Cyrus stood. Eve stood.
The gate pulled shut, but not before the far end of the arena was filled with well over a hundred raptors, some a foot high, others as large as a man. The creatures stayed closely bunched together, forming into smaller packs, which then broke off, scattered, and went running for the walls.
Jesse continued to sprint. He glanced back over his shoulder. When he did, he slipped and pitched forward, hands shooting out to break his fall. He landed hard and skidded to a stop on his stomach.
Eve's own hands clenched into fists.
Cyrus glanced at her. She smirked back and let her fingers unfurl. “I want them to…to…not to die.”
He scratched his cheek and moved to the front edge of the platform. She followed until she was directly behind him and staring at his back. She remembered that her best friend Adam hadn't died from his fall. The raptors had killed him. He might have even survived if they hadn't been there. She continued looking at Cyrus's back. She had a decision to make. She could end this all now. Perhaps even save her friends. If she were to push him off the edge, how long would it take the raptors to get there? And how long would it take them to kill him?
Then she just got lucky, seeing exactly what she wanted to see.
A small group of raptors was running in her direction. The people around her were distracted by what was going on in the arena. She only needed to give Cyrus a shove, just a tap, a push. The raptors would probably kill him before anyone could save him.
She looked left, looked right.
Only David was watching her closely. She did not acknowledge him but could feel his questioning look. Would he allow it? Would David then be in charge? What would that mean for her? She hated Cyrus, but David could be even worse. Maybe he would agree with her decision, though. Maybe he would reward her. Maybe she could play him as well as she had been playing Cyrus.
But he was just so damn ugly.
Gently, she inched closer to Cyrus, feeling her fingers coming up, feeling the tension in her arms and wrists, and knowing just how hard she needed to shove him. She glanced back at the arena, locating her friends. It might be the last time she ever saw them. She could be killed for doing this, maybe even be feed to the raptors.
She hesitated.
Cory had run back to Jesse and was now pulling him along, prodding him forward. They ran together, side by side, stumbling toward the larger group of men. The men tried to form an expanding circle similar to the gold team, but they were doing it poorly. The raptors were quickly surrounding them. Eve lost track of Jesse and Cory in the confusion. She sought to find them again, letting her arms drop to her sides.
“This is more like it,” Cyrus said, taking a step away from the edge.
She had missed her chance.
Maybe she wasn't ready. Maybe she just couldn't do it. Her friends might die, but she would just have to let that happen and pretend it hadn't affected her. The raptors ran past below and raced along the wall, snapping and growling at those mocking them from above. She watched them pass, disappointed.
“What?” Cyrus asked when he looked at her.
She almost panicked and was suddenly worried he knew what she had almost done. “Nothing,” she replied. “I was worried about you. You were too close to the edge, that's all.”
He said nothing in reply and looked a little bemused. She followed him back to his seat. She snuck a furtive glance at David. Would he say anything? He gave no indication either way. He was ignoring her now and sat in his chair staring forward. She took her seat again, watching intently. The men on the white team moved backward, pinning themselves against the wall opposite her. Clusters of raptors formed, cutting off any escape. Those running along the walls came at the men from opposite sides. The white team was surrounded. The only escape was the ladder, but it was over twenty yards away from them.
Impossible to get there alone.
Above them, men from the gold team called down, pointing, mocking, and laughing hysterically.
The raptors moved about cautiously, bumping each other, snapping in warning. Beast and man traded threats. Raptors raked the ground menacingly. The trapped men raised their weapons. Neither side wanted to be the first to move. Foot by foot the raptors shifted until they completed the circle around the hapless men.
Then, as if a switch had been thrown, everything happened all at once.
Raptors charged.
Clubs spun.
Spears stabbed.
Claws ripped.
Screams wailed.
Red sprayed.
Arms thrashed.
