A cruel and unusual game

At that moment Sarah found herself more scared than she’d ever been in her life. She sat down for a few moments, refusing to believe her eyes, because if they weren’t playing tricks on her, the girl who had gone her entire 17 years of life with nothing, suddenly had a lot to lose.

A sound from behind her broke her trance, she bolted to her feet and her heart skipped a beat before she realized who it was.

“We’re going to get lost in here if we’re not careful.” Said Gabriella. Sarah looked at her friend, she looked terrible, her usually beautiful black hair was filthy and hung about her face in strands, her eyes were bloodshot, she looked like a wild animal. Sarah suspected that she probably looked even worse.

Gabriella returned Sarah’s look, the two of them stayed that way for a few moments, two dirty faced, borderline emaciated teenage girls who had known great suffering, the kind of suffering that all inhabitants of their world had known, both young and old, for as long as anyone could remember.

“Did you hear me? If we go much deeper we’re going to-”

“I’ve found it.”

Now Gabriella’s heart quickened, it thudded in her ears like the beat of some great drum. Sarah realized that she was blocking her friend’s view of the thing that she had found and stepped back, not taking her eyes from Gabriella’s - part of her believed that she had made all this up, but as Gabriella’s eyes widened, any notion that she was hallucinating was dispelled. Gabriella moved to pick it up, Sarah didn’t stop her.

“Is it definitely the real thing?,” said Sarah.

“Why wouldn’t it be?,” Gabriella’s voice shook slightly. For some reason Sarah took a step back from the taller girl who held the object with a reverence the likes of which Sarah had never seen in her friend before… For a moment Sarah was sure that Gabriella was moving her lips, talking to the thing she held in her hand.

Sarah reached into her pocket and pulled out a battered timepiece. It was quarter to six in the morning, neither of them had slept. It was the last day of the search, Sarah didn’t expect that the other pairs would have slept either.

From the surface, they were only about one mile from The Gate, they just had to trace their steps back up and then it was a straight shot through the forest and across about a quarter mile of open ground. But both girls knew now that the danger was great, for they had found the thing that every other pair on the search would kill them for without a thought.

Gabriella stood up and put the thing in her pocket, then she un-holstered the pistol she had been carrying on her left hip, she looked very fierce. Sarah had always been in awe of the way that her best friend could, seemingly in the blink of an eye, become larger than herself, and face whatever evil thing had come to do her harm, not a flicker of fear in her dark eyes.

Sarah recalled the last time she had seen that steely look on her friends face, the two of them had been returning from a hunt, empty handed, as was so often the case nowadays, when five marauders had come out of the woods before them, eyes full of hate and lust, come to rob the two teenage girls of whatever innocence a world such as theirs might have left them with.

Gabriella had not been afraid that day, but her courage hadn’t been enough, for either of them.

“They’ll be on us as soon as we get above ground, we’ll have to be quick,” Said Sarah, she too drew her pistol, she surely wasn’t as brave as Gabriella, but she was a better shot.

Gabriella uttered a small laugh, a sound that didn't belong, but comforted Sarah nonetheless,

“One thing at a time, lets get back to the surface first… God I feel like a rat in a maze”

“I know the way,” Sarah had always had the better sense of direction, and now it was Gabriella’s turn to marvel at the smaller girl as she turned on her heels and began to retrace their steps back. Their trust in each other was deep, countless was the number of times one had put their life in the other’s hands.

So now the two girls made their way to the surface, Sarah, lithe and surefooted, navigating them through the network of tunnels, stairways and corridors that comprised the bunker. Every so often they would come across remnants of the old world – a world which neither of them had ever known – they passed through an enormous room lined with banks of long defunct computer monitors, their footsteps echoing in the dark, the weak light from Sarah’s torch barely illuminating the way through clouds of dust that at times were so thick Sarah felt like she was suffocating, tendrils of panic seizing her heart, and it was only the presence of her friend at her heels that gave her the strength to push on.

After what seemed like far too long to both girls, Gabriella broke the silence between them,

“It’s getting lighter,”

Sarah didn’t respond, but Gabriella was right, she turned off her torch and slowed her pace, both girls glad to be rid of the living dark that might have swallowed them had it not been for Sarah’s uncanny internal compass. The pair now rounded the corner of a particularly long and narrow corridor and stopped, daylight greeted them and both girls would have breathed sighs of relief had the most dangerous part of the journey not still been ahead of them.

