Doomsday Warrior 04 - Bloody America (16 page)

The Moscow Coliseum had been modeled after the ancient Roman arena both in shape and in function: to make death become a performer for jaded eyes. But this arena was even larger than the ancient crumbling piece of antiquity that stood in ruins in Soviet-occupied Rome. Its vast rows of steel seats could hold nearly one hundred thousand people, and today, they would be filled to capacity. Fifty thousand seats reserved for the elite of the elite and fifty thousand of the higher rows for lower level functionaries. All had blood lust in their eyes.

The men who ran the death games knew they had to fulfill their spectators’ expectations, otherwise they might well end up themselves taking part in the bloodletting below. The commissar of entertainment, as he was euphemistically called, was Commissar Dubrovnik, a short but muscular man who had worked his way up to the top through backstabbing and double-dealing at every step of the way. He had left a trail of bodies behind him and protected his privileged post, his mansion by the Volga, with narrow eyes and spies planted everywhere. Dubrovnik, as soon as he had reached this pinnacle of success, had studied the ancient Roman games thoroughly, filled with admiration at the myriad ways they had invented for a man to die. And this—this was the biggest event of the year—the celebration of the Russian conquest of the world a century before.

Games were held weekly, but they were often run-of-the-mill overweight gladiators ripping each other apart with unimaginative and hardly graceful thrusts and smashes of their giant swords. But today was different. The Day of the Games—a once a year spectacle that rivaled anything the Romans could have imagined. Dubrovnik had made sure that this would be a festival of blood that none would ever forget. He sat at a glass-enclosed booth high atop the stadium walls, earphones around his head and a microphone pressed against his lips, shouting out orders to his hundreds of underlings who rushed frantically around the immense stadium making sure that everything would proceed smoothly. They knew that mistakes, delays of the game would be dealt with harshly—very harshly.

At last the stands were filled to bursting, and Dubrovnik, over towering ten-foot-high speakers placed every two hundred feet along the surrounding walls, welcomed the fans to the games.

“Welcome to the Day of the Games,” he said, speaking slowly in his deep, nationally known voice. For Dubrovnik had made certain that he was the announcer on most of the important games, introducing the gladiators, many of whom were heroes of the Soviet Union—with their own millions of rubles of reward money for having survived so long. Such names as the Red Lancer, whose long, razor-sharp spear had dissected many an adversary; the Netman, whose dazzling net work pulled opponents from their feet so that his short Sword could finish them off; Two-Sworded Mikael, whose dazzling blades could whip a man into so much bloody meat before he had time to know what hit him; and of course—the infamous Black Menace, the toughest of the tough, who to date had over two hundred kills to his name. One of the few blacks allowed the privileges of the elite he was even welcomed to Kremlin parties. Although the generals and bureaucrats kept a nervous distance from this eight-foot warrior of death. All would fight today. And some would die.

“I am proud,” Dubrovnik continued, “to start the Games of Death. I promise you all, you will not be disappointed.” Then in that famous four word sentence he started the blood sport. “Gladiators prepare to die.”

Dubrovnik liked to start the games off slowly, gradually building the intensity, the danger, until it peaked in the final fight of the big name gladiators. He had learned how to tease and play with the crowd’s emotions, make them want more and more blood and death, until after hours of murder and decapitation they would go home satisfied, excited, and take out their own violence on their mistresses and wives.

Gates opened at each end of the nearly five hundred foot in diameter circular area floor, and young women emerged, terrified, barely clothed, pushed out unwillingly by the probing tips of guards’ spears. Nearly fifty of them—slaves taken from various of the empire’s vassal nations—all young and pretty. They had already been used by those who desired them and now were discarded to meet their fate in a way more horrible than any could imagine. They gathered together in the center of the arena to the roaring jeers of the bloodthirsty crowd. They stared around with wide panic-stricken eyes, begging for mercy from an audience that had not one drop of mercy to give. Suddenly a large gate at the far end of the arena grounds opened. Deep guttural roars emerged from the darkness. Within seconds they emerged—lions, tigers, leopards, all snarling, angry at their captivity, starved for days and ready to take it out on anyone they could sink their fangs into, rip their claws through. The predators paced nervously around for a few moments, growling at one another but too unsure of this unfamiliar terrain to really go at it. Lions with huge golden manes, tigers, fiercest of the cats with teeth like scalpels, leopards, sleek and quick with slashing claws that could rip a chest open in a flash. They slunk down for a few seconds when they heard the rising roar of the crowd above, their hair standing up, tails falling down between their powerful legs.

