The Hangry games; part four

So few friends remain. The mysteriously named company SufoenO has brought them to a place where so many have died. A missile has detonated and one more body has been added to the ever mounting pile.

Alicia lay on the ground, her eyes closed peacefully. It almost seemed like she had fallen asleep lying calmly on the grass gazing at the clouds as the world passed her by.

            There was a giant shard of metal buried in her chest, this kind of ruined the whole calmly sleeping image.

            "Oh no. who is going to give us medical assistance now?"

            "Can't believe Alicia is gone. What a tragedy."

            "Be fair though, she was on borrowed time. Remember that time she almost choked to death on a store purchased samosa?"

            "Also; all the walls she walked into."

            They shared a moment of silence for their fallen comrade.

 

            A sombre feeling settled upon the friends. Even though they had not even reached twenty-four hours in this hateful place it had felt like days. Weeks even. Almost as if they had been waiting for years to find out who died when that cannon sounded just minutes ago. Now they new it was Alicia. So many had fallen. Bob, carelessly knocked off a cliff by a car, Dave accidentally shot to death by Nabila, Oscar-kinda-sorta-accidently shot to death by her mother Tan (she thought he was one of the bad guys. The shots were actually executed with totally badass skill). Nabila didn’t even have a father left either, the poor fellow stepped on a mine. Robert had a horrible burn wound on his arm. Somehow running over these basic facts helped the friends, it was hard to hold on to specific facts when they felt like they had been waiting days and weeks and months…

           

            They settled into conversations about what the heck to next. Two lines of thought seemed to be emerging. One was that they should somehow fight back, after all they had broken the dance off missile launcher and managed to get one of the heads of those queer robots that occupied the stadium seats. The other line was that they wait in the stadium and look after each other generally refusing to kill each other.

            "Now that the missile has gone off, I think we should go back into the shelter." Robert said.

            "I could use another nap." Angphu agreed.

            "No, we've got to keep moving." Amelia was kind of the leader of the faction that wanted to fight back against the mysterious SufoenO. "If we stay in the shed, they'll know exactly where we are."

            "Well how about we stay in the shed and you guys keep moving? We might all be safer if we split up."

            "Yeah, Oscar was super safe when he split from the group." Anna observed drily.

            "Your sarcasm ain’t helping no one right now!"

            "Oh, I don’t know about that. It makes me feel a little better"

            “Trala lala laa.” Nabila wasn’t necessarily on one particular side of the argument.

            Robert and Angphu had stepped back into the shed. Robert turned around and spoke to the group.

            "You know what guys, the most important thing right now is-"

            Nobody found out what the most important thing was, as a blinding flash of light happened. The Anderson shelter had been teleported away again.

           

            "How are we supposed to beat SufoenO if they've got a teleporter?" Amelia pondered aloud, looking at the large patch of grass that had been flattened by the metal shed.

            "Seems like it could be tough."

            “Lala lala traa.”

            ""Why haven't they teleported us?" Don't they normally teleport everyone together?"

            Amelia and Anna stroked their chins thoughtfully. Niamh chewed on her hair as she tried to puzzle it out.

            "Oh Em Gee guys, I've just realised something!" Amelia said excitedly.

            "Is it to do with the teleporter?"

            "No, but it is pretty important."

*

Robert and Angphu stared out of the Anderson as the mysterious teleportation device moved them once more. Upon Robert's advice they were not stepping outside. This was sound advice, last time he stuck his arm out it got fried by some kind of electro-static charge.

            "Hey, look at that!" Angphu had noticed something they had not seen before. They were back on the on enormous conveyor belt, easily as wide as a road. This they recognised from their other trips. But on the edge however there appeared to be a pavement. Halfway down the pavement was a door. Before they could discuss it Angphu got distracted.

"Hey, there's that bicycle again." Angphu pointed at the twisted metal frame as they passed it on the belt.

