Z 2134 (6 page)

With the Bounty box locked, Jonah was
forced to walk to the Joker’s Box to see what awaited him.

Jonah opened the box, hoping for
something more than the machete in his hand, though he’d gotten proficient at
using it and preferred it over most other melee weapons. What greeted him,
however, wasn’t a weapon. It was a photograph — of his family, taken just after
Adam was born.

He looked at the memory and felt the
sting of tears wanting to break him down.

No time for this. Not now.

They’re trying to mess with your mind.

He left the photograph in the box and
slammed the lid shut, hearing it lock a moment after.

Jonah held Bear’s eyes for a minute
before breaking his gaze and stepping onto the first step in the long and
winding staircase wrapping the rock to the top of the Mesa. A pair of hunter
orbs hovered above the stage, making long and lazy circles over the Mesa as
Bear wiped the back of his hand across his beard, then turned to spit on the
ground, twisting his grin into a growl.

Jonah began to climb the ramp toward the
cage and certain death for one of them. Once he was on the Mesa and inside the
cage, the gate would lock behind him. Jonah couldn’t flee. The orbs were there
to make sure no one did, even if they managed to force the gate open. Anyone
watching The Games long enough was all too familiar with the powerful energy
the hunter orbs could produce, blasting a person to ashes in seconds.

Viewers cheered loudest during Mesa
battles, often hoping this would happen, and sometimes believing they could
will it into motion through the strength of their volume. It rarely happened,
and despite a new Game every other week, and Jonah having seen nearly four
decades’ worth of final battles, he had only seen the orbs cut contestants to
nothing at the top of the Mesa a couple of times.

He paused at the door into the cage,
either at the end of his life or taking his final steps into the rest of it.

Zombies no longer mattered.

Not today, and probably never again.

He looked over at Bear, who was relaxed
and waiting, still smiling as if Jonah wasn’t any threat at all, even with a machete
curled tightly in his palm.

Jonah looked at the cage entrance once
last time, then stepped inside, blinking twice as the gate swung shut behind
him and a metal rod slid shut, locking them in.

Bear stopped slapping the axe into his
palm and started swinging it in the air instead, tossing it from his left hand,
then back to his right, like a hot potato.

Jonah circled the man beast, ready to die
but not willing to fall just yet, keeping far enough away from Bear that the
giant would have to throw his axe to hit him. Jonah was quick enough to duck,
but in rough enough shape to miscalculate and make a fatal error.

“It’s over for you now, Mr. Officer Man!”
Bear laughed, then shook the axe above his head and brought it down hard
against the Mesa’s metal surface to show Jonah he could hold the rattle in his
arms.

Jonah continued to circle.

Bear laughed louder. “Watch, listen, and
report this!” Bear cackled, mocking the City Watch signs posted around each of
the Cities.

Bear then swung his axe in a wide arc,
probably not intending to hit Jonah, but rather scare him. Bear swung the axe
through the air a second time as he glanced to his right, still laughing.

There was something horrible and knowing
in his laugh. Jonah followed the giant’s gaze to the left and over the Mesa’s
lip. Fifty feet down, on the ground, were nearly a dozen zombies, moaning their
banshee cries as they ambled into the clearing, quickly crossing the empty land
to the base of the Mesa. Jonah wondered if the zombies had found the entrance
he’d used, or if the Network opened up other doors along the wall surrounding
the clearing. He didn’t have time to look, however. He had to keep his eyes on
Bear and his mighty axe.

Death was a matter of preference: the
killer without mercy before him or the walking dead below. The cage had never
opened during a final battle before, and he hoped the Network wasn’t
introducing a new wrinkle to add to the Wow Factor — a cage battle plus
zombies!

But as the zombies began to ascend the
same ramp he’d just come up, he was almost certain that something bad was about
to happen. Really fucking bad.

Once the zombies reached the Mesa, they’d
be able to walk around the lip of the cage, and likely reach inside, which
limited how much room each man would have to move around. One step too far, and
the zombies might reach in and get them.

