The Hammer Falls Page 11
That afternoon brought another town, another promotional stop, this one piggybacking onto an event between two other stables. Trask’s road train parked in a field outside of Cleveland. Another road train and two caravans of buses arrived in the field, the two pit fighter stables set to compete on tonight’s card. Due to a city ordinance prohibiting gladiatorial events, this event was to be held outside the city limits. Over the course of the afternoon, an enormous tent pavilion went up like a circus big top, transports full of plastic and aluminum bleachers pulled in, disgorged their contents, and moved on while teamsters stacked and assembled everything. Within hours, the field went from grass and weeds to sparkling neon circus. Oversized holograms of the fighters populated the area like giants, posing, striking, hamming it up for the holos.
Music rose from well-hidden speakers, a rotation of heavy steel and ragged electronica, the theme songs of the various fighters echoing across the grassy, windswept plain. Rope fences went up as if by magic, so that when the cars and transit buses began to arrive, people with lighted batons were able to funnel them into some semblance of order. The smell of popcorn, funnel cakes, roasted nuts, and grilling pseudo-meat filled the air. A clown on stilts drifted through the crowds, dancing, cavorting, pantomiming for teenagers too cynical to be amused. A trailer of four rotating searchlights punched holes in the empty dusk sky. Spectators crossed the field on foot.
It was a perfect, late summer night, steeped in carnival atmosphere and soon-to-be-spraying blood. Four contract ambulances and a Regenecorp medical transport were parked behind the pavilion. The transport would carry a full suite of regeneration equipment.
Regenecorp sponsorship had made the neo-gladiators a viable sport, complete with heroes, villains, and drama. Even in the early days of Death Match Unlimited, the money circulating around the league, the stables, the stars, and Regenecorp had been firehoses fed by millions of rabid fans. To be sanctioned by Regenecorp meant your stable could be viable—if they played the right game. Failing to scratch the right backs, shake the right hands, or bring in big enough crowds meant a stable’s promoter would see his fighters forced to fight less lucrative, nonlethal bouts, forced into low-level hospitalization for purely natural healing—if they weren’t killed outright. Without potentially lethal bouts, the crowds stayed home and watched the killer stars and bloodthirsty gods on pay-per-view.
Now, for the first time since he was a teenager, Horace stood on the outside. It felt strange not to be gearing- and psyching-up for a match.
Trask’s stable was not here to compete, only to promote the upcoming spectacle in Albany and help build drama and storylines for the minor league rag-mags. Throughout the afternoon, most of the fighters were shooting challenge spots, wherein they talked smack to the opposing fighters, building drama into their pit fighter personas, establishing who the Good Guys were, who the Bad Guys were, and who was gunning for whom.
Every stable had an array of not only fighting styles, but also personalities, character archetypes that matched well and built compelling stories with other archetypes of other stables. The Clean Cut All-American versus the Dastardly Foreigner of Most-Hated Nationality Du Jour. The High-Class Man versus The Ignorant Hick. The Lumbering Behemoth versus the Bouncing Battler—a pairing that had made Horace and Gaston famous. These archetypes worked almost as well for the female stables, although they had some of their own, such as The Sultry Vixen and the Buxom Badass Girl Next Door.
The rag-mags filled neighborhood supermarket magazine stands and flew across electronic media worldwide, a frenzy of photos, vids, stories, and drama. Fans counted the days when the pit fighters came to town and gave them spectacle.
City ordinances be damned, the people of Cleveland were no different than anyone else. They wanted to see two powerful men face each other with weapon and armor and shield like the warriors of old, in a battle where only one would leave the arena the victor. They wanted to see stories unfold, vendettas waged—however contrived and fictitious—wrongs righted at the point of a vibro-sword. They wanted to see the drama of mortal combat, and in the end, they wanted blood.
Horace was tired of being in his berth. He wanted to feel the crowd, smell the sweat, and taste the action.
He put on a pair of sunglasses, borrowed a surgical mask from the infirmary and a featureless black hoodie from Trask’s workout gear, and slipped into the crowds.
