Flesh Worn Stone (10 page)

The red screen turned to the live camera feed and, once again, it showed the torso of a man sitting in a stone chair, his head cut off by the top of the camera. His hand was outstretched, his thumb level. The image wavered for a moment, cut by grain and static, and then the thumb flashed down. There was a collective gasp as the screen went blank.

The crowd milled for a few moments, looking up hopefully at the steel doors and the garbage shoot.

“I guess that wasn’t good enough,” Darius said.

“And so they, we, won’t eat,” John agreed.

“They’ll eat something,” Steven told them, pointing to where they were dragging away the corpse of the fighter who’d failed.

“I’m not ready for that,” John said, following the crowd back in. “Not yet.”

Steven waited until the crowd had left the Canyon, leaving him alone. He sat on the ground and cried.

Chapter Four

Rebecca waited in the semi-cleared spot they’d all slept in the night before, Mia sitting quietly at her side. She was braiding Mia’s long dark hair, smiling and whistling while she worked. The girl, who still didn’t speak, hummed along. It took Steven several moments to realize they were both doing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”. Her behavior around the girl was different than it had been with the boys, more girlie, more feminine. She’d been a great mother to his son’s, after their mother’s death, but this was something altogether different. The two acted as if they’d known each other for years despite it being only the span of a few days.

“Rebecca,” he said softly, sitting at her side, opposite of Mia. “I’ve been looking all over for you.”

“Mia and I went to rinse off,” she said. “And then we went to watch the Game.”

“I don’t know that it’s appropriate for a child her age to watch the Game. I don’t know if it’s appropriate for any of us to watch it,” he said, instantly feeling silly. The girl had been born in the Cave, he was sure of it. She was used to no other life besides this one.

“She has to learn, Steven.”

“Why?”

“For the day she gets her number and becomes a woman,” Rebecca replied, never making eye contact. Her tone was distant and half crazed, Steven thought, like a mad woman in a sanatorium.

“Rebecca, are you all right?” It was a stupid question. None of them were all right, not after what they’d been through, but he had to ask. He wondered if the loss of the boys was catching up with her to the point that it was driving her insane.

She looked up at him and smiled. “Of course I’m all right. Why wouldn’t I be all right? I have Mia, and that means I have everything.”

“But the boys…”

“What about them?” she asked coldly. “They’re dead.”

“Rebecca, how can you say that?” he asked, flabbergasted.

“Well you heard the gun shots the same as I did, Steven. There isn’t anything we can do about your boys being dead,” she said, and all he noticed from the tirade was her saying ‘your boys’. “But I can protect Mia here and now. If anything, Steven, the people responsible for your boy’s death are here somewhere.”

“Rebecca, they were
our
boys,” he said, lacking conviction.

“No, they were always your boys. Always, always, always. They didn’t love me like Mia does. You don’t love me like Mia does.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, trying to grasp his wife’s shoulder but she pulled away.

“I don’t care what you are, Steven.”

He didn’t know what to think about his wife’s behavior and wanted to attribute it to shock. His Rebecca wouldn’t say such horrible things. She was the strong one, the one that was always there when you needed her. He stood, looking at her sadly. She’d already gone back to braiding the girl’s hair like nothing had been said, humming “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”.

Steven wandered aimlessly, unsure of what to do, what to think. He was hungry, and his stomach screaming bloody murder pushed every other thought to the backburner. He was starving, and the smell of the cooking meat coming from Block’s camp, despite him knowing what it was, tantalized his nose. He wandered closer, where the leader was speaking.

Two of his men held the gang-raped man between them, and Block held his broken face up by a tuft of hair. “You are a failure. You failed the Game, and so you failed your people. Our people will be hungry tonight.”

“Not because of me…” the beaten man said confidently. “Because of Charlie.”

“Yes, you are correct, because of Charlie.” Block turned to the crowd. “Because our brother Charlie could not see fit to abide by the rules of the Game, we have only his body to consume this evening. We have only his flesh because he was weak.”

Block turned back to the raped man. “I wish that I were putting a mark on your head tonight, Jason. I would have liked nothing better. But instead, with your failure, I’m forced to punish you.”

