Flesh Worn Stone (15 page)

“What’s that tattoo on your hand?” Amanda asked. She could make out the string of numbers, but the grime and dirt caked on Rebecca’s hand, just like the rest of them, made it hard to read.

“It’s nothing.” she replied. “A silly number that meant something when I was in college.”

“I have one of those,” she told her, turning around and showing her the ‘tramp stamp’ butterfly that she’d gotten after a night of too much drinking on Spring Break in Cancun. “My mother hates it. She says it’s going to be all wrinkled and faded when I’m old…” She let the thought drift, wondering if she would ever be old. There was a distinct possibility, here in this hellhole, that not only would she not grow old, she’d be someone else’s meal.

Rebecca tried a smile, not really wanting to talk, but Amanda ignored her. Amanda needed to talk. She wanted to talk to a friendly person who was in the same situation. No one else in the Cave would talk to her, and if Rebecca didn’t like it, she and Mia were just going to have to get over it.

“Where are her parents?” Amanda asked, curious.

“Who?”

“Mia.”

“Oh,” Rebecca said, looking confused. “You mean Mia’s parents?”

“Yes.” Amanda didn’t understand Rebecca’s confusion or hesitation. It was like she was afraid to even talk about the subject.

“I don’t know,” Rebecca said, looking at the girl with what Amanda thought was some guilt. “I don’t know where they are or what happened to them. For now it’s just me and her.”

“And Steven.”           

“Yes,” she said quickly. “And Steven.”

“What about Steven?” he asked, stepping into the small camp. He carried an armful of cardboard boxed and plastic bags, dumping them in the center.

“We were just talking about how good you did in the Game, weren’t we, Mia?” Rebecca said like Amanda wasn’t even there.

“I didn’t do anything,” he said, averting eye contact with any of them. “I was just lucky.”

“Take the luck where you can get it,” Rebecca ordered. “Because we can use all the luck we can get.”

“Well,” he said, trying to change the subject, and Amanda could see the guilt he felt for taking another man’s life, “I found some stuff that we can try to use to make some sort of walls and something to sleep on. I think I can string these bags between the rocks…we can make a mattress.”

“Shouldn’t we be more concerned about finding a way out of here instead of how to make our lives more comfortable?” Amanda blurted out. She didn’t want a comfy bed, she wanted out of the Cave and away from the Game and Darius. Well, she thought, she really wanted Darius dead first, but that was a bump on the way to escape.

“If you have some idea that I’m not exploring, some plan, let me know. Because right now, I’m lost. All I know how to do is protect my wife.”      

“And Mia,” Rebecca interrupted.

“And Mia,” Steven said, and Amanda could see the discomfort in his face as he continued. “Sure, I want to escape. But I don’t just want to escape…I want to punish the people who put me here.” Amanda wondered if he caught the sidelong glance from Rebecca. “I want to kill the men who killed my sons. I want to see those men in the pot, I want to smell the boiling of their skin, see their eyeballs floating like potatoes. I want all those things, like you do, maybe more than you do, but right now I can’t have them. All I can have, for now, is living here by the rules they’ve set up.”

“That’s too much like giving up,” Amanda said. “I think our priority has to be finding a way out of here.”

“Go ahead,” Rebecca told her. “Go exploring. I’m sure that they won’t kill and eat you like they did your friend if you go outside the Cave.” She said it with no small amount of sarcasm. “The gate isn’t locked.”

“Fuck you,” she replied vehemently without thinking. She didn’t want to ruin the one relationship she had, and as Rebecca’s eyebrows rose and she turned away from her, she added, “I’m sorry, Rebecca. I just want to get out of here.”

“We all do. But as Steven said, we have to survive until we do. Until you have a better idea, I suggest you get your mind wrapped around that.”

Rebecca, always the practical one, was right. Amanda was here, and it didn’t look like the cavalry was coming anytime soon. She had to make the best of it, along with the people she’d been stranded with, and ultimately survive. She’d never escape if she was dead and resting in the pit of someone else’s stomach. Instead of bitching more, she went to help Steven spread out the cardboard and plastic as best they could, forming small sections of privacy.

“It’s raining!” someone screamed from the entrance to the Canyon and the crowd, much like with a Game, rushed outside.

Chapter Six

Steven had never seen so many naked people in one place before in his life.

