The Ultimate Olympic Showdown
Art by Jason Arias.

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The Ultimate Olympic Showdown

The Rio Olympics are currently a huge garbage fire. Here's what it would look like if things really fell apart.

The Rio Olympics are currently a massive garbage fire. Everything that could go wrong, has—from the threat of a debilitating infectious disease to local economic collapse to harrowing infrastructure failures. But it could always get worse. Aaron Gordon, a staff writer for VICE Sports who's been covering the dismal run up to the games and who will head to Brazil when the games begin, imagines what it would look like if things got really apocalyptic in the Olympic Village. -the ed

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Today would have been my medal competition day, my shot at gold. International fame, glory. All that. Instead, we're preparing to launch a bloody, last-ditch assault on a restaurant.

Nobody knows what happened. Three days before the opening ceremonies, while all our equipment was still in the Village, we lost internet and cell service. Just like that, cutting off all our access to the outside world. Next went the power. We waited.

In the morning, the food delivery trucks, support staff, and our transportation to the venues never showed. We could hear periodic blasts that sounded like bombs but couldn't tell where they were coming from.

A South African long jumper was telling everyone that he'd talked with a Panamanian synchronized swimmer who had been on the phone with his family in the city center just before the phones cut off. He said the World Health Organization had ordered an immediate evacuation of the city due to a recently discovered super-bacteria that, combined with Zika in the human body, could lead to a form of cataclysmic disease that causes your entire body to ooze out of your skin. But that didn't explain the bombs, which a German sailor said was due to an attack and ensuing chaos orchestrated by the Islamic State, a suicide bomber inspired by an online chatroom, taking advantage of Brazil's lax security due to their political and financial crisis. Another theory going around is that the bridges and tunnels built for the Olympics just up and collapsed due to the shoddy construction carried out by corrupt firms, or that the drug gangs seized control of major throughways.

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Inside the Village, though, nobody really knows the truth. Personally, I think it's all true, that one piece fell and the other dominos followed.

Everyone came out of the residential towers to gasp at the billows of smoke from the city center. Turned out none of the vehicles around had keys, and they all required NFC detection to turn on. We were trapped.

"I wonder if this is happening everywhere," I finally said.

Everyone stared at the ground, thinking about their families miles and miles away in central Rio, wondering if they were fighting for their lives without us.

"I bet they've all been evacuated," an Australian beach volleyball player replied, not quite convincingly.

"What should we do?" someone with a very thick Eastern European accent asked.

"We need to stay put," I said. "It's still safe here, which is more than we can say about whatever the fuck is happening out there. The gates are locked shut from to the power outage. If the bridges and tunnels have been destroyed, nobody is going to get here anyways. There's no way in."

"Or out," offered the Eastern European dude with a bit of an incongruous smile. He seemed oddly excited by the prospect before slowly strolling away, rubbing his hands together. I never saw him again.

But with this relative safety, there was a catch. The Olympic Village was designed explicitly so that all of our needs would be taken care of. With no one around, we were totally helpless, in the middle of the jungle, on our own: Everyone knew, instinctively, there wasn't enough to go around. Ten thousand Olympic athletes forced to survive on—and compete for—what was left in the restaurant hall.

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Almost nobody made it to the restaurant before the athletes who were already there when shit started to go down barricaded themselves inside with the food. We don't know exactly who is in there, but we're pretty sure most of the Russians, Hungarians, and Turks—swimmers, weightlifters, wrestlers, and boxers, probably—locked themselves in the massive restaurant facility. They were always eating, after all, and we haven't seen them since.

So, that was how it was going to be. The distance runners immediately formed a pack and tore ass for the city, hoping to find something there. I wonder if they made it.

Word began to spread that the Village coffee shop had some provisions. The badmintoners got there first, presumably because nobody thought to ask "where are the badmintoners" when shit got nasty.

Dog-eat-dog Olympic grandeur-fueled rage took over almost immediately. Turns out that athletes primed for gold go lord of the flies faster than a bunch of stranded schoolboys.

A few of us—two beach volleyball players from Australia and me and my team of rowers—went for a full frontal assault, thinking we could take those puny dweebs without much trouble. We were obviously right.

