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.
