Slave Death Matches are cheap entertainment. Almost dying never gets old if you're the one almost dying constantly, but apparently if you're the one observing it, you get jaded on watching people have their heads caved in.

I do not get the need for these theatrics in a bloodsport, period, but at least Chuck Sliver-Nipples Mc-gee and the leadership of the other houses keep it interesting. Last week the Red House and the Body Broker House fought their respective filthy cola-dropless degenerates, business as usual to entertain the masses before the main event, but they released starved mutts on us halfway through. It wasn't so much worse than Dune having a chomp, I might be keen to avoid dogs for the rest of my half-life, though.

In my next scheduled tango with death, there would be eight fighters. One of the four guys on our side gets to hang unto a handgun with no magazine. One guy on their side has the magazine but no handgun. Here's the fun part. The guy holding the pistol and the guy holding the magazine are getting painted bright red and bright yellow and then chained good and secure to a couple junker cars towed into the arena. Guess what was I was getting slathered all over me at two in the afternoon?

"That doesn't smell cola based,"

"S'not, s'red ochre an' cookin' fat," the red faced slave pusher replied, giving me a slap on the arm to lift 'em as he applied the color with a scratchy paint roller older than the both of us combined.

"Is that why all you guards smell rancid?"

"Sounds like ya said ya wanna add a week to your sentence,"

A growl climbed up my throat but not another word. I wasn't happy about being greasy and tethered to a dead car, but not chaffed enough to add an extra go in the arena to my personal shit-show. I wasn't even permitted to wear my leg in the barracks. The metal leg was contraband, things could be hidden in it that I could use to pick locks, in theory. It's rust, being forced to hobble around on your hands and one foot close to the floors and the filth there, or made to stand on one leg and wobble around without a wall to support yourself, but you get good at that with time. I still eyed the locker I knew my leg sat in, and I was furious to be denied that dignity but powerless to protest it.

"Ya picked who ya want keeping ya from gettin' axed?" He asked, sounding more bored than genuinely interested.

It was the rules. You get picked to be the prone bloke, you get to pick who keeps you sucking air.

"Yep, Skids, Tags, an' Chug."

"Chuck pulled Chug last minute, he's benched 'til next week, he's got House Wars to look forward to, remember?"

"...what?" Damn, I kind of forgot he got rotated onto the Red House team after one of their others carked it in the slums somehow. "Well, who the hell am I supposed to ask to fill the spot?"

"Figure it out, an' turn around."

Damn it. Sprockets, I guess, was an option, and I told the spineless sack of organ meat painting me just that. We weren't on speaking terms, Sprock and I, spitting terms was more like it. He was alright with Nux, but not so much with me. Whatever. He would have to do.

I had my chance to let him know what was up as soon as the paint job was done. I had an hour to wait after being herded back through the circular gate, which may once have been a far more fortified door but had been since replaced with welded rebar bars on heavy hinges.

Ugh, the so called "paint" was slick and disgusting, and my reek was cursed by everyone I passed in the painfully narrow walkways between racks of bodies lying in their cupboard sized bunks. Anyone standing pressed into the curved steel walls or racks to avoid me.

I found Sprockets enjoying what passed as privacy around here, one of the few surviving bunk curtains drawn around his thin square of space. I sat in the walkway and kicked at the supporting frame under his hard, flattened cushion.

"Who the frack!" He snarled, nearly tearing his poor excuse for privacy from the grommets holding it to the rod. "What the hell do you want, Glory Poacher?"

Sprockets used to be on Ace's crew, was a part of the crew Furiosa allowed to die by buzzards and a good sand-blasting via storm. He'd survived, and very clearly he still had some opinions about how Morsov went out. Glory poacher? Maybe, but the shit outright stole my kill in order to be witnessed. Still a shitty move. Fuck 'im. I owe no explanation for a damn thing, past or present. Sprockets looked like no War Boy, if it weren't for his brand or the, well, eight sprockets carved into his chest and belly, you'd never know. You'd merely think he was a hairy wretch just starting to feel death pulsing in his blood from the lumps growing on his neck and beginning to devour his right jaw.

"Chug's benched, I need another body and I wouldn't mind witnessing yours corpsed," I spat, knowing what I was more or less begging for and sitting tensed, ready.

He kicked and I pushed off with my good leg to slide a few feet to the left. Sprockets found the edge of the bunk support opposite of his rack with his heel and a uttered pained bark. I laughed. Can you believe this was an almost civil exchange? For our type anyway.

"Rack off! Pick somebody else!" Sprockets tried to dismiss me.

I had a reason to pick him beyond needing the spot filled and, begrudgingly, acknowledging that he was cunning in the ring.

"There's s'posed to be perks for winners on this one and I still owe, for Nux," I told him before he could try spitting on me to drive me off.

He paused, gears in his head turning for a bit before he spoke, "I get first pick of whatever shit they push at us?"

"Sure, greedy ass,"

"Shut your dried up face and get outta mine, I'm in, jus' fuck off. If I cark it I don't wanna spend my last lookin' at you."

And that was that. Chug was next, either he had no idea he was on the bench or he forgot too. Easy to do when you spend all your time thinking about how you might die any time.

Chugger was a Citadel boy, wretch born like me from what I knew, and we'd been raised with him, Nux and I, after Crank took us in. Chug had been Tank's apprentice, and Crank had been part of Tank and Notch's crew as a repair boy, so that made Chug and I pups of the same crew litter. He was older, miraculously still completely healthy despite being full of lumpy potential because of where he came from. If he hadn't been wretch born, the Imperators might've looked into grooming him as one of their own because he had decent mass, about six feet and four inches, broad shoulders, and had a habit of grinning like a madman in battle. Really unnerving when a round-shaped friendly looking face smiles at you but the eyes are full of murder. I knew better, it was just a farce, a gag which made the Roadkill and Buzzards shake ignorantly in their junk chariots. Chug is soft like wet sand, cares too much about his brothers and lets himself get walked on, or at least I'd always thought of him that way until I got soft and useless to boot.

