Z 2134

by Platt, Sean

  Inside was worse.

  Someone had decided the halls should be painted black, since according to the State, other colors seemed to inspire “ill tempers.” And as if black didn’t lend to the darkness enough, the lighting in the hallways was often neglected, seemingly in a perpetual state of flickering.

  The bottom five floors were devoted to classrooms — orphans were taught in separate schools from the other children. To call what Chimney Rock offered school, however, was a mockery of education. It taught little more than basic skills to be a better worker, and little to no critical thinking. The sixth floor housed the kitchen and dining hall. The remaining floors were divided between boys and girls, grouped by sex and age. There were no bedrooms. Instead, there were giant rooms lined with two rows of beds, 20 on each side of the room, with each child given a trunk and a lock for the foot of his or her bed — the small box meant to harbor every one of their earthly possessions.

  Ana rarely saw Adam any more, except at dinner — when she returned from work in time — and occasionally on Sunday, when their schedule was mostly free. This wasn’t a kindness to the children so much as it was for the adults wanting a day away from the orphanage. While the schoolmaster and a few of the counselors lived on the upper floors of the orphanage, most of the staff was away on Sunday, doing whatever it was adults did when they didn’t have to work.

  Ana pushed through the heavy iron doors, eager to get upstairs and alone, so she could read her note.

  She went to the main desk to sign in. As she waved her wrist, and the chip inside it, across the black square glass in the large reception desk, she was greeted by Merta, a large, unfriendly woman who seemed right at home in the long, black, shapeless dresses the staff were required to wear.

  Tonight, however, the woman greeted her with a rare smile.

  “Congratulations, your father really pulled off a stunner!” she boomed.

  “Yeah,” Ana said, trying to be friendly and avoid explaining how she’d wished The Darwin Games were over already, and whether that meant her father dying or winning, she didn’t really care. She just wanted to stop seeing his face on TV every damned day. Ana smiled, suddenly meaning it because she thought about how Michael said her smiles seemed like she was trying to keep her gas in.

  “To Jonah!” Merta said, raising her fist — one of the more annoying ways fans of the show celebrated their favorite contestants.

  “To Jonah,” Ana repeated, playing along and raising her fist halfheartedly.

  Ana smiled again, then left the main desk, went to the elevators, and pushed the up arrow button. From behind, Merta said, “They’re out of order again.”

  Ana closed her eyes.

  Of course.

  Ana began the long trek up to the 25th floor, eager to reach the restroom on her level, the only place where she could find the privacy she needed to read the note. As she ascended the stairs, Ana wondered how Adam was doing.

  He said he’d made friends with a group of boys a bit older than he, and she was happy to hear it. She also knew that her baby brother was too trusting and could be easily taken advantage of. She planned to meet the boys on Sunday and check them out for herself. Ana hoped they’d be as nice as Adam insisted they were. She hated the thought of someone having fun at her brother’s expense, like what used to happen back home and in regular school all too often — kids making fun of the daft kid because they figured he didn’t get it.

  Adam wasn’t daft. He was damned smart. Just quiet, and had some trouble communicating with others in a normal way. That didn’t make him stupid.

  If Ana found out these kids were messing with him, they’d have hell to pay — even if it meant her getting thrown into The Rock’s basement for a spell.

  Ana pushed open the door on the 25th floor and passed two girls chatting in the hall, ignoring their cries of “To Jonah!” along with their fist salutes, and headed straight for the restroom and a private stall.

  Ana went to the farthest stall, sat to pee, then slid the note from her pants pocket and carefully opened the note.

  It read:

  874 Stone Street Church

  Sunday

  Come alone

  And don’t let The Watchers see you.

  It was the address of the small church with the slightly crooked sign, across the street from Ana’s old apartment.

  CHAPTER 4 — Jonah Lovecraft

  The Barrens

  the next morning

  Jonah felt like his heart would burst. Then it did.

