35
“Pepper,” I scream. “Bellona!” My heart is pounding. “Woodsy. Vern!” I could lose my voice screaming their names. “Where are they? I can’t see them,” I say to Leo, who points at what the tigers are feeding on.
“Well… This might be them. I can’t know what the tigers are gorging on with all this mud. But that’s their Super-V.”
It’s true. I can’t make out what the tigers are eating in the mud. What happened to them?
“Don’t panic,” says Leo. “They might have escaped or something. The tiger couldn’t have killed all four of them. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“Last two survivors,” says Timmy in the microphone. “They look like Romeo and Juliet.”
Leo hugs me tighter again. “Don’t think about it,” he tells me, as I am about to burst into tears. “Stay strong. Stay focused.”
“But they all died.” A teardrop trickles down my cheek. I try so hard not to cry. I still can’t believe it.
“I don’t believe him,” says Leo. “Have faith. I don’t believe him.”
“But we saw them.”
“We saw nothing,” says Leo. “The mud is covering bodies. It could be anyone. They might have escaped. They might be hiding in trees. They might have removed the receptor from under their ears. Anything.”
“You are just trying to make me feel better,” I say.
“Stay strong. Trust me, I have this feeling. They are alive. At least, one or two of them are. Don’t listen to this maniac. In any case, we still have each other. We’ll always have each other.”
Leo pulls my head to his and kisses me suddenly, with the salty tears on my mouth. “Stay alive, Decca,” he whispers, then he stops circling and drives ahead. “I need you to catch Carnivore.” He points at the opening in the roof.
“Is that it?” I ask.
“Yes. Climb up and you’ll find two levers. One opens and closes the main door to the cage in the back. The other opens a small window on top of the cage.” He points at a box full of large chunks of meat. “Take some of this and throw it inside the cage from the opening on top. Then pull the other lever to let Carnivore inside, while I slow down as much as possible, so it enters the cage thinking it will get that piece of meat. Once it takes the bait, you pull the lever back and it is trapped, and we win this game.”
I am confused, trying to absorb and understand all of these instructions at once. Or is it that I am still shocked by the fact that my friends might be dead?
“Look,” says Leo. “I could do this, but you won’t be able to drive the Super-V like I do in all this mud. I know you can do it. You have more reason than ever to catch Carnivore.”
He is right. I look back at the genetically mutated white tiger. The one that might have killed my friends, including Woo, I assume. I will catch it. I will do it.
I climb up through the shaft on top of the Super-V. I imagine I’m a tiger as well, clawing at whatever I can on top of the rattling and bumping Super-V. I have to keep my balance. The wind slaps my face every now and then. The wind whips at my back and legs, as if it is the enemy. I cry out this time, catching Carnivore’s attention. Its eye turns all white, staring at me. What kind of mutated creature is it?
It starts to hunt the Super-V. Leo keeps circling and curving, to splash mud onto Carnivore to blind it. It works, but Carnivore wipes the mud away with its paws as if it were human, and keeps chasing the Super-V. I am still clutching at the top of it. The mud causes Carnivore to slip; it picks itself up, and continues after its prey. Leo and I.
Crawling on my hands and knees, I reach the small opening on top of the cage. I open the bucket, pick up a heavy piece of meat, and prepare to drop it into the cage. It’s so heavy, I am afraid a bump in the muddy road will knock me down into the cage with the meat. I let it fall, thudding against the bottom of the cage in the back of the Super-V.
Carnivore roars. I think the trick is working. I keep pounding against the roof of the Super-V, so Leo will open the cage. He has a controller inside to open it. The wind is so loud, I don’t think Leo can hear me, even if I shout. I need to get my breath before I make it back to the passenger’s seat. I am glad I made it so far. With all those bumps and slides in the road, I am afraid I will fall on my way back.
I pick up my iAm, wondering why I can’t hear Timmy. The wind and the sound of the Super-V is too loud. As the wind curls what’s left of my hair into my mouth, I see Timmy and Faustina talking, but I can’t hear them. What’s Faustina doing up there? Has she become the Trickster’s helper?
I look up at the Zeppelins in the sky, trying their best to follow us. The audience stands up there, taking pictures.
Flash. Flash. Flash.
Little kids pull their parents’ hands to come look at the white tiger.
This isn’t a zoo! I want to scream. Or maybe the world has come down to this, becoming one huge zoo.
“Can you hear me?” Leo shouts. Finally, and faintly, I hear him.
“Yes. Yes. Yes!” I yell as loud as I can.
“I can’t open the cage,” Leo screams, struggling with the wheel. “There’s some malfunction in here. Something is not right. I think Timmy did this.”
“So what now?” I shout.
“You’ll have to open the cage!”
“What?” I stare back at the panting Carnivore, getting closer and closer.
“We don’t have time, Decca,” Leo screams. “I am going to be out of gas very soon. You have to open the cage from the inside.”
“What do you mean open it from inside?”
“It’s how it opens manually,” explains Leo, sounding disappointed with himself. “From the inside. There is a lever that you have to pull from the inside.”
I turn back and look between the bars of the cage. I see the lever inside of the cage. How am I going to do this?
Staring at my iAm, I see Timmy dancing polka with Faustina. When the camera closes in, it says the words, “from inside.” Timmy winks at me. He looks so happy with my misery. The screen shows the subtitles of the phrase in other languages.
I look at the audience standing behind the bulletproof glass in the Zeppelins, not knowing what I am looking for. Maybe I am looking for humanity in their eyes, some evidence that shows they are not robots. That they still have some of that something that makes us human, whatever that is. Although most of them are laughing, voting, and betting, I do see little faces here and there. Those who feel confused about this. Those who have that inner voice troubling them from the inside. The problem is that they do nothing. They don’t want to oppose the Summit. I think this is the greatest mistake of all, wanting so bad to be part of the crowd, whatever the price is.
“How are you going to close the cage on the Carnivore when I trap it inside?” I ask Leo, trying not to think about what could happen to me when I am in the cage with it.
“You just open the cage, get back on top through the shaft, and leave the rest to me,” says Leo. “You can do it, Decca. You can do it. This is the last day and the last game. If you pull it off, you’ll be the first one to outlive the games. You’ll be a Ten!”
I drop myself like a sack of potatoes into the cage, and the audience goes crazy. Every bad thought, every shred of fear, every negative comment, I just kill it with an imaginary gun and puff the smoke off the end of the barrel. As I stand inside of the cage, Carnivore roars at me from outside. It must be enticed by the amount of meat behind the bars, including me. I step forward and grab the lever, while staring at Carnivore one more time, up close and personal. The flashes of the cameras coming from the Zeppelins above me are blinding, even in daylight. Every flash cuts through the air, as if I am a celebrity being chased by the paparazzi. Is this how the Nines feel? Chased everywhere? No privacy? Every time they bleed does the audience feel better?
The flashes of the cameras might make a celebrity out of me in this bleeding daylight, where man has nothing to be entertained with but the misery of another.
The flashes don’t bother Carnivore. It is hungry. It’s natural and animalistic. It wants to feed. Come to think of it, it is no different from those in the Zeppelins. The only difference I can think of is that it has no rank, which makes us both Monsters.
“Are you the one who killed Woo?” I whisper through the bars. I wonder what will happen if I cut through Carnivore. Will I find a set of wires and metal bones?
I take a deep, deep, deep breath and pull the lever. The cage opens.
“Open Sesame,” I mumble.