            "Oh man, you don't think that burnt looking fellow on the bike is Bob's brother, Greg do you? Wasn't he cycling to get to the cafe?"

            "You think he's okay?"

            "He's extra crispy and he's been lying in the electric field of this place for ages. I'm gonna say no."

*

            "Sufoeno!" Amelia said excitedly, back at the stadium. "That's "one of us" spelt backwards!"

            “Sufoeno?”

            “You know, the people running the games? We talked about this barely an hour and a half ago.”

            “Oh yeah. I’m sorry for a moment there it felt like we had that conversation months and months ago.”

            “I kind of noticed that Sufoeno was one of us in reverse a while ago.” Anna confessed.

            "Oh." Amelia looked disappointed. Then she looked suspicious.

            "If you noticed it straight away, how come you didn't say anything?"

            “Well, it just seemed obvious to me that one of us is evil. Why would I let an evil person realise I was on to them?”

            "That's what an evil person would say!"

            "Never mind that, does this mean one of us organised the games?"

            "Well, Dave booked it."

            "Maybe he set it all up! Who else would put a black cape in their rucksack?"

            "Be serious." Anna rolled her eyes. "If Dave organised a game in which his own death featured it would be far more spectacular. He's be laid to rest with a forty-gun salute in a coffin of first."

            "Coffin of first?"

            "Like a cup of first, only people with a first can lie in it."

“Wait a minute!” Amelia exclaimed. “The teleporter!”

           “Yes?”

            “The - you know - the shed!” She was very excited as she gabled to her friends. “The car too, how didn’t we see before? Oh my god!”

            “Very enlightening.” Anna commented drily.

            “Wha t’you talking about there?” Niamh poked Amelia.

            “What?”

            “Explain!”

            “Oh, right. Yes. Metal!”

            She beamed at her two friends, as if she had just explained everything

            “Oh.” Surprisingly Anna understood.

            “What t’you sayin?”

            “Metal’s the key. Every time we’re teleported, we’re surrounded by metal!”

            “Like a Faraday cage!”

            “That’s not how Faraday cages work. They have to be finely meshed… Perhaps it’s a mechanic similar to the lightening rod function.”

            “Robert didn’t get shocked until he put his hand out of the shed! That must be it!”

*

            Robert and Angphu found that the shed had now been placed upon the clifftop, not far away from the tragic demise of Bob the unflappable.

            “Oh, I don’t like this place.”

            “Because it’s where one of our friends died.” Tears were leaking out of Robert’s eyes as he replied. It was not very clear whether or not this was due to the brown giant’s gentle soul or the diminishing reign of general anaesthetic on his wound.

            “Yes. That’s why I don’t like this place.” Angphu was mainly thinking about the fact they were once more surrounded by mines.  Also, the fact that they were probably thousands of miles away from a Nando’s weighed heavily upon him.

            “Hey, do you see that?” Suddenly Robert was tense and alert.

            “What?” The tone of Robert’s voice made Angphu feel afraid.

            At the bottom of the hill, two shadowy figures were staring up at them.

            “Angphu.” Robert sounded really scared now. “People died here right? What if it’s haunted or sometin’?”

            “Don’t be daft Robert, ghosts don’t exist.”

            “Well if they ain’t no ghosts they ain’t no kind of good news. It’s not the girls, is it? Gotta be the folks who're running the show.”

            "Should we talk to them?" Angphu wondered aloud.

            "Talk to the people who threatened to leave a nuclear bomb in an inconvenient place?"

            “Oh crap, I forgot about that. Let’s hide.”

            “In the shed?”

            “The large shed standing alone on the empty green hilltop?”

            “Ah yeah. Um.”

            The looked around the wide-open space, broken only by suspicious looking freshly tug earth. They shrugged in a resigned sort of way.

            “Behind the shed then.

"We're totally going to die."

Many tense minutes crawled by.

           "Quick, take a peek." Angphu whispered as the two crouched behind the shed.

