Colosseum by Simone Sarasso Read Free Book Online Page B

Briton goes outside again and sees him: Demetrius, his master, face broken by rocks, legs mauled by flames. A few steps further on is the frenzied crowd that has trampled him.
    The slaves have broken their chains.
    Faced with the end, the damned Christians have a point: we are not very different from one another. The well-to-do and the wretched of the Earth, they all die in the same way.
    Verus joins the rush, fighting the urge to gag as the air and the ground, he notices only now, become hotter with every step.
    And the more the temperature rises, the more his reason begins to fail.
    The group reaches the city when the worst has already arrived. The roads are rivers of terror, sweaty flesh and aching lungs. Verus has been daydreaming for months of the wealth and unchecked luxury. Of the houses of the rich, for which they break their backs every single day. And now that he has them in front of him, he realizes they look like so many shining prisons, each one with its roof covered in burning rocks, ready to crush those foolish enough to be underneath them still.
    Fire in the sky and on the ground, fire everywhere.
    Verus darts through the alleyways and passes the
insulae
at the entrance to the city, unfortunate homes already touched by ruin. One unlucky victim is the color of crimson; he has crawled outside, but not quickly enough. His flesh, hair and face are a single mass. Where once there was a person, now there is only smooth, scalding matter, mouth throbbing and agape beneath a burnt, gray veil.
    Mutilated human beings turned to statues by the ferocious impact, or by the caress of the growing fire.
    Verus knows that entering the house is a big risk, but he also knows if he does not find water it will all be over for him.
    On the threshold of the villa, right at the entrance to the atrium, a fine mosaic displays a message the young man cannot read:
CAVE CANEM
. Alongside the inscription is an image, exquisite and terrible, of a pitch-black Molosser, all teeth and instinct. The beast is depicted on a leash, crouched slightly on its hind legs, in the act of launching an attack against an unwary intruder who has ventured, pushed on by his predatory instincts, into the private mansion.
    Verus has no time to register all that information, he notices only the picture of the dog before crossing the atrium, sandals burning up under his feet, and diving into the
impluvium
, the large pool for collecting rainwater found in every patrician villa.
    The water is tepid and a few rocks lie on the bottom. They look nothing more than harmless, stationary stones, but it is likely they caused massive damage as they rained down through the enormous hole in the ceiling.
    There is not even the time to put his thoughts in order before the horror reaches out to touch the nape of his neck: a severed thumb is floating in the pool.
    Somebody’s thumb.
    Like a pallid worm, death brushing up against him without prior notice.
    Verus lets out a scream, scrambles out of the pool and continues in his mad race. The commotion has awakened the guard, who reaches him in a scrabble of claws on decorated stone.
    A dog, a damned mastiff that looks just like the one depicted on the mosaic at the entrance, leaps onto Verus, sinking its teeth into his calf.
    Surprise gets the better of pain, panic swells the veins in his neck and speeds his reactions. Verus kicks out violently, with all the force his body can muster, and the beast slackens its grip, ending up in the
impluvium
. It thrashes around for a minute or two, dazed by the heat, the cold, by rage and pain. Then it notices the floating thumb, bites into it, and the frenzy is over.
    Verus feels the bile rising in his throat, gagging as though he has fallen victim to some African curse. The door is open. He goes outside. A moment before another retch from Vulcan comes down on the roof, doing away with the house, the dog, the pool, life.
    Again.
    There are voices crying in the distance, Verus runs without