by JD Heath
I get it. It’s easy to understand, really. Justice isn’t always possible in the court systems and some people do deserve to die for the things they’ve done.
A light snore comes from somebody’s cell. Rustlings and other sounds come from others. Some are sleeping, or pretending to. Most of us are awake. We aren’t speaking. There’s no need to try to make friends with people you’re going to have to ill, after all.
But allies are something we all need. There can be more than one survivor.
Or so Norton says. I don’t believe him. There’s no way any of us are getting out of here alive. It’s stupid to think we will. They aren’t going to extract some pinkie promise and send us off with some cash and a fake ID and trust us not to tell on them.
I wouldn’t.
So that means that surviving the people here’s only part of the game. The other part’s figuring out how to escape before I get killed by one of the others.
Find the flaw in the trap.
First, I need to know where we are. I need to know what’s around this place. I need to know how many guards are here. There’s only one door on this floor and I can’t see past the staircase’s landing, past the glass windows of the room up there to get a good idea of what’s up there. There’s no windows, no light, no hint of time or anything that make give me some kind of clue about where I’ve landed. I need to fix that. Fast.
Second I need to know who I can combine forces with, work with on every level. In other words I need to know who’s the least likely to kill me. Morgan’s my first choice. He’ll do what he can to protect me, as cold as that is, and he’ll do his best to keep himself alive too.
I’m not so sure that’s the big goal for a few of the other players. I’m pretty sure Ally’s got some grand idea of going out in a blaze of bullets and blood, with Tayne right beside her. No way do I want to get in the crosshairs of her suicide.
Clark, the hit man, he’d be a great ally but I know he’d kill me the first chance he got to tie up a loose end. Brallen? Yeah, no thanks. He kills women for sport. Not someone I need to be near. We’re the major players and I know it but I can’t discount the others.
Mick, the imposing man with well-barbered hair and the snake-charmer smile? He set fire to a building he owns in NYC because he wanted to tear it down. The tenants, who were living in slum-conditions and with no leases because he took what money they had and swore they were squatters, all died. The FD declared the fire was created by the bad wiring the squatters had supposedly put in. I wonder if he’s the other Thrill. Maybe. It’s hard to say.
Then there’s Rich Hampton. A former hedge fund manager who went on a killing spree. He took out half the department he used to head before the firm fired him. He’s not a Thrill. Can’t be. He’s been locked up for the last few years, ten if I remember that correctly from his introduction.
Not that that means he can’t be a Thrill. Maybe he knew of this place and volunteered.
I stare at the steel beam angling over the concrete ceiling. That’s something to consider. The Thrills, they may have some useful information. Like, how they got in. How does one sign up for the Dying Game, voluntarily?
The last of our number, is a woman. She’s not just any woman though. She’s Paisley Morgan, the Highway Killer. She’s killed at least three dozen men, and she’s never expressed an ounce of remorse for it either. Maybe she doesn’t have any. If she doesn’t then she really is the sociopath the shrinks that were there at the trail professed her to be.
First thing tomorrow morning I need to try to talk Ally to find out how she managed to volunteer for this. She said she’d volunteered for Tayne. That means she had to have known he’d be here. I need to know how she knew. It might not help me at all, but it may just be the thing that helps me the most.
Ironic, isn’t? She’s the one I’m least likely to trust but she has a name that practically begs me to befriend and trust her.
Yeah. No thanks.
Weariness settles into me, dragging me toward sleep. I know I shouldn’t trust any of them to hold to that enforced amnesty. I know I can’t even trust Norton to hold to it, really. I have to sleep though, I have to. There’s no way I’ll survive if I go into this thing exhausted and unable to think. My eyes flutter closed and darkness reaches for me then takes me down into slumber.
**
The darkness is complete. I can’t breathe. My elbows touch the side of the box, cold steel meets my flesh. I’m breathing too fast, on the verge of hyperventilating. There’s a scream building but I can’t voice it. The gag hurts too much and when I scream it just gets worse.
