The Hammer Falls Page 2

  She sighed. “Hammer, I would like to come, it’s sweet of you to ask, but I can’t. Look, I gotta—”

  “Just this one time.”

  The words seemed to hover on her lips for several seconds. “How do I find you?”

  “I’ll leave word with the guards at the back entrance to bring you to the locker room.”

  “No guarantees, Hammer. I’m kind of in the middle of something now.”

  “I get it.”

  “Bye, Hammer.” The connection went dead.

  “You ready to do this thing, stumpy?” Horace said, crossing Gaston’s dressing room in three great strides.

  “Fuck you and your ‘stumpy,’ eh?” Gaston The Freak Rousseau’s voice sounded like he gargled with molten glass.

  They clasped their leathered, meaty hands in a powerful grip. Then Gaston feinted a punch toward Horace’s stomach, and Horace’s combat instincts slapped it away before it registered in his mind.

  “Oh ho! I didn’t know fossils could move.” Gaston only came up to Horace’s sternum, but the fifteen-centimeter flaming-orange Mohawk made up some of the difference. The David-and-Goliath aspect of their comparative statures was one reason their matches had been so popular back in the day.

  “You just keep right on thinking that,” Horace said.

  “By the way, my offer is still open. Come and help me groom young nipple-suckers for the pit.”

  “Thanks all the same, but I still don’t speak Pussy.”

  “But it is the language of love! Speak Français and pussy rains from the heavens.” Gaston made an expansive gesture toward the dull, concrete ceiling. “You’ve met my wife.”

  Horace rubbed his jaw with a grin. “Maybe there is something to that....”

  The air smelled of rubbing alcohol, ointment, and petroleum jelly, and his head again brushed the bank of light fixtures above, making their shadows sway. The cinder-block walls were painted white, but somehow started to gray. The light dimmed.

  Gaston’s voice sounded like it was coming through a steel culvert. “You okay, Hark?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  A voice floated into his consciousness that he hadn’t heard in far too long. “What is your malfunction, pansy ass? Lying down on the job?”

  His labored heartbeat thundered so loud in his ears he could barely hear her voice. “Naw, Amanda darlin’, I’m just resting.”

  “Get up, Horace.”

  “Not just yet. Need to rest a minute.” His voice sounded farther away than hers.

  An image of the most beautiful face he had ever seen swam through the gray fog. Long, sweeping, dark curls, eyes like propane flames, and that silly golden tiara with the red star in the center.

  He said, “Where you been all this time, darlin’?”

  A warm, callused hand soft on his face. “You need to get up, baby. Right now.”

  “Just lay here a little longer.”

  “Now, fuck face.”

  “No need to get all hostile, darlin’. God, I missed you.”

  She swallowed hard, hovering over him. Had a tear just brushed his cheek? “Me, too.”

  “You never told me his name...”

  Another voice intruded, male, familiar, nearer. “Hark, you need a doctor?”

  “I know, baby,” she said. “I couldn’t.”

  “That was kinda mean, you know?”

  “I’m sorry.” Her voice receded as if through a thickening fog. Then she was gone.

  “Hark, let me help you up, eh.”

  Horace felt himself lifted to his feet as if he was a doll.

  Gaston’s gravelly voice was clear. “There you go. Upright.”

  Horace rubbed his eyes and tried to clear his vision. The blood-thunder in his ears subsided to a distant storm. Another man was there. Horace managed to focus. “Why, Johnny Valentine, when did you get here?”

  The massive shaven-headed warrior helped Gaston ease Horace against the prep table. “Freak here called me in. Y’all all right?”

  “Just a little under the weather is all. Thanks, Johnny.”

  “Anything for you, Hammer.”

  “Listen, Johnny,” Horace said, “your slot must be coming up soon. Me and The Freak here gotta go over the spots.”

  Johnny released Horace’s right arm. “Yeah, number five on the card. Anything y’all need, just holler.” He picked up his ceramic vibro-axe and headed for the door.

  “Kick some ass, kid,” Horace called after him.

