Piercing the Darkness: A Charity Horror Anthology for the Children's Literacy Initiative

by Joe R. Lansdale

  Above that, and slightly more brutal were the cases where the Pit worked for mediation. Herlihy had a sense of humor, you see, and a lot of complaints got handled in public displays of violence. Your neighbor killed your guard dog, raped your mother and stole your canned ham? You could demand justice in the Pit, and if you won you not only got the satisfaction of beating the shit out of your neighbor, you got to return whatever favors you claimed he had committed. Those were the meat and bones of fight nights. Once the comedy was done, you got the warm ups for the big matches, blood was shed, but no death got dealt.

  And finally there was the Abattoir. Medicine and medical knowledge took a lot of resources. The only way to get tended to was to have something to barter with. If you didn’t it was either fight yourself or have a champion take care of it for you and if you could win, the medical problem got fixed. And if you failed, you died. No halfway point. All or nothing. Believe me, it was a popular sport and a lot of people came from other parts of the country to participate.

  When it came to the early part of the night, there were no substitutions allowed. When things got serious, the rules changed. That’s how I met Bryce Darby. I had a neighbor almost a decade back named William Pratt who liked to make accusations. It was easy for him, because he was a soldier and he was a fighter and he picked his targets carefully, knowing exactly who he could take on and how much he could get out of them. Pratt pointed his finger at the house next to his on the left and swore that the man living there had stolen his food supplies. His neighbor was overweight and obnoxious and had all the right connections, so when the charges came down, he took on Pratt, certain that he would win. Pratt beat him down and cleaned out his larder. The neighbor got a lot skinnier, because Pratt followed the letter of the law and left him alive, but he maimed the poor bastard in the process. What little he had left was used to get himself mended and after that the downhill descent was fast and complete.

  The neighbor on the next road over had a wife that Pratt fancied. So he claimed that the fellow had raped his wife, Betty, and Betty was too well beaten down by her husband to deny the charge. The man got his wife back after the fighting was said and done, but not until Pratt had forced himself on her repeatedly. The system wasn’t fair, but for a man like Pratt it was pure heaven on earth. He was a very capable fighter and he knew how to pick his targets.

  And one day he picked me. One of his previous enemies burned one of Pratt’s houses down while he was off celebrating a victory—and believe me, Pratt celebrated because with as often as he was in the fights he had developed a certain amount of celebrity—and when he came home to find his house was ruined, he took a look around the neighborhood and picked me as the latest in a long line of people to offend him.

  I was accused before the local Magistrate and within hours the enforcers came and took me from my home, locking the doors behind me, because I was innocent until beaten in combat. I was dragged before the Magistrate in chains and had my choices explained to me, crying and trembling the entire time. I’m not a weak man, but I knew my limits and I had no desire to lose my worldly possessions to a vicious bastard who was also a trained killer.

  The Magistrate read the formal charges and asked if I would represent myself or if I would have an Advocate. I chose to be represented in combat, unlike most of my neighbors.

  I need to explain that. You see, there were a few souls out there who worked as the new version of attorneys. They were mercenaries, and for the right price they would fight your fights for you. The cost was never light, but if you felt your chances were bettered by having one of them fight for you, it was a chance to keep what you believed was yours or at least to walk away from the combat in one piece.

  I had seen what Pratt did to his opponents in combat. I wasn’t really much for the fights, but when neighbors were involved I normally watched, so I had been there to see him mete out his form of “justice.” Yes, he took his neighbor’s wife when he was done with the fight, but in combat he’d also ruined the man’s left knee and stomped him repeatedly in the testicles, until they were effectively so much shredded meat. He’d crippled a man over imagined food theft and it seemed that every time he had a dispute he got more deliberately violent, whether he was trying to prove a point or merely increase his growing fame I don’t know, but I knew I didn’t want to be the recipient of his new found fury.

  So I chose an Advocate from the seven men that were in the Magistrate’s offices that day. I had never seen any of them fight, but I took my time and chose carefully. Want to know how you choose an Advocate? If you ever run across the need for one, look for the one who’s the hungriest. Not the biggest, not the most scarred, but the one who looks like he wants it the most. There’s all sorts of fanaticism, and I think the hungry ones are the deadliest fanatics of all, because they’ll do damned near anything for a win.

  Bryce Darby looked absolutely ravenous. I mean he was a terror. I took one look at him and seriously thought about fighting Pratt on my own, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to catch Darby’s attention, not ever. He was a big man, but not a giant, and he was just plain ugly. He had short red hair and a broad face that looked incapable of smiling or anything that even vaguely resembled mercy. He was not the largest Advocate, and he was younger than most of them, but when I looked in his eyes and did my best to read his soul, I knew he was the only choice for me. I knew he was the one who would do the most damage to Pratt, and that was important to me.

  “What’s your fee?” I had to lick my lips before I asked him, because I was a nervous wreck just thinking about what he might charge.

  Darby looked me over from head to toe and back and the expression on his brutal face never changed. “What have you got?”