There’s a scraping sound, the sound a coffin lid makes when it’s dragged away. Faces ring the box but the dazzle from the overhead lights renders me unable to see them. Part of me understands this is deliberate.
I’m hoisted up, my naked body being roughly handled. I shudder all over, my skin creeping and forming into ridges of goose pimples. I try to beg for help but the gag muffles the words as I’m hauled out of the coffin room and down hallways with my head hanging downward and banging into a leanly muscled back covered in the softest of material.
Blinking, still mostly blind, I’m deposited upon a table covered in a pure white cloth. The room’s dim, lit only by candles. China and crystal glasses are on the table, and silverware gleams. Men and women sit at the tables arranged in a half-circle around the one I stand upon, and they’re dressed in clothes so beautiful I can’t look away from them.
There’s a spontaneous round of applause as hands pivot my body in a circle. The air, cool against my heated and sweaty skin, strokes along my body, making new shivers awaken below my skin and then run through it.
What’s happening? What is this?
I hear a voice calling my name. My head turns just as that voice crawls into a higher register and then intensifies, climbing to a nearly unbearable pitch. It’s the sound an animal makes when it’s dying and is crying out for mercy.
Ginaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
My mouth opens in answering scream…
I bolt up out of that nightmare, one hand clapping itself to my face, to my mouth. Everything spins all around me. Disorientation sets in, makes me gag. What’s happening? Where am I?
Then it crashes in. I’m here, wherever this is, and I’m in the Dying Game—a nightmare I’m not going to wake up from.
Morgan asks, “You all right?”
I kick my way off the cot. He stands at the bars, his head half-turned toward me. Perspiration dews my skin. I feel clammy and cold. I stagger to the bars, trying to focus. Trying to break out of the horror I’d dreamed up. I mutter, “I guess. You?”
“I made it through the night. I think. We’re all up now and they’re turning up the lights.”
He’s right. The lights outside the cell is growing brighter. It flares into full life seconds later. I ask, “You sleep at all.”
“A little.”
“You should sleep. You’re going to be fighting for your life. You can’t do that if you’re sleepy.”
He chuckles. It’s such an odd sound, given the circumstances, and it completely blows away the last fragments of that dream. “You have a good point.”
Ally groans out, “I need a tall latte with soy. Stat.”
Morgan snorts, “Good luck with that.” The cart rattles through the door. I watch it coming. Morgan does too. We don’t speak again.
Breakfast is scrambled eggs, they’re powdered and runny. The bacon’s too greasy. The toast is so cold it’s gone rubbery and the butter’s a slick trail down the middle of that slice. The fruit’s better, even if it does taste like it came straight from a can. The coffee? It’s strong. That’s about the best I can say for it. There’s dry cream and sugar packets, which doesn’t help the coffee at all. I drink it all and take a second cup when it’s offered. I also take a second helping of the eggs. Protein, it’s the building block of strength, or so they say.
Tayne throws his tray at the bars and begins to
howl. The sound is like the cry of a wolf, long and undulating. It’s a bone chill, a foreshadowing and a memory, all rolled into one. My breakfast threatens to come back up. I force it to stay down. I can’t be seen vomiting. They already think me weak.
It occurs to me that that might be my best defense. If there’s a betting system then the odds won’t help the players here in this prison Whoever gets the highest score, that’s the one the weaker ones will all be looking to kill first.
It’s pack mentality. They’ll go after the strongest first. The weakest will run and hide. But when the strongest are gone the middles, the Betas, so to speak, will be coming and they’ll be bloated on blood and glory, if they live through the fight they chose to pick. If the strongest and more cunning kill the ones who try to take them out then it’s still going to be bad. I’m royally screwed and I know it.
The flaw in the trap, and there’s always a flaw in every trap, is my only chance to survive this. I have to figure out how to get out of here before they can kill me. That means that I need help. I need someone who won’t kill me and who’s just as eager to get out of here as I am. That means I can’t screw up and accidentally try to forge a partnership with a Thrill.
