Flare (38 page)

Cain’s guards threw hunks of raw meat in the ring and then released twenty more rats. The rats made a beeline for the meat, but they focused only on the meat and tried desperately to pull it back to the darkness. Zeke knew rats and knew that they hated open spaces.

They could throw a thousand of these vermin in the ring and it would be just as futile. Rats don’t value fighting. They value hiding.

The woman picked up the largest hunk of meat and gave it to the man. He threw it in a high arc over the cage and it landed on an audience member’s head. The crowd bellowed and the rats squealed before running into the audience towards the thrown meat.

The crowd started to boo precipitously, and there was a
thunk
as an arrow landed in the man’s leg. There was another
thunk
as another arrow landed in his chest, and then he crouched down to pick up his riot shield before a third arrow hit it. The girl crouched behind him, and Zeke saw that the man was unhurt. The arrows had penetrated his armor and nothing else.

Cain came up to the cage and put his hands up for the crowd to be silent.

“I would like to remind you two,” said Cain, “that your task is to
kill
one hundred rats. You are not to survive them, you are to
kill
them. If you continue this behavior, our guards won’t be so careful with the next set of arrows. Do you hear me?”

The man and the woman both nodded, and the test resumed.

/***/

The woman turned out to be an expert rat-killer. The guards threw more raw meat in the pit and the big man would hover on the outer periphery of their circle while she would jump in and stun an unsuspecting rat with the baton before twisting its neck and throwing it in a far corner. The rats were wary of the open space, and became warier with each one of their brethren killed, but they had been so starved that they couldn’t resist trying to grab a bit of the meat first.

It took her the better part of an hour to get all the required kills. By the end the rats were hard to catch, and though they would still make a beeline for the meat, they would no longer stay. It was as if they were telling each other a cat was on the prowl, but their hunger was still a slightly more powerful force.

As soon as they hit the meat she would pounce, hitting four or five with a baton, and then returning to end them off later. The other creatures were unfazed by this, and would often feast on the meat while perched on one of their unconscious cohorts. The woman wouldn’t rest though, and kept sneaking until she could pounce again. She struck and struck and ended them, one by one. Her pile grew larger and larger.

They released more rats and she continued to kill them, each one more clever than the last. After an hour the pile grew into a red-gray mass of flesh, fur and gristle. They released one more rat, and she killed it and threw it on the pile. They released no more, and after a minute she looked out to the audience and found Cain.

“I guess that’s it, then,” she said. “A hundred.”

“Ninety-seven,” said Cain.

“Send more.”

“We already did,” said Cain. “And you let them slip through your fingers. Any last statements before the archers come?”

The big man looked at her, unsure of what to do next. She showed no distress in response, and stretched up to whisper words into her partner’s ear. The big man nodded in understanding, and afterwards she looked at Cain.

“Give me one more minute,” she said.

Cain agreed and she walked over to the pile of dead rats and dug through them. She found one to her liking and pulled it out. She bit into its flesh and then exposed it to the audience.

“Five at its breast and ten in the womb,” she said. “More than a hundred. We passed.”

Cain paused for a moment before furrowing his brow.

“Indeed you have,” he said.

The crowd erupted in applause and laughter, with crude jokes why they wouldn’t want to meet that woman in bed. The woman chewed the meat in her mouth without smiling, and then spat before chewing some more.

Zeke wondered what it would like to be a rat, so disposable that you could be chewed on by another before you were even born, and only as a matter of sport. Zeke wondered if a higher power was looking at humanity the same way now, as rats to be hunted and then spat out before being quickly forgotten.

“Bring on the next test,” said the woman before expelling the last bits of rat flesh. “Bring it on, and we’ll pass that too.”

/***/

They next sent a rabid dog for them to fight, and it got ugly quickly. It was some sort of bull mastiff, but it was too wild to attack them, and instead rolled on the ground in various states of seizure. It gnashed its teeth and lunged at them a few times, but it was too far gone to pose a real threat. The woman distracted it with a noise and the man jumped on it, clubbing it with a baton strapped to his belt. The crowd booed after the creature was done, and the woman yelled words back at them. One bearded audience member in particular was screaming harsh words at the woman, insulting both her character and looks, and this caused his seatmates great delight. They laughed and drank, and laughed and drank some more as he yelled at her, claiming that she was no better than the rats she ate, and he then proceed to list all the unspeakable things he was going to do to her as soon as she got out of the cage.

His seatmates howled, egging him on until he was in a fury, spitting words and saliva at the woman, words so vile that they still resonated through a room in which a hundred rats and a man had just been murdered. The woman shrugged the insults off without a second thought, but her partner was listening intently to the man. Though her partner’s face was shielded, his massive arms started to shake and he seemed to be getting angry.

The crowd started to cheer the bearded taunter, and the noise and the alcohol prodded him to get closer to the cage and deride the girl with new energy. Blinded by his own words, he didn’t see her partner sneak up to the cage until it was too late. The big man reached through a crack between two connected pieces of the makeshift fencing and grabbed the yelling man, yanking him towards the fighting pit as if he were a child.

The man shrieked and cried, but his friends refused to help, choosing only to continue their laughter. The big man pulled him in through the space between the cage pieces, and soon the yelling man was dragged toward the arena. He begged his friends to help him, but they wouldn’t respond, and many of them pushed him forward instead.

