I looked around and spotted similar blotches scattered across the infield.
Hmm. Strange stains in a makeshift arena. I had a pretty good feeling I didn’t really want to investigate this place any further.
Dax’s cell phone beeped. He pulled it out and glanced at it, perhaps out of habit—no one could make calls anymore, but the thing still functioned as a stopwatch and miniature video game console. “Half-hour warning,” he said. “Let’s head back.”
In truth, I was glad for the distraction, as my thoughts had started to wander in a dark direction. What are they using this place for…?
Dax tucked his phone back into his pocket, and the two of us us hurried back toward the medical complex.
The rest of the bites had been dealt with by the time I got back, so Lattimore sent me to a spot she dubbed the Mystery Tent for the rest of my shift. “Ask Renati for instructions,” she said, ushering me away before I could ask any questions, like who the hell Renati was and why they were calling what was probably the ER the Mystery Tent.
As it turned out, questions were unnecessary. A quick survey of its occupants told me this was where everyone who was sick but not really sick got thrown. Better than ICU and Triage, likely not as exciting as Zombie Ward.
Did I say exciting? I meant tragic.
There were two dozen people in the tent; none of them looked all that great, but they didn’t seem to be dying, either. I spotted Alyssa sitting up in bed toward the back and made my way to her. Her color had tanked since the previous day, but she smiled at me and paused in her latest Angry Birds pursuits to wave. “Hey, medic.”
“Hey.” I glanced down at the scribbled notes on her chart; Lattimore definitely felt she had something besides a common cold, and thus had dumped her off here. “So day two, huh?”
“Yeah.”
No antibiotics. Not much of anything, really. She was due for a sedative, which I could load up for her. A quick glance at the other boards around me indicated that sedatives were all we were giving to these poor folks in general.
Why are we keeping them drugged?
Probably so they won’t complain.
Maybe it was for the best. Last time I had the flu, life would have been much better if someone had just doped me up properly. I looked around for an authority figure and spotted a man hunched over a bed on the other side of the tent. A shock of black hair atop his head stuck out in every direction, and his lab coat—well, I figured it had once been a lab coat—had splashes of blue, purple, and red on it. “Is that Renati?” I asked.
She turned over enough to look. I couldn’t quite interpret the look on her face; it didn’t entirely seem to be dislike, but nor did I see someone who was particularly pleased that Renati was in charge of her well-being. “That’s him,” she confirmed after a moment.
“And…?”
She looked back at me and shrugged as best she could, finally setting the phone aside. “He’s not a real doctor.”
“So…he’s one of the fake ones?”
“I mean, he is. But he was in R&D and he makes it pretty clear that’s where he’d rather be. He’s nice and everything, just prefers to talk about pathogens and the Trojan War instead of whatever ails you.”
Interesting combination. Too bad most of the people in this tent probably weren’t retired classics professors.
The good doctor saw me looking at him, glanced around, and hustled over. “I take it you’re my new medic,” he said. He didn’t look pleased, but if what Alyssa said was true, he didn’t want to be here at all. Hell, neither did I.
“Yeah. I’m Vibeke.”
“Marvelous. You’ll take this side, please? I’ll handle the other side.”
“Sure.”
He hadn’t questioned my background yet—either he assumed I’d already been vetted or he simply didn’t care.
“Marvelous. Thank you.”
I tried to think of something appropriately witty and Homeric to say, but none of my usual pleasantries seemed quite fitting.
Alyssa saw my look of concentration and let out a snort. “Doc, I was telling her you prefer R&D.”
“Well, what passes for it these days.” He stuck a hand out, and after a split second of contemplation I shook it. “Gustav Renati. I haven’t dealt with actual patients since med school.”
“Pretty sure you’re not supposed to say that to actual patients,” Alyssa said.
“Wouldn’t you rather have honesty?”
“I’d rather think myself in the hands of a capable physician.”
He stared down at her, brow furrowing as if he were trying to figure out whether she was joking or not. “Well, therein the patient must minister to herself,” he said.
Alyssa gaped up at him for a few seconds. “Did you just…is that…”
“Shakespeare,” he said, and beamed down at her. His gaze shifted back to me, and became contemplative. “I hear you come to us from…The Outside.”
“You make it sound so dramatic,” I said. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised. He did love Shakespeare, after all.
“What have you noticed about the dead out there?” he asked. “The dead—have you noticed—”
And then he looked at Alyssa and stopped himself.
She seemed unamused. “Maybe don’t talk about zombies in front of the sick girl.”
“Of course. My apologies.”
Renati did seem relatively remorseful. He bowed to us, then scurried back over to his side of the tent, his multicolored coat fluttering softly behind him. How did it get that way? Is that on purpose? Or is he spilling blue shit on himself? These days, anything was possible.
“And that’s Renati.” Alyssa picked her phone up again and turned it over in her hands. I knew the gesture; I had done that often enough when I found myself with nothing to do. Sometimes I didn’t even want to look at the phone—I just wanted to hold it, feel that strange sense of security it used to provide wash over me.