The battle became so chaotic that Eve could not tell whether the men were hacking at each other or hacking at the raptors. She put her hands up to cover her eyes and turned away, silently praying for Cory to survive, for Jesse to survive, knowing it was ultimately hopeless.
She had seen them for the last time.
Men screamed.
Raptors screeched.
Seconds passed. She couldn't bear not looking. She dared a peak, spreading her fingers and looking between them. Many of the men were now on the ground dead or dying.
The raptors were winning.
She lowered her hands, wanting Cyrus to think she had just been frightened.
In the tightly clustered group of men still on their feet, she thought she could make out Cory and Jesse with their backs to the wall, hacking away. Cory swung a sword, which he must have taken from another man. Jesse had a baseball bat. The sword in Cory's hand moved scythe-like, cutting through raptors, making slow progress away from the wall, but it was progress. Jesse hung back and covered their sides, letting Cory do most of the work up front. Any raptor that slipped around Cory, Jesse crushed with the bat.
The attacking creatures disengaged from Cory and Jesse and went for easier pickings, tearing off chunks from the dead and running with them along the walls, flicking their tails, looking for a way to escape.
Eve now counted four men remaining on their feet. Two of them were her friends. The others were Jackson and some other man she did not recognize.
She let out a breath that had frozen in her chest.
“Aren't you going to do something?” she asked Cyrus. “They're all going to die.”
“Yes, of course they will, my dear. They failed. I hope they die better than they fought.”
Thinking of nothing else she could say, she simply nodded. His mind was made up.
The creatures withdrew and regrouped. The audience on top of the cargo trailers stomped their feet and cheered. The raptors began to circle, then swarm, and finally they engaged the four remaining men. Cory moved through the oncoming charge, swinging with precise strokes. Jesse cracked skulls as though he were hitting baseballs.
Then one of Jesse's swings went wild.
He was thrown off balance. A raptor slipped behind him. Eve tensed and grabbed the arms of her chair, wrapping her fingers around them in a death grip.
Cory moved faster than she had ever seen him move before. He spun, lunged, and attacked the raptor coming at Jesse. The raptor's head was cut from its body and tumbled away, bouncing like a lopsided ball. Another creature replaced the headless one. Cory swung to strike that one too while still another ran at Jesse.
Jesse drew his bat onto his right shoulder and swung hard. He timed it just right and the blow smacked full-force into the raptor, driving it up off its feet and throwing it onto its back. It landed upside down, unmoving. He then bumped up against Cory, and they moved together, back to back, gore coating them both.
They dripped blood. The ground was soaked with blood, slicked with blood. Bodies were everywhere, bodies of raptors, and bodies of men.
The two other men still on their feet had had enough. They broke and ran. They reached the ladder almost simultaneously. A male raptor peeled off to chase them. Its ugly red comb was fully engorged. The raptor probably weighed as much as the two men combined. Jackson made it to the ladder first and started to climb, but he was large and moving to
o slowly. The second guy reached up for a rung on the ladder then seemed to change his mind. Instead, he grabbed Jackson by the ankle and yanked hard, pulling him off the ladder. Jackson fell and landed on his stomach. The man who had pulled him off stomped down hard, kicking Jackson in the head. He then ran past and climbed. When he reached the top, he shoved the ladder over and back into the arena. It fell slowly and bounced when it hit the concrete. Eve heard the clang above the sounds of gasps from the crowd.
The large male raptor, now presented with an easy kill, shredded Jackson while he kicked and thrashed. It only took a few seconds before his screaming stopped.
The crowd roared its approval.
Jesse and Cory ran along the wall, keeping it at their right shoulders. She could see nowhere for them to go, no way to escape. They slowed, stopped, and raised their weapons. The bloodied raptors reformed into clusters and again moved to attack. Eve stood and inched forward, growing ever closer to the edge. Cyrus stepped alongside, drawing his cape around him.
She had just been presented with another opportunity.
One push.
Just one push.
