by J. D. Heath
The guards tag Baumer and place the explosive around his ankle. He smiles the entire time, that beatific smile of his.
I’m going to kill him.
I am.
I don’t know how but I am, and when I do I’ll say the names of my family while he dies.
Norton says, “Now we begin our day. Remember to enjoy it. These are the last days of many of your lives.”
And that’s when it happens. Brallen breaks. He begins to scream, his voice carrying fury. “Are you happy now you motherfuckers? I know you’re watching! I know you’re there Father, Mother! I know you’re there! Is that what you wanted?”
Gina presses close to the bars. She whispers, in a nearly inaudible voice, “I guess this means he’s not a Thrill.”
Shit. She’s right. Brallen keeps screaming but now he’s banging his head into the bars, slamming his face right into them. Droplets of blood fly and he’s shouting, “Are you entertained yet?”
The guards move in. One of them grabs one of Brallen’s outstretched arms. He screams and fights but it’s too late. The guard yanks a syringe from his shirt pocket and rams it into a vein. Brallen responds by spitting in the guard’s face and then he’s out of the guard’s grasp and capering around his cell like some club kid on whatever high’s popular high these days.
He screams, “Wait until I win and get out of here! I’m coming for you, you motherfuckers! We’ll see who’s in control then, I’ll break control!”
Gina goes limp. Her legs go out from under her and she lands on the floor. The top of her head bangs into a bar and I hear a low whimper come from her throat. I kneel, trying to see if she’s okay. Brallen starts to wind down. He’s fighting the drugs but losing. He’s staggering around in circles, screaming and garbling out words now.
“Gina?” She doesn’t look at me. I start to reach through the bars to her but stop myself. I have no idea if doing that will cause the cuff around my ankle to explode and kill me. I whisper, “Gina?”
She doesn’t answer. She’s rocking back and forth now. I look up to see her odds go from 1-10,000 to 1-12,500. All of the odds have dropped since Baumer’s arrival. With good reason. He’s capable of taking out large numbers of people at a time.
Gina’s shivering uncontrollably now. I want to comfort her but there’s nothing I can do or say. Maybe she’s snapped. Maybe there’s nothing that will bring her back.
Norton, his face showing real pleasure, says, “We’ll start with the showers, shall we?”
Then he walks away, up the stairs. Clark’s cell opens and so does Brallen’s. Brallen’s passed out but the guards grab him up and haul him out and away. Clark, grinning a maniac’s grin, is surrounded by guards.
The guards, Brallen, and Clark go through the door. It closes with a sharp buzz and then the screens retract. Baumer’s sitting on his cot, smiling as he scrutinizes each and every one of us. He says, in a conversational tone, “I’m hungry.”
Ally begins to sob.
I don’t blame her.
**
Gina staggers, her body bent nearly double, along the hallway under the watchful eyes of the guards and me. She’s in shock. I’m sure of it. We’re hustled into two separated shower stalls. I strip off my clothes and the water comes from above. It’s slick and slightly fragranced. They’ve mixed some kind of soap into it I guess. There’s no washcloth, no way to turn the water on or off. I just stand there, letting the water do whatever it’s supposed to do.
The water cuts off. A current of air strikes my body. I assume there’s no towels and I’m right. I’m handed a set of blue coveralls. No underwear. I put them on. It occurs to me that now they’re worried we might commit suicide. I can see why they would be. What I don’t know is why they weren’t worried the night before.
Maybe they had a few more alternates ready to swing into action of we do. But it’s more likely that the Thrills are starting to have second thoughts and want out. Especially now that they’re faced with Baumer.
They give me a standard pair of soft slippers. I get them on my feet and I’m hustled back out and forced into a chair. Two guards watch while another combs out my hair Gina’s in a chair across from me, not moving or say a thing even though the guard is yanking at her hair in what must be the most painful brushing of it she’s ever known.