  We bartered. It was short and sweet. He got a lot for his troubles, but only if he managed to win arbitration. If he failed, he got nothing. I made that clear from the very beginning. The way I saw it, he was the one who would take the beating either way, and if he won the fight he was entitled to what he earned.

  We didn’t shake hands. He never once broke a smile, but the deal was made in the Magistrate’s office and when it was done the Magistrate himself looked at me and told me that I’d made the right choice.

  At that point Bryce Darby had been in a total of six conflicts. He’d won every last one of them. I settled back with that knowledge and I awaited the scheduling of the court case. And while I waited, I listened to the horror stories about Bryce Darby. Here’s a few of them, to maybe get clear to you just how much the man was already capable of. According to the tales I heard, he was a monster before the Fall took place. Rumors claimed that he had taken on a grown man at the age of fourteen and beaten him half to death with his bare hands. Others claimed that he had actually curb stomped a poor bastard that outweighed him by close to a hundred pounds. Still more stories had him taking on cops and beating them down when they tried to arrest him. Those are just the ones I can remember clearly, but there were more. A lot more. Bryce Darby was apparently a natural killing machine who was incapable of feeling pain.

  Worked just fine for me, especially since he was on my side. When the date was set for two weeks later, I talked over the rates with him one more time. You see, if Pratt were to win, I would lose everything to him. If he lost, he would lose one of his homes and all of its contents to me. All I truly needed to know was that for the next two weeks my house was locked away from me and from everyone else. I could not sleep there, nor take from the place any of my possessions. Pratt was in similar straights but he’d been prepared for it. He had a place to stay set up. I was out on the street. I made a side offer to Darby. I told him if he ruined the man for life, I’d double what he was supposed to make.

  He never even blinked. He just nodded his head and left it at that.

  Two weeks after I was locked out of my house I went to the fights and watched another man enter combat as my Advocate. By that point I was furious and desperate to see William Pratt broken and wrecked. I watched the
boards and saw people placing bets on Pratt as the favorite and wondered if I had just lost everything I’d ever fought for or owned.

  I want to explain that. I said that Bryce Darby was hungry and I meant it. He was a big man. He wasn’t a giant, but he was in amazing shape and he was as cold a bastard as I had ever met. Back before the Fall he was exactly the type that gave sociopaths a bad name. And William Pratt? He was worse as far as I could tell. He was a scarred, muscular giant, covered with tattoos and scattered with earrings, studs and spikes. He was an animal and he was a hardened killing machine. I feared him for a very real reason.

  Bryce Darby looked at the man without so much as flinching. I didn’t know if that made him very brave or very stupid.

  The Pit and the Abattoir took place in exactly the same spot. The only difference was the Pit left both opponents alive. The stone circle stood ten feet taller than the ground around it, and was surrounded by barbed wire and sharpened steel posts that aimed into the center of the arena. Two walkways with stairs led from the sides to the battlefield, and those were elevated as well. And all around the combat zone the recessed area sat and reeked, covered with dead bodies, with bones, with stacks of ruined weapons. Only the actual battle zone was cleared of debris. The rest of it was left as a reminder of how very serious the fights could get.

  Darby stared at Pratt. Pratt looked at the younger man for all of a second before he started preening for the crowd. His audience ate it up. Darby just kept staring. Despite myself, I felt a smile grow on my face in that moment. I knew I had chosen right, you see. Darby was hungrier than Pratt.

  The battle began with the usual gong of the bell, and ended a few seconds later. Pratt hit Darby exactly once, his fist slamming into the younger man’s jaw and leaving an angry red mark. He was still thinking about things the wrong way. He was thinking that his opponent was human.

  Darby changed his mind quickly. I had told him to ruin Pratt and that was exactly what he did. He started with the wrist just above the fist that struck him in the face. I can remember the sound of Pratt screaming as Darby bent his arm into an unnatural shape. A moment after that he destroyed the man’s elbow and then his shoulder. That should have been enough. There was no way that Pratt was going to fight any longer, and I think everyone knew it. Instead, Darby continued the carnage. He dropped Pratt to the ground with a brutal sweep of his steel-toed boot that broke the man’s kneecap. Pratt fell down and cried out, his face pale and shocky, and he tried to crawl away. Darby watched him for a moment and then kicked the man in his ribs and flipped him onto his back like a turtle too weak to right itself. When he was down and bloodied and gasping, Darby stomped down on his jaw, shattering the mandible and sending bloody teeth through the air.

  My God, the crowd went crazy, screaming, stomping, cursing and cheering. I hate to admit it, but I cheered too. I roared my approval and watched him as he worked with all the skill and finesse of an artist. I watched him mutilate the older man with his hands and his feet until there was simply no chance that Pratt would ever fight again.

  By law I won all that Pratt had accused me of taking from him. I awarded the man’s remaining house and almost all of the contents in it to Bryce Darby as compensation for services rendered. I never heard from Pratt again. I have little doubt that he died from the injuries he sustained. I sincerely doubt he could have afforded medical attention.

  I didn’t see Darby again for years and I was fine with that, but I heard about the man. Tales of his savagery made the circuit the way stories of the old football and boxing heroes had in the past. You’d get to the market and people would be talking about the devastation he’d dealt out to another person or in a few cases to several people at once.

