The Hike (10 page)

“I know I said just that one time, but please . . . Please, let me see them again.”

There was no answer.

Ben dropped the phone into the dirt and pressed a crampon spike through the screen, the glass shattering and the guts of it cracking up inside. Then he took the stuffed fox that Fermona had gifted him and put it in the sack instead.

He scaled the side of the hole effortlessly. His muscles had rebuilt themselves. Nagging pains aside, he felt fitter than he'd ever been.

“I promise you that I won't stop,” he told Crab.

“Good.”

“Let's go.”

At the end of the dungeon corridor, he and Crab found a dead end. When they turned back and entered the main cavern, a very large and very awake Fermona was waiting for them. She had nothing but welcoming smiles for Ben.

“Well, I think you're strong enough to fight now!”

C
rab buried himself in the dirt as Ben ran up to Fermona and planted one of the ice axes in her foot. She howled in pain as she pulled it out with one hand and smacked him down the stone hallway with the other.

“I'll have to make a new death matrix for you just for that. Some sort of z-axis.”

“Fuck you!”

“You know, I've been more than nice to you, and I have yet to see that friendliness reciprocated.”

“You want to kill and eat me.”

“Well,
duh
. But who said that had to be a drag? I'm doing my best to make it a memorable experience for you. You've been a downer about it the whole time.”

Ben held up his remaining axe. “I'll kill you.”

“No you won't. But I like your determination. I think it's really fantastic that you're trying so hard. You should be proud of that.”

“Go to hell.”

“Try all you like, but I will overpower you. You are quickly running
out of ways to make up for your surliness, so I suggest you give up now, and make the best of an unfortunate situation.”

He dropped the axe.

“Good,” she said. “Now gimme all that stuff again.”

He threw her the bag and stripped down to his underwear.

“Your underwear, too.”

“Come on.”

“Drop 'em!”

He stripped off the boxers and she wadded everything up in her palm, which was the size of a kitchen table.

“These are going right into the fire,” she said. “Sorry to inform you, but you've lost pile status. Now get back in the hole.”

He walked through the door and slid back down the hole. Naked. Defenseless. She poked her head through the door and stared down at him.

“One man or five dwarfs?” she asked him.

“What?”

“Do you want to fight one man, or five dwarfs?”

Ben had no idea how to answer.

“You know what? Sleep on it,” she said. “Tell me in the morning. I'm not gonna put a gun to your head over it.”

She slammed the door and Ben was left in the pitiful torchlight. Ten seconds later, the door opened again. There was Fermona's big, jolly head.

“Oh!” she said. “They're unarmed.”

“What?”

“The dwarfs. And the man. Either one you pick, they will be unarmed. And they possess average hand-to-hand skills, much like yourself. Dunno if that helps you winnow down your selection, but it only seemed fair to tell you. Adieu.”

And the door slammed shut again. He lay down and curled into a ball. After a while, he pawed the dusty floor for the phone he'd smashed, just so he could curse at it again. There was a skittering coming from the hallway. Crab poked through the flap.

“Psst!”

“Hey,” Ben said.

“She's burning all your stuff.”

“Yeah, she said she would do that.”

Crab crawled down the wall of the cave and rested in front of Ben's face, his eyes bobbing on their stalks. “What did she say to you just now?”

“She said I had a choice between fighting five dwarfs or one regular human.”

“Wow, that's fucked up.”

“Fucked up is my new normal.”

“So which one are you gonna pick?”

“I have no idea. You said you went into some of the other holes?”

“I peeked around, yeah.”

“And what did you see?”

“A bunch of sad, naked guys in each one.”

“Did they look, you know, jacked?”

“Jacked?”

“Muscular.”

“Not really.”

“Did you see any dwarfs?”

“You're humans. You're all fucking enormous to me.”

“Did you see anyone who appeared to be smaller than normal humans, despite being relatively large compared to
you
?”

Crab thought for a moment. “I'm not sure.”

“This is some kind of trick. She probably thinks I'll take the dwarfs, but the dwarfs will all have the power to fly.”

“Then pick the one man. Oh, but that could be a trick as well. He could have fire breath or something like that.”

“You're not helping,” Ben said.

“You were thinking out loud, so I started doing likewise, you prick.”