Jonah imagined the audience back home and
how much they must be cheering through the streets. He hated that Adam and Ana
were probably watching from wherever they were.

The Final Battles were almost impossible
for civilians to avoid; even four-year-olds knew when it was Finishing Day. It
was the biggest day for the State-run television, always on a Sunday so
everyone could watch, and was also a huge boon to the gambling industry — the
legal, and illegal, ones.

Death was life, and entertainment for the
masses.

But this was his life, and his death — and
knowing his children would probably see him torn to tatters, either by zombies
or man beast, was something he couldn’t accept. That they might be rooting,
along with many others, for him to receive Darwinian Justice, cut him deep.

Jonah wasn’t guilty.

The City was guilty. From the esteemed
“one true leader” Jack Geralt to the leaders of the Inner Circle, to the
Directors to The Watchers — everyone who had played along in the charade was
guilty.

And in that sense, Jonah, who was part of
the machine for so long,
was guilty
.

He hadn’t killed his wife, but nobody
would ever know of his innocence if he didn’t make it out of The Darwin Games
alive.

He screamed, then charged at Bear. Bear
was expecting the rush and didn’t care. He moved aside, surprisingly quick, and
avoided Jonah’s blade. Not only did he avoid the machete, he managed to wrench
it from Jonah’s hand as Jonah stumbled forward.

Bear threw the machete through the bars,
where it fell 50 feet to the snow-covered field below.

Jonah fell to the Mesa floor, and Bear
laughed as if it were the first joke at the end of the world.

Bear threw his arms into the air as four
orbs circled above and around them, then hurled his axe into the corner, as if
to say he didn’t need it to defeat Jonah. Bear threw his arms up again and
waited through applause he couldn’t hear but probably felt in the cells of
every overdeveloped muscle.

Bear ran at Jonah, grabbed him roughly by
the collar, then lifted him up over his head as though he weighed nothing at
all and smashed him down hard onto the metal floor of the Mesa.

He held his arms in the air again,
screaming in victory, as if he were a real bear, waiting through the orbs’
whirring whispers of broadcast glory.

Jonah was going to die.

It shouldn't end this way, it wasn’t
fair.

A year ago everything was different.

A year ago, Jonah didn’t know, and
ignorance made everything perfect.

But that was before Jonah knew that life
was a lie, and that everything he’d ever suspected actually was, and that the
sour truth might spread farther than The Walls of City 6.

Molly was everything to him. Ana and Adam
knew it because Jonah had given them a lifetime of proof. Ultimately, truth
held no court in a world built on lies.

Not when the “truth” could be created
wholesale from false memories.

Neither of his children believed in his
innocence, and his daughter had testified against him, sending him first to
jail, and then outside The City walls where he fought the dead to stay alive.
She was probably watching and wishing him eaten.

Jonah looked up at the orbs, then back at
Bear.

This was it.

The City’s setup was finally finished.

Jonah was arrested, convicted, and
expelled from The City.

Maybe The State and City were finished
with him, but
he
wasn’t done with them.

Jonah held his roar, swallowing the
swirling tornado inside him through the extra half-second of silence that might
be all he needed to win life from death at the bloody hands of Bear.

Jonah stood up and dived down, just as
Bear realized what was happening, swatting too high through the air as Jonah
landed at the man beast’s ankles, thrusting forward with every one of his 198
pounds. He swung his right arm as he landed, around Bear’s leg and up the
length of his body, yanking the man down hard on his face.

Bear roared like the beast he was, and
the rage in his roar managed to do what Jonah’s machete couldn’t — strike fear,
or at least curiosity, into the surrounding zombies. The moaning grew louder as
their heads spun slowly and wildly around. Their stride never slowed as they
ascended the stairs on their way to the cage.

If the zombies somehow got inside the
gate, Jonah was finished. Even winning against Bear would only prolong his
death. Producers never interfered. And no way Jonah could fight off a horde
with just his hands.

But Jonah wasn’t going to die.

He would kill Bear and earn his way into
City 7, so the plans he’d been making since seven seconds after his arrest
could finally get started.