“Please, Block,” the man pleaded. “I tried.”

“And failed. Put him in the Cage for one week. Let’s see if he can live on the charity of others for that long.”

Three of Block’s men dragged him back towards the rear of the cavern, where the entrance to the Cage they’d found themselves in when they arrive was. The man didn’t resist, but cried all the way.

“It’s a death sentence,” Darius said, coming up behind him. “Unless someone feeds him. And these people, right now, don’t have anything besides that.”

“Now, brothers and sisters,” Block began, “either our stew has just meat, or we dig deep, as a family, and bring what we have put back for hard times forward for the good of the Cave. I know it’s hard, and I, too, have been hungry just as you are.”

Steven watched as people began passing forward bits of fruit and vegetable, some whole, but most rotted, to the cooks who cut them up into as tiny pieces as possible and added them to the pot. Soon the boiling soup took on an appetizing aroma, sending his stomach into fits. He chided himself for allowing the cannibalistic concoction to move him so but he was as hungry as he’d ever been.

He pointed to the caldron of boiling water with the flesh of the failed opponent thrown in. There was already an orderly line forming, people with their bowls, cups, and tin cans in hand ready for the watery soup with a few chunks of meat in it. Steven wondered how far one full grown man would go in feeding the hundreds of people in the cavern. The pile of fruits and vegetables behind Block’s throne, though, went untouched, and Steven wondered why their leader didn’t contribute as he’d asked his people to do.

“His friends will take care of him,” Steven said of the Game loser, half hoping he was right. “They seem to care about each other.” He wondered who would take care of him if he were in that situation, who would look out for his wife?

“Maybe,” Darius replied. “But maybe he ends up in a pot in a couple nights. I give him three days out there, max, without help.”

His stomach was doing somersaults as he stared at the bubbling concoction, his hunger overwhelming his knowledge of the main ingredient. It took everything he could muster to step away from the line and melt back into the crowd.

* * *

Amanda walked around the shantytown, still hysterical, starving and crying.

“Ma’am,” she said to an older woman sitting next to a stalagmite with two small children. She was missing an arm and an eye and tried hard to ignore Amanda. “Please, ma’am. Can you tell me where we are? Can you tell me how to get out of here?

That produced a chuckle, not just from the old woman, but from the children as well. “Get you some marks, girl,” she said, pointing to the two on her forehead. “You need five of them. I traded one for this eye and one for this arm. God willing, I’ll get my other three before I die.”

“Granny,” the little boy said, “we aren’t supposed to talk to her yet.”

“It’s okay, Jimmy,” she said as she patted him on the head. “What are they going to do to an old woman like me?”

“They could put you in the pot,” the little girl said.

“And you could eat another day, then, couldn’t you?”

“I guess so.”

“Ma’am,” Amanda said desperately, “please help me. I’m starving.”

“Go see Block. He’s at the cauldron,” she replied, pointing in the leader’s general direction.

“I don’t want…”

“You don’t want to eat people?”

She shook her head quickly and sadly.

“You will,” the one-eyed woman laughed. “Oh trust me, child, you will.” She laughed again. “Hell, child, it ain’t bad once you get used to it.”

She held up a wooden bowl of the watery soup, a finger bobbing near the surface. “Now, I’m not so partial to fingers, but you take what you can get, you know?”

Amanda ran away from the woman, who laughed hysterically. She bumped into people who, without acknowledging her, pushed her away. She asked for help, begged for someone to give her something to eat, but no one would listen to her. She finally found herself at Block’s camp where the last of the line of Cave dwellers were being fed the remaining few scraps from the cauldrons. Amanda gawked at the liquid remains, her stomach screaming.

Block looked at her and said, “There is no more. You should have been quicker.”

She noticed that behind the cauldrons, near where his wood and bamboo throne was, there were piles of semi-rotted fruit and vegetables. “Please may I have some of that?” she asked, pointing.

“No,” he said simply without anger or malice.

“But why not? I’m starving.”

“Because the food is for three- and four-timers, me being the only four-timer, of course.”

“I don’t understand,” she said, though she wasn’t looking directly at him. Her eyes darted about like a nervous junkie.