The badmintoners defended their territory feistily, waving their racquets like maniacs at anyone who came within five feet of the door. They tried to use their shuttlecocks as projectiles, but they only made it a few feet before harmlessly drifting to the ground. One of the Australians picked a badmintoner off with an overhead jumping serve from 20 yards out. A few of us used our oars, which are way sturdier and more effective weapons than you'd think; you can either use the wide end as a blunt force or rotate it 90 degrees for a sharper cut. Any rower who says they haven't idly wondered how they might wield their oar as a weapon during those long hours on the water is a liar. The badmintoners eventually surrendered and fled, in the dainty and gentle way you would expect badmintoners to flee.

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Unfortunately, there wasn't much left inside the coffee shop. A few coffee beans, croissants, loaves of bread, and some yogurt. Still, we secured the premise and stayed there for what must have been days, living off the scraps. We didn't talk much.

Maybe two or three days later, two tiny people emerged beyond the coffee shop windows holding a white plastic bag attached to a pole, which I guess was supposed to be a white flag.

One of them yelled something in Mandarin. It sounded vaguely unthreatening, so we beckoned them to approach. The plastic bag caught in a gust of apocalyptic wind, and it seemed to pull them across the sidewalk.

"Table tennis," Ricky the cockswain said.

"How do you know?" I asked.

"Pockets." You could see their paddle handles poking out.

Once they got to the door, they tried to talk to us, but none of us spoke Mandarin and they didn't speak English.

"Wait," one of the Australians said. She pulled into her sweatpants pocket and pulled out her phone. "I downloaded every language in the Google Translator app. Works completely offline."

She opened the phone and spoke into it: "What's it like out there?"

"The restaurant is fully barricaded," they replied using Google Translate. "We have sentries posted outside to make sure they can't unload any of the food. But our supplies are getting low. We have to either attack or leave." Sentries. That's where we we were at now.

"Who is we?" the Australian asked.

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"We have amassed a squadron," the table tennis player said, although the exact translation may have been a Google Translate mishap, or, maybe not. "Four equestrians from Great Britain and Saudi Arabia; eight fencers from Italy, Venezuela, and the Egypt; several pole vaulters from Greece and Kazakhstan; and unspecified track and field athletes from all over the place. More are to come."

"Wait, you guys personally got that squad together?" I asked in shock.

"Oh, no," they replied. "We have a leader who is not a weak table tennis player. He is big and strong and knows military strategy."

"So…" asked the Australian, "Do you need us?"

The two table tennis players conferred for a moment, whispering back and forth to each other.

"Yes. Are you hungry?"

We all shouted yes, without going through the app, vigorously nodding our heads.

"We have some food left," they encouraged us. "Come, join us, and you can eat to build strength before the assault."

They had already begun planning, with reinforcements from track and field, table tennis, kayak, judo and taekwondo. It was a multinational group but leaned heavy on the Americas and far east. Everyone had also gathered more of their teammates. In total, we had approximately a hundred athletes. Diagrams, lists, charts were all laid out on the floor. They asked for our help, and we agreed. We didn't have a choice. It was coming up on five days since the food supply had run out.

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The leader of this ragtag guerilla force, an ex-military hammer thrower from Belarus—who was indeed big and strong—said we would continue negotiations with the restaurant contingent for 24 hours before we attacked. Nobody wanted a bloodbath—he didn't know about those badmintoners—but if that was how it had to go, then, he assured us, we would be prepared. This was insane. On some level, I knew it was insane. But I was also hungry. Very hungry. And the colors were starting to blur. Did I mention that? Yeah, the colors were starting to blur.

He led us down to the restaurant where negotiations were underway. The restauranters had several shooters, archers, and javeliners stationed—yes, stationed— on the roof. They insisted there wasn't enough food to go around. If they let us in, nobody would survive for very long. They suggested, as an alternative, we go ahead and die. We gave them 24 hours to reconsider.

They did not.

So it began.

