“And we have a new champion,” came the announcer’s voice. “I don’t freaking believe it.”
Crank stood as the crowd roared. The gate he’d entered through opened, and Mickey rushed through. The lights in the auditorium brightened as Mickey helped steady Crank on wobbly legs after using bolt cutters to unfasten him from Shredder’s cooling body.
“I’ll bet you want to see your wife now, eh, boy?”
“Not yet.” Crank leaned on the small, elderly man and hobbled out of the octagon, as guards trained weapons on him. “First, I want six rocks in the locker room… to set my mind at ease.”
“Oh, Crank.” Mickey’s growl turned into a whine. “That shit is hard to stop once you start, eh?”
“Just do it… and order twelve instead.”
Crank and Mickey hobbled down the aisle to the locker room. Hands reached out to slap the few portions of Crank’s back where there was little blood, but Crank pushed those scum back, tried to memorize their faces so he could kill them later. A few times razor wire cut them and they yelled or screamed, but Crank just laughed. What could they do? Crank was a living weapon now, and he doubted if One-Eye allowed thugs into the spectacle with firearms. If not for the guards with M-16s pointing at his back, he’d be carving his way out of the auditorium to wife and son.
In the locker room, Crank let Mickey use bolt cutters to cut the razor wire encircling his hands and forearms. Mickey cut them, top and bottom, then sat down on the same bench Crank used.
“Finish it.”
Crank held his arms out.
“I ordered sedatives from One-Eye. The champion receives precedence—the first class stuff.”
“Fuck the prime stuff, Mickey. Remove the wire now.”
“You sure?”
“Do it! I can’t stand it on me.”
Mickey pulled on rubber gloves and used pliers to pull metal from Crank’s flesh. Razors from the wire had gouged into parts of his flesh, as if flesh and metal had welded as one, and Mickey had to press his foot against the bench, pulling hard. Once, he fell on his ass, three globs of coagulated blood flying through the air.
Crank laughed.
“Ain’t as young as you used to be, old man.”
“Fuck you, boy. When I was your age—”
“Fighters didn’t have nanonites in their bodies back in your day, Mickey.” Crank helped Mickey up with a bloodied hand, as blood still streamed from his fresh wounds. “Not like us.”
“You got that right, boy.” Mickey stood hunched over Crank and sighed. “In my day, the government experimented on their own, left us civilians—and inmates—alone.”
Crank thought about prison, before he was released on good behavior and being compliant; those experiments back at Leavenworth, the old prison reopened for experimental surgeries courtesy of the U.S. Government.
The Senate Technology Commission has discovered that there have been experiments on soldiers of the United States Marines, a gentlemen in a suit had said on the television mounted in the prison lounge. Miniature machines, or nanonites, have been introduced into the bloodstream of problem soldiers. While this behavior is intolerable and unacceptable, reports have surfaced that… well, to put it bluntly, we’re close to a medical breakthrough for super soldiers.
Crank didn’t know who the big shot was; a senator from the Hill. And he really didn’t care too much about what they did to soldiers, problem Marines or not. What he did care about was what the big shot said next:
With overcrowding such a problem in prisons, the Senate Technology Commission has decided to introduce the experimental technology on prisoners. Murderers, repeat sex offenders… those on death row. They will have to volunteer. Perhaps those who have inflicted so much harm on society can, in some small way, repay what they have taken.
A month later, Crank volunteered to be injected with experimental serums of nanonites. Why not? He didn’t have much self love. Besides, he’d just secretly killed a gang member in prison, and things weren’t too welcoming for him. He wouldn’t leave prison except in a body bag, not with the dead gang member’s posse clamoring to kill him at every opportunity. So Crank signed up. If he died, he’d consider it a slow suicide, robbing his prison enemies of their chance of revenge.
The day after he signed his name to the list, he was sent to Leavenworth. Moved him in with others in the program. His turn came up, right after they finished with a pedophile that had raped and murdered little children, which made Crank feel detestable, following a piece of shit like that.
