A World of Ash: The Territory 3 (8 page)

The roar of the crowd echoed up the tunnel long before Squid and Nim laid eyes on the place the Black Sisters called the colosseum. They had been brought here, to the deep bowels of Pitt, directly on their arrival back in the prison. It had been dark, the early hours of a cold night, when the bio-truck had driven through the angled gate and descended underground. The coughs and pops of the engine had echoed and amplified off the ill-lit walls in a menacing welcome chorus.

When the truck had stopped Squid and Nim had been pulled roughly from their seats. By now the skin around Squid’s wrists had been rubbed pink and raw and the rope had begun to turn crimson with his blood. Every time he tried to adjust his hands the chafed skin burned. He had winced as he and Nim were forced along unpleasantly familiar corridors cut through the rust-orange rock, the flickering gaslight playing off the sharp faces of the clergymen and eerie shadows dancing along the rough walls. Rather than descend the spiraling wooden walkway around the main cavern of the prison they were led along a different passage. The single word above the opening declared their destination: “Colosseum.”

Squid had heard both the Black Sisters and the Holy Order refer to this place. His mother had pretended that’s where she’d been taking them when she’d helped them escape. Clergy-Lieutenant Werther had said he wished he’d seen Mr. Stix and Mr. Stownes in the colosseum, and yet Squid had no idea what it actually was.

It was during the long walk down the tunnel to the colosseum that the sound reached them. It was quiet at first, unrecognizable as anything other than a dull rumble, but it grew steadily until Squid knew it was the roar of a crowd. At the end of the tunnel Squid’s eyes grew wide and he stopped walking despite the pull on his hands and the scratching pain that demanded he keep moving.

Clergy-Lieutenant Werther turned to look at Squid. He smiled. “Impressive, isn’t it?”

They had exited the tunnel at the top of a vast amphitheatre. Tiered seating carved from the earth descended in rows to an arena at the bottom. Everything was hewn from orange rock streaked with reds and browns. The arena itself was covered with red sand that must have been brought in from outside. The seating was broken into three levels with walkways lit by bio-fuel between them. Each level comprised about twenty rows of seats encircling half the circumference of the arena, and almost all were full. While the seating was mostly in darkness the arena itself was ringed with bio-fuel lamps, which were bolted to the stone walls and illuminated the edges of the sandy circle. The center of the arena was lit by an enormous chandelier, each level a ring of fire, the whole thing hanging from an immense chain set into the rock above. Piping for the gas supply curled down and around the chains like an uncoiling serpent. On the opposite side of the arena two arched openings were carved into the rock, and each was sealed shut with a portcullis of latticed steel. A semicircular platform extended out from a similar arched opening in the wall above the two gates.

There must have been thousands of people seated in the colosseum watching the arena below. Even in the dark Squid could see they all wore the blue prisoners’ uniforms. The only exceptions were the uniforms of the Holy Order clergymen, who were standing at intervals around each level. The effect of this many people yelling in an underground cavern was overwhelming. Heat, sound, and the smell of unwashed bodies filled the stagnant air. Squid’s head swam with a warm and sudden dizziness that made his legs weak.

“Come on,” Clergy-Lieutenant Werther said. “You’ll be sitting down here.”

The clergyman holding the end of Squid and Nim’s rope pulled at them impatiently. As they were led down into the crowd Squid, feeling mesmerized and nauseated in equal measure by the scene around him, almost tripped and tumbled down the steep stairs. He probably would have if Nim hadn’t grabbed his shoulder to steady him. Clergy-Lieutenant Werther directed them all the way to the lowest level of the stadium. The prisoners in the crowd watched intently as they passed. When they reached the last row of seats the clergyman made the prisoners move along so they could sit.

“Here,” Clergy-Lieutenant Werther said to them. “Some of the best seats in the house just for you.”

The clergyman freed their wrists from the bonds and began climbing back up the stairs.

“Enjoy the show,” Werther said, leaving Squid and Nim sitting with the other prisoners in the stands.

From their position in the front row, the only thing separating them from the arena was a single railing, and the drop down over the wall to the red dirt below was a height of maybe ten feet. Squid tried to rub his painful wrists but the raw skin stung at the lightest touch.

