The noise was stifling. It somehow carried massive weight, and it pressed him down. The jeers and shouts and clamouring of hundreds of voices all rolled into one. Not a single tangible word, just madness and noise.
The heat was close to unbearable. The hot ceiling lights metres and metres above him somehow managed to boil his scalp, their shafts of light piercing the smoke and fumes swirling around the ceiling.
Drums of fire dotted around the arena. In the centre, a huge bonfire licked the ceiling with burning tongues of flame. Piles of jagged rubble, the burnt shells of old cars and trucks, were scattered here and there, remnants of Trials gone by. On the cold concrete floor, splatters of blood led a trail to dried puddles of old deaths.
He felt sick. His mouth was dry again, and he toyed with the idea that some vomit in his throat might be pleasant. A cold bead of sweat trickled on his neck. It snuck past the collar of his tatty shirt, and he felt it tickle his chest. He shuffled his feet in the sawdust, then stepped forwards onto an upturned crate.
“Gladiators!”
The voice was powerful, silky and rhythmic with a long drawl. The silence was instant. He looked up at Arnero. The second-most terrifying person he’d ever encountered. Beautiful in every way but the way that mattered. He caught her eye for a second and winced as she flashed the daggers in her mouth at him. He looked away.
“The Trials are to the death. There will be one winner. There will be no surrender. To the victor go the spoils, and tonight I have a special prize for one of you! Along with your Croc, a sample of a new drug, something you have all been waiting for…an 'up' to lift you from your 'downs,' a beacon of hope when the withdrawals are unbearable…the next generation of crack cocaine!”
Thunderous noise filled the room – stamping feet, clapping hands, and exuberant cheers. The crowd subsided, replaced by a foreboding drum beat, thumping in time with his heartbeat.
He scanned the huge circle of nineteen Crocheads standing as he was in a ring around the expanse of the arena. They were hungry; their eyes didn’t lie as his lied. They were ready to die, not like he was “ready” to die. He was ready to say he was ready to die, but he wasn’t. He wanted to save Zuri and to escape. To live and to be happy, if he could discover what happiness was.
All around him, lips were licked, teeth were bared, and fists were clenched. So loud. Stifling. He tugged at his collar. What he would give for Ansell to push to the front of the crowd right now and save him. He looked at Roger, his bright eyes staring back from the masses of people, his face grim.
An air horn erupted over the crowd. The nineteen contenders burst from their upturned crates, and they descended on the arena in a whirlwind of sawdust. Jude remained on the crate, his eyes locked to Roger, his legs locked to his feet, and his feet locked to the crate. He was frozen to the spot, trying to decipher what Roger was mouthing.
Run. Run! Shit! He stepped from the crate and tried to sprint, but his legs wouldn’t oblige. They jellied him to the floor. He crawled back to his feet and ran a few steps, falling behind the rusty shell of a truck.
Shit. He didn’t get a bike, he remembered, as engines blared loudly around him. Roger said to get a bike straight away and he hadn’t. Screams of anguish filled the air; death and madness had commenced. He crawled under the truck, his heart thumping in his chest and trying to burst out. He could see the centre of the arena. A bike whizzed past, then another in chase. Two Crocheads rolled in the dust next to the mighty bonfire. Another staggered about, a chisel jutting from her back. A Crochead with one arm and a manic face flew through the air feet first and cannoned her into the flames. Jude winced.
He was ripped from his hiding place, his fingers scrabbling at the dusty crags in the floor, trying in vain to stop him sliding out into the open. He rolled to his back to see a Crochead standing over him hammer in hand. He scrambled back to a bin lid and grabbed it, holding it over his head. As the hammer punched through, Jude snatched it and pulled. The weight of the Crochead came with it, and they rolled in a mad scrap.
His hands were sweaty but he clung tight to the hammer. The Crochead hissed and growled as he tried to get at his neck with his teeth. He headbutted him hard in the mouth, the rotting teeth splintering and cracking. The howl from the Crochead cut through the bedlam. Jude yanked the hammer clear and thundered it into the Crochead’s skull. The Crochead spasmed, and sticky orange liquid trickled from his ears until the writhing finally stopped.
A rapturous cheer erupted from the crowd closest to the kill, thundering claps and stamping feet carrying on the hot air.