A simple shove and it would all be over. Cyrus would be dead. She glanced at David again. He was no longer watching her. She glanced at the women behind him. They were cheering, not watching her, either. She looked back and saw Kate nodding at her. She saw Andrea licking her lips.
But, again, Cyrus shifted away from the edge the instant before she could act, taking a step backward and turning toward her. She still had a chance, though, but she would have to do it face to face. She would see the betrayal in his eyes.
She could do it.
She had to do it.
It was now or never.
The crowd became a susurrus roar in her ears. Her focus was only on the man in front of her, on pushing him, shoving him, and watching him die. He would look at her as Adam had looked at her before he had died, with fear and shock on his face, with terror.
She raised her arms.
Then she realized something.
She couldn't do it.
She couldn't bring herself to kill the man. She would die soon after. She knew it. She was a survivor. She did whatever it took, but she couldn't do this. Cory and Jesse should have never come here. They had no reason to be here. They were wrong, and nothing she could say or do could possibly save them, anyway. She blinked rapidly, not wanting her budding tears to show. She eyed Cyrus and imagined pushing him to his death one last time.
She just couldn't.
Trembling, she backed away and returned to her chair, prepared to watch her friends die.
The raptors closed in.
Cory swung his sword in crisp, figure eights and pressed his attack. Jesse followed closely behind, swinging with his bat, left, right, left.
Raptors died.
More died.
Then more.
Maybe, she thought.
Cory and Jesse's efforts seemed almost tireless. They fought on relentlessly. So did the raptors. Jesse slammed his bat down on the head of a raptor. The creature crashed to the pavement and thrashed in its death throes. He stepped away from it, watching it die, and then spun all the way around with his club held up and ready.
Eve scanned the arena. She had been watching her friends so closely that it took a second for her to realize there were no more raptors left to kill.
Cory sank to his knees and raised his face to the sky. He yelled out a guttural scream of triumph, stunning the crowd into a moment of silence.
Jesse worked his way through the corpses to stand beside Cory. He hunched over, placed a hand under Cory's bicep, and helped him to stand.
The new roar of the crowd that burst forth was deafening.
Cyrus had returned to his chair and stood before it. He motioned Eve and David to come nearer. After they had joined him, he grabbed their hands, raised them in the air, and pumped in mutual celebration with the audience.
“I've never seen anything quite like that,” he said to David over the noise. “Find out who those two are and keep a very close eye on them. Bring me the coward, too. Bring them all to me.”
Eve's brief moment of relief froze into a solid block of fear.
-32-
HAPPY MEAL
JESSE FIGURED IT was late, probably sometime after midnight. Three men with gold armbands were leading him through the crowd. Cory walked beside him. Faint tendrils of cook-fire smoke held the promise of roasting meat in the otherwise breezeless air. Ahead was a large open area filled with long plank tables the color of mahogany. Men sat at those tables eating, drinking, grinning, and laughing.
He ran his hand through his still wet hair. They'd been allowed to clean up after the battle. It had been the first time Jesse had showered since leaving his shelter behind weeks ago. Cory's hair was also wet and hung down to cover his neck.
Heads pivoted as they passed. Hulking, toothless men swiveled, jabbed elbows into their neighbor's ribs, and nodded hey look at those who had not yet turned. Jesse resisted the urged to make fists. His nerves were jangled and his stomach was tied into fat knots. Raptors, he could handle, and had. But this crowd? These men? He remained silent, not making eye contact with any one person, not looking away either.
In his exhaustion, he stumbled over a crack in the pavement and pitched forward. The man standing next to him, whose arms were as big as legs, caught him and held him steady until he could stand on his own again. The man who had caught him grunted and smiled. A gold cap covered one of his front teeth, and with his giant right hand, he slapped Jesse on the shoulder and laughed heartily. Jesse nearly collapsed under the blinding pain. He stumble stepped. It took everything he had to remain vertical.