  Almost four years after he’d worked as my Advocate I saw the man on the street, just in time to watch him wreck a gang that was out to do him in. I think it was that day that I started believing all of the old tales about him.

  I had married by then. My first son had been born and a daughter was on the way and so I worked my ass off, handling work for Herlihy and taking care of collecting for some of his managers. Everyone had to pay Herlihy and somebody had to work for him. I didn’t mind the work and most of the smart ones never considered arguing about what had to be paid.

  I was coming home from work and stopping at the market place for supplies when I saw the men approaching. I knew the type, of course. Call them marauders, thieves, whatever you damned well please, but they were a gang of thugs, pure and simple. They took one look at my uniform and decided to leave me alone: there were distinct advantages to working for Herlihy and that was one of them. Take on one enforcer and you take on all of them. No one wanted to deal with Herlihy’s army. Everyone else, however, was fair game.

  The women were easy targets. They were both lookers and they appeared to be alone. One was a brunette, a fair skinned woman with a good physique and light scars to show how much she had been through in her life. The other was younger, and absolutely striking. She had flame red hair and the natural grace of a dancer. She was also exactly the sort that would cause a man to get stupid. Everything about her said she was trouble and I for one preferred to admire that sort from a distance and avoid the burns that would come from getting too close.

  The gang didn’t seem to share my idea of common sense. Five young men, all of them on the prowl and trying to prove themselves to the people around them, looking to make an impression on the world that would let them get ahead.

  They decided to take what they wanted from the women. I could see it on their faces, in the way they moved, and I started in the direction of the women to prevent things from getting bad. I was cocky, I admit it. I had grown comfortable in my uniform and the security it provided. I walked over to the women with a swagger of my own that was only partially for show. The baton on my hip and the taser in my holster made me confident in my ability to handle whatever situation came up. You see, I’d forgotten about hunger. I hadn’t read those men the right way.

  They weren’t afraid of my uniform, just respectful of what it meant.

  “Ladies, I think you should be on your way.” I looked toward the redhead and the brunette as I approached, and I called out loud and clear, sure that they would get my point. I suppose they did. They started loading the baskets of food they’d picked up into their car all the faster. That they had a car spoke volumes. Most people walked to market, because fuel was costly and cars were even more of a luxury. The rebuilt muscle car couldn’t have been easy to come by. I had grown accustomed to having a car, and I didn’t think about how desperately some people would want to take one that wasn’t marked, like mine was, as being the property of Herlihy.

  The men looked my way and then looked at the two women. One shield against five men, with two women, a week’s worth of food and a vehicle on the line. I never had a chance.

  One of them started to say something to me, harsh and insulting. I reached for the baton as I listened to the tone of voice, and while I was preparing to break a head or two, one of his partners tried to jump me from behind.

  I heard the redhead’s voice call out, loud and clear and desperate. She screamed the name Bryce and backed up as a few of the men got too close for her comfort.

  Darby came from the direction of the market at a hard run, his legs eating the distance even as he looked from one person to the next and assessed the situation. Everything I had seen in him four years earlier was still there, but magnified. He struck like a tidal wave, slamming into the men and breaking them. That’s the only way I can put it. He hit and they fell, screaming, terrified, because as much as I represented the potential for punishment, Darby was the personification of that concept. The first man he hit was snarling as he tried to defend himself. Darby grabbed the man by the sides of his head and yanked, dragging the startled face down to meet up with his knee in one violent, fluid motion. The man’s face shattered, nearly imploded, and Darby was letting him go and moving on to the next in line before they knew wh
at the hell was happening. The second and third were knocked down and bleeding seconds later. The fourth caught on. Maybe he was a fan of the fights, maybe he was simply quick enough to see what had happened to his friends, but he tried to run away. Darby kicked him in the small of his back and knocked him into the side of his car. Metal bent, flesh and bone took on a new shape, and Darby, seeing that his car was damaged, beat the man all the harder.

  All that while I was trying to get the man swinging at me subdued. I finally cracked him on the skull hard enough to get his attention, and while he was trying to retreat, I cracked the back of his head for extra measure.

  Sounds brutal, I know, but I also know they’d planned a lot worse for the women and possibly even for me.

  I knocked one man senseless. In the same time, Bryce Darby either maimed or crippled four opponents, and I had a head start on him. He looked at me just exactly long enough to assess whether or not I was a threat, and then he went to the women. I was panting, adrenaline made my legs and arms jitter and my pulse race furiously. Darby didn’t look like he’d even given thought to the idea of sweating. In that moment I was reminded that there are some people who are more animal than man, and that they can have a serious advantage. I hadn’t completely forgotten that fact. If I had, I’d have been dead before then. Still, he brought it home.

  While I was recovering and calling in the attack, Darby checked on the women with him. When I was done with the call he came over and looked me over. I knew what was going through his mind. I could read that much easily. He was puzzled. He didn’t get it. There was nothing in it for me, you see. I went in and risked my neck for two women who meant absolutely nothing to me and I hadn’t negotiated a price for assisting them. He would have in the same situation. That was what took him off guard.