The Government Game

CHAPTER ONE

Eleven o'clock in the PM on the Eve of the annual, secret Government Game.

A file, sat on the Supreme Leader's desk, labelled TOP SECRET, had been opened and read. Thomas Darwin, Supreme Leader of the Democratic Peoples of Australia, decided to leave it out. Nobody would barge into his office at this hour, he supposed.

In the file names of the contestants are provided, along with their addresses and details. Not only that, but the weapons used in this year's Game. The weapons were to be provided to each contestant. Twenty-one contestants in total. The computer decided it.

Men in black vans drove all round the country, armed to the teeth. They broke into twenty-one quiet houses. Twenty-one people were taken from their slumber. They never awoke, not a peep. However, one woman, hysterical that her husband was being taken by the Game's Armed Forces, was shot and killed. The husband still never awoke.

All twenty-one contestants would be flown to an Arena hidden in the middle of the desert of Australia, not far from Uluru, in fact.

The game would begin shortly by this time. And the sun would rise soon, casting heat over the simulated Arena.

***

Peter Anson awoke in a stifling warehouse.

It didn't strike him straight away, but after seeing the (he assumed) roughly twenty to twenty-five others asleep in the hot room, he realised where he was.

Oh, fuck. That was all he could think.

He tried to stand, but became overwhelmed with a nauseated feeling. Sweat dripped from his face onto the cold, concrete floor. He held onto the wall and looked out the large, almost church-like window. All he could see were trees and brush and vines. He felt as though he was going to be sick, from anxiety and nausea.

The sun was slowly but surely rising. He collapsed, and began to sob silently. He wanted to raise the alarm, but it was far, far too late. He would just sit there for another half an hour whilst the room's residents stirred from their sleep.

There were cries of panic, people who had just woken up running to the window and looking outside. But some merely sat, as if they had accepted it.

Figures. Some people actually fucking volunteer to enter the Game.

Then there was a rattling sound coming from the corner of the room, where a door was being shaken. Some of the contestants hurried away from it into another corner. Once the door unlocked, two soldiers made their way in, guns pointing.

Then, behind them, walked the Supreme Leader of the nation. Thomas Darwin.

He walked to a microphone that stood near a large CRT television. He touched the mike, and then coughed.

'Welcome, welcome, all of you,' he began. 'Today, I want you to kill each other.'

That's when the screams began from the non-volunteering contestants.