He was sitting at the end of a rack because his bunk was on the floor and so was mine. Our cot mats were pulled out of their proper places because it was easier on me and Chug was too long to crush himself into his rack. The Bored had gripped him. He was just squatted there, chipping off paint from the wall with his thumb nail. I sat and watched the paint pull up over his nail and fall away for a moment. I didn't sit on my bunk though, not stinking and greasy like this.

"...Chuck benched you," I told him, still unsure if he knew about this or not, the way he looked as he leaned back and turned his head to face me told me he didn't.

His expression twisted in disgust, "If he expects me to be grateful for that then he can suck my cactus off. You still good for it?"

I shrugged, "I picked Sprockets for your spot."

Chug droned a low hum, the corner of his lips pulling with neither a grin or a scowl. He didn't reply as he shifted himself around and leaned against the wall with his arms crossed over his wide chest. He was better fed than I was upon arrival, so his overall condition was still alright. He'd been a true War Boy up until a month and a half ago. He was sold to Red House from thrallers only days after I was sentenced. First couple times in the arena, I was paired with Chug in two-on-two matches, because apparently Jaw had rigged it that way so that I might survive. It was one of the few favors Jawbreaker could swing from where he was on the ladder. I don't think Jaw realized what a decision he'd made or the deeper reasoning Chug had to keep an eye on me in the ring. Chugger was sentimental, which wasn't ideal for his own survival, but a boon for mine. Felt cheap and sleazy to know these truths and still be grateful for it. Chug seemed not to want to grieve twice, I think that was it. His eyes were wet when he first recognized me that month and a half ago, and he was just as weepy and disgusting at being told Nux was alive too.

I might never be able to repress that sight, an elder brother blubbering like that. The memory tumbled around in my skull as I now watched him grumbling this and that over getting barred from a fight we both knew would be a nightmare, and I guessed that he'd prefer to be having that nightmare himself rather than allow anyone he'd ever known to be subjected to it. There was nothing I could do to fix his mood, so, we sat in silence for the remainder of the hour.

"Headcase, Screamer, Yellow Guts, Lizard Face! Up front!" It was the guard calling us by insulting variations on the ring handles the spectators had assigned us.

I jerked toward the sound, looking toward the exit, but turned back to look back at Chug before I got up. His face pulled in uneasy contortions. I had to go, I didn't have time or patience to lie that I'd be fine when I didn't know that for sure. With his long reach it was easy for him to grasp my shoulder and force me back onto my ass.

"Don't get cocky, don't die unwitnessed," He said. It was as close as you could get to spoken sentimentality from a man who'd never known anything but the Citadel.

The proper response was to shrug him off, internalize whatever it was inside you that threatened to make that mean something. "Y'know damn well I'm too chrome to cark it,"

Close enough.

At the gate, there were four men. A typical pair of guards stationed at the gate, and two other Red-Faces. One Red-Face was armed with hunting rifle to prevent the escape of anyone stupid enough to try slithering out with us, the other had the job of searching us and confirming that everyone had on what they were allowed to have down in the death-pit.

I had to stand with hands up and allow my leg to be put on for me. They wont just hand it to me, because I could easily try to use it as a weapon. Fair enough, it was still degrading and they never managed to get it or the belt required to go on with it right. They always missed a belt loop or put the whole socket on just slightly turned cockeyed as they shoved it up onto my leg. I think they enjoyed watching me scramble to fix it the moment I got the chance.

We were cuffed and we walked down the halls following the lamp light of the guard ahead of us and with the cold barrel of the weapon in the hands of the one behind us driving us along. Skids and Tags walked between Sprockets at the head of the line and me limping up the rear. They were War Boys too, but from the Scrotus faction, not the Citadel. Of course I chose only other war boys, who else would I choose? It was, eh, hard to call Tags and Skids War Boys, though. They'd been among the youngest of pups when the Scrotus camps were cleared out, they'd done little more than survive with a few older brethren for years before thrall rustlers and the likes of Scrud got to them. Theses two hadn't worn war paint since before their voices cracked, they didn't even know the routines of sheering away unnecessary hair and they had few skin decals, but they were nasty as you'd expect Scrotus boys to be and had fewer qualms about Citadel boys than their elders of the same faction. They volunteered for their role in this. They wanted to die in the ring, please their surrogate flesh god, Chuck.

Out of the sub, into the light, and back into the darkness of the underground. The passages taken weren't the grid of main tunnels, they were narrower, crudely dug, sported support struts and beams made from all sorts of otherwise worthless but sturdy shit I failed to identify. These passages wound in curves and every time we took this walk, all I could imagine throughout was the mountain of dirt overhead caving on in stop of us.

An ass-breaking upward slope signaled that we were about to enter the ring, bypassing another passage where slave combatants from other houses were being held. Emergence blinds you with light, but not fire light. They burned through ungodly fart sparks to fuel panels of lights hanging overhead. The arena was underground, sort of. The place was a great pit dug into the seabed. Seating resembling stairs for a giant lined it, build from the dirt itself and covered over in an earthen cement. It was massive, two, maybe three hundred people could fit down here. The arena itself? I think they built it up out of the scavenged infernal bowels of Buzzard dens. Nothing but rust twelve feet high, and deadly sharp prongs studding it so thickly that you could reach your arm into it so deep that you gouge out your eyes on the rusty impalers before you found the true wall with your fingertips. Overhead, I imagine you'd see stars through a cage of cross woven rebar were it not for the lights scorching your eyes. Maybe you'd see a thousand wretch faces peeking in to catch glimpses of the battles for survival.

The stands were already filled with clamoring bodies thirsty for the carnage, and our opponents were already here and in place ahead of us. The armed guard behind us joined another holding a shotgun, both now stationed to keep an eye on for aggression toward their prone counterparts working to get us where we were meant to be.

As promised two totaled steel chariots sat each on opposing ends of the pit. I was un-cuffed from the chain gang and herded to mine. An iron collar and the clinking of heavy chain links was what greeted me. I could only move six feet in a semi-circle around the passenger side of the crumpled heap of scrap. I was tethered to the door frame, chain looped through the empty space where the windshield should be. I'd be sure to test the strength of the chain.