But only for a second. Then they saw the women. Instinct took precedence over fear. Their eyes opened wide with a kind of murderous joy that at last they would get something living, something squirming and hot to eat. Not the half-rotted slabs of beef that had been tossed into their cages. They moved toward the women cautiously at first, their eyes focusing in on the cowering, wailing females. Then they moved in for the kill.

The girls from the slave nations, their thighs and breasts showing through their flimsy ripped garments, moved backward as a group. They held onto one another for dear life as if the grip of their neighbor would somehow break the spell of this nightmare. They edged back until they were up against a wall, nearly twelve feet high with no chance of escape. The spectators in the closest seats leaned over the steel wall and jeered them, telling them in no uncertain terms what was about to befall them.

“Get ready to die sweeties.”

“I’d like to suck those tits of yours before the cats get hold of them.” And other such terms of endearment that increased the women’s stark terror. There was no escape. Suddenly they realized it. They prayed to the gods of their homelands—these women from the plains of Africa, the fields of Britain, the forests of Indonesia, the vast mountains of China. Prayed that they would be released from their judgement. But the gods were too far or too busy to hear. Only the cats would be their judges now.

The creatures moved in, nearly thirty of them, their thick shiny fur glistening in the afternoon sun that peaked through the Russian clouds above as if anxious itself to witness the spectacle of death. The predators circled in on the screaming women, no longer concerned with interspecies rivalries, acting now with an instinctive hunting cooperation. They came in from the front, and from each flank, not allowing a single one of the massed group of flesh to make an attempt at escape.

One of the leopards made the first move, a beautiful creature with stark black spots dotting its rich golden coat. It moved in a blur faster than the human eye could capture. Its five-inch-long incisors, created by evolution to sink deep into its prey, dripped with the juices of its hunger. The leopard tore into the front ranks of the hysterical women and sank its fangs deep into the neck of a teenage black girl from the Mlawi tribe of East Africa. The ivory teeth found the arteries, severing them with one bite. The girl fell to the dusty arena ground, the leopard holding tight, squeezing ever tighter with its iron jaws. Her blood vessels torn, hot red blood pulsed out down over her shiny black flesh. But mercifully for her it was over almost instantly. The leopard was a quick killer unlike the lions and tigers who preferred to play for a while with their prey—like a cat. The leopard dragged the twitching corpse backward, away from the crowd, searching for some shade where it could gorge itself in peace.

As if the kill of the leopard was the signal to attack, the other predators charged forward like an army. Each one singled out its particular meal, drawn to them by some unknown internal process of food selection. An immense tiger, nearly five feet high at the shoulder, rushed at a buxom white Irish girl with skin as fair as a first November snow. But it wasn’t a quick or efficient killer. It ripped out one of its plate-sized paws, the claws fully extended like a row of daggers, and slashed her across the chest. Her right breast was ripped from her body like a piece of flimsy paper. The Irish girl fell to the blood-speckled ground, screaming like a siren. The tiger slashed again, this time across her softly rounded stomach, ripping deep into the tender flesh. The five claws dug in nearly half a foot, five scalpels crudely dissecting the human prey. Her intestines and inner organs spewed out onto the arena floor in an explosion of blood and torn flesh. The huge carnivore put one of its paws on the squirming woman’s throat and slammed its opened jaws into her oozing innards. It ripped at the red goodies, taking bites of the soft organs—its favorite food—pulling out large chunks of the firm dark kidneys and liver and pancreas. The poor girl was still alive, her heart pumping furiously to sustain her existence. She could feel the tiger tearing at her and knew there was not a thing she could do. Its face red with blood, dripping in little drops from its long white whiskers, the tiger moved up to the skull for the brains—the next item on its list of delicacies.

