Grabbing up his shotgun, Monk walked out without looking back.
Cartwright stared back at Monk and said nothing. His face was set, but his eyes told a different story. For a brief moment he almost seemed embarrassed by Lenik’s behavior. Slowly, he walked over and pulled the dead UD by her headgear toward the side of the pit.
Cleese smiled broadly at the two men and followed Monk out of the pit and up to where the older man was stowing his shotgun in a rack just outside the door. Beyond that, the cool calm of the grandstands waited like an oasis in the desert.
~ * ~
'That sonofabitch,' Monk hissed as the two of them sat cooling down in the stands.
Cleese leaned back, resting his upper body’s weight on his elbows. He was busy trying to get his heart rate and body temperature back to normal after his exertion in the pit, but Monk… Monk seemed intent on raising his high enough to give himself a stroke. If Cleese had learned anything since meeting the old man, it was that he was prone to explosions of anger. After he calmed down he’d forget all about whatever it was that he felt slighted him —whether real or imagined. Then it would be business as usual and he’d return to his normal cantankerous self.
'I oughtta go pop that young punk right in the fuckin’ mouth,' the old man grumbled.
'Easy there, Trigger.'
'You know I’m going to hear all about that shit from the suits upstairs…' he jerked his head back toward the pit. 'But…' and he chuckled guiltily, 'I couldn’t resist.'
'Would ‘sorry’ help?' asked Cleese, feigning embarrassment.
'I mean, look at him,' Monk said, ignoring the interruption. He pointed back toward the lights of The Octagon with a stubby finger. 'What a fuckin’ asshole!'
Lenik was standing down on the sand in the middle of some defensive drills. Easy shit mostly, just getting in close and batting advances away with his protected forearms. Cleese had learned that kind of crap a long time ago, back when he was a kid and had to fight off the older kids for what little lunch money he’d been able to scrape together. As he watched the fighter before him, he took a minute and evaluated his potential.
Now that he had an opportunity to see him in action, Lenik was—in Cleese’s considered opinion—more of that cannon fodder he’d noticed when he first arrived. The man talked some shit, but when it was all said and done he had a nasty habit of leaving his right side exposed time and again. He was ripe for an attack from his blind periphery or even from behind. He was over-confident and stupid and he would no doubt be carried out of here on a litter.
By now Monk managed to calm himself down and took an interest in what it was that Cleese was looking at in the pit.
Cleese saw him out of the corner of his eye and nudged him.
'Toes up…' Cleese said, nodding toward the pit.
Monk nodded in return.
'Ain’t that shit the truth?'
'Hey, Cleese…!' came a sudden and unexpected shout from under the lights.
'What do you want, Lenik?' returned Monk.
'Let me show ya a thing or two… Something that old man of yours would never demonstrate in a million years!'
Out of curiosity, Cleese sat up and focused his attention down onto the pit’s floor.
Lenik sauntered over to the UD (a male about forty-five in a soiled button-down business shirt and tie) and, in one a fluid motion, tore off the headgear and tossed it aside. Mr. Shirt-and-Tie stood dumbfounded for a second, rolling his head about in drunken circles. Lenik backed away from the man and drew the machete he wore strapped to his thigh.
Cartwright moved across the pit, shaking his head at his partner’s actions, to retrieve the harness. It was pretty clear that Lenik did this kind of showboating all the time.
'Stooopid shit…' Monk groaned as he rose to his feet.
Lenik crouched, waving the weapon in front of him as if it were a magic wand.
The UD stood still for a second, grabbing hold of what little bearings its dead mind could muster, and took a tentative step toward Lenik. Then it stopped and looked up toward the lights. It stood still for a second, sniffing at the air as if trying to sort it all out. Then, abruptly, the dead man lunged screeching toward one side.
It grabbed a very surprised-looking Cartwright from behind, knocking him forward and off his feet. The old man never saw it coming. Both Cartwright and Mr. Shirt-and-Tie fell face-first to the sand with a grunt. The UD’s face bounced off Cartwright’s back. Long goblets of saliva left puddles of mucous behind in a circular pattern. The thing quickly angled its head, moving as if by instinct, toward the exposed nape of Cartwright’s neck.
Cartwright only had time to marvel at the speed with which the dead man moved before his blood ran in thick streams down the back of his tunic.
Surprised, Lenik shouted and did the unthinkable. He jumped on top of the two men.
Cleese almost had to laugh out loud at the sheer stupidity of the man. It knew no bounds! Any fighter worth his salt knew that you never jumped into a brawl that was already on the ground. Your legs often got tangled up in the multitude of flailing limbs. You slipped. You fell. You spent the rest of your night getting to know the tip of some guy’s (or a group of his friends’) boots as he tried to kick in your sternum.
Cleese and Monk reflexively came off the benches and sprinted around the railing and toward the pit’s entrance. They instinctively knew that whatever was going to happen in the pit would already be decided by the time they got there, but that didn’t stop them from trying. Lenik would have either hacked Mr. Shirt-and-Tie’s head from his shoulders with his pig sticker or the dead man would be sucking up Lenik’s blood like gravy. There just wasn’t a lot that they could do to prevent the outcome.
It was safe to say that Cartwright got tagged. From the way they went down and with Lenik now in the mix to further fuck up the situation, this was not going to end well. The last image Cleese could recall of the scene had a lot of crimson in it, and that was never good.
Not in this game.
The two men made their way rapidly along the gangway, rounded the stairwell and burst through the door to the pit. As they came running through the hatch, they saw Mr. Shirt-and-Tie bent over Lenik happily chomping away on a chunk of the man’s exposed stomach. A wet, smacking sound echoed hopelessly within the emptiness of the pit.
Monk, who’d forgotten his shotgun in his haste, came up behind the zombie and deftly slid his protected right arm under the thing’s gnawing mouth, just across its throat and under the jaw. He braced his left arm behind the thing’s head and clamped down like a vice.
He quickly glanced downward and found himself staring into Lenik’s eyes. Despite the fact that the guy was an asshole, Monk was saddened as he watched the fighter’s life drain out of his gaze and his breathing stutter to a stop. As he died, his mouth quivered and one eye drifted closed.
Monk wrenched his gaze away and torqued down on the UDs neck, making sure he felt the cervical vertebrae tighten and bind up. Then, he bore down with all of his strength.
The crunch of the thing’s neck breaking was almost silent. Cleese had cracked his knuckles and made more noise. It sounded almost like it would have been a relief, like when a dislocated shoulder popped and the bone fell back into place.
Mr. Shirt-and-Tie made a small sharp snort and then his body just sort of deflated into itself. Monk threw his body aside like it was a sack of shit and quickly bent over to check on Lenik. It was pretty obvious from the extent of the wound and the amount of blood splashed about that the man was truly dead.
Monk’s shoulders sagged and his head dropped in frustration. No matter how many times he’d seen fighters die, it always broke his heart, even an asshole like Lenik. He suddenly jerked his head to the side as remembered Cartwright. He swiftly looked up at Cleese.
'Check him,' Monk commanded and he pointed at Cartwright.
'Check him?' Cleese asked dumb-founded. 'Check him for what?'
'To see if he’s still alive.'
'Are you fuckin’ crazy? His throat’s torn out!'
'What…?' Monk’s face screwed up and he squinted. He looked over at Cartwright and, as if seeing him for the
