by A. P. Fuchs
“Welcome to Blood Bay Arena,” she said. “Here for the show?”
Mick cleared his throat. “Um, yeah.”
“How close you want it?”
“Um . . . to the fight?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know, whatever’s cheapest. I really don’t care.”
“Okay.” She tapped her touch screen. “Twenty dollars even and you’re in.”
“Twenty?”
“Twenty.”
He fished out his wallet from his pocket and pulled out a wrinkly twenty-dollar bill. He slid it through the small opening at the bottom of the Plexiglas window. She grabbed it, checked its authenticity under a black light, then stuck it in the till and punched a few numbers on her register. A ticket spat out of a small slit in the brushed nickel countertop in front of her. She passed it to him.
“Enjoy the show,” she said.
“Yeah.” He wondered if he should inquire here about betting or just wait until he was past the guards. “Thanks.”
He went back in the direction he came, gave the guard his ticket and was let through no problem.
The next set of doors was set up almost like a toll booth except instead of passing cars, it was passing people. Mick waited in line and about five minutes later was speaking to a skinny bald man with a headset and a nametag that read nicky.
“I.D., please,” Nicky said.
Mick pulled out his wallet again and sifted out his I.D. card. He gave it to the man.
Nicky swiped it in a slot beside his computer monitor. “Pot?”
“Excuse me?”
“Pot.”
“Pot? I thought—”
“How much are you putting in your pot? You know, the thing you draw from when betting on the fights?”
“Oh. Um, here.” He handed the man the remaining thirty dollars.
The man took it, punched a few numbers on his touch screen, then re-swiped Mick’s I.D. He handed the card back to him.
“Look, obviously you’re new here,” Nicky said. He pointed to the door just outside his booth. “You’ll hear a buzzer. Go through there, find your seat, then take a Controller out of the seat in front of you.”
“A Controller?”
“Yeah, a little black box thing. You won’t miss it. It’s a small computer. It’ll tell you about who’s fighting. Slide your I.D. through the machine, pick your winner, and then wait for the fight to start. If you win, you come back here on the way out and we’ll swipe your card. You’ll get your money and you’ll go. If you lose and end up owing the House, then you’ll pay up. Got it, cowboy?”
Mick nodded. Take a Controller and make a bet. Oh, and swipe my card in it, too. “Sure. Um, thanks.”
Nicky nodded. “Go to the door. I’ll let you in.”
Mick did. A low drone sounded. He opened the door and entered.
Once inside the hallway beyond, he checked his ticket for his seat assignment and made his way there.
It was pretty far back, the nosebleeds. He didn’t care. It was the cheapest ticket.
“Twenty bucks for this?” he said and sat down. “Let’s just get screwed even more.” Story of my life.
Below, past the sea of heads, there was a giant circle-shaped cage that looked to have a radius of some thirty feet. Its floor was cement. The walls and ceiling of it were made of what appeared to be a strong chain-link mesh of some kind. On opposite sides of the circle’s floor were two large iron rings.
Mick tapped his feet then grabbed the Controller out of the seat in front of him.
“Okay, let’s see here,” he said. The moment his finger tapped the screen, it flashed on.
Swipe I.D. card, it read.
Mick got out his I.D. and swiped it along the side of the machine.
Thank you.
Processing . . .
Welcome to Zombie Fight Night, Mick Chelsey. Please review the information for the first bout.
Mick tapped the appropriate button on the screen and was treated to the details of the next fight. “Interesting. Who else is up tonight?” But he couldn’t find a next button or anything indicating such. Can only see the info of one fight at a time? “Hm.” He shrugged his shoulders.
Staring at the two fighters he wondered who he should pick. He’d seen both people and zombies prevail over each other during the Zombie War. Hard to say who’d win on this one.
“Well, let’s go with this guy,” he said. He was then prompted to place his bet. He had only thirty bucks in the pot and not a whole heck of a lot of time to waste here at Blood Bay Arena so he decided to lay it all down. Not only did he pick a winner, but he guessed the length of the bout and who of the two would be pulverized over the other. Ten-to-one shot at winning, but he figured it’d be a nice payout if he nailed it.
Thank you. Enjoy the fight, the screen said.
Mick put the Controller back, folded his hands and waited.
Not long after, the lights went out.
Being one with the dark wasn’t anything new for Kanaye. If anything, the past fifteen years were nothing but living in the dark, half the time physically, the other half mentally.