“So who would
you
pick?” Ben asked.

“The one guy.”

“Why?”

“Well, because it's
one
guy, isn't it? Only one set of pinky toes for me to clip off.”

“All right, so I pick the one man.”

“You know how to fight?”

“My wife taught me a little.”

“Your wife taught you to fight? She cut your steak for you, too?”

“Shut the fuck up, Crab. So I beat the one man, and then . . . what then?”

“You're asking me?”

“Yeah. How do we beat Fermona after that?”

“I dunno, shitbird. Sounded like she was really big on killing you.”

“There has to be a way. The path wouldn't lead me here just to have me get eaten by some giant.”

“Why wouldn't it?”

“Because it just wouldn't.”

“You're assuming there's a reason behind all this.”

“I am.”

“No offense,” said Crab, “but you're a real sap if you buy that.”

“Why don't you crawl up out of that door and go get fucked by a turtle?”

“That's completely unrealistic, anatomically speaking. That's not even something the turtle would
want
.”

“Shut up and go away.”

Crab slipped back through the door as Ben dug up the cracked phone and stared at the punctured screen. He was so used to grabbing at the thing that even now, with it busted and caked in filth, his first instinct was to pick it up and stare at it.

Minutes later, Crab was back.

“Maybe you don't beat her,” Crab said.

“Come again?”

“She's a giant, right? She'll crush you no matter what. So maybe you ask her to help you instead.”

“I'm not gonna do that. She's a cannibal.”

“Doesn't matter.”

“It matters to
me
.”

“But if you befriend her, maybe she won't eat
you
.”

“This is your strategy?”

“Yeah,” said Crab. “I mean, it probably won't work. She'll probably impale you on a fork and then rip your heart out and then eat it like it's a chicken nugget. But hey, you never know.”

“Go to sleep, Crab.”

“I don't sleep. I'm a crab. I only lie dormant.”

“Why don't you sleep?”

“Because things will kill me if I do. I need to be in a state of constant awareness. Even if you think I'm sleeping, I'm not. I'm saving my energy so that I can fuck you up. Heads up 24/7.”

“Then lie dormant, or whatever it is you do.”

Crab rested his belly on the lip of the hole and froze like a stone, his pincers folded. Ben rolled over onto his side and hugged himself for warmth. His determination came and went down in this pit. Those periods of steely resolve that welled up in him were usually followed by moments of sloth and despair. He was in one of the valleys now.
Search parties only search for forty-eight hours, you know. It's been
much longer than that now. You're dead. Or the world is dead. Your family will never find you. You'll never find them. The time has come for shock to become grief, no?

He wondered about the man he was going to have to fight for Fermona's pleasure. In his mind, he played a game of Guess Who? with a million face cards in little plastics slots.
Is your opponent blond? Does he wear glasses? Is he black? Does he wear a hat?
He slapped the cards down one by one until, via the process of elimination, he had his guess. Looked a whole lot like the man who punched him in the airport parking garage. He remembered telling Teresa about the incident after it happened.

“You're coming with me to the gym,” she told him.

“It's fine. It's not that big a deal.”

“Yes, it is.” She sent the kids to her mother's house that weekend and dragged Ben to the ratty jiu jitsu place across the street from her hospital (Ben always found it telling that the two facilities were adjacent to one another), where she trained. She had gotten into fighting a couple of years earlier, right around the time she had that nervous breakdown after losing (killing?) a patient, and started to work out at the gym three times a week—either before a day shift or after a night shift—willing to write off the lost sleep as a sunk cost.

There, on a cheap gym mat that had whole chunks gouged out of it, she drilled him on arm bars and knee locks and other basic moves. He was fatigued after four minutes. Exhausted.

“Can't we just go back home and nap?” he begged her.

“No.
Focus.
What if you see this guy again?”

“What are the odds?”

“What were the odds that guy was gonna hunt you down and punch you in the first place? You learn this stuff so that you never have to use it.”

She charged at him as if she were holding a knife. He responded by mimicking her first demonstration, pulling her lead arm across his body and holding it fast against his chest.

“Good,” she said. “Now lock it.”

“I can't hurt you.”

“I'm a big girl.”

“I don't want to.”

