Flesh Worn Stone Read online

  He stood slowly, smiling, and dragged the helpless man up with him. When the smaller guy kicked out, Darius head butted him hard, knocking him out. He then let go of one wrist and bent to pick up an ankle. His arms trembled as he knelt down, one knee out, and raised the man above his head. Just as quickly, he brought him down on his knee, instantly snapping his back.

  All and all it had taken Darius less than two minutes to kill three people.

  * * *

  Steven didn’t catch Darius’ fight as it was over before he got a chance to turn away from his erstwhile adoring fans. When he did manage to turn around, Darius was standing with three dead bodies around him, looking like he’d hardly broken a sweat. The digital billboard lit up, going to the live view of the hand, thumb outstretched. There was absolutely no waiver in it, and it went up right away, the crowd cheering as the rusty steel doors set high up in the canyon walls parted and the stream of garbage rolled down the chute.

  Steven was stunned by what he’d done. He’d killed a man so he could eat, plain and simple. He’d taken another human being’s life for food, and that was something he was going to have to live with for the rest of his life.

  Rebecca took him by the arm and dragged him towards the pile of garbage. “Come on, there’s extra. We can get enough food for a couple days,” she told him, excitement in her voice like a kid at Christmas.

  Mia was excited as well, hopping in place but still not saying anything. He wondered if the child even had the ability to talk.

  The crowd piled on the heap of garbage with abandon, laughing and frolicking in the half-rotten vegetables, molded chunks of bread, and plastic and paper garbage. It was like a festival, and Steven, still numb from his fight, watched his wife dive right in like she’d been doing it for years. Seagulls fought to get in as well, and a few intrepid Cave dwellers would occasionally catch the birds and snap their necks. Steven figured between the meat of the losers, the birds, and the garbage, the Cave would eat well for days. He was even sure there would be enough garbage for him not to have to eat human flesh.

  For now, anyway.

  “You did well.”

  Steven turned to see an older man with all his teeth and limbs, smiling at him, which was surprisingly rare for the people in the Cave. He was a tall man with a hawkish, narrow face. Long hair so gray it was white fell to the middle of his back, and he wore a purple bathrobe, long faded and repaired often, that gave him the look of a hippie holy man. He took Steven’s hand and shook.

  “Ah…hi.”

  “Hello, Steven. My name is Jackson.”

  “How did you know my name?”

  The old man laughed. “People hear everything here, and I hear everything they hear. Congratulations on your victory, Steven. It is unique for someone so new to the Cave to participate in the game, much less two of you.”

  “Thanks, I guess,” Steven said, uncomfortable with being congratulated on killing another man.

  “It’s something to be proud of here.”

  He slowly realized that he was actually talking to someone from the Cave that he hadn’t arrive with. It was like the silent treatment he’d received since he’d been here had melted away with his victory. “Do you know where here is?”

  “No, I don’t, and besides those in the Castle and those who bring people such as yourself here, I don’t know that anyone really knows.”

  “There has to be some clue in all that,” he said, pointing to the people-covered pile of trash.

  “Oh, there is,” Jackson told him, bending and picking up a crumpled paper cup and then handing it to Steven.

  He opened it and saw the Carnival Cruise Lines logo.

  “There are half a dozen different cruise lines represented in that mess, each, as far as I know, from all over the world. We know that we are somewhere near the equator, and some, who discuss this sort of thing, think that we are near Mexico, possibly one of the large resort towns. And, considering the ship and the plaque, that’s more than likely correct.”

  “This is all garbage from cruise lines?”

  “It would seem so, yes.”

  “How long have you been here?” Steven asked, sensing that the man was willing to talk.

  “I guess that would depend on how old I am,” Jackson told him, “which I just don’t know for sure.”

  “You were born here?”

  “Indeed. This canyon is all I’ve ever known, and, I fear, all I ever will know.”

  “And you don’t know how old you are?” Steven said, thinking what a horribly sad thing that was.

  “No, as you can see, there’s no good way of tracking the seasons here. I suspect I’m in my sixties, but I can’t know for sure. The Game and the Cave, though, are much, much older.”

  “That ship…”

  Jackson nodded. “It’s an old ship, no doubt, and Spanish in origin, though those origins, or the rumors of them, are somewhat murky at best.”

  “It is Spanish, from around the time of Cortez,” Steven told him.

  “You have a knowledge of old ships?”

  “Just in passing, and only in relation to the history of the Gulf Coast area. Besides that, though, there’s the date outside in the Cage.”

  “Ah, yeas, Renacimiento o Muerte. Rebirth or death, our founding fathers’ motto.”

  “If the date is right,” Steven said, “it would put them here around the time of Cortez conquering the Aztec.”

  “Indeed, and so goes the legend.”

  “They were Cortez’s men?”