What was he saying about the dead outside? He had been on the verge of asking me something.
“What’d you have for lunch?” she asked, effectively steering my mind away from the undead.
“Pastrami.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m pretty sure that’s why half the city keeps getting sick. No human can successfully ingest that much pastrami and survive.”
“This is how society will split,” I said. “Pastrami Clan can hold it down. The others…well…”
“Cannibalism?” she suggested.
So much for not thinking about the undead. “I wasn’t about to go that far.”
“Still better than pastrami.”
She grinned at me. I grinned back.
I injected her with the necessary sedative and marked her chart accordingly. Some small part of me wanted to grill her about the radio, but I sensed now was not the time. Besides, her eyes were already getting glassy thanks to the drug. “You feeling better?” I asked.
“I’m not really feeling anything,” she admitted. “And I guess that’s good.”
It would be nice not to feel anything.
“I went for a walk during lunch,” I said. “Wound up at Norwall Park. They play soccer there, I think?”
Alyssa frowned. “Soccer?”
“Is it soccer? Dax and I visited it today and it looks like…not soccer.” I paused, wondering if I could properly convey how uneasy the place made me feel. “At least, I wouldn’t be playing soccer on it. If I knew how to play soccer. Which I don’t.”
She laughed weakly, then turned her head slightly away from me, facing the tent wall as she ran her hands along the blanket. I hovered a little bit, rearranging my kit, hoping for some tidbit of information. She’d reacted to the topic. She had to know something.
“Alyssa?” I asked.
She sighed, and looked at me. “Don’t look into it further,” she said.
“Why not?”
“Because you’re nice. Because you seem like you’re basically an okay p
erson.” She glanced at me again, and this time all merriment had fled her dark eyes. “You might not want to know what goes on there. People do some sick shit when they think their God isn’t watching anymore.”
CHAPTER NINE
Well, when she framed it that way, of course I had to go find out what was happening.
We ate a depressingly silent dinner that evening. Pastrami again, of course. Afterward, Dax sacked out on the living room couch with a magazine over his eyes. Tony vanished into his bedroom, ostensibly to read more of Dead Mennonite Walking until he passed out. I stayed up, puttering around the kitchen, waiting until I heard the crowd cheering.
Don’t get me wrong, I did think about leaving it alone. Maybe, just maybe, I shouldn’t go investigating whatever was happening at the stadium. I should let this sleeping dog lie and go see if this house had any copies of Sex and the City lying around.
Instead, I woke up our own sleeping dog, clipped on her leash, and tiptoed down the front stoop with her in what I believe was my first act of outright rebellion against Tony’s orders.
It was also one of the dumber things I’d done since the world ended. Honestly, I blame all the pastrami.
“What the hell are you doing?”
Evie twisted around and started wagging her tail. I sighed and swung around.
Tony stormed down the front walk, his gaze locked on me.
“How did you know I was out here?” I asked.
He grasped the back of his neck in what I had learned was something of an irritated tic of his. “Do you actually think you’re sneaky? I heard the door open.”
“I was taking the dog out,” I said.
“Not alone.”
I actually didn’t remember that rule. “She had to go now.”
Tony looked down at the dog, who thumped her tail, smiled, and most definitely did not urinate on command.
“Dammit, Evie,” I muttered.
The noise from the park swelled into a roar. I looked down the street in the direction Dax and I had ventured earlier in the day.
“Is the cheering bothering you that much?” Tony asked. “You want some sleeping pills? Come inside.”
I didn’t move. “I want to see what it is.”
“Why?”
“I asked Alyssa what happened there today,” I said. “She told me people do awful shit when they think God’s not watching.”
Tony stared at me, his dark gaze shifting from anger to what looked like resignation. “Goddammit,” he muttered.
He closed the distance between us, hand outstretched. I reluctantly pressed the leash into it. He took the dog back inside and I heard him exchange a few words with Dax. The latter followed him out, almost swimming in a gigantic Hastings Monarchs sweatshirt obviously designed for someone much wider. “This isn’t a good idea,” Tony said. “Nothing good for you to see there.”
No way, man. A prophecy like Alyssa’s needed to be seen to be believed.
The field was only four blocks away from our house—no wonder we could hear it so well. It had been a good distance away from the medical facility, that was for sure. I tried to take in some landmarks, but everything looked different in the darkness.
“Do me a favor and don’t wander around at night on your own,” Tony said. “They don’t patrol parts of the fenceline all that well. Things can sneak through.”
The crowd sent up another cheer, accompanied by a thrum that I realized must have been hundreds of feet stomping on the bleachers.
Once we reached the Norwall Park, Tony stopped us beneath the rearmost row of the bleachers, which were not entirely filled. “Stay back here,” he said, indicating that we should watch through the spaces between the benches and the foot rests. “They don’t feel like being judged, and you two tend to get all horrified when you see things you don’t like.”
“What are they doing that’s so horrible?” I asked. “Fighting zombies?”
Right on cue, two men carrying swords trotted out onto the field.
Tony turned and looked at me, eyebrows lifted.
“Really?” I mumbled.