People were streaming into the canyon, beneath the gaze of the Castle, taking off their clothes as the torrents of rain cascaded down. He stood in the rain, staring up at the dark clouds, letting the water wash over him, taking with it the blood, the dirt, and the guilt. The guilt, like grime and blood, would return, but for the moment, he just stood in the rain, mouth open, the fresh rainwater tasting as glorious as anything he could ever remember.

Children frolicked naked in the puddles formed by the quick rain while adults washed themselves and rinsed out their clothing as best as they could. Rebecca stripped down so quickly it shocked Steven, and she showed no modesty as she hastily began washing her and Mia’s bodies off. There was no modesty anywhere in the canyon, and Steven felt a bit guilty for admiring all the naked women about.

There were the amputees, of course, along with the other disfigurements from the Game, that immediately turned his stomach, but there was also so much beauty in the Cave. There were people of every ethnicity, every color, from all over the world, dancing and laughing and bathing.

Steven wandered through the crowd, looking for Jackson and hoping to ask the man some more questions. He seemed like he had more to say and knew more of what was going on than he’d said earlier. He stopped near a couple of men who were talking, discussing what looked like wooden poker chips.

“It’s bullshit, man,” one said to the other. “How would you know if he’s telling the truth or not?”

“But what if he isn’t lying?” the first man asked. “I mean, come on. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some money when you got out of here?”

“If you get out of here.”

“I’m an optimist,” the man said, and Steven noticed he had two marks cut into his forehead. “And I know that once I get the chance, I’m getting the hell out of here.”

“You don’t want to live in the Castle?” the other said, pointing to where the glass one-way windows were set into the cliff high above.

“I could care less about the Castle. I’m for Cali, man,” he said.

“Well, I still think it’s bullshit. Your traded a wooden chip for what, two apples and a banana?”

“Yeah, but it’s a wooden chip worth five thousand dollars. Five thousand dollars for two rotten apples and a banana that I wouldn’t even eat.”

“Five thousand dollars if you get out of here and,” he said, emphasizing
and
, “if his story is true. Say his story is true…what if his father doesn’t agree to his end of the deal?”

“I guess that’s a bridge I’ll have to cross when I get to it. Like I said, man, I’m an optimist, and right now, I’m an optimist who’s five-thousand dollars richer.”

“No, you’re an optimist that’s out two apples and a banana.”

“Rotten apples, man, rotten apples.”

Steven knew the men could only be talking about John, who’d claimed to be wealthy to their small group. That he was buying things with that supposed wealth wasn’t so unusual. People were creative about surviving, and John was no different, using the one thing he knew to make a go of it. He couldn’t blame the man. Maybe he’d have an easier time of it here than Steven would.

His multiple cuts, on his head and on his abdomen, ached along with his nose, but the cool rain washing over the wounds seemed to help. He cleaned the stitches as well as he could, pressing the pus away and wincing as even the slightest touch made the red, swollen area scream in pain. As he wiped the area with his dampened jumpsuit, several of the stitches burst loose and a torrent of pus and blood shot out. Afterwards, though, there was less pressure and he felt better.

“Try this,” Jackson said, seeming to appear from nowhere and handing Steven a handful of aloe vera plant cuts. “It’s really for burns, but there are healing properties in the salve as well.”

“Thanks…” Steven said, taking the plant. “Where did you come from?”

“Oh, I’ve been around, mostly sitting and talking to people.”

“I haven’t seen you, and I was looking for you.”

            “It’s a large cavern, Steven. I’m sorry I haven’t been available. Was there something you needed help with?”

“I…I’d enjoyed talking to you about this place, its history. I thought maybe we could talk about it some more.”

“I’m sorry, Steven…” Jackson looked around nervously, skittish.

“I guess people like to talk to you.”

“Sometimes. Mostly people act like I’m some sort of priest simply because I’ve been here longer than any of them. I hear everyone’s fears and doubts.”

“I’m sure that could be depressing,” Steven said, noting the man was not naked like everyone else and bathing. His robe, though, looked very clean, as if he hadn’t lived all his life in the Cave.

“I feel it’s my duty. I’m not, apparently, fit to play in the Game, so I’ll do the best I can to help others who are destined for that glory.”

“I wanted to ask you a few things, if you didn’t mind.”

