Indian Hill (25 page)

“Touché Mr. Talbot!” he yelled between ragged breaths.

“What are you talking about?” I asked. I was not about to give him any more breathing room.

“I see what you’re doing,” he rasped, “I may be fat but I’m not stupid. I’m glad I’ll be losing to you instead of one of those other animals. Maybe in a different place we could have actually been friends.”
”Maybe,” I said warily “But you know what I have to do.”

“I do,” he answered. “But do me two favors?” he asked.

“What?”

“Take care of my women, and then please take care of these insects,” and he gestured with his hand to the crowd.

“I promise on my very soul that I will do both of those things for you and for every other decent person that has died here.” With that promise made he dropped his sword. Was this another trick, was he just trying to lure me in? I couldn’t take that chance.

“Defend yourself!” I yelled

“My time here is done Mike, just do it fast." 

“Shawn, pick up your weapon, don’t make me do it this way.”

“Come on man, you know as well as I do I don’t stand a chance against Durgan or anybody else for that matter. I’ve been watching you since this began, you have a way about you. You could actually pull this off. No, it’s better this way. The women have a better chance of survival with you than they do with me. I care more for them than for myself. Just do it!” he yelled. 

His voice startled me, I think I jumped. I was wishing that it could be me letting the weight off of MY shoulders. He was about to die and he seemed immensely relieved. Is that how I’d feel? I wondered.

“Mike, this isn’t a trick. Finish me off or they’ll do the both of us in. Just look over there,” he said as he pointed to the right hand side of the stadium. The guards were already zeroing in on us, and up until now I had not noticed the hissing and booing from the seats. The crowd wanted death and they wanted it now, they didn’t care whether it came from my spear or the guards’ weapons.

“Do it,” and he dropped to his knees. “Do it now,” and then he clasped his hands over his head. “Do it or all of our women are dead.”

I approached him slowly, tears welling up in my eyes. Then I had full on tears coming down my face, I was crying like I was in the 1
st
grade and somebody had stolen my favorite lunchbox. I picked up the sword he had discarded and walked completely around
Timmins
so that his back was facing me. The crowd hushed, the guards put down their weapons. I raised the sword with both hands but I had to take one hand to wipe my eyes. I wanted to make sure that this was a clean killing blow and I could barely make out his bulk at the moment. I could tell that he was also crying; his back rose and fell in the spastic way it does when people are sobbing.

“I’m sorry Shawn.”

“Me too.” he cried
as he placed his hands down by his sides
.

I cut his head of
f; it was amazingly easy, like a
hot knife through butter. Blood spurted out of his severed neck and the body fell over. His head rolled another five or six feet before coming to a rest. Of course it was face up and he still had a tear in his eye. Oh God, I thought, please don’t let him be cognizant right now. This is already going to haunt me. Just then his mouth moved wordlessly, and I hurled everything I had ever eaten in my entire life. My guts screamed as I evacuated my innards. When there was nothing left my body looked for more, dry heaves threatened to rip loose every muscle in my rib cage, and still his mouth moved. God please forgive me! The crowd was going nuts; they apparently liked good old-fashioned beheadings.  

I  couldn’t sleep for a week, every time I closed my eyes Shawn’s head would haunt my dreams and every so often in my five minute dozes before I awoke screaming and sweating, words would actually come out of his mouth. Words of blame, of acrimony. Tension in the Talbot household was at an all time high. I wasn’t sleeping and we had doubled our population. Needless to say I wasn’t the most popular guy to half of th
o
se women. Some of the girls that had been with me for a while were actually concerned that I might be in some danger from one or more of Shawn’s women. And then bless her heart, Debbie snapped out of her self-induced fog to bring some sanity to the household.

“Quit your bitching!” she yelled to the newcomers semi-huddled in the corner of the room. “Your champion…”

“Shawn!” one of the girls yelled.

“Shawn, he wanted Mike to win, he gave himself up to protect all of you! He knew he wasn’t going to win and he didn’t want to lose to any one of those other animals still out there. What do you think would have happened to all of you if he lost to Durgan?” Most of the girls shuddered; some were still not letting go of their anger. “Did you not all watch the battle? He gave himself up willingly. He wanted Mike to protect all of you, all of us.”

“He didn’t have to kill him!” one of the first girls to be in
Timmins
’ harem called out, she was a pretty little thing with short blonde hair; her name was Karina.

“And what then?” Deb yelled. “You saw the guards, they would have killed them both, without blinking. And do you know what they do to spoils with no champion? They kill them! They just bring them out to the center of the arena and mow them down. End of story. So we will quit all of this in-house bickering and we will move forward. I’m sorry Shawn died, from what I could tell he looked like a decent person.”

“He was!” the same little blond cried out.

“But these aren’t decent times, but Shawn did the most decent and selfless thing he could for you and us. He sacrificed himself so that all of us stood a better chance of staying alive. And right now girls, that’s what it’s all about.” I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house, I retired to my room as both sets of women got into the middle of the room and had a huge group hug and cry fest. I had nothing left, I was tapped. I think I had heaved every possible emotion left in me. I slept for three straight days and not once did Shawn Timmins intrude on my thoughts.

