middle finger jutted from his fist in unabashed defiance. 'Don’t talk shit about me like I’m not here.' He spun his fist around in a tight circle. 'You have something to say, you say it to my face or not at all. And number two,' the middle finger lowered slowly into a fist. 'I get treated fairly here and I play nice, but if I think that anyone is trying to buttfuck me, I walk. No bullshit and no second chances.'
He pumped his fist like a heartbeat.
'We work on a mentor system,' continued Masterson, ignoring everything that Cleese had just said. 'Every new recruit is paired with a veteran. Your mentor is Monk. The two of you will bunk together, train together, eat, sleep, and shit together. When in the pit, you are to know where your partner is at all times. Remember, the people who have forgotten that have been carried out of here in pieces.'
Cleese looked at Monk and then back to Masterson.
'Is that understood?' Masterson asked.
Masterson looked quite pleased with himself, like a child who’d been given a job and been able to complete it to satisfaction. And why shouldn’t he be? His package had been picked up and delivered in exactly the manner that The League requested. From here on, Cleese would be Monk’s problem. Masterson was out of it unless, of course, the fighter fucked up. If and when that happened, he would personally pitch the son of a bitch out of a helicopter and throw him back into a world of shit.
For Monk’s part, a look of dissatisfaction continued to squat across his features, like an old woman taking a dump. He’d been around this game for as long as it had been around and he’d seen more fighters come and more fighters go than even he was comfortable with. It was sad for him to think that this guy standing before him would no doubt be dead in a week, maybe less. From the look of him, Monk was starting to think that betting heavily on the 'maybe less' would be a good idea.
'Ay-yup,' Cleese said with a heavy sigh. 'Let’s do this…'
Indoctrination
Over the course of the next few days, Monk showed Cleese how things worked around the compound. He learned there was a rigid five day schedule in place which started with a big breakfast, martial arts and weight training in the mornings, an enormous lunch, and then free sparring and what was referred to as 'target specific training' in the afternoons. After that, it was more food, more training and more pain. It was a helluva lot of work, but despite some initial bitching Cleese found that he enjoyed it. It had been a long time since he’d worked his body this hard and in a short amount of time he regained some of the strength and vitality he’d lost years ago. Hell, he’d even gotten back some of that muscle definition he’d thought was buried forever beneath the avalanche of booze and bad bar food he’d once called a diet.
During the evenings, both mentor and student were encouraged to spend their time doing whatever activity they chose just as long as they remained together. Some of the teams played chess or played music; others drank and took in women. The more serious of them studied the day’s lessons and pored over the compound’s vast fight tape library. Whatever the two of them did, it was always in one another’s company. The generally accepted theory was that if the two fighters were together at all times, constantly looking out for one another, a trust would develop. It was similar to an ethic that the Spartans once developed in their soldiers.
Besides, in this game, you could always use someone who was willing to watch your back.
Cleese was grateful when everything finally settled into a routine and he could get his first real look at some of the other fighters. There were a lot more of them here than he’d initially thought. They were an odd assortment of personalities that had been collected together for an equally odd assortment of reasons. Some of them had nothing left to lose, having lost their families and whatever passed for their lives back before The Dead first crawled from their dusky tombs. These folks started fighting back then and now continued doing it because that was all they remembered.
Others were nothing more than professional adrenaline junkies: guys who’d given up their snowboards, crotch-rockets and thrill-seeking base jumps for a pistol and a blade. They’d gotten hooked on the notoriety and developed a real jones for the high that only came from stepping within scrapping range of the ultimate, dangerous animal. Of course, the money was a pretty big incentive as well. Cleese noticed early on that a lot of these guys had wide-eyed, jittery looks about them and if local myth was to be believed, they usually ended up being torn to shreds in short order.
Another group, one who kept their members apart from the others, referred to themselves as The Budo Warriors. They’d attached a complex theology to the carnage that took place within the confines of The Pit. Each of them had given up his identity from Before and adopted a samurai-like outlook to their work here: 'Live today to the fullest, for tomorrow, we die.'
It was, in their minds, a perfect marriage of canon and confrontation.
Their leader, a good-looking bit of femininity named Chikara, was the stuff of legend around here: leader of the Budo Warriors, a woman without a sense of remorse, fighter beyond equal. She’d been in the League for almost as long as Monk and it was rumored that she’d come here after something she’d held dear was lost to the rampaging Dead. After she’d walked away from her life back in The World and joined The League, she’d not given a good goddamn whether she ever made it out of the pit alive. The League welcomed her mostly because she kicked ass and, as a woman, she was a rarity in this killing game.
At first, her technique was more balls than brains. Then she got wise and applied some intellect to her retribution. She periodically allowed the UDs to come in real close and almost get their grip on her—too close in many trainers’ opinions—and then she’d lash out with everything but the kitchen sink. It was a fighting style that, although unorthodox, was completely practical and incredibly proficient.
Other fighters saw what she was up to and flocked to her and her cause. Hell, everyone loves a winner and if Chikara could offer these inexperienced men knowledge to help keep them alive a little bit longer than the initial five minutes of their first match, everyone had been up for it. Chikara had been smart about it, too. She wrapped whatever fighting technique she had to offer in a tattered veil of spirituality. If she could only free these men’s minds, then their asses would soon follow. She’d doled out nourishing little spoonfuls of Nietzsche and Schopenhauer with a liberal dose of Zen Buddhism, Shintoism, and some cool lines from old Bruce Lee movies.
Soon enough, she had forged for herself a formidable team.
Monk explained to Cleese how all of the Budo Warriors believed that they were already one of The Dead and that the UDs were just another task set before them on their way to enlightenment… or God, whichever. Chikara made little differentiation between gods: hers, theirs or anyone’s. Life was merely a test given to the faithful to prove their capacity to serve. God, Jehovah, Jesus, Buddha, Allah… none of these things made a bit of difference to Chikara. A person’s relationship with his or her god was something that remained between them and their chosen deity. Chikara’s only concern was whether or not you could pass the ordeal that was set before you.
On more than one lazy evening, Monk had shown Cleese a variety of the Warrior’s fight tapes and they were an eerie thing to watch. To a man, the Warriors all had the same creepy, calm approach to their fighting: sometimes standing perfectly still until the very last second, then reacting with a lethality that took your breath away. They were, in many of the fighter’s minds, combat personified.
All of the fighters—no matter how they saw their place in the world— did agree on one thing and it was that The League was all important. It was Life. It was Death. Fame… Prestige… Money… Horror… Pain… Fear… It was what defined many of them. For the fighters, there was only the Training ('The Way is in the Training') followed by the money and the glory of the live televised events. One always followed the other like clockwork; as regular as breathing—in—out—in—out. And soon, Cleese was told, he would catch on and come to understand.
After only a short while, Cleese discovered that he felt at home here and was growing to actually like this new routine. There’d never been anything even remotely resembling a regular schedule in Cleese’s life up ’til now. He’d pretty much done as he pleased since he left home as a kid, but this new discipline just felt right to him. Sure, he’d not had to face a live (or rather dead) opponent, but he knew in time that he would, well aware of the fact that he’d be sparring with the harnessed UDs and all of this mundane shit of lifting weights and going over reaction drills was going to fly right out the fucking window.
Cleese was also pleased to find, despite the inhospitable temper displayed at their initial meeting, Monk was growing on him and vice versa. Sure, he was a foul-mouthed, hard drinking son of a bitch who’d come to the Leagues when they’d first been formed but he was also a man who knew a thing or two about fighting. In the short