  He stopped, clutching at the burning in his chest. Once he realized nothing had erupted, and that it only felt as if he were going to die, but he wasn’t yet dying, he pushed himself to run faster.

  It had been a while since Jonah had heard any zombies, and even longer since he had felt them. After another 20 minutes, he stopped again, just long enough to catch his breath, sucking fresh, cold air into his lungs like the last swallow in a canteen. Once he caught his breath, Jonah looked behind him, scanned the snow-capped tree line for zombies, then turned back and started walking quickly toward the Final Area.

  He passed a lake, walked the long way around the same wooden shack that had been used as a makeshift hospital, a camping ground, and a last stand more times than he could count, or at least remember, in the more than 36 years since he first started watching The Darwin Games. Jonah didn’t go inside the shack, but as he passed, he smelled something inside that made him want to vomit. Past the shack, Jonah reached the large black wall surrounding a clearing — two empty acres in the middle of the forest.

  Jonah wondered how much longer he could continue breathing. His heart was still beating like a jackhammer and threatening eruption. His lungs were a bucket of magma. His throat was dry and raw, and his eyes dry and tired, but he couldn’t risk letting his guard drop now, of all times.

  This was the staging area of the Final Battle.

  Jonah found the gateway into the clearing and then swallowed as he saw the goliath that had beaten him there.

  Bear stood on top of the Mesa, heaving. Massive shoulders rose and fell with the silent threat of a sleeping lion.

  Bear was too far off for Jonah to see his smile, but he was no less certain the giant was wearing one. For a man Bear’s size, who crushed skulls like fruit in his palm, he wielded a surprising amount of mirth. Jonah had caught the screen captures from the orbs on the replays each night. He wouldn’t have been surprised if Bear was the first survivor in history to get his own spinoff show — if he beat Jonah.

  Three days before, Bear had survived a midnight zombie attack by wrapping his arm around a monster’s neck, squeezing it tight enough so that the zombie couldn’t bite him.

  Bear was sleeping soundly when the first zombie made it into his camp, so he wasn’t able to grab a weapon before the first zombie was on him. Bear used the zombie’s body as his only weapon until he tore an arm from another charging zombie, then used that as a bat to fend off the approaching swarm long enough to get his store of weapons, starting with a gun that he fired to empty before switching to an axe that left a littered heap of zombies in piles all over his campsite.

  After just two hours’ sleep, Bear figured it was time to hit the trail again, so he crept through the dark, axe in hand. The axe was still in his hand, three days later, as he stood like a king at the top of the Mesa.

  The Darwin Games started at the Halo and ended at the Mesa. Sometimes no one made it. Most often, and fittingly for an audience surveyed to greatly prefer a one-on-one showdown, there were two survivors. Occasionally, there were three. Once, seven fought to a bloody death at the top of the Mesa.

  The Mesa, a raised metal platform 50 feet high, was surrounded by a large steel cage. There were only two ways to leave the Mesa: dead or by way of the winner’s trip to City 7.

  Bear stood inside the cage, waiting, smiling, and holding the same axe he had sent through the bodies of who-knew-how-many humans and zombies alike. He slapped the flat side of the blade hard i
nto his left palm, then flared his nostrils.

  Bear’s axe was sharp, instead of dull from battle, and his wounds were mended. Of course.

  The first to the Mesa claimed the Bounty — a foot locker-sized box that harbored everything from medicine to food to fresh weapons. Jonah had no idea what other weapons were in the Bounty, but Bear clearly preferred his battle-tested axe. He was, however, fully garbed in a full suit of thick leather padded armor, loosely covering his massive body. Jonah wondered if there was a second, smaller suit inside the Bounty tailored for him, if only he’d been fast enough to reach it. Or if they knew Bear would reach the Bounty before him in enough time to only make one.

  With the Bounty box locked, Jonah was forced to walk to the Joker’s Box to see what awaited him.

  Jonah opened the box, hoping for something more than the machete in his hand, though he’d gotten proficient at using it and preferred it over most other melee weapons. What greeted him, however, wasn’t a weapon. It was a photograph — of his family, taken just after Adam was born.