“Tell me you still have it,” said Sarah.

From her pocket Gabriella brought out the object that would mean a better life for the both of them, if they survived the next 10 minutes or so. Both girls looked at the heart shaped locket on the end of its chain, the locket itself nondescript, but somehow possessing a gravity that was palpable, the light in the corridor even seemed to grow brighter, and Sarah could’ve sworn the air around them began to buzz.

Both girls knew that the locket was not of human creation, the beings who had made and hidden it had done so as part of a cruel and unusual game, a game in which Sarah and Gabriella were now poised to win. Gabriella tore her eyes away from the locket and placed it back in her pocket, she turned toward the end of the corridor, towards the light. The two girls, who loved each other as only two people who have walked side by side through hell can, made their way further toward the entrance of the bunker, until they could make out the forest, not more than 200 yards away.

And now this was the end, with no sentimental glance at one another, Gabriella was the first to start running, pistol in hand, hair flying…

As they burst into the open air, a great humming sound erupted all around them, a sound that they both knew came from the locket, that would alert the other pairs. And now all of a sudden, they were prey. They pelted toward the forest, Sarah having no trouble keeping up with her taller friend, the muscles in her legs were strong, and adrenalin flooded her body, she ran as she never had before, because death was surely coming for them if she did not.

They reached the forest just as the gunshots began, cacophonous and from every direction. The other pairs had converged on them even faster than Sarah had anticipated, still, the trees provided some cover. There was no clear path through the forest, and again Sarah took the lead, weaving and bobbing through the trees like a fox. Gabriella was less agile and before long was covered in scratches from the branches that threatened to relieve her of the use of an eye. A bullet went past Sarah’s ear and from the corner of her eye she glimpsed her assailant, a boy of no more than twelve or thirteen years old, not thirty yards away - wielding what looked to be a high-powered rifle. Without thinking or slowing down, Sarah raised her own pistol, it had been her father’s, and she felt it now not as an object, but as an extension of her own hand, She simply swung the barrel toward the boy, and fired once. She did not need to check if her aim had been true because the boy uttered a shrill cry, and then was silent. She was glad that she had not seen his eyes, and for a moment was consumed by utter misery… and then rage.

She hated them, the beings for whom the boy’s death was nothing but entertainment, Sarah remembered a word her mother had taught her when she was young – Sadist. She had looked into the eyes of terrible men as they had taken what they wanted from her, and seen the black hatred in them, hatred that didn’t come and go, but rather festered like a disease, ever present and all consuming, turning men into violent beasts.

But this violence was different, this was constructed, horribly contrived, and for whatever reason she found it even more sickening than the violence she had known her whole life. She let the thought linger, and used it to fuel her rage. She ran faster still.

She quickly realized that she was leaving Gabriella behind. She slowed down, and as the two of them drew side by side, the edge of the forest came into view.

Both girls were now using up the last of their adrenalin, they had managed to outpace their attackers and the gunshots were now not so close.

They burst into open air, and there it was. The Gate – a shimmering mirage that warped the air around it, so close now, Sarah could feel it’s pull, and she willed her exhausted legs to carry her to the end of their journey.

They reached the gate together, and as they passed through its boundary, they suddenly found themselves weightless, catapulted violently through an enormous darkness, gone was the sky and the trees, they were somewhere else entirely now, or perhaps in some between place.

Just as it seemed to Sarah that they would both be torn apart by the force of the gateway, the two girls found themselves standing on their own two feet again. In this new place, the darkness was not so impregnable, and as Gabriella’s eyes adjusted, she realized they were in an enormous room, the walls of which were black, but seemed to pulse as though they were conductors of some kind of energy, she looked up but could not discern a ceiling of any kind, just darkness. An image then came into her head of a rat lying helpless at the bottom of some long disused but impossibly deep well.

The only sound to be heard now came from the girls themselves – both of them breathing heavily, the rapid beating of their hearts not yet slowing.

And then a voice, from everywhere, monotonous and deep, uttered five words,

“There can be only one.”

The voice echoed for what seemed like an eternity, the meaning of the words permeating every fiber of Sarah and Gabriella’s being.

One last cruelty then.

Slowly, lights appeared in the walls, thousands of them, pairs of them.

Eyes, red and soulless, all focused on the two creatures at the bottom of the pit.

Two girls who loved each other and had known great suffering, turned to face each other in the dark.