by JJ Zep
A movement at the periphery caught his attention, the door to the rooftop swinging open. A man stepped through, scanned the area and then said something over his shoulder. Chris tensed. The man was big and burly, with a nose that had been pulped at least a couple of times. He was wearing an expensive, tailored suit that seemed out of place against his brutish features. The bulge, clearly visible under his coat, betrayed the weapon he was packing.
“Kel,” Chris said. “I want you to walk away, get to the other side of the roof, behind the maintenance shack. Do it now.”
“What is it?” Kelly said. She tried to turn, but Chris held her.
“Just do it,” he said. “No questions, no looking around. Go!”
He eased Kelly gently aside and looked towards the doorway where another man had now stepped through, this one of equal height and girth, a block of granite, blowing hard from the climb up the stairs. Joe had noticed them too. He ushered Ana aside and turned to face them. “This is a private party,” he said.
The men made no reply. They stood to either side of the door, a couple of immovable stone sentries. Now a third man stepped between them, this one diminutive, effeminate. Chris recognized him immediately, Councilman Joseph Barlow, mayoral candidate in the upcoming elections.
five
Ruby looked across the twenty-foot expanse of the fighting cage, a domed structure of roughly welded rebar and angle iron. A couple of attendants were at work, one of them disengaging the locks securing a steel roll-up door that was connected to the cage by a short run, the other holding a rope attached to a pulley system that would ratchet the door open. Whatever was beyond that door had these men scared. She could see it in their quick, jumpy movements, could all but smell it in their acrid sweat. Even the crowd, most of them drunk on cheap, homebrew liquor, had fallen silent. They pushed up against the barricades, rubbernecking for a first glimpse of Ruby’s opponent.
She shifted her gaze to take in the interior of the Wayside Tavern, a ramshackle structure that might once have been a warehouse. A real shithole, her Uncle Joe would call it, and it was difficult to disagree. It was hardly the “finest establishment in Hackensack, New Jersey” that the half-dead neon outside proclaimed it to be.
Why are you doing this again? The question popped into her head unbidden. It was a good question too, one she’d been thinking about a lot lately. It wasn’t for the thrill of battle, that much was certain. Any initial combat high she might have experienced had worn off even before fight clubs had been banned in Manhattan, even before the clubs in Queens and Brooklyn had begun refusing to give her any fights. So why was she doing this? The truth was, she didn’t know. What she did know was that this was the last. There was no joy in it anymore.
A dull thud drew her attention back to the cage, the ring announcer tapping against a microphone before starting his blurb. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to fight night at the Wayside Tavern.” A murmur of assorted taunts and curses from the patrons. “Tonight we have a special treat in store for you. Yes, after a month and a half of wrestling gators, bears and other critters, Cutie Pie finally gets to sample human flesh again.”
This time the crowd roared their approval. The announcer stilled them with a wave of his hand.
“Or perhaps,” he continued, ”we shouldn’t count our zombies before they’re dead, because tonight Cutie comes up against his biggest challenge yet. She may look like just a slip of a girl, ladies and gentlemen, but you all saw her in action earlier this evening, you saw what she did to Fester Jarvis.”
“My grandma could kick Fester’s butt,” someone shouted, setting off a volley of laughter.
“Be that as it may,” the ring announcer countered. “But rumor has it that this little girl was once a trained assassin for The Corporation. So let’s put our hands together and give it up for… Judy Collins!”
That’s Ruby, you asshole, Ruby thought as cheers and wolf whistles rippled through the Wayside. His introduction interested her though, how could he possibly know she’d once worked for the Corporation? She decided it was probably just an attempt to talk her up, maybe encourage a few late bets. Right now the odds chalked on the board were running a hundred to one against her.
The ring announcer continued his introduction, now welcoming Cutie Pie to the arena. Ruby blanked him out, focused her mind on the task ahead of her. The cage was more compact than most she’d fought in, but that wasn’t necessarily a problem. She had a strategy for fighting Z’s at close quarters. That strategy involved taking the fight to them, relying on her superior speed of thought and movement, finishing things quickly. It was pointless trying to evade a Z in a fighting cage. Zombies never tired. They just kept coming after you until you did.
