Blood Games (8 page)

It was just academic curiosity, but Ink and
Jackie always enjoyed guessing at the zombies’ pasts. Medusa had a C-section scar and a flower tattoo on her right buttock, the initials CW written in script upon two of the petals. Priapus had a few scars on his knee from an ACL repair, and Scrapper had scars from chicken pox. His parents had apparently shunned vaccines for everything. That had bitten them in the ass.

“Big day,” Ink said to Thor once everything was done and the vet had gone.
It
had
been a big day for Thor, even if he didn’t know it. Now clean, he looked magnificent. Not Samson’s level, not nearly, but still imposing. There wasn’t time for a brand to heal, so Ink would just leave him unmarked. A lot of people didn’t bother to brand anyway, or did it with henna and only for shows, so Thor would fit in with some crowd whether he had something or not. Real branding was slowly going out of vogue, because zombie fighters changed managers and no one wanted someone else’s brand on their new champion.

Ink didn’t have to be ashamed when he turned up with this zombie, and that made him want to celebrate a little.
If he told his story well enough, people would allow that Thor could have caught Samson off guard. Then Ink would look like he’d just screwed himself over with one inattentive moment, rather than someone screwing him over.

When Thor went down in the melee, Ink would buy everyone in his row a
beer from the vendors who went up and down the stands. A devastated manager wouldn’t do that. He would laugh and hoist his beer to the fallen body, toast whoever took him down in the ring and shake his head ruefully about the gobs of money they dropped on zombies! But no matter. If he was buying everyone a beer, he clearly had money to throw around.

He and the vet had forgotten to give Thor some cuts to bolster the story of a fight with Samson.
They could not look daisy fresh at the Games or everyone would know it was a lie. Almost leaping away from the stall, Ink circled over to his tack room and took out a dagger from the armory. A cut on the upper arm, a slice across the chest, another over the back of the hand would convince everyone that a mighty battle had taken place. As Thor stared up to the lights in entrancement, Ink made the cuts. Not too deep. Blood leaked down the clean flesh and Ink tended the wounds as lovingly as a devoted father. These were his children, after a fashion. No father could look upon his flesh and blood with more pride than Ink did when one of his zombies won at a competition.

When he went into the house, Nadia was in a snit because his Chinese food
that he hadn’t even wanted had gone cold on the table. Ink ignored her and finally began to answer all of the calls he had woken up to in the morning, and those that had come in over the day. The reporters were disappointed to lose the scandal on a slow news day. One zombie murdering another zombie wasn’t front-page sports news in any newspaper no matter how modest. It wasn’t worth a mention whatsoever on any page. Zombie fighting had yet to move into the mainstream of sports, and was just beginning to nibble at the edges with brief mentions of winners in articles and television segments.

They weren’t very interested in Thor’s particulars
, but they weren’t in the show circuit. Their articles had been made irrelevant by Ink’s statements. Then Ink returned calls from the mid-level managers who had been kind to him in the past, and they expressed deep sympathy for the loss. And all to charge a stupid cell phone! Some told stories in return of the second they looked away from their zombies, and what terrible thing had happened. “You can’t blame yourself,” one said. “How many times have we all looked away and nothing has happened? Tons, Ink! Tons! You can’t possibly watch them every single second. Stuff happens. It could happen to any of us. Remember Freya? You probably never heard of her, but she made Maenad look like a pussycat. Then one day when . . .”

Ink had told the story so many times by nightfall that he almost believed it.
The managers were more interested in Thor than the reporters had been, and were eager to see him at the Games. They were also relieved to know that no one was sneaking into stables and killing prize competitors. Longley nearly sobbed with relief into the phone, having spent the day tussling with a new lock for his door to protect his precious Nymph.