“You can't waver.”

She yanked her arm out of the lock and wrapped her leg around his. Then she shoved him to the ground.

“Focus!” she said. “What if this guy never stops? What if he keeps coming back again and again? What if you're so stunned by it that you have no defense at all? You need to be ready, Ben. Do you understand? Just
try
.”

“Okay,” he said, out of breath. “I'll try.”

“Good. Now get your hands up. I'm gonna punch you in the face.”

 • • • 

He fell asleep in the hole. No visions. No coroner. No Annie from college. Hours later, Fermona opened the door and threw a bucket of cold water on him.

“Wake-up time!”

“Huh?”

“Special breakfast!”

She showered Ben in breakfast goods: cartons of hard-boiled eggs, boxes of sugary cereal, bunches of bananas, hot sausages, and a thermos filled with hot coffee. Then she rolled a gallon of water down the side of the hole. Ben feverishly unscrewed the cap and started guzzling.

“How are you feeling? Trim? Fit? I like watching you eat and drink. You do it with real gusto.”

“When do I fight?” he asked her.

“Are you finished eating?”

“No.”

“Then finish eating. We'll get you up here and struggling for your life in no time. It's gonna be fun. Lotta people are hesitant at first, but once you get into it, you really understand what it's all about, I swear.”

“I don't believe you.”

“Huh. Don't really care. Eat up, scarboy!”

She slammed the door shut. Crab came out of hibernation and crawled down to the floor, cutting open a banana and nibbling at it.

“You're gonna have to help me kill her,” Ben said.

“Like hell I will.”

“I assume she watches these fights intently. She won't be paying attention to anything else. Go into that pile and find me a weapon.” There had to be a proper weapon in there, perhaps many: guns and rifles and knives and halberds and lances and long, curved, unidentifiable weapons designed to open up bodies and empty them out.

“There are no weapons in the pile,” Crab said. “I've already rooted through it.”

“A gun. All I need is a gun.”

“A gun might not bring her down.”

“A gun brings everyone down.”

“There won't be one in there.”

“Then find me SOMETHING!” he screamed at Crab. “Find me a way out of this.”

“I already suggested a way out.”

“On the off chance that you are wrong, look in the pile again. You made me promise to keep going. This is what I need to keep going.”

Crab pushed the banana aside. “I'll turn up something for you.”

“Thank you.”

The door swung open again. Crab quickly hid himself. Ben envied his ability to disappear any time he pleased.

“Would you like thirty minutes to digest?” Fermona asked. “I'd hate for you to get a cramp.”

“I'm ready now,” Ben said. Fermona reached into the hole and plucked him out with her bare hand. It took no effort at all. Her palm was as thick as a mattress. Her fingerprints circled around in wide corduroy swales. It was quite a thing to be carried in the hand of another creature. He felt light, as if he were being swept away by a strong wind.

She set him down in the corridor and handed him a pair of white canvas shorts.

“You can wear these,” she told him. “You shouldn't have to fight with your stuff hanging out.”

“Okay. Where do I fight?”

“Oh, back in my living room, of course. Right this way.”

She pushed him forward along the row of thick dungeon doors. He heard more muffled cries and moans. In the center of Fermona's main chamber, there was now an octagonal cage made of chain-link fencing. In the middle of the octagon was a 200-pound man wearing a Rottweiler's face as a mask, ears and all. Ben turned around and tried to run away from the cage. Fermona held him in place with her huge paws. It was like holding back a baby.

“You tricked me,” Ben said to her.

“How did I do that? He's roughly your size. And his fighting skills, frankly, are pedestrian. Won his last twenty fights, sure. But there was very little in the way of showmanship.”

Ben could hear the dogface laughing at him. The menace was back.

“Get in the cage,” Fermona said.

“No.”

“Don't be so defeatist. You can beat this guy. I have faith in you.”

“You're sick.”

“No, I'm not.” She pointed at the dogface. “Now him? He might be sick. I mean, what
normal
person wears a dog's face like that? Something must have happened to him that just . . . just took away his
soul
, you know? It's such a shame that there are monsters like that in this world. I think you'd be doing us a real service by defeating him, and giving us a champion to look up to. A role model. Now hold out your hands.”