Zombie Fight Night: Battles of the Dead

by A. P. Fuchs

  Stalla turned his paw over inside the thweller’s mouth so his claws dug into its roof, and with one swift-yet-effort-filled motion, jerked his hand upward, ripping off the top of the thweller’s head. The creature fell lifeless on top of him.

  Stalla’s vision darkened.

  The crowd cheered somewhere distant.

  This was for Yugta.

  29

  This is New

  Mick stood there, heart pounding, his mind playing the last few moments of the fight over and over. A draw? Mick couldn’t recall the last time that happened, if at all. But he also hadn’t seen every single zombie fight either.

  He turned to Sterpanko. “Now what?”

  The man pressed his lips together and for the briefest of moments, Mick thought he didn’t know what to do. Yet, of course, Mick knew that wasn’t the case. If Sterpanko was anything, he was smart and calculating. He was the type of guy who had Plans A through D for everything. Surely the scenario of a draw had been taken into account when Zombie Fight Night was first created, especially given the contenders.

  Sterpanko reached for the Controller and began tapping buttons. A few moments later, he stopped. “That was quite a bet, Mick. If you had won, we’d be even.”

  “I did win, though. I bet on Bigfoot. The zombies are dead. All four of them.”

  “Yes, but Bigfoot is dead, too, isn’t he?”

  “So if that happens, rules say last one alive is the victor.”

  Sterpanko eyed him coolly. “We continue.”

  “What?”

  Sterpanko narrowed his eyes.

  “You’re serious?”

  “I don’t joke, Mick. You ought to know that by now.”

  “So that last fight—”

  “Doesn’t count.”

  Without thought, Mick lunged at him. In a flash, the security guard was at Sterpanko’s side. Another instant later and Mick’s face lit up with bright red pain. He hit the floor and looked up at Sterpanko. The guard beside him rubbed his fist.

  “Seems you got a hard head on you. Marcus here usually doesn’t wince when taking care of business for me,” Sterpanko said.

  Marcus took a step toward Mick then glanced back at Sterpanko as if waiting for instruction.

  Sterpanko put up a hand. “Leave him be.” He pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket and tossed it down to Mick. “Wipe your face. You’re getting blood all over the carpet.”

  Mick pinched his bloody nose with the handkerchief and held it tight.

  From out of the shadows behind Sterpanko, a familiar figure stepped forward.

  “Anna!” Mick said then coughed.

  She put a hand on Sterpanko’s shoulder.

  “Is he out?” she asked him.

  Sterpanko shook his head. “Not yet. Came close on that last one, though.”

  “Figures,” she said, giving Mick a cold glare.

  “Anna, what are you doing here?” Mick said. “It was you I saw. You hit me. You f—”

  Marcus delivered his boot under Mick’s chin, snapping his mouth shut and sending him toppling backward so he lay on the floor.

  “Can’t have you swearing in front of the lady,” Marcus said.

  “Go to hell.”

  He heard Marcus take a step forward then Sterpanko said, “It’s okay.”

  “Told you he couldn’t deliver,” Anna said.

  Mick felt around his head and torso for the handkerchief that had fallen out of his hand. He located it beside his shoulder then put it against his bleeding nose and mouth. “How could you, Anna?” he said through the cloth. “How could you?”

  She came close and knelt down beside him. She took his hand in hers. When she spoke, her voice was like the calm after a storm. “You ruined us. You took what was ours and squandered it. You put your addiction above you and I.” Her tone changed and Mick knew she was fighting back tears. “I wanted to forgive you. I love you, and I did forgive you. But it just got worse. I didn’t know what you owed. I thought maybe it was a few hundred dollars. Instead you deprived us of nearly a million. One. Million.” She squeezed his hand. Tears were pooled in her eyes but they did not leak. “And you know what? It’s not even about the money. It’s about you risking to destroy us after those we loved were destroyed. After all those people we saw killed when the dead ruled our planet. After all that madness, you took it a step further and gambled with life. Our lives. And you lost.”