The other cats tore into the crowd of sacrificial girls like a hurricane from hell, slashing and biting everyone in sight. They ripped heads from bodies, severed arms and legs with single swipes of their razor claws. The roars of the blood-maddened predators mingled with the cries of the dying girls and the appreciative cheers of the Red elite from the stands above. The sun winked out again, disappearing behind a mountainous cloud, dark and purple, a bruise across the repulsed face of the sky. Within thirty seconds of the charge every creature had tasted blood. The girls were pulled from the crowd, dragged across the now blood-soaked ground as if a mortuary had exploded, sending out pieces of once beautiful female flesh into a hideous sculpture of human parts. The big cats bit at the still hot bodies, pulling out huge chunks of face and chest with each snap of their teeth. Some of the carnivores began fighting over a particularly choice piece, one on each side, ripping the screaming victims literally apart at the fleshy seams, pulling arms and legs off the bodies like parts of a doll. Only these dolls spurted blood, gallons of it. The cats bathed in hot red liquid, feeding themselves from the tasty flesh until they were full. Within minutes there was nothing even vaguely recognizable as something that was once human—a butcher shop of human meat.

The stands roared out their approval. Their faces were wide with sadistic excitement, their mouths screaming in demonic happiness. The games were off to a good start. Commissar Dubrovnik let the cats eat for about five minutes, knowing the crowd loved to see the female flesh actually disappear into the throats of the killers. Like the consummation of a sexual act. He knew his audience well—just how long before they became bored. When the squeals of glee from the stands began quieting, he knew it was time to move on.

“Remove the cats,” his deep voice intoned over the loudspeaker system. Instantly, squads of lance-toting arena staff wearing black leather uniforms studded with brass at the shoulders rushed out and prodded the predators back to the gate they had emerged from just minutes before. The animals were reluctant to leave their feast, but the sharp tips of the long spears, poking, digging into their thick pelts, persuaded them to leave. But there was little left to be eaten anyway. Carrying the last morsels of their meals, long pieces of blood-slimed intestines and whole skulls in their mouths to chew on later in the confines of their dark cages, the cats submitted to the will of their masters and, growling angrily, moved through the entrance and down into the subterranean tunnels of the arena.

While attendants hosed down the bloody grounds for the next segment of fun and games, hawkers went through the stands selling food and drinks to the spectators. The men of power squeezed their women’s thighs and leaned over, biting softly into perfumed necks. They were aroused by the spectacle and could hardly wait to return to their luxurious bedrooms where they would soon play their own games of sadism and sex.

Dubrovnik liked to pace the death games with big and then small events, raising the crowd’s emotions to fever pitch and then subduing them again. He knew how to manipulate his charges like a puppet master his dolls.

“Let the gladiators enter,” his ominous voice rang through the coliseum. Out came two teams of fighters. The crowd roared with laughter. This was the “humorous” part of the program for the gladiators, if they could be called that, were all the misfits from the streets of Moscow and other Red cities. Dwarves, cripples, armless, legless men—they came out hobbling and stumbling, some on carts with wheels. The wretched of the earth who would have been far luckier to have died at birth as had most such “inferior” mutations. These had had the misfortune to live—but now they would die. They carried equally absurd weapons: carving forks, shovels, boards; one small man with misshapen physique and some sort of scalelike covering on his body carried a woman’s high heel shoe in each deformed hand, with long, pointed heels with which he would try to bash in an opponent’s head. The wretched ones had been friends—friends in misery, at any rate, within the confines of the vast holding pens deep within the underground tunnels and warehouses of human flesh of the arena. But now they could no longer care, show any compassion. Each was on his own and their continued life could only be assured by the destruction of those around them.

Nearly one hundred of the pitiful specimens of humanity hobbled or rolled to the center of the stadium as the crowd roared with obscene laughter, their faces red with harsh smiles. The bugles sounded again, signaling the fight to begin, and the wretched ones squared off and began their struggle to the death. It was a ghastly show, these cripples who began slamming away at one another with little strength, hammering away with their crude instruments, weapons that would take many blows to kill a man—insuring that death would not come quickly or easily for any of them. A hammer smashed into a dwarf’s face, bruising it, smashing the nose flat as a piece of bloody cardboard; a rake scraped down the side of a one-armed man’s chest, leaving countless gashes that began oozing blood like thick moisture from a cave wall. The fighters’ faces were twisted, screaming, trying to gather all the strength and hate they could muster to give them the ability to kill. Blood began flowing from myriad minor wounds as the high pitched squeals of fear and madness issued forth from the misfits’ mouths. Shovel against shard of glass, icepick against tire iron, wooden chair against hammer, one man even swung an ancient rusted iron on a long electric cord, bashing in whatever head he could reach. They battled one another with the ferocity of those who wish only to survive.