Ted Kosmatka - The Games

The yellow-striped arm was the same, but the traffic beyond it was significantly different. These cars were moving. Progress was slow—the vehicles were merely inching along—but at least it would get them out of the garage.

He swiped his pass, and the gate arm ascended. Ignoring the honking horns, he pulled forward and aggressively nosed his car into the flow of traffic. The guy who just doesn’t give a shit always has the advantage in merging.

Silas went with the flow of traffic. Around him, pedestrians streamed in a steady flow. Some looked panicked. Some injured. A few were running. “What the hell is going on out here?” Vidonia asked.

“Just keep dialing.”

They were a block away when Vidonia’s call finally went through. “Hello!” Vidonia said.

“Hello, don’t hang up.” She put the phone against Silas’s ear.

“Jeff, you there?”

“Yeah, I’m here.” Jeff’s voice was hoarse.

“Are you okay? Is Eric with you?”

“We’re fine, mostly. A bit shaky. Eric is right here. Silas, you wouldn’t believe wha—”

“Where are you?”

“Where … I … I don’t know. A few blocks from the arena. We’re just moving with the crowd right now. I couldn’t hear my phone with all the noise …”

“Look for a street sign. I need a street sign.”

“Up ahead, I see a sign … Buckeye, but I’m not sure what street I’m on right now.” The sound of screams came through the phone, a distant panic of the crowd.

“That’s fine. Buckeye. Just get to Buckeye. I’m in my car now. We’ll find you.”

“Jesus!” Jeff yelled into the phone.

“What’s happening?”

“Hol—”

And the phone line went dead.

Silas turned to Vidonia. “We need to find Buckeye.”

Vidonia checked the phone’s GPS, but the system lagged. Finally, frustrated, she rolled down her window and yelled to passing pedestrians, “Buckeye—do you know the way?”

The first few people ignored her and kept moving. A few others shrugged or motioned that they didn’t know. Finally, a few pointed. Ahead on the left. That was good enough for Silas.

He switched lanes as soon as he could, getting into the left lane. At the light, he turned. Two blocks up, he came to Buckeye.

“Left or right?”

“The arena is left,” Vidonia said.

Silas spun the wheel. The flow of traffic toward the arena was almost nonexistent, so he was able to pick up some speed.

“Call back,” he said.

She dialed, but it only rang. “They probably can’t hear it,” she said.

“Yeah.”

Most of the traffic was foot traffic. Up ahead, the street opened up into a wide causeway. He rounded a slight bend in the road, and the arena came into view, lit up like Christmas. Abandoned cars blocked the way. They could get no farther.

“Come on,” Silas said.

They climbed out.

The street was packed with runners, people still flowing out away from the arena in streams.

It took only a minute to find them.

Silas saw them up ahead, Jeff gripping the boy’s arm to keep him from being pulled away in the crowd.

“Jeff!” Silas yelled.

His head swiveled, a moment of recognition, and they crossed the street to greet him.

“Jesus, it’s good to see you.” His face was white.

“C’mon, my car is just up ahead.”

“Run,” Jeff said.

“We’re going.”

“That thing … We saw it.”

“In the arena?”

“No,” Jeff said. “Outside. Out here. It was back there in the park, right behind us.”

“Jesus.”

“Silas … It was ripping people apart.”

Behind them, people in the crowd began to scream. There was a sound like rending metal, like a car crash.

Silas didn’t want to look.

He couldn’t stop himself.

He turned, and that’s when he saw it. The creature had landed on the top of a car a block and a half away. Black and monstrous, wings extended. It crouched on the twisted metal wreckage. The crowd screamed and parted. Silas jerked the boy off his feet and carried him.

Silas ran as fast as he could.

There was another crash, more screams. Breaking glass. Silas chanced a look behind them, and the creature stood in the glow of a streetlight, its dark shape slick with blood.

They got to the car, and Silas flung the door open. “Get in.”

There were only two seats, but they all squeezed inside, feet and arms and legs. Jeff was sprawled mostly across the center console, legs stuffed into the passenger side. Eric sat on Vidonia’s lap.

Through the windshield, a shadow. A dark shape airborne, the flap of wings. The crowd screamed, and people ran. But some weren’t fast enough. A hundred yards up the street, the creature slammed to the pavement and knocked a woman to the ground. They could see it all through the windshield.

“Shut your eyes,” Silas told the boy.

A moment later, the creature ripped the woman in half.

Silas fumbled for his car keys.

He slid the key into the ignition. The gladiator moved up the street.

“Please, let’s go,” Vidonia said. “Now.”

The car roared to life, and Silas slammed it into reverse. He turned his head but couldn’t see anything.

“You’re clear!” Jeff shouted.

Silas stomped the gas, and the car lurched backward.

“Keep it straight,” Jeff said, looking behind them. “Just keep it straight.”

The gladiator receded in the distance. It leaped into the air, and Silas watched it rise in two, three powerful flaps of its wings. It flapped again and circled, coming to rest abruptly against the side of a building. It clung.

“It’s still learning to fly,” Vidonia said. “Building its strength.”

“Seems plenty strong to me,” Silas said.

“Get ready to cut your wheel,” Jeff snapped.

Silas’s eyes were still pinned on the gladiator in the distance. It pushed off the building with a mighty thrust and climbed upward into the sky.

“Now! Cut left now!”

Silas spun the wheel, and the car backed up around the corner. He put it into drive, hooked the wheel again, and took off down the side road leading away from the arena.

He drove twenty blocks.

Up ahead, he saw a hotel and pulled into the front drive.

“You’ll be safe here,” he said. “Inside.”

They all climbed out.

The boy hugged him.

“What the hell happened, Silas?” Jeff asked.

“I wish I knew.”

Jeff looked shell-shocked. “What’s going to happen now?”

“Now you’re going to get a room and stay inside until this is all over.”

Silas tossed him his phone as he climbed back behind the wheel. “And call my sister.”

IT TOOK nearly an hour to get to the highway. Time enough for him to clear his head and begin to think rationally. He saw fire trucks and ambulances.

Vidonia was pensive. She sat, reclined in her seat slightly, staring out the window. He supposed she was dealing with the shock of it. All those deaths. She turned away from the window, and her hand went to the radio. She scanned through the channels, lighting on bits of conversation or music, then moving on. She stopped.

“—eighteen confirmed dead, many more possible. The U.S. Olympic Commission has set up a crisis hotline to call if you have any questions about loved ones, or if you see anything suspicious. Once again, the gladiator has still not been captured. It remains at large. There have been several confirmed sightings within the city, and people are asked to remain indoors if at all possible.

“We have word from the Olympic Commission that Dr. Silas Williams, the head of the U.S. program, is wanted for questioning related to possible terrorist involvement in this incident. He is—”

Silas hit the radio button violently, swerving the car into another lane in the process. A horn blared.