I can hear the shower running, the next team must be getting clean. The guards push us into another room, this one running in a long rectangle that’s maybe ten feet wide and thirty feet long. There’s nothing in it. I start to walk the perimeter because that’s what it seems they want and honestly I need the motion, the movement right then. Gina stands against the wall, her face blanked and still.
Time passes and then we’re moving again, back down a hall and to the cell room. Gina never speaks. As soon as the bars slam home she’s on her cot, her arms locked around her knees, rocking, rocking, rocking back and forth.
Eventually everyone’s back in their cell. We all look stunned. Even Baumer. Maybe it’s hitting home, what’s happening here.
The guards shove sheaves of pages through to us and Gina snaps out of whatever has held her. She gets up, goes to the pages and then takes them back to her cot. I can’t afford to pay attention to her now. I need to study these plans, commit as much of them as possible to memory.
Food comes. I eat it, not even noticing what it is. I know time’s passing but I’m busy, trying to find a way to parlay what these plans tell me into a game plan for escape. The biggest obstacles to escape, right now, are the ankle cuff and tag they’ve put under our skin.
Someone’s weeping. I don’t look up. It’s a masculine voice, not female. It’s not Gina. I keep studying the plans until they come and demand them back. Dinner comes. The lights do down. Nobody moves. We all sit on our cots in a profound silence.
Then it’s broken.
Gina asks, “Hey, Brallen. What were you talking about earlier?”
He answers in a slow, exhausted voice. “Fuck you, cunt.”
“Fuck you, you cocksucker,” she returns. “You should be nice. You were too loopy to really look at the plans. Maybe I’ll help you with that. Or not. Definitely not if that’s how you’re going to talk to me.”
There’s a snicker from Clark’s cell. Hampton coos, “You can help me honey.” More snickers. Ire shoots along my veins. I stand but wait it out because I sense she has a reason for asking that question. I want to know what that reason is. Is she onto something or is she just trying to make friends in the hopes of staying alive?
Brallen says, “My parents did this. They put me here. The assholes. I never signed up for this. They’re scared the families of those sluts I killed will win their civil suit against me and they’ll have to pay the bill through the good old family trust.
“They’re probably hoping I die. They’ve got it all planned out, I’m sure. See, if I’m dead they’re off the hook.”
Gina says, in a soft voice. “Wow.”
Brallen snorts.
Gina presses on, “But how did they sign you up? I mean…I don’t get.”
Ally says, “Don’t tell her Brallen. We don’t talk about it. You know we don’t.”
Brallen rolls off the cot. He comes to the bars at the front of his cell and glares at Ally. “Shut up you crazy bitch. You volunteered for this. I didn’t. She didn’t. Most of us didn’t.”
Ally leaps off her cot and rushes to the bars. She snarls, “So what? I love it! There’s no reason to be ashamed of liking what gets me off, and that’s people dying…”
“You’re about to have some wet panties then, dear.”
A shiver crawls up my spine as Baumer’s voice, a cultured and wholly creepy thing that is devoid of accent or inflection, cuts into the conversation.
Hampton adds, “That is, if they gave you any. Do you have underwear?”
“Don’t worry about her underwear,” Clark says. “Worry about her boyfriend over there, ye olde Reaper.”
Baumer chuckles. Hampton doesn�
��t. Paisley comes to her bars. Her hair, parted in the middle, falls in two precise sheets to her shoulders. It’s silver. Not gray. Not white. Silver, and it shimmers softly in the dimness.
Paisley’s voice is all West Virginia, you can practically taste the wood smoke and coal in it. “I know what you’re asking. You’re asking how he signed up because you want to know if he a Thrill. I can tell you he isn’t. You’d be a fool to think he is.”
Paisley’s right. But only half right. Gina’s asking the very same question I need answered.
Who are the people behind this game?
Paisley says, “Now I’m a little curious myself who the Thrills are. I mean I didn’t sign up for this. I had it made since all my kills were made in my home state and we don’t have a death penalty. I was enjoying my fan mail and the perks of being a star. Why would I give that up?”
Clark says, “I got yanked out of my cell and here I am. Nobody even gave me a waiver in case I try to sue later. I want a lawyer.” Then he roars laughter.