No one knew he was a ninja, not even his family. Though ninja’s weren’t heroes, he took up the mantle of one during the Zombie War, sticking to the shadows, tracking his mother’s and sister’s movements each day for ten long years as they moved from place to place, trying to stay alive and ward off the undead. There was a price, though. His mother and sister thought he was dead. Before the war, when he first donned his black shinobi shōzoku and covered his face with a tenugui, he never told them. Even before then he never told them about the long hours after school and university studying ninjutsu, mastering the art. Even the school he studied at was a secret. It didn’t even have a name, but instead was led in an old abandoned warehouse on a Tokyo pier by Master Xu—a seventh generation ninja—four nights a week.
He knew his mother would never understand fighting nor would his sister. Both were conservative women and despite their strong sense of tradition, they abhorred violence for it was brutality that took Kanaye’s father away from them when Kanaye was just eight years old. His father had been the target of a ninja assassin. The murderer was never found, but the theory was his father bore a remarkable resemblance to a criminal leader at the time and was mistakenly killed as a result.
Kanaye took up ninjutsu as a means of vengeance, unaware in those early days there was more than one ninja clan in Japan. He thought that by joining he’d work his way up the ranks and discover who his father’s killer had been. It never came to pass.
The darkness. It was where he kept himself in daylight hours, the real Kanaye secluded deep within his mind, the ninja inside clinging to the shadows of his heart while on the outside emitting the façade of a student fascinated with computer science.
He wasn’t home when the Zombie War began and his mother and sister had escaped the house while he was at school. That same night he was to go on a field exercise for Master Xu, but instead of doing so he donned his shinobi shōzoku and set out to find his family.
He rescued them as a pack of zombies tried to corner them near Satō Noodles.
After the war, he didn’t know if he could face his family and tell them he was still alive. They already grieved for him and appeared to be moving on. Besides, he still hadn’t found his father’s killer. When Zombie Fight Night started, he thought maybe there his father’s assassin would surface if the fiend was still alive, so he made his way into the fighting circuit, hoping that eventually he and the assassin would cross paths.
Now, the darkness surrounding Kanaye was like a warm blanket, a sense of comfort. He dreaded the moment when the lights would burst on, not for their brightness but for what they represented: life away from the shadows. He had been secreting himself in the night for so long that living in the light like most others . . . . He didn’t know if he could do it or even remember how.
The buzzer sounded and the arena lit up.
&n
bsp; Kanaye let his eyes adjust as the iron ring across from him filled with blue light.
It slid to the side and the dead began to rise.
The zombie came to the surface, filthy baggy clothes and all. The tarnished shackles around its wrists matched the leathery blotches marking its gray skin. Its facial hair was patchy and wiry. It wore a bandana, one that was red and ripped on the left side, a puff of crusty and dry black hair poking out. The sash around the creature’s waist was especially interesting and bore a gold embroidered flower against a satiny-smooth brown that was clean and out of place against the filthy ghoul. The stench of rot and years of decay caused Kanaye’s stomach to twitch despite his years of training to withstand unpleasant smells and bad foods.
Pirates, Kanaye thought. The one before him must have come from another time because he hadn’t heard of the pirates of today still wearing their clothes of old, yet he also didn’t discount the possibility. The oceans and seas were vast and there were still many islands and secret inlets yet to be discovered. Some crews could have held up in those covert places for generations enjoying their previous spoils.
The buzzer sounded again and the pirate’s shackles clanged to the floor.
The man shuffled toward Kanaye, arms outstretched. This was going to be easy. Analyzing his opponent was ingrained within him and each of the zombie’s movements—obvious or subtle—registered inside a couple of seconds. Slow shuffle of feet. Hands shaky thanks to the rotting arms with barely the strength to hold themselves up. Mouth open, ready to bite down hard. One eye gouged to pieces; the other missing an eyelid. Options to counter: plenty.
Unlike the other fighters Kanaye knew of, he wasn’t obligated to give the audience a show. If anything, the only preference Tony Sterpanko gave him was to “do that spinning stuff you guys do and jump around a lot,” and even then, those items weren’t mandatory.
Kanaye let the zombie get close and just when the dead pirate moved to grab him, Kanaye ducked and slid to the left, executing a sharp side kick into the zombie’s ribs. The pirate folded to the right, his body now nearly in half. He stumbled a few steps away. If Kanaye hadn’t withheld his strength, he could have easily sent his foot through the zombie’s flesh.
The dead man growled. Kanaye covered ground quickly, crossing one foot in front of the other. He jumped in the air, spun and snapped his foot out, the side of his foot spiking the zombie in the nose. The creature’s head jerked back from the impact.
The crowd cheered.
