No Flesh Shall Be Spared

this match oughtta be a good one!'

~ * ~

Once the last of the UDs was down, Cleese felt exhaustion hit him like a hammer to the solar plexus and his knees abruptly gave out. Bent over, down on all fours, he tried to catch his breath; pulling in—as best he could— great heaving gulps of air. His lungs burned like he’d been free-basing napalm and he was trying hard to forget about the knot that was twisting painfully in his side. He made a quick accounting of his arms, stomach and neck and was relieved to find no cuts, no scrapes and no bites.

Well, that accounted for something.

He’d dropped the final UD in short order, making sure that it was dead by plunging the spike deep into its left eye. The metal tip came out of the thing’s head like an antenna just above its ear. Dark blood oozed out onto the sand and soaked the granules in a blue-maroon.

By his admittedly unreliable count, this was Round Eight and he was looking at four more UDs coming up. Or was it six? He couldn’t quite seem to remember which. Shit, for all he knew, it might be eight. Whatever it was, it was going to seem like way too many.

He fought his exhaustion hard for both a rational perspective and any oxygen he could get as he tried to gauge how much time he had until the next buzzer. Thirty seconds, at best. He knew that, for now, he needed to just stay still and breathe; replenish his lungs with oxygen as quickly as possible so that his muscles didn’t cramp up on him. Forget about the crowd. Forget about the cameras. Forget about how much he wanted to puke his guts up onto the sand. He had to conserve his energy while he was able since it was still a long way to go until the final round and some of that big-titted dick suckin’ Monk had once talked about. Truthfully, he’d skip that last part in exchange for a hot bath, a good stiff drink and maybe some face time with Chikara, but he was willing to take whatever he could get.

'Miles to go before I sleep…'

He figured that whenever the buzzer went off, he would take a few seconds to survey the situation from the ground and, only then, would he decide a definitive course of action. If the UDs happen to catch him as he was halfway to his feet, he’d hit them low and hard from this crouch. Once erect, he could always spin off to a safe zone to gather his wits and plot his next move.

Far above his head, the crowd’s incessant roaring throbbed like a bee sting at the back of his skull and made it hard to think. Cleese had once heard that, in the movies, when they needed a crowd to talk, the director would tell the extras to simply repeat the word 'rhubarb' over and over. He’d thought that silly at the time, but now, standing on the receiving end of it, that was exactly what it sounded like— 'rhubarb.'

Cleese had always hated rhubarb.

He hated it even more now.

~ * ~

Ok, John, so we’re seconds away from the next buzzer and the start of Round Eight. So far, we’ve really been getting our money’s worth in this fight. Cleese has dominated the action with some vicious hand- to-hand skills and that spike of his is an amazingly effective weapon. He’s even managed to get some time to rest between rounds. Now, here it is the beginning of the Eighth Round and he’s still looking pretty fit out there although the physical strain of any match can crush a man.

'That’s right, Bob… We’ve seen seasoned athletes get buried in few rounds.'

'Boy, I’ll say… Ok, we’re getting the signal now that the next buzzer is just about to go off, so let’s go back down to the pit for more action…

~ * ~

This time, when the buzzer went off, Cleese was almost ready for it—almost. Still out of breath and knowing he was a little past halfway through with this thing, he hoped it would surely all be downhill from here. At least, that was what he kept saying to himself. Then, he remembered that the closer he got to the end of the match, the more UDs would be coming out of the turnstiles. The more UDs there were, the greater the danger.

'Danger! Danger! Danger!'

Wasn’t that what that crazy Aussie used to say on television back before a fish stuck his dizzy ass and killed him? They’d called that idiot 'The Croc Hunter,' hadn’t they? Cleese had always thought that anyone who would willingly crawl into a cage with a dangerous animal like a crocodile simply had to be a loon. As he glanced around the pit at the corpses and the blood, he wondered just who was the crazy one now.

'Crikey…' Cleese snickered aloud as he huffed in another breath.

The turnstiles spun and locked with their now familiar booming sound and Cleese quickly made note of where everything was. Positions One, Four, Six, and Seven had UDs in them. Position Three had a fresh clip. The other three spindles were empty.

Things could be a helluva lot worse.

Knowing that there was a new full clip waiting, Cleese decided to expend a few bullets to make his life a little easier. He sprang to his feet and briskly strode toward Six (late teens/early twenties male, punk rocker with a crushed Mohawk, wearing a shirt with the words 'Dead Kennedys' printed on it, a series of bruised heroin tracks ran up one arm) and Seven (forty-ish white guy—big, looked like a cop, a bullet wound was visible in his upper abdomen). The other two UDs seemed to be having a bit of trouble getting out of their turnstiles, so Cleese bet they wouldn’t be posing too much of a problem, not for a few seconds at least.

When he had just about reached where Six and Seven were standing, he pulled his pistol out of its shoulder holster, and shot Six three times between the eyes as the boy came teetering toward him. Sure, it was overkill, but he knew deep down that the crowd would react positively to the splash the blood would make on the sand.

This early in the round, those fuckers’ll go crazy.

The bullets shattered the bridge of the kid’s nose on impact and blew most of his slack expression out the other side of his head. The punk’s Mohawk flopped limply to the side as his scalp slid from his skull like a rotting orange peel. Cleese figured it was pretty safe to say, he was now officially down.

The dead cop came up unexpectedly from behind and wrapped his meaty arms around Cleese’s chest, trapping both extremities at his side. He felt the thing’s rank breath fall cold and clammy against the skin at the back of his neck. A chill ran like a thief down the length of his spine. The cop drove his mouth onto Cleese’s trapezius muscle and slobber ran wetly down the meat of his arm.

Fuck!!!

Luckily, the thing had clamped its jaws over the leather of his shoulder holster rather than on anything he needed. However, it did manage to scare Cleese more than a little. He had missed being bitten by a quarter inch of oiled leather. Simply put, he couldn’t let something like that happen again. Ever! Next time, he wouldn’t be so fortunate. A quick, reverse-headbutt broke the cop’s nose and caused the UDs eyes to water enough so that it had no choice but to let him go. It was a risky move, but given the circumstances, it was the only option open to him.

Once free, Cleese drew out the spike, spun around, and, putting his back into it, slashed diagonally across the cop’s chest. The metal edge of the blade went in through the bullet wound in his chest, cut through muscle and ribcage and slanted downward. The flesh parted like a sausage and let loose the dead man’s intestines in a squiggling heap. The reanimated cop acted as though he’d been slapped with a pillow. His hands flew up and clawed voraciously at Cleese’s chest, fingernails scraping against the chain-mail on his arms.

Over the sound of the crowd overhead and the snarling of the cop, Cleese could just make out the sound coming from the other UD’s as they stumbled their way out of their turnstiles. He could tell from the hissing sound of their feet lumbering across the sand that they were coming, and coming fast.

He’d have to make this quick.

He whacked the gauntlet’s release with the side of the Beretta’s barrel and felt a jerk as the blade fell back into place. He raised the pistol and fired the last of his shells with a 'double tap' into the centre of the cop’s snarling face. The hollow points slapped into his upper lip, splitting it, and then proceeded straight up the cop’s nose. The back of its head exploded in a fireworks display of blood and bone. With a look of complete surprise still plastered on his face, the cop teetered briefly on its feet and then crumpled to the ground like an unwanted doll.

Immediately, Cleese turned toward Position Three and made his way straight for the new ammo. As he ran across the sand, he pushed his thumb against the pistol’s magazine release and the now empty clip slid out, falling