The Hammer Falls Page 13

  Lex’s hands went for Horace’s throat, eyes blazing with bestial fury. Lex’s spiky knuckles gouged under Horace’s jaw, tearing flesh.

  Men loomed over them. Strong hands snatched at Lex’s arms and shoulders, dragging him off. Skullcrusher James and Kevin Michael arm-locked him, left and right, and he snarled like an animal.

  Jocie was in the hallway, laughing.

  Horace got to his feet, his back protesting being slammed against the edge of the bed frame. Lex lunged at him again, but the other two fighters held him fast.

  “This ain’t over!” Lex roared.

  Horace wiped his lip, a tremulous shudder shooting out from his heart through his arms. “I don’t expect so.”

  “I’ll fucking kill you!”

  Trask’s voice sounded from the doorway. “Not on my train, you won’t.”

  Jocie jumped forward. “Mr. Trask, he—”

  “Shut it,” Trask said.

  “I ain’t gonna let this go, Mr. Trask!” Lex snarled, then stuck out a finger. “You and me, Hammer. Out front.”

  Horace blinked. “You’re saying you want a duel?”

  Trask said, “No fucking way! I’m already two fighters down, and you got a bout in three days!”

  Lex said, “The old fuck hurt Jocie! Ain’t no way I can let that stand!”

  There was only one way to make this end. Horace said, “Nonlethal. No weapons, no armor. Sunup.” He cracked his thick knuckles.

  Trask’s eyes narrowed and he chewed his cigar, glancing back and forth between them. “You guys want to work it out that way, fine. But the first guy who tries to go lethal gets tased into a coma and left on the side of the road.” He turned to Lex and met his gaze. “Capisce?”

  Lex snorted, appeared to bite back a few choice words, then took Jocie by the arm and dragged her away.

  “And the loser pays for this fucking bed!” Trask shouted after them.

  Trask spun on Tina. “What are you looking at?”

  She raised her hands. “Just a bystander, Boss!”

  Trask grunted and stomped after Lex and Jocie.

  When he had gone, Tina stepped into the compartment. “Jesus, I kept expecting to hear someone say, ‘Pistols at dawn!’”

  “Sometimes you gotta go old school.” Horace wiped at the blood on his face with the back of his hand.

  “And by old, you mean Cro-Magnon.” She raised her hands and gaze to the sky. “Somebody tell me why I hang out with cavemen!”

  Horace grinned, tasting blood in his teeth. “Because we’re so charming.” Then the humor evaporated as he realized he might not have until morning. There was no way he could be back in Las Vegas by tomorrow night except by plane, and he didn’t have money for airfare. He had tapped out all his favors. He had to make some money by tomorrow night.

  And then it came to him.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  In another abandoned parking lot near Buffalo on the edge of a crumbling business park, bathed in the gray light of dawn, surrounded by buildings utterly lacking any architectural grandeur, far from the watchful eyes of any megacorp or law enforcement drones, in a ring of fighters both stern-eyed and jovial, Horace and Lex faced each other, naked to the waist.

  Trask stood between them. “Now listen here. This is nonlethal. Hammer, I can not afford to lose my number one fighter, even though he’s a jealous, moronic asshole. Lex, if word gets out that you dishonorably killed the legendary Hammer Harkness in a nonlethal grudge brawl, your career will be over. You both got me?”

  They both nodded. Horace cracked his knuckles.

  “And if there’s any regenerating to be done, you pay for it yourselves. Got anything to say?” Trask said. “Want to kiss and make up?”

  “I got something,” Horace said. “A little bet. There’s nothing to gain here for me. I’m here defending my good name. I didn’t touch your wife until she came into my compartment last night hunting for some action—”

  “Fuck you!” Lex roared.

  “—and I politely turned her down. This is all a setup, and you’re too fucking stupid to see it. So I propose a bet.”

  Trask took out his cigar. “What do you got in mind?”

  “Loser pays the winner twenty thousand.”

  “You’re on!” Lex snarled.

  Trask said, “All right, then. You all heard it.”

