by Burks, John
There were people mulling about on the deck of the suspended ship, and more on the ladders and platforms leading down to the floor of the cavern. Most, like the people of the cave, seemed to be making their way to the center.
“Who are all these people?” Darius asked aloud. “Where did they come from?”
“I’m guessing they’re like us,” John Hussein answered, grabbing the arm of a passing girl. “Ma’am…can you tell us where we are? What’s going on?”
The girl could have been the same age as Amanda, and maybe without the bruising and grime, would have been as pretty as the blonde. The girl stared at John with wild blue eyes, trying desperately to pull away from him.
“Please, ma’am,” John said as calmly as possible. “We just want to know where we are. We’re here by mistake.”
Steven thought it odd that John would include the entire group in his plea of innocence. He didn’t know him from Adam. For all John knew, Steven could be the world’s greatest serial killer, sent to the prison of prisons for life. He wasn’t, of course, but he knew nothing about his fellow newcomers. He knew that he, and his wife, shouldn’t be in this place, but he didn’t know anything about the others, other than that they claimed to be from Houston. For all he knew, they were some sort of criminals or terrorists that he and Rebecca had been accidentally mixed up with. He imagined some super secret government organization having them mixed up with another Bradjolina Mr. and Mrs. Smith couple.
The girl ignored him and managed to pull away, and Steven wondered if that was the case. Why were they here? It was obviously some sort of prison, yet there were no guards.
John started after her but Darius stopped him. “Leave her. She’s scared to death of us.”
“But someone in here has to know where we are and what’s going on?”
Darius nodded. “But it isn’t her.”
Others they tried to stop and question reacted much the same, as if the group of newcomers carried the Black Death and they needed as rapidly as possible to get away from them. No one would look them in the eyes much less acknowledge their existence.
Their small group plunged into the crowd of people, still sticking close together if for no other reason than because they had arrived together. Rebecca clutched at his arm, still sobbing, still not talking. Earlier, she’d mumble about the boys, and then burst into full-blown tears. He wondered if she’d cried enough for both of them.
“Oh,” a small, old, plumpish man said, stepping in front of them and looking them over, “I didn’t realize we had newcomers. Though I guess I should have, considering the new girl in the blue jumpsuit. That should have been a clue, right? Well, it doesn’t matter. You’re here now, though I should have seen to you in the Cage.” He said “cage” as it were an official designation, like the name of a city or a museum. “I’ll see you now.”
He wore a long coat made of patched pieces of leather with voluminous pockets at his waist and chest level. The coat was covered in dark stains that Steven could only guess were from blood, and a tattered stethoscope hung around his neck, nearly obscured by the thick, dirty gray beard that hung down to his chest. His feet were clad in moccasins that looked as if they were made from the same material as the coat. He stepped up to Darius without an ounce of apparent fear at the big man’s size, and said, “Bend over and open your mouth.”
“What?”
“You must bend over or I will not be able to see into your mouth. I thought it was really quite simple,” he said, turning to John. “It was, wasn’t it? It wasn’t complicated like ‘forgive thy neighbor’ or some other silly nonsense, was it?”
“Where are we?”
“I’m only allowed to examine you,” the old man said, “not talk to you. You’ll have to figure out all the rest, just like we did. I’m just to make sure you aren’t going to infect us with some disease before you get a chance at the Game.” Again, he said the world like it was a title.
“The Game?” Darius asked, bending and allowing the old man to examine his mouth. Satisfied with that, he listened to the man’s chest with the ancient looking stethoscope, repaired with tape and glue.
The old man listened to his heart, nodding. “Yup, you got a strong ticker there,” he said. “Like a damn horse.”
“Are you a doctor?” Steven asked the man.
“As much as a veterinarian could claim to be a doctor, I suppose. Actually, here, I guess you could claim to be anything you want.” He stepped back, rubbing his scraggly white beard. “You know…I never thought of it that way. I think I’ll be Richard Nixon. Yup, former President.”
He made two peace signs, grinning, and said, “I am not a crook.”
“What’s your name, sir?” John asked as the old vet examined him.
“I just told you. I’m Richard Millhouse Nixon. Tricky Dick to my friends.”
John managed a smile as the old man finished and moved onto Amanda, then Steven and John. He hummed while he worked, and then, when finished, stood back and smiled. “Well, you all look healthy, which isn’t a surprise, considering the selection process, but we have to be sure. An outbreak of disease, here in this cesspool, would kill more people quicker than we could eat them efficiently.”
Steven’s ears perked at hearing eat them, but the others didn’t seem to notice and he said nothing.
“It’s going to be hard for you to stay healthy from here on out, but all I can really tell you is try not to shit where you drink, you know?”
With that, the old man melted into the crowd, leaving them just as shocked and confused as they’d been when they arrived. They pressed on, trying to push between the glut of people who were gathered around the raised stone platform at the center of the cave.