The Thrills aren’t here to escape. They’re here to play.
Could Morgan be a Thrill?
That gives me a serious pause. I don’t know and I don’t know that the Thrills, other than Ally, are that eager to let the others of us know they volunteered. Those who are here because they got forced into this will be way more likely to kill someone who didn’t have to be here, and are.
Norton arrives. He’s wearing a tailored suit with a pressed white shirt below. His tie’s a broad thing wrapped in a blue-and-black striped pattern. His shoes have been shined to within an inch of their glowing lives. He says, “I want to start you off with my favorite verse. So the overseer of the palace, the overseer of the city, the elders, and the guardians sent a message to Jehu: "We are your servants, and we will do whatever you tell us. We will not make anyone king. Do whatever you think is right.”
2 Kings. 10:5. My gaze slides to Morgan. He looks bored. Is he a Thrill? If he is, he’s not y best chance or a partner that I want in my bid for escape.
Norton says, “You’ll all be given the plans for the Dying Game grounds today. You’ll only get to keep them until tonight. Then they will be taken.”
My heart pounds in a sickening way. One day to study them, and no way to copy them. That means I have to cram as fast as I can. It also means I have to remember those plans over what promises to be a very grueling period of time. Stress causes memory issues and distraction, it’s a medical fact. I have to find a way to loosen the grip of the stress and fear, force my mind to work, and glean every bit of useful information that I can from the plans, and then retain that information.
Norton says, “You’ll also be taken from your cells, two at a time, and given the opportunity to exercise and shower.”
Exercise. Bitter bile floats along the back of my tongue. I have a feeling that whoever’s betting on us will be watching us constantly during the exercise period, summing up our strengths and weaknesses. Since we’re being taken out in pairs we’ll only get a tiny shot at seeing each other’s strength or lack of it. If they don’t alternate the pairs, if we’re going to go in the same order every day, then that’s not at all helpful really. I can learn a lot about who I exercise with but that’s only one of eight.
Norton breaks into my thoughts by saying, “You’ll notice I said you’ll be taken out in pairs.”
My thoughts spin. I hadn’t noticed that he’d said that. I’m slipping already. I have to pay more attention! I force all my thoughts into some compartment in my mind and slam it shut, force myself to listen carefully.
Norton says, “There’s always ten players. Always. One always decides to make a run for it. We know this and so we always arrange for an alternate.”
Tension forms hard knots in my shoulders and spine. The door opens and I look toward it. The box is carried in. The screens drop from the ceiling and light up. I see my face on one, my face as it is right now. My skin is wan and there’s dark circles under my eyes. My hair’s a tangled mess. I look terrified.
I am terrified.
There’s six men carrying the box. They’re so alike they could be clones. Hulking, beefy, and all wearing the same dark coveralls. The only real difference between them is the color of their closely buzzed hair.
They settle the box into place and then they lift it so that it’s standing. Steel bolts lock it into place. The back of the box is faced toward the other cells but the screens show it very clearly. Everyone is looking at the box or the screen now.
My fingers curl around the bars of my cell as the lid’s yanked away to reveal a man with golden hair, and the face of an angel.
Lucifer was an angel too, you know, and this man, well let’s just say he’d give Satan a run for his money in the contest for the evilest motherfucker to ever be created.
Morgan lets out a hard gasp. I release my own pent-up breath, forcing myself to do it in a slow and soft way but I can feel the panic closing over me like a black tide.
Norton says, “Ladies and gentlemen, I gave you…Richard Baumer.”
Everything goes gray. I can feel my legs wanting to give way. I sag against the bars, not even pretending to be brave at the moment. Ally pedals backward, one hand thrown up over her face. That movement causes me to finally be able to wrench my attention of Baumer.
