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The Battlefield (part A)

The Battlefield of Sin. That's what we call the place that used to be The Decc. In its time, The Decc was a huge multicomplex devoted to plays, concerts, and conventions, sort of Duluth's answer to the Hollywood Bowl. After the war, however, it just became a pile of rubble, a large platform resting over Lake Superior. But then, some crazy despot named Charlie Freemason decided that some things weren't meant to be just a hunk of junk, so he got some people together and spruced the city back up again. The Decc became the Battlefield, a giant steel platform three times the size of a football field, where people can fight for money and water. The winners walked away happy and the losers added their blood to the Battlefield, which was never washed except for when the rain came.

Did I ever participate in the matches? I had to. I don't know if you got the news before the war, but Lake Superior had an infestation of lampreys. They were becoming pests, breeding like a right bunch of bastards, but when the lake became irradiated after the war, the lampreys remained and continued to feast on the indigenous fish and breed. In the end, they became the only living things in the lake, and instead of staying at the bottom, they sought food at the surface. At night you can see them all, making the entire lake boil as they fed on each other. It's disgusting, but it's even more disgusting when you realize that we're doing to same thing on the Battlefield.

Anyway, you couldn't get close enough to the lake to get a bottleful for purification. The Battlefield is the only way to get good, clean, water. To be honest, though, I don't really mind the money intake, either.

I think I'm pretty good on the Battlefield. I can do a lot with a hatchet, and I can do a lot more with a machete. I've already won enough water to start a little safety cache and enough money to sustain my lodgings for a few years. I live in a cheap housing project what used to be a paper mill with a fox, a panther, and another wolf.

None of them participate in the Battlefield, though I know that Desmond, the fox, is considering it. I hope he doesn't; he's such a smart and enigmatic little guy. I wouldn't want his face to be the next one I see amongst the dead in my dreams.

Rick, the wolf, makes a living by selling herbs and vegetables on the street. He's made a garden in the middle of the floor, which annoys the hell out of everybody. He's taken on Daniel as his assistant, which the panther wasn't really too keen on at the beginning, but after a bit of practice and patience he should be making some progress. He's only twelve, he'll get used to it.

Desmond...he sings. He goes out into the street with his guitar and he sings. But the damn thing, the thing that confuses Rick and me to no end, and the thing that makes me question my previous statement in saying that the fox was "smart," is that he doesn't sing for money. He sings "just to sing," because he likes to, and because the people he sings to like it. I haven't heard him sing before, but Granny Koch that runs the water purification facility says that he is the greatest singer ever to be born. "An angel without wings," I think she said. I'll believe that when I see, or hear, it.

And then there's me, Chris Bridger, a black wolf who is more than willing to spill blood for himself or his friends. Survival is survival, you know.

This is what life was like in the new city of Duluth before He came, and he came like a black angel riding the winds of Armageddon.

1

"Chris? Hey, Chris?"

I was tired. Every muscle in my body screamed for more sleep. I pulled the bed sheet tighter over my head.

"Hey, Chris! Aren't you supposed to be up by now? Yo, are you listening to me?"

I knew he wasn't going to stop until I got up. Grumbling, I tore the sheet away and strained to get up, but I was stopped by Desmond's thin vulpine face staring at me with wide eyes. His small black nose was just barely touching mine.

"Are you awake?"

"I better not be, because if I am I'm going to kick your ass."

"I thought you were supposed to be at the Field today," he said impartially to my threat.

"Not today," I almost growled at him. "It's Thursday, which means I'm not required to enter."

"Oh," Desmond said. He looked a little disappointed, and with a twinge of exasperation I think I knew why. I sat up straighter in my bed, the springs moaning in pain like the lower part of my back. The fox shifted himself until his legs were hanging over the bed.

"Des, I think we should talk about something."

He looked at me with wide eyes. "I swear it wasn't me, man! I thought they were mine..."

"No, no, no," I said, shaking my head and wondering if I had to talk to him about something else later today. "Look, Des. Why do you want to be in the Battlefield?"

Even at the mention of that place, his eyes lit up. "Well, it's just that so many people love you when you win. Don't deny it, I was there with you when all those people cheered the moment they saw you walking down the street. Nobody's ever really appreciated me for, like, anything, and I just want to know what that's like."

Fame and glory. The thought left a sour sensation in my mind. He wants to be a hero.

"Des, please tell me that's not the only reason."

The fox shrugged and stared off into space. He could be such a damn child sometimes.

"Des," I repeated.

"You're risking your life out there, Chris. Every time you go out there you could die, and you're doing it for us. You are, aren't you?"