The taunter was eventually pulled all the way into the fighting pit, much to the delight of the crowd. The big man let him go and he drunkenly fell to the ground and then woozily arose and stumbled about. He finally grasped the dire nature of his current predicament and attempted to escape the cage, but his friends had closed the space between the makeshift walls. He then tried to climb the fencing, but that route was no use either. He could grab hold of the thin wires to climb, but when he did make progress, the metal sagged inwards until he grazed the ground. After the third attempt the yelling man fell to the ground, and the big man kicked him in the midsection. The small man got up and faced him, getting into a clumsy fighting stance while the woman twirled her baton.

The crowd cheered, and Zeke shuddered in disgust. He knew that the small man had done bad things, but he didn’t deserve this fate. This drunken man was no match for the woman, let alone her brutishly large partner. The taunter was about to die and the crowd loved it, most of all his former comrades that had originally egged him on.

“You’re requested above,” said a whispered voice from behind Zeke.

Zeke looked up and saw that it was Lilith, but she looked different. She was draped in a robe, and though she wasn’t completely stripped of her sexuality, it was clear that she wasn’t there for seduction.

“Our leader wants to meet you,” she said. “Please follow me.”

/***/

By the time Zeke entered the cabin in the floor above, the yelling man had nearly been beaten to death. Lilith had led him up a set of makeshift stairs into another gutted room that was lit by candles. There was also a window from the original ship still intact, and it pointed down towards the fighting pit, showing everything but cutting out the sound. Zeke saw that the small man was now on the ground, pounded to a bloody pulp. Zeke also saw that the pair had a new foe, a muscular man who held two pigs on a leash. One of the pigs was small and one was large, but both were so aggressive that the pair circled them with caution, waiting for their next move.

“It’s a shame, ain’t it?” asked a voice behind Zeke.

Zeke turned around and saw a large man, perhaps equal in height to Zeke but twice as broad. He wasn’t as dark as Zeke yet still quite black, and his beard was just as thick. His head was shaved and he was wearing sunglasses even though the candles barely lit the room.

Zeke noticed that Delilah was sitting close by, along with Lilith who had brought him there and the scarred girl who had been part of the performance on stage. They were all clothed and sipping wine, not looking like they were in the mood for sex, but quite relaxed. There were two open bottles nearby, and the bald man nodded at Delilah to bring out a glass for Zeke. She poured red wine into the glass and offered it to Zeke, but he refused.

“You should drink it, brother,” said the man. “This ain’t stuff we make ourselves. This is real wine. Nothin’ fancy, just a table merlot, but there ain’t much of it left nowadays, so it might as well be
Dom Perignon
, ya’ feel me?”

Zeke still refused.

“All right, I heard you ain’t one to give in,” the man said to Zeke. “Will you have a seat at least?”

Zeke hesitated.

“I ain’t here to trick you, brother,” said the man. “You met Delilah and Lilith already, and this is
Jael
. They ain’t gonna seduce you, ’cause I know you don’t want that.”

The man grinned, and his teeth were perfectly white. There was something charismatic about him that engendered
trust
. Zeke didn’t trust him at all, but he could sense that the man was not without his charms. Delilah brought out a chair, and Zeke decided to sit.

“Glad to be with you, my brother,” said the man. “They call me
Legion
.”

/***/

The big man lit a cigar from his pocket and watched the fight begin. The crowd was going crazy because the smaller pig was gnawing on the beaten audience member’s quivering body. The creature’s master was trying to yank it away, but the pig wouldn’t let go. The crowd squealed with delight at this, and many of the members had resumed fornicating.

“This here’s some sick shit, ain’t it, brother?” asked Legion as he took the first puff from his cigar.

Zeke didn’t respond.

“Don’t worry ’bout hurtin’ my feelings,” said Legion. “These are my people, but by any measure, what you see below is some sick shit. But look at me, brother …”

Legion came up close to Zeke, and his expression seemed genuine.

“You know as well as I do that this ain’t
that
crazy,” whispered Legion. “It’s sick, but it ain’t unprecedented, ya’ feel me? Every time you push humanity hard enough, a mess like this gon’ happen. You know it to be true too, don’t you?”

Zeke looked away, but Legion’s gaze still burnt through him.

“And that’s my question to you, brother. How come
every single time
somethin’ goes wrong, we descend into depravity? I’m not talkin’ about a serial killer who hears voices, I’m talkin’ ’bout
societal
abomination,
organized
degeneracy, ya’ get me? Push the ignorant hard enough and it turns into an African civil war, with limbs chopped off and every woman in the country gang-raped a hundred times. Push
educated
people hard enough and you get the Nazis, killin’ off God’s chosen in an organized fashion, German guards with master’s degrees cookin’ up they fellow citizens after takin’ out the gold fillings from they teeth. Asians, Russians, they all got the same story somewhere in they past, and so do everyone else.”

Legion paused and looked Zeke in the eye.

“Push
anyone
hard enough,” said Legion. “Any person, any group, any country and any culture … and they end up doing some wicked stuff, no exceptions. Take the most civilized people in the world, put the right conditions on ’em, and they gonna be raping, torturing and cannibalizing, every time. If they somehow manage to keep they dignity and die before they go crazy, then they
churren
’ll take they place, and be
twice
as crazy to boot.”

Legion took a sip of his wine. He looked down through the plate glass window and saw the couple struggling with the man and the pigs. Part of the big man’s armor had been torn off by one of the pigs’ bites, and the girl found her strategy to hide and attack wasn’t quite effective against the larger pig, which would just wait until she came from behind her partner’s legs and then lunge at her.

“But that’s just the way it is, and
what happens
ain’t my question,” said Legion. “My question is,
why
?
Why
do we do this?”