by Mark Tufo
“Even through all this mess.” Paul laughed. “It comes down to a competition with Mike. I won’t lose to him, to see that smug look of satisfaction on his face as he sees me in defeat, I would rather die at the hands of the aliens.” And somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind, he knew that he would get his chance.
CHAPTER FOUR - Mike Journal Entry 2
“How are you doing, Miiiiike?”
I was aroused from my sleep to a butchering of my name. Was it friend or foe? My memory seemed to have taken an indirect hit during my bouts but as the layers of unconsciousness peeled away, I was able to place a name with the face hovering over me.
"Drababani?” I’m sure I returned the butchering almost as well as my visitor.
“Close, hu-man, it is pronounced Dra-ba-ban, how are your wounds?”
I had not the resolve or the strength for the barbs I felt like issuing. Or lies for that matter. My next and most likely last combatant probably knew my condition far better than I. “I still hurt, Drababan and I feel as weak as a new born lamb.”
“I do not feel pity for you, hu-man you have proved your might over and over again. And you have fought honorably. I will feel something that Genogenerians seldom do. I think that your hu-man term is regret—regret that I will have to exterminate the life force that is within you. If all of your kind battled like you, we may have moved on to a much easier confrontation.”
“Confrontation? Is that what you’re calling it? It was wholesale slaughter. You took us completely by surprise and have done your best to exterminate what is left.” I knew what I was about to say was a lie, but if I could make this brute just stop to think for even a second it was worth it. “And you’ll see what my kind can do when our backs are to the wall.”
“To the wall? I do not understand, hu-man.”
“It means, you fucking ape, that we’re not through yet. We’ll make you pay for what you’ve done!” It was false bravado, but it was still somehow cathartic.
“Miiiike, I did not come here to elevate your vital signs, I came as one warrior to honor another warrior.”
“Drababan, I am not a warrior, I’m just some scared kid who’s world has been turned upside down. I was cornered and I did what I could for myself, but at what cost, I have lost my soul, Drababan. I traded my life for my soul.”
“Ah, that is something I do understand, the Progerians do not believe in what you call a soul but the Genogerians in secret have always believed in Cravaratar.”
“Cravaratar?”
“That would be equivalent to your religion, I think is the word you use.”
“You’re spiritual? I find that hard to believe.” Drababan seemed unperturbed at my comment.
“There are a few of us left that hold on to the old ways, although under penalty of death for practicing our rites has greatly reduced our numbers.”
Recognition dawned. “Is that how you became a gladiator?”
“Gladiator? Ah yes, I was the leader of a small group of worshippers when soldiers stormed my home. They killed all that were present save me. I was forced to become amusement for the masses.”
“So have you sold your Cravatar for your life?”
“Perhaps I have hu-man, I truly had never thought of it in that manner. I do what I do now for my honor.”
“Do you have family, Drababan? Do you mind if I call you, Dee?”
“No, I would not mate for fear of what would happen to my family should it ever be found out that I had not let go of my previous beliefs.”
“Have you ever thought of just stopping?” I asked
“Stopping?”
“Fighting, I mean, not believing.”
He nodded imperceptibly, “I have not, Miiiike, for what would there be left for me? To stop would be suicide, and suicide opposes everything that the Cravaratar stand for.”
“Maybe we have more in common than you think, Dee. How long have you been a warrior?” I asked more for the sake of conversation than a true desire to know. He might be the enemy and more than likely my killer, but somehow it was more comforting having him right in front of me than elsewhere, you know the old saying keep your friends close and your… well you know the rest. But there was something else about Dee he was for a lack of a better term, a religious being. He believed in a higher entity than himself and he tried even under the circumstances to live to that standard. He didn’t realize like me that we were both failing miserably.
“Ten years,” he answered, breaking my thoughts.
“Ten years?” How have you not gone insane? I shouted to myself.
“One hundred twenty-eight lives I have sent to a better place.”
“Is that how you get to sleep at night, with the belief that you have bettered your victims’ lives?”
“These fights, Miiike, are going to happen whether I am involved or not. I am not the butcher your Durgan was. Was it not advantageous to all life that you defeated him? How many of your species’ women did you save? I do what I do because this is my lot in life. I have mourned for the majority of combatants I have felled, but some were equivalent to that monster you defeated and for them I feel nothing except sadness for their souls which will spend all of eternity in Drespenden
It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure Drespenden was his version of hell. Damn, a theologian would have a field day studying this species, in so many ways our existence mirrored theirs. Life was life no matter what the form.
“You are truly an enigma, Dee.”
He cocked his head in the universal gesture for ‘Huh?’.
“You are by far one of the most spiritual beings I have encountered in mine or your civilization, yet you are a supreme killing machine, maybe I meant dichotomy. I don’t know, Dee. You come to me as a friend to see how I am doing, but in less than a week you will be trying to kill me.”
“Not trying, Miiike.”
He said it with such conviction, how could I not believe him? I was his next victim and I believed it with all my heart.
