Four guards ran to the ropes and opened the four blinds. A cavity, maybe fifteen feet deep, had been carved from the ice, which ran across all four frames as one space. In front of each frame stood a post and tied to each was the naked body of a man, all mutilated and bloody. I looked away. It was a horrific sight. Blood covered the icy floor around the posts and the leftmost body had already started to decompose. Then I saw the bearded face of the poor wretch on the right try to look up, but not manage it.
I looked at Valdus in disgust.
“You animal... Can’t you at least put him out of his misery?”
The sneering leader just laughed.
“These men were criminals not worthy of the games. They deserve their fate as God intended.”
“I don’t know what god you think you’re talking to, but he sure isn’t the one I know.”
“The two on the left were food thieves. This one was committed heresy—much like you, Outlander. The other one had intercourse without authorization.”
“You killed him for having sex? What gives you the right? Oh, let me guess ... your god?”
“Yes, you are beginning to understand. Only I can authorize coupling and procreation, as God’s representative. It is necessary for our stock to be strong and obedient and godly. People live in my domain of free will. They are welcome to leave, but usually they do not get far with no food and no clothes, which belong to me, of course.”
“Well, of course, your majesty,” I said, sardonically, bowing.
Sarcasm obviously wasn’t a big thing around here.
“Men, remove the dead,” he ordered, pointing to the posts.
Two guards jumped to it and emerged outside from a side door. They untied the leftmost bodies before dragging them away to somewhere unseen. The view made me queasy and I willed my mind to find some hope in this desperate nightmare of a place.
One of the lackeys beside Valdus got up and showed a piece of paper to the despot, who nodded.
“Before we hear the case against the outlander, we will allow him to see our justice in action. Bring her out!”
The doors by the stage opened and out came two guards behind a petite, mid-twenties woman with shoulder-length blonde hair. She wore only a brown, hessian sack with holes cut for the head and arms. Her face was a mess, with a black eye and cut lip rivaling any of the wife battering I’d seen as a cop. Like me, she had manacles but no leg irons. I guessed there wasn’t anywhere to run to without freezing to death. They led her in front of the stage and pushed her to her knees, her head bowed in submission to Valdus.
“Ah, young Myleene. Not so pretty these days. I trust my men have been looking after you.”
She said nothing.
The dark-skinned girl—a member of the harem, on the bed behind Valdus—looked pained as she exchanged glances with Myleene.
“Well, answer girl!” he bellowed.
“Yes, Great Marshal.”
“You know why you’re here, but for the benefit of the outlander read the charge,” he said to the lackey on his left.
“Great Marshal, she is charged with refusing intercourse with noble Marius and of heresy,” said the lackey, sycophantically.
“Serious charges, hmm? So, how do you plead?”
“Guilty, Great Marshal.”
Her dark-skinned friend, naked on the bed behind, looked down in sorrow.
“Ah, excellent! As a reward for your honesty, I will commute your execution and give you your day at the games,” he said, beaming.
“Thank you, Great Marshal.”
“Take her away!”
A chill ran up my spine as they led her out and left me wondering what the games were exactly. Nothing good.
“Now, before we see justice before God, I would like to give the outlander a lesson in history. Perhaps dispelling your ignorance will help you in this life or the next.”
“I’d rather skip your bogus history, if that’s okay, oh mighty one,” I said, grinning.
“You will hear my wisdom!”
“What a clown,” I muttered, unable to stop myself.
But a dangerous clown, I corrected myself.
He either didn’t hear or chose to ignore me.
“I am the twelfth Great Marshal to rule this domain after my father, my grandfather and our ancestors before us. Great Marshal William commanded a powerful military which secured this region and gave prosperity for generations to come.”
“Call this prosperity?” I said, incredulously.
“Most certainly I do! You see—that is your ignorance showing itself again. Before Great Marshal William, there was only chaos and death. Legend tells of a great apocalypse before the legions of God organized our new civilization.”
“Civilization? This?”
“Yes, ignorant Outlander! Have you not seen our city, our electricity and our technology? We are the center of armaments and food production for many thousands of miles around. The tribes tremble in fear of my name and gladly give tribute.”
He spread his arms forth, looking around the room in pride.
Absolute power and an exploited populace, coming soon to a failed state near you, I thought.
“All of this has taken generations—centuries of brilliant minds and hard work.”
I had to talk to this deluded dictator in his own terms while he was in the mood to talk.
“So tell me about this apocalypse... What do you know?”
“God unleashed great fire and flood upon those unworthy of this world. The corruption of his Kingdom was wiped away and a new righteous class of people inherited it.”
“And what do you know of the civilization before the apocalypse?”
“Little is known for sure. That is how God would like it so that we are not tempted to follow the ways of the distant past. I remember that one time, as a young man, some outlanders came here from the sky, in a machine. My father spoke to the outlanders and welcomed them. They told us they had traveled from far away—from a land they called Hawaii. They wore strange clothes and carried things that we had never seen before, including the radio that we still use today. But after speaking with them, my father saw that they were ungodly, not least because flight is forbidden.”
“So what happened to them?”
