by Ian Woodhead
Rossini’s disclosure had taken him completely by surprise. Stephen had actually met one person who had been able to fool his senses. He’d had the youth down as just another drone, but it turned out that Rossini had a fire burning in his heart. He believed that Rossini would go places too, as long as he was very careful. People who tried to play the system usually ended up against the execution wall.
His surprises hadn’t stopped with the discovery that his friend wanted to rule the city. Just as Stephen was leaving the office, he found himself surrounded by three security personnel who had escorted him right to the top of Government House and into the room of one very powerful woman. Stephen stared aghast at the sight of Natalie Devonshire advancing on him, then pulling his trembling body over to her bed before stripping the pair of them.
Stephen turned away from his wife’s yellow-coated body and gazed back towards the contestants’ entry arch on the other side of the game zone. Oh, he had certainly gone places, thanks to this woman. Even after the plague of the dead had turned the planet into one huge human abattoir, the rulers in the city had still been able to keep the reins tight on their inhabitants.
Strange to think that from all those lowly workers down in the depths of Government House, only he and Rossini were still alive. His old friend had certainly upheld his promise to rise to the top, although, looking back, Stephen believed that the overambitious man really would had been machine-gunned.
If it hadn’t been for the minor inconvenience of the dead rising to feast on the living, Stephen knew that Rossini wouldn’t have lasted more than a couple of years. Despite his promise to be careful, Rossini’s overzealous application of the information available had pissed off a lot of the important people. It had only been Stephen’s intervention that had stopped the execution orders been signed on more than one occasion.
“It doesn’t look that strenuous from the comfort of my armchair,” complained Natalie. She twisted around and glared at him. “I really don’t know how you talked me into taking part in this foolishness.”
Stephen smiled his reassuring smile and gently took her hand. “Because, my sweet. The viewers will flock back in their droves to watch their beloved leader take out a pair of dirty deviants.” He nodded to himself, happy to see even her outer shell soften just a little. After all these years, Stephen had not lost the talent to play his loving wife like a fiddle. He knew exactly which string to pull. “Honey, think about the ratings, think about the sponsorship. After this show is broadcast, our competitors will be dead in the water, I can guarantee it.”
Her outer shell almost collapsed when she stood up and shifted her gaze from him to her body. “But, just look at me!” she cried. “I look ridiculous in this. I can see the headlines right now and every one of them will be less than flattering. They won’t care about what happens tonight, all they’ll focus on will be how I look in this stupid costume.”
That part would be true, well, it would be if, by some miracle, the bitch managed to get out of the game zone in one piece. In fact, it surprised him that Natalie hadn’t commented on his insistence to dress like normal contestants as soon as they’d entered the dressing room. “Honey, don’t you worry. This isn’t going out live. I promise you. Rossini is going to personally edit the program. Although you are just as beautiful as the day we first met. Rossini has promised to refine your actions and tweak your appearance just a little. He knows his stuff.”
She sighed heavily. “You’re not telling me the full truth here, Stephen. I know you’re up to something. I’m not that much of an idiot.” Natalie dragged a fingernail down the side of his cheek. “Just remember that if it wasn’t for me, you would probably be one of the medi-unit scumbags that we’re about to destroy.”
Stephen took her finger and kissed the tip. “I owe my life to you, honey.” He ran his fingers through her hair, wondering how long he’d be able to keep up this pretence. That last statement had really shaken him up. He now saw that she wasn’t as trusting as he’d first thought. Natalie really did believe that her husband was up to some trick. Stephen just hoped that she didn’t discover the truth until it was way too late. “Natalie, we had better be moving on.” He pointed over to another archway, to the west of them.
“They’ll be wondering why we’re not moving.” The gothic stone monument held one of the show’s many cameras. There were over ninety cameras covering nearly every area of the game zone. There were only two or three locations where you could stop and recover without being seen. This rocky outcropping was one of them. When he’d designed the set, Stephen never actually thought that he’d be participating in one of Rossini’s sick and twisted shows; then again, until last week, Stephen had never needed to make his wife disappear from his life.
Natalie set off running along the narrow stone path that cut through the high, gravel-sided valley, heading for the first archway. Stephen followed her, suddenly aware that both their movements would be under scrutiny by the collection of Rossini’s technicians in the studio on the top floor of Entertainment House. He almost felt naked, knowing that other eyes were now tracking their movements as they hurried along the pathway. He pushed away the nagging feeling of being watched and focused on keeping up with his loving wife.
The high sides were only there to stop their prey from trying to find an alternative route out of the game zone; despite being warned about the numerous pits positioned along the path, there had been more than a few who had been stupid enough to risk the climb to the top. Stephen suddenly wished that his wife wasn’t such a follower of the show now. It would have been so easy to arrange some kind of stunt to have the bitch slide past the pathline and into the danger zone. Watching her fall into one of the pits would have sorted out his problem in one stroke. She probably knew the course as well as he did though.
