This is the End 2: The Post-Apocalyptic Box Set (9 Book Collection)

by J. Thorn

  One of his friends hit me in the shoulder, but compared to Rocket it was just a love tap. I started a war between my elbow and his nose, bringing them together three times in rapid succession. His nose lost.

  The third guy punched me in the gut, then screamed when he noticed something behind me. I doubled over just as Rocket’s fist missed my head, instead connecting with the Nazi. His upper body snapped backward with a nauseating crack. He crumpled to the floor, never to goose-step again.

  “Fucking shit monkeys! It’s Roidzilla!”

  McGlade had apparently taken his nose out of the girl-on-girl action long enough to see what was going on. I tugged the folding knife off of my utility belt, opening it up. I doubted the three-inch blade would do much, but it was better than nothing.

  “Shoot him!” I screamed at McGlade.

  “With what?”

  “Your Taser!”

  “No Tesla service in dissytown, partner.”

  Rocket darted in close. His chin and shirt were soaked with blood. I jabbed with the knife, driving it into his stomach. With amazing speed he swatted my hand away. The knife remained lodged in his abs, looking tiny among the striations. He flicked it away.

  “Use your Magnum, McGlade!”

  “I didn’t bring it.”

  “Why the fuck not?”

  “I didn’t want it to get stolen. Have you seen how dangerous this place is?”

  McGlade was an asshole, but he did have a point.

  Rocket spread out his arms, trying for the bear hug. I didn’t want my insides to squeeze up out of my mouth like a tube of toothpaste, so I stepped away and kicked him in the groin again, which he ignored.

  “He’s a roider,” McGlade said. “His balls are the size of peas. If he even has any left.”

  I dropped to my knees and crawled through Rocket’s legs just before his arms closed around me. Then I did a quick spin and worked his kidneys, left right left right, like I was whaling on a heavy bag at the gym.

  Rocket grunted, and caught me with a backhand that connected with such force I was actually lifted off the ground. I landed on a torn-up pool table, fell behind it, and lay there for a second, waiting for the world to stop spinning. Before it did, Rocket was stomping over, kicking chairs and tables out of the way. His earlier, playful look had been replaced by something dark and scary.

  McGlade called out, “You seem to have the situation under control here, buddy, and everyone else is leaving, so I think I’m gonna hit the road.”

  “You’re an asshole, McGlade.”

  “Pretty much.”

  He ran out with the rest of the crowd.

  I looked around, and noticed Lewis on the floor next to me, clawing at his broken trachea and turning a shade of purple normally reserved for plums. I grabbed his dropped baseball bat, then got unsteadily to my feet, ready to hit a home run.

  Rocket hesitated when he saw the bat. He stopped, his pecs twitching, his forty-inch biceps flexing. I couldn’t get over how huge he was. A basketball had only a thirty-inch circumference. This guy’s arm was thicker than McGlade’s pudgy waist.

  The roider feinted a grab. I swung and missed. He rushed me. This time, my swing connected. I aimed at his elbow, putting all of my hundred and ninety pounds behind it, the impact making the handle vibrate in my hands.

  Rocket howled, and I aimed the next one at his head. He shifted, the bat bouncing off his overdeveloped trapezius. I was rearing back for another swing when his enormous hand grasped my face, cutting off my air. Then he began to squeeze.

  Talk about tension headaches.

  Before he could pop my skull like a grape, I switched my grip on the bat, thrusting blindly in the direction of his head. I connected with his chin and he released me. I advanced, swinging wildly. He was so big that I didn’t know if I was damaging him, but I did manage to back him up against the wall. Seven, eight, nine times I struck him, my hands stinging with each impact. He kept his head covered pretty good, so I worked the body, worked the arms, figuring something inside him had to break eventually.

  Then Rocket managed to catch the aluminum bat between his side and his arm, ripping it from my grasp. He held it out in front of him—and bent it in half.

  Then he screamed. Not a scream of pain. Not a scream of fear. This was closer to a lion’s roar—the sound of an angry predator, asserting its dominance.

