Killer Move

by T E Stouyer

  Not wasting a second, the mercenary fired a couple of blind shots through a shelf, at the spot where he expected Damien would be.

  But when he ran around the tall furniture and checked, no one was there.

  “Behind you!” Arianne shouted as she lay on the floor several feet away.

  Kincade promptly spun around.

  He had no idea how, but Damien was now standing right in front of him. Reacting quickly, Kincade started to raise his gun. But his opponent gripped the muzzle before he could level it.

  Assessing the situation in a heart-beat, the former soldier realized the worst course of action would be to engage in a struggle over the firearm. His opponent’s unnatural strength would render any such attempt futile. Instead, he ejected the magazine and let go of the weapon.

  Damien’s face twitched in surprise.

  This brief moment of hesitation created an opening for Kincade, who used it to land a strong left cross to his opponent’s jaw.

  Normally, this would have been a knock-out punch. But in this case, it was only enough to turn Damien’s head and force him to take a step back.

  What the hell was that? Kincade thought to himself, wondering whether he had just hit a person or a stone statue.

  Since his punches were clearly not going to be effective, Kincade decided to try something else. He slithered behind his opponent, wrapped his left arm around Damien’s neck, and interlocked his fingers to complete a choke hold.

  That turned out to be a mistake.

  This time, it was Kincade’s face that twitched. He was shocked at how little resistance he could offer as Damien effortlessly broke free of the hold using plain brute strength.

  The silver-haired man then flung his opponent upwards and slammed him against the ceiling.

  The impact was so violent that the air was forced out of Kincade’s lungs.

  The mercenary dropped face down on the floor. But he didn’t have time to catch his breath. He immediately gazed up and saw the sole of a shoe hovering above his head.

  Damien intended to crush him as he would a bug.

  Alert to the danger, Arianne charged at her brother, hoping to reach him in time to prevent the worst.

  When he heard the rapid footsteps getting closer, Damien peered over his shoulder.

  But Arianne had already closed the gap between them.

  She jumped and bounced off the wall by pushing on it with her right leg. With one powerful thrust, she delivered a spinning kick to her brother’s face, propelling him head first into a large shelf.

  The heavy furniture tumbled over, dragging another two along with it, and leaving Damien buried under a sizable heap of paper, wood, and metal.

  Kincade took a deep breath and then sprang to his feet. The gun’s magazine still laid next to him. But as he scanned the floor for his weapon, Arianne tugged him by the arm.

  “Let’s get out of here!” she said.

  Kincade wasn’t the type to run away from a fight. Not even from this one. Besides, he figured that, with Damien unarmed and momentarily out of play, if they could find either one of the two guns lying around somewhere, it would give them a decisive advantage.

  But Arianne wasn’t the least bit interested in debating the matter. She hauled her companion across the room so vigorously, he thought she would rip his arm clean off.

  As they crossed the adjacent room and exited into the hallway, they heard a loud thump. No doubt the sound of an angered Damien overturning the shelves as he rose from under them.

  Further down the hallway, echoes of loud voices and hurried footsteps were drawing closer by the second.

  Arianne was right. It was time to go.

  Chapter 3 – Bullies

  The young boy stood in front of the blackboard holding a piece of chalk in his hand. He wore an unbuttoned shirt over a loose t-shirt, wrinkled pants, and muddied shoes. He looked indecisive as he stared with intense concentration at the numbers and symbols in front of him. His chin was slightly dropped and his eyebrows dipped into a serious frown.

  He had been standing like this for almost ten seconds when a strident ring broke the silence.

  “Phew.” The boy let out a heavy sigh of relief. Saved by the bell, he said to himself.

  “Very well, class, we’ll finish the corrections tomorrow,” said the teacher as her students started to bolt out the door. She took back the chalk from the boy standing at the blackboard and glowered at him. “As for you, young man, make sure you do your homework next time.”

  The boy said nothing. He calmly returned to his desk at the back of the classroom, collected his books, flung his backpack over his shoulder, and then left.

  It was the afternoon recess, a time when swarms of children invaded the schoolyard.

  Unlike some of the other kids who rushed down the stairs, skipping three or four steps with each stride, the boy slowly made his down to the ground floor. He didn’t seem particularly excited to have some free time, and didn’t appear too concerned by what was going on around him.

  But as soon as he stepped onto the sand, a young girl came running towards him, waving her arms and shouting.

  The girl had big blue eyes and brownish hair tied into two long pigtails hanging from either side of her small head. And her soft round cheeks were covered in freckles that ran across her tiny nose. She had on a yellow flowery dress that fell just below her knees and ended in white frills, and long white socks inside shiny black shoes.

  “Richie! Richie!” the girl called out as she drew nearer.

  “What is it, Laura?” the boy asked.

  “It’s David,” she said.

  “What did he do this time?”

  “He took Stewie’s new racing-car-thingy. I think those are a little silly but Stewie really likes them, and it’s his new one.”

  “Where are they?”

  The young girl turned around and pointed to one of the far-end corners of the schoolyard.

