by Jinx, Hondo
Fight Town
Inspiration
Hondo Jinx
Copyright © 2021 by Hondo Jinx
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Fight Town: Inspiration is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places, and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover design by Yanai Draws
Edited by Karen Bennett
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Created with Vellum
For Craig DiLouie, the undisputed heavyweight champ of brainstorming friends, who spent two hours on the phone with me, getting me so pumped up about this book that I couldn’t wait to write it. You were right, brother.
“A champion is someone who gets up when he can’t.” – Jack Dempsey
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“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” – Mike Tyson
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“Beware of fat men with fast hands.” – Old boxing gym adage
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“Boxing is a sport of self-control. You must understand fear so you can manipulate it. Fear is like fire. You can make it work for you; it can warm you in the winter, cook your food when you’re hungry, give you light when you’re in the dark and produce energy. Let it go out of control and it can hurt you, even kill you… fear is a friend of exceptional people.” – Cus D’Amato
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Afterword
About the Author
Also by Hondo Jinx
Chapter 1
Johnny wasn’t looking to be a hero. He just wanted to take a leak and get back on the road.
But that’s the way life goes, right? One minute, you’re going about your business, driving on a deserted highway at two in the morning. Then you pull into a rest stop, the shit hits the fan, and the next thing you know, you’re a hero.
Trouble is, sometimes heroes get killed.
It all started a week earlier. Johnny was unwinding in his apartment after a hard day of laying brick when someone called HayHeyHey sent him a friend request. He clicked the profile and spent a few seconds ogling the drop-dead gorgeous pic the scammer calling himself HayHeyHey was using to rope in lonely morons. Johnny was just about to hit decline when he did a double take.
Aspects of the young woman’s face were familiar.
That dimple. That crooked smile.
Johnny stared a second longer and glanced again at the username.
No shit…
Growing up, he’d lived next door to Haylie May, a skinny tomboy who loved catching frogs and playing flashlight tag. They’d had a lot of fun together.
Then, in middle school, Haylie moved away. They kept in touch for a couple of weeks. But like any self-respecting eleven-year-old boy, Johnny rolled with the punches, got back to catching frogs with his remaining friends, and mostly forgot about his skinny pal Haylie.
Until that moment ten years later when he’d almost deleted the friend request from HayHeyHey.
The girl in the pic was Haylie, his old frog-catching partner and flashlight tag nemesis. But she sure didn’t look like a tomboy now, especially in that tight white dress. Her waist remained tiny, but nobody would call her skinny, not with those curves.
Johnny hit accept, and fifteen seconds later, his inbox dinged.
HayHeyHey: Wanna go catch some frogs?
The dizzying week that followed started with messages, moved to texting, and bloomed into long phone conversations full of laughter, nostalgia, catching up, and some pretty heavy flirting. Haylie begged him to come and visit her three hundred and fifty miles away, where she was waiting tables in the Outer Banks.
She said he could stay at her apartment for the weekend, then added, “We can turn out all the lights and play flashlight tag.”
Johnny said he would be there when she got off shift at three in the morning.
When he was about an hour away from Haylie’s, he pulled into a rest stop for a much-needed piss.
The lot was empty save for a beat-up Crown Vic and a possum that caught one glimpse of Johnny and trundled away into the swampy tangle behind the building.
Maybe that possum was an omen.
If so, Johnny ignored him. Just like he ignored his mother’s advice.
Never drive on the highway alone at night, his mother had told him when they talked that afternoon. Mom was a worrier full of these weirdly specific, multi-faceted warnings that made her sound like an ancient Gypsy instead of a fifty-something dispatcher for a fuel company.
Don’t look up if you’re visiting a big city full of tourists.
Never trust an unfamiliar dog with a curly tail.
And whatever you do, never drive on the highway alone at night.
But Johnny ignored her.
In the last truly normal moment of his life, Johnny glanced up at the bright, buzzing sign overtop the facility entrance.
North Carolina Welcomes You!
A cloud of insects swarmed the sign, apparently unaware of the lizard stretched across the top, snagging bugs like a guy kicked back on his couch eating popcorn.
Another omen?
Maybe, maybe not. Johnny didn’t give it much thought.
Because that’s when the shouting started.
“Stop it, Floyd!” the woman hollered.
Heightened perception is one of the few advantages to growing up with an alcoholic father. From an early age, you stop relying solely on words and start putting more faith in things like facial expressions and tones of voice.
