Chain Gang All Stars

Mari had walked through security carrying nothing but her wallet, a marker, and a neon-green poster board.

The security guard at the C-gate entrance smiled at her, gold caps shining, and asked, “What’s on the sign?” She’d thought she’d feel a radical terror but instead she felt an instinctual understanding of what to do next. She unraveled the poster board, which had been rolled into a loose cylinder, and displayed the plane of blank green without resistance. He looked at her, confused, and she dug into the left pocket of her pants and pulled out a thick black marker. She waved the marker between her fingers, summoned a smile. “Was in a rush,” she said.

Her smile was reciprocated. “I get you,” he said. “And now maybe you have a little more time to decide who to root for?” he said, laughing. And Mari laughed too as she was allowed through the barrier to find her seats.

Mari found the people sitting in the seats nearest to her. The men and women who had presumably paid hundreds of dollars to witness this circus of death firsthand were, more or less, regular people. They were communal and chatty, asking Mari several questions she answered as though she was trying to expend as little energy as possible engaging with them, which she was.

“First time up this close?” a woman with red hair asked.

“Yes,” Mari said. She was seated in the front row, and had they been at a baseball game, which was what the stadium had been designed for, she would have been near third base.

For the BattleGround, though, a short clear wall had been erected in front of the seats as if it were a hockey match. It was only about five feet high, but while sitting down they peered through it as they watched. And she did watch. She saw Randy Mac get impaled by a halberd, and the people around her screamed in a complicated jubilation and sorrow. Many people, including the woman with the red hair, wept.

Mari bent into her sign. Drew the letters thick. She realized she was crying too and she tried not to wet the fresh black.

“Who you got in the main event?” the man to her left asked. He was there with several other men, who might have been his brothers or cousins. They were loud and all had the same face, the same way of speaking. They were analytical and precise with their observations and assessments of both the murder happening in front of them and Thurwar, whose likeness was projected from their phones, which they passed around, each man assessing her as if they were a board scrutinizing a dissertation.

“Thurwar,” Mari said, looking into the man’s blue eyes briefly before returning to her sign.

“Ladies have to stick together, I guess.” He smiled and Mari did not. “We put money on the other side.” Mari continued writing. She looked at her board. It gave her a place to put her eyes, gave her fear a place to rest. “Good news is, one of us is right. Right?” he offered with a laugh.

“Sure,” Mari said.

She tried to escape into herself. There was a tremendous energy in the space, and she was ashamed to feel it so clearly. Gunny Puddles killed a man. Rico Muerte killed a man. There was a feeling of grand worship, a power and excitement. She was ashamed at how familiar it was. Mari’s secret was she’d watched LinkLyfe regularly. She’d watched to get to know her father, a man who’d hardly known her. She’d watched as he’d done good, as he and Thurwar had shaped the A-Hamm Chain into something different. She’d felt the rush of being wanted every time he said her name. She’d found a way to love him through the horrific show and now it was right in front of her. She’d watched the man they called Sunset because even though he was gone, even though he’d lived a life away from her, he was hers.

She finished and put her marker onto the floor near her sneakers.

Thurwar emerged with no music and Mari stood with everyone else to see the icon, hammer in hand. Staxxx’s music sounded and the roar of the people made the hairs on her arms rise. The energy was unmissable. Their bodies were gleaming in their armor. If it weren’t real it would have been beautiful. As it was, it was awe-inspiring, an opening that came from the chest and spread through the rest of you.

Thur-WAR, Thur-WAR

Hurricane Hurricane Hurricane Staxxx

“First things first,” Staxxx said. “Suck my dick, America!” Staxxx screamed. The people screamed too. The red-haired woman burst into tears again.

“Love you, Mac,” Staxxx said.

Mari watched and listened, but also finally felt the terror she’d expected much earlier. Now that it was time to do what she’d said she was going to do. Now that the rest of her life was before her.

She couldn’t move. Suddenly she was cemented in place. She turned to the red-haired woman, who was screaming, thrilled with life even in sorrow. She clearly was a fan of Staxxx and Thurwar as well.

“My father was a Link,” Mari said, yelling into the woman’s left ear. The woman glanced at her, clearly surprised at the sudden offering of such juicy information.

“Yeah?” she asked, still up and mostly focused on the BattleGround. “What was his name?”

“I’m going to hop this wall in a second,” Mari said. “I’m going to go on the BattleGround to remind us all that we’re better than this.”

“What?” the woman said, confused, still cautiously friendly.

Mari stood on her seat.

“His name was—is—Shareef Harkin Roleenda,” Mari said, and then she leapt and pulled and kicked her way over the wall and onto the BattleGround, the green poster in her hands.

She landed hard and was there on the grounds for at least three seconds before she could feel people noticing. She walked a few steps toward the middle before realizing that she’d hurt her ankle. No matter. She raised her sign above her head, took slow steps. The eruptions of applause shifted to smatterings of sound, clear confusion. The contrast was stark.

“We seem to have somebody who’s a little lost,” the announcer said. Mari watched as he retreated into his small room on the field.

Had she not been completely enthralled by the heat she felt, the power of her steps, she would have laughed at him. Lost.

Staxxx still had not been locked into her position and now she was walking toward Mari, scythe in hand.

Mari smiled at her and Staxxx smiled back. Beyond her Thurwar looked with eyes that reminded Mari of Kai’s: worried, concerned.

“It’s okay,” Mari said. She held the sign up for all to see, slowly rotated it so everyone in the arena could see both sides. It was then that she noticed the soldier-police flooding from both gates in her direction. First they pulled Staxxx back to the Keep and locked her in. Then the armored men ran at Mari.

Mari kneeled down and kept the sign high in the air, proudly speaking the truth. You didn’t get to have it both ways. Either we loved one another or we did not.

The front of the sign read: WHERE LIFE IS PRECIOUS

And the back, which fell facedown when Mari dropped it, read: LIFE IS PRECIOUS. And even though the men circled her, the entire stadium could see the message. And for a moment, before the producers had forced the Jumbotron cameras to black, the message had been magnified for all to see. Where life is precious, life is precious, and it dawned on the crowd, rapt and ready though they were for the doubles BattleGround match of the year, that life might not be precious here.

And the entire stadium could see when one of the officers pulled a weapon that looked like a gun from his side and shot a black rod into Mari’s neck. And the entire stadium saw as Mari was Influenced.