“Sign on the dotted line,” they told him.
“What’s this for?”
“For your rights, scum. If you survive, you might just make parole someday. Based on how many injections you accept and good behavior, of course. You’ll still have to finish half your sentence for your double homicide.”
“I won’t leave prison until I’m sixty-two… well, forty-two if the sentence is halved.”
“Doesn’t matter; word is, the little machines—the nanotechnology—erodes the effects of aging. If it works right, that is. You might be forty-two when you leave, but you’ll look as young as the day you began the injections. Besides, the scientists want to see how those who survive cope in society. See if there are any long term effects, schizophrenia, so they plan to let survivors out early.”
“How early?”
“How the hell should I know every individual case? I just work here, scum.”
They strapped him down on the giant machine with built-in syringes. He hated those injections. Burned like fire, whatever flowed from those hoses and into his veins.
“Used this as a lethal injection device once,” a guard told him. “Now we’re trying to create super soldiers out of inmates.”
“And you’ll let me out if I survive? For sure?”
“That and for good behavior, yeah. If you don’t die, you’ll be free again.”
The majority expired, leaving in body bags. Crank made friends with those hardened prisoners in the beginning, watched his friends go into the injection room, only to come out with sheets covering their faces. That made him think, made everyone think.
So they talked about their chances. Discussed death and the great beyond, what awaited them. Somewhere along the way, a new inmate was introduced into the experimental program, an old codger who—on his first day—said, “I’m ready to die anyway—might as well stare death in the face and laugh.” The old man’s name was Mickey, in for fixing fights, extortion, and murdering a witness forty years ago.
“Besides waiting to see who’s gonna’ die, why don’t I train you lazy bums. Start up a boxing club?”
So the former martial artist turned drug enforcer trained under the watchful eye of Mickey, learning boxing—it came effortless. Mickey had Crank do calisthenics, pushups and sit ups, and running in place. Shadow boxing and sparring with the other inmates, he bettered his competition, a few of whom had been promising amateur boxers before thrown in the slammer. It helped Crank work the experimental shit out of his system.
“Think you’re gonna’ live, old man?”
“Crank,” the old man often said, “I’m too ornery to die.”
At the age of seventy-two, a decade earlier than his sentence, they let Mickey out. Same day as Crank. The judge sent Crank to a drug rehab clinic, to White Oaks Inpatient, just to be sure—ten years after he entered the prison system.
There he met Natasha.
The conversations about death in prison now transformed into topics of life… and love. With Natasha, that is. She’d been an addict like Crank, and she knew the temptations, but hell! She was doing something with her life and helping others in the process. Her inner strength impressed him and, before he knew it, he had a job as the janitor at the local YMCA, and there he helped Mickey train young boxers.
He began using his real name again.
Life moved around him like a positive current. Mack married Natasha and adopted her son, William, who loved Mack as if he were hi
s real Dad. And, for the first time in his life, Mack was happy.
“You should be dead!”
Mickey’s voice broke Crank from his reverie.
Those days are gone… I’m Crank now.
They were still alone in the locker room. There was only one entrance, and that was back to the auditorium and octagon. A muffled roar from the crowd rose for some reason. Crank spread his fingers and saw his hands and forearms were almost healed, but he couldn’t stop trembling.
“Too much crack, boy.” Mickey shook his head and wiped a tear from his eye. “Did the same thing to your opponent. He was a soldier, before the STC found out about them experimenting on Marines. One-Eye pressured Shredder with crank or meth or crack—whatever tempted him into trouble in the first place—and then set ‘em in the octagon.”
“So why did One-Eye just… kidnap me? Just to fight?”
“Word is he fell into debt. This whole complex cost a bunch of out-of-pocket cash, and One-Eye likes to gamble. Sold Shredder to the competition. Lost money on fighters he thought could take down Shredder.”
“So the bastard brought me back to… pay off gambling debts?” Crank shook his head and hammered his fist into his hand. “He ruined my life and kidnapped Natasha and William… for this?”
