Let the Games Begin. Niccolo Ammaniti

online. But they talk plenty about the Children of the Apocalypse,’ whispered Silvietta so softly that nobody heard her.

      Zombie pointed a grissino at his chief. ‘In all this time, what have we ever accomplished?’

      ‘All those things that you promised . . . How many of them have we done?’ Murder chimed in. ‘You said we'd make loads of human sacrifices, but we haven't seen hide nor hair of them. And what about the initiation ritual with the virgins? And the Satanic orgies?’

      ‘Well, for one thing, we did make a human sacrifice, we did indeed,’ Saverio pointed out, annoyed. ‘It might not have worked, but we made it. And the orgy, too.’

      In November of the year before, on the train to Rome, Murder had met Silvia Butti, an off-campus student at the Faculty of Psychology at Tor Vergata University. They had a lot in common: their love for the Lazio football team, for horror films, for Slayer and Iron Maiden, basically for your good old 1980’s-heavy metal. They had started chatting on MSN and hanging out on Via del Corso on Saturday afternoons.

      Saverio had been the one who came up with the idea of sacrificing Silvia Butti to Satan in the forest of Sutri.

      There was just one problem. The victim needed to be a virgin.

      Murder had sworn to it. ‘She and I have done everything, but when I tried to fuck her, she just wouldn't cave in.’

      Zombie had burst out laughing. ‘Did it ever occur to you that maybe she just doesn't want to fuck a fatso like you?’

      ‘She's taken a chastity vow, you idiot. She's definitely a virgin, no doubt about it. And anyway . . . I mean, if it turned out she wasn't one, what would happen?’

      Saverio, the group's master and theoretician, looked worried.

      ‘Well, it's pretty serious. The sacrifice would be worthless. Or even worse, it could turn against us. The powers of Hell wouldn't be satisfied, and they could attack and destroy us.’

      After hours of arguing and online investigating, the Beasts had come to the conclusion that the purity of the victim was not a substantial problem. So they had set to work on a plan.

      Murder had invited Silvia Butti out for pizza in Oriolo Romano. There, by the light of a candle, he had offered her supplì rice balls, salted cod fillets and a huge glass of beer in which he had dissolved three tablets of Rohipnol. By the end of the dinner the young woman could barely stand and was mumbling incomprehensibly. Murder had gotten her into the car and, using the excuse that they should go to see the sunrise over the lake of Bracciano, he'd carried her into the forest of Sutri. There the Wilde Beasts of Abaddon had used tuff bricks to build a sacrificial shrine. The girl, half-unconscious, was undressed and laid down on the altar. Saverio invoked the Evil One, chopped the head off a chicken and sprayed the blood over the naked body of the psychology student, and then they'd all done her. At that point they had dug a hole and buried her alive. The ritual had been performed and the sect had undertaken its journey down into Evil's tenebrous lands.

      The problem had arisen three days later. The Beasts had just come out of the Flamingo cinema, where they had seen The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, and ran straight into Silvia. The girl, sitting on a bench in the gardens, was eating a piadina. She couldn't remember much about that evening, but she had the feeling she'd had fun. She told them how, when she'd come to her senses underneath the dirt, she dug her way to the surface.

      Saverio had then signed her up as the sect's official high priestess. A few weeks later she and Murder were an item.

      ‘Yeah, that's right, you did have an orgy,’ Silvietta giggled nervously. ‘You've told me about it a hundred times.’

      ‘Yeah, but you weren't a virgin. And so, technically, the ceremony didn't work,’ Zombie commented.

      ‘How on earth could you think that I was a virgin? My first time . . .’

      Saverio interrupted her. ‘It was still a Satanic ritual . . .’

      Zombie cut in. ‘All right, forget the sacrifice. What else have we done?’

      ‘We've cut a few sheep's throats, if I remember rightly. Haven't we?’

      ‘Then what?’

      Mantos unwittingly raised his voice. ‘“Then what?! Then what?!” Then there's the grafitti on the viaducts in Anguillara Sabazia!’

      ‘Sure. Did you know that Paolino and those guys from Pavia disembowelled a nun?’

      The only thing that the leader of the Wilde Beasts of Abaddon had managed to do was neck a glass of water.

      ‘Mantos? Did you hear me?’ Murder put his hand to his mouth, like a loudhailer. ‘They disembowelled a fifty-eight-year-old nun.’

      Saverio shrugged his shoulders. ‘That's bollocks. Paolo's just trying to make us jealous, he regrets leaving us.’ But he had the feeling that it wasn't bollocks.

      ‘You watch the news on TV, right?’ Murder insisted, unmerciful. ‘You remember that nun from Caianello that they found decapitated near Pavia?’

      ‘Yeah, so?’

      ‘The Children of the Apocalypse did it. They picked her up at a bus stop and then Kurtz decapitated her with a double-headed axe.’

      Saverio couldn't stand Kurtz, the leader of the Children of the Apocalypse from Pavia. He always had to be top of the class. Always the one coming up with extravagant stuff. Good on you, Kurtz! Congratulations! You're the best!

      Saverio wiped his hand across his face.

      ‘Well, guys . . . Don't forget how much of a hard time I've been having lately, what with the birth of the twins . . . the bloody bank loan for the new house . . .’

      ‘That reminds me, how are the little darlings?’ asked Silvietta.

      ‘They're like drainpipes. They eat and shit. At night they don't let us get any sleep. They've got the measles, too. On top of it all, Serena's father had hip-replacement surgery, so the whole furniture shop is my responsibility. You tell me when I'm supposed to get something organised for the sect . . .’

      ‘Hey, have you got any special offers at the shop?’ Zombie asked. ‘I want to buy a three-seater sofa-bed. The cat's ruined mine.’

      The leader of the Beasts wasn't listening. He was thinking about Kurtz Minetti. As tall as a dick on a tin can. Full-time pastry chef. He had already set fire to a Kirby Vacuum Cleaner salesman and now he had decapitated a nun.

      ‘Anyway, you're all ungrateful.’ He pointed to them one by one. ‘I've worked my arse off for this sect. If it hadn't been for me introducing you to the Worship of Hades, you'd all still be sitting around reading Harry Potter.’

      ‘We know, Saverio, but try to understand us, too. We do believe in the group, but we can't keep going like this.’ Murder bit angrily into a grissino. ‘Let's just give it up and stay friends.’

      The leader of the Beasts slammed his hands down on the table in exasperation.

      ‘Or how about this? Give me a week. You can't say no to an extra week.’

      ‘What are you going to do?’ asked Silvietta, nibbling on her lip ring.

      ‘I've been laying the groundwork for a mind-blowing piece of action. It's a really dangerous mission . . .’ He paused. ‘But don't think you can just cop out. We all know that talk is cheap. But when it's time to act . . .’ He put on a whiney voice. ‘“I can't, I'm sorry . . . I've got problems at home, my mother's not well . . . I have to work.”’ And he looked hard at Zombie, who lowered his head over his plate. ‘No. We all put our arses on the line in the same way.’

      ‘Can't you give us a hint?’ Murder asked shyly.

      ‘No! All I can say is that it's something that will send us right to number one on the list of Italy's Satanic sects.’

      Silvietta