A loud clatter drew her thoughts back to the present. The steel door bulged outward as her opponent threw himself against it, coaxing a gasp from the punters, forcing them into a collective backward step.
“He’s keen,” the ring announcer laughed. He nodded towards the attendant holding the rope. The man tightened the rope around his fist and gave it a yank, lifting it a few inches. Long fingers tipped with filthy, lethal-looking claws immediately pushed through and grasped the underside of the gate. The roller door flew up, releasing the stench of spoiled offal.
Ruby shuffled instinctively into her fighter’s stance, left foot forward, knees slightly bent, balance shifted onto her toes. She brought her hands up, palms extended, took in a breath, released it slowly.
Cutie Pie scurried out of the darkness on all fours, dropped into the cage and stood to his full height. Ruby took a step back and angled her gaze upward. The Z looked like a seven-footer, a gnarled, lean giant with a grayish complexion and a row of deep cuts running diagonally across his face, revealing putrid flesh in which maggots twisted and boiled. His lips had been chewed away, leaving a jagged hole that rendered his over-large teeth into a perpetual and terrible grin. The crowd drew in a shared breath at the sight of him.
Ruby expected him to come staggering forward in the time-honored, brainless attack strategy Z’s employed. Cutie didn’t disappoint. He lurched for her, moving faster than any Z she’d ever fought. She was going to have to stay out of the grasp of those long arms and put him on the deck where she could attack the head. She feinted left and aimed a kick at his knee, felt her boot make contact. Cutie’s leg buckled, but he kept his footing and swiped at her, his black claws missing by a whisker as she ducked under them.
Ruby danced away and came up behind him. For a moment, Cutie seemed to have lost her. She used that to her advantage. She swept hard with her right foot, catching him in the ankles, simultaneously directing a short jab at the base of his spine. Cutie pitched forward and landed on his knees and Ruby shuffled to his blind side and aimed a kick at his head. Once again though, his quickness surprised her. Cutie snaked out a hand, and Ruby felt his crushing grip close on her ankle. If he’d held her then, slammed her into the ground or into the bars, Ruby would have been done for. Instead, Cutie tossed her across the cage.
She hit the ground hard, slid across it and slammed into the metal frame. A whole galaxy seemed to explode in her head and even through the leather jumpsuit she felt a layer of skin removed from her elbow and shoulder. A trickle of blood dripped into her eye. She swatted it aside, blinked to clear her vision and heard a roar from the crowd as Cutie Pie closed in.
She tried to stand, but she was pressed up against the bars and the curvature of the cage prevented her from doing so. She dropped to her knees and was about to scurry away when an unorthodox idea occurred to her. She executed it immediately, darting forward on hands and knees, evading Cutie’s grasp, passing between his legs, coming up behind him. She was on her feet in a flash and before Cutie could react, she grasped his ankles and pulled hard.
Cutie plunged forward, momentum and body weight forcing his head between the bars, bringing him to a shuddering halt against one of the horizontal supports. He wrenched left and right, desperate to free himself. Ruby wasn’t g
oing to wait around for that to happen. She leapt into the air and caught the bars forming the roof of the cage, hovered there with her knees drawn in. The Z seemed to have finally figured out what he needed to do to work himself free. He straightened his head and started withdrawing it. Ruby stamped down hard, bringing both feet to bear on Cutie’s shoulder blades. The Z’s body was forced downward while the horizontal strut held his neck in place, a makeshift guillotine that ripped his head from his body. It plopped to the ground, rolled a couple of times and came to rest with its insane grin directed towards the heavens. The patter of blood from his neck was clearly audible over the stunned silence of the crowd.
six
“Forgive the intrusion, and also the dramatic entrance,” Councilman Barlow said. “Unfortunately, such precautions are necessary in these troubled times. Oh, for the days when the worst your opponent could do was to accuse you of being un-American. These days it’s a knife in an alleyway or a grenade dropped into your coat pocket.” He lifted the coffee cup to his lips, took a sip that was hardly a sip at all. “Good coffee, Mrs. Collins,” he said. “Love what you’ve done with the apartment, too.”
