We ate.
We each had a cup that was meant to be used to get water out of the tap since no one was springing for soda or juice.
There wasn't much talking.
Miller and Delaney, I figured, were focused on their upcoming potential freedom. I imagined, after years of captivity, the thought of freedom was almost as terrifying as living forever as a fighting dog.
"New blood," a voice called out of nowhere on the third day, making me jump, spilling water over my feet, something Adler chuckled at.
"Gotta work on yer reflexes, Ward. Go on, get up. He'll be coming for ya."
I stood because, well, what other choice did I have?
Even if everything in me was screaming that I didn't want to meet the man who put bats up a boy's ass as punishment.
I took a breath, moving toward the door, waiting.
He unlocked the door a second later, coming in.
And he was about what you might expect with graying hair, a beer gut, a horrendous mustache, and beady black eyes.
"Paid a pretty penny for your scrawny ass," he told me, looking me up and down much the way someone would size up a literal fighting dog. "Gotta fatten you up a bit. Maybe you'll be worth the seven-hundred."
I had a feeling he made way more than seven-hundred on us over the course of our 'careers' as fighting dogs.
"Tomorrow night, you'll fight... Cohen," he informed me, then walked out.
"That's a good match-up," Miller told me, the first time he had spoken directly to me since the night I woke them all up. "He's bigger, but he's softer. Don't know you, kid, but I got a feeling you're hungry. Hungry is what will keep you alive in here. Protect your chin. Cohen likes to do a knockout early to prevent having to make things get ugly."
The next night, I followed the guys out, realizing they were always forced to watch the other fights as well - and, apparently, watch any punishment that might take place.
I had been right in thinking it was some kind of old restaurant. There was a halfway abandoned bar to the side, lined with various half-drank bottles of liquor. The room reeked of it too, along with sweat, and the heady odor of blood thirst.
There was no actual ring, just a scuffed and bloodied floor that the men circled around to, I soon found, throw us back at each other if we got out of reach of our opponent.
Cohen and I were introduced.
Bets were placed.
And then we were told to face each other up.
See, for all my rage, I had never acted on it.
I had never, believe it or not, been in a fistfight.
I didn't know dick about what I was doing.
All I knew was to protect my chin.
So I raised my hands, ducked my chin to my chest, and got my first ass-kicking.
I had to be half-carried back to the basement by Delaney and Adler since Miller was fighting Wozniak.
"Ya gotta be fucking kidding me with that weak shit," Adler said, dropping me down.
"Ease up, Adler," Delaney demanded, taking my cup to go get me water.
"Fuck that. I ain't easing up. That was some pansy ass shit out there. Don't got one busted knuckle. You just took yer hits."
"So what?" I growled, reaching for the water Delaney handed me so I could rinse the taste of my own blood out of my mouth.
"So if ya can't put on a good fucking show, he'll have yer ass for it."
"Not like that," Delaney was quick to explain. "He means that he has no use for a fighter who can't pull his own weight. If you have another fight like that, Walt's men won't place bets on you, which means if you lose, Walt loses money. You need to engage. You need to find whatever rage you might be feeling for being a goddamn fighting dog, and use it in the ring."
"Against you guys," I said, looking up at them, unsure how the hell they could beat the shit out of one another, then share a room.
"Look," Delaney said, squatting down, "we all are in the same boat. We might break your bones and knock out your teeth, but when we get back here, we are all we got. We can't hold grudges. So get angry, burn through it in the fight, then let it go."
With that, they were both called back up, leaving me alone to curl up as much as my aching ribs would allow.
Alone, hurt, confused, I had all of five minutes of feeling sorry for myself.
Then it came back.
My oldest friend.
There for me since I was nothing but a baby.
Anger.
The next time I fought, I used it.
And I won.
Then I lost.
Then I won twice in a row.
Every single time, win or lose, I had new scars, new broken bones, new permanent reminders of my time in that basement with no medical supplies, having to wrap broken bones with strips of jeans that didn't fit anyone there.
Miller aged out four months after I showed up.
Merely one month later, Delaney followed.
Then Wozniak.
And Beckett.
Then one night, the door opened.
When the rest of us woke up in the morning, there were three new kids there, suddenly making us, all of maybe sixteen, the old timers, the ones to impart wisdom, the ones to step up where Miller and Delaney once had.
"Quit the fucking crying," Adler hissed one morning after we had all been forced to watch Walt beat in the skull of a kid who had only been around for three nights. He had, thankfully, been unconscious after the first hit. He died sometime after the tenth.
"Adler," I growled, shaking my head at him.
"What? Like this is new? I've been a fucking bastard since before ya showed up here, Ward. I can't fucking think past the blubbering."
He was doing a lot of thinking lately too.
One year.
Tops.
That was all he had left.
I had maybe a year and a half.
I never did get Adler's story. Where he came from. If he had anything to try to go home to.
