shared surprise.
The last screeching note extinguished itself in another detonation of cheers. From the aural chaos emerged a repeated refrain, the beat established by thundering feet:
“Dunk Withers, do you stand ready?”
“Ready!”
“Then… start the clock!”
Pandemonium. Dunk drew his mask down, a horn sounded, the chain was pulled. For a moment nothing happened; then the dopey popped free of the crate and skittered up the cage with a quick, insectile movement, like a roach scurrying up a wall. It could have been looking for a way out or a vantage point for attack; Peter couldn’t tell. The crowd had its opinion. Instantly the cheers turned to boos and catcalls. At the top of the cage, the dopey grasped one of the bars with its feet and unfurled its body so that the top of its head was pointed toward the floor, arms held away from its sides. Dunk stood below it, shouting unhearable taunts and waving the pike, daring it to drop.
The dopey seemed disoriented, almost dazed. Its bland gaze darted about the room randomly, as if the racket and commotion had short-circuited its instincts. Its features had a blurry appearance, as if its human characteristics had been dissolved by strong acid. For five more seconds it hung there, then ten.
“Enough already.” Tifty rose to his feet, taking up the megaphone. “Throw in the meat!”
From without the bars huge, blood-saturated chunks were lobbed into the cage, landing with smeary splats. This was all it took. The creature released the steel bar and dove for the nearest hunk. The upper section of a cow’s leg: the dopey scooped it off the floor and shoved its jaws into the fatty folds, not so much drinking the fluids it contained as inhaling them. Two seconds and it was drained; the creature flung the desiccated remains away.
It swiveled toward Dunk. Now the man meant something. The dopey lowered itself to a crouch, balanced on its prehensile toes and massive splayed hands. The telltale cock of the head, the moment of regard.
It charged.
As the viral leapt toward him, arms extended, claws aiming for his throat, Dunk dropped to the floor and came up swinging the pike. The crowd went wild. Peter felt it too, the raw excitement of the contest surging in his veins. Dodging the pike, the dopey scampered back up the wall of the cage. No dazed retreat this time: its intentions were clear. When they came, they came from above. Twenty feet up, the dopey pushed itself backward off the bars, tucking its body into a headfirst aerial roll, twisting like a corkscrew as it descended in a rush of movement, and alighted on its feet ten feet from Dunk. The same engagement reversed: Dunk lunged; the dopey dropped. The pike speared the empty air above its head. As Dunk fell forward, carried by his own momentum, the dopey shot from its crouch and rammed headlong into his padded midsection, blasting him across the cage.
Dunk wound up propped upright against the bars, obviously shaken. The pike lay on the floor to his left; the mask had been torn away. Peter saw him reaching for the weapon, but the gesture was weak, his hand scrabbling with fogged inaccuracy. His chest was heaving like a bellows, a trickle of blood running from his nose to his upper lip. Why hadn’t the dopey taken him yet?
Because it was a trap. The dopey seemed to suspect as much; as it contemplated the fallen warrior, Peter could sense the creature’s interior conflict. The drive to kill versus an inchoate tactical suspicion that not all was as it appeared—a vestige, perhaps, of the human capacity for reason. Which would win out? The crowd was chanting Dunk’s name, trying to rouse him from his stupor. That or goad the dopey into action. Any death would do. Just by going into the cage, Dunk had already secured the most important victory: to be human. To deny the virals’ dominion over himself, over his fellows, over the world. The rest would fall as it fell.
Blood won.
The dopey went airborne. Simultaneously, the wandering hand found and secured the pike. As the creature fell, Dunk lifted the pike to a forty-five-degree angle, aligning it with the center of the dopey’s descending chest, bracing the butt against the floor between his knees.
Did the dopey know what was about to happen? Did it experience, in that sliver of time in which the outcome was ordained, an awareness of its race toward death? Was it happy? Was it sad? And then the tip of the pike found its mark, spearing the creature so thoroughly that life breathed out of it in a single, grand, instantaneous exhalation of death.
Dunk shoved the body to the side. Peter had joined the crowd on its feet. His energy was a part of theirs; it flowed in the collective current. His voice rang with the multitude:
Why was this different? Peter wondered, while another part of his brain refused to care, adrift in his unanticipated elation. He had faced the virals on the rampart, in cities and deserts, forests and fields. He had dropped seven hundred feet into a crawling cave. He had given himself to death’s likelihood hundreds of times, and yet Dunk’s courage was something more, something purer, something redeeming. Peter glanced at his friends. Michael, Hollis, Lore: there was no mistaking it. They felt just as he did.
Only Tifty looked different. He’d gotten on his feet like the rest of them, but his face was emotionless. What was he seeing in his mind’s eye? Where had he gone? He had gone to the field. Not even the cage could lighten this burden. Here was Peter’s opening. He waited for the cheering to die. In the stands, bets were being counted and paid.
“Let me go in there.”
Tifty studied him with one raised eyebrow. “Lieutenant, what are you asking?”
“A wager. My life against your promise to take me to Iowa. Not just tell me where this city is. You have to go with me.”
“Peter, this is not a good idea,” Hollis warned. “I know what you’re feeling. We call it cage fever.”
“That’s not what this is.”
Tifty folded his arms over his chest. “Mr. Jaxon, how dumb do I look? Your reputation precedes you. I don’t doubt a dopey is well within your abilities.”
“Not a dopey,” he said. “Sheila.”
Tifty weighed him with his eyes. Behind him, Michael and Lore said nothing. Maybe they understood what he was doing, and maybe they didn’t. Maybe they were too dumbstruck by his apparent loss of his faculties to formulate a response. It didn’t matter either way.
“All right, Lieutenant, it’s your funeral. Not that there’ll be anything to bury.”
Peter was escorted to a small room at the rear of the arena by Tifty and two of his men. Michael and Hollis were with him; Lore waited in the stands. The room was bare except for a long table displaying armored pads and an array of weapons. Peter suited up. He had initially been concerned that the pads would slow him down too much, but they were surprisingly light and pliable. The mask was a different matter; Peter couldn’t see how it would be any help, and it cut down his peripheral vision. He put it aside.
Now for armaments. He was permitted two. No firearms were allowed, only piercing weapons. Blades, crossbows, pikes and swords and axes of various lengths and weights. The cross was tempting, but in such close quarters it would take too long to reload. Peter chose a five-foot pike with a barbed steel tip.
As for the second: he cast his eyes around for something that would serve his purpose. In the corner of the room was a galvanized trash can. He removed the lid and examined it.
“Somebody give me a rag.”
A rag was produced. Peter wet it with spit and rubbed the inside of the lid. His reflection began to emerge —not with any distinctiveness, barely more than a blurry shape; but it would have to suffice.
“This is what I want.”
Tifty’s men burst into laughter.
“Your foolishness is one thing, Lieutenant,” said Tifty. “But this. I can’t allow it.”
Michael looked at him with a quizzical frown. “Like… Las Vegas?”
Peter gave him the barest nod, turned to Tifty again. “You said anything in the room.”