The doors to the restaurant were barricaded, so we would need some kind of a battering ram to get them open. We had an idea involving the horses from the equestrian teams, but first we had to neutralize the projectiles on the roof. Under the cover of kayaks, the pole vaulters advanced until they could spring themselves up onto the roof, a relatively low height for their expertise. The javelines rained down on us but couldn't puncture the kayaks. The pole vaulters then flung themselves onto the perfect point so they kicked the archers and shooters in the face as they landed. After making it up, we threw the poles up to them to use as weapons. The shooters had bigger problems now than worry what was going on below.

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Then, the battering ram went to work. We used the horses to pull a truck in neutral up to the door. Then, we nudged the truck through, breaking the barricade. We were in.

The restaurant was cavernous, dozens and dozens of tables lined up in perfect rows. On the other side were the wrestlers, swimmers, weightlifters, boxers, and rugby players. Dozens of them. Maybe a hundred. Hiding behind the serving bars. In the distance, we could see something glisten.

Guns! Crappy sportsman rifles, but guns nonetheless! As if firing guns should ever have been an Olympic sport in the first place. We squeezed through the narrow opening and immediately took cover behind the nearest tables.

"HURDLERS!" I yelled to the back of the pack still outside of the restaurant. "HURDLERS, FRONT."

We had maybe two dozen hurdlers, who lined the foremost tables in front of the defunct barricade.

"What do you think?" I asked the nearest one, who, if I'm not mistaken, medaled in London. "How's the height?"

She surveyed the landscape and replied, "Not bad. 80 to 100 meters. We got this." She turned to the other hurdlers and set an order, then turned back and wryly smiled, "Too bad the Russians aren't here. If they hadn't been banned, those assholes wouldn't even get a shot off." She sighed and chuckled, "Fuck, we could use some dopers right now."

We looked at the line of one set of Olympians preparing to attack another set of Olympians.

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"So much for the Olympic spirit," I said.

"Who was it that said sport is war without the shooting?"

"Orwell."

"Well, not anymore."

She began counting.

Three.

Two.

One.

They all jumped up simultaneously and sprang forth like a herd of gazelles, leaping each table majestically in time. The firing began, and several dropped, but the guns were single action. The goons on the other end didn't even have time to reload.

The rest of us followed immediately, making our way to the other side. A few more hurdlers fell as a few were able to reload, but the rest of us made it after that round.

Everything devolved into a giant melee. One of the table tennis players tried to slap a boxer with his paddle only to get cold-cocked in the jaw, who then got hit in the eye by a series of rapid fire volleys from another table tennis player, playing the ball off the wrestler's cornea.

A fencer stabbed a swimmer in his rock-hard abs only to have the sword bend and the swimmer guffaw in delight. A wrestler twisted a helpless mountain biker into a human saltless pretzel. A weightlifter used his gun as a club, then used his fist as a club. A shot putter shot put whatever that shot ball is called right into a discus thrower's gut. Taekwondo and judo masters laid waste to a flailing boxer.

I ended up face to face with a wrestler in grey sweats. It was hard to tell who he was or where he was from. He was dancing around like he was in the ring, crouching low, back and forth, wiggling his fingers in anticipation.

I smacked that wrestler's cauliflowered ear with the broad side of my oar. He fell to the ground and I hit him again. I hit and hit, until I had scraped all the skin from his face. He refused to show any pain, stalwart in his resolve. He smiled a big smile at me, and there was a giant piece of apple skin lodged in his teeth.

I just needed food, so I could get out and get home. Even if it's just an apple. Even if it's that apple. That motherfucker ate my apple. He took my apple, the apple I need to get the fuck away from this Olympic hellhole. This motherfucker right here, the one underneath my oar, ate the apple that could make me forget I ever came to the fucking Olympics.

I switched from a smack to a stab, downward on his neck, like I was using a post digger in the rocky New England soil. I thrust the oar downward over and over until his jugular burst and his blood spurt upward like a water fountain with too much pressure. I breathed heavily and it squirt upward into my face and mouth. His blood was sweet, sweeter than anything I could remember tasting. I dropped my oar, bent down on all fours, and put my mouth to his neck.

I drank his blood, I drank it all, until the flow eased, until my stomach was full, until I had almost enough. I reached into his mouth, scraped the apple from his teeth, and ate that, too.