I nodded. It was the truest statement anyone could make. Hell, if it wasn't for Desmond, Rick, and Daniel, I probably would have offed myself a long time ago. Maybe they were all what I needed to preoccupy myself after the end of the world, the end of my past life. I needed someone to look after.

"I was wondering," Desmond went on. "If I joined, we could be a team..."

"No," I said. I put all my effort and mental energy into that one word.

"Come on, Chris. Why not?"

"Because you don't know what goes on there, Des. They don't call it the Battlefield of Sin for growing the world's biggest hobby garden."

"I know that, but if you could teach me what to do..."

"Out of the question, and you're out of your goddamn mind. I'm sorry, Desmond, but I can't let you go."

He leaned back, crossed his arms, and pouted in that damn childish way of his. His soft blue eyes turned icy as they squinted angrily at me. "You wouldn't even let me go just to watch?"

"I shouldn't even let you watch the events, knowing what it does to you." I threw the sheets off the bed and went to the dresser. It had been another scorching hot night, and my red gym shorts clung sickeningly to me like fly paper. I took out a pair of army surplus pants and a METALLICA t-shirt, tossing them over my shoulder and onto the bed. Desmond was still watching me, arms crossed, eyes squinting, lips pursed femininely.

"Do you mind, Des?" I said. Normally I wouldn't have cared, but he had already seen to it to put my day in the gutter. He gave a frustrated sigh and shook his head, stomping out of my room and slamming the door shut.

I never imagined myself playing father for a fox that was only a couple years younger than me. I really did love him as a friend, but he just needed to grow up.

I went down to the first level of the paper mill, which was Rick's living quarters. A massive rectangle had been dug out of the concrete floor to expose the fresh ground underneath. Vegetables of all kinds sprouted up from the dirt and proclaimed their positions with tall, leafy banners. The golden-brown wolf was sitting in his favorite scavenged armchair, one hand curled lovingly around a bottle of beer and the other around his clipboard that included his entire inventory. He peered down his spectacles at both with equal manner of interest.

I skirted around the garden, careful so as to keep away from the yellow No-Walking zone around it. When Rick wasn't drunk on booze, he was drunk on science. Both of these traits were embraced by the comfortable arms of paranoia.

"Morning, Rick," I said. I didn't expect him to answer; I just wanted to make small talk. It seemed like I was growing apart from everybody else nowadays.

"Morning," the wolf said lazily. "Pretty Kitty says the weather's gonna take a jump...so's the humidity."

"Ah, shit," I said. "Right on schedule for this time of year."

Rick offered me the bottle of beer, I turned it down. I never drank and he knew it, but it still didn't stop him from offering. He was looking at me with an odd, scrunched-up expression. I didn't care; I knew that he was going to complain about any number of things that involved me. He always did when his pathetic ass managed to crawl into a bottle.

"Something wrong, Chris?" he asked. Feeling that my willingness for conversation had already been strained, I said no. I could hear him ask me some more questions, but I didn't stop to hear them. I needed to get out of the building. I just wanted to be able to think straight, was that too much to ask for?

I went outside. The heat was incredible, just as Pretty Kitty, Duluth's one and only radio broadcaster who was reputed to be half-crazy, had said it would be. I really didn't have any place in mind to go, so I decided to go down to the Battlefield. These days it seemed to be the only place where I can think clearly and freely.

Ten minutes later I was walking down Merchant's Street. If you'd ever been to Duluth, you'd understand that "walking down" is not to be used simply as a phrase; the street sloped down at a sharp angle from the mountain it was situated on. It was a goodish half mile long and one hundred feet high at its peak, and was always filled with people selling their wares. Even if they weren't selling something you needed, they sold you their business, and you could hire them to make what you wanted for a price.

I passed all the street criers and just headed down to the end of Market Street. I passed the main avenue and went up to the massive building that rose up from the ground, just barely staying flush with the mountain.

The entrance to the Battlefield was really a short, rectangular block of a building that inside displayed all the contestants in their proper ranks. The massive steel doors were guarded by a brown bear and a battle-scarred mountain lion, both of which were making growling noises and vicious faces. They were clad in thick leather and scrapped metal armor decorated with menacing chains, rivets, and spiky studs. They glared down at me as I walked up to the door, flexing their muscles threateningly.

"Morning, fellas," I said, taking out my wallet and flashing them my RFL (Registered Fighter's License).

