Bread and the Circus

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

That was a long day.  And looking like it’s gonna be a long night, too, by the looks of it.  Especially if Neph doesn’t get that fire going pretty soon.

He’s been sawing with that stick for hours.  I mean that literally: hours.  There’s sweat on his face, and he has to keep shifting a little to make sure it doesn’t drip onto his work (something he learned after a near-miss earlier).  Maybe I shouldn’t make fun, though, because I took a turn earlier, and I have to admit, it’s hard work starting a fire.  Really hard work.  The guide Neph found, and which I read too, after he walked me verbally through the process of finding it in my stat suit’s displays, said the process could take a pretty long time, so I guess we’ll just stick at it until we succeed or we get too tired to bother anymore.  I’d have still been at it, actually, except that Neph suggested that I’d be better at finding food, and maybe a way to store water, and weapons of some sort, for if (when) trouble shows up.

Well, there’s a pile of fist-sized rocks I’ve gathered stacked up near the base of the big tree we climbed earlier, and I’ve gathered up more than a few really nice-looking beating sticks.  The trees around here seem to be something like blackthorn trees back on Earth, or at least they’re how Dad described them to me, all gnarled and a little bit spiky.  Apparently old-time Earthers made a sort of combination walking stick and club out of these trees they called a shillelagh, and while the sticks I’ve got aren’t polished up nicely like I imagine a proper shillelagh should be, I found plenty of them cast off naturally from the trees (I didn’t feel right breaking off branches), and more than enough to make what feel like pretty good weapons.

Hefting one of my new beating sticks in my hand, I eye the nearby pitcher fruit I’ve stacked on the ground, careful to keep them upright while I was setting them down.  Neph mentioned his thought that the fruit might keep for longer if we left it on the trees, so I didn’t pick any more than we needed for lunch and dinner, but they made nice little drinking vessels once they were empty, so I filled them with water from the stream running near our grove, and now we’ve got a handy source of easy-to-carry water, for when we start exploring in earnest.  They’ve even got these natural viney protrusions sticking out, so we can tie them to some of the little studs on the stat suits and carry them with us.  At least, if I can figure out how to make some sort of a cork, that is.

These are all the thoughts I’m running through my head to keep from thinking about the failing light.  Everywhere is getting really dark, especially with all this underbrush and canopy surrounding us on all sides and from above.  In the day it felt like fortifications, but now…now I’m not so sure.  I can’t see so well with so many bushes blocking my line of sight, and right away I know I’ll have to clear out a lot of them before this place can be made properly defensible.  That, or maybe we should build some sort of treehouse.  That shouldn’t be too hard, not with all the huge limbs above us, and if we could stay off the floor of the forest, especially at night…

That was a whistle.  Not the kind of whistle that a human would make with the lips, though.  No, more like the whistle of some sort of bird.  Or maybe a dinosaur, if what paleontologists and movies used to say about them can be believed.  Some of those old flicks I loved when I was smaller come rushing back into my forebrain, and I reach down to stuff a few of the rocks I’ve found into the pockets of the stat suit.  They’re smooth, probably cast up by flooding from the nearby stream in rainy times, and they’re hard, not much good for making stuff, but they’re more than adequate projectiles.  Then I grip my shillelagh and grit my teeth, and force myself not to say anything to Neph.  I can see the expression on his face as the light finally starts to fail entirely, and the whistles start to get louder, and I know he’s already doing his best, working as fast as he can to get the light going.

Maybe I see smoke, right before everything goes completely black.  Maybe that’s just me being hopeful.  I’m sure I hear Neph muttering to himself, fumbling with something in the dark, but by that point I’m not looking at him anymore: I’m looking outward, gripping my beating stick in both hands, keeping it raised, the whistles loud now, and all around us, accompanied by a rustling noise.  That’s got to be the bushes I was worried about, and I wish I’d thought of clearing them away sooner, so maybe I’d have a less obstructed area for swinging.  There’s nothing friendly down here in the Arena – I’m not naïve enough to think otherwise – and whatever it is that’s rustling its way closer to us while making those whistling sounds, there’s lots of it – them – and they’ll be going for blood before too long.

I just hope I can take a few of them with me.  Maybe I can keep them off Neph long enough to get him up the tree.

Oh God, please don’t let them be able to climb trees.

Maybe my eyes are adapting to the lack of light, because I think I can see a little now.  There are shapes, small, maybe as tall as my waist, all hunchbacked and long-snouted.  They’re scaly-looking, all in dull colors, mottled, naturally camouflaged.  There’s reds and blues and oranges and greens (they must deal with colorblind critters, then, where texture is more important than color), and there’s a lot of them, maybe six or seven.  If they were bigger I’d be even more scared, but I can see that they’re holding sharp-edged knives made of stone or flint or something like that, and I know I’m in trouble if they’re smart enough to make basic weapons.

They’ve got their eyes fixed on me, the tallest object in the clearing with Neph still crouching, and I take a step away from him, pressing my back against the big tree at the center for a moment, the one that gave me most of the fruit and sticks, just enough to make sure they can’t sneak up on me, maybe climb up my body from behind and go for my neck.  They’ve got big, dark eyes, like the eyes of a great white shark I saw in another old movie once (why oh why did I waste so much time watching scary movies as a kid?), and those eyes are gleaming with something deep inside as they look at me, and I realize that they can see perfectly well in complete darkness.