  The tears came. Anna kept quiet for a few minutes as she sobbed.

  “I’m sorry, sweetie, I truly am,” Mick said.

  She sniffled. “So am I, so much so I thought I could get Tony to forgive the debt.”

  Wait. “What do you mean ‘get’?” He watched her closely. She glanced at Sterpanko. The man gave her a gentle smile then turned his cool-as-death eyes onto Mick.

  His breath caught. Tears gushed forth. “NO!” he screamed. “NO, NOT ANNA, NO!”

  He cried.

  She let go of his hand.

  “How—how could you?” he said. “I thought it was just you and me, always you and me.”

  Anna shook her head amidst the tears. “It was. Then it was just you. It’s your fault, Mick.” She stood and walked back to Sterpanko.

  “No . . . please, no. Not him. Not you. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  “Enough,” Sterpanko said.

  Marcus walked over to Mick and jerked him to his feet by the arms. Mick’s head swam from the sudden shift in position. A violent shove in between his shoulder blades sent him stumbling toward Sterpanko and Anna. He looked at his wife. He noticed she wasn’t wearing her ring anymore. A sharp pain jabbed his heart, settled, boiled and exploded.

  He had nothing to lose now. Nothing.

  “Thank you, my dear,” Sterpanko said and gave her a peck on the cheek.

  She gave him a warm smile then walked off, not even looking at Mick once.

  This wasn’t the woman he married. Anna—whoever she was now . . . . He couldn’t even form the thought. All he knew was that it was over.

  Just like him.

  He swung out and delivered a swift hook to Sterpanko’s jaw. The next thing he knew something struck the back of his knees then a split second later the side of his head. He hit the floor, resting on his shins. He touched his ear and pulled away a pair of bloody fingers..

  Concussion.

  “Kill me,” Mick said.

  “Nice shot,” Sterpanko said. “I’ll give you that. As I mentioned, I’m a fair man.”

  “Bullsh—”

  “Ta ta ta. Play nice.”

  Mick didn’t care about the handkerchief anymore. Most of the bleeding had stopped anyway. As if it mattered at this point. “All right, you win,” he said quietly.

  “I already knew that before we started.”

  “Then kill me and get it over with.”

  Sterpanko went on as if he never heard him. “But as I said, I’m a fair man. That last fight ended in a draw. Normally the winnings would be split fifty-fifty, but what we’re doing here today isn’t normal.”

  Mick just shook his head. It was hard to believe what he was hearing yet Sterpanko was a snake so it wasn’t surprising either. Man of fairness? As if. Fair to him, maybe, but most certainly not to anyone else.

  Anna. I love you, Anna. And you betrayed me. Tears leaked from his eyes anew. But I betrayed you first.

  “One more fight, Mick. Just one more,” Sterpanko said.

  Strong hands brought Mick to his feet again. He wanted to snap his elbow back and deliver it straight into Marcus’s gut, but he didn’t. It wouldn’t get him anywhere except maybe . . . dead? With a smirk he twisted to the right, his elbow tight against his body. Large hands behind him caught the elbow. Mick spun around, bringing about his left fist for a hook into Marcus’s head.

  The blow was stopped.

  Mick’s mouth fell open.

  A familiar face stared back at him.

  30

  Two of a Kind

  “Hello, friend,�
� Jack said.

  “Hey, Jack,” Mick said.

  The two just stared at each other. It looked like Jack was going to say something, the words bubbling somewhere beneath the surface of that big head of his. Mick had no idea what the man would say. Or what he could say. Mick supposed that it kind of made sense the big fella was here.

  “So this whole time, what, you were supposed to keep an eye on me?” Mick asked.

  Jack nodded. “Just needed to make sure you played by the rules.”

  Well, we didn’t do that one hundred percent, now, did we? Mick thought. “Suppose I told Sterpanko that you let me—”

  “No.”

  And that was all it took. Behind Jack’s gruff exterior, a light briefly shone then began to dim. His face said it all. Sterpanko was using him, too. Mick knew that look. He’d seen it in his own mirror many times on those sleepless nights where he tried to find counsel in his reflection. Jack was in deep with Sterpanko as well and his family was under threat.

