I could hear them waiting, their shifting feet crunching on the dead rocks and sticks around us. There was always audience around. This was not fighting in its purest conflict; it was fighting for sport. It was violence as entertainment. In what was left of the world, they had nothing better to do.
We fought to survive each day, but then we watched others fight to unwind.
The adrenaline was already reaching thin, excited strands down my veins. My heart was already fluttering into an agitated rhythm, just knowing what was waiting. I fought night after night, smashing my swollen knuckles into another face, for the food to fight the next day. Yet the anxiety never faded; the nerves never steeled.
Above the tremors starting in my muscles, I felt my stomach tightening and writhing, tugging down on my esophagus towards the empty pit in my gut. Vacant, hollow, fucking starving.
I tried to swallow the acid bubbling up my throat and focus on the plate that would be on the other side of this fight.
Then he was gesturing towards me, beckoning me to emerge from the shadows of the trees out into the light of the large bonfire where they could see me. I could see the shifting figures now, mumbling and cheering in anticipation. The fire crackled beside them, sending embers into the black sky. I breathed out hard into that dark sky and watched my breath curl in front of and away from me.
I clapped my hands together and swung my arms back and forth as I had always seen boxers do on TV, imitating numerous people probably dead and rotting under the twisted wreckage.
My opponent looked even more scraggly and desperate than I imagined myself. I had seen myself in the dusty reflection of a shattered window months ago, and it had terrified me. Yet even in that dilapidated state, I was not this emaciated, wild-eyed shell of a man.
He held his hands up in gnarled, shaking fists. I could have underestimated him had other ragged opponents not crept out of starvation to nearly pummel me into the dirt below us.
He did not disappoint. He came at me fast and direct, flying across the dirt and dead pine needles in a flurry of long punches. I lifted my arms defensively over my face and felt his arms collide painfully with my forearms. I let him burn it out. I let him pound his fists into my rounded back.
I knew none of our fatigued and deprived muscles could perform for long.
The crowd grew restless around us. I was not entertaining them. They wanted my fight, my pain to distract them from the dismal world all around us.
The pain rolled over me in waves. Each impact from his fists or his feet rippled through my nerves. My instincts screamed to react, to heed the whine of the patrons, to perform. But I had to stick to the tried and true method. I had to fight my impulse and wear him out. Then I could eat.
I felt his blows waning. I watched his bare feet as I curled under my defensive arms. His footsteps were staggering. He could see the finish line and was seduced by the thought of that food. My food.
When I saw one of his arms dangle at his side, I knew it was time. The audience had nearly given up on me. Stray conversations had started among the crowd; the energy had shifted away from us. When there was a pause in his assault, I stood up tall again and dove my fist into his lower jaw. I felt his jaw collide with his skull, heard his teeth snap together. He toppled back surprised and stunned.
And the crowd exploded in cheers.
They loved me once more; they always loved me when the momentum switched. They were drunk off the violence, wrapped up in the sport.
In a blur of exploding instincts and ravenous hunger, I was on top of him, pounding my fists into his face. I felt the flesh contort below each blow, felt his blood wetting my knuckles. With each strike, the audience became more alive. The world was just this moment, and they lived for what I was doing to this other desperate survivor.
I lived for him to stop moving and for the plate to be placed in front of me.
Finally, his arms stopped flailing up on me. Finally, his breathing dropped to sad sputter. He fell limp beneath me, and the fight was over.
I had won. Dinner was mine.
This is just a glimpse at what entertainment might become in the apocalypse. My upcoming novella, Savages, follows two survivors through the search for others in the apocalypse.
Fiery Pen 