The man tried to slash the sword free, but apparently that’s a bit harder than it looks. He let go of the sword.
The ghoul reached for him.
Dax covered his eyes.
The second fighter reached down to his belt, retrieved a long implement, and jabbed it upward into the zombie’s eye socket. He twisted it, turning his head aside to avoid the inevitable jet of brackish bodily fluid that usually accompanied that kind of assault. The revenant pawed at him a few more seconds, but there was no more intent in its grasp. When the man pushed on the sword, its body fell to the ground.
The people howled their approval.
So this was what I’d been listening to at night. Not soccer. Not baseball. Not some harmless game of hockey. People watching as others lived and died, and making use of all the mobile dead trapped in the city with them.
The victor—I guessed I could call him that—jerked his sword free. He bent down, sawed off the zombie’s head, and lifted it over his own.
The crowd screamed louder.
He’d had some experience in this, I decided, some prior adventure where he’d fought the undead and won.
He also knew what the crowd wanted.
Must be a returning champion.
Then he dropped the head and gave it a kick.
I rubbed my eyes. “You said they were playing soccer,” I muttered.
“I wasn’t lying.” Tony had his gaze glued on the field. “Watch.”
Several viewers from the closer rows stampeded forward to join him in his game. Everyone was very careful to avoid the bodies sprawled on the field, but they merrily kicked the zombie’s head from one end of the stadium to the next, their laughter and joyful shouts reaching us.
“See?” Tony gestured to the macabre performance. “Soccer.”
“That is fucking disgusting.”
“Maybe you should’ve listened to Alyssa.” Tony rubbed the back of his neck. “Seen enough?”
“Yes,” Dax said.
“How come these people aren’t coming to the medical center?” I asked. “They get bitten and cut up, but all I see are soldiers from the checkpoints.”
“I think they treat them in the locker room. Don’t want to expose prized fighters to whatever germs you got floating around in the medical facility.”
That made sense. “How many rounds a night do they have?”
“Five or six. The zombies only come in at the last round.” Tony gestured to the merry game that continued in front of us. “I think it probably started out as some kind of MMA tribute and then just degraded from there. By the time they added the undead to the mix, everyone just…went with it.”
“Keller’s okay with this?”
“Keller wants people to do as he says.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He sighed. “If they’re happy, they aren’t going to revolt.”
That wasn’t an answer, either. At least, not the answer I wanted, but I hadn’t gotten one of those in a long time, either.
“This place has built up quite the reputation,” Tony went on. “Sometimes ‘the house’ runs soldiers, people take bets. People seem to dig it, but they’re afraid of it, too.”
“Afraid,” Dax repeated. “Afraid?”
“Yeah. I don’t think they’ve used it as punishment…yet…but it’s on everyone’s mind. Do something against the rules, face the undead like Romans faced wild animals in the arena. Pretty effective means of punishment, don’t you think? You spill the city’s blood and then the city spills your own.”
Holy shit.
Holy shit.
I could manage weird gladiatorial games. If people wanted to do them, so be it. I could, maybe, just maybe, even see fighting a zombie for sport—it wasn’t my preference for Saturday night entertainment, but at least everyone knew what they were and hated them, and…
What the fuck are you thinking, Vibeke?
Hastings was about to topple headfirst into Crazyville if it wasn’t already there.
What people do when they think their God isn’t watching.
Alyssa had known. Everyone seemed to know. So why had no one said anything to us?
They don’t tell outsiders.
These current seating arrangement might hold a few thousand, max, and it most definitely was not at capacity. If there were at least thirty thousand left in Hastings, that meant most of the citizenry wasn’t coming here to cheer on acts of violence. And it probably wasn’t because the bulk of them wouldn’t fit.
They likely found it as horrific as I might once have. They just didn’t talk about it, because who the hell wants to talk about this kind of thing?
“Ready to go?” Tony asked. “They’re just going to kick the head around until it cracks open.”
Dax was already halfway out from under the bleachers, his hands stuffed into his pockets. Tony began limping after him, and I brought up the rear, trying not to look horrified.