“Thank you,” Kelly said. She didn’t like Barlow. Chris picked it up in her tone. Barlow probably picked up on it too, he was suddenly straight to business.
“Let me cut to the chase, Chris,” he said. “The elections are a touch over five weeks away and as things stand there’s no way I can win this thing.”
He paused, perhaps inviting a comment. When Chris said nothing, he continued.
“Now you might say that’s just the way of the world, that people are entitled to vote whichever way they choose. Thing is Chris, this city won’t survive another term under Mayor Rosenthal.” He scooped up a miniscule fragment of cake from the plate in front of him, nibbled at it and gave a nod of approval.
“Now,” he continued. “You’re probably thinking I’m being melodramatic. I assure you, I am not. This suicidal plan the man has of reclaiming the wastelands, of settling folks on Staten Island. Sheer madness.”
“With all due respect, Councilman. I don’t think its madness at all. I think it’s quite noble in fact.”
“Noble perhaps, viable no,” Barlow said.
“How so?”
“Do you know how much manpower it would take to carry out the program the mayor is proposing?”
“I would have thought it would be self sustaining. Folks in the other boroughs, and over the river in Jersey, are under constant threat from Z’s and bandits. Offer them the chance to move to Manhattan or to Staten Island and I’m sure they’ll be prepared to work for the opportunity, to fight even.”
“So we open our doors to the great unwashed?”
“Not exactly how I’d put it, Councilman.”
Barlow looked across the table at him, a smile playing on his lips, a politician’s smile. “Perhaps I misspoke,” he said eventually. The thing is Chris, I’m not entirely against Rosenthal’s ideas.”
“That contradicts what you’ve been saying at your rallies, doesn’t it?”
“If you’d allow me to finish,” Barlow said, clearly annoyed. “I’m not opposed to Rosenthal’s idea in principle. I just see the implementation differently, that’s all.”
Now that’s a damn lie, Chris thought. Out loud he said, “That’s all very interesting, Councilman. I just don’t understand why we’re discussing it over my kitchen table at two in the morning.”
Barlow chuckled. “Forgive me, Chris,” he said. “I have a tendency towards abstraction at times, the politician’s curse, I’m afraid.” He was suddenly serious. “I want you to join our fight, Chris, to stand as a candidate for councilman on my ticket. What do you say?”
Chris had half-expected this when Barlow had first asked if they “might have a chat,” so he’d had some time to prepare a response. There was no way he was going to stand as a candidate for Barlow’s New Deal Party, or any political party for that matter. But he couldn’t just come right out and say it. His family was settled in New York now. The last thing he needed was to make powerful enemies.
“Me? But why me?” he said, feigning surprise.
“Come now, Chris,” Barlow said. “No need for modesty. Everyone knows how highly regarded you are in these parts. Folks haven’t forgotten that you rid this town of the scourge that was Bronson Chavez. Not only that, but it was you that restored order to the post-Chavez chaos.”
“My daughter got rid of Chavez,” Chris said. “And as for restoring order, I think you’ll find that the credit belongs to Joe Thursday and Dave Bamber.”
“Nonetheless, you’re the one the rank and file look to, the local boy made good, the boxing champion, the folk hero. Hell, if you were to run for mayor, neither Rosenthal nor I would stand a chance.”
“Maybe I should just do that then,” Chris said. It was a joke, but Barlow’s reaction was telling. For someone who earned a living hawking bullshit to people, he hadn’t learned to mask his emotions very well.
“Just kidding,” Chris said. “Thing is, Councilman, I’m a boxer. I run a gym for fighters. I’m no politician.”
“You were though, in Lancaster.”
“That didn’t end well,” Chris said. “Look, I’m flattered by your interest. I’m saying no.”