Part of him knew how stupid it was to appear in public. Letting his beard and hair grow out for a couple of weeks might obscure some of the tattoos on his head, but it wasn’t there yet, and there was media everywhere. All it would take was a networked camera to sweep across him just once, and all this running would be for naught.
With a fistful of corn dogs, he wandered toward the media tent. No one challenged him, taking him for just another one of the fighters going incognito. Flash bulbs and floodlights filled the interior of the red-and-white striped tent. Along the far side, Lex Lethal was posing for stills, dressed in his black armor plating, crudely stenciled skulls spray-painted on each breast. He was all corded arms and curled hair, an ill-tempered Adonis wearing his fiercest expressions.
Horace hung to the rear of the crowd of rag-mag reporters and photographers. Trask stood just close enough to Lex to make his proud, cigar-chomping presence prevalent in the photographs. Video cameras pushed forward, and someone passed Lex a microphone.
A reporter called out, “So what do you have to say to the Dark Horseman? He says he’s ready to ride you hard and put you away bloody.”
Lex stabbed a thick finger at the camera, veins on his neck standing out like ropes. “The Dark Horseman better ride his ass out of town, because I’m coming for him. I’m gonna make him into a gelding! I’m gonna beat him like a rented mule!”
Lightning quick, he tossed a little plastic skull into the air and reached for a scabbard at his belt. The snap-hum of a vibro-blade filled the tent, Lex slashed up with a gladius-style short sword, and the skull fell in two vertically divided pieces. The cut was as smooth as if the plastic had been molded that way.
Lex pointed the still-humming gladius at the camera. “That’s right, Dark Horseman, I’m coming for you. When I’m done, you’re dog food!” The whites of his eyes blazed with ferocity.
Having seen enough minor league fighters come and go, Horace had to admit Lex Lethal possessed the ferocity and camera presence to be a star, a memorable Villain. Getting noticed by the right sponsor or the right recruiter could launch him into the big leagues.
“Thanks, got it,” the camera man said.
Lex deactivated his blade and relaxed.
Trask stepped forward. “All right, that’s it, everyone. Thank you for coming! I’d say it’s time to get ready for the show tonight, huh? Am I right?” He grinned.
As the reporters gathered up their equipment, Trask whispered something to Lex, to which Lex simply listened impassively, nodding slightly.
When they had all gone, Trask spotted Horace standing at the back. “What the hell are you doing here, Tiny? Are you trying to get made?”
“Going stir crazy.” He took off the sunglasses, pulled the mask down, and addressed Lex. “That was a good spot, brother. Good technique on the sword. Nice show.”
Lex snorted. “What the hell do you know, you fucking fossil?”
Horace stiffened. “I know good technique when I see it, I know presence and potential when I see it, and I also know a wet-behind-the-ears, no-respect dipshit when I see one.”
Lex lunged forward, but Trask jumped between them. Lex’s chest plate knocked Trask’s cigar loose. “Hold it, fuck head!”
“I’ll eat your fucking heart!” Lex snarled.
Horace said, “It’s all gristle and you haven’t grown out your big-boy teeth. Sorry, I was wrong, you’ll never amount to anything.” He turned away. “Fire him now, Mr. Trask. Or just let him die when the time comes. All you got there is a killer. He’s no pit fighter.”
“We’ll see, you tottering old fuck!�
� Lex yelled at Horace’s back. “We’re gonna throw down!”
“Bring it on, dipshit.” Horace walked away, flexing his fists, knowing he’d just painted another target on his back.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The crowd pouring into the giant pavilion resembled most crowds elsewhere, with the exception that people looked more run-down here. These people walked with the shuffling step and threadbare clothing of those accustomed to soup lines, never having recovered from the Greater Depression.
At least Cleveland still managed to cling to some kind of existence, unlike Detroit, which had degenerated into a crumbling ghost town buried in rust and tenements, much of which had been reclaimed by nature and scavenger gangs. But these people had come in their overalls, dungarees, t-shirts, and cracked plastic shoes to see a show, and damned if they weren’t going to see a show.