  Of course, Horace didn’t have twenty thousand dollars, but no one carried that much cash. He was gambling that in the heat of the moment Lex would agree to the bet and they would handle the particulars of the funds exchange afterward; and then all Horace had to do was school this moron in the finer social niceties. And if he lost, well, there wasn’t much further for him to fall. The second hand on his clock of borrowed time was picking up speed.

  Trask backed out of the ring of onlookers.

  Lex closed the distance, and they began to circle each other, like old-time boxers checking for weakness. A night’s sleep had cooled Lex’s temper and let calculation and strategy into his brain.

  Based on what he’d seen of Lex already, Horace had concocted his own strategy, which amounted to counterattack. Lex had the advantage of a healthy heart. As long as Horace could minimize his own exertion and let Lex wear himself down, he had a chance. Lex’s martial arts training had made him deceptively fast for such a big fighter. Nevertheless, all it would take was one solid shot from Horace’s iron-hard fists; he had won fights in such manner before. He did feel a little naked without his armor, and Lex’s knuckles could take out an eye with a lucky shot. But Horace’s fists could break ribs, crush a skull, and rupture internal organs.

  Lex lunged forward swinging. Horace blocked, dodged, and jabbed a solid left into Lex’s cheek, snapping his head back.

  Anger flared in Lex’s eyes, quickly staunched by the self-control of an experienced fighter. Horace’s respect for Lex grew in that moment. The great ones knew how to harness the Beast, knew when to let it off the leash. The ones who descended into mindless animal brawling would lose more often to the careful, calculating fighter who could bide his time while the animal expended himself.

  Lex went low, grabbing for Horace’s legs, but last night Horace had watched enough video from the net to recognize Lex’s moves. Horace countered easily and drove a hammer blow into Lex’s kidney. Lex didn’t flinch—any pit fighter’s training inured him to pain—but Horace knew it hurt. Lex would be pissing blood later.

  Horace caught Lex’s head under his arm and squeezed, brought his free fist down hard onto Lex’s ribcage. Lex wrenched himself free and backed off, wincing, unsteady on his feet. Horace watched Lex’s eyes, guessing from hundreds of experiences in the pit, in the boxing ring, on the wrestling mat, what Lex was going to do next.

  When fighters got hurt, some felt that twinge of desperation that they were not the iron-hard badasses they believed themselves to be. So to reclaim that confidence, they turned the hurt around and went on the attack, which was exactly what Lex did. Sometimes the fresh ferocity worked, sometimes it didn’t.

  Another whirl of flailing fists. The fists raked bloody furrows across Horace’s arms, across his chest and shoulder, but he avoided the brunt of the damage and countered with a heavy boot to the inside of Lex’s thigh, spinning the fighter’s leg out from under him. As Lex tried to recover his balance, Horace went on the offensive, pummeling forward with punches and elbows. A bone-cracking shot to Lex’s sternum knocked him onto his back.

  The pain and humiliation stoked the rage in Lex’s eyes into even greater heat.

  Horace tried to give him an out. “Had enough?”

  Lex roared and lunged to his feet, charging fists first. Horace tried to bat them away, but one of them got through to Horace’s ribs. A stunning pain shot through his ribcage, drove the breath out of him. His heart stuttered. He staggered backward.

  Lex lunged, and Horace caught him in a bear hug, trying to hold him long enough to catch his breath, recover his bearings. Multi-colored sparks splashed his vision. Th
e strength drained out of his left arm. Lex squirmed free and kicked at Horace’s knee. He turned his knee aside just enough to let the brunt of the blow pass without snapping his ligaments.

  Horace clinched him again, trying to shake the sparks away so he could see, trying to gather his breath and let some strength return to his arms.

  And then he felt the opening, the instant where Lex was just a sliver off-balance, a moment of relaxation in the right muscles. Horace spun, cranked Lex’s head, and levered him over his hip. Lex’s feet flew into the air as his torso slammed into the ground. Horace hammered a fist toward Lex’s face. Lex saw it coming and tried to move his head, but it wasn’t enough. Horace felt something crack in Lex’s cheek. Lex’s body jerked, stiffened, and went limp.