  “I’m sorry, Jack,” Mick said.

  “Me, too.”

  “Wish we could have had more time.”

  “Not me.” Jack winked.

  “Either way.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  “I know. I’m sorry, too.”

  Mick turned to Sterpanko. “What now?”

  The man clasped his hands together then pointed at him with both index fingers. “One more fight.”

  “And Jack?”

  Sterpanko didn’t even look Jack’s way. “Don’t worry about him. He and I have our own arrangement.”

  Mick glanced back at Jack. The man’s face was ashen.

  He’s going to kill you and you’re just standing there?

  Mick surveyed the room. It was just him, Sterpanko, Jack and Marcus.

  “When’s the next bout?” Mick said over his shoulder.

  “Soon,” Sterpanko said. “Better pick up your Controller.”

  “And Jack?”

  “I said, never you mind.”

  Mick held out his hand to Jack. “Awkward but fun, huh?”

  “Yeah, who would have thought it?”

  “Not me. But you’re a good man, ’kay?”

  “Used to be.”

  “Still are.”

  “Your opinion.”

  “Okay, that’s enough,” Sterpanko said.

  “Do you really want to die today?” Mick asked Jack.

  “Yeah, just like any other. You?”

  Anna was gone. Everything was gone. Sterpanko was going to win either way. “Yeah.”

  The two men exchanged stares as if reading each other’s thoughts.

  “Then let’s get to it,” Jack said.

  Mick headed for Sterpanko; Jack for Marcus.

  It didn’t take more than a couple of swift punches to the face to knock Sterpanko down. Mick glanced at Jack. It appeared Jack had dove on top of Marcus and was now straddling his chest, delivering blow after blow into the man’s face.

  “Come on, let’s go!” Mick shouted.

  Jack gave one last quick shot to the guard’s face then got off him. He and Mick ran for the door.

  Thunder rocked the room when Mick’s hand touched the door handle. He turned around to see Jack behind him, a dark red rose blossoming on his chest. Just behind him, Sterpanko held a gun out.

  “Go,” Jack said and fell to his knees.

  “I can’t leave you.”

  “I’m already dead.” He winced and let out a grunt. “You’re not. Go.”

  Sterpanko began his walk toward them. “Hand off the handle, Mick.”

  His fingers gripped the handle harder for some reason. Panic, maybe. He had to force himself to let go.

  “That’s it. Nice and easy,” Sterpanko said, gun still aimed at him. When the man was almost upon him, he added, “One more fight, Mick. One more. Win or lose. No draw this time.”

  Then it was over. Mick looked at Jack. The big man lay face down on the carpet.

  Sterpanko drew closer. The security guard groaned somewhere in the background.

  “Now, Mick,” Sterpanko said.

  Mick raised his hands in surrender and slowly walked toward him.

  A moment later, Sterpanko suddenly dropped from his line of sight. The next thing Mick knew, Jack was on top of Sterpanko, delivering feeble punch after feeble punch.

  When Jack spoke, it was a cross between a whisper and a cough. “Run.”

  “Thanks, Jack,” Mick said, and with tears in his eyes, turned and ran out of the room.

  He hit the hallway beyond. Gunshots rang behind the door. He wanted to go back in and see if Jack was all right. Yet, there was no telling who had been shot. He hoped it was Sterpanko.

  Mick tore off down the hallway and searched for a way out.

  It didn’t take long before security guards were on his tail.

  31

  The Corridor

  Mick stumbled through each step, the toils of the day seeming to saturate every blood cell in his veins.

  “Just hit the door,” he said to himself softly. Wait. The guards at the front doors must have been alerted to his escape by now. If he went for the doors, he’d surely be caught. The back? Was there even a back door to this place?

  Whatever, he thought and pumped his legs as fast as he could, weaving in and out between the people who were not in the arena in search of stale hot dogs, cold beer and maybe a T-shirt or two.

  “Hey!” a guard shouted behind him.