“We executed them for heresy then scavenged their flying machine for materials.”
I looked at him wide eyed and slack jawed.
“They came all the way from Hawaii and you killed them, for flying a plane?”
“Of course—I slit their throats with my own hand!” he said, proudly.
I reached for my coat zipper and instantly the guards pointed rifles at me.
“It’s okay, I’m just hot in this thing.”
Valdus nodded ascent and I undid the jacket then the fleece underneath.
“I am growing tired of this talk. Number-19, what are the charges?” said Valdus, impatiently.
He bowed and said, “Great Marshal, there are three charges. One: trespassing on your domain; two: carrying a firearm without authorization; three: suspected use of radio frequencies.”
“Very good, Number-19. And we can add to that insulting me and heresy. How do you plead, Outlander?”
“Not guilty,” I said wearily but without hesitation.
“Very well, Outlander. I will consider your case and return my verdict tomorrow. My loins are growing restless,” he said, turning around to leer at the young women who forced themselves to smile. He stood and looked down at me with a sadistic grin.
“Take him to the cells!”
Whatever nascent rapport I thought I had with this maniac didn’t seem to add up to much. And unsurprisingly, I didn’t have much faith in the justice system around here. Hell, I would’ve taken a corrupt tin pot nation’s courts from 2070 over this place any day. At least they took bribes back then.
Despite the grotesqueness of his character, I still wondered how much choice Valdus had in it all. I mean, if his father let him slit two guys’ throats at
a young age, God knew what else he’d exposed him to. In a way, he was no different to the child soldiers of twenty-first century Earth, fighting in nasty little wars in Africa and elsewhere. Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man. Part of me almost felt sorry for him. Not a very big part though. They say there’s good in everyone. I wasn’t so sure with Valdus. He seemed to have had it knocked out of him at an early age. And if anyone ever needed proof that unbridled power corrupts, they need look no further than Valdus. I’m sure his father was the same and, no doubt, his father before him.
The guards led me back out to the lobby as Valdus the Insane drew the curtains to his love nest amongst squeals of fake delight from his harem. Most of the guards and all of the hangers-on made haste and I was led down a dark side tunnel to the basement below. The dungeons awaited me. I’d made a massive mistake coming here and wanted to take this tyrant down with every cell of my body. But for the moment I had to be realistic and work on one thing—survival.
13
The basement parking lot of the former hotel now served as a prison. As they led me down, the temperature dropped to what I guessed was near freezing. The darkened space was a labyrinth of bricked-off partitions and cells fronted with an old chain-link fence. Wretched figures inhabited some of the cells; one poor woman looked up from the floor bereft of both energy and hope. A half-dressed man with welts on his back hung from chains on his cell wall. He looked dead. Moans and hushed voices drifted through the darkness, broken only by occasional weak lightbulb. The place smelled of human filth and death.
“This place is horrific,” I protested to Number-19 and Number-45. “How can you treat people like this?”
“It’s not your concern, Outlander. This is the Great Marshal’s—”
“Yeah, yeah, save the crap, prick.”
A visceral scream pierced the air, chilling and depressing me in equal measure.
“Jesus…” I muttered.
They locked me in my cell, secured the door with a padlock and started walking off.
“Hey, what time’s dinner? Do I get to call a lawyer?”
Number-19 turned around, went to speak then decided better of it and left.
I regarded the ten by ten foot cell, cinderblock on three sides, chain link at the front. Other than the old plastic bucket in the corner, it was completely bare. Below the pair steel loops attached to the rear wall, a reddish-brown stain permeated the cinderblock.
“Like a medieval dungeon but without the charm,” I murmured, trying to break my mood with humor.
It didn’t work—this place was a house of horrors, overseen by a psychopathic ruler.
Then came the soft voice of a woman from the neighboring cell.
“Outlander? Is that you?” she whispered.
“Well, that’s what they’ve been calling me. Are you Myleene?”
“Yes, it’s me. They will enter you in the games tomorrow. I heard the guards laughing about it.”
“What are these games?”
“You must fight to the death. Only one fighter can emerge from each round alive. If you survive a number of fights, then you go free.”
“How many?”
“It depends how many that bastard decrees.”
I chuckled at her defiance.
“So you don’t think he deserves the title Great Marshal, either?”
“He is a bastard, a rapist and a murderer,” she said, her voice trembling with emotion. “His hunting party took me as a teenager from my people and have treated me worse than an animal ever since. But we are weak against the Valdus’ fighters. They had numbers and weapons. We did not.”
“So you have to fight in the games too?”
“Yes, the day after tomorrow. He has decreed three matches, but I stand little chance. I am a small woman; the opponents will be big men.”
This place was the antithesis of everything I stood for.
“You knew this, yet you pleaded guilty… Why?”
“Because there is no justice here and to die by execution is worse. I will die fighting and be noble as my tribe would be proud.”
“You’re very brave, Myleene.”
“I hope so,” she said, before breaking into a shiver.
“Cold?”
“Yes.”
“Hold on a second,” I said as I reached to the chain-link ceiling where our common cell wall met. Not easy with the manacles still on.