Barlow was grinning again, searching his face, probing for some give. His final riposte was the one Chris expected. “Will you at least think about it?”
“I have,” Chris said. “I’m sorry, Councilman.”
“Oh well,” Barlow said. “I tried.” He lifted himself out of his chair, made a fuss of straightening his coat. “Can I at least count on your vote?”
“Now Councilman,” Chris said. “You should know the constitution guarantees me a secret ballot.”
Barlow chuckled at that, but there was little humor in his laugh. “Mrs. Collins,” he said and stalked from the room.
“What an asshole,” Kelly said as the apartment door closed behind him.
seven
“One hundred and six, one hundred and seven, one hundred and eight.” Chez Burns counted out the grubby bills on the counter, then stacked them together and slid them towards Ruby.
“You’re twelve dollars short,” Ruby said. “Forty dollars a fight, three fights, I make that a hundred and twenty.”
“Ten percent goes to the house,” Burns said. “Call it an agency fee.”
Ruby looked back at the man behind the bar. Burns was gaunt and stooped with a mouth populated by blackened, crooked teeth. He wore large, looped earrings in either ear, an array of smaller ones in his eyebrows and nose. His face and arms were extensively tattooed, intricate patterns featuring snakes and skulls and flames decorating every inch of skin. He was also lying through his rotten teeth. She considered calling him out and decided against it. She wasn’t in this for the money. Most of the time she handed her winnings over to the first person she encountered, or simply tossed it away.
“Yeah well, enjoy my twelve bucks,” she said. “Buy yourself a rat casserole. My sword?”
Burns reached under the bar, retrieved the Katana and placed it reverently on the counter. “She’s a beauty,” he said. “You wouldn’t perhaps be interested in selling her, would you? I could offer you a good price.”
“Not interested,” Ruby said. She snatched up the sheath, swung the sword over her back and fastened the clasp at the front. “Pleasure doing business with you,” she said and turned away.
“Er… miss?” Burns said from behind her. Ruby turned and scowled at him. It was three in the morning. She wanted out of here.
Burns cleared his throat and leaned forward. “Feller in the booth over there wants to buy you a drink.”
Ruby followed his gaze. At this time of the morning, even a twenty-four hour drinking establishment like the Wayside was more or less empty of patrons. One or two drunkards still staggered about, while a few others were passed out and hadn’t yet been ejected by the bouncers. The man sitting in the booth Burns w
as indicating, was neither drunk nor passed out. He sat stock straight, looking directly in front of him, the light from the bar reflected back off his eyeglasses.
“Do I look like the kind of girl trying to get picked up in a dump like this?” Ruby said.
“No, you don’t understand,” Burns said. “That’s Scolfield.”
“And?”
“He runs the biggest fight club in Jersey, audience by invitation only. Man you should see it, pitched battles, a hundred Z’s in the arena at a time, mazes, chariot races. It’s like fucking Gladiator.”
“The question remains…and?”
“And he pays well too, a thousand a fight they say.”
“Not interested,” Ruby said. She turned to go.
“Wait!” Burns said, reaching over the bar and placing a hand on her shoulder.
Ruby half turned and gave him a glare, and Burns removed his hand in a hurry. “Here’s the thing,” he said, voice and eyes pleading. “He spotted me a hundred bucks to get you to talk to him. You walk away and I’m up shit creek without a paddle.”
“So? Why’s that my problem? When did you become my social secretary?”
“Please?” Burns pleaded. “Pretty please?”
Ruby looked from Burns to the man sitting in the booth. She had no interest in helping Burns out of the tight spot he’d worked himself into, no particular interest in talking to Scolfield either. But she had to admit that the fight club Burns had described intrigued her. You’re done with the fight game, Ruby, her inner voice cautioned. I know, she answered, but this isn’t fighting, this is just talking.
“Okay,” she said. “Five minutes and that’s it.”
“You’ll do it?” Burns said. “Thank you, oh thank you.”
He came out from behind the bar, and walked her over to where Scolfield sat. “Mr. Scolfield?” he said as they approached. “This here’s –”