Ally says, “Shut up! All of you!”
Brallen says, “You shut up. I have some bad news for you. They don’t expect any of us to live and it doesn’t look like loverboy over there’s planning to help you out at all. You’re going to die. You have to know you’re going to die.”
Ally shakes her head so hard her hair flies around her face. “No I’m not. I’m here for the sheer fun of it. I know I can kill. I know I can. I have already and I liked it. I liked it!”
Brallen shoots back, “We’re all killers here.”
Paisley says, “Oh you poor, dear, sweet, summer child. We all like it. And you’re going to find out just how little your victims liked it, I think.”
Silence falls again. Brallen says, “I’m not a Thrill. Ally is. So which of your assholes signed on for this?”
Nobody speaks. Paisley says, “Not me.”
Gina says, “Not me.”
I speak. “Not me.”
Baumer says, “I certainly didn’t.”
Tayne speaks to us for the first time. His voice is a high and anxious whine. “Me either.”
Clark says, “And not me. So that just leaves you two.”
It did. That meant that Mick and Hampton were the other Thrills. The sick, caught look on their faces tell me that’s the truth.
Gina says, “So why’d you do it? Why’d you sign up to kill us?”
That’s not what she wants to know. She wants to know how they did it. Who got them in. I want to know the same thing.
Clark asks, “So what happens when you volunteer? They give you weapons and leave us naked? Just let you take us out? Is that why she’s so sure she’s not going down?”
Mick speaks in a guttural voice that gives away his fear. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I didn’t volunteer for this.”
Ally cries out, “Don’t you see what she’s doing? She’s making you think us Thrills are the enemy!”
Paisley snarls, “You are the enemy. You think you’re walking outta here sugar cakes? Not hardly. The boy there’s got the right of it already. Nobody’s getting outta here. We’re here to kill, and we’re all good at it. Except her.” Paisley jabs a finger in Gina’s direction. “That one’s just an appetizer for the bloodthirsty masses. Just like the idiot that scattered his bones and blood when he tried to run. All slaughters require the lambs and I’d say she’s this one’s sacrifice. We’re all lambs to the slaughter though, really. We’re all good as dead.”
Grim quiet falls. I know they all knew this already. Well, everyone but the Thrills. But they know it now and it shows. There’s no way out of this, they’ve signed on some dotted line and they’re going nowhere but to a grave nobody will ever find.
We all are.
My stomach goes sick and twisty. I don’t intend to die here. I have to figure to a way to escape, and Paisley’s right. Gina’s just an appetizer, someone who will die fast and all so the watchers of this game can get their rocks off.
Hampton says, “All of you shut up.”
I ask, “How did you volunteer? You were in prison. I mean they snatched me and Gina off the street but you volunteered, from prison. How the does that even happen?”
Hampton doesn’t answer.
There’s a burst of static. Then Norton’s voice comes from hidden speakers. “It’s quiet time. You may talk tomorrow. But for now you will refrain from speaking.”
That’s all. We all ghost back to our cots. The silence is so heavy that it’s oppressive. I get it. This is why they took everything we could use to kill ourselves. Because they knew that we’d figure out the truth eventually.
There’s not going to be a survivor of the Dying Game, not if the inmates running this particular have anything to say about it.
CHAPTER 5: GINA
Mick’s dead.
He hung himself in a very inventive way. He took off his coveralls and used the legs to make a noose. His ghastly, swollen face and protruding tongue are the first things that greets us this morning.
Norton’s pissed, to put it lightly. He’s storming up and down the cells, stopping at each one to look in on us. His teeth are clenched and his eyes are glowing in a way that reminds me of the feral cats that used to live in the alley that was my home for a few months.
Norton says, “This is unacceptable. I’ve been given the order by the game controllers…”
“You mean control,” Brallen snarls. “You’ve been given your orders by Control.”
Control? What’s he talking about? He said something similar the day before. It means something. What?
Whatever Brallen means, it’s clear he’s hit a large nerve. Norton says, “We’re going forward with nine players.”