Only one securing bolt remained, the others just rusted, broken stumps. The chain-link lifted up easily enough. Next, I hooked the small padlock that secured my right manacle over one of the broken bolt stumps. Then I jerked down on it with all my weight. The shackle popped free, so I repeated the trick with the other one before throwing the manacles to the ground and removing my jacket.
“Here, take my jacket,” I said, unzipping the thick Arctic coat before pushing it over the wall.
I heard Myleene murmur in delight of the clean, hi-tech jacket, large enough to reach past her knees.
“You’re a very kind person, Outlander.”
“My friends call me Dan or Danny or Luker.”
“Thank you, Luker.”
“My pleasure.”
***
That night I slept in fits and starts, disturbed by all I’d seen and heard. But I awoke with rage in my belly and fire in my heart. Someone was going to die today and it wasn’t going to be me. Prof. Heinz’s watch said it was 5:35 a.m. and I could still hear Myleene’s gentle snoozing from next door.
Five minutes later, the noise of guards coming my way subsumed the distant sobs and moans. They laughed and guffawed at their own private jokes until they reached my cell. They wore blue coveralls and the numbers 75 and 80. Both were bigger built than the scrawny guys that had first welcomed me to the wonderful world of Valdus. Both had bushy beards and bad teeth. Number-75 carried a bucket and ladle.
“Breakfast, Outlander,” he said harshly, holding out a ladle of some thin substance resembling porridge.
I looked at him confused.
“Don’t you have a bowl or something?”
“Use your hands, wretch!”
I gave him a hard stare but saw little point in refusing. With no food for a while, I was beginning to feel weak. On cupping my hands, he poured in the cold gruel.
Before walking off, he said, “Be ready in one hour.”
I poured it down my throat in three big gulps then licked off every drop of the joyless gruel. Despite its tastelessness, it helped.
“Hey, dumbass! You still there?”
No answer.
“Please sir, can I have some more?” I called out like a latter-day Oliver Twist.
They were gone.
The noise woke Myleene and I spent the hour learning about her life at Angels Station and her desire to return home to her people. Looked like that wouldn’t happen unless we sprung a jailbreak somehow.
An hour later, the armed guards came right on time and noticed the broken manacles on the cell floor. Number-75 sighed and shook his head. He went to turn away, then spun around with his rifle butt raised, ready to thrust it into me. I anticipated the move and sidestepped grabbing the rifle and holding it across his throat.
“Let him go,” said Number-80, unconvincingly as his buddy grasped at his neck and made choking noises.
“I’ll let him go and I won’t beat your asses, but next time you try something like that you won’t be so lucky. Oh, and no manacles thanks—they’re kind of uncomfortable.”
I knew they wouldn’t kill me without Valdus’s say-so and if they tried to take me down, they’d fail. But there was no point trying to make a break there and then, deep within the complex. I’d need to bide my time and wait for an opportunity. These guys were rank amateurs with shoddy equipment and procedures, so I was willing to wait.
“Okay, okay,” said a nodding Number-80, who looked young and inexperienced on closer inspection.
“How about you, hotshot?” I said to Number-75, loosening my gr
ip.
He nodded vigorously, so I pushed him to the floor and threw his crudely made rifle at him.
“Okay, are we going somewhere nice?” I asked with a smile.
“The Games briefing... C-can you at least put the manacles on please? No lock. W-we don’t want to get in trouble.”
I sighed as if it was a real imposition, but took their point and bent down and put them on with the broken padlocks in place.
After Number-75 picked his ass off the deck, they indicated to follow them. We went up the crumbling concrete stairwell missing its handrail, past the lobby and up four more levels to the fifth floor. An old plaque read Indoor Pool, and that’s where they led me—to what used to be the changing rooms for hotel guests. From the large number of people—mostly dirt-poor—surrounding the drained pool beyond the doorway, it was still a place of leisure. But not for me, as the dude dressed in a black gown explained. Apparently, this ruddy-faced old man was the Gamesmaster.
“Outlander, you will fight second today,” he explained. “Your opponent, Baltan, is the undefeated champion of the last six months. He will first fight two criminals, then you.”
“Hang on a second ... So what, have I been sentenced to this farce in absentia?”
“You catch on fast, Outlander. The Great Marshal’s servant informed me yesterday. I must say, it took some rearranging of the schedules, but I managed to advertise your bout. The crowd you have drawn looks like being a good for the coffers.”
“Well, I’m so pleased for you. So what happens if these so-called criminals hand Baltan his ass before I can?”
“Do you mean should they defeat him?”
“You catch on fast too.”
“That is unlikely... But if they do, then you will fight them instead.”
“So where’s my weapon?”
“That will be revealed in the pit.”
The crowd outside started cheering as Valdus and his entourage entered from a side door and took their places on some upholstered bleachers near the middle of the pit’s long side. His naked harem entered next and sat beside their master. Armed guards filed in and took up positions around the room. Valdus sat while everyone else stood. He clicked his fingers and every single man, woman and child got on one knee and bowed. Everyone but me. Screw him. He clicked again and they retook their places sitting or standing around the arena.
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