Unfortunately for me,
Timmins
’ selflessness ended up hurting me. In his willingness to let me kill him, the aliens felt that I had not lived up to my ranking and demoted me to 25
th
, not that it truly mattered. Out of the 38 of us that were still alive none of my remaining battles were going to be easy. But I had another month or so to prepare.

CHAPTER 25

Washington
DC
– Pentagon

“Do you think this is a viable plan?” the President asked his Chiefs of Staff.

“Sir we don’t know if it is, but it is the only plan that we have,” answered one of the President’s more liked advisors. He was Dr. David Witherdrot, the Chief of Homeland Security. “Sir, we have heard nothing further from the ship since they took those hostages almost six months ago. To do nothing makes us look weak. Especially to an increasingly hostile and paranoid population. For good or bad, we need to do something.”

“Yes, I understand the need to do something,” the President uttered. “I’ve got pressure from groups that didn’t even exist half a year ago. I just don’t feel confident that this is the course I wish to take.”

“Mr. President, we understand your concerns, but we feel that this shuttle is our best offensive weapon.”

“And what of the hostages?” the President asked.

“Sir?” asked the Chief of the Military.

“The hostages, General, are they just fodder?” the President snapped back.

“Sir, we’ve been through this. We have to protect the many, even at the cost of the few.”

“That doesn’t make it any easier General.”

“Sir, whether you like me or not. The fact remains as a military man I would rather avoid conflict at all times. It’s always been politicians who scream WAR; whereas we military men have always advocated peace. But in these times sir, I believe that our hand has been forced. The aliens sit there parked on our doorstep, and say and do nothing. They could be waiting for reinforcements, they could be just deciding which way would be the best way to attack. Hell sir, not to get morbid, they might just think of our planet as a drive thru restaurant and they’re just finishing up. What do we do the next time they come to visit? I don’t think that we offer them a dove.”

“General, what if they are trying to ascertain whether or not to contact us?” the President asked.

“Sir, with all due respect. The best scientific minds on this planet have been working on that very question for almost the entire six months. They came to the basic conclusion that the aliens have enough information at their disposal to have come up with a decision in their first week of orbit around Venus. No sir, their expert opinion is that the aliens are deciding on how to take us down in the most efficient way without doing untold damage to the planet. For all we know sir, those people they grabbed are test subjects for some type of viral agent that will reduce our population to thousands or maybe even hundreds. Sir as a species, our days may be numbered in the single digits. We owe it to all humanity to take this one final shot. If nothing else, we need to show those bastards that we won’t go down without a fight.” 

“General, I understand your vigor. But what makes you think these nuclear weapons will have any effect whatsoever on the mother ship? We didn’t even scratch the probe the last time we tried something like this.”

“Sir, there is no guarantee, but the explosives that are on that shuttle are on the magnitude of 75 times the power of the one detonated off of the atoll. It’s our best chance.”

“I hope this doesn’t just piss them off,” the Chief Science Officer intoned.

“Well speak out now, Dr. Nisorini. You’ve made your opinions known, no sense in keeping them bottled up now,” the President motioned. He did not like Nisorini in the least; he was a member of a growing segment of the populace that had become increasingly fatalistic. Depression and suicide were running rampant throughout the country, and the world for that matter.
Rumors of the aliens had started with the disappearances of people around the globe and it had spread like wildfire. There was no concrete evidence as of yet but when had that ever stopped a determined conspiracy theorist? And the panic and depression was swelling with each new news story.
The President had always been a die-hard optimist, if you were still alive, you still had a chance.

“Sir,” Dr. Nisorini said with a nasal twang. “The aliens thus far have done nothing to us.”

“Except take twenty-five thousand or so people off our planet against their will.”

“Except that sir, but at this point we really don’t know if they have harmed them in any way. It just might be a way to introduce themselves. It has been my stance that we should not anger these aliens in any way. To do so could bring untold horrors down on the rest of us.”

“So we should just chalk those people up as losses?” asked the President.

“That is my view,” Nisorini droned. For being such a brilliant man he had not the least amount of common sense. The President had merely been baiting him, but Nisorini bit hard. Well at least, The President thought he knew where the good doctor stood. Not that he valued that opinion very highly.

“Well, thank you Dr. Nisorini. You have made up my mind,” the President said.

“You are welcome, Mr. President.” Nisorini beamed like a child that had received a gold star in his notebook for a good day at school.

“General,” the President said.

“Sir?”

“Launch the shuttles.”

“Yes sir!” The general hopped on the phone to tell NASA to get their asses in gear. It was now time for operation Blue Dragon.

The President wished he had a camera. Nisorini’s fac
ial expression
was worth
a
thousand words. The President couldn’t decide whether Nisorini was going to cry or start stomping his feet.