“Those are just guys,” Dax said. “Not revenants.”
I was glad to be at least partially wrong.
Whoever had outfitted them had given them swords and shields. Total gladiators—aside from their all-too-normal jeans, T-shirts, and sneakers. They circled each other, and the crowd’s voice went up to a solid, steady roar.
At least they didn’t have an announcer. That would just be too tacky.
The men circled each other, taking hesitant jabs with their swords. One of them finally took a proper swat at the other, and the second man stumbled, his hand going up to cover the wound on his arm. The people in the bleachers above us stomped their feet and cheered.
“Well, this is all oddly disturbing,” I said, “but I think it’s okay. They can have their fighting games if they want.”
“I don’t like it,” Dax said.
“You don’t like anything.”
“You just wait.” Tony pointed past the men, at what I guessed was the home team dugout. Most of the dugout itself had been cordoned off, leaving only a doorway to a dark tunnel that probably led to the locker room.
Tony went on: “First blood is up, which means the party is just starting.”
The door in the dugout opened, and a figure lumbered out. It wore a plaid shirt and sweatpants, and even from here we could tell that most of its face had fallen off in some unfortunate incident.
Oh shit. Oh shit.
Dax looked at me accusingly. “How did you know?”
Oh shit oh shit oh shit! “I didn’t!”
The revenant spilled out on to the field and looked around, seemingly distracted by the roar in the bleachers. It jerked to the side, looked between the two combatants, and went after the bleeding man.
Dammit, I hate being right.
The bleeding man lifted his sword and cut awkwardly at the revenant. It batted the blade aside and lunged at him, and he went down in a series of screams, gurgles swiftly cut short by the snap of powerful jaws around his neck. Then came the fountain of blood, visible even from our spot under the bleachers.
The crowd screamed in what sounded very much like approval.
The other man lifted his sword up and brought it down on the back of the zombie’s neck. I’m fairly certain he intended to behead the dead guy, but he either didn’t hit in the right place or the sword was too dull, and he only sent the zombie sprawling forward. He dragged the blade upward for another strike. The ghoul stretched for him.
The bleachers shook as the crowd stomped their feet, whipped into bloodlust.
Dax covered his ears. Tony just stood there.
“Do they just keep a closet of revenants for this?” I asked. “Where are they getting them?”
Neither man answered me.
The second man stabbed the revenant through the midsection. Easy mistake; when they come at you like a living person, you react like a living person. The dead man kept walking toward him, not really caring that each step just wedged the blade deeper into its guts.
The man tried to slash the sword free, but apparently that’s a bit harder than it looks. He let go of the sword.
The ghoul reached for him.
Dax covered his eyes.
The second fighter reached down to his belt, retrieved a long implement, and jabbed it upward into the zombie’s eye socket. He twisted it, turning his head aside to avoid the inevitable jet of brackish bodily fluid that usually accompanied that kind of assault. The revenant pawed at him a few more seconds, but there was no more intent in its grasp. When the man pushed on the sword, its body fell to the ground.
The people howled their approval.
So this was what I’d been listening to at night. Not soccer. Not baseball. Not some harmless game of hockey. People watching as others lived and died, and making use of all the mobile dead trapped in the city with them.
The victor—I guessed I could call him th
at—jerked his sword free. He bent down, sawed off the zombie’s head, and lifted it over his own.
The crowd screamed louder.
He’d had some experience in this, I decided, some prior adventure where he’d fought the undead and won.
He also knew what the crowd wanted.
Must be a returning champion.
Then he dropped the head and gave it a kick.
I rubbed my eyes. “You said they were playing soccer,” I muttered.
“I wasn’t lying.” Tony had his gaze glued on the field. “Watch.”
Several viewers from the closer rows stampeded forward to join him in his game. Everyone was very careful to avoid the bodies sprawled on the field, but they merrily kicked the zombie’s head from one end of the stadium to the next, their laughter and joyful shouts reaching us.
“See?” Tony gestured to the macabre performance. “Soccer.”
“That is fucking disgusting.”
“Maybe you should’ve listened to Alyssa.” Tony rubbed the back of his neck. “Seen enough?”
“Yes,” Dax said.
“How come these people aren’t coming to the medical center?” I asked. “They get bitten and cut up, but all I see are soldiers from the checkpoints.”
“I think they treat them in the locker room. Don’t want to expose prized fighters to whatever germs you got floating around in the medical facility.”
That made sense. “How many rounds a night do they have?”
“Five or six. The zombies only come in at the last round.” Tony gestured to the merry game that continued in front of us. “I think it probably started out as some kind of MMA tribute and then just degraded from there. By the time they added the undead to the mix, everyone just…went with it.”
“Keller’s okay with this?”
“Keller wants people to do as he says.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He sighed. “If they’re happy, they aren’t going to revolt.”
That wasn’t an answer, either. At least, not the answer I wanted, but I hadn’t gotten one of those in a long time, either.
“This place has built up quite the reputation,” Tony went on. “Sometimes ‘the house’ runs soldiers, people take bets. People seem to dig it, but they’re afraid of it, too.”
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