Herokiller

by Paul Tassi

  Drescher was almost as wide as he was tall, and stood a few inches shorter than Mark. He lacked the chiseled muscles of a cage fighter or bodybuilder, but he was solid as concrete from head to toe. He was the kind of guy you’d see pulling tractor trailers or flipping monster truck tires in strongman competitions.

  His full litany of tattoos was on display: flaming swastikas, SS emblems, iron crosses and a host of pagan-looking symbols and nonsensical numbers that Mark assumed were part of the neo-Nazi movement, which somehow never seemed to dissolve, even close to a century after Hitler’s death. Mark also was close enough to make out a German phrase inked across his chest in medieval-looking letters, ARBEIT MACHT FREI.

  The man’s not just a disease, Mark thought. He’s a fucking plague.

  Anyone else would have been terrified. The man before him was the closest thing to evil incarnate that walked the earth. But Mark had stared into darkness so long it had lost all power over him. He divorced Drescher from the legend. From the Aryan Nation terrorist. From the Prison Wars gladiator. He was just a man. A man who had hurt his friend.

  “Tell me,” Drescher growled at him, circling like a predatory beast. “Were you fuckin’ him? The little spic?”

  Mark’s blood boiled, but he remained silent.

  “I’ve been hearin’ all about your late-night training sessions, and neither one of you showed up to Crayton’s party with a bitch on your arm. Makes sense.” He snorted.

  Mark was mildly concerned he was seeing two Dreschers talking shit, but shook his head to refocus. He hoped he wasn’t going to vomit up whiskey or something worse into the middle of the ring.

  “The chink and the spic. An epic love story for our time.”

  The announcer was presenting each of them to the crowd, but Drescher just kept going.

  “Well, he should be fuckin’ dead, but from what I hear he’s a vegetable. Guess that means you’ll need some lube next time you wanna—”

  Mark was done. With Drescher. With holding back. With all of it. The announcer dove out of the way midway through his presentation as Mark speared Drescher through the midsection, pulverizing the air from his lungs. They crashed into the polyglass wall, Drescher miraculously remaining upright with his solid, low center of gravity. He hammered two shots directly into Mark’s ribs, which made him release his grip. Mark thought he’d puke right then and there, but his organs merely bounced around inside him. Drescher took advantage of Mark’s discomfort and hit him with a hard right cross that dropped him straight to the mat. The man had the force of a Panzer tank behind his punches, and his kicks too, Mark learned as Drescher’s foot met his abdomen and spun him around in a full loop. A few more of those and he’d be in the hospital bed next to Carlo.

  Mark regained his footing, aware that he wasn’t quite the ruthless fighting machine he imagined after two and a half days of nonstop drinking. Drawing energy from the frenzied crowd, he blocked Drescher’s next two strikes, but found out he had been right in his advice to Carlo. The punches threatened to break his forearms if he kept them in place, so he was forced to try to duck and weave out of the way instead, his arms already turning beet-red from the blows.

  Again, he just wasn’t fast enough and one left hook caught him alongside the ear and sent him tumbling to the ground. It hit him with so much force he couldn’t even hear whether or not the crowd was cheering or booing when he got up, and it took everything in him to dodge a second swing that would have taken his head clean off.

  There was no style here to understand. Drescher was a street fighter, always improvising. Just when Mark thought he was getting a handle on the punches, Drescher dove into his waist, picking him up and slamming him into the wall. This time it was Mark who lost his breath, and as he gasped to get it back, Drescher stuck three stubby fingers in his mouth and yanked him down to the mat by his jaw. Mark was so caught off guard, he couldn’t dodge the foot that slammed into his face immediately after. An inch to the right and it would have shattered his nose, but it drew blood all the same. Liquid was also leaking out of his ear, he realized, and he was more disoriented than ever.

  Mark rolled away and righted himself once more, this time more slowly. He realized he was going to have to try to go on the offensive if he wanted a prayer of surviving a fight he thought was supposed to be a sure thing. Then again, he was supposed to be sober.

  Mark lashed out with a few strikes, but the ones that landed didn’t even make Drescher flinch. Mark jabbed at a skull tattoo near his kidneys, but it took five full blows before Drescher even cringed. And his counter overhand dropped Mark to one knee. The crowd gasped.