  “All right, let’s go,” said the boy as he looked straight ahead.

  He strode across the sand like a soldier marching to war, shoving aside all who happened to be in his path, and with his eyes fixed on a yet unseen enemy. Laura shuffled her little feet as she tried to keep up with him, despite making the occasional stop to apologize to those who had been bumped by her brutish companion.

  When the two arrived at the far wall, they found an older boy and two of his acolytes taunting a smaller kid by dangling a toy car just outside of his reach.

  “It’s not funny, David. Give it back,” the smaller boy cried.

  “I warned you, Stewart. I told you to stop bringing those stupid toys to school, didn’t I?”

  “Alfred and Maggie wanted to see it. I was just showing it to them. Come on, give it back. My dad just bought it for me last week.”

  “Just tell him you lost it,” said David. “And if you snitch on me, we’ll beat you up every day after class until the summer holidays.”

  David Tucker was one of the oldest kids in the school—by virtue of having repeated a grade twice—and he was definitely the most hated. His favorite pastime consisted of harassing younger students, boys and girls alike. He particularly enjoyed playing humiliating pranks and confiscating toys, snacks, or anything else that might catch his eye. His reign of terror had been going on for over a year and a half now.

  Recently, he had enlisted the help of other kids to carry out his reprehensible deeds. A couple of them were afflicted with a similar kind of mean stupidity as David, but the rest had joined him out of fear of reprisal. They figured that if they helped him torment other students, it would safeguard them from ending up on the receiving end of those mistreatments. It was a cowardly reasoning. But one that, thus far, had yielded the desired result.

  With no one to challenge him over the months, and this being his final year before graduating to high-school, David Tucker had grown bolder and crueler.

  At the beginning of the semester, a breeze of hope had passed through the school with t
he arrival of a new transfer student. He was considerably bigger than anyone else his age, and he always had a mean look on his face.

  But not much was known about the newcomer. At first, a few boys had tried to strike up a conversation with him during PE, or in the canteen. But every one of them had been shut down in a radical manner. No one had dared to try after that.

  The other students had hoped he might be the one to finally stand up to David and his gang, but their wish had never materialized. The new boy had made it abundantly clear he wanted nothing to do with anyone at the school. He almost always arrived late for class, invariably kept to himself during recess, and left as soon as the bell rang.

  Only one other student had ever been seen talking to him. Laura Hall, a sixth-grader. Despite his intimidating size and scary expression, she seemed completely at ease with the new boy.

  Eventually, the other kids noticed that on the few occasions the new transfer student made it to school on time, he always arrived together with Laura. And whenever it was time to go home, he always looked for her so that they would leave together.

  It didn’t take long for rumors to spread.

  It was said that the boy was a child that Laura’s father had had with another woman, and that since the woman had died, the boy had come to live with Laura and her family.

  Coincidently, whoever had started that baseless rumor hadn’t been too far off the mark. The boy had indeed moved into Laura’s home. He was a foster child, placed with her family by social services after his previous foster parents had been arrested on drug charges.

  For Laura’s parents, the transition period had been fraught with difficulties. But for Laura, it had been a simple and smooth adjustment. Children sometimes have a way of breezing past such issues. She’d never had a brother before, and now she did. Besides, the boy was easy enough to get along with. He mostly kept to himself, never touched her stuff, and the dog really liked him—a very significant marker for her. Both kids had accepted their new circumstances as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  “Hey, you! Give him back his stupid toy.”

  David Tucker froze. No student had ever dared to address him in such a dismissive tone before. He was so flabbergasted that it took him a moment to react and turn around. “Ah! You’re that new guy. I’ve seen you around school. Since you’re new, maybe you don’t know how things work around here. I’m in charge. Nobody tells me what to do. Isn’t that right, guys?”

  The two behind him nodded and mumbled something in agreement.

  The new guy approached them menacingly and said, “I won’t ask again.”

  David recoiled. He wasn’t used to being defied so openly. He sized up his challenger from top to bottom. The new kid must have had two or three inches on him. And he was much bulkier, but not from excess fat, his body simply appeared to have more volume.

  David tried to stare down his challenger. But the boy wouldn’t back down. He stared back at David with unflinching resolve.

  During the course of his young life, the new kid had encountered his share of bullies. He knew they acted tough only when dealing with people far weaker than themselves, or when they enjoyed the advantage of vastly superior numbers. He believed them to be spineless creatures who always folded at the slightest sign of resistance. Especially, when dealing with an opposition on equal footing.

  This bully was no exception. Despite the three-to-one advantage, David decided to avoid a direct confrontation. “There, you can have it back,” he said as he pitched the toy at Stewart’s feet. The miniature car hit the ground so hard that small fragments broke off.

  “David Jeremiah Tucker, you can be such a jerk!” Laura shouted in anger. She went over to Stewart who had picked up his broken toy and helped him remove the dust from it. “Sorry about your car, Stewie,” she said, trying to comfort her friend. “Come on, Richie, Let’s g—”

  When Laura turned around, she saw her foster-brother go after the three bullies as they walked away, looking pleased with themselves.