In this woman’s voice Johnny heard anger and fear and that chilling sound recognized instantly by any kid who grew up in a violent household: the quiver of pain in the voice of someone trying to disguise it. To anyone who knows it intimately, that quiver, even when whispered, is louder than a bloodcurdling scream.
Floyd was hurting this woman. She wanted him to stop. And she knew that voicing her pain would only fue
l Floyd’s cruelty.
Johnny had no intention of being a hero. But if he heard a woman in distress, he was going to help her. Period.
Trouble was, he had to piss. Really bad.
Delaying a long overdue leak is bad enough, but it’s even worse if you suddenly realize you might have to toss knuckles with some asshole named Floyd.
A man’s voice, kind of squeaky and mean, said, “Don’t you push me, you fucking bitch.”
The woman cried out in pain.
Johnny rushed inside, wishing he could call a piss-break timeout before getting down to business, but alas, life doesn’t work that way when you’re dealing with the Floyds of the world.
A man and woman wrestled awkwardly next to the vending machines, cursing at each other. She was pale and skinny with rust-colored cornrows and more tattoos than a biker bar on the Fourth of July.
Her dance partner, Floyd, had a face made for a mug shot. He was short and wiry with a shaved head, a salt-and-pepper goatee, and even more tattoos than his wrestling partner. Judging by the blue ink and sloppy work, he’d probably paid for his tats with jailhouse hooch.
They continued their sloppy, profane dance, completely aware of Johnny’s presence.
For a fleeting millisecond, Johnny weighed the chances of slipping unseen into the pisser and taking care of business before dealing with this shit show.
But then Floyd drew back a hand and socked her. It wasn’t a punch, exactly. More of a meaty slap. But he caught her hard on the hinge of the jaw, and she dropped harder than a sack of QUIKRETE left in the rain.
“Hey!” Johnny boomed.
Johnny was a big guy, and he worked masonry, so he was in shape.
Floyd, on the other hand, looked around five-five and a buck-thirty, so Johnny figured once the guy laid eyes on him, he’d go all deer in the headlights.
Johnny figured wrong.
Floyd jerked around and fixed him with wide eyes. But not the wide eyes of a fear-struck doe or even a semi-ominous possum hightailing it for the weeds. More like the wide eyes of a rabid raccoon. Floyd’s upper lip curled, revealing a jack-o’-lantern smattering of cracked and jagged stubs, brown with rot.
Fuck, Johnny thought eloquently, realizing that the guy was A) a tweaked-out wingnut likely carrying more diseases than a feral cat, and B) almost certainly about to attack him.
Johnny wasn’t worried about getting his ass kicked. He’d grown up in Philly, after all, and being the youngest of six brothers is like being the smallest Neanderthal in the cave. Johnny knew how to take care of himself.
Which is why, when Floyd did charge, Johnny automatically dropped his right leg back and threw a quick left hook. It wasn’t a particularly hard shot, but Johnny had dynamite in both hands. The punch landed flush on the point of his attacker’s stubbly chin, and old Floyd went down in a boneless pantomime of his girlfriend or wife or whoever she was.
Johnny didn’t care about the particulars of their relationship status, honestly. He was just glad he’d stopped Floyd from beating on her.
Johnny would ask if she wanted him to call the cops—after he took a piss. The oh-shit portion of this situation was, for all intents and purposes, over.
Or so he thought.
Then the woman grabbed hold of the vending machine, pulled herself shakily to her feet, and shrieked at him like a banshee. “What did you do to Floyd, fart stick?”
Fart stick? Johnny thought, knocked off-balance by her weird-ass insult and shocking ingratitude, not to mention her absolutely mind-boggling defense of Floyd, who was currently snoring like a fat dog on a futon.
“Hey,” Johnny said. “It’s okay. He won’t hurt you anymore. I’ll call the cops, and—”
“Cops?” she said, and Johnny realized a few things. A) This woman wasn’t as old as he had thought; she was closer to eighteen than thirty, despite the bags under her eyes and streaks of gray in her hair, B) she had, along the unfortunate path to this strange moment, dropped more pills than a three-fingered pharmacist, and C) Johnny no longer gave a fuck about helping her.
Now, some of you knight-in-shining-armor types might take issue with that confession. But when was the last time you put off a much-needed piss to save a drug-addled crazy in cornrows from a potentially serious beating only to have her treat you like the bad guy?
