Blood Games (15 page)

Dog of Tartarus won, as did Cauldron of Fire.
Ultimate Hades’ brand spanking new career came to a swift end against the far more experienced Volcanus, who turned him, as one visitor to Thor’s stall said, into a little puddle of goo and facial prosthetics. Zombie Jesus triumphed over Burning Bush and it served the latter’s stupid manager right. Purposely wearing out your zombie before a show was idiotic. Especially the Games.

The Immortal met his maker in Bow Down Before Me, and then
there was
another
upset in Nemesis defeating Hades himself. The only Hades that mattered! That was what finally drew people away from Thor’s stall. That blurb in the paper was going to be shared, or perhaps there would be a longer article about how two total newbies had overturned the Games.

Ink watched replays on his cell phone when all was quiet around Thor.
Dionysus had done nearly as well, ending the match in a scant thirty-eight seconds. The manager of Bastard of Hades had embarrassed himself by throwing a punch at the manager of Fightin’ Titan after their match. Ink clicked Dog of Tartarus’ fight against One True God. Dog of Tartarus was a shrimp of a dude, but fast and vicious. So-and-so had told so-and-so had told so-and-so had told Jackie that Dog of Tartarus was reacting so poorly to each new doping regimen that they had had to stop giving him drugs altogether. Ink could see the evidence. Like Thor, Dog of Tartarus was fighting only with natural muscle, and that was on the skimpy side. He had been much more imposing in his musculature a year and a half ago. But he still won against One True God, his speed beating the tank of dope that was his opponent.

The
Hades-Nemesis battle was very exciting, running three minutes but all of it a flurry of legs and arms and teeth. That manager had sent Nemesis out with his dumb facial prosthetics still on, and they must have been fastened with industrial glue because he finished the match with all of them doing fine. And those tattoos! You could barely tell the zombie’s skin tone with the tattoos that heavily laden. All of them were black. Black flames, black swirls, black skulls, black characters, black suns and stars . . . they ran from the back of each hand up to his shoulders, down his chest and all over his legs. His back was covered in a black dragon caught in a massive cobweb. You couldn’t even see the guy underneath. You just saw those tattoos. The guy had been into major body art before he got infected with the virus.

The cuts he had on one of his arms were nasty, but they hadn’t slowed him down in the fight.
In Ink’s opinion, it was a lucky strike that had finished Hades for the match. One misstep, one split second finding balance . . . Unlike Son of Zeus, who hadn’t jumped on the chance when Son of Hades staggered, Nemesis was on the real Hades like a fly on shit.

A man sidled up to the bars and gave Ink a bright smile.
Ink returned it, believing this person to be another fan, and then the man said, “How much?”

He wanted to buy Thor!
Ink didn’t know him from anywhere. “What are you offering?”

“What are you asking?”

Ink just laughed, refusing to show his cards before the man showed his. The man laughed along, a little tightly, and said, “My client was thinking five hundred, six. Open to negotiation, of course.”

Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Ink would have asked ten times that plus a little more for wiry, unexciting Chaos. If the opening bid was a pitiful five to six hundred, the client wasn’t likely to go over a thousand tops. And for a fighter who had just downed Ares and stolen the show, a thousand was an insult. No real dealer would have made this offer. Ink asked, “What’s your name? And what’s the client’s strategy for him?”

“
I’m Maxim and who cares? As long as you get your money,” the dealer said obsequiously. One name. Only Vasilov had one name, and he had earned the right.

“I get attached to my fighters,” Ink said with a
fake show of sheepishness.

Maxim’s
laughter got even tighter. “He’s planning to pull Thor, cede the second match to his opponent, give him some training-” his eyes lingered on Thor’s unenhanced musculature, “-and start him on the small ring circuit. Build him up from there. A career should start small and grow big, not the other way around.”

Such wisdom from a dealer that Ink had never seen or heard of before!
He’d been knee-deep in zombies for twenty years and knew the people who mattered. This Maxim wasn’t anyone. “Why don’t you leave your card and I’ll think about it?”