“I will mourn for you, Miiike, as I have not mourned for anyone else I have faced in the arena, but the outcome will still be the same. You are an honorable being, you are a spiritual being, whether you believe it or not. You are an intelligent being, but you will be the one hundred twenty-ninth name I will write on my tibujarar.”
“Tibu—what?”
“Tibujarar it is sort of a journal warriors use to keep record of those they have met and defeated in battle. It is an honor to be entered into a tibujarar, it is a sign of respect.”
“Too bad I won’t be around to take part in the festivities.”
Dee looked at me with which could only be described as a blank look. How could they be so far up the evolutionary scale and not know what sarcasm was? Man, too bad they hadn’t attacked Boston first they wouldn’t have made it any farther, I quipped.
“Is something humorous, Miiike?”
“The whole fucking thing is kind of humorous, Dee. First, I got a date with the hottest girl in college, who actually liked me. Then we go to this hippy concert, which really isn’t my thing, then I get picked up by aliens, which is rather humorous in its own right. But then, Dee, it gets really hilarious. The girl I start having true feelings for becomes a prize and I have to fight for her, but not in the traditional way. No, you see, I have to at the same time not only preserve my life and the lives of my charges but kill other humans, and not because they are my enemies but merely because they have the unfortunate circumstance of being in the fighting arena with me. So I win some fights, kill some people, fear the worst and begin to fall in love with another woman, not because I’m truly in love but I am afraid for my own mortality and the false comfort of another is still better than no comfort at all. In the mean time, a full scale invasion is being planned against my home and everything that I know, love and cherish is threatened. And when all seems darkest a light shines at the end of the tunnel and I am in one fell stroke able to save myself and my ‘harem’ as it were. So
when I finally get to touch down to my home, I realize that my mother has died and my father is on the verge of coming apart because of her death and my disappearance. My best friend has set up some sort of militant camp in the mountains of Colorado; I go to see him because I am trying to get away from one woman who loves me for all the wrong reasons and one who loathes me for what I have done and become, I go seeking out my friend. I am treated like the returning Helen of Troy, my presence is suspect, I am an outsider on my own planet. How is that possible? My friend proceeds to shoot me in the back, no less and sends me to France. Who does that? Isn’t there a more hospitable place I could have gone? Say like the Sahara? Then I come to find out I am no more wanted in that country than I was in my own. The French can’t wait to give me up. But what can you expect, they’ve been giving up now for close to a hundred years, it must be something inherent in them. So then I find myself back on board the USS Planet Earth Destroyer, to fight the man voted most likely to be a sociopath in his high school yearbook. By some grace of God, I side-step death to be faced with the ultimate weapon of death—you, my friend. So you see, I either find humor in the whole thing or I crawl into a corner and await the inevitable.”
“My friend?”
I couldn’t help but smile. Apparently, Dee had ‘tuned out’ my entire diatribe except for two words, which I more intoned as another witticism than of anything regarding substantiated meaning. Shit, maybe sarcasm was finally going to work in my favor for once rather than something that was going to lead to trouble like my mother always said.
“Sure, my friend,” I said. “You’re the closest thing to it here. You talk to me without the pretense of gain. I know that you are here to gather more information for your tiburajar, but I also know that you, like me, are an outsider, you can never ‘fit in’ to your own society, whether it be from your masters or your own people. You are an outcast for what you believe in and now for what you do. Sure you may be revered and awed by those who you claim to know, but they are far more impressed for what you do for them, whether it is to fatten their pockets or for the thrill of your ‘entertainment’, it will never be for what you think you stand for or what you believe in your heart. When you die, Dee, nobody will mourn your passing. Another will take up your spot and carry forth your torch of destruction. Dee pondered this for a moment and abruptly stood.
“We will talk more of this matter later,” he said gruffly. And with that he turned and walked out of my room.
“Well, you had better make it soon, Dee, I don’t think I have that much time.”
With what appeared to be a glint in his eye (was I imagining it?) he answered, “Perhaps.” And with that he left me to think as I no doubt left him the same way.
CHAPTER FIVE
Beth slept fitfully at best, the slightest sound waking her. But with the approaching light of day, she could not sit in the open no matter how much her fear was rooting her to that space. “Get up, Beth.” Trying a verbal approach to motivation. She knew staying put was tantamount to suicide, eventually whoever was tailing her would discover they had passed her up in the night and begin backtracking methodically. But moving also had its own inherent dangers. What if she moved up on her attacker while he was sleeping? She didn’t feel like she would be much of a match for anyone over the age of ten. Tired, hungry, scared, and alone, she felt she would more than likely just give up rather than face another confrontation. Now she knew what Mike meant when he had told her that he had just wanted to give up. But he hadn’t, he had faced all sorts of horrible odds and still plodded on.
“Oh God, where are you, Mike?” she cried. But the crying did more to steel her resolve than to melt it away.
I will go on if for no other reason than to see him just one more time—to tell him I’m sorry, that I’m sorry for so many things, she thought. And if that bastard in the woods comes for me I’ll rip his throat out.