Jude swiped his forehead. Teeth fell to the ground and blood trickled over his eyes. Adrenaline pulsing through him now, he dashed across the arena and threw himself behind a huge pile of rubble. He came up in a roll behind a woman and cannoned the hammer into the back of her head to another massive cheer. He dropped and backed up into the rubble and scanned for weapons. There should be pistols hidden, Roger had said so. He found nothing, save a length of rebar which he clasped tightly in his free hand. How many contenders left?
He could hear engines. A Trial bike rattled past him, kicking dust into his eyes, another in chase. He spat dust to the floor and pushed his fingers into his eyes, wiping blood and dust and smearing it down his cheeks like war paint.
A gunshot! He poked his head around the rubble to see the bikes blasting towards him once more. The first was shrouded in fumes, and the Crochead riding the one behind it was firing desperate shots. The metallic cracks rang out as they pierced the tank.
The first bike skidded past him, the back tyre flat and wobbling as it slowed to a stop. He sank back to the rubble, and he knew the gunman would fly past next. He jumped to his feet but slipped in blood and staggered into the bike’s path.
The Crochead braked hard and swerved, and his foot touched down as the bike snaked through the dust towards Jude. He dropped and rolled, and as he rose to his knee, he thrust the rebar through the spokes of the bike’s back wheel. A dramatic gasp sounded from the baying crowd as the bike kicked and launched the Crochead metres into the air. He hung there for an age, twisting and spinning until he screamed to his death on a pile of burning tyres.
The Crochead on the first bike had abandoned it. The back tyre was beyond use. They locked eyes. The Crochead glanced to the left, then glanced a second time. Jude followed his eyes to the pistol on the floor.
He launched the hammer at the man, but it whizzed past his head. They dove for the pistol in unison, scrambling for it in wild desperation. Jude’s grip closed on the handle, but he felt it drag away as the spindly fingers of the Crochead clawed the barrel. Spit and blood and fear in the air, they rolled around, pulling and vying for control.
Stolen novel; please report.
Jude cracked a fist into the Crochead’s cheek, but the man didn’t flinch. He pushed and twisted, forcing the barrel towards Jude’s face. Sweat in his eyes stung him, the metallic tinge of blood sickly in his mouth. Panic coursed through him as the black hole at the end of the barrel closed on his forehead. His arms were so tired. He couldn’t die, not now, not like this. His death meant death for Zuri, and that wasn’t possible.
He hawked and spat. Thick blood spattered out into the face of the Crochead, jarring him from his desperate grappling. Jude wrenched the barrel up and over his head as he lunged at the man, sinking his teeth into his nose. Like an animal, he chewed and gnawed and ripped at flesh and bone, then spat it to the dust. The screams were silent on the ghoulish, blood-drenched face of the Crochead. The screams of the crowd shook the shanty to the core as the Crochead’s hands released the gun to clasp at his face. Seconds later, a bullet hole ripped through them into his skull.
Jude staggered, bone-weary and blood-drenched. He tripped on heavy legs and stumbled into the gnarly carcass of an old trailer, and he leant on it as he checked the gun. Three shots left. But how many contenders?
He scanned the arena. Three Crocheads pummelled each other by the huge fire, two on top of a rusted old bus scrabbling for control of a cleaver, one crawling through a puddle of blood towards a motorbike. The engine was ticking and growling as it should, and the tyres were miraculously still in tact. He forced himself across the arena towards the bike, and not breaking stride, he passed the crawling man.
Then, out of nowhere, he felt fire in his leg. He spun and dropped his chin down at the man holding the handle of a screwdriver jutting from his calf, and he grunted in pain as he jabbed his pistol at him, blasting a hole through his skull. He ripped the screwdriver from his leg and thrust it into his belt before leaping onto the bike.
He kicked into gear and tore across the arena, leaning and swerving in loops until he was satisfied he had counted the remaining contenders accurately. Minus the crawling Crochead he had shot moments ago, there were five left.
Four left now, as a screeching woman was kicked from the roof of the bus and plummeted to the floor with a cleaver embedded in her neck.
Three. A man at the bonfire shouldered into the towering flames.
Jude blazed towards the two remaining in front of the fire. Not slowing down, he fired off a round into the first, who tumbled to the dust in a mist of blood. He swung the bike into a slide and careened it into the second man, cannoning him into the fire.
The crowd had turned wild now, feverish and lusting for the end. The smell of burning flesh in his nose, he booted the kickstand down and hopped off the bike. One left, a woman, and he had a gun. The end was in sight. He’d kill her and then he’d be on to the hard part of his plan.
