by Mark Tufo
“Ssit down and Sshut up hu-man,” it snarled.
“You need to learn some more words asshole!!” I spat, I figured if I was going to die I might as well get a last jab in. I don’t think that he had any clue what I said, he shut the door to the booth and left.
“Sit down hu-man,” a voice boomed from the top of the booth in what appeared to be an alien version of a speaker. “Your briefing will begin now.”
This did very little to calm my nerves, if anything it only made me more nervous, to hear the alien voice through a speaker made it sound that much more inhuman. I felt like a rat in a cage, a very small cage.
“You are here, hu-man,” that snapped me back to reality, “in a competition like no other. Should you become the champion of these games you will win the prize which your kind cherishes the most.” The first thought that came to my mind was ‘pussy.’ I’m sorry, I was an 18-year-old college student. “Freedom!” the voice boomed. Well, that was my second choice. “You will compete to the death, whether it is yours or your opponents.” The voice might as well have been talking about last night’s soccer score for all the inflection and feeling it put into those words. I yelled at the speaker to demand what had happened to my girlfriend, but my fears were not quelled, apparently this was a one way speaker and more than likely it was ‘canned.’ I did not think these aliens wanted to do anything more with us than to watch us die. “The winner will be rewarded handsomely, the losers will be dead.” Oh shit, I thought, the voice didn’t use plurals. There is only going to be one winner, out of what my mind figured were a possible 4000 or so contestants. I resigned myself to my fate, how could I possibly come out on the top of this? I was a self-proclaimed lover, not a fighter. And I wasn’t even sure how good a lover I was and I had some practice in that field; the last fight I was in, I was 8 and I got my ass kicked by a girl. I know that’s pretty humiliating, I got my ass kicked by an 8-year-old girl that had a crush on me. All I wanted to do was play baseball with my friends, so she threw me down on the ground and punched me in the eye. I of course told my friends that I was jumped by Jimmy Johnson’s gang of friends and that’s how I got my shiner. Nobody ever tells anybody that they got beat up by a girl. “Each battle...” whoa, back to reality or at least this skewed version of it. “…will be a one on one competition to the death. The only other rule is that you are permitted to use only one weapon at a time. And do not be fooled, hu-man, if you or your competitor do not abide by these rules at all times you will both be dead. If both of you do not fight, you both will be dead. Look to your right and my point will be proven.” So I did just that, off to the right I spotted what appeared to be the variety of species that my guard was, there were four of them holding what appeared to be rifles, but I was under the impression that it wouldn’t be lead that came out of that long barrel. How would it feel to be shot by plasma or whatever it was, well I guess it would be the same as being shot by lead, dead. And that thought sent chills right up my spine. I knew in the back of my head that everybody dies, but to know that I was mere moments from it made me think of what wrongly convicted death row inmates must feel. Terror. Pure, unadulterated terror. “Your first test will begin momentarily. You will be given one minute to prepare yourself in whatever way you wish.”
“Wait!” I wailed. “A minute’s not enough, I don’t want to die, Mom!!!”
