Ted Kosmatka - The Games

The gladiator brought its attention to bear on Silas again. It crouched low to the ground and moved toward his broken form, sniffing around his head. Silas turned his face away.

He was still alive.

Her breath caught in her throat.

He was still alive.

Vidonia brought a shaking hand up to her mouth to hold it all in—the laughter, the crying, the screams. Everything that wanted to pour out of her. He was still alive. Tears slid down her cheek and dropped to the floor.

She grabbed the broken sill. Glass sank into her palms, but she barely felt it.

She extended a leg out the window, then shifted her weight onto the small ledge. Her other leg followed, and she let herself drop. She landed in the bushes with a resounding crack. At first she assumed the sound had been her leg or spine. She was in pain, but when she stretched, all her parts still moved. The sound had been a branch that broke her fall. Her butt had taken most of the force of the fall, and for once, she was happy for the little extra padding nature had provided her.

She lifted her head up from the mud, half expecting to see the creature looming over her, attracted by the sound of her fall. But it still knelt beside Silas. It sniffed him, pausing over his front pockets where he had stuffed the eggs. One huge black hand raked down his body, ripping open his clothes and flesh. Silas screamed in pain as the gladiator picked the eggs from his wounds.

Vidonia put her hand over her ears but could not block the sound completely. The screaming continued, and she crawled away on her hands and knees, staying behind the belt of shrubs next to the building. She tried to think of something, anything, that she could do.

There was a loud thud, and the screaming stopped.

She turned and looked through a gap in the shrubbery. She didn’t want to see but couldn’t help herself.

The gladiator’s fist was high over its head. Then the arm came down on Silas in a savage arc, thudding again. Tears slid from her eyes. Any thought that Silas was still alive died with that second blow. It’s over for him now , she told herself. But the tears kept coming, blinding her. She continued to crawl, keeping her shoulder against the wall for direction. Behind her, she heard the arm come down again. Again. She heard the crunch of bones, the sickening squish of pulped flesh.

She crawled on her belly with her face in the dirt, not looking, not wanting to see or hear what was going on twenty feet away. The sounds grew softer and farther away. She stopped when her head hit the tire. She looked up, and the car seemed impossibly huge—impossibly removed in time, like an artifact of some forgotten age. Had it really been only a few hours since she’d arrived on those very four wheels? It seemed like an eternity. Everything in the world had changed since then.

Her hand closed on the door handle. She pulled, and the latch popped like a gunshot. She looked over at the gladiator, but its arm still did not stop. It was too distracted to notice. The thick black limb rose and fell like a piston, making of Silas a little dent in the ground.

Tears came anew, and she told herself she wouldn’t look again. If it was coming for her, what could she do, anyway?

She slithered inside, over the passenger seat and behind the steering wheel. She lowered her feet to the floor and raised her body up.

She closed her eyes. “Please, God,” she whispered. “The keys. That’s all I ask.”

Her shaking hand found the ignition. The key was still in it.

She let loose a ragged breath and turned the key. The electric motor buzzed to life. It wasn’t loud, but she couldn’t help looking again, and this time, the gladiator did stop. It cast its baleful eye toward her.

She shifted into reverse and hit the accelerator. The car jerked back from the wall and spun in a half-circle. She turned the wheel, and the car pivoted on its rear axis. She was straining over her right shoulder, hand gripping the back of the passenger seat hard enough to pierce the material with her nails. Still in reverse, she floored it, screaming wordlessly.

The gladiator had plenty of time to react. It even lingered for a moment to scoop up its eggs before it stood. As the car jumped off the pavement and hurtled across the grass toward it, the gladiator raised its wings and thrust upward into the sky.

Or it would have, had the right wing not been damaged by the arrow.

The ascent was crippled, off-sided, and the gladiator’s body tilted in the air as the wings provided different amounts of lift.

The trunk of the car connected solidly with the gladiator’s right thigh, spinning the creature over the top of the car and across the hood to the grass. She hit the brakes immediately, shifted into drive, and floored the accelerator again. It cost only a single second to do this, but still she barely caught it. The creature was up and moving. She jerked the wheel, and its hip collided solidly with the corner of the car, knocking the gladiator sideways to the grass.

It was hurt now. Not badly, but it was hurt. She turned the wheel again, bringing the car back around and throwing turf in a dozen directions. She moved the headlights across the creature as it tried to gain its footing. She screamed again and stomped the pedal to the floor. The car connected solidly. There was a loud crack, and the creature spun away, up and over the hood.

She spun the wheel again, and the headlights swung through the darkness until they found the black, bloody shape moving in the grass. The creature was damaged now. Badly. It crawled toward the building, pulling its broken body forward by its hands. She inched the car forward, using the hood ornament as a gun sight. When the crosshairs were lined up, she stomped on the pedal again.

She heard the clumps of grass pummeling the inside of the wheel wells as she picked up speed, rocking over the bumpy turf. The gladiator turned its eye to the headlights and threw its arm up. It didn’t matter.

The nose of the car connected squarely with the gladiator’s torso, carrying it forward through the bushes at more than forty miles per hour. The car buried itself in the wall with bone-crushing force.

Darkness enveloped her.

HER EYES opened to stinging darkness. She lifted her face from the deflated air bag and wiped the blood away with the back of an unfamiliar hand. The hand looked vaguely like hers but was shaped differently than she was used to. The fingers went in odd directions, and the wrist had a funny twist to it that shouldn’t have been there. She tried to straighten it, and the pain came then, crashing in with enough force to send her back into the darkness for a while.

Later—she couldn’t say how long—when she traded one darkness for the other, her face felt very cold, and she was lying across the passenger seat. She moved by slow degrees, discovering what pain really was. Everything hurt. Then she remembered that Silas was dead, and that was worse than the pain.

When she could, she tried the door. She couldn’t find the handle. She looked around the car for where it might have fallen. Glass was everywhere but the windows. She looked across the steering wheel, and the hood of the car was a crumple against the wall. A dark, huge, twisted arm led away from the point of impact.

The passenger side was better. She pulled at the handle, and the door popped open with a clang. She pushed, but it would open only a foot or two. It was enough. She crawled across the passenger seat and aimed her face toward the gap. She pushed with her good arm, and the grass was damp and soothing against her skin. She sank her fingers past the roots and pulled. Her body followed.

For the first time, she realized the motor was still running. The throttle was stuck wide open, and it buzzed wildly, half bee, half sewing machine. She could see the flash of sparks falling to the ground under the motor.