  Spinning up with a kick, he caught Drescher under the jaw, which caused him to stagger back. It was an opening. He raced forward, almost losing his balance, and launched himself into the air. This time, he landed two rotating kicks before he hit the ground, and Drescher clutched his chest. Mark ducked under a clothesline and countered with backward elbow, a move he borrowed from Josh Tanner. Now Drescher was the one bleeding, and Mark felt new life pouring into him as Soldier Field erupted in another chant of his name. He took a running start and propelled himself off the wall, bringing his fist down for a knockout blow to Drescher’s tattooed face.

  He caught him.

  Drescher had one hand wrapped around his arm and the other under his thigh. They hung there for a moment, suspended in a grotesque ballet, before Drescher whirled around and flung him up into the polyglass. Mark fell a solid seven feet after contact, too dazed to avoid smashing face-first into the mat. And just in case that wasn’t enough, as he rolled over, Drescher’s next kick was aimed straight at his crotch. Mark felt pain like he hadn’t experienced since the chair in China, and his vision was blinding white. Drescher grabbed him by the hair and slammed him down over and over. If they were on concrete, his brains would have been spilled all over the ground already. Mark struggled, but Drescher sensed escape and collapsed completely on him. He wrapped his meaty arm around Mark’s neck and pressed his elbow into his vertebrae. The force increased with each passing second until there was only one conclusion.

  He’s going to kill me, Mark realized. And then he understood.

  He had to stop treating this like a fight. A boxing match. An MMA brawl. Like something with rules. With boundaries. This was survival. This was the deck of the Hóngsè Fēng. This was the library of West Lincoln High.

  Mark bit into the flesh of Drescher’s arm until he understood what human meat tasted like. The man howled and wrenched back, losing his kill-grip on Mark’s neck. He stepped back and looked at the deep chunk missing from his forearm, which was now a bloody glob on the ground. He roared and swung at Mark with a hard left. The arm that had been broken by a pipe in Prison Wars.

  Mark broke it again.

  The move was effortless. Bend the right way with the right force and it doesn’t matter how much muscle surrounds the bone. Drescher’s left arm was crooked to the point of uselessness, but practically immune to the pain, he still charged.

  Stomping down hard into his kneecap, Mark heard that crack too. Drescher lurched forward, slamming into the mat. Mark followed him down to the ground, landing on him with a knee specifically designed to detach one of his kidneys. Even if he missed, he’d take two ribs with it. More cracks. The ring mics picked up every sound and the crowd was delirious with excitement.

  Drescher pulled himself up with his remaining good arm. He turned to face Mark, blood pouring from his nose, coloring his torso’s tattoos a vivid crimson. He was trying to mouth something but Mark suspected he’d split his tongue open. From the way he was breathing, it seemed like Mark’s last strike had punctured one of his lungs.

  He could have thrown a punch to end it all. Drescher would be out cold and he’d be sailing into the finals as the triumphant avenger.

  But he thought of Carlo, who might not ever wake up. He thought of Crayton, who was responsible for this shitshow. He thought of the Pakistani family that had burned alive at Drescher’s hand a
nd instead of justice their killer was turned into a superstar.

  He didn’t throw that punch. Instead, he lashed out with the flat of his hand.

  It caught Drescher in the throat, and a wet crack told Mark that he’d collapsed his windpipe. Drescher went down to his knees, clawing at his neck, unable to suck air into skewered, liquid-filled lungs. At last, his sky-blue eyes released their rage, and were wholly consumed by fear.

  Mark watched Burton Drescher drown in his own blood live in front of thirty-five million people.

  PART II

  “You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension.”

  —Nikola Tesla

  15

  WELCOME TO SPORTSWIRE, I’M Jayce Harrington, and there’s only one thing anyone’s talking about this morning. Am I right, Melanie?”

  “Absolutely, Jayce. In case you’ve been struck blind or deaf, Cameron Crayton’s Crucible tournament claimed its first victim last night, veteran Prison Wars participant Burton Drescher, killed in the ring by newcomer Mark Wei. Johanna Viseberg and Turk Smith are joining our discussion.”

  “Thanks for having us.”

  “Now, there have been a few deaths in the Crucible so far, correct?”

