for sec men to hide,” J.B. added.
They walked into the center of the arena where there was a large open space and the dirt on the ground was level. The walls surrounding the arena were now topped with spectators. Most of them were people from the ville, workers in Baron DeMann’s laboratory, but there were still sec men scattered throughout the crowd. The few permanent seats set up around the arena were taken up by whitecoats, who obviously enjoyed special status in the ville. Ryan noted that there were no addict muties in the crowd, and wondered what it would take to get them streaming over the wall into the ville.
Robards followed the group into the arena and joined the friends in the center. A sec man assisting Robards came up behind the sec chief pushing a wheelbarrow containing a steel strongbox. Robards opened the box and handed a blaster to each of the friends.
“Light,” Krysty said, hefting a blaster in her hand.
“It’s not loaded,” J.B. told her, as he accepted his blaster from Robards. “When the balls go in the hopper, it gets pretty heavy. Best to keep between one and two dozen balls in the blaster. More than that and you won’t be able to move the blaster fast enough.”
Robards handed blasters to Ryan and Mildred. Then the sec chief went back to the wheelbarrow and picked up several sets of plastic goggles.
“What are those?” Ryan asked.
“Protection for your eyes,” Robards said. “The balls won’t hurt you, but if you get one hitting you just right you could lose an eye. Want them?”
Ryan just stared at him.
They had been in firefights in which hot lead had zinged past their eyes, in front of their eyes, and just over their heads. Now that they were playing a game, protection against water-filled balls seemed ridiculous. “No, thanks.”
Robards tossed a pair of goggles to each of the sec men, then handed them each a blaster.
Ryan noticed that the blasters the sec men were getting looked new, or at least better maintained, while the friends’ blasters were scratched, pitted and stained. It was only the outward appearance of
the weapons, but if they hadn’t been maintained on the outside, then they probably hadn’t been looked after properly on the inside.
“Mind if my man inspects those blasters?” Ryan said.
“Not at all,” Robards answered.
Ryan looked at J.B. and flicked his head in the direction of the sec men.
J.B. walked over to one of the sec men carrying the dirty, well-worn blaster he’d be using in the game. He tested out the older-looking model, making sure the action on it worked properly and the pressure charge on it was full and didn’t bleed off extra pressure with each shot. The blaster responded well with a smooth and even pock, pock, pock sound with each squeeze of the trigger.
Then he tried the sec man’s weapon and although looking cleaner and newer, it worked in precisely the same way.
“No difference in these two,” J.B. reported. “I’d like to check them all, though.”
“Be my guest,” Robards said.
The sec men gave up their weapons and J.B. looked all of them over and compared them with the blasters to be used by the friends. In the end, J.B. decided to keep his blaster and the one to be used by Krysty, but exchanged Ryan’s and Mildred’s for the two best blasters belonging to the sec men.
“Satisfied now?” Robards asked.
J.B. nodded.
“All right, then, here’s your ammo.” A second sec man entered the arena pushing a green wheelbarrow filled with two mesh sacs, one red and one blue. He lifted the red sac first and brought it over to where the friends were standing, then carried the blue sac over to the sec men.
Robards beamed. “I assume that’s more than enough ammo.”
Ryan nodded. “It’ll do.”
J.B. stepped forward. “Mind if I check the ammo, too?”
“Why would I mind?”
J.B. dug a handful of blue balls from the sec men’s sac and dropped them into his blaster. Then he raised the weapon and fired a line of balls against the wall, putting four blue splotches on the wall with a foot between each one. He walked over and looked closely at the stains, making sure they were just colored water.
“Looks all right,” he reported when he returned.
“I’m almost offended that you didn’t trust me.”
“Just being careful,” Ryan said.
“Of course you are. It’s exactly why your little group is able to survive out in the Deathlands, and why the baron wants you to test your skills against our sec force.”
“You sure those are the only reasons?” Ryan asked.
Robards ignored the question. “Since you are our guests here, I will leave it to you what type of challenge you’d like to partake in.”
“You mean we’ve got a choice?”
“Well, yes and no. Between sec men we often engage in Last Man Standing, but since that could end up pitting my sec men against each other, instead of against you, your only real choices are Capture the Flag or Covert Ops, where you either attack or defend a specific target.”
“How about we just chill your four sec men,” Ryan said. “And then you can stick your flag up your ass!”
“Very well, then,” Robards said. “You’ve made your decision.”
“Let’s just get on with it.”
“All right, but before we begin, there’s one last thing.”
“What?”
“Since the blasters aren’t fatal, a referee is required to resolve matters of near misses and grazings—”
“Give you three guesses who the referee is going to be,” J.B. muttered, “and the first two guesses don’t count.”
“—and I will be that referee.”
Ryan just shook his head. He knew that the challenge would somehow be skewed in the sec men’s favor, but he’d thought it would have at least been unseen. This had become a farce, but at least the sec chief would be in the arena where Ryan could get at him if he had to.
“Let’s get on with it.”
Robards grinned. “All right, load up and take your positions. The challenge will begin in five minutes.”