            "I don't wanna peek, you peek."

            "No, you peek!"

            "Hang on, there's no footsteps."

            "I told you they were ghosts!"

            "Robert there’s no such things as ghosts.” Angphu stood up and gathered his courage.     “Let’s go see what’s happening.”

            The phantom of his dead friend Dave stood before him.

 

*

             “Right. So. We’ve worked something out.” Amelia put her hands on her hips in a very I’ve-rolled-up-my-sleeves-and-I’m-taking-charge kind of way. “Now we just need to turn it to our advantage, don’t we?”

            Anna rolled her eyes in a no-s**t-Sherlock-what-new-gem-will-you-dazzle-us-with-next manner of style.

            “How does it help though?” Niamh frowned. “We can stay out of metal and walk everywhere? If we get close to wherever they’re hiding won’t they just teleport us anyway, and fry us in the conveyor belt?”

            “Oh. Yes.”

A satisfied smile alighted upon Anna’s lips.

            “You know. I think there is a way we can work this.”

            “Oh?”

            “These robots. They’re made of metal aren’t they? We can wear their bodies as armour. Then if they put us on that conveyor belt, we’re free to move around.”

            “Oh, jolly good.” Amelia gave Anna a look that seemed to say a well-done-you-what-a-clever-old thing-you-are.

            Anna raised an eyebrow in a manner that appeared to convey now-really-it’s-nice-to-receive-a-complimet-and-all-that-but-don’t-you-think-the-“clever-old-thing”-facial-expression-is-a-trifle-condescending?”

The girls started gathering the pieces of armour that had been thrown at Angphu and Robert as they fled from their attackers the night previously.

            “Well damn, we’re a torso piece short.”

            “It’s okay. Didn’t Angphu make friends with one? I’ll just go and pal up to them. I’m sure they’ll want to be chums.”

            Anna and Niamh watched her confidently stride towards the hoard of robots.

            “Well then. I guess it’s time to go and watch Am get beaten to death by robots.”

*

            The apparition of Dave loomed theatrically before Angphu and Robert.

            "I have climbed from the abyss! Clawed my way through the unspeakable realm to return to you. Kneel before me and tremble at the unholy horrors I shall recount. A realm without trams!”

            Robert squealed in terror and darted backwards away from the ghost. He tottered over the edge of the cliff, his centre of gravity teetering back and forth. 

            Angphu grabbed his hand and this surprised Robert so much he almost plunged both of them to their deaths. I'm afraid to say it did looked neither elegant nor dignified, but the two did manage to scramble back on to the surface of the cliff.

            "Ah, sorry about that guys." Ghost Dave twisted his fingers about themselves guiltily. "I thought you might enjoy a dramatic re-entrance."

            "You thought you'd give a startling performance to your two friends while they were by the edge a provably dangerous cliff?”

            “Sorry again.” Dave’s guilty face switched off as a thought occurred to him.     “Look at it this way though, death’s not the permanent inconvenience we thought it was.”

            To this Angphu and Robert could only respond with mutually unimpressed faces.

            “Looks whose back b*****s!” Phantom Tan sprung into sight in front of the group, bursting from the ground in a startling and cinematic manner.

                No one said anything, as if asian mothers popped out of the ground on a regular basis.

                “Come on guys. I’m a freakin’ ghost!” She flapped her arms about to demonstrate her unique and interesting state of affairs. “Wake up! Be impressed at my awesomeness.”

“It’s just…”

“Dave did this whole back from the pits of hell bit…”

“It was really quite good actually.”

“Dave you b*****d, you stole my thunder!” Tan glared at the other ghost.

“Fine” Dave rolled his eyes and sighed. “You can perform to the next group of people we find. “Happy?”

“Yeah. I guess. I’m gonna frighten the ba’Jesus out of them!”

“Dave did almost terrify Robert into falling off of the cliff edge.” Angphu commented.