The man slid his hand into his
coat pocket and then withdrew it. “I must have left them in my truck. What’s there to think about? As I said, he’s willing to negotiate.”

“I just don’t like to make decisions on the spot,” Ink said.
What dealer didn’t have cards? One just looking to make a quick buck at the Games. “Give me your number and I’ll call later. I’ll remember it.”

The man rattled it off and Ink committed
the information to the shakiest shelf of his short-term memory. It would be gone before the man rounded the aisle. Maxim stuck around a few minutes longer to admire Thor and see if Ink would change his mind, and then his phone rang and he answered it as he walked away. Just another flash-in-the-pan dealer, here one season and gone the next. People thought it was a get-rich-quick scheme, but unless you were one of the rare few hit by a lightning strike of luck or had family connections, it was just another career to build from the ground floor up over time.

Ink had done this from the ground floor.
He had earned every decibel of that screaming at the end of the first match, every eager face at the bars and pair of hands thrusting out a pad of paper and a pen. Thinking that he had to find some dinner, he hesitated about leaving Thor unattended. There were cameras and security all over, but losing another fighter was going to kill him. So he sat there and waited for the food vendors to go through. He had no idea where Nadia had gone, back to the motel or up in the stands, or if she was in the hospital for brawling over jewelry that wasn’t even hers. Or maybe she was hunting down a locksmith to get those cuffs off if the key hadn’t been in the pile. Scrapper was in his stall, covered heavily in bandages, but sadly alive. Ink dumped some meat mash into his trough, but only after he’d fed Thor.

Vasilov sent a text.
Samson is history, my boy. The only name I hear in this clubroom is Thor!

And Nemesis, I presume,
Ink wrote. What a day this had been!

Yes, Nemesis too, a
nd Calliope, who gave Maenad the first true fight of her career! Many names are being spoken, but Thor is spilling from lips wherever I turn.

Even if Thor lost his second match tomorrow, Samson’s death had been eclipsed.
Ink sent thanks up to God as he settled in for the night outside the stalls. The aisles didn’t quiet very quickly. Everyone was too excited from the events of the day, and some were still giggling about the torn-off pants at the children’s melee. He pretended to sleep and just listened to the cheers and gasps and laughter, the angry clangs of a man who was cleaning up his belongings and those of his dead fighter’s, and preparing to go home in a huff. People didn’t understand how much their display of good or bad sportsmanship mattered when they lost. Even if the manager who had slugged another in a temper had a champion above all the rest one day, people would remember what he had done today at the Games. And talk.

“Oh, honey, he’s sleeping,” a woman whispered.
Ink pulled off his black out mask and blinked at a woman trying to lead a disappointed boy away from Thor’s stall. Both were wearing backstage passes. Calling them back, Ink waved off the mother’s apology and gave the excited boy the autograph he desired so badly that his little body was trembling. Eight or nine, stick thin and not a scrap of muscle on him, he looked through the bars to Thor in worship.

Another fan.
Another
two
fans, because the mother would remember that Ink had been kind to her puny young son. The boy asked shyly if he could peek into the locker room and Ink got up at once to unlock it and show him. When the two of them left, the kid had stars in his eyes.

What if someone tried to shoot Thor while Ink was asleep?
It was all he could think about as he sat down on his cot. Then he took out his wallet. He couldn’t justify wasting money on extras, but this was a necessity. He never skimped on those. Removing sixty dollars, he went in search of the nearest security guard. The kid was strolling around one aisle over. He looked about seventeen or eighteen, more pimples than skin, and nervous about his authority. Sixty big ones was probably what he made as a guard after six hours of work.

Just as Ink was about to greet him, the guard lit up and said, “Good show!
I couldn’t believe it!”

“Thank God you’re not an Ares fan,” Ink said.
Slipping the folded twenties into the guy’s palm, he lowered his voice and added, “Seriously, I’m getting some totally black looks from people. Are you working through the night?” He glanced at the kid’s nametag. “Brian?”

“All the way through it.
I just punched in.”

