Matthew Costello - Rage

And suddenly the assistant was there, clipboard in hand, ready to lead him away.

Raine looked at the table of weapons.

The selection didn’t seem to matter, not when you had an array of clunky clubs and homemade bladed weapons. He picked up the longest blade he could find, more of a pike with a sharpened tip and not much of an edge. For a club-he gave each one a heft. He wanted something light that could be whipped around easily. He found one that felt right.

“I’ll take these two.”

The assistant wrote down something on the clipboard.

“You gotta take a jacket.”

The assistant pointed to a rack with jackets, all bright colors.

“They all have tonight’s sponsor on them: SuperStim.”

“I have to wear one?”

“Yes. It’s in your-” He flipped through some pages. “-your contract. Somewhere.”

“I didn’t sign one,” Raine said. “Late addition to the program.”

The assistant misunderstood, the dialogue exceeding his intellect.

“No, you will be on first. You are the first Bash.”

“Which means-I guess-that I’m not expected to get out alive?”

At first the assistant said nothing, but then: “The outfits give you an extra layer. That could be helpful. Good way to think about it.”

Raine went over and picked up a blue jacket with the words S UPPER S TIM! on the back. He put it on.

I feel like a race car with ads plastered on its side.

He zipped it up. Not much protection. But the guy was right. A few millimeters extra padding.

“And the puzzle?”

“Oh, Mr. Stiles will announce that when you enter the arena.” The guy put a hand to his earpiece.

“Yeah, right. Okay, we go live to air in three minutes. When that door pops open, out you go.”

Raine waited for a “good luck” that didn’t come. He guessed the guy had seen enough people walk out that door only to disappear.

And I guess “break a leg” would have a very different meaning today-if people even remembered it.

Raine turned to the door, pike and club in hand. He started taking steady breaths.

Must be how the gladiators felt.

A light above the door glowed red.

Then, suddenly, it turned green and the door popped open. • • •

And with the open door, cheers erupted from the studio audience filling the hundreds of seats that ringed the arena. Raine walked out, watching how the aerial cameras moved to follow him. His hands clenched tightly, holding the weapons up a bit and ready.

“And welcome, for our first Mutant Bash, the winner of the White Rabbit…”

That was met with boos.

“… Raine!”

He listened to Stiles, but also took in the layout of the arena, no longer the empty space shown in the model. But it was also different from what he saw in the video.

The arena held oversized statues… more like bizarre, giant dolls:

A clownlike figure holding a bottle of stim up to its oversized lips.

A beautiful woman holding a bag of money.

A bandit figure with a ball of fire.

A flying creature, wings outstretched-a dragon with a massive head, open mouth lined with teeth, one claw foot holding a gun.

Four figures, each near fifteen feet tall.

“Your challenge, Raine, is to show us the answer to this… our world needs order. What is the order… here?” The audience groaned, quickly stumped by the riddle.

Me, too, Raine thought.

What the fuck is he talking about?

“Show us the answer!” Stiles’s voice boomed in the arena.

Raine started walking. The door behind him slammed shut. He kept looking at the figures, turning from one to the other, when the base of the woman figure opened and a pair of mutants ran out.

“ A clue to get you started,” Stiles screamed.

Raine raised his weapon.

The two mutants came out of the woman first.

That might mean something. He didn’t wait for them to charge to him, but he ran up, swinging his club with the biggest arc possible. One mutant reared back. The other kept coming.

Raine then shoved his pike into the still-charging mutant, skewering it.

He immediately discovered a downside to the weapon. Once thrust in, it didn’t come out too easily.

But the thing writhed on the end of the pike, dead.

The other mutant now came at him, and, one-handed, Raine swung his club at it, the bash he delivered living up to its name.

Cameras catching it all.

Raine tried to think about the riddle. Order. With these statues.

What could it mean?

Distracted for a moment, the mutant smacked at his knee, making that leg buckle.

But Raine discovered as he reared back that the pike slid out of the dead mutie like a pin out of cushion, dripping with mutant blood.

Good for a close-up.

Focus!

Then, quickly spinning, he thrust it at the other mutant. The length of the pike worked well, giving him that extra few inches.

It went in, and Raine heard the audience cheer. • • •

Standing there, thinking about the riddle, he heard a loud click, and another pair of mutants came out of the bottom of the clown holding the bottle of stim. They raced toward him.

This time he stood his ground. He had to figure out what he was supposed to do or Stiles would just keep sending damn mutants at him.

Order.

He looked at the figures, each paired with something.

Bandit. Fire.

Woman. Money.

Clown. Stim.

Dragon. Gun.

Mismatched?

Could be that was the puzzle.

But no… there seemed no logic to that. And the puzzle couldn’t be so hard that the viewers would be totally stumped.

That is, unless they just gave the viewers the answer.

Raine was frustrated. What the hell do I know about game shows?

Especially this game show, which had the added difficulty of mutants constantly attacking.

He crouched and let one impale itself on the pike.

But the other didn’t even use its club. Instead it leapt on him, knocking him flat, his own club rendered useless. He smelled the thing in his face; had to be the worst smell in the foul-smelling world.

The thing was trying to get at his neck.

Getting this on camera, boys?

The jagged teeth and the snapping, open maw of the thing so close.

Raine just hoped Stiles didn’t open another figure and let out even more mutants.

He couldn’t use his club. His pike was feet away, still buried in the other mutant.

With no weapon, he had no choice.

Classic hand-to-hand technique. Use what you had. In this case, one free hand.

He took his fingers, formed them into a claw, and jammed them into the eye sockets of the mutant.

And though the thing was more animal than human, that degree of blinding pain made it leap away from him.

It stood up, dropped its club, and raised its hands to its head.

Raine ran over to the pike and pulled it out of the thing he had skewered, and though the blind mutant was now no threat, he gave it a quick in and out with the pike where he guessed its heart should be.

It fell to the ground.

Good guess.

They were dead.

“Ladies and gentlemen, a round of applause for Raine! Can he solve the Bash, now that things are about to get…”

The audience answered, a show mantra apparently.

“… even… harder!”

With no mutants attacking, Raine had a few moments to once again look at the giant figures. The odd mix of what they held, jumbled up.

The one clue… about “order.”

He heard a clicking sound, and another large statue began disgorging its mutants.

But he kept looking at the figures, waiting for something to occur to him.

The bandit. The clown. The dragon.

Fire. Gun. Money.