Noble Warrior

by Alan Lawrence Sitomer

  But where was Kaitlyn? Larson, reading M.D.’s mind, stepped behind an archway and rolled her out from behind the blackness. She sat in a wheelchair, arms and legs bound, a hood covering her head.

  A wheelchair? M.D. thought. Surely, they hadn’t crippled her. No way they’d gone that far.

  Larson rolled Kaitlyn to the far end of the cavernous room and set her under one of the working white lights. M.D. suddenly understood the reason for the wheelchair. Larson hadn’t severed her spine; the wheelchair was for ease of transport. A chair with wheels on it enabled Larson to roll her wherever he wanted.

  Any cop who thought like that, McCutcheon realized, was a cop who had kidnapped before.

  “She should see this, don’t ya think?” Larson lifted the cloak off Kaitlyn’s head as if he were unveiling a statue and she blinked, the sudden light too bright for her green eyes. As she struggled to regain her vision McCutcheon noticed the wounds. A black eye. Traces of a cut lip beneath a white gag. Seeing Kaitlyn’s injuries caused his blood to boil.

  “She got a li’l lippy,” Larson said. “Get it? Lippy?” He laughed. “I tell ya…” Larson opened his mouth wide and licked the side of Kaitlyn’s face with his soft, fat, wet, pink tongue. “This one’s got some pep.”

  McCutcheon flexed, readied to cross the room and attack, but with an expert flick of the wrist Larson switched open a butterfly knife and put the blade to Kaitlyn’s neck.

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Slow down, cowboy,” he said to McCutcheon.

  M.D. and Kaitlyn made eye contact. Even if they had time to speak, McCutcheon had no words. What could he say? How could he apologize? There was no way to make amends for getting her tangled up in something as horrific as this, and all his excuses of “I had no idea” or “I never meant to” wouldn’t amount to anything, because there she sat, bound, gagged, and beaten. From this point forward he knew he could save her, but he also knew he would never be able to spare her from what she’d already been through.

  The realization of the pain he’d inadvertently caused Kaitlyn sliced McCutcheon’s heart like a rusty dagger. He knew he’d carry this emotional wound for the rest of his days. So would Kaitlyn. They’d share a pair of scars that would never ever heal. His hurt turned to anger and then his anger turned to rage.

  Someone needed to pay.

  “Blades or pipes?” Larson asked. Laid out neatly across an old deli counter sat two sets of weapons. On the left, a pair of knives. Stainless steel, black handles, seven-inch blades, identical in every manner. On the right, two pipes. Rusted, not matching, but roughly the same size, weight, and thickness. M.D. noted that neither piece of steel held any sort of obvious advantage over the other, but that, he knew, was because of the gladiator code. Larson didn’t just want to battle to the death; he wanted each of the combatants to be evenly armed. A war of honor was the only ethical path.

  “I said blades or pipes?” Larson repeated.

  “Makes no difference,” McCutcheon said.

  “To me, either.”

  Larson picked up one of the two black-handled knives and felt the weight of the gleaming silver blade in his right hand. It was a fine weapon: balanced, heavy, sturdy, serrated on one side for tearing at meat, and razor sharp on its whetted edge for ruthless slicing. Suddenly and violently he spun and hurled the knife through the air. It screamed across the room and exploded into the wall.

  All eyes turned. Twenty-five feet away the blade, its tip driven three inches deep into a wooden beam, jutted from the wall. Without words the throw of the knife spoke volumes about Larson’s abilities.

  “Let’s go with these,” Larson said in regards to the pipes. “Just more fun to bash shit than poke it, don’t you think?”

  McCutcheon crossed to the table, picked up the second knife, and gazed at the blade Larson had just used to impale into the wood. Everyone stared. How could M.D. top such a throw? The only way possible would be to hurl his knife and slice Larson’s blade right through the butt of its handle, and split the weapon in two like Robin Hood.

  Which, of course, would be impossible.

  M.D. never spent any time learning to throw knives. He knew how to defend himself against an enemy who might wield one, but beyond that he’d only used them like most civilians did, for cutting food or opening boxes.