Bear finished his bellow, then ran at
Jonah, catching him before he could get away, and lifted him again, and then
threw him in a rage hard to the ground.

Pain exploded through Jonah’s back and
left shoulder. He gasped for breath and choked up blood, but his heart was
still beating.

He spit a giant gob of bloody snot from
his mouth. It landed on the Mesa floor a foot from Bear’s blood-crusted boot.
Bear grunted, then turned black eyes from Jonah to the closed gate door as the zombies
reached the cage and began to press against the door. Jonah wondered how long
the gate would hold, with the inevitable thousands of pounds pushing their dead
weight against it. Bear turned to the cage, screaming at the zombies on the
other side, either trying to intimidate them, or perhaps rile them up and
encourage them to push the cage door open.

Bear turned around, not looking
altogether surprised to see that Jonah had made his way across the cage to
retrieve Bear’s carelessly thrown axe.

Jonah held Bear’s axe with both hands,
his muscles straining from the weight and bulging from his tired biceps. Bear
laughed.

“You better swing true,” he said. “’Cause
if you miss, I’m gonna get it. And I promise: I won’t miss.”

They stared at one another, each of them
snarling. Jonah didn’t have the strength to charge. He barely had the strength
to stand without dropping the axe.

And Bear knew it.

Both men were bleeding — and the zombies
were pressing harder against the cage door, crowding the bars closest to the
door, rotten arms reaching in, swinging wildly, spurred by a hunger for flesh.

Jonah stared through the layers of
certain death and snarled. Compared to the zombies behind the bars, being torn
to bitter memory by Bear would be a blessing.

Jonah had two children and a City to
save, if not a world.

His time was now.

Jonah ran toward Bear, then swung his
gait wide at the last minute, rounded past the startled behemoth as he charged
toward the cage door. Jonah swung the axe, severing several ruined hands and
covering himself with a gallon of blood, but he struck his target — the metal
bar holding the gate closed. The lock broke and fell to the ground with a
clank.

The cage exploded open, the door slamming
Jonah back against the wall of iron bars, as a dozen zombies rushed in. They
raced past Jonah, secured by the door, which trapped him against the wall of
iron bars, and toward Bear, who was racing to the far corner of the cage,
screaming.

Fortunately, the zombies who had been on
the left side of the door weren’t still there, or Jonah would have been trapped
and they would have torn him apart. They’d raced inside with the rest of the
zombies, leaving the ramp to the cage clear. Jonah swung the cage door back
open, and grabbed the axe, which had fallen from his hands when the door burst
open. As he headed through the open door, he looked back to see that none of
the zombies was paying any attention to him. They were all in the corner — surrounding
Bear, who was pushing and fighting them as best he could.

Jonah wasn’t gonna wait to see who would
win the battle. He began to descend the ramp, sneaking one last look back.

Bear screamed as if three men were dying
inside him, then fell to his knees as a river of blood ran from beneath him.
The zombies in the cage piled on top of him like flies to a dying cow’s
asshole. Then came the sound of ripping, and Bear’s screams were choked in
gurgling blood.

Jonah looked back down the ramp to see
that he wasn’t alone. A female zombie, late to the party, was at the bottom of
the sloped ramp and headed straight toward him.

Her white eyes locked on him as her mouth
opened and teeth began to chomp in anticipation of a feast.

Jonah gripped the axe tight and headed
toward her, cautious not to fall over the edge of the ramp and take a plunge
that would kill him right after he won The Game.

As they drew closer, he realized that if
he swung the axe and missed, his momentum, and the cool wind, could take him
right off the ramp.

The zombie was closing in — 20 feet, and
then 10.

Jonah readied the axe, and as the dead
woman closed the gap between them, she shrieked.

He didn’t swing the axe, though. Instead,
he shoved the blade right at her chest, thrusting it forward to knock her off
the ramp.

As the axe struck, her arms reached out
for his, and Jonah was forced to let go of the axe. The zombie stumbled back,
slipped, and then sailed right off the ramp, screeching all the way down.