“Aw come on! You almost killed someone? How am I supposed to follow that act?”

“You’re jealous that I nearly killed someone? Wow Tan. Dying’s really changed you.”

*

"Hello there." Amelia beamed at the crowd of robots. "My name is Amelia. I'm a human being."

The robots looked at her in disbelief. They could see quite plainly that she was a human being.

            “Now, as a human being I can’t see why we can’t all be jolly good chums, eh?

            The watchers cross referenced “chums” with “jolly good” and found no particular logical benefit to the human construct called “friendship” with the individual they saw before them.

“I’m sure we have lots in common.”

The robots doubted this, one of their favourite pass-times being sitting on standby mode updating their software patterns.

          “I like drinking wine, visiting the theatre and going to the spa.”

*

            “So how come you guys haven’t like, passed on to the next life or whatever?” Angphu asked the ghosts.

            “No idea, when we came back, we did have these weird books in our hands.”

            Dave held up an ominous looking tome with “BOOK OF DEATH are you ready for the eternal after realm? Top tips about how to kiss the arse of your chosen deity.” written on it. 

            "Fun times. Have you read it?"

            "Nah, it seems pretty heavy going."

            "But it might have useful information in it."

        "Yeah, but... The book’s so big."

            “Oh, I know who can read it! Bob, he always reads instructions, right?"

        "Yeah, but we've not found him as yet."

       "Hold the phone,” Dave thoughtfully rummaged about in his pockets. “We died with phones, I wonder if they still work?”

         "That's ridiculous, why would a phone work after death?." She reached into her pocket to get out her phone and demonstrate how absurdly stupid Dave's idea was.

            The bloody thing dialled out to Bob straight away.

            "Lucky it wasn't a Nokia. Those things are indestructible." Dave quipped as he graciously concealed a smug look on his face.

            "Oooh, it's ringing. "

        "Hello?" gurgle glub glub.

        "Hey, Bob! How's it going?"

        "Not great." Gurgle gurgle.

        "Where are you? How come we haven't seen you around?"

      "Didn't you read the book?" glub glub. ""I died at sea. That means I'm ‘damned to roam the seas for eternity, crying out to lost souls in the mists of the ocean.’ "

            "Oh right. That's a bummer."

            "Sure is."

        "What did Bob say?"

        "Says he's stuck in the water. shouting at people."

         "Well tell him to get unstuck then!"

         "That's not what I said." Bob protested.

         "I'm paraphrasing."

         "Put me on speakerphone!"

         "Fine."

        "Hey guys, Bob here." gurgle glub gurgle. "Damned to roam the seas for eternity crying out to lost souls."

            "That's what I said!"

            “It’s all in the phrasing though isn’t it? “Damned” and “Roaming” sounds a bit more interesting.”

            "Well either way, sounds boring as hell."

            "It’s not too shabby. I've been practising my call to the lost souls. "Cooee! Lost souls! Cooeee! Over here! Cooooeeee!""

            "Noice. Noice"

         "So, have you read the book?"

         "Why am I always the one who reads the instructions?" Bob protested.

         "Well, did you read them?"

         "Yeah. But still, I'm deeply unhappy about it."

*

           Amelia was still trying to charm the robots into friendship back at the stadium.           

"You know what humans do when they're friends? They hug each other. Let's hug!" 

          "Oh, this cannot end well." Anna commented.

            "Should we stop her?" 

            "She can't actually be serious - Oh God she's actually going for it!"    Amelia stepped towards the robots with her arms spread wide. 

"Amelia stop!" 

         But Amelia was already giving the robot a hug. 

             "You see? Now you hug me!" The automaton reached out with hands and proceeded to hug Amelia's neck.

         "No, " She gasped. "You're not doing it right-"

         “Gees Am, you’re always criticising.”

         “I think it’s strangling her.”

         “Oh, right, yeah.”