The door opened and the festivities began. The terrain was moving, well not quite moving it was shifting, changing, that’s it, it was changing from the grated ship floor into what appeared to be small scrub, no they were definitely getting bigger, it was becoming a forest. Not a particularly dense forest, it actually reminded me a lot of the woods surrounding the Boulder area, oh to be back at school cracking a kegger. Could this all be a bad trip! Please? How could this not be a trip gone bad, I’m being held on an alien ship preparing to fight for my life on a platform that is terraforming in front of me? My legs were like wood. They were so stiff. I felt like I was in one of those dreams where a monster is chasing you and you can’t run, although there was nothing ‘dream like’ about this. My very existence depended on my being able to move and defend myself. In contrast my arms felt like jelly, I couldn’t possibly think to wield a weapon with them feeling like this. Weapons, that was what I was focusing on, there appeared to be weapons of varying sorts lined against the bottom wall of the coliseum, bows and arrows, swords, spears, knives, maces, unfortunately no plasma discharging weapons, because I’d really like to take out a couple of those crocodile looking thing’s. But there was no weapon quite advanced enough to make an escape a plausible possibility. Who was I kidding, where was I going to go, I didn’t even like to ride amusement park rides, did I really think I’d get far enough to grab a shuttle ship and pilot my way back home? No, my only chance was victory. The crowd had finally become silent as they waited in anticipation for the ensuing battle. While all of those thoughts were running through my head I watched as my opponent was forcibly removed from his holding pen and thrust into the arena on the opposite side. The guy looked more scared than I was. He was more than a hundred yards away and I could see him shaking from here. I’m not an intimidating fellow, and like I said I’ve always prided myself as being a lover, not a fighter. This guy was pathetic though, he looked to be about 55 years old, 5’5” or 5’6”, maybe 130 pounds soaking wet. I think that he was one of the security guards at the gate at Red Rocks. If it was the same man, he also had a nervous tick on the right side of his face. This place was almost a replica of Mile High Stadium, they even had a huge screen on either end of the arena. It was how I was able to tell that my opponent was more petrified than I was. Terror emanated from him, his eyes were all pupil, in the fight or flight scheme of things this guy was a jack rabbit looking for a place to run. I could see him begging the guards not to leave him there, and then I could hear him yelling in my direction to please not kill him. I wanted to tell him that I had not so much as killed an insect on purpose. But my gestures scared him even more because he shrank back against the wall; it was then that he grabbed a spear. So apparently this jackrabbit could bite. What was I doing, get moving, I thought, or this pathetic old man is going to kill you, and if he does I would never be able to make the ones responsible for this injustice pay. He was still crying for alien mercy or possibly mine, but he was advancing and he had a weapon. My heart felt like it was in my throat. I had the distinct impression that I was going to choke to death long before he was able to get to my side of the battlefield. As he stepped forward I backed up, and in all my glory I fell over. I had tripped on a tree root and banged my head against a tree, I tripped on a tree root on a space ship. This was going to be real difficult to grasp the reality of. “Go to your death or go to your victory hu-mans!” a voice thundered from overhead. The crowd went nuts, the huge screens went blank, apparently they didn’t want us watching what our opponent was doing. The aliens began a sort of hissing, it sounded like a battalion of tires having their air let out; the noise was deafening. I got up, my head still spinning from the impact, and I wiped the blood away. Just maybe the fall was the best thing that happened to me, I finally got moving and ran to the wall behind me and grabbed the closest weapon, a sword. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, I had no intention of actually using it on that man, and maybe if I waited long enough he would die of natural causes. But the need to have that weapon in my hands was somehow primordial, instinctual, it felt good. Blood pulsed through my veins. My senses were heightened to their max. I thought I could smell the fear of my prey, but more than likely I smelled my own fear. My eyes honed in on the slightest movement. My feet began to move with stealth that modern man had long since forgotten. I began to wonder if my forehead was beginning to protrude a little more. No time for intellectual thought, I began to surrender myself to the most basic of thoughts, survival. I had crossed what I took to be roughly half of the arena without a single cognitive thought beyond kill or be killed. I didn’t even hear the crowd anymore. And then
it hit me, my modern mind raced to catch up; fear suddenly and eagerly gripped me with a force equal to dread. I dropped my sword. It made a loud clanging noise as it slid down a small embankment. The crowd quieted, it almost sounded like they were holding their breaths. At the same time I heard him coming. Apparently he wanted to live too.