All wasn’t well, but it was the best
that Ink could do. He had salvaged what could be salvaged from this wreckage. Vasilov would be proud of what Ink had accomplished today, a decent zombie to give a whirl at the Games, a more than decent zombie, and a good story that moved Ink from victimhood to only unfortunate. Ink would refit Samson’s costume for Thor, see what fit and what didn’t, and Ink had done well there, too. Thor was almost the same height as Samson had been. Although he wasn’t as muscled from lack of doping, he was big. So Ink wouldn’t have to waste any money in finding a new costume. He’d tighten the seams, adjust some straps, and get this show on the road.

He let the organizers of the Games know what had happened so they could change the
program. It was a digital version only, so the substitution of Thor for Samson was no trouble at all. The bigwigs specially commissioned the few paper versions, and those were only for themselves. Many bigwigs were old and distrustful of cell phones and computers, or old and fluent in new technology but they just enjoyed paging through a physical copy of the event.

At
long last, Ink called Ricky and told him that his father had a gun again. Apoplectic at the news, Ricky promised to be over there first thing the following morning to get rid of the damn thing. All he needed was a neighbor kid climbing into his dad’s yard after a ball and getting a hole blasted through the gut.

“You’re a good man for letting me know,” Ricky said
gratefully before getting off the phone, and Ink sat on the spare room bed saddened but all right. He tried to be a good man, a good man doing his best in this rotten world, fighting as hard as he knew how, and one day he was going to emerge the winner.

“You didn’t even
ask
if I found something to
wear
,” Nadia called down the hallway.

The divorced winner
, Ink thought. One day he’d have so much money that losing half to cut her free wouldn’t ruin him. He’d hire the best lawyer, a team of the best lawyers, to make sure she didn’t get a cent more than to what she was entitled. Until then, he just had to put up with it. Slipping the phone into his pocket, he went out to the living room to see what she had wasted money on now.

****

Getting to the Games was always an undertaking, even though they didn’t have far to go. The zombies staying behind had to be fed and watered, and the hired help trained on what to do. Ink didn’t get a street kid for that. He only trusted them when he was present to make sure they were trustworthy. They would rob the house blind in the days and nights he was absent from home. The man who lived across the street had a teenaged daughter looking to pick up extra cash for her college fund, so Ink showed her what to do as she looked bored and repeated that she’d done this before for other stables. Don’t turn off the lights. Don’t play with the zombies. Don’t give them anything but meat mash and water. Don’t bring over your friends. Don’t mess around with the costumes and weapons. Blah blah blah, Mr. Delwich. He gave her half the pay up front for Chaos and Medusa’s care, and she’d get the other half when he returned and the two of them were well.

It was terribly bitter
to pack up his luggage for two weeks, like he thought he still had a chance of going to the resort in Hawaii. He really had had that chance with Samson. The huge smile on his face for the cameraman when the Games started would be forced. Nadia had put ALOHA and hibiscus stickers on his suitcase. Though Ink wanted to peel them off, he reminded himself of the image he had to present. The stickers stayed on. He would smile so widely to the camera that anyone ever to gaze upon the picture would be dazzled by it.

Everyone in contention
for the grand prize was supposed to show up in gaudy Hawaiian-vacationer clothes as well. Ink looked regretfully at his best suit and left it on the hanger to pull out blue shorts and a shirt that had parrots bursting out of palm fronds. He had never worn something so foolish in his life.

He had wanted that resort vacation.
Lusted
after it. The website itself had been glorious to behold. The winner of the Games would have a bungalow with a private lanai and unlimited mai tais any time of day or night. The vacation package came with a spa treatment, lessons on the golf course, transportation to the best restaurants, and all sorts of amenities including an item called chilled towels. He didn’t know why one would chill a towel, or exactly how, but he’d wanted one all the same. It sounded so luxurious. That had been something he’d been meaning to type into a search engine, but now the information was just going to torture him so he didn’t. Two weeks of idleness in a paradise, capped off with a million big ones to spend at the end of it. Perfection. Whoever had stolen that dream from Ink could rot in hell.