A slime-covered stream of water ran down a large horn-shaped stalagmite, forming a pool of tepid water at its base. Naked children, without the arm tattoos Steven noted, frolicked in the water as people stopped to drink from it. Darius knelt and drank a handful of the water and then spat it out.
“It’s nasty.”
A small boy smiled at him as he peed in it, waving.
“I wonder why,” John said as Amanda, seeming not to care, dropped to her knees and gulped at the water. She drank until she threw up, the water the only contents of her stomach.
“We’ve got to find something to eat and a cleaner source of water,” John told them as he helped Amanda to her feet after she had finished.
“Good luck here,” Darius said. “This place is nothing but filth. I don’t think anyone is taking Richard Nixon’s advice.”
Steven sat Rebecca down near the pool and tried to clear away some of the grime and filth covering the surface, trying as best he could to get her a clean handful of water. She balked at first when he offered it to her, but took it eventually. A drop of water joined the flow of tears through the dirt on her face. He hugged her tightly to him, his arms wrapped around her.
“When are you going to cry, Steven?” she asked softly. “The boys…”
“I…I can’t cry right now. I have to worry about us, here and now. I’ll cry when I get us out of here.” That was optimistic, he thought. Some of the people in the crowds, eating, sitting around small fires, looked positively ancient.
“They’re gone, Steven.”
“I know.”
“Do you smell that?” Darius asked aloud.
“All I smell is shit,” John replied. “Shit and death.”
“No, there’s meat cooking somewhere. I don’t know what kind of meat, but it’s meat.”
The big man walked towards the smell, and the tendrils of smoke drifting near the cavern’s ceiling, wrapping the pirate ship in a haze. There were several large cooking fires surrounded by men armed with wooden clubs and spears. They were a ragged looking bunch, but much healthier appearing than their counterparts in the rest of the cavern. Steven also suspected he recognized a few from the frenzied beating of Cassandra. Looking well fed and ready for a fight, they formed a loose circle around the
cooking fires, guarding the area where spits of meat cooked alongside large pots of some unidentified stew. Darius marched to the head of the line.
“Get back to the end of the line,” one of the men said, a thick Latino with gang tattoos all over his body. He stood with a stone-tipped spear across his chest. There were three vertical slashes carved into his forehead, forming rough scars.
“We just got here and we’re hungry.”
“I don’t give two fucks when you got here. You can get back to the end of the line or you can go the fuck away. I don’t care.”
Darius looked past the man where several other large men sat laughing and eating. One man in particular, a large Samoan, sat on a throne made of bamboo, wood, and bone, eating a meat Steven couldn’t readily identify from the bone. Skulls lined the base of the throne as well as its tall, arched back.
“I bet they didn’t stand in line,” Darius said simply.
“They’re three- and four-timers. Why in the hell would they stand in line?”
Steven had no idea what the man meant by three- and four-timers, but Darius still wasn’t moved, “I don’t care. We’re hungry and we’re going to eat.”
The spear tip was quickly at his throat. “It’s not against the rules to drop you in order to keep order, you know.”
“No,” Darius shot back, “I don’t know. I don’t know what the rules are; I don’t have a clue where we are. Tell you what, chump, why don’t you take that stick and shove it up your ass before I do it for you.”
The man looked back and forth at the large Samoan on the junk thrown, confused. He obviously wasn’t used to someone not backing down. He wasn’t used to non-submission. The Samoan looked at him with disgust and then stood, coming to them.
“What’s the problem here?” he asked.
The Samoan was at least, if not larger, than Darius. Steven was sure he was meaner. He, like the Latino, was covered in tattoos, though his looked more traditional Polynesian than prison, and instead of three marks on his forehead, he had four. A series of circles, lines, and dashes ran from his knees up his thighs, and up his chest. His black hair was close cropped to his scarred head.
“The problem here,” Darius said, taking a step past the spear holder, “is that we were brought here to this place against our will, and now I’m fucking hungry. I’m hungry and you have food.”
“And you think, being a newcomer and large, maybe a little scary looking, that you’re going to walk right up and take what you want? You think this is some sort of mob rule prison or something?”
Darius looked uncomfortable with the accusation, just as uncomfortable as when Amanda accused him of attacking her. “I don’t know what to think, I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Well most new people don’t get this much help,” the Samoan told him. “Most newcomers have to find out what this place is all about on their very own. It’s part of the process. But I’m going to help you out. I’m feeling generous right now.”
The men around him laughed like jackals around a fallen gazelle. “You’re not shit here. I don’t give a fuck what you were before. Here you’re worth less than shit. No one cares what you were before, no one cares what power you had. It doesn’t mean shit here. No one even fucking cares that you’re here. And I’ll bet no one back there,” he said, pointing in the general direction of the cave entrance, “cares that you’re gone. There’s a reason you’re gone, you know?”