“I almost forgot that there was somebody in here with me.” To this day I’m not sure if I said that out loud or not. I turned to look and there he was, about thirty yards away and closing fast, at least as fast as a 50ish-year-old could move. It was kind of comical. Here was a wafer thin man hefting a spear almost double his height, huffing and puffing his way toward me. It would have been even funnier if he wasn’t huffing and puffing his way to kill me. ‘Dude,’ I thought to myself, ‘have a heart attack and save us both the trouble.’ I don’t think he heard me. His face still contained that look of utter terror but now there was something else, what was it? It was determination. He wants to kill me. I unlocked my feet and luckily this time they weren’t nailed to the floor like in so many childhood dreams. In fact they were quite the opposite, they felt like feathers. It’s amazing what pure adrenaline can do for you, hell, look what it was doing for him. I moved with not a second to spare, the man went tumbling past me. He cart wheeled down the embankment more times than I could count. I’ve got to get my sword before he recovers. I ran down the embankment about ten yards to retrieve it; the man was another ten yards beyond that at the bottom of the rise. He was still on his back. His eyes were closed but I could tell he was still conscious, he was sobbing. He kept pitching his spear in different directions almost with the hope that I would impale myself on it. The crowd went crazy as I approached the downed man, sword in hand. When I was just out of reach of his outstretched spear I stopped. The man was begging and pleading with me not to kill him; if I had eaten any lunch I would have left it there on the forest floor. I let my upraised sword hand drop down and half-turned to leave, it was then that I noticed what that outcome would entail. The guards raised their weapons level with my head. So this was how it was going to end, either I went against everything that I was and killed this man, or the croc-things were going to melt my head. Survival is by far the most demanding of instincts, I turned to do that which most repulsed me in life. I was going to take another human’s life, I had to kill. The man had stopped flailing his spear, his arms were around his head now; his breathing came in ragged sobs. I think that he had finally resigned himself to death.
“Sir,” I said, my breath coming out in thin wisps, “Sir, I’m sorry. I’ll make it as quick and painless as possible.” Tears flowed from my eyes almost to the point of blindness.
“Sir, what is your name?” I asked.
“Tom Greenborough.” His breath hitched in his throat.
“Mr. Greenborough, I promise on my soul that I will avenge your death.”
“Thank you, son,” he replied more calmly. He placed his arms by his side and said the Lord’s Prayer. I waited for him to finish before I brought the sword crashing down through his upper chest. The shock of his breastplate collapsing almost jolted my arms out of their sockets, but once through his chest I felt the sword go all the way through his internal organs and stick into his spine. The sound was horrible, it sounded like a cockroach being crushed only a hundred times louder; the blood, however, that was far worse. I had pierced his heart and the blood flew up in an arc looking like some sort of macabre fountain. It stung my eyes and assaulted my mouth, it tasted like steel. The sword rose and fell once with the final beat of Mister Greenborough’s heart. I fell to both knees sobbing and I cradled him in my arms. It was there and then through my apologies to his still warm body that I promised I would do all in my power to not make his death in vain. The crowd was in near hysterics. I had not noticed before but the guards had encircled me and motioned for me to get up. I half thought to grab the sword and do what damage I could, but no, I wouldn’t make it two steps, and then my promise would have been futile. So I got up and let the guards do with me as they would. I was led back to a cell, not necessarily my cell though, the corridor I was led down appeared to be different, although it was in the same direction I had come. My adrenaline surge was waning, I could not think clearly and I was visibly shaking from head to toe. It was all I could do to walk straight. And then it dawned on me the cells that I was passing on my left were bigger, yeah, that was it, they were bigger, almost double the size. Then I came to the horrified realization that they were double the size because half of us were dead. I collapsed, whether from the shock of the truth or just because my body could no longer withstand the rush of stimulants I had been producing, I guess I’ll never know. I awoke minutes? hours? days? later, I just didn’t know, there was no way to tell the passage of time here. I awoke with a start. Whoa, I thought, this room is a lot different from my last abode. There was a table in the middle of the room with a bowl containing what appeared to be fruit and a door that actually led to a bathroom, but what really caught my attention was what was on the far wall from my bunk. It appeared to be a large video screen. I walked over and hit the only button available; I hoped it was the power button. I was right, I stepped back as the screen lit up into life. At first I wasn’t sure what I was looking at, it was just a bunch of names with a number next to them. Then it dawned on me that this was their rating system. The first round was over. 2,048 men were alive, and tragically 2,102 had died. I knew that my event wasn’t a very artful and/or cunning one, so I figured that I would be somewhere in the middle of the pack in terms of ranking, but obviously there were a lot better warriors out there than me. I was ranked No. 1,738, almost the bottom of the barrel. I was paired against No. 310, one Hank Sterns. Things were not looking good. I barely survived against a 55-year-old man, how was I possibly going to take down my next competitor? I leaned against the wall pondering my mixed emotions but mostly to keep from falling over. The screen changed but it took me a moment to register this fact; what I saw on the screen both frightened and thrilled me at the same time.