As for me, well, I didn't have dick.
I knew my future was going to be a dark, hard, ugly one.
But I would survive.
That was what needed to happen.
"Cohen didn't come back," one of the newer kids commented, a somewhat dim-witted kid whose already small brain likely wouldn't take too kindly to getting knocked around for years.
"Because like I told ya last night, ya nitwit, he aged out."
Out of the seven of us that had been there the night I first arrived, Adler and I were the only ones left. Adler, because he passed for younger with his hair he refused to cut, his thinness. Me because while I hit a huge growth spurt and absolutely looked every bit my age, I brought in a lot of money.
It wasn't until several months later - maybe half a year, time was hard to tell anymore - early on in a non-fight night, that shit changed.
I was called out.
No one ever got called out.
Aging out meant you got held back after your final fight.
There had never been an instance, not in the two years I had been inside that basement where one of us had been called up before a fight.
And then Adler was called out as well.
Adler gave me a look in that moment that I would never forget, a look I still saw in my head in quiet moments.
He looked scared.
It was a look I had never seen on his face before.
And it terrified me. Me, this guy who had become nothing but a walking, talking, living, breathing survival manual.
You did what you had to do.
Day in, day out.
That was your only choice.
To live.
But this guy, Adler, smart-ass comments aside, had always been stronger, always been more hungry, more willing to take it on the chin, to shake it off, to keep plugging on, to offer the new kids up to the liquid burn of our harsh reality, no chaser.
And he was fucking scared.
So even as we were led upstairs and into the bar, his man leaving
out the back door, leaving us alone with Walt, we knew the plan.
Come what may, we were going to live through that motherfucking night.
I almost didn't.
"Well well well, the grandpas," he said, nodding at us over the rim of his glass. Scotch. He always drank scotch. "The kids call you that, did you know? Grandpas."
Shoulder-to-shoulder with Adler, I could feel the way the air around him was vibrating. And though his head stayed still, I knew he was looking; I knew he was assessing the situation. He was good at that, at sussing shit out. His eyes saw fucking everything. He had been the only one to know six months before that one of the kids had gotten a nasty infection from the injuries following a particularly ugly fight. The rest of us just thought he was beat, trying to recover.
Another three hours if he's lucky.
It was almost that to the dot.
So I knew he wasn't just standing there looking at Walt with his oily face and thinning hair and stupid ass mustache.
No.
He was taking in every movement the man made, every aspect of the room, what any of it could mean for us in that moment.
"Nothing to say, huh? Surprised. I hear you're a real talker." That was directed at Adler, obviously. No one would ever accuse me of being chatty.
"Ya smell like the dead sea, ya fuck. Trying to hold my breath over here."
I closed my eyes, shaking my head.
He never did know when to check the attitude.
But Walt just snorted at that, going behind the bar for a second, then moving forward toward us, dropping something down at a table just a few feet in front of us.
My gaze went down.
And my stomach dropped.
A gun.
Worse yet.
A revolver.
Don't ask me how I knew.
But I did.
Why the fuck else would he want the two of us?
The only reason we existed was for his sick pleasure, the way he got off on fear, anger, and bloodshed.
Six chambers.
Three bullets.
A fifty-fifty chance of death.
There was a scrape, dragging my eyes away from the revolver to look up and find Walt pulling two chairs over.
"Go on, have a seat. It's time for a fun, friendly game."
I looked over at Adler who was steadily avoiding eye-contact as he moved to sit down, something I found especially disconcerting.
What was he thinking?
Was he plotting?
He was the one always talking about riding it out until you aged up and out.
And he was so close.
But what were the chances that we would both walk away from this game?
Slim to none.
He had to have been planning something, right?
"Alright, you mouthy fuck," Walt said, moving toward the bar, pulling his own gun out of his pocket, and neither of us doubted his willingness to use it. We were one foot out the door already anyway, soon to mean dick to him. Our replacements were in the basement, with years to go still. "You're up first." Adler reached for the gun, everything about his demeanor languid, relaxed, nothing to show his heart was hammering or his palms sweating like mine were.
Which was possibly why I never saw it coming when his hand closed around the handle, his finger went to the hammer, and he raised the barrel at me.
"Oh, now this just got interesting!" Walt declared, a loud guffaw in his voice. "Why didn't I think of that? Much better to see you have to kill each other, isn't it?"
I forced my eyes from the gun, meeting his gaze.
It shouldn't have surprised me, but he held it.
He didn't blink.
He didn't respond to what had to have been shock, betrayal, and outrage in my face.
True, we were forced to live in a different reality where we had to frequently beat the shit out of one another. Adler had broken three of my ribs over the years, knocked out a molar, given me concussions. In turn, I had broken his nose, his hand, a rib, and gotten him unconscious three times.
But that was different.
We were forced to do that.
This was a choice.
