Ted Kosmatka - The Games

The U.S. gladiator did a slow pivot, turning toward the Chinese bear-tiger. The two creatures locked gazes, and for a moment, neither reacted. The Chinese contestant’s predation drive was out in the open now, exposed, naked. It had the thousand-yard stare of a big cat eyeing prey on the open savanna. The glare had weight to it, and an almost incandescent intensity. There was no anger or malice; it was the glint of hunger that shone in the bear-tiger’s eyes. It was the look of a predator making its living. No more, no less. Silas wasn’t sure what he saw in the other eyes, the gray eyes, but he was certain there was more than that. More than hunger.

Something darker. Something angry.

The U.S. gladiator howled then. The head reared back, fleshy snout peeling away from the strange double row of teeth, and it sang out high and strong. The sound reverberated in the expanse of the arena but soon drowned in the howl of the masses that rose to greet it, becoming just another voice in a sea of thousands. Then its mouth closed with a scissor snap, and when it locked eyes on the bear-tiger again, its pupils were sharp black ellipses. Muscles bunched beneath the dark shine of its hindquarters, gathering, gathering …

The mob .

Marchers shouted angry slogans as they moved through the streets. Cars waited through green lights. Television cameras rolled from the sidelines. The crowd attenuated as it approached the arena, became a line—the amoeboid mass grown suddenly filamentous .

The men with bullhorns prodded the crowd forward. The bright lights of the arena rose above, merely blocks off now, a shape closing in the distance .

Up ahead, the police stood their ground, drawing their own lines. Olympic steps rose at the officers’ backs .

At the final turn, the head of the crowd stopped a hundred yards from the police. But the rest of the crowd filled in from behind, still coming on, like a climbing rope cut from some height, pooling in widening loops as it fell free, gathering strength—a hundred, two hundred, five hundred people. Until the crowd filled the intersection completely, blocking traffic here, too, in both directions .

The two groups faced each other .

The policemen stood firm, riot shields brandished in a clear plastic wall. A man in a crisp blue uniform lifted his own bullhorn .

“BE ADVISED, YOU WILL VACATE THE AREA IMMEDIATELY,” the policeman said. “IT IS UNLAWFUL FOR YOU TO ASSEMBLE HERE.”

The proclamation was met with taunts and shouts, voices in the throng: “Fuck you, pig!”

A different bullhorn answered from the crowd in a clear, calm voice: “WE ARE GATHERED PEACEABLY.”

“YOU ARE OBSTRUCTING TRAFFIC,” the police responded. It was a police sergeant who had answered. A man with bars on his shoulder, to accompany the chip. A man who did not like being called a pig .

“THIS IS A LAWFUL DEMONSTRATION OF PROTEST.”

“NO, YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF LOCAL TRAFFIC ORDINANCES.”

“WE ARE EXERCISING OUR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF ASSEMBLY.”

There was a pause, then a response from the sergeant, spoken softly but amplified greatly, “Not on my fucking roads.”

There was resolution in that voice. It was the voice of a man who had made a decision .

From behind the police lines, another voice was handed the bullhorn. “YOU WILL DISPERSE IMMEDIATELY. ANYBODY WHO DOES NOT DISPERSE IMMEDIATELY WILL BE ARRESTED.”

“WE WILL NOT DISPERSE.”

The crowd tightened, becoming hard where it had been soft, becoming sharp where it had been dull .

“YOU HAVE THIRTY SECONDS.”

The seconds ticked away as if there had ever been a choice .

The police sergeant looked at his watch. He nodded to his captains, so they took note that he’d given the crowd reasonable warning .

From behind the line of police, a howl went up from the arena, a building of voices like cheers, or screams. The sergeant heard the roar of the crowd but did not turn. He wondered, vaguely, what might be happening there. He gave the signal, and the noise was drowned by the explosion of teargas canisters .

The protesters screamed in rage and fear. Teargas billowed across the crowd. Some of those at the periphery began to flee, but for those in the center, there was no place to go, only swaying bodies all around, the clench of lungs, self-preservation. They lifted their protest signs as ridiculous talismans—or it was their fists, or their bullhorns, that they raised, choking on the gas, eyes streaming .

The police charged, swinging nightsticks. The two groups collided in a mash of blood and bone .

“GOD,” SILAS whispered.

The dark shine of tensed flesh, glossy black shadow. The bear-tiger circled the crouching American gladiator. Silas had seen that crouch before. On the day that Tay died.

Vidonia’s hand reached for his as they watched the screen.

The dark gladiator’s ears folded back against its long skull. Muscles spring-coiled, legs back-bent, gathering …

And then it struck.

And the bear-tiger sprang to meet it.

Once when Silas was a boy, he’d seen two trucks hit head-on in a rainstorm. Two big trucks, one of them a four-by-four. They’d come together in the middle of an intersection while he was sitting at a red light with his mother. They’d had front-row seats for the event. The enormity of the impact, the sound, the sheer power released, had left him unable to speak, unable to breathe while the wreckage spun across the wet pavement in a tumbling wave of shrapnel.

It was like that for him again when the gladiators collided, that same feeling of breathlessness, that same sense of enormity, of impact. And shrapnel, too, bright red, that spun away wetly, clumping in the sawdust.

When the beasts disengaged, the U.S. gladiator twirled away, still easy on its feet but missing a crescent of ear. Those big ears are a liability , he heard Baskov saying to him all those months ago. The bear-tiger was slower now. A great peel of flesh dangled from its shoulder, exposing red muscle above stark white clavicle. It wasn’t a mortal wound, but it would sap the beast’s strength. Blood turned the floor to soup.

The U.S. gladiator wasted no time. It circled, coming in from behind. But the bear-tiger spun with it, keeping its frontal arsenal of fangs and claws pointed toward the U.S. combatant. The shadow kept circling, around and around, wearing a path in the sawdust. The beartiger turned with it, spinning in place. The seconds turned into a minute. The minute into two. Death had patience tonight. It didn’t want to lose its other ear.

The blackness reversed abruptly in its circular path. The bear-tiger spun onward only a second more before reacting, but it was a second too long.

They met in a flurry, the impact of giants.

The bear-tiger was only a few degrees off balance, but yellow fur parted, a roar of pain, and the blackness came away with a chunk of flesh in its jaws.

Enraged, the bear-tiger dropped into a crouch, hissing and spitting, and again the shadow circled, waiting for its opening.

The blackness gulped down the chunk of bloody meat and opened its jaws wide again and snapped them shut.

The crowd cheered and stomped its feet.

The blackness pounced.

This time, they battled across the floor for only a moment, but when they separated, the bear-tiger was in two parts, loosely connected. One part still breathed, and focused its eyes, and moved to match fronts with its circling killer. The other part lay in a steaming pile of rubbery loops that dragged along behind, picking up huge cakes of sawdust. Perhaps still digesting its last meal.