  Blade in hand, McCutcheon walked to the knife that Larson had just sizzled into the beam like some sort of weapons expert and inspected his enemy’s throw. It was a fine fling indeed. M.D. nodded, took off his jacket, and then neatly hung it up on the wall using Larson’s blade as a coat hanger.

  Stanzer smiled wryly. M.D. peeled off his shirt, folded it, and then set it down. He turned and his abs rippled. McCutcheon dropped his knife. It fell straight downward. Its tip pierced the wood. Stuck straight up like an erect pencil.

  “Let’s do this,” McCutcheon said.

  Larson picked up both pipes, extended his arms, and offered M.D. his choice of weapons. McCutcheon shrugged. Didn’t matter to him. Larson tossed the one in his right hand to his opponent; it sailed through the air and M.D. caught it. As McCutcheon’s fist wrapped around the pole, he felt the pipe’s potential. It was a powerful piece of steel. Strong, thick, certain to cause lots of damage on impact.

  Larson, too, pulled off his shirt and his huge, swollen muscles bulged. All eyes in the room stared at his bacne. An unnatural galaxy of red pimples speckled his hulking, mammoth back. Back acne was a common side effect of steroids, much like fits of uncontrollable rage and shrunken nuts. But McCutcheon wasn’t there to measure Larson’s testicles; he’d come to chop them off.

  The two met in the center.

  “Like Vale Tudo. Only one of us walks away.”

  “Just so you know,” McCutcheon answered. “I don’t want to fight you.”

  Larson stared into M.D.’s eyes. “Yes, you do.”

  He was right. M.D. did want to fight him. More than just fight him, McCutcheon wanted to end his life. Adrenaline surged through M.D.’s veins. His inner beast screamed. It needed food, revenge, the spilling of blood.

  They raised their pipes.

  A look of deviant pleasure glowed in Larson’s eyes. He loved the idea of battling in a winner-take-all match. He’d been training for just such a moment ever since he turned ten years old. Larson knew that if he took down McCutcheon, he’d not only save his own life, but also his name would ring out across the far corners of the underground fight world. Larson would be the gladiator who ended Bam Bam, the legendary Prince of Detroit.

  No, it wasn’t the floor of the Roman Colosseum, but for Larson it was good enough.

  “Just so we’re clear,” Puppet said, acting as de facto master of ceremonies. “No matter what happens,” he glared at Stanzer, “you don’t pull any bullshit.” The colonel, after a moment of eye contact with McCutcheon, rubbed his chin. He didn’t like to be told jack shit about what he could or could not do. Especially, by a scumbag gangster. But he nodded. He’d honor M.D.’s wishes. If Larson won, he could walk. As would the Priests, as would Kaitlyn. But if Larson lost, well…that would be a different story.

  “All right, gentleman,” Puppet said, stepping back. All eyes zeroed in on the two opponents. The electricity of impending brutality supercharged the air. “Do your thing.”

  McCutcheon, pipe in hand, narrowed his eyes. Blood scorched through his veins. Then he had an insight. A sudden realization. One that brought fear and doubt.

  He had no strategy.

  In all his years of fighting, McCutcheon had never entered into a battle without a well-considered plan. Forethought, tactics, calculated courses of action, and perspicacious blueprints had always been his ace in the hole. He’d defeated scores of opponents over the course of his career who’d been bigger, stronger, and nastier, but he’d only been able to do so by tapping into his own greatest strength: his mind.

  For all his skills, McCutcheon was a thinking warrior. He owned a powerful body but an even more powerful spirit—and yet, seconds away from the
biggest battle of his life, he had no plan of attack. He hesitated, and concern descended on him like a cloud. His confidence was destabilized.

  He had no vision for a path to victory. Worse, he’d run out of time.

  Larson, pipe in the air, attacked.

  Rage had blinded him. Hate had consumed him. McCutcheon’s inner beast, crying for carnage, thirsting for bloodshed, driven only by the primal urge of extracting revenge, stole the clarity from M.D.’s mind.

  Murder would be nectar. He needed to bash in this man’s head and brain him. Nothing less would quench his thirst.

  Is this really who I want to be?

  Larson roared forward with an overhead right. M.D. deflected the strike with a rising rooftop block and the pipes PINKED! as they collided. The explosive sound of metal bashing metal filled the room with a bone-chilling sense of danger.

