Blood Games by Macaulay C. Hunter

boom of noise hit him when he entered. Vendors were everywhere, free standing and in kiosks and tents, shouting out what they sold or leaving the announcement to marquees with bursting fireworks and exclamation points. Thousands of people had already come into the stadium grounds from the parking lots, and thousands more were in lines that stretched out as far as Ink could see. The swell of excitement caught him up, teenagers shouting about which competitions they wanted to watch, adults placing bets, tiny replicas of favorite fighters doing battles over tables at the restaurants while parents scolded their kids to put those toys away and eat. A vendor selling backstage passes had a long line at his kiosk. During certain hours, people would be able to walk the stables down below. It was an absolute chaos of thrill and happiness, music playing and names booming out over the speakers to cheers. MAENAD! HADES! DIOOOOOOOOOO-NYSUS!
    “Which Hades?” someone yelled to the speaker.
    “The only one that matters!” someone else shouted back.
    The sky was blue and cloudless, a perfect day for fighting. It was promising to be very warm. Ink ambled around to take in the sights and thought he spied Adolfo at a back table in a breakfast joint. The man had no zombie to show at the Games, and maybe he’d wanted to make sure Ink had no zombie either. Ink put a smile on his face in case anyone was watching. He had Thor, mighty Thor, and his grief over Samson could only be expressed in private. A text came from the vet, just a reminder that she would meet him at Thor’s stall after the melee. It was going to be a short visit, since he would either be dead or need to be euthanized.
    It was nine now. If Nadia hadn’t gotten Scrapper patched together and accepted a blue slip, she was out of luck. The photographers had to report to the stadium. They would race through the last pictures and be vanishing from the stables even now as Ink stood beside a toy vendor. And there beside him was a shelf full of little Samson figurines for five bucks each. He’d get a dollar off each sale, and this would be the last time any of them sold. Had Samson lived and won, there would have been Samson-related merchandise in every kiosk and shop at every show from then on. Ink would have raked in a fortune.
    His smile faltered as he picked up one of the figurines. “You like him?” Ink asked a boy who was doing the same.
    “He’s my favorite!” the boy exclaimed. “I got his poster in my bedroom. He wins all his matches and he trounced Ajax at the Sweep! I saw that one.”
    That had been one of Samson’s first competitions, and Ajax had indeed been trounced. The boy said, “You like him, too?”
    Ink put the figurine down. “No. He died. I like Thor.”
    “He didn’t die!” the boy said in disbelief, and ran away to his parents in line at the cash register.
    Someone, someone that was likely here at the Games, had done this. Done it and gotten away with it forever. Ink checked the time and realized he had to get to the stables for his luggage, and then over to the atrium for the picture. Pushing through the crowds, he went back.
    Nadia had gotten Scrapper’s picture done by the skin of her teeth. Now she was going at a more casual pace through her own ministrations. When Ink said there wasn’t time for that, she said, “Calm down. It won’t be taken right at nine-thirty.”
    It would be. Competitions ran on a tight schedule, and if she could stop thinking about herself for even a moment, she would know that. He picked up his luggage and left her there. The crowds had doubled in the five minutes Ink was downstairs. The noise was so great that the voices through the speakers only penetrated as bleats. The atrium was a hike, clear on the other side, so he pushed his way through the crowds around the stadium and didn’t look back to apologize when people tripped over his rolling suitcase.
    The bigwigs had a clubroom at every stadium, the best place