        The machine concluded that it was not "hugging" firmly enough, so it tightened its grip.

                        Amelia was gasping and flailing about so the mechanical mind assumed they were supposed to be dancing. He started rocking her head back and forth. 

              "This - is - not - how - you - hug-"

                The friends rushed forward with Nabila toddling behind. Nabila thought it was highly amusing that Amelia was doing some kind of purple faced dance. While Nabila giggled Niamh and Anna scrabbled desperately to pry apart the metal fingers off of Amelia’s neck.

                “Maybe we should unplug it?”

                “Gnn idmmn”

                “What’s she saying?”

                “Good idea, I think?”

                “Pllll Hrrrryy”

                “What’s she saying now?”

               “Probably “please hurry.”

*

          “So, the Book of Death has various guidelines for “moving on” as it were.” Bob was giving everyone the basics. “It starts with stuff like the pearly gates and persuading St Peter to look the other way. Even goes all the way back to stuff with Anubis and Thoth, how to secretly swap the balancing device for weighted scales… It’s quite interesting you know.”

            “Yes, we’re all fascinated but-”

            “They’ve even got all the religious that died out millennia ago. Did you know one ancient mythos requires the hopeful soul to run naked through a field of thorns and bees’ hives covered in jam? At first, I thought it was some sort of endurance thing, pain proving worthiness and all that. I was wrong. Turns out they were just super into jam. There’s pages and pages on the stuff, the holy sugar to raspberry ratio, the divine thickness for spreading. Hating jam was like being gay in the bible belt to these people.”

            “Bob-“

            “Next to advice to the Jedi it just says “grow up””

            “Bob shut up! Doesn’t it saying anything about coming back from the dead?”

            “Oh, right yeah. Not a great deal of that.  Mostly it’s just “reanimation is abhorrent and an insult to the eyes of insert chosen deity here. The Flying Spaghetti Monster is particularly harsh on that subject. He does some messed up things to people who trying to get back to the land of the living. Seriously, I almost vommed when I heard what he did to Rasputin.”

            “What did do?” Tan was curious.

            “Trust me pal, you don’t want to know.”

            “C’mon, you can’t leave me hanging like this!”

            “Well alright, there’s a diagram on page 432” ..." the sound of ghostly pages turning in Tan’s copy ..." “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

            Tan took one look at the picture and hurled up ectoplasmic vomit everywhere.

*

            Anna and Niamh were desperately dashing between the robot spectators, separately trying to find the source of all the cables that were attached to all the humanoid devices. Nabila was jogging around too, but with less of an air desperation. She was just running with a sense of reckless abandon just movingfor the pure joy of exercise. Kids eh? They know how to live life. No sense of pressure or urgency. Just happy and carefree.

            Amelia was gasping some of her last breaths at the hands of the copper creature.

            Her vision was tunnelling and she was seeing stars and all sorts of half formed thoughts were racing through her mind, as all the systems starting shutting down. One of the thoughts was about a holiday in Spain. Another thought about some spreadsheets she had been meaning to attend to chased that one out. That particular reminiscence was replacing by a slightly regretful thought about a handsome gentleman she saw regularly on her commute to work. 

            She briefly lamented that she had never gotten an opportunity to engage that man in conversation, or indeed work the whole thing into some kind of relationship whereby she would be permitted to pinch his bum, which was actually a bum of very fine quality. Other varied notions waltzed through her mind as the lights began to fade.

            “Here!” Niamh shouted.

            She had found the source of wires, a vast bank of sockets. Hundreds of cables lead to the tangled mess, all plugged in with no apparent sense of order of reason.

            Anna raced to join her friend and arrived clutching her side. One of her bullet wounds had opened up again.

            “Oh damn. That’s a lot of plug sockets.”

            The two shrugged at each other. They started yanking the cables out one by one. Anna was considerably slower, paling slowly with pain growing in her side.

About a tenth of the plugs were removed.