"You're a fucking asshole, Adler," I hissed at him, voice low enough that Walt, a good eight feet away, couldn't hear.
"Check yer anger," Adler said, voice low.
"What's all the whispering about, ladies? Get the fucking show on the road, or I start shooting off toes."
There was hardly even a hesitation.
His finger moved to the trigger.
He pulled.
Then pain seared through my shoulder even as the bang made my ears pop.
Hissing in pain, I didn't hear the hollow click of an empty chamber, but I damn sure heard it when there was another bang.
This one not in my direction.
My eyes went to Adler first, seeing him rushing to stand, arm still extended.
Toward Walt.
Who had a bullet hole right through his left cheek, hand raised, eyes huge, blood dripping fucking everywhere.
"Thought the first one'd be empty," Adler explained calmly, looking over his shoulder at me as he ducked down to get Walt's fallen gun off the floor, turning to put it on the table in front of me, then going behind the bar.
He came back with two items.
Only one of them I understood.
The Discipliner.
"Adler," my voice called as I forced my legs to stand, as I mind-over-mattered the pain searing through my shoulder.
"Ain't gonna stick it up his arse," Adler said. Even with his back to me, I could hear the eye roll he was giving me. "Though he fucking deserves it."
Then the gun got tucked in his pants, the bat got swung in his hand, and he bashed in the brain of the man who had killed at least half a dozen times since I had been around, who had tortured more, who did God-knew what to the ones we figured aged out.
When he finally stopped, there was brain matter and skull fragments splattered around the room, and his face, clothes, hair, everything was saturated with blood.
He turned to me, dripping, looking like some savage fucking beast.
And just like that, we were free.
Free where, we didn't know.
Free to do what, yeah, that was a mystery as well.
But free.
Adler reached down, digging through Walt's pockets, pulling out more bullets for his gun, taking a second to load them into chambers, leaving me to wonder how he even knew how to do such things if he had been in a basement since he was fifteen, and took all the cash out of his wallet.
"Thousand," he said, moving over to the table, making five piles on the surface, one for each of the remaining fighting dogs.
"That's not even," I said as I found a rag, stabbing it into the bleeding wound on my shoulder. Two of the piles were stacked much higher than the others.
"They're all fifteen down there," he explained, pocketing his pile. "They're gonna run from here, find the cops, and get placed. Ya and me, we're on our fucking own now. Need something to live off of."
With that, he charged past me, and I was vaguely aware of his feet hammering down on the steps to the basement, of the door opening, of him shouting something at the kids remaining. Knowing him, something blunt, callous, and offensive somehow all at once.
But they all came back up regardless, looking around with dazed eyes, taking the money when Adler told them to. "Yer best bet is to stay together, run, and find the cops," he told them as he moved back toward the other item he had taken from behind the bar - a bottle of vodka - and moved back toward me, roughly ripping the rag out of my bullet wound, then pouring half the bottle over my open flesh.
"Motherfucker!" I yelled, the pain of the cleaning somehow worse than that of the bullet itself.
"Yeah, this is gonna fucking suck," he agreed, pouring the vodka over his fingers, making me acutely aware of what was going to happen just a second before two of his fingers slipped inside my body, digging arou
nd for the bullet.
I won't rewrite history just because I don't like this next part.
I blacked the fuck out.
I woke up sometime later to find the bloody bullet pressed into my hand, Walt's body by the bar, and the body of the guard who had brought us up piled next to him. My share of the money was in my pocket.
But the kids were gone.
Adler was gone.
And I was left with only one choice.
The same choice.
The one that would be my life for years to follow.
I had to survive.
"Did you ever see them again?" Adalind asked, shocking me out of my memories, making me realize how much I had given her, more than I had given anyone, more than I realized I even remembered from so long ago.
"Yeah."
I hadn't right away.
I had dragged my busted, broken ass out of that restaurant, finding myself in some place called Alberry Park, in the middle of a shitty area that - even after spending years as a fighting dog, and currently bleeding from a bullet wound - I didn't feel safe walking around in.
I didn't know much about the world I had left behind, except that it was about two and a half years older, and that it was in the middle of fall, making a chill course through me as I padded barefoot through the streets before finally finding a motel, spending sixty of the three-hundred and fifty bucks I had to my name to get a room for the night.
I showered for the first time in years.
I slept in a bed for the first time in years.
And I woke up in the morning with one thing on my mind.
Survival.
Nothing else mattered.
I had lived through the worst of what life had to offer me.
I could live through whatever it took to get something for myself.
I worked odd jobs for a while, anything that could pay enough to keep the motel roof over my head and food in my stomach. Then one night, completely by chance, I happened upon one.
An underground fighting ring.
Run by a man named Xavier Cooper who wore nice suits and drove an expensive as fuck sports car.
But this time, the men in his employ weren't forced into it.
And they made money from it.
Grudge Match Page 12