  “That’s right. During the various, non-televised qualifying stages, there have been reports of a few accidental deaths from injury in the ring or, on a few occasions, heart trouble. But the debate today is whether or not Mark Wei purposefully killed Burton Drescher for critically injuring his friend and training partner Carlo Rivera in a fight earlier in the week.”

  “If you watch the fight, near the end, you can see something changes in Wei. His moves become more precise. His last four blows each broke a bone, according to our analysis.”

  “This is what you get when you bring in soldiers, not fighters, Jayce.”

  “Expand on that, Johanna.”

  “These men are trained to subdue with lethal force. So lethal force is what you’re going to get. And could you blame Wei after what Drescher did to Rivera? That fight was also above and beyond what was necessary.”

  “I have to chime in here, I think we’re missing an important point.”

  “Yes, Turk?”

  “Have we forgotten that the entire purpose of the Crucible qualifiers is to enter a tournament that Cameron Crayton specifically said is a fight to the death? And we’ve already seen this with Prison Wars! Why should Mark Wei killing Drescher, even intentionally, be such an issue if we’ve already accepted all that?”

  “Well Turk, as you know, the Supreme Court ruled against Prison Wars, specifically the ‘purposeful death’ component of the competition. While Cameron Crayton’s ‘Athletic Protection’ bill aims to correct that, it’s only passed one house of Congress. He’s hoping to have it signed by the time the Crucible itself starts later this summer, but for now, that kind of competition is technically still illegal.”

  “It’s a gray area, Melanie. I don’t think you can prove that Wei even had intent to kill Drescher. Four boxers died in the ring last year alone on the pro circuit. Six cage fighters, after the rules changes. I don’t think this is different.”

  “Johanna, you’re a veteran fighter; was that final blow by Mark Wei meant to kill?”

  “If I just watched the footage by itself? Hard to say. It’s a valid strike that with less force could merely disorient your opponent. But in the larger context of the situation, it seems likely it was meant to be lethal.”

  “I believe they call that speculation.”

  “And I don’t mean to be improper here, but is anyone really going to be mourning Burton Drescher? The guy was a scumbag, he killed a family from—”

  “I’ll remind you that he was cleared of those charges.”

  “Maybe, but I think Wei was doing the world a favor.”

  “Word has it that the Aryan Nation has issued a host of death threats to Mark Wei, the Rivera family, and even Cameron Crayton in the wake of Drescher’s death. Like him or not, he was a pillar of his own community, and by surviving Prison Wars he grew himself quite a public fanbase as well.”

  “Here’s the question, though: what does Crayton do about Mark Wei? Does he kick him out of the tournament?”

  “Why bother? The next stage will have combatants killing each other anyway. What’s the point?”

  “It sets a bad precedent for the rest of the qualifiers, for one.”

  “I’m sorry, but that’s bullshit. You sign up for a tournament that has you killing people, you shouldn’t be surprised when people start dying.”

  “We’re going to take a quick break, but when we come back—”

  TWO WEEKS LATER, THE Crucible rolled on, and Carlo’s condition hadn’t changed. The mission itself had stalled, with almost nothing valuable trickling in from all the phones Mark had collected. What little info was gleaned went straight to command and bypassed him entirely. All that was relayed to him was that it was “essential” that he remain embedded in the tournament.

  Mark and Brooke were leaning on a rail near the end of Navy Pier, surrounded by crowds who had showed up to nearby bars to watch the Seattle qualifier finals. Mark wore a baseball hat and wide, pitch-black sunglasses to prevent anyone recognizing him. His skin crawled every time he was out in public now with his profile so high. Everyone was still talking about Drescher’s death in the ring. Crayton had issued a public statement clearing Mark of any intentional wrongdoing, and law enforcement wasn’t bringing any charges against him either. Mark’s face still had traces of the bruise from that night, and his cheek flared with pain whenever he had to chew anything harder than bread.

  “We also wormed our way into his mail server, so we’re still getting incoming messages, too,” Brooke continued. She was also wearing sunglasses, but for more traditional reasons. Her curly blonde hair kept flying in front of her face, propelled by the wind. In frustration she finally threaded it back into a ponytail.

  When she was done she showed Mark her phone where a message was illuminated.