Darius’ arm flashed so quickly and the lighting was so bad that Steven didn’t see his fist connect with the Samoan’s jaw. He simply saw the man stagger back a few paces and then the dozen sharp looking spear tips at the black man’s throat.
The Samoan laughed as he righted himself. “You hit like a mule,” he said, walking back up to Darius. “That’s good. It will come in handy later. I should kill you. I’d be within the rules—all these people saw you attack me—but I won’t.”
He bent down and retrieved the piece of meat on the bone that he’d been eating and offered it to Darius. “Here. You want it? Have it.”
Darius took the offering, looked at it, and then turned to the side, throwing up in violent spasms, the raw meat falling to the muddy floor with a wet thud. Steven looked down, seeing it was a forearm, stripped of skin, most of the hand still attached, and his stomach threatened to join Darius.
The Samoan and his men began laughing hysterically, along with anyone else in earshot of what had transpired. Rebecca joined Darius in heaving, and Amanda cried out.
“Oh my god…they’re eating Cassandra.”
“She broke the rules, she pays the price,” the Samoan said. “We all pay the price if we break the rules, and that, if nothing else, is something you should learn this very minute.”
“She’s still alive,” Steven gasped.
Okay, crapCassandra, or what was left of her, lay on a large piece of sanded driftwood next to the impromptu throne. Her legs were missing, cut just beneath the knees, and her left arm was gone. The stumps had been burnt to a crisp, and there wasn’t nearly as much blood as Steven would have figured. A pile of the bones from her legs were stacked neatly next to her, bits of cartilage and meat still attached. Her chest had been marked up with a knife, like a butcher might mark up a hog for slaughter. She stared at them, eyes pleading and expressing a pain Steven couldn’t begin to imagine.
“They keep better alive and last longer,” the big Samoan told them without emotion, as if they were discussing storing beef. “Nothing will be wasted, and her death will contribute to the survival of the Cave. And though she hadn’t yet had the opportunity to join us, she will be remembered nonetheless. She will live on, forever, on the Wall.”
Amanda fainted straight away, falling to the ground before Darius or John could catch her. Darius surged forward again, his face full of rage and anger, but stopped short of the wall of spear tips separating him from the Samoan. Rebecca was speechless, staring at the mutilated girl, and Steven threw up again.
“Save it for The Game, big man,” the Samoan, leaning in and whispering to Darius, said. “Save it for the Game. Use it…it might save you.”
A siren split the laughter and the mood in the cavern turned festive, people cheering and shouting. Steven, wiping bile from his mouth, watched as even the children began laughing and marching towards the opposite end of the cavern, away the entrance. Everyone in the cavern, man, woman, child, young and old, marched out, some even singing, though Steven couldn’t make out what the words of the song were. It only took a couple of minutes for the cavern to empty completely out, leaving the group of five by themselves.
Amanda dashed to her friend’s side and Cassandra managed to raise her remaining arm and hold the other girl’s hand. She gurgled, trying to speak, yet was unable. Rebecca pulled away from Steven and went to the girls. “You can’t do any more for her.”
Rebecca gently guided Amanda to John, then turned back to Cassandra. “I’m sorry.”
Steven didn’t see it, but he heard the twisting of her neck and the snapping of her bones, and when his wife stepped away from her, he knew the girl was finally dead. The three men stared at her in shock but Amanda rushed to her, hugging her deeply.
“Thank you.”
“She’s not suffering any more.”
“I know.”
John Hussein, who, during the exchange with the Samoan had been silent, said, “I…I don’t know what to say. Did they bring us here as food? This is the plot of a bad B-movie, isn’t it, where some rednecks in the Appalachians or desert kidnap hapless tourists for their evening meal?”
Darius shook his head. “They only killed her because she tried to escape. They could have killed me right here without blinking, but they didn’t. There’s a set of rules here, a set of laws that they live by.”
“What’s the Game?” Steven asked and wondered again what Cassandra had meant when she said it wasn’t supposed to be like this. He’d never know now; he was still in shock at the violent act of mercy from his wife.
“I don’t know and don’t particularly want to know,” Hussein told them, “but I think we have no choice but to follow them once again.”
Steven looked at the other cave entrance, wider and taller than the one they’d entered, and wondered what horrors lay in the next chamber.
Chapter Two
He’d met Rebecca a short two months after the death of his wife, when he and his two sons were still not just in mourning at the lost of their wife and mother, but in utter and complete shock. It had been a simple incident, but one he looked back on fondly as if fate had sent him an angel to guide him through the dark times. He’d been mindlessly jogging, just burning away excess energy and trying to keep thoughts of his deceased wife out of his mind. It was just one foot in front of another, trying to stamp out the vision of Michelle laying there on the coroner’s table.