  Pipe fighting was for lunatics. Larson’s eyes widened. He’d never had more fun.

  Larson swung again. Expertly. Making a figure eight in the air, he advanced on M.D. with three crisp, crashing, consecutive strikes. McCutcheon backpedaled and parried—PINK! PINK! PINK!—then hopped to an open part of the room outside of his assailant’s strike zone. Lacking clarity on how to proceed, he readied his defenses.

  Larson displayed excellent mechanics. His weight was balanced, he did little to telegraph his moves, and he struck with ferocity, power, and technique. Clearly, he’d been well trained. He knew what he wanted to accomplish and why he wanted to achieve it. As a warrior, he was locked in.

  The same could not be said about McCutcheon. A part of him wanted to bash Larson’s skull. McCutcheon knew just the right spot on the temple to strike to cause immediate brain swelling, too.

  But another part of M.D. held back. Violence, his gut told him, wasn’t the answer—it couldn’t be—and the warrior within knew there must a higher road that he could take. On one hand he hungered to take a life; on the other he yearned to never take one again. Though he’d killed before, having extinguished a person’s existence once did not, he now realized, make doing it again any less significant.

  McCutcheon, not knowing what to do, was stuck, caught, snared by indecision. And as all warriors knew, the hesitant fighter was always lost.

  Larson, sensing tentativeness, raged forward.

  Cutting a fierce X through the air, Larson engaged again. Over his left shoulder, a strike from the right, an attack from the hip—PINK! PINK! PINK!—he targeted the crown of McCutcheon’s head, the side of McCutcheon’s neck, and his face.

  If even one of the blows had landed the fight would be over. These were immense blows being launched, one after the other. McCutcheon needed to commit, but to what aim? Was he willing to take another life? Was he being forced to murder in the name of self-defense, or was there another path to victory he could embrace without causing death? The questions jumbled one on top of the other, but he had no answers, and he fought like a man plagued by overthinking and indecision.

  McCutcheon floundered and Larson gained the upper hand. It became a war of offense versus defense, attack versus protect, assail versus merely ward off. If M.D. didn’t take committed action soon, his defenses would surely give way.

  Most ’roid monsters were more bulk than athleticism. Not Larson. He had tree trunks for thighs, but he also knew how to leverage them and explode from his hips. In stick fighting, meaningful striking power always came from the hips, and Larson’s pipe blasts thundered like bursts from a canon. The more he swung, the more his confidence grew. He was on track to win this war and thus his freedom and the glory. To Larson it no longer was a matter of if he’d win, but when.

  He launched two more blows—PINK! PINK!—and smiled. “Gotta say,” Larson taunted. “Thought you woulda had more in ya.”

  He swung again. PINK! “Damn, I’m good,” Larson said aloud.

  With his left palm high and facing inward, McCutcheon used his right hand to wield the pipe and guarded the left side of his head with his free hand. It was a classic defensive posture that allowed him to fend off, parry, and avoid strike after strike. Then a shot landed. A forearm shiver that cracked M.D. in the jaw. Larson followed the shot with a hard knee to the ribs. McCutcheon shot for his opponent’s legs, but Larson proved quicker than M.D. had expected and sidestepped the attempted takedown.

  With McCutcheon on the floor, after having missed a double leg shoot, Larson spun and crashed down with a monstrous overhead blow. Full speed, full pipe, a mighty man slamming downward from a superior position. M.D. rolled away just as the steel crashed into the floor, and scampered to his feet. It was a miss but a close one.

  His lip bleeding, his ribs pounding, McCutcheon steadied himself.

  “Just so you know,” Larson said with a grin. “There’s plenty more where that came from.”

  It was kill or be killed. Or was it??

  His inner debate continued.

  Larson’s onslaught moved forward with another trio of shots. PINK! PINK! PINK! The Priests, Stanzer, even Kaitlyn knew that McCutcheon would only be able deflect, block, and evade for so long. At some point he’d have to attack with purpose and meaning or he’d be defeated.

  McCutcheon searched his heart and the answer became clear: he did not want to kill this man. Why? Because he yearned too deeply to do so.

