Indian Hill (15 page)

“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.

The captain had no desire to be in
Washington
. He had always despised politics, he was a soldier, he did as he was ordered and he expected the orders he issued to be attended to with the same attention to detail. Everything in
Washington
came at a price. Every word here had meanings on multiple levels. Ulterior motives were the norm in this town. Here he was trying to avert a National Disaster, and the President, a pot smoking draft dodger, was more concerned with recent poll numbers. The President couldn’t believe that the aliens would come to Earth on an election year.

“Sir, we’ve got some eyewitness reports but they are not all that reliable.”

“How so Captain?”

“Well sir, most of the eyewitnesses are still pretty shaken up, or else they were under the effects of various types of drugs.”

“Drugs, Captain?”

“Yes sir, it
was
a concert, it’s tough to get an accurate picture of what happened from a person tripping on mushrooms,” the captain noted sarcastically.

“Captain, I’m not much in the mood for humor today. I know you don’t like politics much, or more specifically me. I know you think that I’m more concerned with poll numbers than the crisis at hand.”

The captain looked up with a start, not meaning to, but the President had hit his thoughts on the button.

“Ah, I see by your reaction that I was correct. Captain, I am concerned with the numbers only for the fact that I need to stay in office to deal with this threat. If the Republicans get into office we both know their stance on this new crisis, hit it with everything in our power. Well I’ll let you in on a little secret, Captain, that wouldn’t do a damn thing.”

“Sir?” the captain said, now a little curious.

“Captain, what you are now about to hear is top secret information only a handful of
people
in this country know about.”

The captain was hooked.

“We had prior knowledge of these aliens coming.”

The captain bolted upright out of his seat. “Sir, how could you not let us know, we could have prepared ourselves!”