  He looked at the memory and felt the sting of tears wanting to break him down.

  No time for this. Not now.

  They’re trying to mess with your mind.

  He left the photograph in the box and slammed the lid shut, hearing it lock a moment after.

  Jonah held Bear’s eyes for a minute before breaking his gaze and stepping onto the first step in the long and winding staircase wrapping the rock to the top of the Mesa. A pair of hunter orbs hovered above the stage, making long and lazy circles over the Mesa as Bear wiped the back of his hand across his beard, then turned to spit on the ground, twisting his grin into a growl.

  Jonah began to climb the ramp toward the cage and certain death for one of them. Once he was on the Mesa and inside the cage, the gate would lock behind him. Jonah couldn’t flee. The orbs were there to make sure no one did, even if they managed to force the gate open. Anyone watching The Games long enough was all too familiar with the powerful energy the hunter orbs could produce, blasting a person to ashes in seconds.

  Viewers cheered loudest during Mesa battles, often hoping this would happen, and sometimes believing they could will it into motion through the strength of their volume. It rarely happened, and despite a new Game every other week, and Jonah having seen nearly four decades’ worth of final battles, he had only seen the orbs cut contestants to nothing at the top of the Mesa a couple of times.

  He paused at the door into the cage, either at the end of his life or taking his final steps into the rest of it.

  Zombies no longer mattered.

  Not today, and probably never again.

  He looked over at Bear, who was relaxed and waiting, still smiling as if Jonah wasn’t any threat at all, even with a machete curled tightly in his palm.

  Jonah looked at the cage entrance once last time, then stepped inside, blinking twice as the gate swung shut behind him and a metal rod slid shut, locking them in.

  Bear stopped slapping the axe into his palm and started swinging it in the air instead, tossing it from his left hand, then back to his right, like a hot potato.

  Jonah circled the man beast, ready to die but not willing to fall just yet, keeping far enough away from Bear that the giant would have to throw his axe to hit him. Jonah was quick enough to duck, but in rough enough shape to miscalculate and make a fatal error.

  “It’s over for you now, Mr. Officer Man!” Bear laughed, then shook the axe above his head and brought it down hard against the Mesa’s metal surface to show Jonah he could hold the rattle in his arms.

  Jonah continued to circle.

  Bear laughed louder. “Watch, listen, and report this!” Bear cackled, mocking the City Watch signs posted around each of the Cities.

  Bear then swung his axe in a wide arc, probably not intending to hit Jonah, but rather scare him. Bear swung the axe through the air a second time as he glanced to his right, still laughing.

  There was something horrible and knowing in his laugh. Jonah followed the giant’s gaze to the left and over the Mesa’s lip. Fifty feet down, on the ground, were nearly a dozen zombies, moaning their banshee cries as they ambled into the clearing, quickly crossing the empty land to the base of the Mesa. Jonah wondered if the zombies had found the entrance he’d used, or if the Network opened up other doors along the wall surrounding the clearing. He didn’t have time to look, however. He had to keep his eyes on Bear and his mighty axe.

  Death was a matter of preference: the killer without mercy before him or the walking dead below. The cage had never opened during a final battle before, and he hoped the Network wasn’t introducing a new wrinkle to add to the Wow Factor — a cage battle plus zombies!

  But as the zombies began to ascend the same ramp he’d just come up, he was almost certain that something bad was about to happen. Really fucking bad.

  Once the zombies reached the Mesa, they’d be able to walk around the lip of the cage, and likely reach inside, which limited how much room each man would have to move around. One step too far, and the zombies might reach in and get them.

  Jonah imagined the audience back home and how much they must be cheering through the streets. He hated that Adam and Ana were probably watching from wherever they were.

  The Final Battles were almost impossible for civilians to avoid; even four-year-olds knew when it was Finishing Day. It was the biggest day for the State-run television, always on a Sunday so everyone could watch, and was also a huge boon to the gambling industry — the legal, and illegal, ones.