“He’s on the shit, too, kid. Don’t matter who you are, whether you’re a dealer or user; you do the shit, it jacks you up and fills you with stupidity.”
Crank looked at the crusted razor wire littering the floor. It looked like pieces of nanotechnology that had fallen from his body. Mickey had had One-Eye send down vials of rocks. They rested on the blood splattered bench. Although Crank felt the burning need, the thought of smoking those rocks sickened him.
“Remember when we used to talk about death, Mickey? Back in prison?”
“You ain’t dying anytime soon, boy.”
“No, I ain’t worried about that.”
“What then?” Mickey looked worried. “What’s on your mind?”
“I wonder what happens to someone like us when we die.”
“Did you see your opponent in the ring, boy?” Mickey spat into the corner. “That’s what happens when we die. That nanotechnology is in our bloodstream, and once the blood bleeds out—”
“But I was told the nanonites worked their way into the flesh after a time, which was how we heal so rapidly.”
The locked door burst open. The muffled roar of the crowd went up a decibel, and a woman screamed. One-Eye ran inside with three guards brandishing M-16s.
“Lock that door,” One-Eye yelled, then ordered a guard to train his weapon on Crank.
“What—?” Crank began to say, but a loud noise at the locked door echoed.
The metal door bent inward.
“That’s either a policeman’s battering ram,” Mickey said, “or you have a pissed off Nano-Prisoner.”
That’s what the Press called them: Nano-Prisoners. Those who were no longer in prison were called Nano-Civilians.
“It’s Shredder,” One-Eye said, adjusting his eye patch. “He’s gone mad.”
“Shredder’s dead,” Crank said. “I killed him.”
The metal door burst open. Crank stood gaping at Shredder, the hole in Shredder’s leg still there, but filling in with flesh. The behemoth’s eyes were glazed. The three guards fired short bursts into Shredder’s chest. He stepped back and growled. When he took a step forward, the guards unloaded their weapons into the giant.
Shredder ran at them screaming.
“Oh, the shit’s hitting the fan now, boy,” Mickey yelled, when the M-16s ran out of ammo.
Shredder ripped the head off the first guard to cross his path, and he tore the throat from the second guard. One-Eye grabbed a fallen M-16 and pushed the third guard, screaming for him to kill Shredder. Shredder tore the guard’s body into two pieces before he could react.
Crank sucker punched Shredder from the side, then shoved Shredder’s head into the wall. Perhaps if he knocked Shredder out, he could escape through the open door.
“Come on, Mickey!”
Through the pain, Shredder crawled toward One-Eye, backing the fat man into a corner and shaking his head. Shredder grabbed One-Eye’s ankle and squeezed. Bone splintered and One-Eye dropped the M-16. It skittered across the floor where Mickey picked it up. Crank sighed with relief when Mickey walked toward him, readying the weapon with a cocky grin.
“Let’s find your family, boy.”
Crank screamed when Shredder, still decorated with hellish razor wire at his hands and feet, stood and sent his fist through Mickey’s back. When he pulled his hand out, he pulled an assortment of organs from the old man—a heart and what could have been a pale lung—and Mickey collapsed, wheezing in a hoarse voice, “Oh, crap.” He fell on his face, and Shredder glared at Crank with his one whole eye, the other an empty socket.
At that moment, Crank realized Shredder was no longer human.
Shredder moved with the grace of a rhino, but his arms and feet were weapons. Each time Crank blocked his blows, razor wire ripped through his flesh. Suddenly, he was backed against the wall, his forearms shredded down to the bone from Shredder’s relentless hammering.
Somewhere in this godforsaken shithole are Natasha and William, Mickey had told him yesterday, before he’d fought the Oriental fighter. You fight for them.
Shredder struck Crank in the abdomen, and Crank felt the razor-gauntlet penetrate his stomach. Shredder picked him up and looked him in the eye.
“I ain’t gonna’ make it, Mickey.” Crank’s voice quivered. “I’m… s-sorry.”
“Don’t let me down, boy,” came Mickey’s wavering voice.