I was presented with an ammo box, it was shut and locked up with a padlock. I expected it to be dropped at my feet, but no, it too was to be chained, the length fed through the top handle and locked around my waist tightly after I was swatted with a baton to lift my arms. Fuck, that must have had the pistol in it. So it wasn't as straight forward as I had been led to believe. Why would we need the gun anyway? Why couldn't we just pound each other to death like the usual business? This was just like the time they sicked the dogs on us. It was a surprise twist we didn't want, we just didn't know the hook yet.

The guard left me to pull on my chain and tug at the heavy box awkwardly fastened to me. I looked up in time to see him hand a key to Sprockets and pointed across the arena to the man painted yellow. Yellow and Greasy as me, he was my opposing counterpart chained to a dead sedan with an identical box and chain biting at his skinny bones. Okay, so the other team got the key to our box, I gathered. Sprockets immediately gave Tags the key and must have told him to spot me, as he jogged over and took up a position on the roof of the dead car with the key tucked into his pocket.

Still no explanation on what the gun was for. Pretty foolish, arming combatants with a firearm in the first place. For instance, if I saw someone in the stands who I didn't particularly like... There must be a catch, I was sure of that.

The spectators were already tossing shit down into the margins of the ring, anything that could be used as a blunt or stabbing weapon. We couldn't touch them, not yet. Not until the Red-Guards retreated and the match officially began with the pop of starter pistol. I could see Sprockets inching closer to a work hammer chucked in far enough that he could dive for it straight off and have it before anyone else could pick up their own weapon.

From our left, the ring seemed to open, the walls pushed out with the help of of several men, and in came that catch I knew was coming. It was a cage, and inside was no prisoner. It was the very perks I'd been promised and had in turn promised Sprockets if he filled Chug's spot, clean clothing, pants and a shirt, and a huge bowl of- I wasn't really sure, it looked like produce but a lot more color rich than something like a potato or turnip. On top of the cage and hovering precariously close, a bucket hanging by the handle on the long arm of a bracket, and rigged around it was a pulley system strung up to the bottom of the bucket. A bag leaking sand into another bucket on the other end of the pulley wire. The second bucket had a target crudely painted on it. Okay, I get it. Blast a hole in the second bucket so it can't fill enough to get heavy and tip whatever was in the first bucket. No smell had wafted this way yet, but I was betting it was shit by the clouds of fly wings glittering in the harsh spark light. All of it was high enough to be out of our reach, so that had to be what the gun was for. The thorny wall was pulled closed as the helpers retreated behind it again, and a Red-Face sniper posted at the top of that same wall, I guess just to be sure we didn't tamper with the paltry prizes.

Muscle goes rigid and you forget to breathe as you wait for the pop of the start signal. One of the combatants was eyeing the same hammer Sprock would no doubt grab at the first opportunity. You shouldn't make eye contact here, but it's hard to avoid. There was a guy about my size with a gradient of pale and sun wrecked skin on his chest that seemed to indicate that he used to have a beard that hung down to his sternum, his eyes burned into me like icy needles. I knew he'd be headed this way straight off, and I searched the dirt around me for anything within reach that I might be able to fight him off with. My chain was too short. I had nothing, I looked back at Tags, about to order him to go and grab something from the edges of the ring to beat Beard-Tan with, but the start pistol cried with a bang and it was too late, the crowd's roars drowned out my command.

Beard-Tan was already on top of us before Tags could use his brain on his own and fetch a weapon. The reeking bastard was slashing away with a cooking blade that must have been flung into the ring near enough to him that he could grab it and be on me quick as a greased rat. He was frantic and without skill, but the ammo box hanging off my waist and nailing me in the crotch every time I moved made me clumsy, I couldn't parry him like I should.

If he managed to draw first blood, I didn't know it yet, I was too flooded with nitro to feel a damn thing but my own pulse in my ears and teeth.

Tags leapt from the roof of the wreck onto Beard-Tan's back, trying to put him in a choke hold I think, but being too lean, young, and too small to get a good grip. Beard spun and charged backward into the wreck in an attempt to get Tags off him. The boy was determined, he hung on, kept Beard-Tan distracted enough that I could try grappling with his hands to take the knife from him.

Wham.

The arena wobbled violently and I hit the grit and grime under us with knees and elbows in a daze. Something hit me from behind, hard, right across the back of the head.

I could still hear Tags screeching and howling curses, but I couldn't see him. I saw dirt, and I saw Sprock beating a bloody splatter onto the sand from the face of a combatant with that hammer.

I tried to rise to my hands and knee but failed, palm stumbling over whatever the hell had hit me. I discovered a boot, a spectator threw a boot at me?

I got stepped on under a grimy bare foot, flesh at my side squashed and my gnarled up back jerky stretching nasty. I rolled on reflex, looking up to see Beard-Tan trying to jab the knife over his shoulder at Tags, who was bleeding from somewhere over his scalp as he dug in and tried to tuck his head down against a shoulder. I think he bit him. A roar erupted and Beard was spinning against the dead car again, now looking like he was trying to scrape Tags off against the crumpled steel body.

My head throbbed, and I was pissed. With the ankle cuff of the boot in my right hand I rose, struggling with my shit-leg, and swung so hard my shoulder burned with the exertion. I probably just pulled something, but the splatter of red and the chunks of tooth leaving Beard's cola-hole as the heel of the boot flew across his mouth yanked laughter out of me.

He dropped the knife and the moment Beard collapsed, Tags dropped off him and scrambled after the blade, one hand trying to hold the gash over his skull closed. Tags didn't need the knife, not for Beard-Tan at least. I was kamicrazy, and this wretch wasn't leaving the arena alive.

The eyes roll back, veins in the face bulge, grains of filth between your staining fingers and their soft fragile skin gouge thin red scratches. I wish I could let it go on record that I knew what I did was cruel, that I felt remorse or pity. The truth is, I didn't even feel the least bit conflicted about what I did to people unlucky enough to wind up down in that blood pit with me.

