Flesh Worn Stone (4 page)

“It’s nasty.”

A small boy smiled at him as he peed in it, waving.

“I wonder why,” John said as Amanda, seeming not to care, dropped to her knees and gulped at the water. She drank until she threw up, the water the only contents of her stomach.

“We’ve got to find something to eat and a cleaner source of water,” John told them as he helped Amanda to her feet after she had finished.

“Good luck here,” Darius said. “This place is nothing but filth. I don’t think anyone is taking Richard Nixon’s advice.”

Steven sat Rebecca down near the pool and tried to clear away some of the grime and filth covering the surface, trying as best he could to get her a clean handful of water. She balked at first when he offered it to her, but took it eventually. A drop of water joined the flow of tears through the dirt on her face. He hugged her tightly to him, his arms wrapped around her.

“When are you going to cry, Steven?” she asked softly. “The boys…”

“I…I can’t cry right now. I have to worry about us, here and now. I’ll cry when I get us out of here.” That was optimistic, he thought. Some of the people in the crowds, eating, sitting around small fires, looked positively ancient.

“They’re gone, Steven.”

“I know.”

“Do you smell that?” Darius asked aloud.

“All I smell is shit,” John replied. “Shit and death.”

“No, there’s meat cooking somewhere. I don’t know what kind of meat, but it’s meat.”

The big man walked towards the smell, and the tendrils of smoke drifting near the cavern’s ceiling, wrapping the pirate ship in a haze. There were several large cooking fires surrounded by men armed with wooden clubs and spears. They were a ragged looking bunch, but much healthier appearing than their counterparts in the rest of the cavern. Steven also suspected he recognized a few from the frenzied beating of Cassandra. Looking well fed and ready for a fight, they formed a loose circle around the cooking fires, guarding the area where spits of meat cooked alongside large pots of some unidentified stew. Darius marched to the head of the line.

“Get back to the end of the line,” one of the men said, a thick Latino with gang tattoos all over his body. He stood with a stone-tipped spear across his chest. There were three vertical slashes carved into his forehead, forming rough scars.

“We just got here and we’re hungry.”

“I don’t give two fucks when you got here. You can get back to the end of the line or you can go the fuck away. I don’t care.”

Darius looked past the man where several other large men sat laughing and eating. One man in particular, a large Samoan, sat on a throne made of bamboo, wood, and bone, eating a meat Steven couldn’t readily identify from the bone. Skulls lined the base of the throne as well as its tall, arched back.

“I bet they didn’t stand in line,” Darius said simply.

“They’re three- and four-timers. Why in the hell would they stand in line?”

Steven had no idea what the man meant by three- and four-timers, but Darius still wasn’t moved, “I don’t care. We’re hungry and we’re going to eat.”

The spear tip was quickly at his throat. “It’s not against the rules to drop you in order to keep order, you know.”

“No,” Darius shot back, “I don’t know. I don’t know what the rules are; I don’t have a clue where we are. Tell you what, chump, why don’t you take that stick and shove it up your ass before I do it for you.”

The man looked back and forth at the large Samoan on the junk thrown, confused. He obviously wasn’t used to someone not backing down. He wasn’t used to non-submission. The Samoan looked at him with disgust and then stood, coming to them.

“What’s the problem here?” he asked.

The Samoan was at least, if not larger, than Darius. Steven was sure he was meaner. He, like the Latino, was covered in tattoos, though his looked more traditional Polynesian than prison, and instead of three marks on his forehead, he had four. A series of circles, lines, and dashes ran from his knees up his thighs, and up his chest. His black hair was close cropped to his scarred head.

“The problem here,” Darius said, taking a step past the spear holder, “is that we were brought here to this place against our will, and now I’m fucking hungry. I’m hungry and you have food.”

“And you think, being a newcomer and large, maybe a little scary looking, that you’re going to walk right up and take what you want? You think this is some sort of mob rule prison or something?”

Darius looked uncomfortable with the accusation, just as uncomfortable as when Amanda accused him of attacking her. “I don’t know what to think, I don’t know what’s going on.”