“
Could you take some extra passes through my aisle, just check on Thor tonight and make sure he’s okay?”

Brian
counted up the bills and said, “Sure, man!”

“That would be great.
Good night.” Ink returned to his cot and fell asleep, the pimply guard standing watch nearby.

Chapter Seven: The Second Match

He woke up anxious in the morning, but Thor was unhurt in his stall. The atmosphere in the stables was much calmer since no one was readying for pictures, and quieter since some people had packed up and left when their zombies died or were injured in the melees and matches. An email had come in as Ink slept with the list of second matches for men in the 20-35 category. Thor was paired up with Dog of Tartarus, and Ink allowed himself to feel hopeful that his zombie might pull off another amazing victory.

Dog of Tartarus was good
, but not great. He had been fighting for two-and-a-half years now, a solid middle-of-the-road performer. Never had he fallen in a melee, but rarely had he made it to the final battle with the top five contestants either. And now he didn’t even take those drugs to bulk him up! Ink skimmed his history and liked what he saw. Thor had a chance. But even if he lost, there was no shame. Dog of Tartarus had a great manager in Matthias West. The fellow was young, but he hadn’t fallen under the sway of the training fads like starvation and warm-up fights like so many young managers did. When Dog of Tartarus had gotten beaten up pretty badly in his first match at the Arctic, Matthias pulled his place from Filo to give him time to heal. That was a good move, a hard decision, but one that Ink would have made. Others would have pressed on and fought him anyway at Filo, unable to pass up the fun of a competition, and risked injuring the fighter so badly that he couldn’t go to the Games. But you had to see the bigger picture.

So
Dog of Tartarus was in top form today. But he was no Ares, especially without any dope, and Thor had ended Ares in no time at all.

There were four other pairings in the email.
Nemesis was going up against Fightin’ Titan, and the hapless Son of Zeus didn’t have an ice cube’s chance in hell in the ring with Dionysus. Cauldron of Fire and Bow Down Before Me were evenly matched and also looked fairly similar, so the audience was going to have a hard time telling one from the other. Lastly, Zombie Jesus had his second match against Volcanus. Those matches started at eleven.

It was only eight now.
The 36-50 adult male category was having its matches first, and after that would be the women in the same age group. At half-past nine, the younger women would fight. And then, once the younger men had their turn, the stadium was just playing host to random bits of silliness in the halftime elderly competition, magicians and singers and other nonsense until it was time for the brawls.

Backstage passes were from eight-thirty to ten-thirty this morning, and
then all through the afternoon. Nadia appeared to festoon Scrapper’s stall with streamers and balloons. There were scratches across her face, shallow but still visible under her cosmetics. Ink was sure that whatever she had gotten them for, they had been richly deserved. The cuffs were off her wrists. She hung up a sign announcing the boy’s status as Prince of the Games. But there was nothing princely about Scrapper at the time being. He was just a battered zombie boy in a stall, standing by his water trough like he’d spent the night trying to dump it and was trying to figure out why it hadn’t worked.

Nadia
didn’t say much to Ink, and Ink didn’t say much to Nadia although he was tempted to ask how the job search was going. Seen any Help Wanted signs lately? But she was soon tangling with a stadium employee who insisted that she drop the balloons to a lower bar so the light wasn’t blocked. After a lengthy argument, he threatened to cut the ribbons and she acquiesced, but only long enough for him to go away. Then she started picking at the knots to raise the balloons again. Once they were up where she liked them, she changed into her barbarian queen outfit, minus the handcuffs, and sat on a chair outside the stall.

People showed up with their passes.
Ink cleaned off Thor and answered the questions while Nadia tried to skim off some of his audience for herself. “Do you know who’s in here?” she asked two preteen girls at the periphery of a crowd. “The Prince of the Games!”

But they wanted to see powerful
Thor, the zombie who had brought down popular Ares, not a four-year-old boy with piss dribbling down his legs. The children’s melee was old news today. As they admired Ink’s fighter, people chatted about the young women going up to fight, laughed about the elderly halftime show, and checked times on the brawls. A boy piped up, “Mister? Does he ever get scared?”