Natalie reached the archway and waited impatiently for him to catch up. It troubled him greatly that she wasn’t even out of breath. He, on the other hand, was already tired. He turned around and took a deep breath, feeling his heart beating hard. He’d felt like this ever since waking up. Even the morning tablets hadn’t made much difference, which had disturbed him. Stephen’s tablets were just like the rest of the elite’s medication. Almost pure Beldazine. The tablets used to make him feel super-human just after taking them; not so now though.
“Stephen, what have you stopped for? You’re the one who was saying we needed to get a move on.”
He turned around, flashed her his usual ‘nothing to worry about’ smile, and caught up to her. “Sorry, I thought I saw movement up there,” he said. Stephen smiled again. “Don’t look like that. You know as well as I do that there have been at least two occasions when the prey has been successful in scaling the gravel sides instead of following this path.”
She shrugged. “Not this time though. Remember, I was there when Rossini left them in the holding tank. The girl might have done it, but not the other one. What’s his name again?”
“He’s called Kenny,” he replied, “and his sister is called Diane.” He knew her all right, she used to work for him. It was a shame to see her put in the game zone, she had been a great asset.
“Yeah well, the man wouldn’t have been able to climb that. He looked half dead when Rossini had them bundled into the holding pen. Come on, I don’t want to stumble over his corpse just because my unfit husband couldn’t keep up.” She flashed him a cold smile. “I want to kill him myself.”
Stephen shivered, suddenly believing that the woman knew what gruesome death he and Rossini had cooked up for her. He shook away the doubt; he knew her almost as well as she knew herself. If Natalie thought for one minute that they had planned to have her killed, Natalie would have had the pair of them executed on the spot. There was no way that she’d be able to keep up the pretence of not knowing.
With reluctance, he moved killing to her, painfully aware that he was now within killing range of that deadly club, gripped in her hand. “Sorry, honey,” he said. “I have no idea why I�
��m so tired.”
“Could it be because you’re been living off me for the past two decades?” she answered sweetly. “You haven’t done any real hard work since that time you managed to talk your way into my panties.” Natalie spun around and marched away. “Christ knows what must have been going through my head at the time,” she muttered. “No wonder Daddy almost had heart failure when I brought you home.”
It was the same old tired speech that vomited from her mouth every time the woman became irritated, only this time, Stephen detected a trace of bitterness sprinkled over the words specially designed to hurt him.
He looked at his own club. He had completely forgotten that he even had the damn thing in his hand. He wouldn’t need her to stray from the path, it would only take a single blow to the back of her skull to put her down. He knew exactly where to hit as well. The fat bitch would go down like a felled elephant. Stephen slowed down, putting a few more paces between them, just to help him resist the temptation. Hell, he really would be put up against the wall if he tried anything so dumb.
The lights positioned high above them began to dim. Stephen blinked. He took his eyes off his weapon and tilted his head back. That wasn’t supposed to happen. The lights were fixed to simulate the coming of dusk on a summer’s day. “What the fuck?” Stephen took in a deep breath. For the first time, he found his lungs full of cold air; he detected something else too, there was a breeze now.
“Stephen!” gasped his wife. “We’re outside, how can that be right?”
He ran up to Natalie and peered at the next stone archway, a couple of meters from their position. He took one step over the pathline and ran over to the structure, ignoring Natalie’s gasp of shock. He knew that the woman had got their assessment completely right. It didn’t matter about the impossibility; they were no longer in the studio. Stephen trailed his fingers down the cold rough archway, feeling the damp stone on the tips of his fingers. “Either dew or it was raining recently,” he murmured.
“Come back! You’re between two pits.”
He shook his head. “No I’m not,” he replied. Stephen look up again. This time, he saw the twinkling of a couple of stars in the black sky. “This is just incredible. Do you know where we are, Natalie?”
His wife looked as though all her self-esteem and confidence had been punched out of her. He looked at the club in his hand, knowing that he could dispatch the woman in seconds if he so desired. Why not? There were no cameras here. That much he did know. He smiled to himself. Stephen no longer desired to end her life, not now. Looking at this miserable woman, and seeing her deflated personality staring back at him, all he wanted to do now was to go over there and hug her.
“Look at me, Natalie,” he said, walking back towards her. He lifted her chin and gently kissed her. “We’re not in the city anymore,” he said. “I know this place because I based the game zone on the layout. This is where I grew up. This is where I was born, honey.” He looked around the desolate landscape, feeling a shiver travel down his spine. That feeling of being watched hadn’t left him. Stephen pointed at the archway. “Come on, let’s get over there. I think it’s going to rain again. I don’t want to be caught in a downpour.”
She refused to budge. “No, we stay here. I want you to stop and listen to the madness coming out of your mouth. We can’t be back where you live, even if by some magical way we had travelled a couple of hundred miles out of the city.” Natalie bent down and scooped up a handful of wet dirt. “My father showed me where you were born a few days after I brought you home. I think he was trying to prove to me that you were no better than the lowest servant in the household.”
Stephen shrugged. She had never told him this information before but he had always assumed that her father had done his research anyway. “Okay, so you know where I was born, I don’t understand why you’re so agitated.”
