identifying them as military police.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer began. I mused that neither ladies nor gentlemen would come to see this bloody spectacle.
“…Sad Sam’s Palace welcomes you to our main event.”
Tonight’s sacrifice had already entered the ring. He stood beside the announcer, rolling his shoulders and shaking his head. The guy was short. His muscled arms hung slack by his sides, slightly bent at the elbows like parenthesis marks on either side of his body. He was barrel-chested, with a solid slab for a stomach. The guy looked vaguely familiar; I probably had given him a beating sometime back.
The air in the Palace felt hot, and the atmosphere was electric. As I stepped onto the floor, a man to my right accidentally splashed beer on me. He stood screaming at the tops of his lungs, his voice raw, and he waved his half-gallon-sized paper cup of beer in the air like a baby shaking a rattle. Two security guards walked ahead of me, clearing a path through crowds that had jumped to their feet.
“Our challenger, weighing in at 227 pounds, your Sad Sam’s Iron Man champion of the evening, Thomas Monty!”
I heard screaming and pounding. Men jumped up and down like children pitching a tantrum, but no one could seriously believe this stiff stood a chance. He was just another Christian being fed to the clone lion. The lights suddenly cut out, leaving the entire arena dark except for the blazing lights above the ring and a spotlight that followed me. The floor quieted.
“And now, our defending champion, weighing in at 218 pounds, Wayson
The ring was a raised platform with no ropes around it. There would be chain-link walls, but those would drop from the ceiling after I entered the ring and the referee exited it—there would be no third man in the ring in this competition.
I climbed the three-step ladder near the corner. Across the ring, Monty stood in the bright white glare, the light reflecting off the sheen of perspiration on his face. Now that I was close enough to get a good look, I saw that the guard in the parking lot had sized Monty up perfectly. He stood under six feet, maybe only five-foot-eight, but he was a bear of a man with huge shoulders. Because the bright light was directly over him, dark shadows formed over Monty’s eye sockets. I could not see his eyes. No emotion showed on his face—neither hate nor anger. His lips parted, and I saw the black squares where he had once had teeth.
Sad Sam’s management did not compromise the integrity of its Iron Man competition with something so foreign as a point system. The fights ended when one of the opponents was out cold or submitted. The tough guys who entered this ring seldom called uncle, though. A few people died, but no one ever asked for mercy.
The referee looked at Monty, then at me. He mouthed something. I could not hear his whispered instructions over the crowd, but I imagined it was something along the lines of “Let’s put on a good show.” He left the ring with the announcer, and the walls, seven-foot panels of chain-link fencing, began to lower from the rafters.
I never took my eyes off Monty. Standing this close, I saw that he had not made it through the tournament unscathed. He had a black eye, and the left side of his mouth was swollen. He also had bruises on his arms and chest. I did not feel bad for him, though; we all went through that. To become champion, you had to win the Friday Night Tournament and have enough left in you to beat the standing champ.
Cogs ground as the walls slowly lowered. Monty slid his mouthpiece over his upper teeth. I already had mine in. I stared into Monty’s emotionless brown eyes. No fear showed, nor did anything resembling compassion. Perhaps he regarded me as something less than human.
The walls clanged into place. Somewhere in the darkness outside the ring, somebody rang a bell, and the fight began. Monty turned toward me and started to drift in my direction. I hit him in the mouth with a straight right, leaving a small stream of blood flowing from his already-swollen lower lip. He did not stutter or miss a step.
I took a step back. I had at least six inches of reach on this guy. I hit him along the top of his mouth with an overhand right, making sure to roll my knuckles across the point of his nose.
Monty did not so much as blink. A tough enough guy might shake off the belt across the mouth, but the knuckles to the nose would have caused anyone to wince …any normal person. If Monty had luded up before the match, the drugs would feel the pain instead of him. And if he was drugged, the chemicals would keep him demonically focused on breaking my neck. I kept my distance and long-ranged him with a few more shots.
Management supposedly tested fighters for ludes and boosters, but that was usually before their first fight. Monty might have taken something later. He might have even waited until right before this fight.
Monty lunged at me. I had no trouble dodging the attack, I simply stepped to the left, allowing him to sail on past me and charge face-first into the chain-link wall around the ring. Then I grabbed a handful of his hair with my left hand and placed my right along the nape of his neck. I rubbed his face up and down the chain-link wall like a cook grating cheese. Monty screamed like an animal, pivoted around, and broke my grip with a wild brush of his arm.
He should not have been able to break out of my grip so easily, but you can do all kinds of things with the right pharmaceuticals. Still, I had left my mark—a four-inch gash opened across his forehead. Blood rolled down his face and into his impassive eyes.
Monty stopped for just a second and smiled at me. The blood hid the outline of his lips, and red droplets speckled his teeth.
I had originally planned to carry the guy for a few minutes, maybe give the paying customers a moment to believe they were witnessing a fair fight. Now I changed my mind. Screw showmanship, I swept Monty’s right knee, contacting hard at about the two o’clock angle on the poor bastard’s kneecap. The leg broke easily enough, and Thomas Monty fell like a tree. He laughed as if I had told him a joke, shook his fist in the air like a man cursing his bad luck, then pushed down on the canvas mat and climbed right back to his feet. If I ever doubted my ability to put this guy away, it was at that moment.
When men are luded to the gills, they can stand up on broken legs; hell, I once saw a guy do jumping jacks on a broken leg. Thomas Monty stood on his good leg, then put weight on the broken one, which folded instantly. He took a step forward just the same, so I broke his good leg with a second kick.
Down went Monty, and this time he stayed down. He tried to get to his feet again, but the law of gravity conspired against him. He planted his feet, then leaned forward, trying to heave himself up, but tumbled on his face instead. And now he began to feel the pain.
I watched this from about six feet away, just out of his reach. I stood there with my arms folded across my chest to demonstrate to the ref that the fight was over, my opponent had nothing left.
Cursing at the top of his lungs, Monty pulled himself toward me. He reminded me of the Hollywood version of a mortally wounded soldier pulling himself heroically across the battlefield. I took a step away. He pulled himself closer. I took another step away. He followed. The fight would not stop until he stopped chasing me, so I scooted around the recently crippled Mr. Thomas Monty and kicked one of his broken kneecaps as hard as I could.
His shriek was neither human nor animal. It reminded me of the sound of stressed metal twisting and tearing. When he swung a fist at my leg, I sidestepped his punch and kicked his leg a second time. The pain from that kick shot its way through the haze of drugs that numbed his brain, and he curled into a ball, weeping and screaming with the shrillness of an injured child.
The referee walked to the outside of the cage and yelled, “Do you submit?”
Monty screamed, rolled around on the mat, and held his legs.
The referee asked again and got the same unintelligible response, so I kicked Monty’s knees to help clarify things. The lower half of his leg spun like a tetherball from below his kneecap. “Hey, asshole, the referee asked you a question.”
Monty howled.
“What do you want me to do?” I asked the ref. “He’s too luded to know he’s beat.”
“Hey, Monty!” the ref yelled.
Monty said something along the line of “Ummmmmmm! Hyummmm.”
I kicked his knee again. “The guy can’t defend himself.”
“I can’t stop the fight unless he quits,” the ref said.
