It seemed to work, because the sec men moved farther away, their hands no longer quite so steady with their blasters.
“Chill him!” the bleeding man on the floor cried, his face horribly disfigured. “Set him on fire! Give him to the worms!”
“Aye,” the big sec man muttered. “It’s been long enough for them to be hungry again. We’ll toss him to the worms.”
The word was relayed across the grandstand, and the viewers shifted their seats for a better view of the fourth arena.
“Like worms,” Jak snarled. “Eat them for breakfast.”
The sailors laughed at the show of bravado, and Jak shifted his plans. Maybe he could earn their respect and get enlisted. That would give him the chance to help his friends. If they were still alive.
“That buys you a drink,” a sec man said with a chuckle, passing over a greasy bottle.
Jak took a sniff and forced himself to recoil. “What is?” he demanded. “Horse piss?”
The big sec man lost his grin and shoved a blaster into the teenager’s side. “Shut up and drink,” he ordered, obviously angered that the gesture had been rebuked. “And for every drop you miss, off comes a toe. Eh? How’s that, gimp?”
“Fair,” Jak told him, taking a long swig. Then sprayed the bitter brew into the pirate’s eyes.
Momentarily blinded, the sec man fired his blaster, but Jak had already moved, the .44 miniball slamming into the guard behind the teenager. Clutching his chest, the startled man stumbled backward and fell into the nearest pit.
Kicking another man in the knee, Jak felt the bone break. As a guard rushed forward, the teenager smashed the bottle over his head and stole the guard’s knife. With half their number aced in a few moments, the remaining guards scrambled for distance to safely use their blasters. Meanwhile, the crowd roared its approval as Jak buried the broken end of the bottle into the face of a bearded pirate, twisting the shards in deep. The mutilated sailor howled in agony, falling to his knees on the suddenly bloody floor. With lightning-fast hands, Jak grabbed his blaster and a second blade, then started for the tunnel, the only escape route available.
But the guards were already rushing toward him with raised chairs as shields. Shifting plans, Jak fired the blaster, catching the slave with the keys in the belly. The man slumped over in pain, the keys clattering as they fell to the ground. The line of slaves stared in wonder at the sight, then dived upon the keys, insanely fighting among themselves to get loose first.
A guard rushed Jak with an ax. The teen blocked the strike with the spent blaster and grabbed a fresh weapon from his attacker. Then the others swarmed over him, and the teenager was forced off the grandstand and fell into a pit himself.
The crowd redoubled its yells of delight as the wild boars raced upon the sprawled teenager, blood from their last chill dripping off their razor-sharp tusks.
Chapter Eight
The trembling slaves stood in a bunch on the deck of the PT boat, staring in open horror at the island only a hundred feet away. Most were people dragged from the hovels outside Cascade, beaten and chained as slaves, then herded onto crude rafts of lashed timbers and hauled behind the four petey boats across miles of ocean until reaching this horrid destination. Forbidden Island. To many the words were synonymous with hell.
“You first,” Mitchum ordered, grabbing a skinny man by the shoulder and shoving him off the boat. The man hit the water splashing and yelling.
“Swim for shore, idiot!” a sec man shouted angrily at the floundering man. “And when you hit the beach, walk straight.”
“But I’ll die!” he replied, kicking madly to stay afloat. “The air is poison! Muties everywhere!”
“Convince him otherwise,” Glassman ordered from the wheelhouse of the boat.
“Aye, sir.” Campbell lowered his longblaster and fired. The slave shouted as the miniball punched into the water near his chest, the tiny geyser splashing onto his face.
“Swim or die,” the navvy ordered, another sailor passing him a loaded blaster.
The chained crowd whimpered and muttered among themselves as they watched the man dog paddle for the nearby shore. The waves were gentle along that section of the beach, and if there were any riptides that far from the deadly whirlpool, none seized the man and hauled him underwater.