“Of course you don’t,” he replied. “But you will.”

“Please,” she said, sliding her arms out of her sleeves and letting her blue jumpsuit fall to her waist. “I’ll do anything.”

“I’m sure you would,” Block said. “But so would most of the people in here. No, honey, I’m not going to take you for an apple. If I took you for an apple and sapped my strength, what would I do if I had to fuck someone in the show?”

She tried to look exotic, alluring, but wasn’t feeling it. “Please, Block. I’d fuck you better than anyone.”

He stepped up and took one of her pert breasts in his calloused hand, squeezing it gently like it was a tomato at the market. “And you might well do that, but not here, not now. Save it for the Game, girl.”

She pulled her jumpsuit back up, feeling humiliated by his rejection on top of everything else, and darted for the pile of food, hoping to snatch something and get away before he could move. He was lightning quick, though, and grabbed her by her blonde hair, causing her feet to fly out from under her. He held her down on the ground by her throat and leaned in very close.

“You don’t want to be labeled a thief here, girl. You really, really don’t. Now get out of here. You’re testing my patience.

She scrambled away from him, and then turned, crouching like a feral cat. “I’m going to kill you,” she told him, rage replacing her fear and hunger. “I’m going to kill everyone responsible for me being here.”

Block didn’t laugh at the threat and only nodded solemnly. “Good. Keep that,” he told her. “That’s what you’ll survive the Cave with. Now go on before I find a rule you’ve broken.”

Amanda backed away into the darkness, never taking her eyes from the man. He’d pay, along with Darius. They’d all pay.

* * *

“It’s not nearly as bad as you’d think it would be,” John said, licking the remnants of the bowl he’d found. “It tastes a bit like pork boiled for a long time. It could use some salt, if anything.”

Darius looked on curiously. He wasn’t as opposed to eating human flesh as he’d made out, and certainly not as freaked out about it as Steven. His biggest problem at the moment, staring at the people soup, was he didn’t particularly want that piece of human flesh. He looked down at his own bowl and tried to determine what portion of the poor fool from the Game he was looking at. It was a chunk of skin, with soft blonde hair and the edge of a tattoo. He hadn’t noticed the man’s tattoos, and with his luck, it was probably ass. He couldn’t help but chuckle at the thought. Here he was, in the middle of a cavern packed with cannibals, and he could possibly be about to tear into the ass cheeks of a man who’d died in the Game.

“Salt would be good. Maybe some Tony’s,” he said, referring to the classic Cajun spice in the green bottle. He stirred the soup with his finger, sipped the broth and let the warm liquid flow down his throat. “But I can dig this just like it is. Man that’s good.”         

            John looked up at him, eyebrows furrowed. “Well, I don’t know if I’d say that or not, but it’s definitely better than the hunger.”

Darius wasn’t surprised by the ease with which John had fallen into cannibalism, despite his urgent protests against it. He knew hunger and he knew what hunger did to a man. There was no more base instinct, no more purer form of survival instinct than the urge to beat the demon hunger. Darius had been hungry before, in his days before prison, and he knew from experience that if he went a long time without eating that he’d start losing muscle mass. He couldn’t have that. Muscle mass, he figured, along with general street skills, were what were going to keep him alive during the Game.

“Anything is better than hunger,” Darius agreed.

“Are you going to tell the others?”

“Why would I care?”

“I don’t know,” John answered. “I was thinking it might be awkward, but eventually, they’ll be in the line as well. I don’t guess it really matters.”

“No,” Darius said, taking a careful bite of the boiled flesh. It didn’t particularly taste like anything he could think of, though the texture was somewhat like pork. It hadn’t been boiled enough, though, and was chewy. He chewed on it for a few minutes until it was finally soft enough to swallow. The watery soup he downed in one shot and though his hunger was temporarily abated, he knew he could eat a lot more.

“Well, I don’t feel any different,” he told John.

“What do you mean?”

“I thought once I ate people I’d feel different.”

“Evil or something?”

“At least guilty,” he said, wishing he had another bowl. “Like in that movie where the soccer team has to eat its teammates to survive. I thought I’d feel like that.”