“Well most new people don’t get this much help,” the Samoan told him. “Most newcomers have to find out what this place is all about on their very own. It’s part of the process. But I’m going to help you out. I’m feeling generous right now.”

The men around him laughed like jackals around a fallen gazelle. “You’re not shit here. I don’t give a fuck what you were before. Here you’re worth less than shit. No one cares what you were before, no one cares what power you had. It doesn’t mean shit here. No one even fucking cares that you’re here. And I’ll bet no one back there,” he said, pointing in the general direction of the cave entrance, “cares that you’re gone. There’s a reason you’re gone, you know?”

Darius’ arm flashed so quickly and the lighting was so bad that Steven didn’t see his fist connect with the Samoan’s jaw. He simply saw the man stagger back a few paces and then the dozen sharp looking spear tips at the black man’s throat.

The Samoan laughed as he righted himself. “You hit like a mule,” he said, walking back up to Darius. “That’s good. It will come in handy later. I should kill you. I’d be within the rules—all these people saw you attack me—but I won’t.”

He bent down and retrieved the piece of meat on the bone that he’d been eating and offered it to Darius. “Here. You want it? Have it.”

Darius took the offering, looked at it, and then turned to the side, throwing up in violent spasms, the raw meat falling to the muddy floor with a wet thud. Steven looked down, seeing it was a forearm, stripped of skin, most of the hand still attached, and his stomach threatened to join Darius.

The Samoan and his men began laughing hysterically, along with anyone else in earshot of what had transpired. Rebecca joined Darius in heaving, and Amanda cried out.

“Oh my god…they’re eating Cassandra.”

“She broke the rules, she pays the price,” the Samoan said. “We all pay the price if we break the rules, and that, if nothing else, is something you should learn this very minute.”

“She’s still alive,” Steven gasped.

Okay, crapCassandra, or what was left of her, lay on a large piece of sanded driftwood next to the impromptu throne. Her legs were missing, cut just beneath the knees, and her left arm was gone. The stumps had been burnt to a crisp, and there wasn’t nearly as much blood as Steven would have figured. A pile of the bones from her legs were stacked neatly next to her, bits of cartilage and meat still attached. Her chest had been marked up with a knife, like a butcher might mark up a hog for slaughter. She stared at them, eyes pleading and expressing a pain Steven couldn’t begin to imagine.

“They keep better alive and last longer,” the big Samoan told them without emotion, as if they were discussing storing beef. “Nothing will be wasted, and her death will contribute to the survival of the Cave. And though she hadn’t yet had the opportunity to join us, she will be remembered nonetheless. She will live on, forever, on the Wall.”

Amanda fainted straight away, falling to the ground before Darius or John could catch her. Darius surged forward again, his face full of rage and anger, but stopped short of the wall of spear tips separating him from the Samoan. Rebecca was speechless, staring at the mutilated girl, and Steven threw up again.

“Save it for The Game, big man,” the Samoan, leaning in and whispering to Darius, said. “Save it for the Game. Use it…it might save you.”

A siren split the laughter and the mood in the cavern turned festive, people cheering and shouting. Steven, wiping bile from his mouth, watched as even the children began laughing and marching towards the opposite end of the cavern, away the entrance. Everyone in the cavern, man, woman, child, young and old, marched out, some even singing, though Steven couldn’t make out what the words of the song were. It only took a couple of minutes for the cavern to empty completely out, leaving the group of five by themselves.

Amanda dashed to her friend’s side and Cassandra managed to raise her remaining arm and hold the other girl’s hand. She gurgled, trying to speak, yet was unable. Rebecca pulled away from Steven and went to the girls. “You can’t do any more for her.”

Rebecca gently guided Amanda to John, then turned back to Cassandra. “I’m sorry.”

Steven didn’t see it, but he heard the twisting of her neck and the snapping of her bones, and when his wife stepped away from her, he knew the girl was finally dead. The three men stared at her in shock but Amanda rushed to her, hugging her deeply.

“Thank you.”

“She’s not suffering any more.”

“I know.”

John Hussein, who, during the exchange with the Samoan had been silent, said, “I…I don’t know what to say. Did they bring us here as food? This is the plot of a bad B-movie, isn’t it, where some rednecks in the Appalachians or desert kidnap hapless tourists for their evening meal?”