The ordeal he and Cory had been through had ended over an hour ago. They alone had cleared the raptor pens beyond the gates. Nothing was left for gold or silver, so white had won by default. While he'd gotten past the post-fear shakes, he knew the weariness he was feeling now was only the tip of the spear. He would get the shaft soon enough. He hoped he was somewhere soft and safe when that happened. Even now, a certain amount of fear remained, which kept him on his feet, but that was a fear of having shown up his supposed betters. The members of the silver and gold teams seemed quite nonplussed that the two remaining members of white had won it all.
They were led to a trestle table near the rear of the gathering. The table had been set with plates, bright silver knives, polished spoons, forks, and cloth napkins. White cloth napkins, Jesse noted, clean napkins. A row of neatly spaced candles cast pools of flickering yellow over the tablecloth. Across the table, a bald-headed man dressed in a black and purple robe stood up from his chair and waited for Jesse to approach.
The guy looked like a damn circus freak. He was Cyrus, the man in charge, the leader, a real asshole by Jesse's estimation, even more so than Cory was. Next to him, though, was Eve. She waited alongside the freak. Jesse met her eyes carefully, but there was no recognition in them, just as there had been no recognition from her when he had earlier stepped before the platform to be commended for what he and Cory had done in the arena. Since she had remained quiet then as she was doing now, he would maintain her anonymity and hope that she would do the same for him. It was probably best that this freak didn't know how well they knew each other.
“Good evening,” Cyrus said. He was holding onto the back of Eve's chair and waiting for her to sit. She nodded, and then did. He helped her move closer to the table. Once she was fully situated, he seated himself, hiked up the sleeves on his robe, and rested his elbows on the table.
Jesse felt Cyrus's gaze viscerally, as if it were burrowing into his brain, searching for nuggets of information. The feeling was uncomfortable at best, but he was too tired to do much more than sit there and breathe in, breathe out.
After nearly a minute, Cyrus placed a hand on top of Eve's. “Do you know these two most amazing men?”
“No,” she said steadily, “Why?”
Cyrus studied Jess
e. “And your names are?”
Jesse hoped his story would hold true. He was certain Cyrus had been briefed on who he was and where he had come from, but he was not sure if they had bought the lie or knew the truth. He extended a hand across the table and decided to chance it and maintain the lie.
“I'm Jesse, Jesse Prieo,” he said as enthusiastically as he could. “And this guy is Cory—” He cut himself off. He realized he didn't know Cory's last name. He laughed to cover the mistake.
Cyrus did not return the handshake. Jesse let his forced laugh trail off and withdrew his offered hand.
After a few uncomfortable seconds, Cyrus smiled. “Welcome, Jesse. And, Cory, I must say again, what you did tonight was…impressive. Quite brave. We have not seen two work so well together. So, as you can probably understand, I must know more about you and why you are here.”
“Yes,” Jesse said. “Not a problem. Sounds good. Real good. And thank you, by the way, for all this. I haven't had a shower in weeks.” Jesse pulled the cloth napkin from the table and put it in his lap.
“And where are you two from?”
“California,” Jesse said quickly then peeked at Cory.
Cyrus frowned. “No, I'm afraid not. You most certainly are not from California.”
Jesse stiffened. He put his hands on the table, palms down. “Well, actually, I'm from Texas, but we made it all the way to California. We heard there were boats running out of San Diego taking people off to Hawaii.”
“Hawaii? You were planning a little vacation then?”
“No,” Jesse said, forcing a chuckle, “we'd just heard it was a safe there. Safer than anywhere else. But we were wrong. Just as bad there.”
“I see,” Cyrus said, drawing his hairless eyebrows together. He stuck his chin out and stroked it. Then, as if remembering something, he slapped the table. Everything on it rattled. He turned to a woman standing to his left. Her head was bowed, but she was watching him closely through upturned eyes. He held up his wine glass, admired it, and then showed it to the girl.
Red Asphalt: Raptor Apocalypse Book 2 Page 26