  The enormous axe man opened the door, then stood back as the familiar rattle and squeak of gurney and medical equipment whisked a fallen fighter to the infirmary. Through the open door, the smells of blood and viscera wafted into the room, mixing with the aromas of alcohol, oiled steel, and leather.

  Valentine squeezed through the doorway and disappeared.

  Gaston gripped Horace’s shoulder. “That a drug reaction? Who were you talking to?”

  Horace chose the easier question to answer. “Amanda Reckinwith. Her parents had a sick sense of humor. She tried to kill me once.”

  “Name’s familiar....”

  “Chromosome Clash III.” The ladies had their own pit fighting circuits, with stars just as big as Horace and Gaston had been. “Amazing” Grace Benedict with her mug like a shaved gorilla; like Horace, she’d been one of the early adopters of gene-modding. Then there were the tech-babes like Cassia “The Enlightened” Evajea, the sparkling assassin with coruscating lights embedded in her flesh.

  Gaston’s eyes brightened. “Yeah, she dressed up as a superhero.”

  Amanda had even licensed the tiara and lasso from the media company, except the tiara was titanium and the lasso was bioengineered spider silk laced with micro-razors. She’d nearly severed his left forearm with that lasso, and he’d taken her down by getting close enough to shatter her molded ceramic breastplate—and her ribcage—with a one-handed Thunder Hammer. Afterward, as they lay in the infirmary, waiting for their bodies to regenerate from the ghastly wounds they had given each other, they had shared a glance, then later a shower, then a solid month in Caesar’s Palace StarTower, drunk on Dom Perignon, during which time she’d done her damnedest to wear him down to a nub. He’d had a hundred (and twelve?) groupies and pit girls—plus a few Fortune 500 CEOs and even a Siamese princess—in the fifteen years since then, but she had been the real deal. Tastes of strawberry lip gloss and the saltiness of her throat floated out of the dark.

  Horace said, “She started hating me when she found out she was pregnant.”

  Gaston ran kielbasa-like fingers through the thick orange braids of his beard. “Always wondered why she quit. She was on top.”

  “I suggested an abortion if she was so sore about being disqualified, but...” He shrugged. Something in her had shifted, something biological, instinctive. “I wanted her to have the kid, you know? But she had to get away from the life. I couldn’t quit back then any more than I can quit now.” Horace took a deep breath and started circling the room, feeling his bearings return, thinking about all the messages and phone calls that had gone unanswered. “Back in ’68, I got an envelope with a Singapore postmark but no return address.”

  “Back in ’68,” Gaston blew out his breath and shook his head.

  “The only thing inside was a photo of a ten-year-old boy.” He pointed to his chin. “No mistaking this jaw, or the eyes.”

  “Were they still in Singapore during the bombing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You look through the databases?”

  “I searched for six months, hired P.I.s, even went to Singapore. Spent most everything I had. You saw the news feeds. All that was left was radioactive glass and a big empty crater. When I came back, I’d been gone just a little too long.”

  “Oui, Eric ‘The Slaughterer’ had all the top billing by then.”

  “I was old meat.”

  “That kid was a punk.”

  “Naw, he was a good kid.”

  “He was doping.”


  “So was I. So were you.”

  “Oui, but our shit wasn’t as good as his shit, eh?”

  They laughed together, then Gaston gave him a hard, hard stare. “So why you doing this, man? I appreciate being here again, after all these years, eh? Feels like old times. But you can’t fight me, the shape you’re in.”

  Horace sighed and looked at his iron-hard hands and thick, chitinous forearms with the wraps of gray barbed-wire tattoos that went all the way up and across his shoulders and chest.

  “When I was a kid, my dear old granddad told me about his pro wrestling days. There was this guy, Lex Luger, used to say that if you could walk to the ring, you could wrestle.” He looked Gaston in the eye, and Gaston nodded. “This is what I do.” And because his only friends in the world were people who had tried to kill him. Some of them had even succeeded. How sad was that? “Listen, brother, don’t tell anyone about this, all right? By horn-time, I’ll be ready to eat your heart.”

  Gaston’s eyes narrowed. “Whatever you say.”