Darius shook his head. “They only killed her because she tried to escape. They could have killed me right here without blinking, but they didn’t. There’s a set of rules here, a set of laws that they live by.”

“What’s the Game?” Steven asked and wondered again what Cassandra had meant when she said it wasn’t supposed to be like this. He’d never know now; he was still in shock at the violent act of mercy from his wife.

“I don’t know and don’t particularly want to know,” Hussein told them, “but I think we have no choice but to follow them once again.”

Steven looked at the other cave entrance, wider and taller than the one they’d entered, and wondered what horrors lay in the next chamber.

Chapter Two

He’d met Rebecca a short two months after the death of his wife, when he and his two sons were still not just in mourning at the lost of their wife and mother, but in utter and complete shock. It had been a simple incident, but one he looked back on fondly as if fate had sent him an angel to guide him through the dark times. He’d been mindlessly jogging, just burning away excess energy and trying to keep thoughts of his deceased wife out of his mind. It was just one foot in front of another, trying to stamp out the vision of Michelle laying there on the coroner’s table.

The medical examiner had tried to clean her up and had wiped much of the dried blood away, but it had been hard to hide the bones sticking through the skin at unnatural angles.

He’d been staring at the ground, unconcerned for traffic and other runners when he’d run right into her. They bumped, head first, and then both fell backwards to the cement sidewalk. She hadn’t apparently been watching out either.

Steven looked into her face, and she smiled. It was a good smile.

He felt himself smiling in return, something he hadn’t done since that night.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“It’s okay,” he replied, the uncomfortable smile still present. “I wasn’t watching.”

A few moments of awkward silence followed until she finally stuck out her hand. “I’m Rebecca.”

He took the hand and noticed the little string of numbers tattooed between her thumb and forefinger, 12345. “I’m Steven. It’s nice to meet you.”

They stayed like that for a few more awkward moments, holding hands, looking into each other’s eyes. He felt something instant, some click between them, and then instantly felt guilty for feeling it, withdrawing his hand.

She sensed it, right away, like she’d sense his emotions in years to come. “Is everything all right?”

“I…” he wanted to tell her about Michelle, to talk to her about it for some reason, but he didn’t. “That’s an interesting tattoo. What’s the significance of the numbers?”

“They are significant,” she said, but offered no more about the tattoo, instead standing. “It was nice meeting you.”

They’d meet at the same spot many more times over the next year, sometimes talking, sometimes not, always jogging. They’d talked more once he finally asked her to dinner.    

* * *

The light burned his eyes as he stepped out of the tunnel into the open air, and it took several seconds for him to adjust to the bright sunlight. The tunnel emptied into a large circular canyon, easily a football field across. The walls were un-scalable and as slick as the cliff face by the Cage. There were large windows along the southern side of the canyon—Steven only knowing the direction from the position of the sun—that immediately reminded him of the sky boxes at Minute Maid Park in Houston, boxes allowing the wealthy to observe the game without actually having to mingle with the unwashed masses. Above those, along the rim of the canyon, were nasty looking turrets, dark machine gun barrels aimed down at the crowd.

The crowd filed alongside the canyon walls, leaving the area in the middle clear, as well as a section to the south. They formed a rough U-shape around the canyon and all stared upwards. Beneath the windows set in stone was a large digital billboard like you’d see at any sports arena, perhaps when a batter hit a home run. It displayed a cartoon of two gladiators fighting, pounding on half shields with short swords. When one of the cartoon characters fell, the crowd cheered and the words “The Game” were displayed.

“What the hell is the Game?” Hussein asked aloud, though Steven could barely hear him over the roar of the crowd. The feeling of the place was not unlike a sports arena, Steven thought, thinking of the Astro’s baseball park back home.

“They kidnap us and bring us here to watch cartoons?” Darius asked. “What kind of sense does any of this make?”

It didn’t make sense, of course, nothing about the entire situation did. The cartoon, quickly replaced by numbers and one capitol letter, K, made no sense either. As soon as the numbers flashed, people began checking their forearms, and it took only a couple of seconds for Steven to make the connection along with Hussein.