Squid turned to the prisoner seated next to him. He was an elderly man, white-haired, his skin pale, withered, and wrinkled, his age-worn look made worse by the gauntness of his face. His eyes were sunken in hollow sockets and his skin sagged down from his sharply pointed cheekbones like wet clothes over a rock. Without asking Squid could tell he had spent much of his life in this place.

“What’s happening?” Squid asked.

“C-C-Colosseum,” the man stammered.

“Yes,” Squid said, “but what happens here?”

“P-P-Punishments are given,” the man said, squinting his eyes closed as he pushed his way through his stuttering. “Everyone c-comes to watch the p-p-p-p—”

“Punishments?” Squid said.

“Yes,” said the man. “Everyone gets to watch.”

There was a flare of something in his eyes. Squid thought it was excitement, but he didn’t know how anyone could be excited about this. What sort of punishment was given out in a place like this, and why was the entire population of the prison seemingly so excited to watch?

“How long have you been here?” Squid asked.

“It hasn’t started yet.”

“No,” Squid said. “I mean how long have you been in Pitt?”

The man looked at him, his already wrinkled brow creasing further as he thought about the question. He shrugged. “Since I was a k-k-k-k-k-k—”

“Oh, give it up, Nelson,” the younger man sitting on the other side of him said, turning to Squid. “He’s been here since he was a kid.”

The old man, Nelson, shot the younger man a look of annoyance but shrugged and nodded.

Squid couldn’t help but wonder what would happen to someone who was forced to live their whole life in this forsaken place. Would they grow so out of touch they would be excited to watch others punished?

“Why?” Squid asked.

“I couldn’t say my P-P-P-P-Pr-Pr—”

“Praise be to the Pure,” Squid said. “You can’t say it?”

Nelson nodded.

“And they locked you up here because of that?”

He nodded again. Squid shook his head. What did it matter if he couldn’t say that stupid phrase? It wasn’t his fault. Yet again Squid felt a rush of anger in the knowledge that the Church took it upon themselves to punish people who had no say in their situation.
The sins of the father are the sins of the son.

Around them a steady roar built from the crowd until it engulfed them. At first Squid didn’t know what was happening, but then he noticed the two figures emerging from the opposite side of the arena. They were coming out of the opening onto the stone platform set high on the wall.

As the figures moved into the light Squid saw they were two clergymen, their red cloaks flicking and flapping out behind them. One was carrying a large box, a speaker with a crank handle on the side, while the other held a microphone fixed to the top of a stand. They positioned both objects in the front center of the platform and stepped aside, waiting. After a moment another figure emerged, the long tail extending from her black dress dragging along the stone as she walked purposefully toward the microphone. It was Priestess Regina, Warden of Pitt.

The crowd noise increased in volume, but dropped in pitch until it became a low churning sound, a collection of shouts, boos, hisses, and jeers. The collective prisoners of Pitt were making their disdain for the leader of their captors clear. Squid was shocked. At first he wondered why they would do such a thing. He certainly wanted to let the Black Sisters know what he thought of them too, but surely the prisoners must have been concerned about the punishment they would receive? The Sisters did not take disrespect lightly. Squid had heard them come down hard on the other children in the schoolhouse in Dust and of course he knew what they’d done to Lynn. Then, looking around, it came to him. Here, in the colosseum, there were simply too many of them. Priestess Regina and the Holy Order could never pick out which of the prisoners were responsible for the noises of disapproval and dissent if they all were. There were thousands of them and the Church couldn’t punish them all – at least no more than they already were.

To Squid’s further surprise Priestess Regina was smiling, as if she relished this welcome. It seemed to Squid that this, perhaps, had become some sort of ritual. Whenever the warden emerged the crowd would react negatively like this and, at least for the time they were all packed into the seats, the warden did nothing about it. Standing before the microphone Priestess Regina raised her hands and the noise dimmed, though it did not dissipate completely.

“Here, in this place beyond the borders of our world, God trains his eye. You are here by his divine mercy to be redeemed in his heart, to join those of the pure who will reclaim the world anew. Praise be to the Pure.”