  All went still, the onlookers holding their breath.

  Lex lay motionless.

  Horace wobbled to his feet. Cold sweat exploded over his body. He couldn’t breathe. His left arm was a slab of tingling numbness all the way to his fingertips.

  Not now... He had to hold his feet just a little longer. He had to win.

  Jocie screamed and rushed to Lex’s side.

  He couldn’t find the face to match Trask’s voice. “That’s it then.”

  Horace said, “I guess it is.” He collapsed to one knee, then onto his side.

  Rosy fingers of sunrise painted ribbons of contrails above. A sliver of moon hung overhead, so clear.

  A few meters away, Jocie was crying over Lex. “Lex, wake up, you idiot! Wake up, baby!”

  Lex’s voice rumbled, strangely muffled. “Something broke... Hurts.”

  Someone rolled Horace onto his back. Faces circled his vision.

  There were small, cool hands on him. “Hammer!” Tina’s voice.

  “I knew this would be a fucking fiasco,” Trask growled. “Carry them to the infirmary.”

  “Go Juice...” Horace rasped.

  Tina leaned so close he could smell the jasmine of her soap, the apple shampoo of her rainbow hair. “What?”

  “In my equipment...with injector.” It was all the breath he could muster.

  Tina disappeared from his vision. His head swam, and his vision went gray.

  And then it blazed to life again with Prismacolor 3-D clarity. He was sitting up, gasping for air, and a syringe was sticking out of his chest like an arrow. He touched it, stared stupidly as it twitched rhythmically with the beat of the muscle it was embedded in. Tick-tick-tick-tick... A freshly wound antique watch. He wrapped numb fingers around it, pulled the needle out of his heart.

  Bunny said, “Mr. Trask, we need to get him to a hospital.”

  “Yeah. Jesus, Horus, and Thor, what a fiasco.”

  As the Go Juice suffused Horace’s system, his tattoos blazed blue. So strange that his symbols of readiness to fight were so bright when there was no fight left in him.

  He got to his feet, electricity spreading through his veins, jolting, sporadic.

  Jocie and another fighter were helping Lex into the train’s infirmary car. Lex was holding his cheek.

  “I’m fine,” Horace said.

  “No, you’re not,” Bunny said. “I already called an ambulance.”

  An explosion of dizziness almost brought him to his knees again, but arms caught him. “No, I’m not.”

  Images and impressions wandered through the gray fastness of his perception, half-glimpsed, half-remembered. Lifted by two paramedics onto a gurney. Morning sun shining through the rear window of the ambulance, the mask over his face, the sting of the IV. The sweat sheening his body, even though he was freezing; the incessant pain in his chest, squeezing tighter with every heartbeat. Fluorescent lights sliding through his vision. The bustle of activity around him. Trask’s voice talking to someone.

  “Patient’s name?”

  “Uh, Jim. James Smith.”

  “What’s his medical program?”

  “He doesn’t have a medical program.”

  “Then he doesn’t qualify for regeneration. The best we can do is stabilize him. Does he have the money to pay?”

  “How the hell should I know? Look, he’s only been with us a few days.”

  The voices receding, people surrounding him, a cold stethoscope on his breast. The wires and sensors now attached to him. The beep of the machines.

  Throughout it all, he floated in serenity. He’d trod the expanses of this vague, vast grayness so many times it was part of his reality, this netherworld between life and death, between being on and off.

  The injections began, and he succumbed to unconsciousness.

  The sound of a sliding curtain intruded upon the haze of sleep. A man in a white coat stood beside him, carrying a datapad. The Fight Doctor, Ferris Wilton, MD.

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” Horace said.

  “I’m Dr. Pentz, Mr. Smith.” The doctor’s voice didn’t match the Fight Doctor.

  “Huh?”

  The Fight Doctor’s face melted and became a woman’s, hovering beside him. “You’re still groggy.”

  Horace blinked and rubbed his eyes.

  Dr. Pentz smiled at him, then took a stethoscope and applied it to his chest, watching the biometric monitor. She had kind, green eyes and a face lined by years of stress. She put the stethoscope away. “Do you remember anything?”