  One of the reasons I didn’t use steroids, other than possible shrinkage of my masculine parts, was because I’d seen the dangers of roid rage on the job. Before timecasting, a good number of assaults involved roiders. Too much testosterone led to temporary—and in some cases permanent—insanity. During rages, some people were even immune to Taser shocks. I’d witnessed roiders bust out of flex-cuffs and break through brick walls. Any trace of humanity, logic, or common sense was lost in a roid rage. You might as well have been dealing with a mad bull.

  That was how Rocket looked—like he’d abandoned his humanity. Bending a bat was nothing for him. He could go way beyond that.

  Which was why it didn’t really surprise me when he picked up that pool table.

  What did surprise me was how far he was able to throw it.

  As soon as he pressed it to his chest I ran in the opposite direction, getting a good thirty feet away before looking around for a weapon. I figured the table—slate and metal—weighed at least twice as much as Rocket did. He wouldn’t be able to chuck an eight-hundred-pound table more than thirty feet. No way.

  Then I heard the crash and saw the pool table skidding across the floor at a high speed, plowing through overturned chairs, smashing Lewis’s head open like a dropped pumpkin, and finally banging into me.

  I rode the pool table another ten feet, and then it slammed me against the wall.

  Amazingly, I didn’t seem to be injured. It hurt, sure, and I’d be pretty bruised up, but nothing seemed broken or crushed.

  The panic set in when I tried to move.

  I couldn’t. The table had me pinned against the wall.

  I was trapped. And Rocket was heading my way.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  There are stories that, when confronted with frightening or emotionally overwhelming situations, human beings can exert feats of strength disproportionate to their size. Mothers lifting cars to save their children trapped underneath was an oft-told example.

  Those stories were complete bullshit. I couldn’t budge that pool table a single inch, no matter how hard I strained against it, and I’d never been more frightened or overwhelmed in my life. The only disproportionate thing in my entire body was my bladder, which felt enormous and clenched tighter and tighter each step closer Rocket got to me.

  The only time I’d ever been this frightened, other than the skydiving fiasco, was years ago, back when being a timecaster meant catching crooks instead of visiting grammar schools. Someone had been planting bombs in nursing homes, and following the perp’s trail led me to a cache of plastic explosives hidden under a snack table during a geriatric polka night. The six seconds ticking down on the bomb’s timer had paralyzed me with fear. There wasn’t time to get the elderly out of there, or even time for me to take cover, so my only choice was to try to defuse it.

  Looking at that bomb, I had known I was going to die. I knew it the same way I knew I’d hit the octeract point while timecasting. It was a whole-body feeling, as real and as sure as any tactile experience.

  Dying was something I desperately didn’t want to happen, so I’d waited until the last possible moment to take the long shot and disconnect one of the wires. Blue or red. Blue or red. I knew one would save me, and the other would kill me. Luckily, the wire I pulled was the right one.

  But now I didn’t have any wires to choose from. I felt the same overwhelming sense of my own demise. Death was counting down for me, and there was nothing I could do about it.

  When Rocket finally reached the pool table, he cocked his head to the side, licked his bloody lips, and stared, as if studying a bug on a pin and finding
it sexually arousing. Exhibiting superhuman self-control, I managed not to piss myself, and instead used my only remaining weapon. Truth.

  “I didn’t kill your aunt. I didn’t even know who she was. Your cousin Neil hired me to find her because she’d gone missing.”

  Some of the rage melted off his face, replaced by confusion. “Neil?”

  “Do you know your aunt used to be a man?”

  “Yeah. He invented the intranet.”

  Actually, he’d only invented the search engine the intranet used, but I saw no need to correct Rocket on that point. He raised a fist, ready to pound me into the wall.

  “That means”—I spoke quickly, flinching away and squeezing my eyes shut—“now that your aunt is dead, you’re a billionaire…”

  The blow didn’t come. I peeked open one eye. Rocket had his hand in the air, but he wasn’t throwing the punch.

  “I’m rich?”

  “Your aunt is dead. You and Neil are her only surviving relatives. You inherit all of her money and possessions. And there’s a lot.”

  He lowered his fist. “Who’s Neil?”

  “Your cousin.”