  Death was life, and entertainment for the masses.

  But this was his life, and his death — and knowing his children would probably see him torn to tatters, either by zombies or man beast, was something he couldn’t accept. That they might be rooting, along with many others, for him to receive Darwinian Justice, cut him deep.

  Jonah wasn’t guilty.

  The City was guilty. From the esteemed “one true leader” Jack Geralt to the leaders of the Inner Circle, to the Directors to The Watchers — everyone who had played along in the charade was guilty.

  And in that sense, Jonah, who was part of the machine for so long, was guilty.

  He hadn’t killed his wife, but nobody would ever know of his innocence if he didn’t make it out of The Darwin Games alive.

  He screamed, then charged at Bear. Bear was expecting the rush and didn’t care. He moved aside, surprisingly quick, and avoided Jonah’s blade. Not only did he avoid the machete, he managed to wrench it from Jonah’s hand as Jonah stumbled forward.

  Bear threw the machete through the bars, where it fell 50 feet to the snow-covered field below.

  Jonah fell to the Mesa floor, and Bear laughed as if it were the first joke at the end of the world.

  Bear threw his arms into the air as four orbs circled above and around them, then hurled his axe into the corner, as if to say he didn’t need it to defeat Jonah. Bear threw his arms up again and waited through applause he couldn’t hear but probably felt in the cells of every overdeveloped muscle.

  Bear ran at Jonah, grabbed him roughly by the collar, then lifted him up over his head as though he weighed nothing at all and smashed him down hard onto the metal floor of the Mesa.

  He held his arms in the air again, screaming in victory, as if he were a real bear, waiting through the orbs’ whirring whispers of broadcast glory.

  Jonah was going to die.

  It shouldn't end this way, it wasn’t fair.

  A year ago everything was different.

  A year ago, Jonah didn’t know, and ignorance made everything perfect.

  But that was before Jonah knew that life was a lie, and that everything he’d ever suspected actually was, and that the sour truth might spread farther than The Walls of City 6.

  Molly was everything to him. Ana and Adam knew it because Jonah had given them a lifetime of proof. Ultimately, truth held no court in a world built on lies.

  Not when the “truth” could be created wholesal
e from false memories.

  Neither of his children believed in his innocence, and his daughter had testified against him, sending him first to jail, and then outside The City walls where he fought the dead to stay alive. She was probably watching and wishing him eaten.

  Jonah looked up at the orbs, then back at Bear.

  This was it.

  The City’s setup was finally finished.

  Jonah was arrested, convicted, and expelled from The City.

  Maybe The State and City were finished with him, but he wasn’t done with them.

  Jonah held his roar, swallowing the swirling tornado inside him through the extra half-second of silence that might be all he needed to win life from death at the bloody hands of Bear.

  Jonah stood up and dived down, just as Bear realized what was happening, swatting too high through the air as Jonah landed at the man beast’s ankles, thrusting forward with every one of his 198 pounds. He swung his right arm as he landed, around Bear’s leg and up the length of his body, yanking the man down hard on his face.

  Bear roared like the beast he was, and the rage in his roar managed to do what Jonah’s machete couldn’t — strike fear, or at least curiosity, into the surrounding zombies. The moaning grew louder as their heads spun slowly and wildly around. Their stride never slowed as they ascended the stairs on their way to the cage.

  If the zombies somehow got inside the gate, Jonah was finished. Even winning against Bear would only prolong his death. Producers never interfered. And no way Jonah could fight off a horde with just his hands.

  But Jonah wasn’t going to die.

  He would kill Bear and earn his way into City 7, so the plans he’d been making since seven seconds after his arrest could finally get started.

  Bear finished his bellow, then ran at Jonah, catching him before he could get away, and lifted him again, and then threw him in a rage hard to the ground.

  Pain exploded through Jonah’s back and left shoulder. He gasped for breath and choked up blood, but his heart was still beating.