Round Two had begun, and like a pay-per view event I sat on my bunk and watched. I never even looked at the food I was eating as the games started. No. 1, Durgan O'Shea, was squaring off against No. 2048, one Albert Timmins. Timmins looked as if he had eaten his last competitor. He weighed in excess of 350 pounds, all of it fat, he must have fallen on his last victim. Sweat dropped from his brow, in fact, his whole body was wet with sweat and he hadn’t even moved from where the guards had deposited him so unceremoniously. He was too busy biting his nails in nervousness to obtain a weapon.
“Get up you fat fuck!” I yelled at the screen. “At least defend yourself!” How the hell did he make it to this round, I wondered. It was later that I found out that his competitor had died of a heart attack as I had wished mine had. But if he thought divine intervention was going to happen again he was sadly mistaken. It was clearly obvious he was not going to see Round Three. Durgan was closing fast, the axe that he had obtained was held high. There was no tact here; Durgan went straight up the middle of Main Street in what appeared to be Mayberry. I think it was, they even had mockup dummies of Floyd the Barber and Barney Fife; where was Andy when you needed him. He would have stopped this slaughter. Durgan’s body was a rippling mass of muscle clearly outlined in his tank top and jeans; this man spent the majority of his days in the gym from the look of it. He was monstrous, 6’2” or 3” of pure muscle. He was the type that walked the beach and made girls melt and smaller men look on with envy. He even had the looks to match the muscle, although that face was now contorted into a grotesque sort of war mask. He appeared to have painted blood onto his face in the way of the ancient Incans. He looked like the Roman God of war, all ferocity and determination. He was not going to be denied. I turned my gaze just a fraction of a second too late, I had seen in horror Durgan’s axe hit home, straight on the top of Timmins’ skull, and from the force and sound of it, I’m fairly certain he split the fat man in half. I shook like a leaf in a gale;
my body was wet with a sheen of sweat. I was glued to the screen for what seemed like hours. I watched hundreds of battles and subsequently hundreds of deaths. I was becoming numb. The one fact that stuck in my head was how well the aliens had done on their handicapping of these events. Very rarely did a lower seed pull out an upset, and that was usually only when the higher ranked competitor made a serious blunder. I was not feeling very confident about my chances when I turned to see the guards entering my room. It was my turn and ready or not I had to go. I said a prayer but I wasn’t sure to which god I was praying to. How many gods would help those that kill? I was led to the arena almost courteously. I guess winning did have some advantages. This time I wasn’t even shoved through the door, although I did not get the luxury of gathering my thoughts in the isolation booth. Apparently everyone was supposed to know the rules by now. I waited patiently for No. 310 to enter the arena.
CHAPTER 18
“Is there any new news from Colorado, Captain?” the President intoned. The captain was under the impression that the President was more concerned with his plummeting approval ratings than with the semi-invasion of Earth. Three ships had deployed from the mother ship and had removed thousands of people from three different venues around the globe. One in Russia, one in China and one here in the United States. The lack of response by any of the governments was astounding but really, what could they do, nobody was prepared for this scenario; there were no computer mock-ups for this, no drills. Nine thousand people in Morrison, Colorado had simply vanished. One moment the amphitheater had been packed with concert-goers enjoying a show, the next it was empty. Even the surrounding fauna had been uprooted. Anything that was living had simply ceased to exist in that spot, for some unlucky few who were actually half in and half out of the ship’s radius, they were neatly sliced in two as if by a laser. In one example, some eye-witnesses were still visibly shaken as their friend had been chasing a Frisbee when the mass exodus occurred. They had watched in horror as his right outstretched arm, his leg from his knee down and a quarter of his face just disappeared. He was able to half turn to his companions, his one eye pleading with them for answers; he had not even been able to vocalize a scream because that portion of his brain had been removed.