"Morning, Chris," they both replied, their gnashing snarls replaced with genuine smiles. The mountain lion went to a little black box beside the door and typed something into the display. I heard gears rasping behind the doors and a loud grinding scream of metal on metal. Then the doors, ten inch thick blast doors that were probably welded from a dozen discarded tanks or other military equipment, parted noisily. I was about to walk in when Jeff, the mountain lion, held me back.

"Hey Chris, you know what old Stripeypants Freemason has us doing now?"

"Hmm? What?"

"He's got it in his head that if you sign up a friend for the Battlefield, you could take a free week off for some R&R. You can even get a discount on gear and shit."

"Really?" I muttered, trying to sound as interested as I could while a deep sinking feeling slammed into my gut.

"Hey," Jeff went on with a glint in his eye. "That fox that you hang around with would be a great..."

"Yeah, that sounds like a pretty decent proposal," I interrupted. I told him I would talk to Des about it, knowing full well that I'd rather have my legs caught up in a combine harvester. I quickly walked past them and into the lobby, which was adorned with poster-sized blow-ups of photographs, mostly of famed fighters who now have become Charlie Freemason's personal guard. Halfway down the hallway were the rankings of all the current contestants, shown on massive computer screens. I looked for mine under the bright blue WARRIOR display. As my eyes rolled down the list of names, I felt a surge of confusion when I couldn't find my own. I was sure that it was there yesterday when I left. I couldn't have slipped down, could I?

Then I found it, the very first name under the yellow PREDATOR display. I gave a strangled laugh; I'd been working for a Predator position ever since they made it after realizing not too many people were being put through into the Destroyer rank.

Feeling happier than usual, I continued down the lobby. The final third part of the lobby consisted of the daily and weekly rosters. There was an access terminal for the main entry doors to the Battlefield at the center of the hall. You had to swipe your card through the slot to gain entry. I took mine out, swiped it, and laid my ears flat as a crashing PING!! sounded off on the PA system. The doors opened, and I stepped out into the red Battlefield.

2

When we see things that truly fascinate us, that arrest our senses of logic and rationalization, we sometimes momentarily lose our ability to form words together. To me, the Battlefield was one of those things.

43,500 square yards of steel, half hanging out over deadly Lake Superior like a box-like coliseum. I went up the flight of stairs on the side of the entry doors and up into the stands. There were about thirty or forty people here already, even though the preliminary events wouldn't take place for another twenty minutes. I was about to sit when I saw a hand flapping wildly on the other side of the stands. It was Carlotta.

In the Battlefield, it goes without saying that you need friends to help you. It doesn't pay to go up against ten chainsaw-bearing maniacs by yourself, and even though I know some who can do it, I'm not totally willing to be cut down right when I was getting to the point. You need allies, you need a team. Carlotta, a short, wiry-haired bobcat that dressed as though the world were going to end again tomorrow, was somebody you really wanted on your side.

Today she was wearing all red with some twisted strands of barbed wire as decoration, which probably meant that she was going to fight today. I went over to her, we hugged in a polite platonic manner, and sat down. We talked about the weather ("God DAMN it's bloody hot, isn't it?" she said in her heavy English accent), about Market Street ("Personally I don't care how poorly lit your house is, I would not pay thirty five dollars for a second-rate lamp."), and about the new fighters ("Betcha twenty he'll be dead in a week.").

"By the way," she said as she handed me a daily Battlefield brochure. "Did you hear about that new guy Sachem, or whatever his name is?" I told her I hadn't heard anything, and she explained.

"Well, you know that in order to enter the combatant rank you have to kill three lampreys, right?"

Of course I did. It seemed a bit strange that before you could even enter yourself as a member of the Battlefield you had to kill three massive radioactive creatures, who were usually pissed off at being dragged out of the lake, but hey, to each his own, I guess. They were hard as hell to kill, too, because you had to do it while facing two important obstacles: they wanted food, and they wanted back in the water.

"This guy did it in ten seconds flat," she said. I told her she was lying, and we argued until she forced me to open the brochure and look at the statistics. The brochure always had useful little snippets of information about all the contestants appearing in a given day.

Apparently this Sachem was a wild dog from Africa, but his fur color wasn't like that of any wild dog I've seen. Admittedly, I've never seen a wild dog personally, but I'm sure there were none like this guy. His photograph showed his face beneath a white hood, a pair of emotionless yellow eyes peering out from its shadowy interior.

"Look at him," Carlotta said. "Pure evil in a dusty white wrapper."

"Oh, come on. He's probably just another super-goth who knows how to swing an axe."

The bobcat shrugged her fuzzy shoulders and sniffed. "Either way, he can swing pretty hard," she said, and we left it at that. We were silent for a long time as we watched more and more people begin to fill the stands. It seemed as though the events were about to start when Carlotta spoke again.