  The frenzied sound of the roaring crowd and the pulsing thunder of the bass beat filtered down into the room. The announcer thundered to the masses: “Resurrection Watch is now underway for Randy ‘The Wrecker’ Washington. The Samurai’s katana really did some damage.”

  Horace’s gaze flicked to one of the ubiquitous screens where a replay showed Wrecker Washington’s spectacular evisceration in enhanced 3-D. That had been a helluva cut, Hammer mused, right in the crease below the breastplate.

  The announcer went on, “Regenecorp technicians are even now struggling to restore The Wrecker’s life.”

  The video feed cut to the infirmary where the Fight Doctor and a bevy of medical techs huddled around the fighter’s ensanguined corpse. Flashing lights and readouts blazed self-importantly, and nests of tubes pierced the fighter’s flesh at various points. Montage of concerned faces in the crowd, kids and women looking pensive over the fate of the downed fighter.

  A caption box appeared at the bottom of the screen, flashing:

  RESURRECTION WATCH: ODDS OF SUCCESSFUL RESURRECTION 1:3 AGAINST.

  PLACE YOUR BETS NOW IN ACCOUNT DM55588767. BETTING WINDOW CLOSES IN 1:37.

  The timer counted down the seconds.

  The video feed cut back to the octagonal enclosure in the center of the stadium, and the timer retreated to an upper corner. Giant searchlights speared the black Las Vegas sky and spotlights swept silver discs across the multicolored tapestry of fans.

  Gaston said to the screen, “Pull it through, kid.”

  Horace took a deep breath. “How about we go through the spots?” The outcome of the vast majority of bouts was left up to the skills of the fighters, but the sponsors often required each match to include certain moves or events—or spots, as they were called—usually because they wanted to highlight the performance of their newest weapon or armor tech. Sometimes they just wanted their logo highlighted at a crucial moment. They wanted stuff that looked fabulous in the after clips. Sometimes, the outcome was determined before the fighters ever set foot in the pit, either by Death Match Unlimited or by one of the chief sponsors. Those matches came with a hefty bonus and comprised a significant portion of Horace’s losses.

  Gaston perked up. “Sure. I’ve got the two kukris, of course. You been using spiked baseball bats lately, eh?”

  “Yeah, but those won’t stand up when they drop in the bucklers for Round Two. After the No-Weapons Round, I’m going with this new vibro-cleaver.”

  “The NorseX one? How is it?”

  “It’ll split a charging buffalo from nose to asshole.”

  “Magnifique. How about surprises?”

  “Retractable punch dagger in my left bracer. You?”

  Gaston smiled and lifted his chin and raised his thick orange beard, revealing a small sheath woven into the braids. “Electro-fiber dagger. The manufacturer is classified, but they’re humping bunnies to get this stuff on the market.” He pulled out a strip of gray cloth hanging from a narrow plastic grip.

  “Nice!” Horace breathed.

  Gaston thumbed the switch, and the micro-battery sent a current through the memory fibers, snapping them straight and rigid. From a supple strap of cloth to deadly weapon in less than a millisecond.

  “I’ll bet that cost you,” Horace said.

  “Endorsement deal from the manufacturer. It’s a sample.”

  “Sharp?”

  “You can shave with it, if you’re careful. Care to try it on your balls?”

  “I’ll pass. Still using ’em.”

  “I’ll make ’em look good.”

  “You always do.”

  Gaston’s white teeth grinned between flaming orange beard and mustache. “Good to be working with you again, mon ami.”

  Horace clapped him on the shoulder. “Let’s give ’em their money’s worth.”

  Back in his own dressing room, Horace clomped the massive aluminum case up on the prep table, unsnapped the heavy latches, and opened the clamshell. His signature body armor with its yellow-orange flames, scored and repaired and re-stitched, waited inside to offer whatever meager protection it could from weapons designed, at least in part, to penetrate it. Just like his body, every scar told a story. The fresh, new sponsorship logos covered some of the old scarring—NorseX, EnerGen, PeaceTech. Plastered right over his heart, Regenecorp’s logo was the largest, mandatory for any match sanctioned for regenite tech.