This upsets him for some reason. He repeats the number, nine, under his breath several times. He looks shaken, upset. I try to puzzle his reaction out. Surely this has happened before, so why all the uproar?
Norton mutters, “The patterns will have to be shifted. There should be ten.”
He’s rattled by this, by the numbers being uneven by not there being ten sacrificial little lambs all running bleating to the slaughter, that it’s almost funny. It would be funny, if I wasn’t one of the lambs.
Ally, whose eyes are rimmed with red and whose face has taken on a squeezed lemon look, all sunken and somehow lifeless, shakes herself off her cot and stands by her bed. She’s just as rattled as Norton and for a moment I feel pity for her. Clearly she came into this thinking it was just a part she’d play then shuck off. Somewhere in the night she’d found the truth she didn’t want to admit to.
Paisley was right. Nobody was leaving her alive, Thrill or no.
My resolve gathers. I’m leaving this game alive. I am. No matter what it takes. Yesterday fucked me hard. Of course it did. The sight of the dead man being unceremoniously dragged along the floor, is somehow pitiful.
But I don’t really pity him. He signed up for this. He knew the people who put this thing together and breathed it into life. He might even have been one of them.
Good riddance.
Besides, now that he’s dead, he’s one less person I have to worry about. One less person who’s going to try to kill me. That takes me right back to Morgan. He’s not a Thrill. He’s still my best chance but the way I acted yesterday might just be the thing that keeps him from helping me.
I have to fix that. Fast. I need him, as much as I hate needing anyone.
Norton nods and the guards start taking us out of the cells. We’re hauled down the hallway in pairs. Lucky me, I got Morgan. He strides along beside me and asks, sotto voice, “How are you doing today?”
“As well as I can be.” I know that weakness is my strength right now but I can’t be so weak he’s not sure of helping me. It’s a fine line and one I’m used to walking, though I wish that wasn’t true either.
Morgan and I are hustled into a room and ten the steel door shuts. We’re alone, but there’s a screen and I can guess we’re being recorded, or that
we’re being live streamed. I look around with real interest. There’s no weapons in sight. What the hell are we supposed to do right now?
The lights overhead go bright. A tinny voice says, “Fight.”
Fight?
What?
I look toward Morgan. He looks as confused as I feel. Surely they don’t mean I’m supposed to fight him?
Morgan licks his lips and shakes his head. “I’m not hitting a woman.”
“Fight,” the voice intones.
I get it. They want to see how vicious we are. They want to know how strong we are, but mostly, they want to know how murderous, how violent we are. “I think you’re going to have to.”
“No.”
I take a deep breath. It just figures, I mean it just fucking figures, that I’d meet a guy who’s the embodiment of what I think a man should be: strong, hot, and not interested in hurting me, here. The world’s never thought too much of me, and the cosmos has been laughing at me since I was a little kid. I try again, “Morgan, it’s okay. I think we have to.”
His jaw goes so taut a muscle jumps below the stubble riding along it. “They’ll just have to lower my odds.”
“Mine are already low enough.” My voice sharpens as I speak.
His arms cross over his chest. His voice is truculent. “Hit me then. It’s fine.”
“You do know Paisley will kill you and so will Ally, r4egardless of your dislike of hitting women.”
Pain surfaces on his face, and stays there. My world flips upside down. He’s the elusive, practically mythical, good man, and he’s in an impossible situation. He whispers, “Just hit me and let them think whatever. I don’t care. I’m not hitting you. If Paisley comes for me, I’ll kill her.”
It’s not just my being a woman then. It’s the innocence he believes in that’s stopping him from throwing a blow my way. I look down at my feet. Before I can say anything a long siren cranks up and my hands go to my ears. The door opens and guards rush in.
A fist hits my face. I go out of my mind. A scream crashes along my tongue and falls from my lips. Three of them have Morgan and there’s nothing he can do to help me. I fight because there’s nothing else I can do. Fists and feet crash into me. It’s brutal, but I’ve had worse.