SHERMAN AND ROY took up a position just under a mile from the front gate. They had wanted to venture in farther, but they hadn’t anticipated the outer edges of the ville being inhabited by so many addicts and muties. There was no way they’d be able to fit in and mingle among the population. They’d either be swarmed by a gang of muties and torn apart by addicts, or someone would spot them and call in DeMann’s sec men.
So they hung back and watched.
But even from this distance it was obvious that something different was going on inside the walls. There was none of the usual activity going on in the ville, like people moving about, or wags making deliveries. It seemed as if everything had come to a stop.
“Sure would like to know what’s going on in there,” Sherman said, watching the ville through a cheap plastic telescope he’d found in the ruins of an elementary school in what was left of the pre-Dark ville called Muncie.
“Why don’t you go down there and take a look around?”
“With those muties all over the place?”
Roy smirked. “They don’t look too dangerous.”
“No, not much. Just the kind that would slice open my belly to eat my breakfast.”
“So what do you suppose we should do?” Roy asked.
“Sec chief told us to wait for Baron Schini’s signal and that’s exactly what I intend to do.”
“What’s the signal?”
“Don’t know right now, but I figure I’ll know it when I see it.”
BARON DEMANN JOINED Robards on the arena floor. The baron wanted to speak to each of his men personally before the challenge, and the sec men seemed pleased that the baron had taken such a personal interest in what was for them just another challenge.
“This is something more than what you’re used to,” he began. “This is a test of two vastly different ways of life. Ours and theirs… Villelife versus the Deathlands… Sec men versus outland scum… Order and chaos…”
As he talked, DeMann walked back and forth in front of the four-man team, looking each man in the eyes, checking to see if the man was focused on the task ahead of him, and to see if anyone was about to do the challenge all doped up on jolt or dreem. Because the challenge blasters were nonlethal, several sec men over the years had participated in challenges high on drugs. The result was a reckless attack that put the sec man and his whole team at risk. But ever since the penalty for such drug abuse had become a slow tortuous death by, first, overdose of bang, and then a protracted deprivation, which brought on madness and eventually, some would say mercifully, death, drug use by sec men had gone way down.
DeMann was glad to see that the eyes of all the men were sharp and clear.
“I know you’ll do this ville proud,” the baron continued, “because you’ve had the best training of any sec force for hundreds of miles in any direction. You are the best, and your victory will be a message to the surrounding villes and outland scum that might wander past—don’t mess with DeMann.”
A slight cheer arose from the four-man team.
DeMann continued to walk in front of the sec men, but now he stopped before each one to shake hands. “Best of luck, Rodriguez,” he said, extending his hand.
There were six balls in his hand, their shade of blue slightly lighter than those he’d given the men earlier.
“I want the one-eyed outlander dead,” he whispered.
Rodriguez nodded, knowing exactly what the off-color balls were for. He slipped them into the plastic-lined pocket on the outside right thigh of his fatigues.
The baron moved onto the next sec man and whispered his instructions.
The sec man nodded silently, knowing what to do.
They all did.
“ALL RIGHT, EVERYONE,” Ryan said, standing in a circle with the other friends at the far end of the arena. He began pouring out balls into the pockets and waist belts of each of the friends. “Keep your ammo in the blaster down below two-dozen balls.” H
e paused a moment to feel the wind on his face. “And with the way the wind’s blowing, these blasters won’t be accurate past fifty yards, so bring them in close before firing.”
“You think Robards will call his men out when they’re hit?” Mildred asked, raising and lowering her blaster in her extended hand to check its weight and balance.
Ryan just looked at her. “What do you think?”
Mildred shook her head. “Can’t trust a sec chief to go against his own men.”
“That’s right,” Ryan continued, “so we’re going to have to make our rounds count. Shots to the head and trunk only. Anything else and the sec men will probably argue it.”
“What about leaving?” J.B. asked. “Case something goes wrong.”
“I intend to play this game out and walk out of the arena a winner. But since we’re dealing with sec men, I want everyone to make a note of where Doc is sitting as soon as we get out there so you can find him if and when you need your blaster. There are four exits from the arena, and a few of them are partially obscured by wooden structures, so if we have to get out in a hurry, those would be our best choices.”
“What about on the outside of the arena? The streets of this ville are like a maze,” Krysty stated.
“One thing at a time, but we’ll probably have to blast our way out…if it comes to that.”
J.B. shook his head. “I don’t like this.”
“None of us do,” Ryan answered.
“We’ve been in worse spots,” Mildred suggested.
“At least then we had real blasters, not this shit.” J.B. held up his weapon as if it were a play thing.
“Any idea about how we’re going to capture their flag?” Krysty said, reminding everybody that they had a mission to plan.
“Mildred will stay back and defend our flag while the rest of us will fan out and go on the offensive.”
“We gonna try for the flag.”
Ryan shook his head. “Best way I know to get the flag is chilling their whole team first.”
J.B. nodded approval.
“So we’re going to take them all out, then pick up their flag.”
“Want to set a trap for them?” Krysty suggested.
Ryan leaned in. “What have you got in mind?”