Ink clasped Thor’s shoulder
and said firmly, “Never.” And that was amazing to a child, a person who could not feel scared in such a very big and scary world. An unauthorized vendor swept in to sell purported clips of Thor’s hair, and an email from Ink’s phone to security dispatch was answered in less than a minute. Two guards showed up to escort her out. She protested all the way down the aisle that she was just trying to make a little money, and steeping the hair in tea would imbue the drinker with zombie-like strength. Sure, that was exactly what Thor’s lice-ridden hair would have done. Another unauthorized vendor in the show circuit years ago had done something similar with zombie dung, used it as a fertilizer and sold the tea leaves. The craziest part was that some people had paid for it. A hundred dollars for six grams! The man had been banned from shows eventually, but he persisted in selling it on a website until the Health Department shut him down.

Had Samson lived and won the Games, legitimate vendors would have besieged Ink
for authorization to use his zombie’s likeness in clothing, action figures, and product packaging. Not clips of hair, or God forbid, his shit. Ink had had some good deals already, but it would have gone wild! Taken him from making thousands of dollars to hundreds of thousands, because in his pocket would be a percentage of every sale. Managers could get rich fast that way, but they had to have a champion first. Samson had almost been there, just one step away, and already it had begun to trickle in with dolls and posters.

If Thor survived the Games, as incredible as that sounded, if Ink could parlay his
amazing, two-dollar zombie into a champion and keep him alive for a few years’ worth of shows, that would be a lot of extra money for doing essentially nothing but signing his name on the dotted line.

That made him dream.
He’d build a stable of forty fighting zombies, fifty or sixty men and women, and always have someone new clawing his or her way up to the top as someone else was taking the inevitable slide down. When you only had one or two decent zombies, their losses hurt like a bitch. When you had the wins and losses spread out among dozens, the bottom line wasn’t so affected by a death or some other failure. Nothing he ever did would shoot him up to the Hodgings’ level of fortune, but he didn’t need to be obscenely wealthy. Wealthy was enough.

“I miss the girl
show,” a man said wistfully over his cell phone as Ink signed autographs for a fresh clutch of children and adolescents. “Used to dress them up all pretty, parade them around at halftime like it was Miss Zombie America.”

“Dad, that’s so sexist!”
his daughter cried. In her early teens, she was wearing a Maenad T-shirt. There was nothing pretty about the lips spread in a snarl, the blood dripping from her mouth and a slash over her breasts. Fingers extended and nails out to scratch, she was a warrior. Not a princess.

“How’s Maenad doing
today? Has she fought yet?” Ink asked.

“You can knock her down, but you can’t knock her out,” the girl said with pride.
So it was a better day for Cantine. “You got any women fighters?”

“We’ve got a prince,” Nadia
offered.

“Yes, I have Medusa,” Ink said.

“Maenad kicked her ass at Filo,” the girl smirked.

Ink matched it.
“Yes, she did. And once Medusa gets her healed ass in the ring, she’ll be looking for payback.”

Enjoying
the bandy, the girl said, “She won’t ever get it.”

The father was still staring at his cell phone, where a replay of a women’s fight was going on with screeches and
cracks of fists. “They used to do a swimsuit competition back when I was a boy. The twelve best went in a calendar.” Another crack rang out from his phone. “Now they’re just like men.”

As Ink scribbled the last autograph for the group, the
Maenad girl said, “The pendulum swings, Dad. Maybe it’s the guys’ turn to be in swimsuits.”

The father forgot
the battle and looked up in dismay. “I don’t want to see that!”

They began to move away, Ink waving to the
little boys who were squealing over their autographs and straining to catch one last glimpse of Thor. The girl was still harassing her father. “I’m going to buy you that calendar. Twelve Months of Mr. Zombie America. So then you can see what it’s like to be objectified.” No one took any notice of the Prince of the Games, except for a toddler girl who clapped at the balloons.