Trask and the other two stable bosses were doubtless meeting behind closed doors now, drinking scotch and making deals. The business end of the Business was as much about who one knew as it was about skill or heart. Knowing the right people made its own luck. Horace’s involvement with his first stable had raised him to stardom. A rising tide lifts all boats. He’d been lucky there.
There were too many eyes, too much media attention around for him to step into the pavilion, even with his disguise. Too much could go wrong, so he retreated to the train, chafing at the sense of imprisonment, angered at being chased out of his own home, as it were—the fights themselves.
Inside the train, he found Tina and three of the other fighters in the lounge car, gathered around the screen, which was playing the prematch commentary by local sportscasters, along with slow-motion, blood-spray-enhanced clips of previous bouts by these fighters.
“Pull up a wheelchair, Hammer,” Tina said.
“Don’t mind if I do,” he said.
The other three fighters introduced themselves as “Mad Killer” Kevin Michael, Jax “To The Max” Gavillion, and “Skullcrusher” Camden James. They shook hands with mixtures of politeness and reverence.
Kevin Michael said, “That was some good stuff you told us, Hammer. I don’t know if it’ll help, but I’ll be thinking about it until we get to Albany.” His eyes glinted with light that said they were cybernetic.
“Man,” Gavillion said, “I grew up watching you. We couldn’t get the pay-per-views in my ’hood, so I used to sneak out and go to a bar outside the Poor Zone just to watch you. Loved The Freak, too, and that enormous motherfucker, like eight feet tall.”
Horace smiled. “Andre the Titan.”
“Yeah, Jesus Christ, that guy was a monster.”
Horace held up his arm. “Yeah, he tried to make my elbow go both ways once. Still kills me sometimes.”
“An honor, Hammer,” Gavillion said.
Horace shrugged. “Thanks, but we’re all just doing our jobs, right?”
Tina took a drink of beer. “You guys should all hug and shit now. Or make out or something.”
“Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you,” Kevin Michael said.
They all laughed, and Horace sat down in one of the chairs upholstered in the cracked-orange-vinyl style, the purchaser of which had to have been colorblind.
“For a couple hundred smackers,” James said, “I’ll make out with whoever you want.”
“So, ‘Skullcrusher,’ how’s that movie deal coming along?” Kevin Michael said.
“My agent’s still working on the terms,” James said.
Tina cranked her head toward Horace. “Skullcrusher here got a gig in a porn vid.”
“This body’s gotta pay for itself every way it can,” James said, kissing his massive biceps. “And it ain’t hard-core porn. It’s erotica.”
“So does that mean you have to just pretend to fuck?” Michael said. “All limp dick and strategic camera angles?”
“I don’t know.”
“No money shot?” Gavillion said. “If I was gonna be in a porno, I better be doing some fuckin’.”
“I don’t know!” James’ face turned red. “Now leave me alone, you fuckers.”
Gavillion and Michael slapped him on the back, laughing.
The night’s first fighters charged onto the screen. The rumble and thud of the intro music pounded from the screen and through the walls of the train from outside, rattling the windows with its power. The roar of the crowd followed close behind like the sound of a rising wind.
The camera panned around the audience of perhaps three thousand, many of whom were standing in the peanut gallery around the raised platform where the cage stood, with its two-meter chain-link walls. Sponsorship banners hung in brilliant multitudes from on high—Monsanto, Regenecorp, World MegaBank, Magic Marijuana.
Elevated above the cage were six VIP booths, populated by men in silk suits—Horace recognized a pro rugby player from the Cleveland Clubbers among them—and women sparkling with diamonds and the most intense beauty money could buy. Spotlights swept the crowd. Even on a scale like this, so much smaller than the event with Gaston, the pageantry and larger-than-life spectacle were as important as the fights themselves.
Horace leaned back in the chair and watched as the fights began. His attention drifted from evaluating the combatants’ technique to their stage presence, to listening to the fighters banter. Tina’s attention was fixed on the screen, and Horace could see from her gaze and subtle reactions that she was responding to the same things he was in the matches. Moments of triumph, the skills pitted against each other, failures of courage or will. Weapons flailed and bashed. Screams of rage and pain were drowned in the surge of the crowd. Blood and meat splattered the clay surface. Epic battles between would-be gods.
