36
Carnivore comes running, wilder, fiercer, and hungrier than ever.
I trot back and try to jump up, reaching for the small opening I came down from. It’s absurd how it suddenly seems too high. I can’t get a grip on the bars at the top to pull myself up through the opening. I pound on the inner bars of the cage as hard as I can, to let Leo know that the cage is now open.
Leo is trying to slow down as much as possible, to allow Carnivore to leap into the cage.
“Jump up!” Leo screams from inside. “Why can’t I see you on top of the cage?”
I guess his rear-view mirror covers only the roof. How am I going to explain that I have miscalculated things? The cage’s roof is too high. Like many other things, it’s easier to get in than to get out.
I run from the middle of the cage to one side, and start climbing up the bars with my bare feet and hands.
Flash. Flash. Flash.
The audience in the Zeppelins must be labeling me today’s favorite dish.
Climb, Decca, climb!
Carnivore is panting at the threshold of the cage. Seeing it this close pumps panic through my body. I let go of the bars, and fall down onto my back again.
Carnivore is looking straight at me. So close. It’s pawing at the edge of the cage. Why am I paralyzed? I don’t know. The piece of meat lies right next to me. All I can think of is to pull it up and throw it out of the cage at the beast, so it forgets about me. Its paws reach for the cage. Before it has the chance to leap in, Leo takes a hard turn and Carnivore slips out again.
I throw the meat out of the cage. It flies in the air like a heavy pie. Carnivore doesn’t bother looking at it, or running back to catch it. It wants me. Only me.
Running to the side again, I climb the bars on all fours like a monkey one more time. When I reach the top of the barred cage, the opening is too far in the middle, so I have to climb the cage’s ceiling, again, like a monkey, but upside down. Gymnastics wasn’t my favorite class in school, but neither was math, which I ended up studying and passing. Math is horrible. I can’t imagine there is anything else to teach beyond 2 + 2 = 4. That’s all math is about. The rest is some complex gibberish that the average girl never uses. Ask Carnivore. It’ll tell you how much math sucks.
Carnivore jumps into the cage while I am hanging upside down like an amateur spider. It lashes out at me with its paws from down there, trying to reach me. I am amazed that the cage’s ceiling is so high, even for it.
Show me how you can climb the bars like a monkey now, you heavy miserable white creature!
Although its paws can’t reach for me, it slashes through my hair, scraping a big chunk of it away. I pull myself flat to the bars of the ceiling while reaching for the opening.
What’s with everyone in this world tearing at my hair? I am not just dying. It’s even worse. I am balding in here.
“Thanks.” I grin at Carnivore. “How’d you like it if I rip out your white fur?”
The audience in the Zeppelin right above me claps and laughs. Such an awkward position for me to watch the Zeppelins from.
“We love you!” a couple of kids say behind the glass, as if I were the clown in the circus, pulling my latest tiger trick.
“Go get a life!” I scream at them. “Go fall in love. Break your heart. Meet somebody. Go live, instead of watching live video games of people being killed!” The kids are taken aback.
Finally, I reach the opening and pull myself up. Carnivore slashes one last time. Once I am up, I discover that he slashed at my right arm. It hurts like hell, but I don’t want to look at the wound. I’ll consider it Carnivore’s signature on my body.
I pound on the roof for Leo to take notice.
“Thank God!” he yells. “You jump out of the Super-V now. I’ll take it from here.”
How is he going to take it from here? He can’t pull the cage shut from where he is driving. What keeps Carnivore in the cage is me. As long as I am standing on top of the cage, it thinks it can get me. If I jump out, it will jump out too and hunt me. I can’t leave. I have to stay here, until we find a way to kill it.
When I raise my head, gazing in front of me, I see one of the steep cliffs up front. One of those cliffs Leo used to kill the other tiger, making it chase us and steering the wheel back at the very last minute. It won’t work now because Carnivore is inside the cage.
Leo is speeding up toward the cliff.
“Jump, Decca,” Leo shouts. “Jump!”
Now I know what Leo is thinking. He is on some kind of crazy suicide mission, driving with the Carnivore in the cage over the cliff, ready to die with it to save me.
No!
“Don’t do it, Leo,” I scream, trying to crawl back to him.
“I am just dropping it off the cliff,” explains Leo. “I can steer the wheel and turn around in the last second after it’s thrown out of the cage and off the cliff. Trust me.”
“No!”
“I just can’t do it when you’re still up there. Jump off the Super-V, Decca.”
We’re getting closer and closer to the edge. The stupid Carnivore is still trying to reach for me from inside, not knowing what is about to happen to it.
“We can do this,” Leo insists. “Don’t mess this up by staying with me. If I die it won’t matter, because you will survive the games. Don’t you give up at the last second.”
So close to the edge.
Even the Zeppelins are slowing down. I can’t imagine what is scaring them, when they’re flying in the air. Dumb audience.
Watching the edge of the cliff approaching, I crawl back into the passenger’s seat. Sometimes my stubbornness is my only friend.
When Leo sees me back in the seat next to him, his eyes widen with anger. But it’s too late. I can see the hollow void leading all the way down over the cliff.
“Leo!”
He steers the wheel with all his might to the right, and hits the brakes so the Super-V slows down a little. I hear the sound of Carnivore banging heavily against the bars of the inside of the cage in the back. It’s a mix of roaring and moaning. I think it fell out of the cage, and off the cliff.