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the rush and didn’t care. He moved aside, surprisingly quick, and avoided Jonah’s blade. Not only did he avoid the machete, he managed to wrench it from Jonah’s hand as Jonah stumbled forward.
    Bear threw the machete through the bars, where it fell 50 feet to the snow-covered field below.
    Jonah fell to the Mesa floor, and Bear laughed as if it were the first joke at the end of the world.
    Bear threw his arms into the air as four orbs circled above and around them, then hurled his axe into the corner, as if to say he didn’t need it to defeat Jonah. Bear threw his arms up again and waited through applause he couldn’t hear but probably felt in the cells of every overdeveloped muscle.
    Bear ran at Jonah, grabbed him roughly by the collar, then lifted him up over his head as though he weighed nothing at all and smashed him down hard onto the metal floor of the Mesa.
    He held his arms in the air again, screaming in victory, as if he were a real bear, waiting through the orbs’ whirring whispers of broadcast glory.
    Jonah was going to die.
    It shouldn’t end this way, it wasn’t fair.
    A year ago everything was different.
    A year ago, Jonah didn’t know, and ignorance made everything perfect.
    But that was before Jonah knew that life was a lie, and that everything he’d ever suspected actually was, and that the sour truth might spread farther than The Walls of City 6.
    Molly was everything to him. Ana and Adam knew it because Jonah had given them a lifetime of proof. Ultimately, truth held no court in a world built on lies.
    Not when the “truth” could be created wholesale from false memories.
    Neither of his children believed in his innocence, and his daughter had testified against him, sending him first to jail, and then outside The City walls where he fought the dead to stay alive. She was probably watching and wishing him eaten.
    Jonah looked up at the orbs, then back at Bear.
    This was it.
    The City’s setup was finally finished.
    Jonah was arrested, convicted, and expelled from The City.
    Maybe The State and City were finished with him, but he wasn’t done with them.
    Jonah held his roar, swallowing the swirling tornado inside him through the extra half-second of silence that might be all he needed to win life from death at the bloody hands of Bear.
    Jonah stood up and dived down, just as Bear realized what was happening, swatting too high through the air as Jonah landed at the man beast’s ankles, thrusting forward with every one of his 198 pounds. He swung his right arm as he landed, around Bear’s leg and up the length of his body, yanking the man down hard on his face.
    Bear roared like the beast he was, and the rage in his roar managed to do what Jonah’s machete couldn’t — strike fear, or at least curiosity, into the surrounding zombies. The moaning grew louder as their heads spun slowly and wildly around. Their stride never slowed as they ascended the stairs on their way to the cage.
    If the zombies somehow got inside the gate, Jonah was finished. Even winning against Bear would only prolong his death. Producers never interfered. And no way Jonah could fight off a horde with just his hands.
    But Jonah wasn’t going to die.
    He would kill Bear and earn his way into City 7, so the plans he’d been making since seven seconds after his arrest could finally get started.
    Bear finished his bellow, then ran at Jonah, catching him before he could get away, and lifted him again, and then threw him in a rage hard to the ground.
    Pain exploded through Jonah’s back and left shoulder. He gasped for breath and choked up blood, but his heart was still beating.
    He spit a giant gob of bloody snot from his mouth. It landed on the Mesa floor a foot from Bear’s blood-crusted boot. Bear grunted, then turned black eyes from Jonah to the closed gate door as the zombies reached the cage and began to press against the door. Jonah wondered how long the gate would hold, with the inevitable thousands of pounds pushing their dead weight against it. Bear turned to the cage, screaming at the zombies on the other side, either trying to intimidate them, or perhaps rile them up and encourage them to push the cage door open.
    Bear turned around, not looking altogether surprised to see that Jonah had made his way across the cage to retrieve Bear’s carelessly thrown axe.
    Jonah held Bear’s axe with both hands, his muscles straining from the weight and bulging from his tired biceps. Bear laughed.
    “You