"So, what's the deal with you and Desi?"

"Huh?"

"I'm not blind, Chris. I've seen him making angel eyes at you. Thinking of getting serious?"

"No."

"Oh, how come? He's such a nice guy."

I felt an insane sort of laughter build up inside me, and I didn't know why. "I know he is, Carlotta. It's just...I'm too busy doing this," I said hesitantly, gesturing with my hands to the whole Battlefield. "I don't have any time for anybody else. Everybody has their own art that their devoted to, and this is mine."

I looked back at her, but she just shook her head.

"You can't be thinking about yourself all the time, Chris. You have to think about your friends, too."

I was about to argue, but she was right after all. I just had to try harder. They'd notice sooner or later. Just then the announcer proclaimed the day's activities. It was mostly inducting initiates into the first Combatant rank (which was really interesting to watch but often poorly attended), but soon they got down to the real action. Fighting one-on-one between higher ranks, team fighting, gunfights, controlled fights...it was all beautiful. My muscles ached just watching it all, and I felt a little despondency at being unable to contend today.

Hours went by, injured fighters were carted off to the infirmary, water and money were won, survival of the fittest in action. Then the announcer called Sachem's name, and I watched as a massive hooded figure wearing a strange white robe glided slowly out into the Battlefield. From up here I could see he was holding a knife in his right hand.

"Seven feet tall, I betcha," Carlotta muttered beside me. "What's that on his arm?"

I noticed it, too; the wild dog's left arm was covered in a large metal gauntlet that stretched from his shoulder all the way down to his hand, forming a scaly claw. It was a pristine, shimmering thing that made me think of liquid glass. I wondered if it was a weapon or not. More likely it was a clever concealment or compensation for a grievous injury. Whatever the reason was, the thing looked damn impressive.

Then the announcer called Carlotta's name. She jumped up and punched me playfully on the shoulder. "Auf wiedersehen, love. I gotta go welcome the new guy.'"

I smiled, but at the same time I was mentally beating myself up. I wanted to tell somebody about all the stuff that was going on in my mind. Maybe that was what I needed to do, to just get it all off my chest. Carlotta would have been the perfect person to talk to.

I can wait. In the meantime, I'll just settle down to watch the mayhem.

The two circled each other, and I could tell they were scouting out the other's disadvantages and weaknesses. Carlotta was twirling an ornate, electrified spike in hand, grinning menacingly at her opponent. I couldn't make out the wild dog's expression from underneath the white hood. He seemed way too sure of himself, though. I could tell that from the way he walked, as though he had no purpose or meaning, like this was all just a dream to him.

Good luck believing that, I thought.

Then the all-too-familiar siren-like buzzer sounded, and the fight was on. Carlotta leapt at the wild dog, laughing wildly. I couldn't help but smile; her enthusiasm was infectious as well as notorious.

She stabbed at him and sidestepped, repeating the act over and over again. Despite the canine's massive girth, he was extraordinarily agile, jumping back or to the side to avoid her deadly weapon. She lunged for him with her spike held out in her hand, and he parried it with his knife with an expert flick of his wrist. He continued to jump backward, moving closer to the edge of the arena that hung over the lake.

Suddenly Carlotta made a mad rush for him, continuing to laugh crazily. This is it, I thought, the poor bastard's got no chance now.

She stabbed and kicked with opportunistic advances, driving him closer to the edge. I wondered if her plan was to kill him or push him into the virulent blue waters. He continued to dodge and parry with his knife, never once striking back at her. Suddenly she ran at him at an angle, bringing her arm across her chest to stab in a ferocious backhand. Like lightning he stepped aside, putting his foot out to trip her. She caught herself at the last moment, but she faltered, and only her instinctive reflexes managed to save her from falling over the edge. The canine brought up his metal-encased arm, she held up her spike to catch the blow--

There was a brilliant flash of blue light, and I watched in horror as Carlotta's severed head sailed into the air, making a crimson arc as it fell into the lake.

The Battlefield was filled with the gasps and screams of the spectators. I would have added to the united voice of the many, but I felt too weak, too sick. I was sure that if I opened my mouth for any action it would be to vomit onto the aluminum-steel surface of the stands. It was impossible to believe what I had just seen, what I was seeing. The wild dog was already walking out of the arena, his dusty white robe rustling against the Battlefield. The announcer had to clear his throat to proclaim the winner, the final outrage that added to the irrationality of the whole thing.

I stood up and walked out of the stands, heading back home. The atmosphere of the place was making me sick.