  “Somebody stop that guy!” shouted the other.

  Ignore them. Keep running, Mick told himself. He glanced over his shoulder. The guards were about ten meters back. No matter how hard he dug his heels into the linoleum floor, attaining more speed was impossible. But there was no giving up. If he was going to go down, he was going to go down fighting. In brief reflection, Mick thought it strange that earlier tonight he didn’t care at all about the outcome of the evening. Now, faced with life or death—life mattered, and if he was to die, he was going to die living.

  He looked back over his shoulder once more and when he faced back front, he rammed smack into a hefty woman, middle-aged with a gold-yellow perm. The two went tumbling head over heels. Mick thought he heard something crack as he went over with her except he didn’t feel a thing in his body. She must have broken something.

  “So sorry,” he said quickly as he scrambled to his feet. The guards were nearly upon him.

  Panting, he made a sharp turn to the left, took the five steps down in a single leap, landed in a crouched position—then kept running.

  He heard the frantic footfalls of the guards taking the stairs behind him.

  There was a gray door on his left. Mick turned again, ran for it, then yanked it open. He pulled it closed behind him. He didn’t know if the guards saw him go in here or not. It wasn’t worth hanging around to find out.

  Mick jogged a few steps forward and found another set of stairs that led down to a white-painted brick hallway below. He took the steps, stood in the hall for a second and looked left and right. Both directions appeared the same: white walls, a few gray doors off to either side, each end of the hallway ending in perpendicular hallways, also white-bricked and gray-floored.

  He went right, somehow in his mind thinking the rear of the building was somewhere in that direction. He wasn’t completely sure, though.

  Mick ran. No sooner had his legs been pumping for a few seconds did a figure appear at the end of the hallway. He didn’t know who it was. The only thing he was sure of was that it wasn’t a security guard.

  He skidded to a stop, spun around, and bolted in the other direction.

  More footfalls echoed in the cement-enclosed hallway. The weird part was they were coming from somewhere ahead.

  He glanced over his shoulder.

  A being with white skin, white hands with claws and a blood-red cloak zipped through the air toward him like a jet out of control.

  Screaming, Mick ran as fast as
he could. At the end of the hallway before him, a couple of security guards appeared though Mick was pretty sure they weren’t the same ones from just a few minutes back. It didn’t matter. He was trapped and was already past the door with the stairs where he first entered this hallway. There was no doubling back.

  “Crapcrapcrapcrapcrap . . .” The words rolled off his tongue like boulders down a hill.

  His shoulders suddenly seized up and multiple spikes of pain raced through them as well as his arms. He was brought to a halt. Glancing at his shoulders he saw white hands on either side, the red of his blood clashing against the sharp sallow nails digging into his flesh.

  Movement was impossible. Whatever demon had him caught from behind wouldn’t let him move.

  “One more fight,” the thing behind him hissed.

  The security guards caught up to them.

  With a growl, the creature threw Mick forward and into the guards’ arms.

  Mick took in the beast. He knew that facial structure: the pronounced forehead, the wrinkled skin, pale as all get out, the bold cheekbones, that dash of stark white hair on top. Though the creature didn’t have his giant sunglasses on, Mick knew it was the old man that had been sitting motionless beside him during this evening’s fights. He didn’t know what the old guy was—a vampire, maybe—and it became clear that he, like Jack, was meant to keep an eye on him.

  The creature stood before him, each breath it took seeming to heave his chest up and down with rage. The old man’s eyes were bright white, with red irises and golden-yellow pupils. The man didn’t blink.

  “I want . . . to . . . drink,” the old man said. His voice was precise, each word enunciated perfectly as if a science.

  “No,” one of the guards said. “This man is for the boss. Thank you for your service. You will receive your payment in full as promised.”

  The old man grimaced then bore all his teeth, eyes wide and bright like an inferno. The vampire lashed out at the security guard, the old man’s claws slicing the guard’s forearm off. The man howled, and immediately cradled his arm. Mick wondered if he should take the opportunity to make a break for it.