This poor skid mark, I was going to beat his face with a shoe thrown into the arena until he wasn't recognizably human. I'd learned quickly that you should really spare your knuckles the abuse if you have to do this shit twice a week, a solid shoe heel is a blessing, and the spectators snarling "Lizard King!" knew it was one of my favorite killing utensils outside of anything that gave me a longer reach.

Thump! Thump! Thwack! Thwack! Squelch! Eventually the impacts go from a dull knocking against bone to wet crunches. The crowd eats it up, showers their favored fighters in great praise as the victim rattles a final wheeze.

It feels incredible, you feel high when they scream your ring handle, you ride that adrenaline all the way out of the red stained dirt of the arena, into the slave barracks. Lizard King, Lizard King, Lizard King. Their hollow love for you drives you on, temporarily absolves you of the violence.

I was coming up out of the frenzy, the blood made my hands slick, clumsy. Skid's was on his way to us, running, frantically screaming "KEY! KEY!" with the other lock box in his arms. He was somehow painted now too, in red like me from the arms up and yellow smeared around his jaw. My brain was still high on murder. Took too long to register that Skids was soaked in blood.

How did he get the lock box off the other guy? On a knee and scrabbling with the metal leg to let it bend under me, I scanned toward the other junker car. It was a massacre, a body hacked in two, entrails, a lake of red pooling under, and someone roaring over the corpse in horror. The heavy blade of a machete lay near the mourner's knee. He locked eyes on Skid's back as he and Tags fumbled with the box and the key.

I bellowed, "WHERE'S THE OTHER KEY?!"

The second key was thrown at me, no idea how he got it or who from, since I'd been too busy with Beard-Tan-No-Face to observe Skid's brawling. It hit me right in the teeth but I had no time to feel around to see if the chunk of metal chipped any of my ivory.

The box in Skids' hands popped open just as I was fumbling with my own sloppy wet fingers to get the key to my lockbox in the hole. The magazine fell from Tags' hands, eating up precious seconds as the two Scrotus pups dove to catch it like it was alive and trying to flee them. Sprockets was no use, he was busy getting strangled by the other surviving member of their team he failed to kill completely. He'd probably die later to infection.

My box sprung open, and out into my red slicked hands came the pistol. Tags just about hoped into my lap to whack that mag into place.

And then the heavy bush blade gripped in The Mourner's hands came down as Skids rose from his knees. It sounded like a flat palm on a hollow drum as the thick shaft of steel stuck halfway through a skull, and there was surprisingly little blood.

Skids dropped like a rag doll under The Mourner's legs as his charge lost momentum. The machete was stuck in Skid's head. His still warm corpse expelled a steamy puff of breath into the winter air while he was stepped on and his head was yanked around by his killer trying to remove his weapon from where it was firmly wedged into bone.

All of this happened in the matter of a second, maybe a second and a half, too short a time to have any response to it outside of pure deadly instinct.

Tags was screaming, lurched away from me with the knife stolen from Beard-Tan over his head in a doubled fist, hoping I'm sure to plunge it through The Mourner's blood pump.

Feeble skull meat of mine stalled out for a breath and I moved on reflex, lying on my back and aiming up as The Mourner shoved Tags away by the face easily without gaining much worse the pricked skin from the tip of the shiv. Tags was only a pup, after all. Kamicrazy, but a pup.

BANG!

And it was over. Another body dropped. Sprockets was blue in the lips and ears, but by the retching and gagging he was doing, I assumed he'd live. His assailant backed off as soon as the gun went off. It was trained on him now. I don't know how many rounds were loaded into the magazine, probably one, because that's all you'd need for the purpose they gave us on saving the spoils, which by the way were now fucked, soiled in human shit.

The signal to cease fire, or combat more accurately, sounded with a bellowing brass horn held to the lips of a Red-Face. I checked the chamber and mag, Yeah, one target, one bullet.

Fuck. No eating the colorful produce now. A damn waste, three out of our four survived, though, and I had two kills to Sprockets' possibly one. I'm still me, so of course I prided in my prowess. Of course a War Boy would.

I was rode the high of winning, trying not to look at the bodies and tuned out as much of Tags' bawling as I could as I stood. I held my arms up, showed them the goods, showed them the bloody shoe and the pistol, too.

Now this, I know I'll feel like shit about it later. I shouldn't be enjoying the sound of my ring handle being shouted from a hundred mouths and I shouldn't feel gratified and powerful, not like this when everything outside this moment has gone so wrong. All of that heavy reality B.S. is something for afterward.

We were ordered to drop our weapons at gunpoint, then I felt hands pull at my elbows. It was time to be cuffed and removed from the ring. This is the end of the show as far as I'll ever experience it. The walk is long though the tunnels toward the holding cells is short by distance but long by your estimate as the adrenaline eases off. The barred door into a six by six cage was opened, I stepped inside, the cuffs came off, so did my metal leg, and the door closed behind me as I wobbled and sat.

Most everyone else in the row of cages left and right of me were quiet as we who survived were put away until we could be sorted back to our barracks. Either the others were waiting for their matches or group brawls, or were on the other side of it like me.

This is the part where it stops feeling like a victory and more like you did nothing but survive. I ached all over, because I should. My left elbow might always be shot now, since it never really got to sit in a sling and heal after getting knocked undone. I felt old and scared. I've been alive for roughly eleven-thousand days, give or take a few hundred. I feel ancient, and for a half-life War Boy, I guess I'll actually be ancient soon enough, if I can survive the next two weeks.

In two weeks, I'll have been in this seabed hell-scape for three months. Three months is long enough in the Bullet Farm gulags to get irreversible rot in the lungs. I was certain, by the time I got to Bullet Farm, if I even made it there, Dune would be half-life too.

The holding cages is where the world crashes down on you, and everything seems less and less quiet the longer you sit there waiting to be escorted in a line back to your bunk. Every shivering breath roars like thunder.