Thor and Scrapper were loaded up into the trailer without fuss
, separated by bars in case of mishap. Ink spent an hour in the attached dressing room to go down his three-page checklist. Brushes. Soaps. Costumes. Weapons. Scissors. Lotions. The Games weren’t in some out-of-the-way place where he couldn’t pick up most of these things at stores, but that was a waste of money that Ink wouldn’t tolerate. His next zombie from Vasilov wasn’t going to come cheap.

On the drive, the radio played a commercial for
Ride the Wind
. Ink had never heard of this show until now, and now he was hearing about it all the time. Frat boys yelled
chug chug chug
as the narrator invited everyone to watch Markie get a canyon fire in the most outrageous challenge yet. A scholarly voice announced that a canyon fire was when it went wrong lighting farts and flame rippled up the ass crack. Ink listened in amazement as a long, rattling fart came through the speakers while masculine voices cheered and hooted. Then a boy howled in pain as fire crackled. Ink had been throwing himself into business at that age; other boys were holding lighters to their friends’ buttocks and going on panty raids. No drive. No ambition. The commercial ended with the wail of a siren and canned audience laughter.

“That sounds
really stupid,” Nadia commented. It was a miracle! They agreed on something. There had been a reason he liked her once.

He should have been arriving at the Games in nerves and triumph with
his unbeatable Samson. He came to them sadly and joined the waiting line of cars, trucks, and trailers getting pointed to the correct lot to park. Although the Games didn’t start until tomorrow morning, hardcore audience members showed up early to guarantee a parking spot and admission. They’d sleep in their cars tonight, or in the only motel within walking distance. Managers either took rooms there, slept in their trucks or trailers or campers, or crashed on a cot beside the underground stalls where the zombies would be housed for the duration of the Games. Until he got married, Ink had selected the cot option for events that lasted over a day. After his marriage, he had to get the motel room. But Nadia would have it all to herself. He was staying in the giant stables, not to protect two zombies he didn’t care about but because that was a place you made connections.

Ink wanted to connect with Adolfo.
He fancied that he would be able to read the guy’s guilt in how he greeted Ink. The bigwigs didn’t sleep on cots in the stables, they had lesser people to do that for them, so Ink would have to find some other opportunity to run into Constanzo.

Protestors were five-deep on the sidewalk outside the chain-link fence to the parking lots, the stadium rising high beyond those.
Security guards had set up a rope between streetlights to keep the people away from the vehicles. Broken shells were everywhere from hurled eggs. No fresh ones came over; they had run out. Now they were just waving signs and screaming. “Murderers! Murderers!” “Zombie rights are human rights!” “Fuck you!” “Stop abusing the sick!” “Zombies are our brothers!”

Sure.
They were all brothers. They were all brothers holding hands in friendship and love until the lights went out. Ink had no patience for such idiocy, and the sight of a spilled paint can against the curb pissed him off. Glowering, he searched the angry faces for that woman from long ago who had splattered Ink and Gore Fest. Several security guards were keeping an eye on things, and three police cars were parked across the street.

The line of vehicles moved at a fair clip
past the protestors and soon Ink was pulling up to a woman in a reflective vest. A baton was in her hand. Pointing it to them as Ink rolled down the window, she called, “Vendor, manager, or guest?”

“Manager,” Ink said.

“Parking lot C.” She pointed to the left, where another parking assistant waved them on.

“I hope no one else has the same costume as Scrapper,” Nadia said after they had parked in a line of trucks and trailers.
She looked out the window suspiciously as someone led a young zombie boy down the lit walkway. Each row of parking spaces emptied into one of those dazzling sidewalks that ran all the way to the ramp going down to the stables. The Games didn’t let protestors hang out around the zombie walkways. This was private property. They could scream as much as they wanted from the other side of the fence, which was at such a distance from Parking Lot C that their howls of outrage were muted to a single, wordless note. Ink wondered what they would say if they could see his extensive checklist. His zombies had more brushes and combs and medications than those stupid people had themselves. Even spearmint-scented floss. Would that their lives were so lucky as to be a zombie of Delwich Stables.