  “I’m in the hospital.” Each word felt like spitting out a cotton ball.

  “You are indeed. And you’re very lucky.”

  “Twenty-seven times.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. When can I go?”

  “That is indeed the question, Mr. Smith. Your friend, Mr. Trask, tells us that you have no medical program. By law in the State of New York, we’re only obligated to keep you for twelve hours.”

  “Peachy. Gotta go anyway.”

  “We’ve done full scans on your heart. The amount of scar tissue boggles my mind.”

  “I’m a pit fighter.”

  “So I gather.” Her lips twisted into disgust. “I must say that I regard your profession—and its corporate sponsors—as utterly reprehensible. It puts the lowest possible value on human life.”

  “Human life has always been cheap, Doc. Just ask any king or corporation ever born. Some of us are just born to be meat for the machine, and not many of those ever see the gears.”

  “I prefer to be less cynical, Mr. Smith.”

  “So give it to me straight, Doctor. I’m guessing I don’t have much time.”

  “I could give you the whole spiel about watching your stress level—”

  Horace burst into painful laughter.

  “—and watching what you eat and taking it easy before your heart explodes. But I’m not going to do that. You’re right when you say you don’t have much time. Could be days, could be a year. You need a new heart.”

  “I know.”

  “We could give you an artificial one, if you had a medical program.”

  “I looked into it. There aren’t any made that fit a body this size. I’m outside specs. They can’t handle the flow load for what I do. Besides, I’d rather have a new one of my own. But I don’t have the money for that either.”

  “The scarring alone... Tell me, how have you kept yourself alive?”

  “My Go Juice.”

  “What is in this Go Juice?”

  “A bunch of stuff. I got a friend who mixes it up for me. Keeps me coming back when the ticker sticks.”

  “Have you any idea how dangerous—?” She stopped herself. “Never mind that.”

  Horace chuckled again. “Beyond a certain point, decisions get a whole lot easier.” Then he took a deep, ragged breath. “Now, I’m gonna give it to you straight, Doctor. I don’t have the money for a new heart. I can’t stay here, and the longer I do, the more danger you’re in. But...there are people depending on me right now, today: a woman and two kids, life or death. What kind of fix can you give me to keep this ticker going the next time it decides to crap out?”

  She chewed on the end of he
r stylus.

  “Something on a budget,” he said.

  She paced. “Why should I, if you put such a low value on your life?”

  “Because it’s your job. Just like it’s mine to be an entertainer.”

  “A butcher, more like.”

  “I am one entertaining butcher. Neither of us can change the world, Doc. But like I said, there are people who might be dead if I don’t help them. Help me save them.”

  “Who?”

  “A friend and her two kids.”

  “What can you do?”

  “I have no idea. But I have to try.”

  She eyed him for a long, long time, chewing on her stylus. “There is one possibility that will work strictly temporarily. It’s cheaper than re-growing a new heart. We can mount an EKG monitor on you, sort of like a pacemaker, and rig it with an injector of your Go Juice. Next time you flatline, it injects you.”

  “Sounds great. How much?”

  She gave him a scary figure.

  “Shit, Doc, no problem. Just let me go rob a bank first.”

  “Even if we do this, it is not foolproof. There will come a time when no amount of Go Juice or anything else will restart that heart.”

  The thought of keeping Lilly and her kids out of the hands of the Russians meant a whole lot more to him than anything else. “Thanks for your concern, really. How soon could you rig one up?”

  “First you would have to verify that you have the funds available.”

  “You let me worry about that.”

  “Next, we would have to get you out of this hospital. This is somewhat outside the system.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “I tried to bring you a nice Geriatri-Cal,” Tina said, sitting down beside the bed, hands stuffed in her jeans pockets, “but they confiscated it at the door.”

  “I appreciate the thought.” Horace leaned back on the bed, trying to muster a smile.

  Her eyes wouldn’t meet his, and there was a seriousness lurking there, like a stain behind a patch of brittle plaster. She wiped at her nose.