A half hour or six hours, I never had any idea how long I'd wait. This time, like each time, the sting and throb of damaged skin began to break through the numbing adrenaline. This is nothing to War Boys, but the sharp burning across my left collar bone and sternum was starting to make me squirm. Kiss of cruel steel, a feeling I knew all too well. Red ran down in streaks and made the waistband of my slacks wet and cold. I guess I hadn't moved quickly enough out of the way of my opponent's wild slashing. I wasn't too worried. I've had worse.

"That needs closed up."

I looked up, finding the attending Red-Face looming just beyond the wire mesh of the cage. I glanced down to see how far the blood had absorbed into the worn clothing, but didn't bother any more than a blink or two when I looked back to his darkened silhouette against the burning bin of trash lighting the room.

"You want the ol' blue or not?"

So far, I'd had plenty of black and brown patches and my share of pain, but I hadn't been offered a trip to get patch-work. There was a taboo to it, for War Boys here to agree to seeing the meat menders, but no one else's former driver was living with the local organic mechanic. I didn't have to think twice about it.

"Yeah, alright," I agreed.

Once again, I had to stand and tolerate having my leg put on for me, and I had to fix it again as I stood on it. Then I was cuffed once again.

"Mediocre, Slit!" I heard Sprockets cackle with his raw throat. It was an echo of my own words for Morsov. The only reason I'd be out of my holding cell was to see a meat mechanic, and he knew he could fault me for it.

Why grace him with a comeback? I just scraped my metal knee across the bars and mesh wire of his cage obnoxiously. I'd learned from Dune that offering to real reply to an insult was the greatest fuck you which could be offered to our kind.

"Glory poacher!" He kicked the corner of his cage.

He couldn't touch me. Back home, they'd have scrubbed off the black he once wore on his forehead and marked him mediocre for getting strangled like he had in the pit that night. Weak. Amazing how fast I was losing my scav brain and regaining my War Boy nature. Terrifying.

Wilson's face was bluer than ever, so blue you almost couldn't read the initial panic in his eyes when I was pressed through the doorway with a palm at the back of the head like a criminal. He must have just been re-dyed. The color was bleeding into the yellowed shirt he wore, turning the collar green.

The old man had never feared the men painted red, he shoved a wad of newly cut bandages into the guard's hand and told him, "You put pressure on that."

I didn't care for the idea of the guard touching me any more than he had to while I was cuffed and if the look on his face was any indication, neither did he regardless of how well I was restrained.

I was targeted next, "Slit, stop wiggling. Turn around, lemme see what else you're hiding. You've lost weight, son."

That's probably true, but neither the slash across my collar bone or the scav padding I dropped were why I was here. I looked around over the Red-Guard's shoulder. I didn't see who I expected to be here making the louder scene.

"Where's Nux?" I asked.

Wilson's brows lifted and his mustache pulled itself wide as he cringed, "Oh, he probably won't be back for another hour, he went to see you fight, the poor kid always has it rough tryin'na beat the crowd to get out of the stands. Lighty takes him."

He's been watching me fight? I thought about that for a minute as Wilson had me seated and brought his tray of sharps. I thought about what Nux might be thinking as he watched me today, beating a man to death in the dirt for nothing but the entertainment of those who could afford to waste water on a lot better than bloody thrills. I wondered if he knew I held little against the slaughter, and I wondered what Dune would say if she knew as much. I could just as easily be slaughtered myself, which I decided was probably why Nux would waste someone else's cola to come see the blood-sport.

"He comes so he can witness," I stated just to confirm the thought in my own voice and nothing more.

"Mhm, he said somethin' or other 'bout that, Can't figure what he meant an' I'm afraid to ask," Wilson grunted and began cleaning the slash with what trickles of water he could get away with sparing in front of the Red-Face's keen eyes. It was probably best he never learned the meaning of Witnessing.

If I died, Nux wanted to be sure I was seen. I'd have to thank him for that, one day, when I would be able to swallow back the memory of feeling like rust for years about how I didn't witness him. He didn't die, no, but I should've been there any way in case he did, just as Nux was now doing.

What should I say? I couldn't know, I wasn't ready to say anything of it. Maybe it could be enough, for now, that Wilson would probably tell him I was here. My former driver could probably guess that I now knew he came to see the fights.

The stitches stung like hell, and I think it might be that it was hair. Felt different than the cat or rat gut Wilson usually used. It was still nothing, fuck I shouldn't be so accustomed to pain. I have no witty proverb for this, it's just concerning and a little depressing that a seven inch slice was merely a minor inconvenience to me now. I know the risks of infection but fuck it, a lot worse had failed to kill me lately.

It didn't take Wilson an hour to put those knotted stitches in me, though I know he tried to drag it out so that maybe Nux would get back in time. It wasn't happening, Red-face started to complain, Wilson shot back about his arthritis, and Red-Face reminded him that he'd seen the old man work faster under pressure and let a free hand slide down his hip to rest on the taped grip of a wooden cane he used as a baton. Smegma breath.

I had enough time to ask how Nux was doing. Wilson tried not to say it outright in front of the guard, but he seemed to imply that they were still getting my ration from Jaw, so he and Nux were putting weight back on slowly. It was a secret relief and a little less weight on my head.

It didn't take any longer than a halved second for Red-face to recognize when my treatment was complete, and he gave us no time for parting pleasantries. My sore ass was walked back to the barracks, bypassing the holding cages adjacent to the arena altogether.

I hate him, the red guard, and the cuffs around my wrists too. They felt heavy. I now understood why cuffs were featured in Dune's nightmares so often.

As always, my leg was confiscated before I was stuffed past the threshold and behind the barred gate. There's a kind of comfort at rock bottom. No real way things could get worse. Right? Except it varies day to damn day.

This is when you find out just how low rock bottom can get. You curl up in your bunk with the stench of viscera on you to shake and retch. You can't fall asleep for hours. Every time you close your eyes you see the ring, the salty brown grit under your feet which may have at one point been nearly white, and shadows circling, waiting to crush your head in with rocks or whatever was thrown into the arena. Sometimes you see other things, like your litter mates being torn to shreds by the hungry mutts. You fall asleep, finally. You're back in the arena again, it's empty and there are no spectators, but you can't find your way out, you're trapped.

