The butcher pounces with the club. Nails puncture Stinson’s jugular and left pectoral before the man has a chance to roll away. The audience yowls.
Bob turns away for a moment, feeling nauseous and dizzy. He takes another huge gulp of whiskey and lets the burn soothe his terror. He takes another, and another, and finally works up enough nerve to gaze back at the action. The butcher is pummeling Stinson, sending gouts of blood—as black as tar in the sodium lights—spraying across the matted brown turf of the infield.
The wide dirt track circling the infield has armed guards at each gate, intently watching the fracas, their assault rifles cradled at the ready. Bob swallows more whiskey and averts his gaze from the grisly slaughter, focusing on the upper regions of the racetrack. The diamond-vision screen is blank, powerless, probably inoperable. The glass enclosures of VIP boxes lining one side of the arena are mostly deserted and dark … all except for one.
The Governor and Martinez stand behind the window of the center box, looking down on the spectacle with unreadable expressions on their faces.
Bob chugs another few fingers of whiskey—he’s already halfway through the bottle—and finds himself avoiding eye contact with the crowd. In his peripheral vision he can see the faces of young and old, male and female, all riveted to the bloody skirmish. Many faces contort with a kind of manic delight. Some of the onlookers rise to their feet, hands waving as though they are finding Jesus.
Down on the field the butcher delivers one last savage blow to Stinson’s kidney, the nails sinking into the guardsman’s fleshy lower back. Blood bubbles and gushes, and then Stinson sags in the dirt, convulsing, twitching in his death throes. Breathing hard, drooling with psychotic glee, the butcher raises the club and faces the crowd. The spectators respond with a surge of howls.
Repulsed, woozy, going numb with horror, Bob Stookey chugs more whiskey and looks down.
“I THINK WE HAVE A WINNER!”
The amplified voice coming through the public address system echoes and feeds back with harsh, electronic squealing noises. Bob gazes up and sees the Governor behind the center box window casually speaking into a microphone. Even from this great distance, Bob can see the weird pleasure glimmering behind the Governor’s eyes like two pinpoints of starlight. Bob looks back down.
“HOLD ON! HOLD ON!! LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I THINK WE HAVE A COMEBACK!!”
Bob looks up.
On the infield, the big lump on the ground has come back to life. Lurching toward the machete, Stinson gets his blood-slick hand around the hilt and twists back toward the butcher, who has his back turned. Stinson pounces with every last ounce of strength. The butcher turns and tries to shield his face as the machete slashes.
The blade sinks into the butcher’s neck deep enough to get stuck.
The butcher staggers and falls backward with the machete still planted in his jugular. Stinson moves in with drunken rage, the blood loss making him lumber and weave with eerie resemblance to a zombie. The crowd jeers and roars. Stinson pulls the machete loose and delivers another devastating blow to the butcher’s neck, severing the gaunt man’s head between the fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae.
The spectators cheer as the butcher’s neck floods the ground with its lifeblood.
Bob looks away. He falls to his knees, one hand still clutching the chain link. His stomach lurches and he vomits on the cement floor of the mezzanine. The bottle falls but does not break. Bob pukes out the entire contents of his stomach in heaving gasps—the noise of the crowd going all watery, everything getting blurry and indistinct in his watery vision. He vomits and vomits until there is nothing left but thin strands of bile hanging off his lips. He falls back against the first row of empty bleachers. He retrieves the bottle and sucks down the rest of its contents.
The amplified voice echoes: “AND THAT, FOLKS, IS WHAT WE CALL JUSTICE!”
* * *
Outside the arena, at that moment, the streets of Woodbury could be confused with any other deserted ghost ship of a village in the Georgia countryside—abandoned and scoured clean in the advent of the plague.
At first glance, every last inhabitant appears to be missing in action—the entire population still gathered in the stadium, riveted to the final moments of the battle royale. Even the sidewalk in front of the food center has been cleared, any lingering evidence of murder mopped away by Stevens and his men, Josh’s body carted off to the morgue.
Now, in the darkness, as the muffled echoes of the crowd swirl on the wind, Lilly Caul wanders the sidewalk in her fleece, torn jeans, and tattered high-tops. She cannot sleep, cannot think, cannot stop crying. The noise from the arena feels like insects crawling on her. The Xanax Bob gave her has done nothing but dull the pain, like a layer of gauze over her racing thoughts. She shivers in the cold and pauses in a dark vestibule in front of a boarded drugstore.
“It’s none of my business,” a voice says from the shadows. “But a young lady like yourself shouldn’t be out alone on these streets.”
Lilly turns and sees the glint of metal-rimmed glasses on a dark face. She sighs, wipes her eyes, and looks down. “What difference does it make?”
Dr. Stevens steps into the flickering light of torches. He stands with his hands in his pockets, his lab coat buttoned to the collar, a scarf around his neck. “How are you holding up, Lilly?”
She looks at him through her tears. “Holding up? I’m just grand.” She tries to breathe but her lungs feel as though they’re full of sand. “Next stupid question.”
“You might think about resting.” He comes over to her and inspects her bruises. “You’re still in shock, Lilly. You need sleep.”
She manages a pallid smile. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” She cringes and looks down, the tears burning her eyes. “Funny thing is, I hardly knew him.”
“He seemed like a good man.”
She looks up, focusing on the doctor. “Is that even possible anymore?”
“Is what possible?”
“Being a good person.”
The doctor lets out a sigh. “Probably not.”
Lilly swallows and looks down. “I have to get out of this place.” She winces at another sob building in her. “I can’t deal with it anymore.”
Stevens looks at her. “Join the club.”
A moment of awkward silence passes.
Lilly rubs her eyes. “How do you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Stay here … put up with this shit. You seem like a semisane person to me.”
The doctor shrugs. “Looks can be deceiving. Anyway … I stay for the same reason they all stay.”
“And that is…?”
“Fear.”
Lilly looks at the paving stones. She doesn’t say anything. What is there to say? The torchlight across the street dwindles, the wicks burning down, the shadows deepening in the nooks and crannies between the buildings. Lilly fights the dizziness washing over her. She doesn’t want to sleep ever again.
“They’re going to be coming out of there pretty soon,” the doctor says with a nod toward the racetrack in the distance. “Once they’ve had their fill of the little horror show Blake has concocted for them.”
Lilly shakes her head. “Place is a fucking madhouse, and that dude is the craziest one of all.”
“Tell you what.” The doctor gestures toward the opposite end of town. “Why don’t we take a little walk, Lilly … avoid the crowds.”
She exhales a pained breath, then shrugs and mutters, “Whatever…”
* * *
That night, Dr. Stevens and Lilly walk for over an hour in the cold, bracing air, meandering back and forth along the far fence on the east side of town, and then down along the abandoned railroad tracks inside the security fence. While they walk and talk, the crowd slowly files out of the arena, wandering back to their dwellings, bloodlust satiated. The doctor does most of the talking that night, speaking softly, ever mindful of the listening ears of guards, who are positioned at strategic corners along the barricade, equipped with guns, binoculars, and walkie- talkies.