  “Richie! Where are you going?” she called out.

  The boy wasn’t listening.

  It had taken every iota of self-control he had to keep from bashing David’s head the moment he had seen him. But that last spiteful act had pushed him over the edge. He grabbed the bully by the shoulder, turned him around, and gave him a long-overdue punch on the nose.

  David fell on his backside and covered his face with his hands as he muttered some unintelligible threats.

  He eventually looked around for his two acolytes, only to see their backs from a distance as they ran away.

  Too cowardly to fight on his own, David tried to imitate his two light-footed companions. Unfortunately for him, the new boy wasn’t the type to settle down easily once he got riled up. Despite Laura’s pleas, he grabbed David by the back of his collar and belt, and tossed him into the sandbox a few feet away.

  Chapter 4 – Rescue

  As Rock flew parallel to the ground before crashing into a row of motorcycles parked on the curb, the long-forgotten memory from his middle-school days surged back to the surface.

  As a child, Richard Reinhart had only gotten into very few fights. There had been no need. He had always been much bigger and much stronger than the other kids. He knew it, and so did they. So, no matter how strong the disagreements, or how high tensions mounted, it rarely escalated to the point of physical violence.

  For a long time, he had believed that he had simply been growing up faster than the other kids but that they eventually would have caught up to him. But as the years went by, he had come to realize that it would not be the case. In fact, the opposite happened. The difference in size and strength between him and everybody else grew even further.

  After he had joined the military, and later on, had teamed-up with Nate, Rock had often found himself engaged in hand-to-hand combat against several opponents at once. It had never been a problem for him. He was a force of nature.

  But this time was different.

  There was nothing natural about this particular foe.

  As he lay on his back, Rock recalled the numerous times he had thrown someone against a wall, a table, or some other hard surface. This was the first time, as far back as he could remember, that he had been on the receiving end of such a rough treatment. His colossal size and considerable weight had always shielded him from this experience. So, this is what it must have felt like? he thought to himself. A faint smile escaped him as he hurried back to his feet. I almost feel bad for all those poor bastards, now.

  He leapt away from the pile of two-wheelers, intending to rush back to Ashrem’s aid, but a sharp pain to his right ribcage stopped him in his tracks.

  “Ouch!” I must have cracked a rib or two, he thought. But he didn’t have time to worry about such a minor injury.

  A few feet away, in the middle of the road, the fight had taken a turn for the worse. Jenkins had his hands wrapped around Ashrem’s throat.

  The young man tried to break free, but his efforts were in vain. He sunk to his knees as his strength waned.

  “Crap!” Rock exclaimed.

  The murderous intent in Patrick Jenkins’ eyes was unmistakable. He clearly meant to squeeze the life out of his opponent.

  Rock dashed towards them, ignoring the pain shooting through his body with each step he took.

  He tackled Jenkins like a defensive lineman charging a quarterback.

  It was a strong impact. Strong enough to send Jenkins rolling back all the way to the curb.

  Rock then knelt down to check on Ashrem.

  The young man was unconscious, a few more seconds and he probably would have died.

  Jenkins promptly got back to his feet and squared off against the giant. It wasn’t every day he encountered someone capable of knocking him to the ground so easily, and this man had done it twice in the space of a few minutes. It was as though Jenkins was acknowledging Rock as a serious adversary. One that needed to be dealt with, the same as
Ashrem.

  Rock stood up and shot a quick glance at his companion. With Ashrem out of commission, making a run for it was not an option.

  And just as the giant told himself their situation couldn’t possibly be any worse, a black SUV turned the corner and screeched to a stop behind Jenkins.

  Three masked men emerged from the vehicle, brandishing assault rifles.

  They ran up to Jenkins and lined up next to him.

  “What are your orders, sir?” one of them asked.

  At that moment, Rock truly believed this was the end of the line. But when he took another look at Jenkins, he started to breathe easier.

  The appearance of his men had prompted Jenkins to regain his composure. The rage that had been boiling inside of him a moment ago had vanished, or rather, had been contained once again.

  “We’re taking them with us,” said Jenkins. “I have some questions for the big one. Get them into the vehicle.”

  The masked men were about to execute the order when, out of nowhere, Mitsuki showed up and shot one of them.

  She had come from the direction of the hotel, just like the masked men. No doubt she had spotted Jenkins chasing after Rock and Ashrem, and had decided to follow him.

  She fired at Jenkins next, but only managed to scrape him on the arm as he dived behind a light-colored sedan.

  The remaining masked men immediately returned fire as they also headed for cover.

  Mitsuki ducked behind the SUV and, holding a gun in each hand, continued to fire at Jenkins and his men, trying to keep them pinned down. “Get moving!” she shouted.

  When Rock heard her child-like voice he wondered who she was talking to. It took him a second to realize she was actually talking to him. He had dithered at first because he had recognized her, and couldn’t imagine she had come to rescue them. But that’s exactly what she was doing.

  In any case, this was his chance.

  The giant flung Ashrem over his shoulder and darted into a side alley.