“Oh my God,” she hissed. “You mean apart from the fucking obvious? My father specifically chose this region as one of the anchor points during the plague.” Natalie gripped his hand tight. “This doesn’t exist anymore.”
His blood ran cold. Stephen remembered the anchor points very well, they all did. It had been the city’s last ditch attempt to stop the millions of corpses from overwhelming the defenses of the last city. Hundreds of prisoners had been shipped out and secured in these chosen anchor points to guide the dead armies away from the city. As soon as those corpses had taken the bait, each anchor point was nuked. In one hour, their plan had vaporized millions of human bodies, both living and dead.
He hadn’t been that high up in the chain of command to know the specific details of the plan, either that or his wife had just not allowed him to see that one chosen site. He turned away from her and looked back at the archway. “The town’s memorial must be nuclear missile-proof,” he murmured. Stephen spun around, not all that surprised to find his urge to kill the bitch had returned with full force. “So, he decided to murder this town, just in case any of my family still lived here? After all, it was bad enough to have his daughter marry scum, the last thing he needed was for my relatives to start knocking on his door, asking for a loan.”
His next volley of insults never left his mouth. Stephen’s heart beat double time when he saw a lone figure walking towards the pair of them. The man, dressed in ragged leather armour, carried a double-bladed axe in his right arm, while holding a studded shield in his other hand. What stopped Stephen from speaking was that the man looked exactly like him.
“Stephen, what is it?” His wife’s eyes shifted from his and she started to turn her head. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
He dug his fingers into her soft flesh, feeling her whole body stiffen. “Don’t even think about it,” he hissed. Stephen pulled her close as he walked backwards, keeping his gaze fixed on the approaching figure. “Please, just keep up with me, Natalie.”
The woman responded by struggling out of his grasp and twisting her head savagely around. Her reaction to the impossible appearance of the other Stephen made his whole body feel like it had just been pushed through a giant sieve. He gaped in utter dismay as Natalie ran over to the other man, who had already opened his arm to receive her. “No way,” Stephen muttered, his saliva drying up. “I refuse to believe it.”
His wife sighed loudly and nuzzled into the man’s thick chest. She wriggled then turned around, running her hands up and down the other Stephen’s heavily muscled arms. “It’s not like I’ve been cheating on you, Stephen,” she said, giggling. Natalie purred and visibly shuddered when the man grabbed her breasts and squeezed them together. “It’s just that this Stephen knows how to please me.”
The other Stephen rested his chin on her shoulder and gave him the once over. If it came to a fight, Stephen knew that he wouldn’t last two minutes with this brute. Just one look into those hard, lifeless eyes told him that much. The fact that he also looked as though he’d been carved out of solid granite was just window dressing.
“Natalie, did you bring any more tablets?”
She turned around in his arms and kissed the tip of his nose. “Honey, I had no idea that I was going to end up in this world.” The woman snapped her head around and glared at Stephen. “You always told me that you wanted to hurt your duplicate from my world. Well, here’s your chance.” Natalie pulled herself out of his embrace. “He was up to something and I’d like to know what he had planned.”
The acid pouring from the eyes of his other self gave Stephen a pretty good idea what would happen if the meathead did grab him. Stephen turned around and raced towards the nearest building, daring not to look back. There was no point, he could hear the pair of them right behind him. Stephen found hidden energy resources from somewhere and skidded to the left, just praying that this place really was just like where he’d grown up. Stephen promptly took a left and burst through a narrow gap between two stone buildings, feeling a large degree of satisfaction when he heard both of them fill the air with harsh obscenities.
“F
uck the pair of you,” he growled, jumping onto a tipped-over bin and reaching for a set of black metal ladders. Stephen leaped up and lunged for the first rung, crying out in triumph as his fingers wrapped around the cold, round metal. He pulled them down and scrambled up and onto the fire escape. The pair of them ran into the alley, just as the ladders swung back up into place.
He raced up the rest of the ladders, heading for the roof, knowing that his lucky escape would be short-lived if he didn’t put a good deal of distance between him and his other self. Stephen pulled his tired body onto the ledge and stood on the lip of the building; he leaned over, watching the man unsuccessfully try to reach for the ladders. It appeared that, this time, the bastard’s huge bulk was not working in his favor.
“I hope you fall over and break your neck, you fat bastard,” Stephen snarled before spinning around and racing across the flat roof. His blood ran cold when he heard them finally succeed in bringing down the ladders. Stephen looked desperately to his left, seeking out a very special flat rectangular skylight. “Why are you even bothering?” he muttered. “Your special hidey-hole was vaporized in a nuclear fire.” He stopped in the middle of the eight skylights and spun around, searching for the marks. Stephen’s grin widened when he saw them. He dropped to his knees and traced the tip of his finger across the scratch marks made in the hard plastic. He vividly remembered scratching his name and the name of the girl that he was going to marry into the skylight, when he was just fourteen. He looked down and saw his name, then he frowned. “Who the fuck is Andrea?” he murmured. “It should say Debbie.”