  “So the legend says. They were supposedly dissenters, a few who chose not to participate in the slaughter of the Aztecs, sent here as punishment for disobeying the Church, forced to fight for their very existence. Another version of the legend has them as pirates, lighting out with some of Cortez’s captured gold. No one knows for sure, but we do know that 1521 is the earliest record of the Game, and that it has been going on steadily since, in one form or another.”

  “You’ve seen many Games, then.”

  “Yes, more than I care to remember.”

  There was sadness in the old man’s blue eyes that tore at Steven’s heart. “I can only imagine. You don’t have any marks,” he said, nodding towards Jackson’s forehead. “You’ve never participated.”

  He rolled up the sleeve on his arm. “I don’t have a number, so there’s no way for me to participate in the Game. Sometimes I wish that I did, though, because the stories I hear from people like you are intriguing. To know that there is something besides living off garbage and the flesh of your fellow man…I can’t begin to imagine that.”

  “Who runs it all? Who has managed to keep this running for 500 years?”

  Jackson shrugged and pointed up to the Castle. “Many of the people who are there, watching over us and directing the Game, are from the Game. They say that once a man has conquered five Games, he is different, a God among men, unafraid of anything, and immortal. Hogwash, I know, but the participants who have won keep the Game going for the next generation. We never see them, but hear of them through the stories of those who have arrived, like you. I assumed you were kidnapped and brought here against your will?”

  “Yes,” Steven said solemnly, “with my wife. My…” It was still hard to talk about it. “My sons were murdered.”

  “I am sorry,” Jackson said compassionately, “but that isn’t unusual for new arrivals. It seems that the Castle recruits people who have no family ties, or very few, at least. I’m assuming your parents are dead and you probably have no brothers and sisters to speak of?”

  “I have one uncle I haven’t seen in ten years,” Steven agreed. “But other than that…no. No family to speak of.”

  “And they eliminated the other ties you had when they murdered your children. Bloodthirsty bastards.”

  “What’s to stop someone who escapes from exposing this place? I can’t believe that in 500 years there hasn’t been an attempt.”

  “No,” Jackson said. “No one has ever escaped wi
thout winning five games, to my knowledge. As for why those who do win don’t expose the Game…I have no idea. Maybe what they say about winning, that it somehow changes you, is true. I just don’t know. I can say, though, that I’ve dreamt of just that. I’ve dreamt of your Navy coming ashore and taking us all away. The idea is intriguing, yet the scariest thing I have ever thought of.”

  “The idea has to be as strange to you as this place is to me,” Steven said, watching as Rebecca and Mia filled a large black garbage sack with half-rotted food. It was nice to have a somewhat normal conversation with someone, just a calm exploration of the facts instead of a debate on life and death and where the next meal was coming from.

  “We are both strangers in strange lands,” Jackson said, smiling. “Anyway, I just wanted to say hello and congratulate you on your victory. I’m sure we will get plenty of opportunities to visit in the future.”

  “Thanks,” Steven said, watching as the man made his way up the line of people wallowing in the filth. He’d stop and talk to individuals, a hand on the shoulder, a smile on his face, and in return they’d give him some small part of what they had gathered. They looked at him with the reverence he’d seen reserved for priests and other holy men.

  “He’s a nice man,” Rebecca told him, struggling to carry their haul. “And he’s been here a very long time.”

  “How do you know these things, Rebecca?”

  “I listen to people. You should to.”

  “Yes,” he said, helping her with the sack, his mouth salivating at the site of all the half-eaten food. “I really should. But now I’m going to go see that vet about this nose.”

  “He won’t do anything for you,” she told him.

  “How do you know that?”

  “I just know.”

  * * *

  He found the doctor at his makeshift clinic, near where the ghostly pirate ship hung in the sky. To call the collection of wooden boxes and curtains made from plastic garbage bags and newspapers a clinic was laughable at best, but the crudely painted sign, hanging above the entrance, proclaimed it just that. It red ‘Clinic’ and looked as if it had been scrawled by a stoned teenager.

  His nose was throbbing and, as he pushed through the curtains, he was glad he couldn’t smell anything for the moment. There were two corpses inside on makeshift stretchers, both black and bloated with flies swarming around them. Several other people sat on benches made from driftwood and wooden debris, each looking as if they were ready to join the dead. They were coughing and sweating profusely, gripped by fever.

  “What do you want?” the vet asked, coming out of the rear of the clinic between two curtains, his bloodstained leather coat even bloodier.

  “Hey, Mr. Nixon,” Steven began, unsure of how to approach a crazy man. “I was just in a Game and…”

  “Good for you,” the vet interrupted. “But this week I’m Marlon Brando.”

  “Okay…Mr. Brando…I was just in a Game.”