“I hate cops!” she shrieked.
“Sorry to hear that,” Johnny said, edging toward the bathroom, “but I’m a brick—”
He’d meant to say, I’m a bricklayer, but the final word died in his throat when the wild-eyed woman yanked a snub-nosed revolver from her waistband, aimed it at Johnny’s chest, and screamed, “Die, pig!”
There was a bright flash, a tremendous roar, and Mike Tyson punched him right in the solar plexus.
Everything went away for a moment.
When Johnny came to, he was down on his back, half in the building, half out. He couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, couldn’t even breathe.
Everything was a confusion of pain and paralysis.
Johnny was aware of the woman raving inside but couldn’t make sense of her shrieking. All he could do was lie there and stare up at the bright, buzzing sign crawling with insects. The lizard whipped out his tongue and hauled a swath of bugs into his mouth.
Good for you, buddy, Johnny thought. Good for you.
And then Johnny died.
Chapter 2
“Congratulations,” a woman’s voice said. “You’re a hero.”
Johnny opened his eyes and squinted against the harsh glare of an overhead light.
A man’s voice spoke. “Bad news is you also expired. Hashtag frowny face.”
“What?” The pain was gone, but Johnny couldn’t move. Looking down, he realized he was strapped to a table.
What did this guy mean, expired?
Beneath the restraints, Johnny still wore a plain black t-shirt, cargo shorts, and running shoes.
But he saw no blood or bullet hole. No tubes, no wires, not so much as one of those little plastic hospital bracelets.
What was going on?
The blinding light clicked off, and a pudgy, bespectacled face fringed in coppery peach fuzz leaned over him, grinning. “Hi, I’m Paul. And this is my business associate, Annabelle.”
“Um… hey. I’m—”
“We know who you are, Johnny,” Paul said. He wore a rumpled green flannel over a dark green t-shirt. “You made the headlines.”
“National headlines,” Annabelle said, stepping into view. She had glasses, too, and wore a pink hoodie with an unfamiliar cartoon cat on the front. Her long blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
They both looked around Johnny’s age, maybe even younger. He seriously doubted they were doctors.
“That crazy stunt at the rest stop struck a chord with the masses,” Annabelle said.
Paul cleared his throat and fiddled with a tablet. “From the front page of USA TODAY: Tragedy on the Turnpike. John Jefferson Rockledge, 21, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, lost his life in the early hours of Saturday morning after heroically attempting to—”
“Wait,” Johnny interrupted. “I’m dead?”
“Not exactly,” Paul said. “You were dead.”
“Well, technically,” Annabelle said, “he still is dead.”
“I don’t feel dead.”
“No,” she laughed. “You’re not dead here.”
“So… I’m dead someplace else?”
“Yes, you’re dead in another time flow.”
“Long dead,” Paul said. “But don’t worry about that. It’s complicated. Basically, it goes like this. We’re from the future.”
“The future…” Johnny trailed off, understanding these two were just as crazy as Floyd and the woman who’d shot him. Were they friends of theirs?
He tested his restraints. Unfortunately, he couldn’t even wiggle.
“Yes,” Annabelle said. “Despite what they told you back in 2019, time travel is possible. It’s a pain the ass, and don�
��t even get me started on the regulations, but it does work.”
Paul nodded. “Here’s the short of it, Johnny. Since you died, we were free to drop back along a parallel time-space spindle, swoop in, and save you at the last second.”
Johnny just blinked at him. What they were saying was crazy, but given the circumstances, he decided to listen.
“That’s what we do,” Annabelle said. “We study obituaries, then go back in time and save people who are about to die. Their influence on that time flow is over, so we are allowed to remove them.”
“First, of course, we need approval from the Temporal Harvesting Bureau,” Paul said, “which, let me tell you, is a huge pain in the ass.”
“So you guys are what,” Johnny asked, “like 911 from the future?”
They chuckled.
“Good one,” Annabelle said. “But not exactly. I mean, yes, we do save lives.”
“Lots of lives,” Paul said.
“But we’re not paramedics,” Annabelle said. “We’re more like game developers.”
“Game developers?” Johnny narrowed his eyes. “As in video games?”
They laughed again. Harder this time.
“Video games,” Paul said. “Quaint. Very period appropriate. Were you a gamer, Johnny?”