  “Don’t have no cousin. My mom only had one brother—Aunt Zelda. I’m really rich?”

  “You could hire Donald Trump the Third to be your cabana boy.”

  Rocket didn’t look enraged anymore. If anything, he appeared pensive. Maybe I’d actually have a chance to—

  “I’ll save you, Talon!”

  McGlade came running up behind Rocket. He had my tiny folding knife raised up over his head.

  “McGlade! Don’t!”

  “Die, you enormous son of a bitch!”

  McGlade stabbed Rocket in the left ass cheek. To my trained eye, it didn’t seem to be a killing blow.

  Rocket snarled, then stared down at McGlade. McGlade grabbed the knife’s handle and yanked on it.

  The knife wouldn’t budge. It was lodged to the hilt in the roider’s rock-hard gluteus maximus, and I doubted nothing less than a block and tackle would be able to remove it. McGlade grunted with effort for a few seconds, trying both overhand and underhand grips. He even tried bracing his foot against Rocket’s leg. Eventually, he gave up.

  “You got a really strong ass, buddy,” McGlade said, out of breath. He wiped his brow with his sleeve, then gave the knife handle a baby pat. “You should keep it there. Makes you look tough.”

  “You’re dead,” Rocket told him.

  “Kinda figured.”

  Then McGlade took stupid to the next level. He reared back and kicked the knife blade.

  Rocket’s eyes practically shot out of his head. He howled, the roid rage once again taking control, and backhanded McGlade so hard it could be heard in neighboring states. Then he turned his fury on me. Shoving the pool table to the side as if it weighed nothing, he grabbed my shirt and lifted me up over his head.

  I’d felt trapped before. Now I felt helpless, which was even worse.

  He tossed me, visions of broken bones and organ failure swirling through my head as I spun through the air.

  Incredibly, miraculously, I landed on something soft.

  “You broke my fall,” I said, amazed.

  “You broke my ribs,” McGlade groaned underneath me.

  I disentangled myself from McGlade and picked up an overturned metal chair. Rocket rushed at me, fists clenched. I kept him at bay like a lion tamer, poking at him without letting him grab the chair and pull it away. He still had my knife in his buttocks, but I didn’t think asking for it back was a smart idea.

  “You’re rich now,” I said, as we circled each other. “You don’t want to go to jail for murder.”

  “I’ll hire a good lawyer.”

  “Bust the chair over his Nazi head, Talon,” McGlade said from the floor. “This fucknut gets that kind of money, he’ll start the Fourth Reich.”

  Rocket turned to McGlade, snarling. I busted the chair over his Nazi head. The roider stumbled, falling to his knees. I reared back to hit him again, and he kicked out one of his enormous legs, sweeping my feet out from under me. I dropped the chair and slammed onto my back.

  McGlade screamed. I watched. Rocket had his arm. The giant snapped it in half, like it was a breadstick. I saw McGlade’s knuckles touch his elbow. He saw it, too, and lost consciousness in midscream. Then Rocket gave me his full attention.

  “No fun when they pass out,” he said. “You gonna pass out on me?”

  I felt like passing out right then.

  I’ve had some experience with violence. While timecasting discouraged most inappropriate behavior, there were still instances of two people coming to blows because they were both convinced they were right.

  Usually, violent acts were fast and ugly. Two or three quick hits, someone going down, and a hasty retreat. People didn’t like to linger. Dwelling on the violence you’ve committed, even if it was justified, was never a satisfying, wholesome experience.

  Fights—outside of a televised hyperboxing match—rarely lasted more than thirty seconds. A fight that traversed the entire length and width of a dissy P&P bar, complete with smashed furniture, bent bats, tossed pool tables, broken bones, lost teeth, stab wounds, and several deaths…It was unheard of.

  So when I forced myself to look at Rocket, it was eight kinds of surreal. This shouldn’t be happening. Not to me. Not at this moment. Not in this country.

  I’d spent most of my adult life making sure things like this didn’t happen.

  I felt overwhelmed. And tired. So tired.