Kanaye stepped in, not allowing the zombie to recover, and delivered two swift punches to the creature’s chest, a fast right hook to its face, then a spinning back hand hard against its jaw. The ghoul teetered to the side, confusion written on its face.
Practice dummy, Kanaye thought. Upon studying these creatures, they didn’t seem to feel pain but instead only impacts and jolts, anything that upset their stride.
Kanaye decided to pour on the assault, but not before drawing some blood. He viewed this particular fight as training. The pirate moved in. Kanaye let it grab his arm. He then took its wrist in one hand and slammed the palm of the other against the creature’s elbow, popping the bone through the flesh. Creamy black blood splashed out. With a swift heel, he stomped on the zombie’s knee, his foot cleaving the knee cap off. Blood stained the creature’s pants. He kicked the same spot again, folding the knee against the joint. The dead man’s leg went inward then snapped off completely. Kanaye avoided a quick nip to his hand and socked the creature in the face, derailing its searching mouth for a moment, then grabbed the thing by the collar, dragged it around and punched it straight in the chest. The zombie’s severed leg fell out of its pants as the creature flew back against the cage.
A look of almost disbelief and anger flashed across its face, as if saying all it wanted was a meal and Kanaye denied him that.
You better believe I did, Kanaye thought.
The dead man pushed off from the cage, teetered on the one leg, then began falling forward.
Kanaye darted in, brought his lead foot around in a sharp crescent kick from inside right to outside left and snapped his heel across the zombie’s head so fast that, combined with the dead man falling face first, he swiftly guided the creature to the ground, his foot still against its head.
Sticking his fingers out and hardening his hand like a board, Kanaye shoved his wooden-like fingertips into the back of the zombie’s neck, breaking it. Another hit and he punctured the flesh. A quick jerk upward with his other hand holding the zombie’s tuft of hair through the bandana and the head was removed from the body. Blood leaked out from the neck.
Kanaye stood, dropped the head, then waited for the lights to go out so he could vanish once more.
I won! Mick thought. I won! Man, three hundred bucks just like that. In the old days that took me two days to earn, a whole sixteen hours. Three hundred beans. Clams. Moola.
Anna was going to be thrilled, he knew, and, boy, did they need the cash. Now they could get a fresh batch of groceries, get some much-needed clothing and not feel the pinch for once.
“She’s gonna love me for this,” he said softly.
He leaned forward and picked up the Controller and scrolled to the next fight. He liked what he saw.
Okay, quick debate: I could go and give Anna the money. She’ll kiss me and we might even make love tonight. It’s been a long time since we did that, her mood kind of deterring things in that arena. Anna. Her perfect—okay, focus. Go, or stay here and see what happens. Maybe just a small bet, like, ten bucks? I could double that. Three-twenty. ’Kay, fifty bucks. If I win, I’m up to four hundred. Oh man. Yeah. Four hundred. His heart rate picked up at the thought. Three hundred. Wow, but double or nothing could mean six hundred beans before the night’s out. That’s groceries, clothes, maybe a new front door ’cause the one we have now has a huge crack in it. And doors weren’t cheap. Six hundred. Six hundred. Six hundred . . .
He let out a slow exhale through pursed lips. Quietly to himself: “Six hundred, if I win.” He squeezed the Controller tight. “Just do it.” His fingers wouldn’t move. I should go. But his legs wouldn’t budge either. Six hundred, maybe more if I put a guess on someone just obliterating the other guy. “Six hundred.” He exhaled slowly again. “Okay, just get it out. Just do it.” He worked his fingers quickly, laying it all down on the line.
Man, I’m stupid. Dumb move. He checked the screen to see if there was an option to cancel his bet. There wasn’t. No turning back now. Anna’s gonna kill me if I blow it. But I also don’t have to tell her. Just say I lost the fifty bucks I started with and it’s all good. She can live with that. I hope.
He put the Controller back and tried to ignore the sweat forming all over his body.
Thee hundred bucks on the line.
Double or nothing.
What could go wrong?
About the Author
A.P. Fuchs is the author of many novels and short stories, most of which have been published. He is also known for his superhero series, The Axiom-man Saga, and is the author of Blood of the Dead, the first novel in the shoot ’em up zombie trilogy, Undead World. He also edited the zombie anthologies Dead Science and Vicious Verses and Reanimated Rhymes: Zany Zombie Poetry for the Undead Head.
Fuchs lives and writes in Winnipeg, Manitoba, with his wife, Roxanne, and two sons, Gabriel and Lewis.
Visit his corner of the Web at
www.canisterx.com
Check out the Undead World Trilogy at www.undeadworldtrilogy.com
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