The thing about doing war is, you go home after a raid, you lick your wounds, you're told there's glory in what you've done and that "daddy loves you", and even if it's all a lie it's enough that you can move on and distract yourself in the following lull. You're not locked in stifled rooms with nothing to look at but the latest empty bunks. The turnover rate there was much higher than any cancerous malady or spreading disease. Fit and healthy men die suddenly, brutally, and anyone could be next.

I got lucky, my dreams shifted somewhere I once foolishly thought had been rock bottom.

"Like something tha' seeks it's level, I wanna go to the devil. Ah! I wanna be evil, I wanna spit tacks. I wanna be evil and cheat at jacks. I wanna be wicked, I wanna tell lies! I wanna be mean and throw mud pies! Mhmm!"

She was singing, same as she does every morning while she wakes up to chore or sometimes just pass time lazily.

The dim fire light revealed her, back turned to me as she wrung newly clean bandages through her hands. Sometimes she grunted out the words to the song when her scarred right hand struggled to grip wet cloth and she had to summon extra effort.

"I wanna be evil, oof!... I wanna be... mad... But more than that, I wanna be bad! Bad! BAD!" Her singing paused as she shook out the rags and hung them on the drying line.

The stitched wound across my collar bone still stung, and I was certain the scavenger would be limping her way over to clean up the gash and put a protective layer of cloth between it and the world just as soon as she realized I was awake.

I didn't move, I just wanted to watch for a while. A lot of mornings she didn't wear much more than a pullover and wrap of cloth around her hips with faded green patterns in the yellowed fibers. The cloth may once have been white and blue.

Shine as the words in some of her songs were, I preferred her morning voice most when she was humming along with the tune instead. I was somewhat aware that this was a dream because the humming began on cue the moment I wished for it. Sometimes you get a little control over a dream. She turned and grinned huge with her hideous teeth the second I considered sitting up to get her attention.

"Ducky, you're up! You were starting to worry her, poor tired War Boy, must be hungry by now, yeah? No?" She turned away to fetch bowls and my hand chased after her as she moved out of my reach.

"C'mon Nutter, it can wait," I tried. I didn't care about food, I wanted to pull her into the nest of musty, mildewed bedding to sleep within sleep.

She shook her head as she turned back and took a seat, once again, just out of reach.

"We'll let that ugly bleeder air out a while more while we eat. Then a wash and new wrappings. Hmm? Then you'll get that Shine Hand ya want, needy man."

I'd roll my eyes if I weren't desperate for the dream to continue forever.

Voices that didn't belong kept interrupting it, pulling me out and forcing me to struggle back to where Dune and I left off. Crying, Tags was crying like the pup he was because someone was missing. Every time I came back, things would change, go slightly sideways and left.

She was dusted in the white of a War Boy, eye sockets scrubbed black with soot.

Another interruption, the sound of bunk springs squealing, and the place changed.

We were at the Citadel's Bloodshed. Nux lay napping behind me in an ill exhaustion.

"I'm starved, Duck," she said as she lifted her pullover from the bottom and revealed the familiar hole punched through her center, but instead of the smoldering embers I expected to see, fat maggots poured out of her into the bowl she held under the ragged wound.

I woke to find the survivors of tonight's matches, some struggling to staunch the flow of new wounds, filling up the space again. Skids was missing. Right. He got his head cracked in half.

I rolled back toward the wall. The bruises were setting in, and the twisting motion of turning to look back at the others had pulled the stitches just enough to send a nasty jolt up my neck.

I wanted to cover my head and vanish back into sleep but I knew I couldn't check out until everyone else quieted. There aren't even sheets or scraps of cloth to cover yourself in around here. Apparently some had used things of the like to string themselves up and end their suffering. The slave fighter barracks were well heated, but you feel exposed without something to cover yourself. Best I had to block out the sound and light were my arms, or at least the one which wasn't still kind of fucked up.

I felt the cot dip around considerable weight settling in the middle of the outer edge.

"Just me," It was Chug.

Chug was soft, damn soft, and always had been. He probably saw me curled up like a dead spider in my bunk and read too much into it. Funny how somebody going soft on you makes things go from whatever to rust. I held it in, a shake of the shoulder and a choke or two and I swallowed back the hell trying to slither out of me. I couldn't go spewing cola. Seemed like every time I give in to the waterworks, it just made the body pains worse, and I couldn't afford that now even if it weren't undignified and a display of weakness for a War Boy.

Soft as wet sand Chug, the fucker, but it was lulling as he squeezed himself further onto my bunk and lay himself on his side, back against mine. I felt almost safe between him and the wall, and it was enough to get back to where Dune left off filling bowls with breakfast.

-A week later-

Finale of the House Wars. It meant two things for me: First, I didn't have to fight this week. Everything was booked up with non-violent talent in between fights and the only ones who had to go to the arena were those who had been hand picked for the teams. Second, If Lighty Boy wins I may not see Nux for a while. Or ever again.

Chug was slotted to fight on behalf of Red House along side Blood Bag, but eventually they'd have to fight each other if they both stuck it out until the end. Unfortunate, but at least these matches weren't generally to the death. Those hired fighters are too valuable, worth their weight ten times over in cola. Both Lighty Boy and Chug could lose, too. Then no one at the Citadel would ever know what truly went on down here. I'd certainly never heard of this place before Dune told me a little about it.

The guards by the door had a CB radio setup to listen to live updates of the tournament as they were broadcast out of the radio tower topside over the underground arena. The entire population of the slave barracks were crowded at the gate and barely breathed so that the radio could be heard.

Sonya the Meat Slicer is left dazed and heaving by Gribs Gritty's unholy gut buster kicks... It might do Sonya some favors if she coughs up brekkie now, Scabby, I've got it on good authority that Gribs is a sympathetic chunder cannon.