  There might not be dignity in surrender. But there is finality. The willingness to give up, just so it could be over, was a powerfully tantalizing feeling. With one direct punch, Rocket could end my life. My pain would end along with it. My worries would be gone. If victory was impossible, why keep fighting?

  I took a deep breath, let it out slow, and realized I already knew the answer.

  This battle wasn’t with Rocket. There was no contest. I couldn’t beat him.

  So it wasn’t about winning.

  The battle was with myself. The measure of a man’s worth was all about what finally made him give up.

  Rocket laughed. “You gonna pass—”

  I clenched my hands and raised them.

  “Just shut the fuck up and fight, bitch.”

  For a fraction of a second, Rocket appeared uncertain. Then he came at me.

  He swung. I ducked. He feinted. I dodged. I swung. I connected. No effect. I kicked. I connected. No effect. He kicked. I jumped away. He punched. I dodged. I punched. I connected. No effect. I punched. I connected. No effect. He punched—catapulting me off my feet, flipping me end over end until I came to rest on my belly, sucking air and exhaling pain, my cold hands and shaking legs the first symptoms of going into shock.

  Rocket towered over me. He was going to reach down, grab my arm, and start twisting until things snapped. Bone, muscle, tendons, ligaments, veins, arteries, flesh, skin. To think that a human being would want to tear off another’s arm was disturbing. To think it was about to happen to me was unfathomable.

  Rocket reached down. He took my wrist.

  I scissor-kicked the bastard in the nose, hard as I could, elated when it burst like a Fourth of July firework, showering me with streams of blood.

  Then I got to my feet, again, to face him, again. This was my fate. To trade blows with this monstrosity, this grotesque parody of a human being, until he beat me to death.

  “Come on,” I said, raising my fists. “Let’s go.”

  And then I saw something on Rocket’s face I never expected to see.

  I saw fear.

  But before I could be empowered by it, and take the initiative, and make him feel what he’d undoubtedly made many men feel before he killed them, Rocket reached behind him and grabbed something in his belt.

  When he brought his hand forward, I questioned my own senses. He wasn’t holding anything. All I saw was his empty fist.

  Then he shifted, and out of nowhere, it
appeared. He shifted again. It was gone. Again. It was back. I realized what was going on. I could see it sideways, but not straight on.

  “Oh…no…” Rocket had a Nife.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Rocket with a Nife was so redundant I almost laughed at it. Sort of like giving a shark a machine gun. Nifes were for total psychos, so it wasn’t a stretch that he owned one. But the thought of facing an assailant with a Nife made me want to vomit.

  To reinforce my feelings on the matter, Rocket swung the Nife at the overturned pool table. He sliced off the corner, the thin blade cutting through the slate like it was a watermelon.

  I was dead. The thought was both depressing and liberating. The only thing left for me to decide was how I wanted to go out.

  The decision didn’t take long.

  I wanted to go out swinging.

  Rocket sauntered over, taking his time. His face was a bloody mess, making his smile all the creepier.

  “You know what this is?” he asked, waving the Nife in front of him.

  I scanned the floor around me for weapons, then realized it didn’t matter. The Nife would make easy work of a thrown chair or a plastic table leg. If I had a chain saw, it would make easy work of that as well.

  I considered my utility belt. The supplication collar needed a Tesla field to work. The wax bullets in my Glock would sting, but not much else. I had some flex-cuffs, but they weren’t big enough to get around Rocket’s wrists even if I could get close enough. My nanotube reel was empty. I didn’t see what good my flashlight or various tools would do, and my folding knife was still stuck in the roider’s ass.

  I was fuct.

  “It’s a Nife,” Rocket said. “I’m going to use it to slice off your eyelids, so you can’t look away while I skin you alive.”

  I thought of something tough and flippant to say back, but I didn’t trust my voice not to quiver.

  Rocket strolled toward me, taking his time. He waved the Nife in front of him, knowing I couldn’t take my eyes off of it, knowing I was imagining how it would feel when it cut me. According to all accounts, being sliced with a Nife didn’t hurt at first. Being only a few nanometers thin, it was so sharp a person didn’t feel it going in. It was only after the body part dropped off that the pain began.