The response echoed from thousands of voices in the crowd, hypnotic, trancelike. Even Nelson, locked in this place for his stutter, attempted to repeat it. It seemed strange to Squid that this crowd had the audacity to boo a priestess of the Black Sisters and yet still they repeated this mantra mandated by the same church. Did they truly believe they were in this place so God could make them worthy of something? Had they become so accustomed to repeating those words that they didn’t see they were just as much a prison as the underground facility around them?

“Being here is an opportunity the Church of Glorious God the Redeemer has afforded you,” Priestess Regina continued. “It should never be taken for granted. It should never be squandered. But,” Priestess Regina said into the microphone with such force that it popped and crackled, “there are those who live among us who cannot see the error of their old ways. They cannot see the great work being done here. They disregard the rules set forth for them. They break the trust both we and God himself have in them. It is for these people that we have the colosseum.”

She threw her arms wide as she boomed the last word. A cheer rose from the crowd. They were hungry and the roar said they knew Priestess Regina would feed them.

“For your entertainment, and for the glory of God, tonight those who have lost their way will fight for deliverance in the arena. As always, victory will see them forgiven for their trespasses and will prove them pure of heart, and they shall be released back into the Central Territory. Failure will mean death.”

Another roar from the crowd. Squid was confused. These were fellow prisoners she was speaking of, and yet they were cheering to watch them fight.

“First tonight, a man who was caught stealing food from the kitchens. Your food. He kept two loaves of bread for himself and now he faces the arena for his transgression. He will fight for his place among the worthy. May God have mercy if he wishes to see him redeemed. Praise be to the Pure.”

Priestess Regina waited once again for the chorused response from the crowd before turning and walking back through the archway she had emerged from, the two clergymen in her wake.

Moments later the left gate in the wall below the platform began to rise. At the top the steel gate rattled as it stopped, the pointed spikes on the bottom of the portcullis making the dark arch look like a beastly gaping maw with a row of dagger-like teeth. The crowd dropped into a cacophony of boos, hisses, and cheers as a prisoner dressed in the familiar blue prison garb stumbled through the archway, landing on his front and sliding, arms sprawled, across the red dirt as though forcefully pushed from behind. Panicking, he clambered to his feet and spun back but the steel gate was already dropping closed. He beat his fists against the metal grate and began yelling but Squid could barely hear him over the roar of the crowd.

As the man stood, desperately banging against the metal, the gate over the other archway shuddered and began to rise. There was only a moment of anticipation where Squid wondered what was behind it. Even before it was open all the way he heard the eagle-like screeching and low guttural moans that could only come from one thing. Of course it was ghouls. Here, in the prison of Pitt, for the entertainment of the gathered masses, those who broke the rules were made to fight ghouls.

The prisoner, hearing the sounds of the creatures, abandoned his wild banging on the gate and fled toward the center of the arena, slipping mid-way on the loose gravelly sand. He turned back to see the ghouls emerging from the dark. There were three of them, a female and two males. They too were dressed in the blue uniforms of prisoners, each in varying states of decay.

The ghouls jerked from position to position, their heads snapping to the side and then back up as they caught the scent of the fleeing man. Their thirst for the moisture filling his body would be all-consuming. Squid knew what that was like now. He had been taken right to the precipice of becoming one of them, and in some way, if not completely, he understood their desire to drink. They needed it. It was the only instinct that drove them. They had sensed this prisoner and would not give up their pursuit of him. Each of them broke into that impossible stuttering run, moving in sudden jerks and pops of arms and legs and twisting heads.

The ghouls moved fast, a sudden burst of speed that startled Squid at first. The only ghouls he’d seen move like that were those who had freshly fed. It had been like that in the Battle of Dust; they would drink from one of the fallen Diggers for a time and then pop back up, faster than before, hunting for the next person on whom to quench their thirst. Squid knew it was probably something to do with the moisture freeing up their muscles, making them more alert, making them stronger, but it did seem like an addiction, a crazed behavior that made them faster and faster as they sought out more and more victims.