I faded in and out, mostly just listening for the names that mattered to me periodically as I kept myself busy. I had been awarded new pants after my last match, because the shirt and the pants were minimally shit all over, and because apparently Chuck was getting attached to my performance. Whatever, free digs. I had to beg a guard to both cut off the excess material on the left pant legand allow me to keep what was cut. No blades allowed in here, but I wanted to keep the severed pant leg. It was a sort of warm brown color but not by staining and weathering. Sprockets got the shirt, and Tags, well, he got to sleep between Chug and I now, since he looked pretty pathetic without Skids around.

...And Sonya rebounds with a devastating grapple. Gribs is in trouble!

I've never seen clothes like this, so fresh. I'd been keeping busy in the down time pulling threads from the scrap piece and twisting them together for a braided cord. I wasn't truly sure what I was doing this for, but these threads were of a fine quality. I just wanted to have busy hands. The Citadel was boring in peace times, but at least there there was always something you could do with your hands. I just needed to be occupied.

I was finishing a loop of braided cord with a knot when I heard that Chug was up against an opponent named Wheelie Bar. He wasn't from our barracks, but the name sounded vaguely familiar.

...It's brother against brother out here tonight, as Former V8 cultists circle...

Ah, guess Wheelie was a War Boy, then. Damn. Bad News for Chug. He was predictably rust deep down and he'd go easy on one of his own.

...The Smiley Bastard just keeps on eating knuckle sammich after another, if he can't get his head in the game, then this match may be the quickest yet.

Chug was going to lose, no question. Some of us hissed and spit and cursed him until the guards told everyone to shut up. The commentators were right. It was over quick. Loss by knockout within minutes.

My memory was jogged, Wheelie Bar was one of the boys on Tank and Notch's crew for a time, under a different name though. We called him Scraps, because he saved every chunk of worthless scrap metal to make trinkets from. He and Chug were good mates for a while, but Scraps took a position with a different crew in pursuit of advancing his rank, that was when he took the new name. Chug was pretty quiet about it all and didn't really bitch about it, but he didn't smile for a while after that. All of that was a long time ago. Apparently Chug was still not willing to knock Scraps' nugget off his shoulders over it.

The crowd at the gate dispersed back to the bunks. The fights would pause for a two hour thing where a story teller spoke a bunch of before-time nonsense and performers would act it out or something. Jaw explained it to me during one of the morning training sessions up top. I didn't really do any training much of the time, I and many others just sat there trying to recover from almost dying every time we were was in the arena.

The only reason I survived at all through the first two weeks of this shit was because of Chug, and I owed something for that. He'd saved my skin more than a few times, and not all of those times were here. I didn't wander back to the cots with the rest. I waited for him to be escorted back.

It would be a while, thirty or forty minutes before the procession of losers lumbered down the corridor into view. He was at the back, both shamed by the others for throwing a fight he could've won and needing to be guided by a Red-Face tugging him along at the elbow.

Ugh, he was smeared in his own red, eyes were both badly swollen and cheek fat on the left side, too. Damn, Wheelie got him good, didn't he?

I had to shuffle back against the wall on my palms and ass to give up enough room for him to get through. Chug was abandoned by the Red-Guard as soon as he was through the threshold and the gate locked.

"Chugger, over here," I called softly. I couldn't really lead him around, couldn't walk upright at the moment, but I could stick around with him while he navigated slowly toward the bunks and let him know if he was about to trip over anything. I usually gave him plenty of shit for being soft but I was no better. I said nothing of his bashed in face or the stench of defeat clinging to his skin nor the duty to beg forgiveness from V8 for his weakness. Though it was waning fast, there was still too much Scav in me to bother with the rituals of humiliation.

Chug found the thin mat on the floor which served as his spot and lowered himself onto it with care not to rattle himself. He said nothing, just licked idly through a wince at his busted lip as he lay on his side and half curled over on himself. Not much more could be done for the shame of that loss. Wasn't right to encourage mediocrity by telling him it was okay to lose to Wheelie, because it wasn't and he could've pounded him into pulp instead of pissing away his only path out of this shit-pit, but it didn't feel right to point that out either. I just sat on the floor near his head and waited for the guards to call in that the fights had resumed. I kept plucking threads from the scrap of cloth in my lap and lost myself to my thoughts for a time.

"Jus' wanna go home," he muttered through a wet slur. He was drooling, probably couldn't feel much of his face now that the swelling was peaking out.

It put a chill up my spine. Chug was the older war brother, the one Notch always had keeping us in line and the one trying to keep the us out of an early grave. He sounded like a pup, now. I threw the length of pant leg at my bunk, giving up on it and whatever I was going to try crafting out of it. I was too nauseated to do anything, not by Chug, by the fact that he sounded just as trapped as I felt.

I wondered about home while a knot tied itself in my guts. Lighty Boy will win, I thought to myself. You have to have faith in something, right? If that flea-bag could escape my wrath and have a hand in killing off three warlords, then it should be a sure thing, but what kind of home would the blood factory be bringing Nux to? I had to know.

"What's home like now?" I asked as quietly as I could. The nausea and racing blood pump only elevated to new heights as he made me wait for an answer.

His shoulders hunched in a shrug and he rolled into his back, turning his face away to hock up a bloody mouthful and eject it away.

"Boring, no raids, no war, nothin' 'cept cocky fuck-wits thinkin' is'sa good idea to try their luck on us," he started. I think he meant to say more, but his misshapen face twisted a bit. Pain.

"More boring than before, huh?"

He nodded and shivered, but not with cold.

"Got empty bunks, lot of unwitnessed," he said flatly, it wasn't new to him, this had been his reality for three years, but the last of the statement would be spat with contempt, "it was nothing but rust for a while."

My guts felt like acid at that, I figured the death toll after the rock slide at The Canyon would be bad, but it didn't sound like he meant that as the culprit for vacant beds. I trusted what he'd claimed before, it was the only path I saw toward any reassurance that Nux might have a few more years on his half-life if he left with Bloodbag and ideally went back to The Citadel.