“You’re alive?”
“Told you—too ornery to die.”
Mickey lay on his stomach, head turned to the side. The hole in his back swam with blood, but Mickey still moved, impossibly, crawling toward them, still full of fight—still alive! Crank thought of Shredder rising, of Mickey still alive, and he knew… he knew!
We can’t die!
The thought revitalized him. While hanging from Shredder’s arm—while the behemoth hesitated between attacking Mickey or finishing Crank off—Crank reached out and grabbed Shredder’s head, one hand on his chin and one on the top of his head. Nausea pulsed through him, and he would have vomited, but Shredder’s fist occupied the space where Crank’s stomach had been.
“Fuck you—” Crank screamed and twisted, snapping Shredder’s neck in two. “—and die!”
Shredder fell to the floor. Crank was still stuck to Shredder’s fist, and went down with him. He pushed up with his hands and feet, rising, feeling razor wire catch and slice along his inner organs. Searing razor-points scratched against the undercarriage of his ribs, and he dry heaved the air that blew through his open cavity like icy winds, shooting up into his esophagus. With a scream that sent globs of bloody spittle flying, he freed his stomach from the dead man’s gory gauntlet.
Crank collapsed next to Shredder who was already twitching, as nanonites in his body began to heal.
Can the nanonites make appendages grow back, Mickey? he had asked Mickey once. Like a lizard’s tail?
They can repair, but they can’t replicate tissue or regenerate blood loss.
Obviously the old man had been wrong.
“You did phenomenal, boy.”
Crank gasped for breath and rolled to his knees.
“Fuck you, old man. I ain’t done yet.”
“What’chu gonna’ do? Fuck him to death?”
Crank couldn’t catch his breath for a retort. Instead, he crawled for the bolt cutters, his intestines sliding from his body like hot noodles, but already drawing back inside. When he returned to Shredder, the behemoth was beginning to twitch his head from side-to-side.
“You gonna’ circumcise him?” Mickey wheezed.
“I’m gonna’ cut off this bastard’s head.”
Somewhere on the complex, Natasha and William were waiting to be released. That thought kept Cr
ank functioning. That and his friend Mickey, who helped steady his hands on the bolt cutters.
They worked side-by-side, holding the big man down as he squirmed. They took turns cutting and kicking and sometimes biting. When the head came off with a loud popping noise, they stuffed it in a locker.
“Grow that back, fucker.”
Afterwards, they grabbed M-16s and searched for Mack’s family.
***
A year later, Natasha and Mack sat at a picnic table and watched Mickey playing with William in the park near a weeping willow. Mack held Natasha’s scarred hand, the one that read R.U.T.H. carved into her knuckles. Her other hand finished the word. They had tortured her while Mack fought in the octagon, and she didn’t have nanonites to mend the scars.
Natasha smiled as if she hadn’t a care, as if she hadn’t gone through hell the previous year. She always was the stronger one. Watching Mickey play with William, sitting next to her—it was almost too much.
“What’s wrong, baby?” She wiped a tear from Mack’s cheek. “I thought you were tough.”
“Pollen.”
“Bullshit.”
“You are so… ”
“Ruthless?” she interjected.
Mack flinched, but her smile set him at ease. She placed her hand on his forearm then turned to their son. Mack watched Mickey teaching William footwork in the shade of the weeping willow.
“Bob and jab, you lazy bum,” Mickey hollered.
They all laughed when William snuck one in, sending Mickey’s head back.
“Just like your old man, kid.”
Birthday Song
by Thornton Austen
Carl Hampton celebrated his sixty-fourth birthday with a dead dog. No one ever accused Hampton of being too bright, but one thing he knew to the root of his soul, he hated Scott Sutton. Carl didn’t loathe Scott. He didn’t merely despise Scott. He wanted him gone, with Scott dead if it had to be that way.
As Carl drug his burden through the thicket toward Scott’s house, he mused to himself, Maybe this trick will finally get the kid to move on.
Ruthless: An Extreme Shock Horror Collection Page 15