The woman limped out of the rusted old bus, her head hung to the floor as she shuffled towards him. Her neck was covered in blood and lacerations, her clothes ripped and torn. Her bare feet padded red footprints on the concrete. Her pitiful sobs were barely audible over the bloodthirsty crowd and oppressive beating of drums.
“Please. You win. Don’t shoot me,” she whimpered as she closed in on him.
“Stop walking, stay there.” He jabbed the gun towards her.
“Kill! Kill! Kill!” The crowd chanted in time with the drums, thundering around the arena, the dust on the ground vibrating and bouncing about his feet.
“I give in, don’t shoot. Please, I’m begging you.”
“Stop fucking walking! I can’t hear myself think. What’s in your hand?”
“Kill! Kill! Kill!”
The woman’s hand stayed where it was, tucked into her chest in a fist and drenched in blood, partly concealed by her torn clothes. His head was spinning, and her eyes bore at him, so sad. They were honest. Scared.
A pang of guilt shook him. How many were dead by his hands?
“Stop walking – keep fucking still! What’s in your hand?” he shouted at her.
“It’s nothing, please, let me live…I surrender.”
A tear formed in his eye, or was it blood? “There will be one winner…There will be no surrender.”
He levelled the pistol, clutching it hard with both hands. It was steady; he was calm. He narrowed his eyes and pulled the trigger, and the woman spun back with blood bubbling from her forehead as she poleaxed to the floor with a thud. Her arm sprawled from her chest and her fist opened, a child’s doll flopping from it into the blood.
“Mammy!” A small girl pushed through the crowd and ran across the arena, dropping at the body. Her cries were engulfed by the ear-splitting roar of the masses, followed by the blast of an air horn and silence.
Jude stood trembling and staring at the girl.
“We have a winner!” announced Arnero with theatrical glee. “Champion, allow me to lead you to my chambers…for your prize!”
Jude trudged towards the makeshift gantry where she stood. Every shred of focus he had was being called upon just to put one shaky foot in front of the other, the girl's harrowing cries in his wake.
“As for you, my shanty dwellers…” A roar erupted once more. “My soldiers will serve up your Croc in a moment. And for every one of you, there will be a half-price taster of the new drug in the city, Nileodil!”
The roar erupted again and this time it didn’t subside. Arnero’s men began to file off the gantry, the lead men struggling under the weight of metal drums, sawn in half and brimming with wraps of Croc and Nileodil, brown powder and white rocks wrapped tightly in plastic.
Clamouring Crocheads climbed over each other to get closest to it. Swells in the crowd turned into scuffles and affrays. The Crocheads nearest to the drums were kept at bay only by the rifles of the guards. Over thirty of Arnero’s militia stepped from the shadows and corners and crowds, their faces coarse and craggy and mean.
Jude’s heart sank. There was no way he was getting Zuri out of here. No way they were getting out of this, not alive. Not without Ansell and not without a distraction.
A flash of light cracked, followed by a thunderous boom and a blast of wind. He was ripped from his feet and thrown across the arena as black smoke and sparks and clouds of dust swirled in the air. His ears rang and he tried to shout, but there was no sound. His head hammered and his vision doubled as he staggered to his feet and dropped back to his knees.
A huge supporting pillar on the far side of the shanty fell slowly through the air like a tree. It crashed to the crowd below, followed by the ceiling in a ferocious avalanche, and through the settling dust appeared the flashes of guns, as a force of men stormed through firing at Arnero’s militia. Front and centre was a powerfully squat man, a panther adorning his chest, a rifle rattling in his hands. Dawson.
Jude pushed himself to his feet and limped away from the battle, struggling through the manic crowd towards the ramp up to Zuri.
Away toward the gantry, Crocheads rioted around the drums of Croc and Nileodil, unperturbed by the collapsing building or the flying bullets. He pushed and shoved through the masses moving against him, scanning the faces for Roger, but there was no sign.
Finally he reached the ramp. Exhausted, he fell and clawed himself up the slope, slowly forcing himself on through the throngs of Arnero’s men racing towards the gunshots.
He didn’t know how or why this was happening, but he couldn’t stop to wonder. He summoned all that was left of his strength and lurched to his feet. One more ramp to climb, and at long last, he would be with Zuri once more.