I’m just winding up for my swing when I realize: I’m not in complete darkness anymore.

The dry tinder Neph had ready bursts into sudden light, and I see the eyes of the creatures widen in surprise…which just leaves them all the more vulnerable to the sudden shock of light that strikes those delicate organs, making them whistle and hoot in pain.  Some cover their faces with their hands, others turn and run, but one…one runs right at me, squealing with a fury born of a hate deeper and more pure than anything I’d ever encountered before.  For a moment, that sheer hate hits me like a physical blow, and I hesitate, stunned.

Then I swing the shillelagh, right as the little lizard beastie leaps into the air, straight at my face: they can jump high!  But the beating stick connects with a loud c***k, and now I understand what some old baseball players Mom introduced me to once meant about the “sweet spot” on their bats as the sharp-faced lizard-thing goes flying with a final squeal, slamming into one of the smaller trees near the edge of our little clearing, and then flopping to the ground and lying still.

Neph isn’t idle.  He’s up, and he’s swinging a club of his own, this one wrapped in strands of dry grass, making a decent torch.  The lizard-things are hooting in pain and scrambling around in confusion now, so we both wade in, swinging with vicious efficiency, sending them packing.  I’m pretty sure I can see more than the six or seven I saw initially, all milling around in confusion in the sudden light of the fire now starting to blaze in the firepit at the center of the clearing, but we don’t stop, and soon me and Neph are throwing rocks at the retreating stubby tails of the lizard-things as they retreat into the darkness, their hoots and whistles swiftly receding, until before too long the sounds are gone as well.

Only the crackling of the fire and our ragged, panting breathing filling up the night now, I trade a look with Neph.  Then we both break out into a case of the giggles.  It’s the adrenaline rush, I guess, the shock of almost being dead, and suddenly finding that we might actually live.  Maybe it’s something else.  Probably is.  If you haven’t felt it yourself, I can’t really explain it.  But we’re leaning our backs against each other, laughing our heads off, and we’re both alive and we’ve got a fire, and it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in the whole wide universe.

We’re both sitting on the ground now, with the rough bark of the tree at our backs, exhausted as the excitement finally leaves our bodies spent, when Neph finally speaks up.

“We should hold torches behind us when we can,” he said, his voice calm with that certainty that comes from having looked into the face of death, and walked away alive.  “The light got in my eyes while I was hitting those things.  It dazzled me.  I’m just lucky those things were like morlocks with their big eyes, and got even more dazzled than I did, or they might have got me when I couldn’t see them so well.”

“Good to know,” I muttered, suddenly desperately tired.  “You take first watch, Neph.  Use the clock in the stat suit to watch for it.  When I’ve had maybe four or five hours, or you get too tired to go on, wake me.”

He was just starting to look at me, or at least I think he was, when I let my eyes close.  The adrenaline was all out of me now, and that was enough for me to just lose all motivation to stay awake.  Of course I don’t remember the moment of falling asleep, but it happened pretty fast, a lot faster than I’d thought it would.  Guess being out here in nature improves my sleeping habits as much as it does my appetite.

There’s one moment I remember, sometime during the night.  I had the presence of mind to glance up at my stat suit’s timer, which I’d figured out how to arrange up on one side of my field of vision, where it wouldn’t get in the way, but I could still see it, and knew I’d only slept for two or three hours before tossing awake.  Guess my body thought I should get up and use the bathroom, except the stat suit had already dealt with that need before it even registered with my conscious mind.  So I looked around the clearing, and saw Neph there, kneeling by the fire, feeding it sticks, keeping it bright and hot.  Every now and then he’d get up, then spend a long time looking out at the darkness, one of the beating sticks I’d gathered in his hands.  I realized that he was doing his best to let his eyes adapt to the darkness between sessions of tending the fire, all the better to stand guard and make sure nothing else snuck up on us in the night.

Thinking about all the contestants who had to somehow survive out here alone, without anybody else to help out or take a turn at watch, I gave a shudder, and then must have passed out again, because the next thing I knew, Neph had just touched my shoulder, his hand still resting there, and I was wide awake.  First thing, I checked the clock, then relaxed when I saw that only about four hours had passed since I went under: Neph hadn’t tried to be a gentleman, and I was glad for it.  After all, we had to treat each other like equals out here if we were going to make it, and that meant sharing the load in every way, sleep included.

“Sack out,” I told him, taking up my shillelagh and hefting it experimentally in my hands, making sure I still had the feel for its use.  “I’ll wake you in four or five, or when I see dawn, whichever comes first.”

Sure it was wrong of me, but I still couldn’t help but smirk when I saw Neph pass out almost as soon as his head touched the ground between the roots where I’d been sleeping just moments before.  Poor guy must’ve been right on the edge of exhausted collapse himself when I called first dibs.

Yeah, Neph’s a good guy.  I’m lucky to have him as my partner.

These thoughts running through my head, and ones like them, I start my patrol, keeping my eyes active, my senses alert, my mind working.  I even had a midnight snack, sipping some of the plentiful fruit, and drinking a lot of water (and still finding it so weird that I didn’t need to pee it out afterward; thank heavens for the stat suit!).  Anything to keep from getting bored and losing focus.

Out here, making dumb mistakes like that would get you dead very, very fast.