"But you still want to go home, right?" I probed.

He shrugged again. "S'home. Shit's different but, there's still crew."

Crew, Nux and I left it shortly after Crank was gone. Things got too chaotic, and we were young and thought we knew everything. The minute Nux had a car of his own together and running, we started taking jobs with other crews and just bouncing from station to station, chasing glory. The fact was, after Crank left, Notch and Tank fought relentlessly. I think I better understand why now, because clearly they knew the truth about why he left and the two disagreed with the decision Tank made about it, and the lies they fed us about it. The brother who took us in was dead as far as we knew, a deserter, and we didn't care to listen to crew leads who were too busy being at each other's throats to lead. We still worked with them from time to time, but there was a buffering space between us and them.

"How's everyone?" It felt stilted to ask something like that so casually. I didn't really have a right to know anymore.

Chug's face twitched as if he might've lifted his brows if it wasn't excruciating, hissed a past wince, and waved a hand once before dropping it.

"Still like throwing a lit stick of dynamite at a cactus patch. Shock an' Nugget, still a pain. Fork, still a smart-ass. Big Boy, still big. Backpack, still hates bath day. Cecil, eh, he's the way he was last you saw him. Ike was still holdin' on when- you know, last I saw."

"And Notch?"

"Still old as dirt," he admitted only because Notch couldn't hear that jab all the way from the Citadel.

I snorted though a grin. It wasn't that funny, but a little is a lot when you've got no reason to laugh. It was weak, but Chug cringed out a chuckle too.

A thought crossed my mind, one that probably should have occurred to me weeks ago, because Chug would know how to answer this. The math added up. If Crank made it to the Citadel, Chug would know about it. He didn't get himself sold here until two days after I got sentenced.

"Chug, is Cr-" I started, but paused when I second guessed bringing it up. If Crank and the bog folk never made it then what good would it do to kick Chug with the truth about Crank while he's already on the floor?

"Hm?" He grunted, right corner of his lip sagging toward half a grimace.

I sighed, if Crank was at the Citadel, then all I'd have to do to get answers or at least acknowledgment was say his name, if Chugger didn't know what I was talking about, then I'd just have to make up some other wretch-shit reason to bring the deserter up.

"Crank," I said, holding back as much urgency as I could.

Chug winced again, but this time I could tell it wasn't his face he was sore about.

"Well, Notch hasn't killed him yet, so..." he trailed off in grumbles.

All I could do was let go of a held breath and lie down on the floor. My skull meat was tired. I heard another sloppy splatter of bloody mess leave Chug's face.

"You should go ask for the old blue man,"

"You ask, I'm fine," He asserted.

"You're feckin' hard to look at," I jabbed.

"So're you, Shit-head,"

There was a rumble and a deep roar from out past the shack town and somewhere in the lots.

"What was that?" A man behind me worried.

"Is a storm coming? Sounds like thunder." Another proposed, wrongly.

"That's not a storm!" I heard Sprockets crying out from the next aisle of bunks. He'd certainly know the difference, wouldn't he?

Chug sat forward and lurched onto his feet blindly, holding onto the rack of bunks for support. His left hand gripped my right shoulder as I rose on one leg.

The only men here who would mistake that for an incoming sandstorm were those pitiful bastards who'd never seen war. Anyone here with a brand on his back or who had belonged to one of the northern factions would recognize the sound. It was thunder alright, but not from a storm.

"Sounds like raiders," Chug growled.

I looked down the hall past all the bodies leaving their bunks. All who had ever been a War Boy or Road Skirmisher were fairly vibrating. It's basic reflex, ingrained deep as bones. We were ready for war but barred from carrying it out.

I dropped to my palms and began moving like an animate tripod for the gate. Chug clumsily pressed at the back of the body clogged aisle to follow, effectively initiating a mass migration and a crushing squeeze of bodies at the circular exit. I was almost squashed flat against a wall and threw an elbow back at whoever was digging into my ribs with a knee.

Voices pounded the steel walls and bounced back to pummel ears. The Red-Faces snarled for quiet as they hunched closer to the speaker box of their CB. It took threats to shut us up enough that anyone could hear.

There was static, the sound of men speaking to each other in The background. All I caught was

...Motherfucker Unlimited is back, brought reinforcements, all enforcers are to abandon duties and muster at the stations A and D. All tuned in are to spread the order down the chain.

Our ever present gate guardians were gone in a flash, sprinting down the narrow hallway. They left the radio tantalizingly just out of reach of the man now stretching his arm through the bars to claw at the knotted up cord connecting the mouth piece.

The mass of bodies shifted, I couldn't see anything, I had an eyeful of someone's ass. There was a clamor of excited expletives blended with praise. I heard Chug's name. Someone must have pulled him to the front for his long reach.

The buzz of shouts and hoots rose to fever pitch and then quickly fell back to dead silence as we all listened. Everyone, including myself packed in, leaning closer as the antenna was jiggled around. Just static for a while, then some guard chatter, but quite a bit of background noise too. The frequency was toyed with, and we heard a voice cut through even from some distance away from whatever mic was picking it up.

...We've made our intentions and deman-... No one wants this war-...

Ack! Damn shitty signal in this giant tin can.

...all suitable vehicles in the lots are to be commandeered...

Red-Faces organizing a defensive.

...We came once in peace, flew streamers of white-...

There was that voice again, it was a strain to understand it through layers of chatter and the sound of engines revving somewhere within it all.

...stained in blood and wasted guzzoline!...

...They're breaking formation and moving in a line on the isthmus...

….You have fifteen minutes to comply!...

My body felt unreal, like I was turning into a fluid or a gas and could flow around loosely, detached from a solid form. I also felt a lot like I might be about to shit myself. I called for Chug, pushed at the sweat stinking bodies in my way to get through and grab his arm.

"Am I hearing shit? Am I fuckin, cracked? It can't be-" He cut me off.

"It is," he confirmed, and I felt a shiver run though him, not fear though, excitement, maybe even hope. "That's Big Boy."