“Goddammit, get the fuck out of here!” a man shouted in another aisle.
“Security!
Security!
”

Ink was alarmed as four security guards went dashing
by. But it turned out to be harmless protestors. They were led past Thor’s stall, four middle-aged fools with duct tape over their lips and DO WE NOT ALL BLEED printed in red on their T-shirts. This sort of thing happened at every event, and the Games drew even more of them with its popularity. And these people had to be what happened when those know-it-all college kids who lived off Daddy’s credit cards grew up! Daddy still hadn’t cut them off to make their own way in the world, so they were here making trouble for lack of anything else to do.

Stiff-
backed, Nadia came over to peer through the bars at Thor. “I don’t know why everyone is ignoring Scrapper to stare at that thing.”

“
That thing
survived the men’s melee,” Ink taunted. “
That thing
won his first match.
That thing
is hot shit.” If
that thing
made it through his second match and to the brawl, Ink was guaranteed to win a small amount of money. Only the top dog got the million dollars, but second and third would get twenty and ten thousand respectively, fourth would get five thousand and fifth would get three.

“I spent a lot of time on this costume,” Nadia said grumpily.
“And no one ever got to appreciate it in the ring because the children’s melee started so suddenly.”

“
Fame is so very fleeting,” Ink said. She knew that he was being sarcastic, and stomped away to pout. If Ink could only go back in time to the day the two of them had met, he’d shake his younger self and then dump ice water down those hot pants.

Thor and Dog of Tartarus were scheduled
as the last of the second matches. Once his fighter was ready, Ink felt comforted at the heavy security presence and went upstairs to watch the other ones. Dionysus and Son of Zeus had just been delivered to their marks as the announcer chattered over the speakers. Only the Dionysus fans were listening, and there were gaps in the stands. The melees and the brawls were the favorite items on the agenda. After a while, the matches all started to look the same.

Constanzo was watching from the clubroom.
Ink watched him through the binoculars from the stands. The man wasn’t intent on his champion as the match readied to start. Sipping from a drink, he had his eyes out to the sky. Then he checked his watch and looked into the clubroom. Had Ink murdered an opponent’s zombie to better his zombie’s odds, you could be damn sure he would be watching the ring. The grumpy geezer’s disinterest made Ink question his suspicions. Did Constanzo care
that
much if Dionysus lost? So insanely much that he would murder to help his chances at the Games? Constanzo had made plenty off the zombie over the years, and would make plenty more in renting out his body for many years to come. Dionysus was a good-looking dude and a little more proficient in the sack than most zombie males, according to a rumor that Jackie had passed along to Ink.

It began.
The Greek god Zeus had fathered many sons, but this Son of Zeus in the ring was one of his less impressive ones. Transforming into his usual pinwheel of randomly thrown out fists, he absorbed a hard blow to his gut and kept on slugging. Dionysus couldn’t get too close without getting clobbered. He backed away, Son of Zeus coming after him, and backed away a little faster. Son of Zeus slugged at the air, still going along at the same pace. Punch, punch, kick, kick, punch, kick, he wasn’t marking his opponent and perhaps there was something wrong with his vision. Zombies were just as prone to being near-sighted or far-sighted as the general population. If that was the issue here, Son of Zeus compensated by doing this, punching and kicking at every blur and smear he could see. That was one of the things that made the elderly melee so funny. They couldn’t see, they couldn’t hear, some could only hobble, but they hated each other with every inch of their withered, white-haired bodies and vengeance would be theirs. Take that, Grandpa!

The manager for Nemesis was watching at the bar nearby.
Ink moved his binoculars. Yes, those features were just so strong and unfeminine! Strong features like that looked good on a man, but for a woman, it was a tragedy. She was a veritable Amazon, tall and sturdily built. Some of the guys around her at the bar were shorter than she was. There was no levity in her eyes to watch the match, only seriousness that was out of place when neither opponent belonged to her. She had a lovely shape though, and rich brown hair in a French braid. If she were to let that down, if she would smile, it would help to soften her features. One of the men spoke to her and she brushed him off in total disinterest, even though there wasn’t a ring on her finger.