            Nabila meanwhile had tired of jogging about and had become distracted by a large red switch. She loved flicking switches. Never before in her short life had she seen one so large. It was enormous, almost as big as she was. It also had some large red squiggly lines on it. She lacked the knowledge to recognise the Roman alphabet so she couldn’t know that in this configuration the words spelt “ON/OFF”.

            She liked that switch.

            “How are we doing?” Niamh and Anna were slightly too far away from Nabila to see what she was up to.

            “Must - be - about - halfway - through.” Anna was really struggling now.

            Halfway there did not appear to be enough, as the robot was still hugging away at Amelia’s neck. 

            Its algorithms where becoming horribly confused. For some reason the human had stopped talking so it was unable to add to useful data to the new hugging sub routine it was trying to write. The subject’s face was going red and the human was gasping for breath with its eyes rolling back in its head. According to the robot’s records this feedback could be positive or negative according to context and circumstance so the befuddled computer was trying to find some frame of reference.

            Nabila reached for the giant switch.

*

            “You feelin’ alright?” Robert looked at his friend with a mixture of concern and terror. It is not every day of the week that you learn ghosts are real, or indeed that they can throw up in quite so spectacular a manner.

            “I think I’m fine. Yeah. Yeah, I’m alright. I just feel a bit sort of empty.”

            “I think that’s just part of being a ghost.” Dave commented.

            “Sounds awful.” Angphu shuddered.

            “Did I just here someone throw up?” Bob was still on speaker.

            “Yeah.”

            “Intriguing. Who knew that was possible as a ghost?”

            “Hang on, I thought you said you read the book?”

            “Well, I might have skipped over some bits. There’s a hell of a lot of footnotes.”

            “So, there might be a way back!”

         “I’ve read a lot of it guys and I’m just not hopeful.”

            “I’m not accepting it!” Tan started frantically flicking through pages, glaring at footnotes. “I’ve got a little baby girl who needs me back in the land of the living!”

*

            Nabila was shoving on the giant switch, with no real luck. It was a big old thing and clearly required a good firm push to change it between on and off. She yelled at it in frustration.

            Niamh looked up at the sound. Nabila didn’t sound scared or hurt though so she went back to desperately tugging out all of the cables as fast as she could. Anna had sat down, covered in sweat and pressing her bullet wound, trying to stem the bloodflow.

Nabila summoned all of her strength and ran into the switch with her full body weight behind the charge. The switch stayed on and she fell over.

            “That’s all of them!” Niamh gasped. She turned around and ran back to her friend, Anna limped along behind her. Nabila continued to heat her tiny fists angrily on the switch without achieving anything.

*

            Dave suddenly doubled over and gasped in pain.

            "Dave, what;s happening?" Angphu and Robert stepped forward in concern while Tan was still obsessively leafing through the book, jumping back and forth between keywords in the index and obscure footnotes.

            "I don't know." Dave sounded scared. Hearing the normally cheerful man with tears in his eyes sound afraid was terrifying. "I feeling like I'm burning and fading all at once."

"Guys, I think he's passing on!" The phone had been dropped but Bob's voice was still audible.

"No." Dave started crying. "This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. I don't want to!"

“Don’t worry Dave, you’re going to be fine.”

“I can’t believe the b*****d’s given me two really painful death’s… All I wanted was to be part of the story again….”

“What’s he saying?”

“I think he’s just rambling. You know, like people who are dying turn into crazy people at the end.”

“This isn’t fair…” Dave whispered, with tears in his eyes.

           

Anna and Niamh got back to where Amelia lay collapsed on the floor. The robot had fallen over with no power to function or balance itself with. Its fingers were fixed rigidly about Amelia’s throat, the ability to open and close its electronic motor grip also having fled with the loss of electricity.

Niamh thought she saw Amelia’s cheek flutter. Was she trying to draw a breath, or was it the last queer spasm of a dying nervous system?