Even she didn’t believe the last part but it sounded a lot better than, ‘I’ll grovel at his feet for mercy’. Beth walked for what seemed like hours, in somewhat of a straight line but the New England scrub brush was doing its best to keep her off course.
I’ve got to get to a road, I’ll die long before I get to Walpole at this pace. And this she knew to be the truth. She knew after her last disastrous encounter, she would have to be doubly careful, she didn’t even have the Sergeant any more for protection. And with the physicality of a punch to the stomach she bent over from the pain, the pain of loss, the pain of loneliness, the pain of it all. Beth, like everyone else, was having great difficulty assimilating all the events that had happened in the recent past. She had grown up on the far slope of the bell curve, her family was affluent, she wanted for naught as a youngster. And although personally, she knew she was attractive, she didn’t wholeheartedly believe that she was the ravishing beauty that so many had labeled her as. Her whole life up to two years ago had been what many would consider a fantasy. She was head cheerleader and prom Queen in her junior and senior years, boys fought over the right to date her. And she loved it, she craved the attention. And to top it off, she was only point-twenty-three percentage points from being valedictorian, beauty and brains, she was a deadly combination. Then college started, where she felt for sure her inadequacies would start to show through, but if anything the light that was Beth had begun to shine even brighter. College work had come as easy to her as high school and grown men stopped to stare as she walked by and then came Mike, he had been just one of many potential suitors. Sure, she felt something for him but of all the men that had been vying for her attention she wasn’t even sure he cracked the top five. There had been something about him that she hadn’t been able to put her finger on and she had been eager to find out what it was. So she had toyed with him to a degree trying to ascertain his secrets. And then had come Red Rocks, an event for which she’d been wholly unprepared for. Her head hadn’t completely finished spinning when she’d tried to wrap her mind around what the games were about and what the ‘combatants’ had been fighting for. Although she’d known it was wrong, she couldn’t help but smile a little at the fact that all the men had been fighting over her. It had been nothing conscious but still there it was. Even aliens were able to ascertain that her beauty was above those of her peers and had placed her at the center of attention for their ‘games’. True, she had been shielded from participating in the brutality but she had bore witness that had been the whole spectacle. It wasn’t until she began to track the progress of Durgan that a deep unsettling fear began to worm its way into her very being. This wasn’t a game. This was real; real people were dying and she would be among them if that monster had his way. He was an animal, no doubt about it, and he would not place her on the pedestal with which she had become accustomed to her whole life. And then there was Mike. She finally began to understand what he was hiding from her, it was an uncontrollable rage which could be unleashed with sudden and savage fury, she felt that he had a little devil trapped inside which he could set free when the events warranted it. He scared her to the depths of her soul,
How could anyone contain such a force inside and be able to control it? They couldn’t, she deemed, eventually it would be set loose on some unsuspecting unlucky individual. She hadn’t then been able to see the big picture as she could now. She had been a fool, a narrow-minded fool. He had not done anything on that ship for himself, his main concern had always been her safety and that of the women he had come to obtain. Why had she been such an idiot?
With a single minded determination, she headed out onto the fringes of the Mass pike Highway 90. There was no traffic for miles, but someone caught witness as she broke from the trees two miles outside of Amherst.
CHAPTER SIX
Paul walked through the throngs of people huddled inside the large gathering room. He heard many grumblings as he passed, some more vocal than others, but always just low enough as to not attract too much attention. Paul had no room in his universe for complainers but he knew that something
had to be done now before any type of organized rebellion formed. Paul meandered down to the center of the stage and the dais that been set up. He made sure to take his time making it look like he wasn’t in any sort of hurry, although he thought the rapid beating of his heart would surely give him away. Paul and his men had been training to fight not sit and wait, they weren’t a reactionary force, they were the rebellion. And nothing can stall a rebellion faster than stagnation. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt the aliens were preparing for a strike, where and when was the question. With stores rapidly depleting, rationing would only quicken the unraveling of their tenuous hold on the world as they once knew it.
Paul had finally made it to the pulpit and his mouth went dry as powder, licking his lips now would only signify the tremors he felt
All eyes were on him, even some of the more incessant grumblings had come to a halt when they realized their leader, or captor as some antagonized, was going to ‘honor’ them with some prose.
“Friends.” He cleared his throat, where this speech was going was anyone’s guess. “I come to you not only as the leader of the Earth Corps, but as a person the majority of you know to some degree. To some I am a friend, others a classmate, and to others still some guy you may have run across on campus or at some barely remembered all-night party.” There was a smattering of snickers throughout the crowd. “But first and foremost, I come to you as a human being on planet Earth, thrust into the position of an endangered species. Don’t be fooled by the calm and quiet, all is not well top side. Society as any of us knew it has been completely obliterated, even though the aliens have not landed and begun their assault yet.” Paul made sure to leave no doubt that this would happen. “Man has turned against his fellow man, there is no altruism out there, it is literally every man for himself right now. There is no safe place, to begin again, as I have heard some of you express. The aliens for whatever reason are waiting to begin their assault, my council believes this will occur right after Mike fights their champion.”