For the first time Ally looks afraid. Not just afraid either. Something beyond that. She’s finally grasped the full weight of her choice, and it shows. In the beautifully graven face of Richard Baumer lies death, a death so terrible that even Ally who’s here to die—who’s clearly here to die—is horrified beyond all measure.
Tayne’s still sitting on his cot, the remains of his breakfast scattered on the floor around his feet. His face wears no expression at all. It’s as remote and distant as the moon. Morgan’s staring at Baumer with both repulsion and fascination, as are most of the others.
Even I’m fascinated. Looking at him, at those blinding Hollywood hunk looks and that sweet, little-boy smile on his well-molded lips, is like looking at a work of art. A lethal, sadistic work of art that will first suck you in, and then eat you.
Literally eat you, since he is indeed a cannibal.
Norton rubs his long, skeletal fingers together in what I’m sure is real glee. He says, “Richard Baumer. He has thirty-four confirmed kills. The bones and some body parts of his victims show his real goal in killing was not just the pleasure of it, but food.”
Yup. I’m going to puke. I swivel my head in a deliberate way and my gaze meets Morgan’s. He’s moved so that he’s pressed right up against the bars between us. I move too, out of sheer instinct and then we’re standing there, separated only by a few inches of slid steel.
Morgan whispers, “I wonder what they’ll put on his trays.”
Then he grins, a grin that lights his entire face up, and winks at me!
For a second the entire world tilts and shifts and threatens to spin me right off of the sides. Then my lips curve upward. It isn’t funny my God, how could it be? But that wink, and that grin of Morgan’s, have somehow made it less dreadful, if only for a single moment.
Baumer’s not gagged. His teeth, very large and square and stained, the only flaw in his beauty, bare themselves in a smile. The screen that shows his face shows his odds, and they’re very good.
Mine?
I just went from 1-1000, to 1-10,000.
Even Ally ranks higher than me, but not by much. Paisley’s begins to laugh. Her laughter swells and dips like my breath. Norton waits that laughter out, just as he did when Ally laughed the day before.
Norton says, “Now we begin our day. Remember to enjoy it. These are the last days of many of your lives.”
CHAPTER 4: MORGAN
Baumer! All the hate I’ve ever felt comes flying in, threatening to upen
d me. Did Norton know of my personal connection with Baumer? Is that why Baumer was brought in to the Dying Game?
It seems far more likely that it’s the other way around. To get Baumer here had to take a lot of pulling of a whole lot of strings. It didn’t take anything but two dirty cops, the same ones who brought Gina in, I’m sure, to get me here. My connection with Baumer’s a matter of public record.
He killed my family.
My mother, Lois. My father, Jackson. My sister, Emily, who was all of eight years old.
Dead. Gone. Murdered by that creature in that box. My hands yank at the bars, try to pull them apart even though I know it’s an exercise in futility. Even though I know it’s stupid. Going after Baumer now, in this amnesty, won’t serve any purpose at all.
I have to survive this.
But still.
Time plunges backward before I can stop it. I’m three-years old all over again, and my family’s being brutally murdered. I can hear their screams, their pleas, and my hands, clapped to my ears, can’t stop those sounds from reaching me.
The gasp that escapes my mouth pulls me back to the present. I’ve walked my body to the end of the cell and Gina’s staring at me. Her face is carved into lines of utter disgust and fear.
Mine must wear the same expression.
Something coalesces, hardens inside me. I’m staring at the face of an innocent. She’s going to die juts like my family did if I don’t help her. Even with my help she’s probably going to die. I might not be able to save her, or even myself, but I have to try.
Goddammit I have to try.
I utter, “I wonder what they’ll put on his trays,” and for some reason that strikes me as funny in a way I can’t even explain. A smiles lifts my mouth and then I wink at her.
I see it happen. She forgets, for a moment, about Baumer, about what’s happening. Her smile is radiant. It lights her face and I feel a knock to my solar plexus. She’s so beautiful, so incredibly beautiful, like a statue someone managed to bring to life.