  Sponsorship wasn’t what it used to be, a pittance now. With even half of the sponsorship dollars he used to receive, he would never have needed to talk to Dmitri.

  He typically needed about ten minutes to strap on the lightweight ceramic plates embedded in carbon-nanofiber-impregnated leather, but tonight his hands kept fumbling over the buckles and snaps. It didn’t fit right, wasn’t falling into place like it always did.

  Gripping the edges of the table to steady himself, he wished the eels in his head would quit squirming. He had to get his shit together. He extracted a hypodermic from his case, pulled out a little bottle of his Go Juice, a potent cocktail of steroids, amino acids, enzymes, hormones, and god knew what else. It was too soon before the fight, but it had enough adrenaline that it might keep his heart going for a little while longer. Standard dose plus fifty percent oughta do it. Strange how the prick of a needle could be so exquisite compared to the sheer volume of physical torture he had endured, but nevertheless it was a rush when it went up into the vein.

  Sheer power and ferocity surged like lightning up his arm and spread crackling through his left shoulder into his chest. His heart kicked, then roared like an antique V-8. The struggle in its rhythm disappeared, all cylinders firing in perfect powerful rhythm like a turbo-charger dumping fuel and air by the bucket into every chamber. He squeezed his fist and savored the familiar rush.

  Starting with his arm, the grayish tattoos across his body began to glimmer with a blue-green light as the enzymes in the Go Juice energized the bioluminescent ink. Now he glowed in the dark, just like his action figure, complete with Thunder Hammer action and removable entrails. Too bad the action figure had been discontinued ten years ago. Maybe after tonight they’d make an updated version.

  He took a deep breath, let it out. He was almost starting to feel like himself. All he had to do was beat Gaston tonight and his worries were over. New heart, clean slate.

  The intercom dinged with a guard’s voice. “Hammer to the rear entrance. Hammer to the rear entrance.”

  Two security guards stood at the rear entrance to the coliseum. Above the sparkle and gleam of the Strip, searchlights and lasers painted the sky with clashing pit fighters a hundred meters tall. The Golden Spike Tower formed a gleaming, gilded needle over a kilometer high, right next to the Caesar’s Palace StarTower, as if racing each other toward the stratosphere. The air still smelled of desert and the crackling ozone of hover drives. The limousines of VIPs filled the small parking lot like carefully stacked dominoes, their hover drives quiescent. Horace scanned the li
mousines for anything that smacked of danger, but all was quiet compared to the roar seeping over the coliseum wall.

  He hardly recognized her. She wore sandals, faded jeans, and an off-the-shoulder t-shirt from some musical he’d barely heard of, quite unlike the skimpy straps, lace, and high heels he knew so well. Her hair, pulled into a stubby ponytail, was back to brown, one of the many colors he’d seen, but those big, brown eyes were still Lilly, and the square of her shoulders and curve of her neck were so like Amanda they could be two halves of the same person. But the wind brought him her scent, the delicate combination of jasmine and vanilla and Lilly he’d experienced so often at close range.

  He cracked a grin. “You look shorter.”

  She smiled back, feebly, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. Dark circles ringed her eyes, and she thrust both hands into her pockets. She cocked a foot. “No heels.” Even without heels, she was tall, over 180 centimeters, willowy. “I’ve never seen you glowing like that before. Kind of creepy.”

  How many times had he imagined the inner glow pulsing out of her as she danced? He extended his hand. “Come on, I got a VIP box.”

  She swallowed hard. “I can’t. The sight of blood makes me sick. I just... I just came because I needed some air. And it’s only a ten-minute walk.”

  “From where?”

  She shrugged off the question. “How soon before you go on?”

  “Maybe an hour. Why don’t you come inside?” He scanned the parking lot again. How could he tell her that she might be in danger because of him?

  Her eyes glistened. “Even if I could—”

  “No bullshit tonight. What’s going on? I haven’t seen you in weeks. I stopped down there once to give you a ticket.”

  Her voice cracked. “It’s my son. He’s in the hospital. He’s sleeping now, so I had to get out of there for a while and—”

  “You have a son?”