  SENDER: vredgrave@craytonmedia

  RECIPIENT: crayton@craytonmedia

  SUBJECT: Wei

  “This is our chance, sir. With Wei killing Drescher, we can DQ him and replace him with Josh Tanner. His kid’s still alive. He’s still the best story. Please consider it. For the record, creative agrees with me.”

  -Vanessa

  SENDER: crayton@craytonmedia

  RECIPIENT: vredgrave@craytonmedia

  SUBJECT: Re: Wei

  “Wei stays. This is the last I’ll hear about it.”

  -CC

  Mark tossed the phone back in her lap.

  “What’s this have to do with the mission?”

  “Well, it shows Crayton’s got a soft spot for you at the very least. Plus he opened up a bit to you the night of Carlo’s fight.”

  “That was all smoke. And it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than being teacher’s pet to extract anything useful out of him.”

  Mark winced as he saw a couple look in his direction as they passed by. They kept going and didn’t say anything. Somewhere out there were at least two plainclothes agents making sure the Aryan Nation didn’t try to murder him. So far, no one had made any attempts. Mark looked at Brooke, who had visibly hardened since being the bumbling girl next door he’d known for years. Her shy smiles were replaced by a wrinkled brow and pursed lips most of the time. Over time, Mark grew increasingly sad that she was a part of this at all. She probably was recruited straight out of Stanford and thought she’d win Cold War II through sheer determination and a positive attitude. Now what was she? A babysitter turned animal tamer, cracking the whip around the lion to make sure he didn’t eat anyone else.

  There was a loud cheer from the closest bar, and Brooke turned her head.

  “Sure you don’t want to watch the end of the fight?” she said.

  Mark shook his head.

  “And see some poor old man get his ass beat? No thanks. Not really in the mood.”

 
Mark couldn’t remember the names of the Seattle finalists, but one stood out, a wrinkled, bald Asian man in at least his mid-sixties. The Crucible didn’t broadcast much about him other than he was supposed to originally be from somewhere around the Nepal/Tibet region and had been involved with the border war there in some capacity. He eventually was naturalized after living in the US for a few years once immigration became streamlined at the beginning of the Ashford administration. What was his name again? It was on the tip of Mark’s tongue.

  A louder cheer from the bar interrupted his thought process.

  “Holy shit,” Brooke exclaimed. “The old man won.”

  She showed him a livestream on her phone she’d flipped on in secret. The short, bald man simply stood and bowed to his opponent, who was unmoving on the floor.

  67-YEAR-OLD SHIN TAGAMI CROWNED SEATTLE CHAMPION, the banner read.

  Tagami? Japanese then. Mark wondered how he got wrapped up in the border war on the other side of China. In any case, at least Mark wasn’t the only Asian finalist anymore, for whatever that was worth. And sixty-seven? That seemed insane. Mark now regretted not watching the match to see his fighting style, but they were already showing replays. It was mostly Chinese kung-fu, including a thunderous knockout palm strike on his much larger, much younger opponent that was so fast Mark and the cameras barely caught it. He was intrigued.

  For a split second he looked up, expecting to see Riko so they could speculate about the man’s migration from Japan to China. But it was Brooke, of course, and his question caught in his throat. Mark realized that the last time he’d been to the pier was with Riko. And Asami. They rode the giant Ferris wheel and little Asami threw up on both of them. They might have even sat on this bench after the ride, cleaning up, he remembered. Mark laughed at the thought, which drew a strange look from Brooke.

  “What?” she said.

  “Déjà vu. Let’s go.”

  MARK SPENT THE NEXT few days trying to avoid Crucible hype as much as possible. The press was beating down his door for interviews, still morbidly fascinated by Drescher’s death, but he dodged them all, a move command actually agreed with. Crayton himself was hopping all around the country for events. Unlike Mark, Crayton never turned down the opportunity to do an interview or three, and Mark was sick to death of him and his damn tournament. That could not be said about the general public however, as the Crucible’s ratings continued to climb, leapfrogging several top porn programs and recently ticking by the numbers put up by Prison Wars. The Crucible was a fully-fledged phenomenon, and Mark could only imagine the viewership if the Vegas deathmatch tournament actually made it to air, though it was still up to him to ensure that didn’t happen. Problem was, after all this time and even fairly extensive personal contact with Crayton, he still felt miles away from that goal. No matter how hard he looked, Mark still couldn’t see the Chinese angle in the tournament.