“Sure,” Steven said. “I’ll be happy to help where I can.”

“I know you said you didn’t know exactly where we are, but I wondered if you knew about the area around the canyon and the Cave. Is it all rock and beach, or is there more to it?”

            “I don’t know,” he said simply, and Steven couldn’t tell if he was lying or not. “I’ve never ventured beyond the Cave system or the Cage. I don’t know what’s out there. Many speculate we’re on an island somewhere, but we could just as easily be on a part of a coast that’s hard to access. There are rumors, of course.”

“What sort of rumors?”

“Oh, you know, the usual. There are stories of wild men running in the jungles around the Canyon, waiting to kill anyone who manages to escape. Not that anyone has, in my lifetime. There are rumors that the guards manning those machine gun nests are actually aliens,” he pointed to the rim of the canyon, “and this is all some sort of super secret experiment where they observe human nature in advance of an invasion. There is every sort of rumor and conspiracy theory here that you can imagine.”

“What do you think this place is?”

“What does it matter?”

“Indulge me.”

“I don’t,” Jackson told him. “I don’t think about anything but helping people, day to day.”

Steven knew that was an outright lie. It was simply against human nature not to wonder about our existence. He couldn’t imagine a man living in the Cave all his life and never, not even once, wondering about where they were, or, more importantly, why they were here. He didn’t press the man on the matter, thought, and smiled. “I understand, Jackson.”

* * *

Amanda, like everyone else, had forgotten modesty and had taken off the stinking blue jumpsuit to dance naked in the rain. She felt alive among the people of the Cave, relishing the water as it rained down, and it felt even better to wash the grime from her body. She noticed several men staring at her and guessed that she was, unlike many of the women on the island, as yet unaffected by starvation and the ravages of life in the Cave. She knew that, for the time being, she was something to look at, but that didn’t matter in the long run. The men here wouldn’t make their move on her outside the Game, just as Block hadn’t. It just wasn’t their way.

She washed as best she could in the downpour, ignoring the stings of the cold rain.

“You’re beautiful,” Darius told her from behind her. “Probably the best looking woman in this whole miserable place.”

Amanda spun around, her hair trailing wet behind her, and glared at him. “Get away from me.”

“Amanda,” he said. “I know whatever happened to you in that van that night was bad.”

“You should.”

“It wasn’t me,” he told her. “It just wasn’t me. I know there isn’t any way I can prove that to you, and I know that you’ll never believe me. There is nothing I can do to change your mind. Nothing at all.”

Amanda looked up into the big man’s eyes and, for just a moment, wanted to believe him. He was sincere and didn’t waver from her gaze. She knew, however, that he’d been there. There wasn’t any other explanation. She could trace the tracks of his scars in her dreams. She could still see Cassandra looking out at her in agony when he was on top of her. Shaking her head, she tried to twist the thoughts from her mind.

“Fuck you,” she said. “I know it was you. There’s nothing you can say that will ever erase that. There’s no lie you can tell that will wipe the slate clean. You act like you care, but you don’t really care about anything. I know what you are…you’re dead inside, dead to anything but your ego and your pride.”

He nodded, seeming to agree. “I have to try. It’s what makes us human.”

There was still no anger on his face, nothing but dismay at not having been believed, and once again Amanda doubted herself, doubted Cassandra. If she was wrong, she was no better than those who said all blacks looked alike. But she couldn’t be wrong…could she?

The rain party went on until the rain stopped, which to Amanda seemed like hours. She imitated what she saw the other women doing, washing their clothes on the rocks, scrubbing on flat parts. Dirt and grime came out in brownish fluid, but she was sure she’d never get them completely clean.

There was nothing about this place that would ever be clean. No amount of rain could wash away all the blood.

* * *

“Where in the hell did you get all that?” Darius demanded.

John was sitting on a tattered sleeping bag inside the enclosure Steven had constructed of cardboard and garbage bags. The walls did nothing to keep the sounds of the Cave out, but they at least didn’t have to look at the hundreds of other residents. The sounds of the community, laughter and tears, happiness and arguing, still filtered through the barrier. Next to John was a small dented green Coleman ice chest with the lid missing. Inside were fruits and vegetables, all in various states of rot, as well as the remains of a couple of T-bone steaks.