  “You were just in a Game,” he interrupted again, annoyed. “And you broke your nose. You thought, since you were finally someone, that you’d come here and I’d fix that ugly excuse for a nose, right?”

  “Well, I was hoping you’d do something, yeah,” Steven agreed.

  “And you thought you’d just waltz right in, huh? Get seen right away, or something like that?”

  “You’re the doctor, right?”

  “I’m the only thing that passes for one here, yeah, but this isn’t the Mayo clinic. Your nose isn’t serious, and even if it was, there’s a wait.”

  “But I won a Game…”

  “And so did they,” he said, pointing to the three people sitting on the bench who were doing their utmost to ignore the exchange. “Hank there has had that case of malaria so long he ought to be dead from it by now. Isn’t that right, Hank?”

  The older man had two vertical slashes on his forehead, a sign of winning two games, and nodded in agreement. “Yes, sir.”

  “And he didn’t waltz right in. Well, he did, but only to get on that list,” the vet said, pointing to a clipboard hanging by the entrance. “And then he waited six months…”

  “Eight,” Hank interrupted.

  “Eight months to be seen. I still can’t believe you’re alive, Hank. I wish I could have seen you sooner. We might have been able to do something before you went and ruined your meat.”

  The big man shrugged, a look of What can you do? across his face, and it took several seconds before Steven realized what the vet was talking about. Since the man’s condition had progressed so far, his body was useless for consumption by the community. If they ate him, like the black corpses on the table, they’d probably infect the entire Cave.

  “Tell you what,” the vet started. “You can get on the list or you can just reset your nose yourself. If you wait until I can get to it, I’ll have to re-break it and start over. Or you can just leave it alone. I always thought a twisted up, gnarled nose gave a man’s face a certain amount of character.”

  “I…okay.” Steven just didn’t know what to say.

  “Now get the hell out of here before you catch something and ruin your meat too.”

  * * *

  The ceremony following the game had all the air of a football team winning the Super Bowl. There was music and dancing, and the cauldrons were all going into overdrive, their contents rich with noodles, vegetables, and chunks of meat both from the garbage and from the four dead bodies that were lined up behind Block’s throne. The meat was already starting to rot, and flies circled around like angry buzzards. They’d have to eat it quickly or it would go bad. Block approached him through the crowd.

  “Welcome to the Cave,” he told him kindly, hand outstretched.

  “Can you guys not talk to us before we win a game?” Steven asked, while ignoring the proffered hand and with no small amount of disgust. “It might have been nice for someone to say hi, hello, or fuck you when we got here.”

  “It is our way, but it not necessarily because you won the Game that I talk to you. Once a person has been here a year or more, even without winning the Game, they are integrated into the community,” Block told him. “Also, if you lose a Game, yet live, you are also integrated.”

  “Though punished like the man out in the Cage.”

  “Something like that. Look, I don’t make the rules, I just play by them.”

  “Who does make the rules?” Steven asked, enraged. “I’d like to see them.”

  “Then win four more Games and you can go to the Castle. But none of that matters right now. I just need to know your and your friend’s names.”

  “You don’t already?”

  “Quite frankly, no. I try not to pay attention to those I think are going to fail and eventually fill the pot. It saves on heartache and whatnot if I don’t attach emotion to your eventual demise.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Steven said, his anger fading. He didn’t think it was the big Samoan’s fault that he was here, nor was the man responsible for the rules of the Cave. If Jackson and his apparent age were any indication, along with the graffiti on the entrance to the Cave, this place had been around for a long, long time. “My name is Steven. The big black man is Darius.”

  “Steven and Darius,” Block replied, rolling the names around on his tongue as if he were tasting a fine wine. “Okay, I have it. You’ll come to the stage when I call you.” It was an order, not a request, and Steven agreed, though he wasn’t looking forward to the scarring process required to put the mark on his head. Was there a chance of getting four more to go with it? he thought. And if so, would he be able to take Rebecca home with him?

  Steven nodded in agreement and stepped away from the big man as he turned to the crowd.

  “Brothers and sisters,” Block began, his men whistling for quiet and attention, “this morning we celebrate not only a successful Game, but the start down the path of rebirth for two of our new brothers. We welcome Darius and Steven to the Cave, both of which defeated
our brothers and sisters.” He pointed to the bodies behind him. “And because of the sacrifices of Helen, Jacob, Martin, and Lee, we will eat well for days to come. The Game has been good to us.”

  The crowd cheered and people slapped Steven and Darius on the back, cheering for both of them.

  “Come forward, Steven,” Block bellowed to be heard over the crowd.

  Steven stepped up hesitantly, but Block was quick, slashing down on his forehead before he got the chance to be scared. The cut was quick and neat, but it stung like hell, reminding him of his other bruises, abrasions, and cuts, along with his broken nose. He figured that if he lived through the infections, he was bound to have a fighting chance at another Game.