“Whoa, there went his arm!” Michael said. A severed forearm tumbled free and landed in the dirt, titanium buckler falling loose. The maimed fighter succumbed to shock and blood loss moments later and passed out. While the other fighter roared his victory, Regenecorp medtechs rushed out with a gurney, scooped up the fighter and the arm, and whisked them away for resection.
After a brief on-camera interview with the victor, who graciously praised his opponent’s skill and courage, the master of ceremonies came into the cage with a microphone. “And now, let’s thank our generous sponsors with a big round of applause!” The audience obeyed. “Another round of applause for our Regenecorp medtechs, how about that!” More applause. “And now, one lucky audience member will receive a great prize, courtesy of Regenecorp!”
The camera cut around the audience to men and women looking hopeful, some of them taking out their tickets, clutching them.
“And the winner of Regenecorp’s Good Neighbor Prize is... Jonathan Cavallo! You are the winner of a full year of individual medical coverage, courtesy of Regenecorp!”
The camera cut to the bleachers, to a man steeped in hard work. A moment of joy beamed on his face until he looked at his pregnant wife, who hugged him with all the joy she could muster, and his joy crumbled. With tears glistening in his eyes, he faced the cameras, raised his hands and clapped, hard and slow. Beside him, his wife wiped tears steeped in a new kind of sadness and worry. As it was an individual policy, she and her pregnancy would not be covered. She was still on her own when the baby came, and so would the baby be.
The next fighters on the card exploded into the pavilion amid fresh fanfare.
Something about the look on the wife’s face stabbed Horace in the belly. “I gotta get some air.”
He pulled up his hood, replaced the sunglasses and mask, and stepped outside. He wanted to punch something. He wanted to apply a Thunder Hammer to the skull of someone who deserved it, like the Regenecorp exec who thought up that promotion. It was a common thing, especially in the minor leagues where most of the fans were too poor to afford medical. The medical costs of that baby’s birth—exempt from the father’s “individual coverage”—would put the family in the poorhouse for decades, unless she gave birth at home in the bathtub.
In a world of twelve billion people, th
e most effective way to control population growth was with carefully restricted medical coverage. The cost of simply going to the doctor was beyond the reach of the labor class unless a person’s employer had a doctor on the payroll, in which case the worker started tallying up debts to the company. Anything more complicated than a runny nose incurred major expenses. The twenty-first century version of the company store. Those without medical paid cash. No cash, no medical. With enough cybernetic, genetic, and regenite intervention, the wealthy could easily live to a hundred and thirty. Horace had only a couple more years to go before he crossed the life-expectancy finish line of the labor class. But the megacorp party line simply crowed about how they had successfully leveled off the world’s population growth. A few well-placed wars in hand-picked locales also helped burn off the rest of the human chaff.
With nowhere for his ire to go, he thrust his fists into his pockets and slid into one of the fighter entrances. The security guard looked him up and down and admitted him with a nod. The next fighters from this stable were too busy warming up, psyching themselves up, to pay him any attention. Horace found a spot inside the pavilion where he could watch the cage through a gap in the bleachers. The atmosphere in the tent pulsed with an energy no 3-D screen could recreate.
Horace had grown up watching mixed martial arts and professional wrestling on television, and it was a kickboxing exhibition in a little arena in Nebraska that had seized the imagination of a small-town boy far too big for his age. The exhibition had been a mix of amateurs from the local gyms and a handful of touring professionals.
In one bout, a fighter had landed the most perfect kick he had ever seen, a snap kick straight to his opponent’s abdomen, right in the liver. The solid, meaty thud had echoed through the arena like a side of beef dropped from three meters. An instant of silence descended. The audience gave a low, awe-stricken Ooooooo. The victim sank to his knees, clutching his belly. The referee jumped in, waving away the next kick that would have been to the man’s face, and it was over. The man fell sideways. The crowd exploded. And little Horace MacElroy was hooked.