  The battle raged on—PINK! PINK! PINK! After another flurry of strikes from Larson, M.D. jumped over a stray bottle, moved into the center of the room, and made eye contact with Kaitlyn. The look was brief but it was also deep and full of meaning.

  Suddenly, McCutcheon knew what he had to do, and he switched his pipe from his right hand to his left.

  Having spent hundreds of hours in the gym turning himself into an ambidextrous fighter, M.D. changed angles and attacked his foe high-low-high from the left. PINK! PINK! PINK! Larson parried the blows, but for the first time in the battle he’d been forced to step backward instead of forward.

  McCutcheon attacked again—PINK! PINK! PINK!—and while Larson fended off the strikes with a series of defensive blocks, Larson could feel the momentum shifting.

  Which is exactly what M.D. wanted. He now knew his strategy. He saw his path to victory. The first phase of McCutcheon’s plan—an aggressive assault—would set the stage for the next wave of confrontation. His scheme worked perfectly, too, and M.D. got the exact reaction from Larson that he had expected.

  McCutcheon turned up the heat because he knew that Larson would respond in kind. His foe considered himself an animal, a beast, and Larson’s ego would not allow for an opponent to put him on the defensive for very long. Larson, fury raging, went wild-eyed and raised his pipe, now more determined than ever to strike a vital target.

  McCutcheon had figured out that Larson deeply wanted one big hit. The home run. A monstrous knockout shot to the teeth, temple, or nose. He didn’t just seek victory; Larson sought unforgettable destruction. Only a barbaric blow that would echo through the room with shock would suffice. Aside from a few feints to the knees, everything Larson launched had been high, high, high.

  Which allowed McCutcheon to anticipate the next angle.

  His quest for the big smash was his weakness. Trachea shots, pipe blasts to the center of the face, blows like this were wonderful paths to victory if they could be landed. However, top stick fighters knew that the most important target area in a battle featuring metal poles for weapons, was the opponent’s hands.

  A pipe to the knuckles was all it would take. One clean smash and Larson would drop his steel, entirely disarmed. No, it wouldn’t be sexiest path to victory, but it would be effective, like taking the fangs from a snake.

  McCutcheon timed it perfectly and his metal pipe exploded against the middle knuckle of Larson’s right hand, just as his enemy attempted to bring a massive downward strike onto M.D.’s head. The was no PINK! Just a muffled thud, the sound of steel smashing meat.

  Larson’s pipe tinked to the floor, and two Priests recoiled in horror as Larson’s hand instantaneously
swelled to the size of a grapefruit. M.D. went low.

  CRACK! He smashed Larson’s left ankle and the bone misaligned from the foot. M.D. spun, did a 360-degree turn to generate maximum speed, brought the pipe around the side of his head, and CRACK! went for Larson’s other ankle.

  But missed.

  Instead of hitting Larson near the top of his foot, McCutcheon drove his pipe into Larson’s lower shin. The steel severed the tibia bone like an ax breaking through a piece of firewood, and Larson’s leg dangled off its bone, the bottom still attached to the top only because of the threads of ligament holding the pieces together.

  Blood began to seep through his pants. Larson, in shock from the pain, tried, inexplicably, to take a step forward and attack.

  He collapsed on his face, his leg unable to support any weight. McCutcheon pounced, dropped a knee into the middle of Larson’s back, and forced his enemy’s left arm to extend outward from his body in a straight line. With Larson’s palm down and fingers extended like a starfish, McCutcheon raised his pipe high in the air.

  Fear filled Larson’s eyes. He knew what was coming but had no way to stop it. His hand would have to absorb the upcoming blow at full speed unless the plea in his eye could convince M.D. to relent.

  McCutcheon gave no quarter. Palm down, knuckles up, his fingernails pointed toward the sky, M.D. brought down a colassal pipe blow onto the center of Larson’s outstretched hand.

  The CRACK! of shattering bones caused a gangster to gag. If it wasn’t for the skin surrounding Larson’s fingers, the bones in his hand would have gone ricocheting across the floor like a blast of billiard balls exploding on a pool table. Larson had been defeated, but his life had been spared. Captured yet defanged. No, McCutcheon would not take his life, but also he would not allow this man to pose any further threat. Each appendage of his opponent had been rendered useless, and it might be years before any of Larson’s four limbs functioned properly again.